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Two Cranberries, Two Tangerines (Yin & Yang) (+ "painting is torment")


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Although my students know quite well that I respectfully disagree with him that 'painting is torment,' I thought perhaps you'd be interested in this article about a Cuban artist whose work I studied in 2012 when I visited the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana:

"'All art is tragedy,' Wilfredo Lam said in his halting French. 'For me, painting is a torment.' He was at that moment frantically at work in his little hibiscus-shaded house on the outskirts of Havana. In the back room he uses as his studio, bare but for a profusion of his pictures, he paints every day—or rather, every evening. He usually begins around 11 p.m. after his guests have left, hopping about, lugging his canvas from easel to floor and back again in an acrobatic ballet that sometimes continues till the early morning light filters through the Cuban shutters.

Wifredo Lam, who was born in Cuba in 1902, was one of the very few artists from beyond the borders of the American and European art worlds to become a genuine star in those locales in the middle part of the 20th century...." [Read more at source]

Also: looking back, I find I often paint cranberries and tangerines around this time of year. This painting continues my "yin and yang" series that I began back in 2010.

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All my best,