Ars Gratia Artis

For the sake of art

Of the interesting things that we’ve received into the shop recently, some of the artwork is really nice. Two that I will talk about here are, Shelbee Mares, and a Romanian artist named Chichicov.

“Botanical Sonata” Artist: Shelby Mares

I enjoy shooting shooting really nice artwork, especially when it’s an original, and not a print. This is a larger painting, on canvas, and I typically switch my setup for the larger canvases, mostly because I am lookinggto get good light over all of the canvas; something I cannot do at my table.

Here is what this setup looked like.

I loves me some clamshell lighting, but I cannot replicate this setup at my table, so I switch to the freestanding easel.

The top light is approximately 6 inches in front of the canvas and 12 inches above, The bottom light is 2 feet in front of the canvas, pointed up at a 45 degree angle. This allows for good coverage of the entire canvas and it allows for texture to show.

Typically, I will shoot a full-frontal shot of the canvas, which will serve as the first. picture that the bidder sees in the auction. I will then section the painting off into thirds, or sometimes quarters (depending), starting at the top and working to the bottom. If there is an artists signature, I’ll get a closeup of that. This work was unsigned on the front. However…

One of the hallmarks of Shelbee’s work is, she’ll write something specific to the piece on the back of the canvas, a nice personalization from the artist. We have several of hairpieces HER PIECES! (fucking auto-correct!) in he auction, and each one is signed thusly.

The second artist is a fellow who went by, Chichicov

Untitled, Artist, Chichicov

Chichicov, was a Romanian artist, who was commonly described as a, “mid-Century Modern” artist. I found plenty of examples of his work being sold at auction, but very little biographical data. What data I did find came from other auction sites. I did also discover that “Chichicov” was the name of a character in the book, “Dead Souls”, a mid 19th Century book by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. That’s it! I tried several different ways to search for his name, profession and birthplace, but I never found anything that looked like a biography. Alas.

Since this painting was presented in a landscape orientation, I shot fro left to right. I added a few more shots of the central figure, attempting to highlight the impasto technique that Chichicov employed.

I would love to have either (or both) of these paintings in my house, but I doubt that I’ll be able to afford them. I will keep an eye out for their work in the future.