I’m Sunshine Happiness Amos. I’m from Nigeria west Africa but currently lives in Togo another west African country which is a small beautiful tropical heaven. I also lived some of my childhood in Ghana, Accra. I grew up in a lot of rich west African culture, lifestyle and foods. I’m a self- thought artist from a draftsman to an impressionist and watercolor painter.
As an African I thought I should be painting African works of art. After I discovered my dream as a painter. I visited a lot of art galleries and saw African paintings which were mostly figurative of the people, lifestyle and culture. I used five years of my art journey trying to be an African artist painting African art. No matter what I did I was failing. I couldn’t paint figurative properly and I was bad at portrait after learning how to do them for years. I started to reach out to some established Nigerian Artist for help to point me in the right direction. They were happy to help but I wasn’t improving. Until an Art curator from an Art gallery asked to see my portfolio. Then he said to me.
” Sunshine, I can’t feel your Art. It’s like you’re trying to be like somebody. Please don’t do that. There are no Police in the Art World. Do whatever you want. Create whatever you want. You have something that will touch the lives of people through your art. But you haven’t found it yet.”
Then I asked him with frustration. “But how will I know?”
Then he said ” When you know you know. With your artistic flare and passion. I guess maybe three years from now”
This was in 2017. I didn’t like what he said. I was desperate. I just wanted him to put my paintings in his gallery. But what do I know. I went home crying.
Three years later in 2020 during the world COVID 19 lockdown. I found my voice in Art and my calling. The funniest thing is that it has been there all along. My love for gardens and flowers. European Antiques and Dutch style still life paintings. I started with painting gardens I found from garden photographers, gardeners and garden home owners from Europe and America. Every painting I made made me feel happy and accomplished. I felt I created a paradise with my paint brush. The feeling was overwhelming. I started posting it on Facebook and Instagram and people were engaging with it happily and telling me how it touches their hearts. This is it! My calling.
Presented by Domux
Domux
(Art gallery, Switzerland)Garden In A Vase Number 6
Watercolor Still life painting 16×24 inches.
Garden In A Vase Number 6 is finally done. It 's the first big size painting in the collection. It took me three days to finish with a lot of patience, observation and color touch-up. The painting is a mixed-media of watercolors for the flowers, and still life objects. And the greenery scenery is painted with acrylics. This painting is a realistic impressionism painting. I used both techniques were my artistic mind wants to apply it. The greenery scene behind the vase of flowers is fully the work of impressionism with brush strokes in dark green to make the vibrant flowers of the vase to shine. The painting is like an early morning day in spring. But it's simply the beauty of tranquility and rest. A calmness of the mind and of the heart.
Painting In Progress
Bit by bit the vision begins to come alive. I had to work slowly and gently because I was working a lot with contrast and lots of color mixing.
Photo of A Food.
Sandwich helps my creative energy a lot. During this painting Tuna and egg sandwich was the energy food that keeps me active.
ARTIST IN STUDIO
I used to think that Paul Cezanne works were very ugly especially his still life. Impressionism may have looked ugly to the naked eye. Not until you start to look beyond just visuals of the artwork. When I was painting my second large still life painting from my Garden in a vase collection my mind just start to think about the works of Paul Cezanne especially his still life paintings and how he translate the subject matter through his artistic eyes. I began to express myself more in my new painting.
When I look at his works beyond the visuals I begin to understand why he paints still life the way he did. He was expressing emotions and artistic flair through the shape and colors while re- creating what he saw in his own creative way. Which makes me wonder." What was he thinking, look how he painted that orange in his artwork. I can feel the freedom and movement of his brush."
Right now, I am express myself more through my Still life painting. Especially in this Garden in a vase remaining collection. And I feel more excited and empowered painting with this artistic mindset.
Garden In a Vase Number 7
Painting in progress from the studio. I didn't destroy the painting this time. I created and completed a masterpiece.
