Blog Posts

a cool art nun actually lived!

5/16/2019

I stumbled upon Sister Wendy's video series while I was meandering through a Miami library. I don't remember if I watched all the episodes, but I loved the ones I watched! If you want to learn more about art, art history, etc., Sister Wendy's videos are a great place to begin. She's fun!

I mention her on my blog because her library is offered up for sale. She passed away in 2018. I can only imagine the books she had in her collection!!! WOW! Stuff of my dreams! It's a shame it's a book collection that's being split. Too bad the collection couldn't go to a library for most of us to enjoy. I can easily imagine adding a Sister Wendy Art Book Library to my bucket list of places to visit.

For more about Sister Wendy:
Wikipedia: Wendy Mary Beckett, better known as Sister Wendy, was a British religious sister, hermit, consecrated virgin and art historian who became well known internationally during the 1990s when she presented a series of BBC television documentaries on the history of art.

For more about Sister Wendy's book collection:
LONDON.- London dealer Thomas Heneage has purchased a Library belonging to the late Wendy Mary Beckett, TV Art Historian and nun, better-known as Sister Wendy. Heneage will offer a large number of books from Sister Wendy’s Library for sale at TEFAF Maastricht (16 – 24 March 2019).

After her death at the end of last year, BBC director of arts Jonty Claypole paid tribute to Sister Wendy, describing her "unique presentation style” as well as her “deep knowledge of and passion for the arts". Sister Wendy’s purpose-built library was next to the caravan she lived in and is made up of some fascinating books, on subjects ranging from Chinese paintings and manuscripts to Old Master Paintings, and contemporary art. This collection of books demonstrates Sister Wendy’s breadth of knowledge and fascination with all areas of the art world.

For more about the auction that already happened: Thomas Heaneage offers Sister Wendy's library for sale.

Pets buried in backyards: illegal

5/9/2019

I heard that my area has laws against burying your loved best furry friend in your yard. I recently learned this is a law across the USA.

I also heard a story of a cat being eaten by a gator because the gator was lured by fish bait dumped in the yard.

Yes, I live in a very interesting place called Redlands, Miami, Florida. We also have pythons eating gators but those are different stories.

Hence the subject of this blog, lol, don't bury your pet in your yard. The article explains that IF your pet is found by another animal, that animal could get sick.

Trying to dig in any yard in South Florida either gets you to water or through a ton of small rocks. So the rules in the link of burying your loved pet 3 feet deep will take you a while of back breaking work. Andy & I had holes 3 feet deep dug, but they were with a rented machine to move some plants...!

As a painting artist who loves to paint your cats and dogs for you, I've noticed that some paintings are done for the memory. The first dog I painted for some was Wilson, as a keepsake memory of Karla's best furry friend. Please keep in mind all the furry (and scaly) friends that are outside, and act responsibly when choosing how to lay your pet to rest. I'm sure our veterinarians will guide us when these sad days arrive.

Anyway. If you're interested in not-gory-but-factual-details of what might happen if a pet is buried in a yard, here's the original link: Stop-burying-your-pets-in-the-backyard

Below is Halloween Still Life, 22x33 inches, acrylics on paper

ghost in photo - do you have ghostly experiences?

5/1/2019

I live in the Redlands of Miami...where there seem to be few ghost stories.

I know Miami has to have some ghost stories, but most are probably in the original downtown and older areas. I know of ghost stories around Vizcaya and the Deering Estate...but few others.

The article link takes you to a photograph that has a ghost. Makes me wonder if I go back through all of my photos...what would I see? Would I see any ghosts other than those I loved in them?

It's a cool story. You can find it here: How a Photographer Captured a Ghost - a Photo Archived Over 75 Years

Below is a Spooky Postcard Skeletogenous Painter, by me, 2018.

for all the vermeers in the world

4/24/2019

I've read Girl with the Pearl Earring.

I'd love to travel the world just to see all of Vermeer's paintings in person.

Like you, I can only dream, but wait! NOW, THERE'S AN APP for that!

I'll be seeing all the Vermeers in the world through that app! I've downloaded it, and when I get the most anxious, I start scrolling thru the paintings.

The app has an ad at the bottom of it - with some moving type - but what do you expect for a FREE app!? Occasionally, a full screen pop ad that you have close at the "X" will annoy, too.

It lets you crop sections, see details larger, and has the paintings by years. It's really wonderful to zoom in and see the marble floors Vermeer painted in his painting. One painting has a painting in it, lol!

