Studio Notes: October 1st, 2021

Transcript:

I'm Brandon Woods, and this is Studio Notes for October 1st, t2021. This is my piece, "Autumnal". I've talked about this a few times and it's still in my studio and I'm excited that it is because what a, what perfect day to talk about it more. The month of October is my favorite month in Tennessee because the sky turns this electric blue color that I tried to capture in this piece and in making it, I also made this little accessory piece; I call it "Leaf". And I was inspired—I'm going to try to move over here, see if I can give you a better view of that—I was inspired to make this piece while I was working on this from one of my favorite stories in art history.

So, stepping back for a minute, my, my view of art history is that it's an ongoing conversation between artists over the past 72,000 years, that different pieces connect to different artists as if we're engaging in art in a conversation through our work. And our work outlives us and it's our voice that we... and just ourselves that we pour into it. And so that's that's what brings such a romantic notion to my mind.

In 1880, Charles Ephrussi commissioned Manet to make a painting of asparagus, a bundle of asparagus for him. And he was so pleased with the bundle of asparagus that Manet painted for him that he gave Manet an extra two hundred francs, which he was originally going to pay him 800. He gave him 1,000 Francs, which I don't know how a thousand francs translates to modern U.S. dollars. It's one of those one of those many questions that that I have and I don't always have time to fully investigate, but it was a generous amount of money, and Manet was I was pleased with it, and so he made a painting of a single asparagus and sent that to Charles Ephrussi and said "one fell out of your bundle". And so I had that same idea with this, that that this could be like one leaf that kind of fell out of this piece that it was. Just a little just a little additional additional piece to go with it.

And I think that's all for, for my Studio Notes today. I'm keeping it a lot shorter than than I have been, but I'm going to go to the art crawls tonight. I'm going to go to a bunch of different gallery openings because part of being a professional artist is showing up. So I'm going to go show up and see what happens. Wish me luck.Until next time, I want to encourage you to show up. And to do what you love. And make good work. I'll talk to you soon.