David Prashker's Art Gallery

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Two Sisters

I am regularly accused of simply photoshopping photographs. Would it were that easy! This one, however, did start out that way, as a photograph of the two sisters, in kodachrome...

If you want to see the difference between a photoshop and a digital painting, take any photo you please, open it in photoshop, adjust it to any of the filters or art effects they offer, and then save it. Then open it again, in Microsoft Paint or an equivalent Paint program, and zoom in to the maximum; you will find a blur of pixelation, made up of colour bleed and colour fragmentation, where a digital painting - or my digital paintings anyway - are pixel-pure. And if you still don't believe me, or understand the difference, look at "Prashker In Blue" amongst my "Cartoons", where I have done, and explained, precisely that.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Nina à la Kandinsky

How else does an artist tell the woman he loves how deep that love goes, especially when circumstances have put six thousand miles between you, and little likelihood of that distance ever being breached? How else, except by painting her in her truest colours, all the art (she loves art and is very talented), all the architecture (it's how she earns her living), all the colour (sun and life and light and vibrancy), all the beauty (she cheats: she dyes her hair, she does gym daily, she juices and does organic foods), all the intelligence (see the last phrase on this page).

But then circumstances broke us up, and if the relationship has to remain unfinished, so does the portrait. I sent it to her as a birthday card the year we parted, still best friends, just an ocean and a lot of my ill-health apart. I told her, it's unfinished. She agreed.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Nicole Abstracted

The trial run for "Nina à la Kandinsky", to see if this was a technique that I might continue with (it isn't).

The model was my niece, and the purpose was a birthday present for her mother, my sister (who loved it, so that redeems all of the work's many failures).

She was working for some boutique clothing shop at the time, and that background blue was the exact colour of their logo, as well as being absolutely delicious by any standard of blue. By the time I finished the painting she had been head-hunted to manage a much better store, but the colour of their logo wasn't anything like so compelling, so I kept this one (the boutique store went bust during the coronavirus).

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Friday, April 17, 2020

Japanese Street

How does Art (whatever that means) happen? By inspiration? Perhaps? As a consequence of protracted inner jihad? Probably. But there are other sources. Picasso, like Shakespeare, simply stole most of his ideas, usually by wandering the studios of his fellow artists, seeing what they were working on, and going home to do the same thing himself, only rather better. I imagine Rembrandt with his kids, or Michelangelo with his boyfriend, looking for a suitable birthday or Christmas present to encourage their artistic interests, and finding whatever in their day was the equivalent of Painting By Numbers; and then, watching the recipient excitedly but incompetently make a complete mess of it, taking up a brush and doing their own version on whatever canvas happened to be the commission at the time. So Rembrandt reworked Caravaggio. So Michelangelo reworked Andrea del Sarto.

Myself, for this painting, I took the reverse route, my then teenage daughters being the ones who bought the colouring-in book to encourage my artistic interests, me who made the complete mess of it; but then, years later, scanned the mess into my computer, and had another go with the digital paintbrush.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Taj Mahal

Inversions. Reversions. Alternating perspectives. I think this is really just an alternate way of making my painting "The Best Way To Study Cézanne", or it may be an alternate way of writing my piece about Constable's "Hay-Wain", though I am uncertain whether the underwater reflection here equivalates to the finished Constable, and the earth-bound one to the study, or wikey worser, as we should pronounce that Latin cliché.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

Trees in Silhouette

Pure photography - but is photography not Art?

An image, captured by the eye, using the hand to manipulate a tool, made manifest on a canvas.

All of which is just "means" and "medium", when what really counts is the process of looking, and seeing, and being abe to distinguish the image that merits retaining from the one that does not.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Chinese Fan

Another item for my growing catalogue (to take the positive, creative view) of availables for artists, my continuing complaint (to take the negative, uncreative view):

why are there so many details of Nature, so many human artefacts, which are apparently no-go areas for artists?

You can paint the items in a kitchen, both dead and alive; why can't you paint the items in a lady's boudoir - those gorgeous lipsticks and hair dyes, the details of a lace handkerchief or, as here, those of a fan?

Every artist moans about the paucity of subjects available - when actually they are infinite.

Every artist moans that all they can do is make pictorial anagrams, personalised versions of the same old same old.

But there are so many options, so much that is different new that enables you to express your deepest inner self, or simply take pleasure from the shapes and colours.

A painting of a set of bookshelves, featuring the spines of all the books you love best.

Or of your record collection.

Why not?

Why does it always have to be a Crucifixion, a nude, the view from your window, or ships at sea?

Grow the options, fellow artists! Shed the anagrams and grow the options!

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

DHL2

The three pictures included on the left are all from the "obscene" collection, which is described in more detail in the newspaper article top right, though I appreciate that the thumbprint is far too small to read it. More here, if you are interested, which you should be if you are interested in art, because where they start by banning paintings they generally end by burning people - that's a slight misquote of Heinrich Heine, but no less valid for being so.

The "more here" link not only tells the whole idiotic story, but also includes much larger copies of the paintings.