Will you go check it out and let me know what you think? The app is named "Vermeer" and has a close up of the girl with a pearl earring as its screen icon.

To read more about the app and how it was developed, please continue below by signature:

In the meantime, smiles with paint on my hands, Angeline

Want to See All the Vermeers in the World? Now’s Your Chance
Meet Vermeer, a new augmented-reality app from the Mauritshuis museum and Google, is a virtual museum containing images of all authenticated Vermeer paintings. From left, an overhead view of the galleries in miniature; a look inside the space; and “Girl With a Pearl Earring” on the wall.
Credit
via Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Cultur

Meet Vermeer, a new augmented-reality app from the Mauritshuis museum and Google, is a virtual museum containing images of all authenticated Vermeer paintings. From left, an overhead view of the galleries in miniature; a look inside the space; and “Girl With a Pearl Earring” on the wall.

CreditCreditvia Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Culture
By Nina Siegal
Dec. 3, 2018

AMSTERDAM — Johannes Vermeer, whose acute eye captured the quiet beauty of Dutch domestic life, was not a prolific artist: Just 36 paintings are widely acknowledged as his work. Still, anyone who wanted to see them all had to travel far and wide — to New York, London, Paris and beyond.
Until now.
The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, which owns what is perhaps Vermeer’s best-known masterpiece, “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” has teamed up with Google Arts & Culture in Paris to build an augmented-reality app that creates a virtual museum featuring all of the artist’s works.
For the app, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has contributed images of all five of its Vermeer masterpieces, while the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, each with four, have also given photographs of theirs. Two more have come from the Louvre, and three from the Frick Collection. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston has shared an image of “The Concert,” the Vermeer that disappeared after being stolen from the museum’s collection in 1990.
That painting will be on view once again in Meet Vermeer, the digital museum. Starting Monday, the free app will be accessible to anyone with a camera-equipped smartphone.
A detail of “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” perhaps Vermeer’s best-known work. Users of the app can zoom in on all the paintings.
Credit
via Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Culture

A detail of “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” perhaps Vermeer’s best-known work. Users of the app can zoom in on all the paintings.Creditvia Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Culture
“This is one of these moments when technology does something that you can never do in real life, and that’s because these paintings could never be brought together in real life,” said Emilie Gordenker, director of the Mauritshuis.
She explained that some of the 17th-century paintings were too fragile to travel, while some were in private collections, and the Gardner’s was lost. But even under different circumstances, it would be unlikely that all the owners would be willing to part with all of their prized Vermeers at the same time.
The 18 museums and private collections that own Vermeer paintings, however, were willing to provide high-resolution digital image files of their Vermeers to the project.
Vermeer, a somewhat mysterious figure who lived and worked in Delft, the Netherlands, is thought to have created about 45 paintings during a career spanning nearly two decades. Some are believed to have gone missing. Besides the 36 works that a majority of Vermeer scholars accept as authentic, other paintings have been attributed to him. Because the art world continues to debate their authorship, Ms. Gordenker said this virtual museum would not include them.
Although many of these images are already on the museums’ websites, Ms. Gordenker said she wanted to give the public a sense of the paintings’ size in relation to one another — something that is hard to convey in a flat picture on a screen.

All the institutions contributing to the app sent high-resolution digital images of their Vermeers. Here, “The Procuress” being photographed for the project at the Old Masters Picture Gallery, Dresden State Art Museums.
Credit
Dresden State Art Museums, via Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Culture

All the institutions contributing to the app sent high-resolution digital images of their Vermeers. Here, “The Procuress” being photographed for the project at the Old Masters Picture Gallery, Dresden State Art Museums.CreditDresden State Art Museums, via Mauritshuis/Google Arts & Culture
Opening the app, visitors gaze down at a museum with no ceiling. To enter one of the rooms displayed, they touch the phone’s surface, pinching their fingers together and then opening them. As they land in a gallery, the perspective shifts so that they face the walls, where the framed paintings hang. Zooming in, they can approach each work and examine it closely.
The first room is devoted to Vermeer’s earliest works. The rest of the museum is organized thematically, exploring subjects such as “contemplation” and the studies of faces known as “tronies.”
Laurent Gaveau, director of Google’s Arts and Culture Lab, a nonprofit developed to experiment with new ways to make art and culture accessible to the public, said this was the first virtual museum that Google had created, but that he could certainly imagine making more.
“We could think about all kinds of museums that never existed,” he said in a telephone interview, although he added that no other such projects were yet in the works. “We want to first see how people will react to this, and we want to see, from a technological standpoint and a user standpoint, if it’s right and how it can be improved.”

