saudade

We recently received an email from a client who was interested in our painting "The Way Back". The  entire message was lovely and thought provoking but one particular line stood out to me.  It said "The saudade of your work is palpable and intoxicating."  This stood out mostly because not only did I have no idea what it meant but I had never even seen that word before.  Google defines it as:

'a Portuguese and Galician word that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. 

Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone.  Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again.'

Wow.  While this is a shade darker than we generally intend, it is a mood that we've always reached for.  The definition goes on to describe a feeling that is 'happy and sad at once', missing that which is gone but joyous that it was experienced at all.

Bless you, emailer, for adding to my vocabulary and giving me a deeper sense of what our work means.

Blink

But what does it mean?!

I debate often, with others and with myself, the benefits and detriments of artist self representation vs. gallery or dealer representation.  While Genna and I do both, the plusses of self representation far outweigh the detriments in our personal equation.  No one is more motivated to represent us than us.  Not having a middle man between us and our collectors helps us keep our prices at a reasonable level.  Travel.  The glamour of sweaty, windy, panicky booth assembly.  Oh, sorry, that goes on the other side of the equation.  But the biggest benefit by far is the constant feedback we receive from viewers as we sit for hours, looking at our paintings, hearing what they have to say, and discussing the work.  I believe I have learned as much about our work from others as I have from actually participating in making it.

I had a particularly interesting conversation with a young man recently in The Woodlands, TX.  He was of an age that I now consider ‘a kid’…probably somewhere in his early twenties…and was intensely chatty.  He was poking me mercilessly to reveal more and more about what our work means, what our motivations are, what are the themes, why is this this color, why is that painted like that.  He was very sweet and I was doing my best to answer his questions but was struggling as most of what he was asking had no verbal answer.  Finally I said something to the effect of “painting is a visual media.  If I could communicate everything I wanted to communicate in words, I’d be a writer.”  I promise I didn’t mean this in a smart ass way.  It’s just true.  And more than not having a clear answer in my own mind to many of his questions, I felt that to manufacture answers would minimize the work, make it about one thing when thing when truly it’s about everything and/or anything  I think this is why you’ll often find artists much more interested in discussing their medium and physical processes than their themes.  I can talk all day about how Genna and I make our work but tend to gloss over the ‘why’ with broad strokes…family, community, nostalgia, the quality of memory, the beauty of the everyday.

I wound up having a really great conversation with that kid about art in general and the contrast between visual and verbal art that had me charged up for the rest of the day.  Like I said, perks of the business.  Then last week I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ which is about the power of and mechanism behind snap decisions.  Around page 119 there’s this:

Let me give you a very simple example.  Picture, in your mind, the face of the waiter who served you the last time you ate at a restaurant, or the person who sat next to you on the bus today.  Any stranger whom you’ve seen recently will do.  Now, if I were to ask you to pick that person out of a police lineup, could you do it? I suspect you could.  Recognizing someone’s face is a classic example of unconscious cognition.  We don’t have to think about it.  Faces just pop into our minds.  But suppose I were to ask you to take a pen and paper and write down in as much detail as you can what your person looks like.  Describe her face.  What color was her hair?  What was she wearing? Was she wearing any jewelry? Believe it or not, you will NOW DO A LOT WORSE AT PICKING THAT FACE OUT OF A LINEUP.  THIS IS BECAUSE THE ACT OF DESCRIBING A FACE HAS THE EFFECT OF IMAIRING YOUR OTHERWISE EFFORTLESS ABILITY TO SUBSEQUESNTLY RECOGNIZE THAT FACE.

            The psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, who pioneered research on this effect, calls it VERBAL OVERSHADOWING.  Your brain has a part (the left hemisphere) that thinks in words, and a part (the right hemisphere) that thinks in pictures, and what happened when you described the face in words was that your actual visual memory WAS DISPLACED.  Your thinking was bumped from the right to the left hemisphere.  When you were faced with the lineup the second time around, what you were drawing on was your memory of what you said the waitress looked like, not your memory of what you saw she looked like.”

(I apologize for the shouting…the caps were mine, not Mr. Gladwell’s).  SO…aha.  We all have a visual, instinctive, magical place in our minds that is not only not enhanced by a verbal overlay of an experience but actually subverted by it.

Does this mean we shouldn’t talk about art?  Absolutely not.  We should all be pleased to share our experiences of art.  This interaction enriches the art exponentially.  What we should not do, however, is ask artists to give to us in words what they have already given us whole heartedly, freely in paint, clay, song, pixels, metal, wool, troll doll assemblage, photography, peep collage…

bayou city feature!

Genna and I are THRILLED to have been chosen as the featured artists for the Bayou City Memorial Park Art Festival in Houston next month.  This is one of our favorite festivals in one of our favorite cities.  They selected our 'Spin' and 'Pendleton Pegasus' for use on the billboards and commemorative posters for the show.

"Spin", 30" sq oil on linen, $1950

Here's a sweet little piece that they wrote for their February, Valentine's Day themed newsletter:

Signe and Genna Grushovenko have a lifestyle where collaboration is key. Partners in both art and life, the married featured artists have been creating art together for nearly ten years. 

