INCENTIVE #2

INCENTIVE #2 BEGINS TODAY

This 2-Day incentive starts Thursday, August 8th at  12:01 AM PST and ends Friday, August 9th  @ 8 PM EDT.  Your donation makes you eligible to win this unique print.

INCENTIVE #2

PiCassieO Print

Title: Java

Size: 8.5 x 11

Signed and numbered by the artist, 1/50

Donor: Beth Stafford

When you look at the photos in this post you might be wondering what this has to do with Airedales or dogs, but it does. In fact it is a very special connection to Airedales and rescue. The talented Airedales who collaborated on this artwork are both rescues. I’ll let Beth describe how it is created.

PiCassieO

Art with Love ♥

The Team:

  

Cassie - Airedale, Age 11

Beth - Artist - Over 11

My Airedale had been painting the windows for years before I finally became aware of her considerable talent for wildly expressionistic art. One sunny afternoon in the fall of 2006, I was looking out one of her favorite “canvases” upstairs and was amazed at what she’d done with that big nose of hers! There were graceful spirals, swirls, and waves that were beautifully free and well-executed, all in response to whatever she saw outside. Artists are known for looking at the world in unique ways, often choosing as subject matter what would normally be overlooked or not seen as “art”. In my case, it was my dog’s window markings that triggered an “aha” moment which was the start of the largest body of work I’ve produced in my 30-year career as a painter. This “interspecies” collaboration has produced dozens of brilliantly colorful abstracts that I sign as “PiCassieO”. My dog’s name is Cassie; doing yet another play on Picasso was irresistible! I figured Picasso could represent me, the human half of the team, with Cassie in her usual spot in the center of everything.

I confess that in the beginning I was like most people looking at non-representational art, searching in Cassie’s marks for recognizable symbols – like looking for cloud pictures. Some of the early ones are a little embarrassing now, but gradually I came to appreciate the beauty of the “brushwork” for itself and not for what it might seem to represent. I have come to regard my enthusiastic and totally uninhibited dog as my artistic alter ego – the side that wants to cut loose and be spontaneous instead of meticulously planning and drawing and painting in “high definition”. That gets really old after a while, believe me. Cassie graciously lets me use her art as the basis for my own take on it. With the help of a digital camera, photo shop software, tablet and stylus, and a really good printing set-up, I am now producing art that I’m proud to claim, and am having incredible fun making it! We probably have the “dirtiest” windows around – but there are such treasures to be discovered there.

Links:
PiCassiO blog,. www.airedale-art.blogspot.com
Website, www.BethStafford.com
Etsy, www.PiCassieO.Etsy.com
Facebook, www.facebook.com/BethStaffordArtAdventures

     

                        Cassie                                       Cassie's Original Nose Art

Cassie's Nose Garden 

    

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