Paintings by Vermeer have long been reproduced in all types of formats, from posters to patterns on handbags and umbrellas. But as the technology improves and visitors have the artificial but intimate experience of seeing high-quality reproductions in a museum setting, does Ms. Gordenker worry that they will be less motivated to travel for the real thing?
No, she said.
“The more information we share, including images, the more I think that people want to have the authentic experience of seeing the work in its home,” she said, “and seeing it as an actual physical presence. One of the reasons that museums have becoming increasingly relevant, and why attendance is going up, is that we’ve been able to harness these digital technologies. It breaks down barriers, and makes what we have much more accessible.”

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 4, 2018, on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: All the World’s Vermeers, Under One Virtual Roof.

Notre Dame Cathedral - longer may it live

4/18/2019

A really bad photo of a good photo of me in September, 2011, with Notre Dame in background.

Andy texted me late on Monday afternoon, April 15th, 2019.

The Notre Dame in Paris is on fire.

I watched the spire fall online.

I watched, like millions of others, online as the fire watched.

I also cried. Wondered. Hoped.

Facts:
The stone structures are mostly intact.
The wood structures are mostly gone and irreplaceable.
There are no trees that grow as tall as those used in the building of Notre Dame.
Most of the stained glass is gone.
Many of the artworks are ok.
The candles, lit in prayers and wishes, were still aflame after the fire was doused.
Billions of dollars are being donated to rebuild the Notre Dame.

I am grateful for the honor of having visited the Grand Lady in 1987, 1993, 2002, and a lovely 4 weeks in 2011 walking past her and entering every chance I had.

I don't believe Notre Dame will be rebuilt in my lifetime....It took a hundred years to build it. Yes, I believe in technology, etc, but, to there is so much work and lost knowledge.

If you're interested in learning more about Notre Dame, a quick Google search will get you to some good links.

As for the fire, here are some good links...

but watch for the wifi suck up from CNN links:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/europe/inside-notre-dame-cathedral-photos-intl/index.html

photos of fire and after fire:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2019/apr/16/assessing-damage-notre-dame-cathedral-in-pictures

Oh, if you want to donate to the rebuild, the Making a Mark has some very reliable charities.
https://makingamark.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-destruction-of-notre-dame.html

https://makingamark.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-donate-restoration-of-notre-dame.html

Trying to smile through tears, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

painting lost for 300 years

4/3/2019

Palette Knife Palm Tree Study, 3 by 5 inches, acrylics on paper

Ok, my painting wasn't lost for 300 years, but I know of one that was!!!

Have you ever remodeled your home? Watched the TV shows that have houses remodeled?
Andy & I will sometimes spend a little while, physically tired, in front of the TV to watch a house remodeling show. We watch from house hunting to the brothers.

The article I include here is of a store remodel, in Paris, France. A painted mural was uncovered that is over 300 years old!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was found behind a wall in a luxury brand's store.

Based on my resources, I'd've had the wall cut out and sold to someone who could do all the restoration and care that it needs! Over 300 years old...! If I were returning to Paris, I would visit this store just to see this painting!

Never, in any of the home shows we've watched, has a painted mural that was by a master been found, lol. To think of it, only one house was even designed by a master architect, lol!

Do you have a fantasy of finding a long lost art treasure? What would YOU do if you found a historical painting mural in your house?

Smiles, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

You can link to article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/fashion/the-treasure-behind-the-wall.html or read on:

The Treasure Behind the WallSomething in the new Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris was not what it seemed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/fashion/the-treasure-behind-the-wall.html

The 17th-century oil painting discovered behind a wall during construction of the Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris.
Credit
Julien Mignot for The New York Times

Image
The 17th-century oil painting discovered behind a wall during construction of the Oscar de la Renta boutique in Paris. CreditCreditJulien Mignot for The New York Times
By Vanessa Friedman
Jan. 21, 2019