"I think the things that make our marriage successful are the same things that make our collaboration successful," said Signe. "Genna and I are different in many ways but those differences complement one another." 

After viewing any of the Grushovenko work, it's apparent that these differences influence their artwork and help to make it even more unique. While creating a piece, Genna begins the process with tonal underpaintings of acrylic and oil pigments. After his work dries, Signe takes over and uses vintage photos as references for oil pastel drawings and then finishes the work with painting in oil.

"In our work, Genna lays down the rich, spontaneous foundation and I tame that wildness with my figures," said Signe. "The results are both paintings and a lifestyle that neither of us could have created on our own."

Together the artists find harmony in both art and their relationship. Genna says the couple's marriage is the foundation from which their artwork grows. Because of this they are able to dodge the battle of egos that could come from two artists working together on one piece. 

"No matter who is the star in a particular piece, in the end 100% of the praise and the profits all come home," Genna said.

The fact that the Grushovenko's art is created with love and collaboration makes it even more special. Though each layer is unique to Signe or Genna, the final product is a beautiful, harmonious piece, much like their relationship.

For more information on Signe and Genna, the featured "art couple," please visit the Bayou City Art Festival website or the Grushovenko's website.  

share with us?

Genna and I are looking to expand our collection of images from the 50's, 60's and 70's and hope you can help.  Are there photos in your family albums that would make a great Grushovenko?  If so, please go to our artist page on facebook and post them there.  If you're going to post, please read to the end! If we choose one of your images to make a painting, we will:

1.  Send you something.  I'm not sure what it is yet.  At the very least you'll receive a box of notecards featuring one of our paintings.  What we may do is make a limited number of cards from each piece chosen, in which case you'll get those :)

2.  Give you right of first refussal on the painting made from your photo.  There is absolutely no pressure to buy your piece, but we won't let anyone else have it if you want it.

3.  Make a book from the images and give you one.  Every piece created from a submitted photo will be professionally photographed and put together in a catalog to be produced and distributed to all participants next winter.

4.  Say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  We've done variations on this idea twice before and several 'all stars' from our image collection came from there...including the 'Boy Line, Bike Tangle' image entered by Ralph & Nita Howard and the 'Soft Bather' entered by Susie Brown, both from the LaGrange GA show.

  

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Primarily exterior shots.  Interior shots need some interesting background (architecture, Christmas tree, patterned wallpaper, cool furniture).  Sports, family groups, dining scenes, airplanes, palm trees, suitcases, embraces, beach scenes, action, attitude, dancing, cool shoes, suits, pegged jeans, good hair, motorcycles, cool cars, roller skates, candid wedding, bell bottoms, poolside, bikinis, converse sneakers, rvs, camping, boy scouts, girl scouts, greasers, golf.

Our work is mostly faceless, so we're looking for images that are strong on physical personality.


WHAT ARE WE NOT LOOKING FOR?

Professional portraits, facial close-ups, posed wedding pictures, posed class pictures.

If you are submitting in hopes of purchasing your painting if chosen, please send us a private message when you post your images telling us what size range you would be interested in and which images on our website have a color pallette that appeals to you.

Common sizes, price:

9" x 12"    $375
12" x 16"  $450
16" x 20"  $600
20" x 20"  $800
24" x 36"  $1500
30" x 40"  $1950
36" x 36"  $2400
36" x 48"  $2800
36" x 60"  $3250
48" x 60"  $4800

NOT A FACEBOOKER?  Email me your images directly.

Please scan your pictures at a photo quality, color rich setting, even if they are black and white.



the fine print:

IF YOU SUBMIT, please understand that you are giving us permission to make and sell a painting from your photo.  The painting may be photographed and submitted for entry in exhibitions.  While we do not make any prints of our work for sale (giclees, etc.), we may print the image as postcards or notecards to use as client gifts or for promotion of future exhibitions.  If we love your image, we may create more than one painting from it.  SUBMITTING A PHOTO SIGNIFIES THAT YOU AGREE WITH THESE TERMS.  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me before submitting.

28 day dance party

 

'Spin' 30" square oil on linen, $1500

Our budding experiments with capturing movement have blossomed!  The '28 day dance party' launches tonight at Art & Light gallery, 4 Aberdeen Drive, Greenville SC from 6pm-9pm.  Come join us for some moving and shaking in the New Year!

Big thanks are in order to A&L gallerist Teresa Roche who envisioned this series and gently prodded us into tackling it for the last year or so.  Teresa is a boudless source of energy and enthusiam and I hope we have captured even a fraction of her energy in this show.

The exhibition opened for sales this morning at 9am.  This series is available exclusively through Art & Light through the month of January.  To see the series and for purchasing info, visit our website at www.grushovenko.com.

'Orange Crush', 16" x 12" oil on masonite, $450

new energy

Something new is percolating up through our work.  For ages, we've been working from vintage photos. This body of work began around 1996 with a few paintings I made of my great-grandparents.  One of the first was of my great-great-grandfather Alfonso and his wife Madora.  The style was nearly unrecognizable from where we are today...heavy paint, plenty face, and details of the photo's frame included in the painting.  The reference image was probably from the early 1900's.  I liked the contrast of the contemporary style with the traditional imagery and began to mine that vein deeper and deeper.

