Blog

Now that concerns about Covid are fading from my mind, I have been venturing out with my camera.  One trip was a night shoot to photograph a fireworks display.  Every year, during the Labor Day weekend, the San Diego Symphony performs Tchaikovosky’s 1812 Overture.  If you want to hear Tchaikovosky's concert again, here is a link. 

The performance ends with a fireworks display set off over San Diego Bay. I photographed the event in Coronado, capturing the new outdoor music venue and surrounding downtown buildings, the light show, and reflections in the water.

Here are a few of the images I captured, standing 3/4 mile away from the venue.

If you would like to purchase a print on paper or metal, please contact me. My email is danalevineart@gmail.com

Fireworks over San Diego Bay 1

Fireworks over San Diego Bay 2

Fireworks over San Diego Bay 3

Fireworks over San Diego Bay 4

Fireworks over San Diego Bay 5

The Race

I have been photographing things that I see during beach walks.  If you look closely at the crumbling, sandstone cliffs backing up to the beach, you can find small marine critters and little rocks wedged into crevices.  I've given a few photographs names that make me think, not of rocks, but of that Henry Miller quote.  They evoke quietude and contemplation.  Here are two examples.    

On a recent trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano - built in the late 1700's by indigenous Native Americans converted to Catholicism by Spanish missionaries and restored many times over the centuries - you are reminded of the layers of history and the passage of time embedded there.  The textures of the brick and stucco walls of the mission buildings, the riotous color of the flowers in the garden and the deep blue of the lily ponds are incredibly beautiful .  Here are two examples

Visit my upcoming exhibitions at the La Jolla Art Association (June and July), Gallery 21 in Spanish Village (July) and Mission Trails Regional Park (September and October).

La Jolla Art Association:  6811 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla, from June 4 though July.  Monday - Friday 9 -5 pm.  858-459-0831.  Reception on June 4th from 4 - 6 pm 

Gallery 21, Spanish Village, Balboa Park, 1770 Village Place, San Diego.  July 5 - July 18, Monday - Sunday 11- 4 pm.   Reception on July 9 from 1 - 4 pm

I recently did the cover of a book of poetry for a friend.  

Words Bursting in Air, by Janice Alper, is filled with wonderful poems.*  

The cover image titled, Woman in a Net, made me realize that for the 

past several months I have been experiencing feelings of anxiety.

Woman in a Net

Centuries after the creation of the 

Easter Island monoliths and the stoic 

Egyptian deities, Greek artists during the 

Hellenic period sculpted lifelike 

human figures.

What the Greeks had accomplished, 

With their abstract representations of man 

less than forty years later, artists like Jacques 

Lipshitz and Giacometti reference us 

back to the silent figures of 

the ancient world.

Artists' interpretations of 

Japanese and Chinese artists 

used line to impart sensuality 

and a suggestion of form and 

movement to their inked 

and painted figures. And though 

the figures are flat and lack

solidity, we glimpse their character and

get a look into everyday life.

In contrast to Asian art, 

in the religious paintings 

of Giotto in the 14th century 

and van Eyck's painting of the 

Arnolfini marriage, the figures 

occupy space but are frozen in 

time and place, silent and pale.

By the 19th century,  Ingres is 

once again celebrating line in his 

portraits of beautiful young women.  

Matisse, the post-impressionist,

turned to color and curved 

embellishments in many of his 

paintings. He outlined this woman 

in black and she becomes part of 

the wall decoration.

At the turn of the century, Picasso, 

inspired by African tribal masks,

shocks the art world when he

presents flattened images of nude 

When Gauguin went to Tahiti, he painted

 

large, simplified forms, reflecting an island 

life far removed from European culture.

 

And, by mid-20th century, the pop artist

  

Roy Lichtenstein compares people in

 

American society to comic book

 

characters. Both artists' women

  

almost fill their canvases, recalling

Giotto's saintly figures who are 

right up against the picture plane.

Picasso
Picasso was famous for injecting his personal feelings into his work.  We are seeing someone through his eyes and, at the same time, we are seeing Picasso by the way he presents his subject.  For example, for his famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, he was criticized for not depicting her as she was.  He responded that he painted her as she would become. And indeed she did grow into her portrait! At the beginning of his relationship with Dora Maar, his lover is shown with brilliant colors, "which joyously convey the radiance of her youth".  Later, at the end of their relationship, her anguished feelings leap out at the viewer in his painting, The Weeping Woman.  Similar colors, but entirely different expression by the artist of his subject.

 Toulouse Lautrec painted the can-can dancer, Jane Avril, many times.  Lautrec wasn’t simply interested in her as a figure from the world of dancers and prostitutes; he found in her noticeable eccentricity a correspondence to his own physical defects.  Here, Jane Avril stares out at the world with confidence; her gaze demands our attention  As one contemporary remembered, "She was proud. She didn’t know how to cry, nor beg, nor apologise."

Otto Dix, the 20th Century German painter, was so supremely self-confident that he painted himself in the same pose as Durer's self portrait. Dix didn't just emulate an Old Master, he depicted himself as an Old Master.  When the Nazis came to power, Dix was labeled a degenerate artist and he lost his teaching job. And when Nazi Germany collapsed, he was drafted, promptly captured, and ended the war in a French POW camp. A later self portrait as a broken old man shows him without a trace of arrogance.

 Arnold Newman chose to photograph Marilyn Monroe just seven months before her death, not as a glamorous Hollywood star, but as a confused, intoxicated woman. "She was a very troubled woman, and I knew it immediately.....She was pouring her heart out with all her troubles to Carl (Sandburg) ....I start taking pictures of her, and then she said she couldn't sleep... She couldn't sleep at night."

Francis Bacon painted wounded and traumatized humanity. His subjects were distorted, isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas. About his series of paintings called the "screaming popes,"  Bacon says, “I’ve always been very moved by the movement of the mouth and the shape of the mouth and the teeth. People say that these have all sorts of sexual implications . . . I’ve always hoped in a sense to be able to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset.”

Yellow Orchid

Late Summer Meditation

Gallery 21, Spanish Village, Balboa Park,
1770 Village Place,  San Diego, CA 92101

Nov. 9th through Nov. 21, 2016
11 am - 4 pm daily

Reception:  Sunday, No.v 13th from 1 - 3 pm

Straw Hats and Lantern

I recently returned from Alaska.  And, although I do not normally photograph nature and the weather was mostly drizzly and the small ship cruising the waterways of the Tsongas National Forest gently rocked, nevertheless....... I did manage to capture some incredible natural beauty in this part of the world.  I've put some of my favorite images in a new gallery on my website to share with you.  Tell me what you think.