Alex Bolen, the chief executive of Oscar de la Renta, planned to have his new store in Paris open around this week, just in time for the couture shows. He planned to have a presence in the city even if he didn’t have a show. He had it all figured out.
Then, last summer, in the middle of renovations, Mr. Bolen got a call from his architect, Nathalie Ryan.
“‘We made a discovery,’” he remembered her saying. On the other end of the phone, Mr. Bolen cringed. The last time he received a call like that about a store, their plans to move a wall had to be scrapped because of fears the building would collapse. He asked what, exactly, the discovery was.
“You have to come and see,” she told him.
So, gritting his teeth, he got on a plane from New York. Ms. Ryan took him to the second floor of what would be the shop, where workers were busily clearing out detritus, and gestured toward the end of the space. Mr. Bolen, she said, blinked. Then he said: “No, it’s not possible.”
Something had been hidden behind a wall, and it wasn’t asbestos. It was a 10-by-20-foot oil painting of an elaborately coifed and dressed 17th-century marquis and assorted courtiers entering the city of Jerusalem.
“It’s very rare and exceptional, for many reasons,” said Benoît Janson, of the restoration specialists Nouvelle Tendance, who is overseeing work on the canvas. Namely, “its historical and aesthetic quality and size.”

Boutique renovations, like most renovations, are often delayed. They frequently run over budget. But rarely are they delayed and over budget because a mysterious artwork more than three centuries old has resurfaced.
In the arms race for the most unique! most authentic! store currently underway, when only-in-person experience is what differentiates retail from e-tail, a cultural treasure surrounded by a puzzle straight out of a Dan Brown novel may be the ultimate accessory.Be Careful What You Wish ForMr. Bolen had been looking for a store in Paris for a long time. In the early 1990s, the company had a small boutique in the city during Mr. de la Renta’s tenure as couturier of Balmain, but the boutique closed after he left the brand in 2002. (He died in 2014.)In 2017, Mr. Bolen was offered the former Reed Krakoff store on Rue de Marignan, a diagonal side street off the luxury thoroughfare Avenue Montaigne, which terminates on one end at L’Avenue, the high-fashion canteen.
Mr. Bolen liked the location, and the building, which had been built in the 19th century and remained largely in the hands of one family, many of whom still lived in the upstairs apartments. Still, he wanted a larger site, and when the office space that spanned the second floor became available, he grabbed it.
“It was pretty charmless,” he said. A former insurance brokerage, it had a dropped ceiling with fluorescent lighting, particleboard walls and industrial carpeting in its rabbit warren of offices. “We knew we’d have to take everything out,” Mr. Bolen said.
The idea was to link the two floors with a grand staircase. The ground floor and part of the second would serve as the boutique, and a room at the end would be used as a showroom and event space, with other space for offices and storage.
The interior, designed by Jeang Kim and Will Kim of Oro Studio, would feel less like a big white box than a home for “young people who had just moved into their grandmother’s grand apartment,” according to Ms. Kim (who is also the sister of Oscar de la Renta’s co-creative director Laura Kim; she is not related to Mr. Kim).

Image

The restoration is expected to be done by May.CreditJulien Mignot for The New York Times
Image

