Dear Friends,
February has been a very busy month for me here in California.
My exposition on The Art of Conservation closes Friday the 24th. Along with the successful conference “The Perfect Garden in the Perfect Place,” I gave a workshop in the Hortense Miller Garden to six participants that turned out some excellent work in one day on this uniquely beautiful site in Laguna Beach.
Then I was in San José del Cabo, Mexico painting for 15 days. For part of that time, a group of ladies from the Laguna Beach Sister City Association came to visit to their sister city of San José, which included a visit with the Secretary General. I led a sculpture walk and lecture on the marina where there is a surprisingly exceptional collection of bronzes by Leonora Carrington (http:// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carrington), a surrealist painter, author, and sculptor from England who chose to live in Mexico. Her artistic life is an inspiration. She died at 94 in 2011, the last surviving participant of the original surrealist movement during the 1930’s and 40’s. Her work was informed by her own experience, interpreted through visual myth and alchemy.
During my stay in Mexico, I also did a commission piece of lilacs for The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN (http://tmora.org), the largest museum of Russian art and culture in the United States. It will be auctioned at an upcoming benefit at the museum. My stay in California will finish with a painting workshop at the Annenberg Foundation in Rancho Mirage Saturday the 25th where I will be teaching the idea of rendering plant life using negative space to find the form of the plant.
I return to Europe on March 1st, ready to begin preparations for my next residency for several months on the island of Ischia, Italy, once again at La Mortella gardens. I will be painting in spingtime, whereas my last residency focused on fall.
I look forward to reflective alone time again, which is what grounds me and my painting.
As always, I invite you to visit my website for a complete view of paintings. www.gianne.org.
Gianne