Art By Tali Landsman

Tomorrow we fly to Europe for a short vacation. I will try to blog if I can, while traveling. Have fun all!! I wanted to mention that while I strolled the Vail and Beaver Creek areas, I felt almost a resistance to get into the many galleries to look at the art. Both areas as well as Aspen are packed with the same art galleries. Why was I so repulsed to enter them? To be totally honest, they depress me. Like many galleries in tourist areas, they cater to wealthy patrons with a taste for a decorative, non challenging art that portray in a skillful manner, the mountains in the area, the wildlife, aspens etc. All these galleries feel boring to me and the art in them repetitive and uninspiring. As an artist, I feel that they operate like a gift store, not really representing the arts. There is no call for growth through art in these places, just an attempt to match styles with buyer's taste.

Married couple tend to get into a daily routine that leaves less time for romance. In order to combat this possibility, Jules and I packed an overnight bag and went on a "date". We spent the day strolling around Beaver Creek Resort and saw families having fun on their vacation. At the bottom of the slops, we saw (and had to restrain ourselves not to eat) kids roasting marshmallows and making "smores", courtesy of the resort. (you hook a piece of marshmallow on a stick and roast it on the open fire, put in on a Graham cracker, add a thin leaf of chocolate and top the sandwich with another Graham cracker.) Later we checked into the newly built Westin Resort. The chef at the hotel's restaurant, upon hearing that we are vegans, rose to the challenge and made us a memorable dinner. He created a dish of wraps made from steamed green chard leaves filled with baby lentils and fresh figs, covered with roasted baby eggplant, baby yellow carrots, baby beets, sun dried toma...

Yesterday we went for a walk at Vail village. In the summer it really feels like an alpine village filled with Tyrolean style buildings, cosy restaurants and stores displaying their ware under hanging flowers and people strolling with an ice cream or a cocktail. Vail was celebrating the "Sweet Vail Day" in which restaurants and independent vendors created all sorts of desserts and sweets and sold them in a festive street fair. The village atmosphere in Vail is created by the fact that you have to park your car and stroll the streets of the village by foot- no cars allowed.

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” 
–Winston Churchill

This morning I've received some good news in my inbox. My "Artist's Sketchbook" series was selected to be published in the glossy pages of the "Studio Visit Magazine". This new art magazine comes from "The Open Studio Press" which also publishes the "New American Paintings" magazine. It is distributed to 2000 galleries and curators across the USA as well as being sold in bookstores and to subscribers. After the weekend, I am going back to the studio to start a new painting in this series. Since it is a more complex process than painting orchids, I plan to alternate the two and work on a piece that feel more fluid that day.

An Orchid For a short while after selling our house in Kohukohu NZ, we entertained the idea of buying a studio or a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Since we live in rural and quiet places both here in the Colorado's Rockies and in New Zealand, it seems like we are constantly in need of a "City Fix". While in NZ, we drive to Auckland almost every ten days and spend our time taking in the street scenes, the people, their diversity and energy. We also get our fill of great food, bookstores, cafes, a movie, a play or a swim in the the "Tepid baths". While we cooled off to the idea of buying and keeping another place empty while we enjoy it only intermediately, we did come up with a brilliant idea. We will spend a month (during the USA summer), every year in a different city of our choice. Every major city offers furnished apartments for rent on a short term basis. We decided to start with a month in Tokyo or Kyoto next July. We chose Japan because we love the ae...

I framed, packed and shipped a painting to a collector today. I also worked on editing the images of the now completed art project for my art collector from Florida. On another note, I have just finished reading a book about orchids. It is a non-fiction work describing the intricate world of orchid's collectors, growers, researches, filled with tales of smuggling, armed crime and enthusiasts. I have learned so much about orchids in the process. Have you ever known that some orchids change their scent during the day? Two examples that comes to mind is an orchid that smells like "Lilly of the valley" by day and like butter cookies by night. The other orchid smells like menthol by mid morning and emits a scent similar to cinnamon rolls by the afternoon. The scent of an orchid is a complex mix of more than 150 different chemical components. If you want to read the book it is called "Orchid Fever" by Eric Hansen

You got to see this painted animation in sand from the Ukraine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

You must discover yourself through daily life. We are by nature an energy that is constantly shifting. We keep on redefining who we are and we recreate ourselves by the choices that we make day by day. I find that I define myself as an artist, not only on days that I hold a brush in the studio, but also on days when I observe the colors of the landscape and think how to reproduce it in front of the canvas if I chose to do so. I am an artist when I trace the contour of a person in a cafe' and pretend that I am drawing it with pencil in my mind's eye. Or when I find my mind conjuring compositions in the street and rearranging items in my mind when I am suppose to be daydreaming

I have created this 3D sculpture in response to an article that I have read on CNN.com. The article told the story of a group of women that were sentenced to 40 lashes (beating) for wearing trousers in a cafe' in Sudan. It saddened me so very much to read this story. I gazes at my casual pants that I put on this morning without giving it a second thought and my heart went out to those women who suffer such abuse of basic human rights. A woman is a ghost in the eyes of fanatic extremist Islam. But it is our basic human right to have a voice, to show our face and to choose to express ourselves without fear, misinterpretations, or regulations imposed by tradition.

On our last cycling trip in Aspen, we stopped at the Aspen Art Museum to enjoy the current exhibition of Fred Tomaselli. Tomaselli displayed large canvases covered in resin into which he embedded leaves (marijuana), pills, collage and paint. The paintings seems so decorative, but at a closer look they are fascinating in their intricacy and in their compositional complexity. You must go and see it! the online images does not do it justice. In New Zealand, the Affordable Art Show in Wellington have just finished. I have not heard the results yet, but I did get a small note from a couple that said: "We've just bought your painting "Tree in bloom" from the NZ Affordable Arts Show and we love it!" - Ray It is always great to hear from collectors. It helps me feel that I am not working in a vacuum. I wish my collectors will write to me more...