Benoît Janson, a restoration specialist, works on the painting.CreditJulien Mignot for The New York Times
Not long after the demolition began, a discovery was made. A workman, tearing down the dropped ceiling in the last room on the second floor, said there was something “strange.”
That would be a paneled ceiling that had been underneath the visible one, composed of 29 inset squares, eight of them painted with different heraldic seals, and a central diamond. Dating from the mid-19th-century, they were well preserved since they had been recessed within the coffers of the ceiling.
Still, while that was an interesting reveal, it was not unprecedented in a building of that age. It was when workers began removing the particleboard along the side and a chunk of the wall came off too that things got interesting.
“Oh my God, it was — wow,” said Ms. Ryan, who was the in-house architect for Dior for many years and opened her own company, Kirei Studio, in 2010.
Behind the wall a single painting, dark with age, ran from end to end. “Sometimes when you work on castles, you find something, but usually it’s a hidden fireplace, or in Italy, maybe a fresco,” Ms. Ryan said. “But in an apartment? In a store?” She had never seen anything like it.
“Everyone freaked out,” Ms. Kim said. “It was like finding a mummy. I turned off my phone immediately and just looked at it. Nothing like this had ever happened in my work before.”
Demolition was halted to figure out what the painting was and how it came to be in what was about to be a shop. Seeing the aristocrats on horseback and the mosque in the picture, Mr. Bolen said, visions of Crusaders and Knights Templar began to dance in his head. “I think maybe I have seen too many movies,” he said. A WhodunitIn the game of six degrees of separation, this was a good one: Mr. Bolen’s mother-in-law, Annette de la Renta, had cousins (via her mother, Jane Engelhard) who had married into the de La Rochefoucauld family, storied members of the French aristocracy. One of those family members happened to live across the street from the new de la Renta boutique.
So when the painting was found, and it became clear Mr. Bolen would have to talk to the building’s owners, whom he had never met (the lease had been negotiated through a broker), his relative was able to make the introductions. Another de La Rochefoucauld, who happened to work at the Louvre, got a recommendation for an art historian: Stephane Pinta of the Cabinet Turquin, an expert in old-master paintings.
Mr. Pinta determined that the painting was an oil on canvas created in 1674 by Arnould de Vuez, a painter who worked with Charles Le Brun, the first painter to Louis XIV and designer of interiors of the Château de Versailles. After working with Le Brun, de Vuez, who was known for getting involved in duels of honor, was forced to flee France and ended up in Constantinople.
Mr. Pinta traced the painting to a plate that was reproduced in the 1900 book “Odyssey of an Ambassador: The Travels of the Marquis de Nointel, 1670-1680” by Albert Vandal, which told the story of the travels of Charles-Marie-François Olier, Marquis de Nointel et d’Angervilliers, Louis XIV’s ambassador to the Ottoman Court. On Page 129, there is a rotogravure of an artwork depicting the Marquis de Nointel arriving in Jerusalem with great pomp and circumstance — the painting on the wall.
But how it ended up glued to that wall, no one knew, nor why it was covered up. There was speculation that maybe it happened during World War II, given the setting. It could be “a fog-of-war issue,” Mr. Bolen said.
What everyone did know was that it would be dangerous to move because of how the painting had been attached to wall: backed by gauze and glued on. And, Mr. Bolen said, his wife, Eliza, told him, “If you move that painting, you will have 100 years of bad luck.” He thought she was probably right.
The Next Mystery
Instead, Mr. Bolen reached an agreement with the building’s owners: He would restore the painting if they agreed to let it remain in the store while the store was a tenant (the initial lease is for 10 years). Mr. Janson got to work in late November.
“It was very dark because of all the overpaint from earlier restorations and varnish,” Mr. Janson said.

Teams of restorers swab away some of the varnish to allow colors to come through.
Credit
Julien Mignot for The New York Times

Image
Teams of restorers swab away some of the varnish to allow colors to come through.CreditJulien Mignot for The New York Times
For the last two months, a team of three to five people have laboriously swabbed away some of the varnish to allow the colors to come through. They hope to be finished by May, Mr. Janson said, though Mr. Bolen believes it will be sooner than that. Slowly, details that confirmed the painting’s provenance have begun to emerge: the mosque, the Western Wall, the elaborate brocades of the visiting Frenchmen.
The discovery demanded something of a interior rethink as well as some practical changes. Ms. Kim has been haunting auctions for furniture from different periods to link past to present, including Marcel Breuer chairs and pieces from Pierre Bergé’s estate.
“We’re not going to put a wall of dresses in front,” Ms. Ryan said. Security will be increased, and the 10 floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor equipped with treated glass. The plan is to open in late spring.
In the meantime, Mr. Bolen has not given up the search. “I need to get a heraldic expert in to look at the ceiling,” he said, sifting through photographs and pointing at some of the shields. “That one has three stars, a royal crown — and fish?”
He looked at another one. “What do those three stars mean?” he wondered. “I don’t know. But that’s worth finding out.” He looked excited.
Shoppers with a yen for a conspiracy theory or a taste of history may be, too.

Vanessa Friedman is The Times's fashion director and chief fashion critic. She was previously the fashion editor of the Financial Times. @VVFriedman

March 28 is respect your cat day

3/27/2019

Abyssinian Cat Stare, acrylics on wood panel, 6x6 inches, available for $100

March 28th is Respect Your Cat Day.

Because I respect our indoor cat Simon very much, I thought to remind you in time to respect your cat all day long.

The cat in this painting is based on Simon. He will stare at us like that when he wants something. Now he meows, too, a lot.

We do our best to keep Simon's food dish full, his water fresh, and his restroom clean. He knows how to let us know when he feels disrespected...and we don't like it! Hint: it's not his stare, lol!

Do you have a cat? Do you respect your cat? Will you, just for March 28th?

Smiles, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

museum cat, lost and found

3/20/2019

"His disappearance set all of Moscow in uproar," reported Moskva-24 local television.

