The Container

The Container
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Available on Fine Art America

When you look down into silence, you see no friend;

When you lift your gaze to space, you hear no echo;

It is like striking a single chord-

It rings out but there is no music.

-Lu Ji

To Love and be Loved...

Cross Stitch created by my Mother the year before I was born.

Need I say more?

(I love my Mommy.)

Time

Time
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
12" x 16"

Time keeps on slippin' into the future...

No wait! I hate that song.

How about...

It is my feeling that Time ripens all things;

with Time all things are revealed;

Time is the father of truth. 

-Francois Rabelais

or...

People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness.

-John Wanamaker

The Lake

The Lake
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
9" x 12"

Let your love flow outward through the universe,

to its height, its depth,

its broad extent,

a limitless love without hatred or enmity.

-Buddha

Butterfly

The Butterfly
Copyright 2001 Addie Hirschten
Watercolor on Paper

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

~Rabindranath Tagore

Lovers



Lovers
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 24"
Prints available on Fine Art America

All kinds of marvelous things go on,

I don't see how anyone who has looked, and seen,

can do ought but say,

'where I stand, wherever I stand, I am on holy ground.'

-John Wood

Cellular Structure

Cellular Structure
Copyright 1999  Addie Hirschten
Oil on Wood
24" x 24"

Society does not tend to encourage people to tell the truth. Society in general is interested in sustaining itself and that includes whatever fictions, facades or hypocrisies it needs to sustain itself. That imparts stability but at the same time if you go with that you never get improvements, corrections of injustices and so on. You need the words of the rebels, the artists, the people who will not accept reality as it is presented. You need both forces for civilization.

-David Cronenberg, Recorded on Fresh Air

Eyeballs are Important

So I totally made a huge mistake on one of my paintings last week.  I forgot an entire eyeball on a person's face. 

How, how, how could I have overlooked such a thing? 

AND I didn't notice until it had been up on the web for several days....

Before

So I fixed it....

After

It reminds me of one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes,

To look at a thing is different from seeing and thing. 

And one does not see anything until one sees it's beauty.

She was beautiful without her eye, but I was the one who was blinded?

A Drink of Water
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Prints available on Fine Art America

Sunlight

Sunlight
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
9" x 12"

The soul speaks in image.

-Carl Jung

The Garden of Love

Blake's Garden of Love
Copyright 2011 Addie Hirschten
Watercolor on Paper
14" x 17"
Prints available on Fine Art America

I laid me down upon the bank
where love lay sleeping...

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen,
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
-William Blake

A Drink of Water



A Drink of Water
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Prints available on Fine Art America

“What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The Language of Nature



Path in the Woods
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Prints available on Fine Art America

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious;

but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet,

and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

-George Eliot

Excess

Lifting
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
12" x 16"
Prints available on Fine Art America

In matters of art I confess that I do not hate excess. 

Moderation never seemed to me to be a sign of vigorous nature. 

I like these excesses of health, these outbreaks of will which inscribe themselves in works like inflamed asphalt in the heart of a volcano. 

-Charles Beaudelaire

A Mathematical Equation

A Mathematical Equation
Acrylic on Paper
11" x 17"

Love and you shall be loved. 

All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

-Emerson

Happiness

Cross Stitch made by my mother, age 10

I am easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. 

My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

-Thoreau

De Colores

De Colores
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 24"
Prints available on Fine Art America

De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera

Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí

-De Colores, Traditional Spainish Folksong

Passion is a powerful spring.
-Emerson

Dreams and Reality

Dreams and Reality
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
30" x 40"
Print available on Fine Art America

You can design, create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. 

But it takes people to make the dream a reality. 

-Walt Disney

And just because I feel the need to temper the relative purity of Disney:

Don't dream it, be it.

-Dr. Frank-N-Furter

Do you want the backstory?  Visit:

http://www.artistaddie.com/2012/01/dream-of-india.html

 

Dreaming of Spring

Dreaming of Spring
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Original SOLD
Prints available on Fine Art America

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

So priketh hem nature in hir corages:

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

-Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
Print available on Fine Art America

Not knowing that it would release all of the evil into the world, Pandora opened the box. 
After all of that mess was released only one item was left for her.
It was hope.

But here is my question...

Wasn't all of that bad stuff already there? 
It existed.
 

Isn't it better to open that can of worms and face it?

Fantasy

Fantasy
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
12" x 16"
Prints available on Fine Art America

In an effort for us all to start Monday morning off right I would like to offer up a bit of fantasy. 

If this isn't enough to set your heart a flutter how about reading true love letters...
http://www.theromantic.com/LoveLetters/main.htm
This website has love letters written by Keats, Byron and... Ronald Reagan?
Good stuff I'm telling you.

Measure for Measure

Mariana
Oil on Canvas
12" x 16"
Prints available on Fine Art America

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt...

The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.

-Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Dreaming of Roses
Oil on Canvas
8" x 10"

Woohoo! 

I just finished a 3 day oil painting workshop with the lovely artist Dreama Tolle Perry at the elegant Renaissance Fine Art and Design Gallery.



Dreama demonstrating painting a rose

We laughed, we cried, no wait... I don't remember anybody crying. 

But we did have "so much fun it shouldn't be legal."

Here are a couple of my pieces from the workshop...

French Window
Oil on Canvas
8" x 8"

Italian Cafe
Oil on Canvas
12" x 12"

And what about the lizard?  Have we tamed that beast? 

I sure do hope so.