Friday, April 25, 2014

Andrew Wyeth's 'Christina's World'

I was attending the Pittsburgh Art Institute in '48.  When I attended a national show of American Artist.  Everywhere I looked was a vast field of Abstract canvases.  Then I came upon "Christina's World" by Andrew Wyeth.  It totally jarred me, the power of the thing.  I've been a fan ever since......Elbert

Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth
(sketch by Elbert Price)

THE JUNE BUG

                                             THE JUNE BUG

At five years, I was always fascinated by the possibility that one could fly through the air.  My first target for accomplishing this feat was June Bugs.
They were all over the place when I was a kid.  If I could just get enough thread to make strings for more hind legs, I would soon have enough be airlifted away on the wings of June Bugs.  I just tortured the hell out of a lot of poor old June Bugs whose only purpose in life was to find a mate and die.  But what did I know?  I stomped a lot of green corn and killed a lot of June Bugs in the process.  Elbert

(I suggested that he insert the word 'procreate' in the sentence about the June Bugs purpose in life and his reply was "No, you do not want to use a fifty dollar word in a two dollar story".) Shirley

Thursday, April 24, 2014

MY ALTER EGO


In early days, when all had eaten the stew and had gathered around, the story teller and show man .....

He used a drawing stick and drew in  a large, clear space on the ground, in front of him, while sitting on his stool and scooting about as needed.  He wore a boar's head bone and skin with pride, for the boars are fierce fighters and very intelligent in tactics of evasion and attack, and have killed or maimed many members of the group.

The storyteller was, of course, an artist and as such was teaching his people to be able to communicate by sketching on the bare ground with a stick.
Early days, we all learned to sketch as the important necessity to say where we had been and what we had seen.  All our early ancestors could sketch or draw things.  And many of us could do it Very Well.

Our sketches were how our languages developed over time and our early writing was pictographs or quick sketches as symbols of the real thing.

Drawing on the ground was how we all learned a language and if we even try at all, we can do it too---It's in our genes.by now. Elbert