My further thoughts on the genius of D.H. Lawrence can be found on March 2nd in "The Book of Days", and on his poem "The Snake" here.

The authentic quote from Heine, and more on the subject, can be found here.

My epitaph-poem for DHL can be found in "Welcome To My World".

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Colour Chart

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

On Wishes by Mahmoud Dharwish

My first attempt at drawing him was without glasses, but I wanted to construct his face out of a map of the Arab world, and by odd chance the territory known as Jordan, which the world has forgotten constitutes 65% of Palestine, superimposed glasses onto him. Back in June 1967, when he became one of the founders of the "al-Naksa", the "June poetry movement", he didn't wear glasses, but the wonderfully evocative photo of him on the website of the Poetry Foundation confirms that, in later life, he needed them; and so Art and Reality have become harmonised, in a manner which sadly has not been repeated in the world of Palestinian politics.

Click here for my piece on Nizar Qabbani, another of the great "al-Naksa" poets, in my "Private Collection" blog.

Click here for the Poetry Foundation page on MD himself.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

The Best Way To Study Cezanne

Mont St Victoire at dawn, when the light is barely sufficient to provide colour.

Mont St Victoire at breakfast time, when the farmer has taken the cows in from the field for milking, and clouds are slowing down the dawning of the summer day.

Mont St Victoire by mid-morning, the distant grey-brown blur now discernible as hill and wood, and even a residue of snow on the mountain summit.

Mont St Victoire by lunchtime, the artist's eyes damp and therefore blurry from the intensity of concentration, and a mild allergy to the chemicals in the paints, but at least, stopping for a baguette, he has managed to work out how, maybe, to capture the shifting time between commencement and completion.

Mont St Victoire in the afternoon, riviera sunshine, dense, intense colours, light almost overpowering in its luminosity.

And all this, in just one, single painting.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Light and Glass

The time has come to discuss... signatures.

Why does a painting need to be ruined, by having a signature on it at all? Hidden away discreetly in a corner - no problem. But more often than not it occupies a space of meaningful content, like a watermark on an image that someone who owns the copyright wishes to prevent you seeing properly, for fear that you might steal it (using paint software, watermarks are remarkably easy to remove, but don't tell "them" that!).

And why does there have to be a trademark signature (I have used the word "trademark" deliberately, fully aware that this is the answer to my question)?

In my pictures you will find dozens of variations of my signature, different fonts, different sizes, even different languages, and with the Argaman paintings different names.

In most of my pictures, I have attempted to make the signature either totally unobtrusive, or part of the design. So, here, it is fitted neatly into the grey shadow in the bottom right hand corner, its colours precisely echoing those of the painting.

Why has no one ever written a PhD thesis, let alone an entire book, on this hugely important subject of the artist's signature?

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Still Life (but only just)

According to my Google Browswer, which came up with it as the answer to my question "What is the purpose of abstraction?":

"Abstraction is selecting data from a larger pool to show only the relevant details of the object to the user. Abstraction 'shows' only the essential attributes and 'hides' unnecessary information. It helps to reduce programming complexity and effort. It is one of the most important concepts of OOPs."

Which I think is written correctly as OOPs, though I am inclined to mis-spell it as Oops.

So I have attempted a naturalistic and realistic portrait of the human condition, but executed according to the rules and formulae in that quotation.

So it is life; it is, still, life; if only just.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

Hand of God

Hand of El Shadai really, the source of the Chamsa...

My issue in posting this to the blog was whether to label it as a "Picture", as in an image out of Nature, or as an "Abstract". The later Jewish deity was definitely abstract, but El Shadai seems to have been rather more anthropomorphic...

Because I don't believe in gods, except as metaphors, I have gone for Abstract.

For those who like to deconstruct these matters, the fourth finger is a Moslem minaret, the middle finger a Hindu mandir, and the thumb and fifth fingers are Christian and Protestant spires respectively. The second finger was originally Greek Orthodox, but later converted to Reform Judaism.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Diamond Abstract

Does every drawing, painting, sketch and sculpture, hanging on a wall or standing on a plynth, really require a semiotic to describe it, let alone explain it? And what if the wrong label got hung?

This one reads: Davido Prashkerotti, Florence, 1492, oil on canvas. Art historians dispute the date however, convinced that it must have been 1491 and not 1492. A Davidoni Praszkarotti is also known from the same epoch, but in Turin, not Florence.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/

The Argaman Press

Space Island 3

M.C. Escher for a third time, but that isn't why this is titled "Space Island 3" - simply that it took three major attempts, several years apart, the first by hand, measuring lines with rulers, both for their straightness and their precise length, then a scanned version to see what could be done to make the waterfall stand out from the sky (my drawing techniques are very limited, but the technology is infinitely skilful!); and finally this version, insisting on colour because, if we are going to inflict humanity on the rest of the cosmos, can we at least take our art and our wisdom with us, and leave behind our pollution, our global warming, and our general tendency to turn everywhere we colonise into a toilet.

You can find David Prashker at:

http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com

http://davidprashkersworldhourglass.blogspot.co.uk/