Early pieces in this series came from late 1800's-early 1900's photographs.  Genna joined me in the work around 2000 and the vintage of the reference imagery we were drawn to began to move very slowly forward.  Working with turn of the century photos, the characters tended to be static, standing tall and creating almost a grid between the figures, the horizon, and the other objects in the scene (architecture, autos, etc). 

 

 

 

 

These are as early as I can get without going back through slides.  Top image is a 24" square, maybe around 2003, the bottom one is a 4' square circa 2001.

During the first decade of our colaboration, we proceeded slowly through the first half of the twentieth century. In the last few years, the work has reached into the sixties with brief forrays into the seventies.  I even caught myself looking hard at an eighties snapshot the other day (God forbid).

As film became more advanced and cheaper, the characters in these reference images become more and more animated.  Family photos morphed from staid portraits to on-the-fly snapshots.  My skill set as a painter has shifted incrementally hand in hand with our slow trek into this more active imagery.

So, after ten years of painting upright citizens, I'm suddenly (or maybe not at all suddenly) finding myself drawn more and more to photos of movement.  Recently came this:

 

Which even though it was a 1930's image I wouldn't have considered a few years ago.  I must have enjoyed it as plenty more moving and shaking is in works.  We've just scheduled a solo show with Teresa Roche at Art & Light for January 2013...all dancers!

 



 

 

Work on this sub-series of images will begin just after this weekend's Open Studio event.  I can't wait!  If you're in the upstate area, join us at the gallery Friday 6-9, Saturday 10-6, or Sunday 12-6.  Grushovenko Gallery, 1203 Pendleton Street, Greenville SC 29611.  Hope to see you there!

Fete Greenville cover!

 

Big thank you to Jay Spivey at Fete Greenville online magazine for the July 2012 cover feature!  We were honored to be chosen.  Additionally, Fete columnist and our very good friend Teresa Roche wrote about us in her page 33 feature "Travel Inspired".  Check out the magazine online at http://emag.fetegreenville.com/.  

Here is lovely Teresa's article:

"Summer-time greetings friends and collectors!  When artists travel, my hear pitter-patters as I anticipate the all-new and completely inspired collections of works that follow. Travel has inspired artists’ creations for centuries, from stunning vistas and landscapes of 19^th century Realist painters to the spectacular photographs of Walker-Evans.  Several of Greenville’s finest are spending quality time on the road this summer as well

Greenville’s very own JJ Ohlinger found himself completely and totally inspired on a trip with his wife last year and that trip has resulted in a very exciting project and a brand new body of work.    For JJ, the New York subway system “hosts one of the most elegant dance performances you will ever see, and it’s free to anyone who , takes the time to watch.”   In JJ’s eye, the hundreds of people who load and unload, moving quickly in both directions is like watching an “amazing ballet.”  Because he loves introducing contrasts, with respect to light and dark, in painting, he enjoys the challenge and reward immensely. Just as in life experiences,  JJ explains, “contrasts of life in the City abound in the subway.  At one point you can be wedged between hundreds of people on the platform and be completely alone while in the next moment you can be the only individual in sight, yet you are completely connected with all that is New York City.”  But, to JJ the inspiration came when the trains departed and the halls and walkways were calm.    His F Train project features subway stations in a mode of silence and calm and features amazing tile work, graffiti and layers of grime earned over years of serving the city.  New York is one of my favorite cities on earth – I am thankful to JJ for reminding me of the subway ballet when NY City seems so far away.

"Church and 18th" watercolor by JJ Ohlinger

 

Signe and Genna Grushovenko, Greenville’s newest art couple is hitting the road this month as well. The husband and wife painting duo’s next art tour takes them to DesMoines, Denver and Madison (WI)” When Genna and Signe travel, they often take a few detours between shows for rest, refueling and inspiration to boot!  Signe comments, “before we make it back home again.  Genna will take time in between the first two shows to camp and fish in Rocky Mountain National Park with fellow artists.  That’s become one of our favorite parts of the festival lifestyle...connecting strongly with our ‘tribe’ and taking mini vacations all over the place.”  Last year they spent time in the Arkansas Mountains and on the Texas coast, neither of which they would ever have done if they hadn’t been cooling their heels waiting for the next festival.  Capturing blissful moments with family and friends in oil paintings is at the heart of the Grushovenko’s work.  Traveling and visiting with art friends at summer art festivals is sure to kick start all new collections – can’t wait to see the results!"

"Dapper Dans", oil on linen, 36" x 48"

Read more on Teresa's blog at  http://www.artandlightgallery.blogspot.com.  Teresa is a visual artist, a writer, a gallerist, an interior designer, and as far as I'm concerned, the glue that holds the Greenville art scene together!  Her gallery, Art & Light, is moving this month from the Flat Iron Studios building in the Farthest West End to a fantastic little spot right off Augusta Street.  Read all about it and see the 'before' pics of her new space on her blog.