I feel like the force of nature have turned me into an impressionist whether I like it or not. I have always desired to be a hyper realistic painter. But anytime I create a new piece my artistic hand just starts to work towards brush expression and colors which will eventually becomes an impressionism painting. I am a visual person. I like something vivid and very detailed. A feast for my eyes I should say. And that's what I've always try to do with my art. Sometimes I do in some part of the painting. But the rest will be an impressionist style. I've tried hard to be a realism painter and I know how. But, my creative hand won't let me. Now, when I'm creating. I just say 'Whatever will be, will be.' And, I feel more accomplish when I create an impressionist painting. My creative heart has chosen my Art destiny. I will no longer fight it.
The painting behind me was going to be my second big still life painting from my Garden in a vase collection. But, I destroyed it. My week was sad and unfulfilled. Just when I was about to finish this painting last weekend I got severely ill. It was so unexpected and I wanted to finish my painting so bad. When I got a little better I return to finish the painting. But, I destroyed it the next day. The painting didn't feel right. I thought I made a huge mistake somewhere in the painting. Something just wasn't right with it. As a painter I thrive on perfection and constant creativity. The will to create an art piece is always so electrifying. But when I can't for any reason I get depressed.
I like posting perfect artworks but posting a sad unfinished work is also part of my Art life.
About The Book:
Perhaps best known as the long-suffering wife of Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner is now, finally, being recognized as one of the 20th century’s modernist masters. In Lee Krasner, author Gail Levin gives us an engrossing biography of the painter—so memorably portrayed in the movie Pollack by actor Marcia Gay Harden, who won an Academy Award for her performance—a firebrand and trailblazer for women’s rights as well as an exceptional artist who led a truly fascinating life.
ABOUT The Book
best book of the year from New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Book Riot, and the Sunday Times (London).
A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.
Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.
To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.
In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
ABOUT The Book
Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).
Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.
Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life.
Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.
ABOUT The Book
How do art and faith intersect? How does art help us see our own lives more clearly? What can we understand about God and humanity by looking at the lives of artists?
Striving for beauty, art also reveals what is broken. It presents us with the tremendous struggles and longings common to the human experience. And it says a lot about our Creator too. Great works of art can speak to the soul in a unique way.
Rembrandt Is in the Wind is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works and how each of them illuminates something about God, people, and the purpose of life. Part art history, part biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience, this book is nonetheless all story.
From Michelangelo to Vincent van Gogh to Edward Hopper, the lives of the artists in this book illustrate the struggle of living in this world and point to the beauty of the redemption available to us in Christ. Each story is different. Some conclude with resounding triumph while others end in struggle. But all of them raise important questions about humanity's hunger and capacity for glory, and all of them teach us to love and see beauty.
"The artists featured in these pages—artists who devoted their lives and work to what is good, true, and beautiful—remind us that we can, and should, do the same." —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well.
ABOUT The Book:
A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world—and Picasso the most famous artist alive—in the shadow of World War II
“[Eakin] has mastered this material. . . . The book soars.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker
In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture?
The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a cultural visionary who, at the age of twenty-seven, became the director of New York’s new Museum of Modern Art.
Barr and Quinn’s shared goal would be thwarted in the years to come—by popular hostility, by the Depression, by Parisian intrigues, and by Picasso himself. It would take Hitler’s campaign against Jews and modern art, and Barr’s fraught alliance with Paul Rosenberg, Picasso’s persecuted dealer, to get Picasso’s most important paintings out of Europe. Mounted in the shadow of war, the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art would launch Picasso in America, define MoMA as we know it, and shift the focus of the art world from Paris to New York.
Picasso’s War is the never-before-told story about how a single exhibition, a decade in the making, irrevocably changed American taste, and in doing so saved dozens of the twentieth century’s most enduring artworks from the Nazis. Through a deft combination of new scholarship and vivid storytelling, Hugh Eakin shows how two men and their obsession with Picasso changed the art world forever.
