"The Mexican Tea Kettle," Oil on Hardboard.
Rachel Mindrup
8 a.m-5 p.m.
Shirley Stiles Gallery
Westwood City Hall
4700 Rainbow Blvd.
Westwood, KS
913.362.1550
Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday
Runs through: Jan. 31
Artist’s site: http://www.rmindrup.com
Gallery site: http://www.westwoodks.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={43A74ACE-3B22-43ED-B836-E380A5FE1BA2}
Ever see a portrait without that "spark of life" in the subject's eye? It doesn't look right, does it? That small gleam, that flash of white makes the difference between the believable and the (unsettling) unbelievable.
The only eyes in a still life are either artificial (those of decoys or stuffed animals, perhaps), or represent alternate usages of the word "eye." (Potatoes and needles come to mind). But for such a painting to work, there has to be ... well, call it a spark of still life.
It's that flash of reflected light from a curved surface: a pear, a clock face ... a teapot and some chiles, as in today's featured work, Rachel Mindrup's The Mexican Tea Kettle.
That painting is part of Mindrup's current show at Westwood City Hall's Shirley Stiles Gallery: all oils, all still life pieces, and all of them gleaming with reality and vitality.
There's far more to Mindrup's body of work than still life painting, however. She's a portraitist, an illustrator, a designer, a cartoonist, a caricaturist ... and somehow she finds time to teach art and raise two young sons. There's plenty of life in her life, not only her art.
It should come as no surprise, then, that in the process of creating still life works, adding the spark is Mindrup's favorite part.
"That's the icing on the cake for me," she said at last night's opening reception. "That's what everything else is leading up to. There's all the — I don't want to call it 'grunt work', but all the foundation work, and then the composition, and all the other things. And it's all leading up to the moment when you can pick up your palette knife and ..."
(Here, she made a quick, demonstrative motion, complete with sound effects, using The Mexican Tea Kettle as an example. And while we're inside these parentheses, waiting for Mindrup to finish her thought, it must be noted that her foundation, composition and "all the other things" are worthy of the spark that brings them to life.)
"... Ta-dah! And that's my favorite moment."
It shows.
And it shows in Mindrup's paintings, too.
Tagged as: Light, Parenthetical Comments, Rachel Mindrup, Shirley Stiles Gallery, Sparks of Life, Westwood, Westwood City Hall
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(ARTKC365) With a Gleam in Her Art: Rachel Mindrup
"The Mexican Tea Kettle," Oil on Hardboard.
Rachel Mindrup
8 a.m-5 p.m.
Shirley Stiles Gallery
Westwood City Hall
4700 Rainbow Blvd.
Westwood, KS
913.362.1550
Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday
Runs through: Jan. 31
Artist’s site: http://www.rmindrup.com
Gallery site: http://www.westwoodks.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={43A74ACE-3B22-43ED-B836-E380A5FE1BA2}
Ever see a portrait without that "spark of life" in the subject's eye? It doesn't look right, does it? That small gleam, that flash of white makes the difference between the believable and the (unsettling) unbelievable.
The only eyes in a still life are either artificial (those of decoys or stuffed animals, perhaps), or represent alternate usages of the word "eye." (Potatoes and needles come to mind). But for such a painting to work, there has to be ... well, call it a spark of still life.
It's that flash of reflected light from a curved surface: a pear, a clock face ... a teapot and some chiles, as in today's featured work, Rachel Mindrup's The Mexican Tea Kettle.
That painting is part of Mindrup's current show at Westwood City Hall's Shirley Stiles Gallery: all oils, all still life pieces, and all of them gleaming with reality and vitality.
There's far more to Mindrup's body of work than still life painting, however. She's a portraitist, an illustrator, a designer, a cartoonist, a caricaturist ... and somehow she finds time to teach art and raise two young sons. There's plenty of life in her life, not only her art.
It should come as no surprise, then, that in the process of creating still life works, adding the spark is Mindrup's favorite part.
"That's the icing on the cake for me," she said at last night's opening reception. "That's what everything else is leading up to. There's all the — I don't want to call it 'grunt work', but all the foundation work, and then the composition, and all the other things. And it's all leading up to the moment when you can pick up your palette knife and ..."
(Here, she made a quick, demonstrative motion, complete with sound effects, using The Mexican Tea Kettle as an example. And while we're inside these parentheses, waiting for Mindrup to finish her thought, it must be noted that her foundation, composition and "all the other things" are worthy of the spark that brings them to life.)
"... Ta-dah! And that's my favorite moment."
It shows.
And it shows in Mindrup's paintings, too.
Tagged as: Light, Parenthetical Comments, Rachel Mindrup, Shirley Stiles Gallery, Sparks of Life, Westwood, Westwood City Hall
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