"The most important member of staff at the Bulgakov museum has gone missing," reported another channel, TV Centre.

A cat, lives in a museum!

There are plenty of studio cats, but I never knew there were museum cats! Simon is my studio cat, as seen here. If you'd like to see more studio cats, go to Instagram and follow #studiocat

Click over to see the cat and read about losing and finding him, lol.

Smiles, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

PS: Today is K-9 Veterans Day. Please honor those who served!

Simon, sitting on our back patio bar.

cat jumps and rips 17th century painting and how that relates to simon cat

3/13/2019

Photo: My studio cat, Simon, sitting on some of my cut out collage papers that I taped to a temporary clear plastic sheet. He can't harm these, rarer still that I placed anything on the floor, so it was a Kodak moment for us, lol.

I can't imagine how I'd feel if Simon were to rip through a painting, destroying it almost immediately, like Padme did. Padme destroyed a 17th century painting!

My first question would be "where was the painting that a cat could jump or claw it?"

Maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe the painting was leaning against the wall, which is a usual way of storing a painting. I feel for this man. Oh, I just "met" him recently, too, as I just discovered the BBC show "Fake or Fortune" in Netflix!

Cats are cats. I try to have spaces in my studio for Simon to be safe. He has his own water dish, a few cubby-like spaces where I don't mind him....I try to make sure there isn't much he can break, etc. that is easy for him to access. He has tried to drink my paint water...but he's yet to walk all over a painting because I don't leave them around for him.

As a painter, I've used paper, canvas, and wood for my designs. My favorite is wood, followed by paper, and distant last is canvas. If my cat, or yours, destroys a painting by me, maybe I can repair it...but it's probably best to simply replace it. Then again, my artwork isn't a few hundred years old, yet!

Oh, writing of wood surfaces, my pet paintings are all on wood. The worst your cat or dog can do to protest his painting is scratch it. Consider getting your cat (or dog's) portrait by getting my free book about how called "How to Hire a Pet Portrait Artist that Works for You" by clicking on this paragraph.

What would you do if your cat destroyed a piece of artwork you love?

The original article about Padme, his photo, and his painting adventure is below, with the link, too. It's totally worth a click!

Smiles, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/05/bbc-art-expert-tells-rare-5000-painting-john-michael-wright/

BBC art expert reveals rare painting worth thousands of pounds was destroyed by his cat

Helena Horton
5 JANUARY 2019 • 2:06PM
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A BBC arts experts has revealed how his cat wrecked a rare masterpiece painted by one of his favourite artists.
Dr Bendor Grosvenor, who appeared in five seasons of Fake or Fortune, paid more than £5,000 for a painting by 17th century portrait artist John Michael Wright, which was clawed by his pet Padme.
He was busy restoring the artwork after two small tears had formed because a cold winter followed by a hot summer had caused a stretcher displaying the painting to move.
The 41-year-old covered the front of the painting with facing paper and brushed on a warm gelatin-and-water solution to preserve it before it could be sent to London to be relined.
However, Dr Grosvenor was left dismayed when his cat launched itself at the painting before raking its claws down the middle of the portrait to leave a large gaping hole.

Dr Bendor Grosvenor featured in five seasons of BBC's Fake or Fortune CREDIT: STUART NICOL PHOTOGRAPHY
While the painting was not completely destroyed, the repair costs are estimated to almost equal the entire purchase fee and Dr Grosvenor admitted the artwork will never return to its pristine condition.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "I bought it in 2015 for £5,250. I probably spent the same again cleaning and reframing it.

"And as I stood back to admire my handiwork, up jumped our cat, landing forcefully in the centre of the painting with a crunch. Disaster.”

“Wright is one of my favourite artists, and I bought this example because it was in excellent condition, with all the original glazes and details wonderfully intact.

"Now, it's obviously in less good condition - but at least the cat landed on his clothing, and not his face.”

He added Padme is “not a fan of John Michael Wright, and regrets nothing.”

Dr Grosvenor has found many lost works of art in his career, including a 2017 discovery of the "lost portrait" of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham at Pollok House, Glasgow, Scotland.

It was thought to have been lost for more than 400 years.

In 2009, he bested the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's experts, finding their portrait of Charles Edward Stuart by Maurice Quentin de La Tour was in fact a portrait of Charles' brother, Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal York.

