Arboretum Kalmthout: A Haven Near Antwerp
When I received the gift of a museum pass, I was excited at the idea of discovering new-to-me museums in Belgium as well as having the possibility to pop into much-loved museums to my heart’s content! What a wonderful surprise it was to learn that the museum pass includes gardens like the Arboretum Kalmthout in the province of Antwerp! This spring I visited the provincial park several times and loved seeing how the plants changed with every visit.
Paris: Museums & Memories
I first went to Paris when I was 18 years old with my sister and my uncle. We stayed in an apartment in Le Marais, visited museums, climbed the stairs of Montmartre, and ate ice cream by the Seine. I loved it, as I knew I would, and returned a year later to study art history at La Sorbonne. In the art history building near Luxembourg gardens, I studied Italian Renaissance art, the Flemish masters, and contemporary photography, and on weekends frequented the many museums.
Skills Corner: The Underpainting
From intuition-based painting to rigorously planned compositions, artists work in different ways. Yet across styles, many establish what is called an "underpainting" at the beginning of a new project. The underpainting of the artwork refers to its initial layers. An underpainting can be understood as a first compositional sketch or the foundational marks of a painting, inevitably becoming invisible or partially so as the painting progresses. In this blog post, I write about the underpainting as a guideline, why it matters, and the techniques I use to set myself up for a successful finished painting.
A Visit to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA)
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (KMSKA) re-opened in 2022, after over a decade of major restoration and renovation work. First opened in 1890, the KMSKA now houses both old masters and modern art. Having moved to Belgium in 2013, I hadn’t visited the museum before its recent reopening and was excited to see the building and the artwork inside. In what follows, I share my impressions of what will surely be the first of many visits to the KMSKA.
Negative Space: A Way of Seeing
Recently, I decided to pause work on a painting because I felt stuck. A garden scene with lots of shapes and colours, it had been going well but as I progressed, something felt off. It could have been the depth: not enough? Or the colours of the flowers: were there too many? I needed to slow down, focus, and think about what was going on in the painting. I thought back to essential drawing techniques and specifically about the important role of negative space. In this post, I write about this basic drawing technique, how it is a way of seeing, and why it is essential to my practice.