"There, Suspended"
2008
Watercolor, gouache, marker and pen on Arches paper
12 x 12 inches
I designed my original portfolio website five years ago and, possessing only a rudimentary knowledge of .html, the result was plain to the point of blandness. I'm therefore happy to announce that ChristopherReiger.com has undergone a rather dramatic transformation!
The City Mouse designed the new site, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for his hard work, great suggestions and good nature. A lot of folks tell me that website redesign is a headache; TCM made it a very pleasant affair.
The site also formally announces my charitable sales model. I'm pleased that interest in this approach to art sales has already been strong, and I hope that the website's launch will introduce the idea to still more people. As I write on the site, "If the sales model is a success, I plan to invite other artists to join an expanding network of professionals dedicated to making the art market work for the environmental and social causes that are most important to us."
11 comments:
Nice font choice on the new site! It's a favorite of mine- it brings good associations with my childhood bird book, the golden guide to the birds of north america.
Niiice. You should be in book form, the paintings in between poems, with the drawings interspersed in them. Max Ernst did his own strange forms like this, with rubbings and indecipherable beings. This would work great. Know any that would fit? Try it.
Eirons:Wow, I thought I knew all the field guides to North American birds. The Golden Guide is a new one on me. I'll have to check it out.
Some of your artwork, by the way, is quite nice.
Donald:Thanks. The book approach is something I'd love to do one day, maybe soon.
i may have to get a guide, the birds are constantly changing. Had an oriole onetime, had to have escaped, but got a couple that look just like one but yellow, and some kind of rust breast colored songbird taking over from the blue jays that have been here for decades. The mockingbirds have always sung their song along with others, but never seen these little birds before, a kinda robin? Hummingbirds never change. But got the parrots and peacocks that wouldnt be in your guide. Some Ravens we saw in Yosemite were absolutely beautiful shimmering multicolored radiance from their dark feather, not black like the crows that are everywhere, and pelicans are now back by the tens of thousands, they love breakwatesr, which are white with guano. I know, TMI.
Donald:
Yes, climate change has allowed for a lot of range movement. The biologists are constantly surprised, and the annual bird counts are a great help to them. (I think it's terrific that the amateur can still play an important role in wildlife biology.)
The yellow oriole species is likely a western plumage Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus) and the robin-like fellow you've seen is probably a Rufous-backed Robin (Turdus rufopalliatus), a species spreading north from the US southwest. (Turdus, by the way, means thrush, not turd!)
Ravens are absolutely stunning. As you write, they shimmer. Grackle plumage, too, is radiant.
You nailed the oriole, had never seen it til hte last couple of years, and hadnt seen it in Baja either, but I was mostly in Baja Norte not Sur.
The songbird we got is small and shaped like tis, but a pale raw sienna, with a rusty throat on teh male, teh female sactualluy very pretty, a slight green cast o its chest, with individual feathers having pattern. Nicer than the mnale, whihc is unusual, except he has this long melody of over 5 seconds, one the mocking birds have used for years, along wiht other sounds, but not seen in this bird, its originator, til recently.
Things are changing. Raccoons, possums, coyotes, vultures, hawks all growing in population. like I said, man doesnt blast them on sight anymore. Though those Squirrells are looking tastier and tastier.
You are the man, will get to you with all my bird watching questions. Also have snowy egrets, and white and blue herons, which look like pterodactyls when they soar from the ground between the trees in the parks. The birds are much more comfortable around humans now. Interesting, or as you say, curioser and curioser.
Congrats on the upgrade, Hungry:)
Donald:
Glad that I could help with the oriole ID. You've stumped me, though, with the songbird description. Perhaps some other bird-watching reader will weigh in? In any case, you gotta admire the mockingbird's remarkable imitative ability!
The most likely etymology of my family name is rooted in the Dutch word reiger, or heron, so I feel a special affiliation with the long-legged hunters you're seeing in your local parks. But if my surname's provenance is not Dutch, and is instead Austrian or German, it is believed to be more closely related to the Middle High German word rueger than it is to reiher, the German word for heron. Rueger means "debater" or "prosecutor." I suppose that might mean some long dead ancestor of mine was a difficult son of a bitch, but I prefer to think that, even if my more immediate Hungarian ancestors could be traced back to Austrian stock, the "debater" label isn't too far from the parochial southern name for the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) that I grew up with, "Old Cranky."
Josh:
Thank you, sir!
Our blue heron doesnt have the hair style, the white egret does, and the white heron is about the same size as the blue, sans hair do also.
So you are either a lawyer, or cranky old bird. I am with you, and would take the bird. I keep on being told as a Frazell(strawberry picker in French)i am Scottish and part of the clan Frazier. Considering my family, being a clansman isnt too desirable.
But I know my great grand father came over with his son as Napoleon and Oscar from Marseilles. Cant get a French geneology to prove I am not related to Charleton Heston and his dead cold fingers, his real name is Frazier from talking with other "clansmen". And always getting calls for "Lefty" Frizell, also of the same family.
I prefer to think of myself as French anyway, though like most Americans am a mutt, German and English also. But Frazelle has a nice ring to it, like Cezanne. Though his family originally from the Italian side.
We all are mutts really, migration the one constant in the animal kindgom, if you dont, you will or have been overrun at some point. Having the colorist gene would explain much, and named my son after the three Paul's, Cezanne, Gauguin and Klee. Pablo too. That first Paul was the worlds original televangelist/used car salesman.
Anyway, back to YOU. I do think your work would be perfect for a poetry book, and considering how badly poetry is doing these days, they could use someone who doesnt really illustrate the work, but complements it. Artists often publish books, Ernst and Matisse among others. Look into it, with nature stores popping up, it would do well in the right combination. And you could use a heron stamp as signature, I am looking into a nature calendar, but dragonfly my emblem. Hover and speed around, fits me.
Now is the time for art to get more involved with life, not just illustration, but complex emotional works that help tie us to our world, and it to us. No more sterile white gallery walls, time to venture out into the real world. Art is needed.
Hey, thanks for taking a look at my work. I've been admiring yours for quite some time!
The field guide I mentioned is this 1970's version- all the titling is in futura. A little outdated these days, but it still holds a place in my heart.
Donald:
Thanks for the book suggestion, Mr. Strawberry Picker. It is definitely something I've long considered. I imagine that any book I might one day produce would be less poetry, per se, than poetic prose. In any case, thanks for the encouragement. I hope that I can one day do it.
eirons:
And thank you, in turn!
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