According to Tate, John Michael Wright was rated as "one of the leading indigenous British painters of his generation" for his Baroque style portraits.

Having trained as an artist in Scotland under the tutelage of George Jamesone, he moved to England permanently in 1656 where he painted Stuart kings Charles II and James II.

cafe, chocolate, and birds

3/6/2019

My first pet loves were a toy white poodle named Champagne and a baby bird we named Twitty...which we believe grew up to be Pinta Roja.

All of those are long stories. The most pertinent to this article I found about preserving endangered birds is Pinta Roja.

When Twitty disappeared, Papa and I began to feed any birds that showed up in our yard. We felt it was a guarenteed food source for Twitty, if Twitty were to return to visit us.

A beautiful red-winged blackbird, all alone, began appearing a few days after we began feeding all the birds in our yard. Pinta Roja would sing outside our kitchen window, asking to be fed. He would let us within a couple of feet of him, our arm outstretched in hopes of him hopping on to us. When we got too close, he'd hop down the power line. We spent many years feeding the birds in our yard...forever we remember Pinta Roja.

2018 marked the beginning of my consciously including birds into my artwork. I made a few silhouette stencils for our local restaurant Chefs on the Run for painting up their ladies' room back in 2014. I've making it a point to use my handmade stencils and stamps during 2019 in more paintings. Watch for more birds showing up....

In the meantime, I thought the article below was super cool about helping out our feathered friends.

Smiles, with paint on my hands,
Angeline

http://artdaily.com/news/108864/Coffee-and-chocolate-could-help-preserve-endangered-birds-in-According to estimates, less than 3000 Red Siskins remain in the wild in Venezuela.

Coffee and chocolate could help preserve endangered birds in Venezuela

WASHINGTON, DC.- In Venezuela, the red siskin (Spinus cucullatus), a vibrantly colored red-and-black finch, is inextricably linked with the country’s identity. It is present in poems, paintings, names of streets and sports teams and even graces the back of the 100,000 Bolivar bill, but it is rare in its natural habitat. To help reverse this, the Smithsonian and the Piedra de Cachimbo coffee farmers in northern Venezuela stepped in.

With support from the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act, farmers are committing to the conservation of 400 hectares of forest for traditional shade-grown organic coffee, seeking Smithsonian Bird Friendly certification of their beans. This approach is part of the Red Siskin Initiative (RSI), an international consortium in which the Smithsonian collaborates closely with Provita, a local NGO focused on the preservation of biodiversity in Venezuela, and other partners.

This will protect the siskin’s natural habitat and increase their profits. As part of the process, they have established relationships with roasters and retailers in Caracas. Their plan, which will also protect other native birds and migrants, is embedded in the Smithsonian Conservation Commons, an action network within the Smithsonian highlighting the relevance of science and innovative interdisciplinary approaches to on-the-ground conservation.

“Farm workers can help us monitor the birds, which is a big advantage. Some of these farms also border protected areas like national parks, creating a wildlife corridor,” said Brian Coyle, Conservation Commons program manager at the Smithsonian and RSI project coordinator.

In addition to coffee, the project aims to include another agroforestry crop: cacao. The Bird Friendly certification standards for cacao are currently being developed by the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center, which created the Bird Friendly program based on decades of scientific research. Currently, the RSI is producing a red siskin-branded chocolate bar made from organically sourced cacao. The profits go back to farmers, research and RSI conservation efforts.

This initiative has also achieved a better understanding of illegal bird trafficking networks, which will allow for more focused preventive actions, based on research led by Ada Sanchez-Mercado at Provita and Kate Rodriguez-Clark at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park. One proposed solution is to supply enough captive-bred birds to fulfill the demand, an approach that proved effective with other bird species. For this, the RSI partners with private breeders in the United States and Australia who help figure out how to best breed the red siskin in captivity.

“We could lose the red siskin in 10 years if we do nothing about it,” said Miguel Arvelo, RSI coordinator for Venezuela and conservationist at Provita. “If we lose this bird, we will have lost part of what it means to be Venezuelan.”

Additional components of the RSI include genetics, animal husbandry, health and breeding research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, SCBI and the National Zoo.

“In 20 or 30 years we envision a flock of dozens of beautiful red birds flying against the bright blue sky,” Coyle said. “It would be inspiring for the people in Venezuela and elsewhere, knowing that conservation does work and getting their support for more of it. Conservation can’t succeed if the community doesn’t get behind it.”

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