28 June, 2012

Cool Blogs You Haven't Seen







Maybe you have seen them.  But for those who have not, they are recommended.

The Limited Palette Workshop, by H. Edward Brooks.
Atelier LaRose, by Steven LaRose.  Formerly Fish or Cut Bait.
pastelnews at Tumblr, by Mario Vuklic.
Buckwheat.  A father & son bluegrass duo.  Jetta Smith.
For the Color, by Ken Elliott.
Sarah Peroutka Studios, by  Sarah Peroutka.

19 June, 2012

18 June, 2012

16 June, 2012

Fathers and History



Link
My Grandfather, Max Klahn, is the young boy pictured @ the top right. See a story about him below. Next to him at his left are Henry, my Great Grandfather and Charlotte, my Great Grandmother. Location: Quillayute Prairie, WA. Date: 1895. This remote place is about the rainiest spot in the US, and less than 5 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. And we love it there.


Father's Day is a time that I choose to remember my fore-bearers.  

Grandpa Max and Grandma Anna homesteaded in the land that time forgot, the Olympic Peninsula.  Think Twilight, only without the amenities.  By no amenities, I mean no electricity.  Did I mention no road, either?  Max hiked the Olympic beach to get to work during the Great Depression, which was a hundred miles plus a little.  The Indians rafted him across the rivers he couldn't ford.  He worked in the logging and port towns of Hoquiam and Aberdeen.

Max and Anna had 13 children, and the seven brothers all went off to war.  My father, Kenneth K. Klahn, saw heavy combat in Italy, as a member of the famous Tenth Mountain Division, US Army.  

Together with my maternal grandfather, my father, brother and I worked in the woods when I was four years old.  Did I say I worked?  Of course, I played.

Today, we honor my father-in-law who passed away Thursday.  He was a wheat farmer, and a WW II veteran.  He could outwork five oversized men half his age, and feed the world while he was at it.  You cannot replace him, which is a fact.

Father's Day is Sunday.  A local point of pride is the fact that Father's Day was invented in 1910, in Spokane, WA,  by Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd.  It is good to remember our fathers.




14 June, 2012

Matisse on Color


1953




I just ordered a book of essays by and about Henri Matisse.  This quote is from the essay, The Role and Modalities of Color, 1945.

08 June, 2012

Tip-Toe This Line






This critique of my work offers some insight into the lines I try to straddle.
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Keep your ear to the ground and your heart in a safe place, you never know when you'll find yourself wandering...
                                      


   Coming into form, Casey Klahn's art strives to join the abstract with the ingenuity of landscape detail. You could say he tip-toes this line with ease, when in reality a line remains to be seen. The human eye is trained to view things which manifest in our hearts.

   The overall feel (of Klahn's art) refuses to be labeled with simple adjectives, rather wishes to be defined by thought patterns and feelings adapted into emotion. Keep your ear to the ground and your heart in a safe place, you never know when you'll find yourself wandering...

   This is a place where man has seldom come. The forest's age is conveyed with dynamic precision. The balance...would have to be its best quality. With just the right amount of color where it needs to be, you really get a sense of how much control the artist has with the instruments at his disposal.


   When it comes down to it, Casey Klahn's artwork has a mood all its own. The notion to single out a central theme or idea works against him in many cases, requiring his viewers to dig deep within themselves to try and identify a hidden meaning in many of his works.

   The human mind is only as open and deep as we make it, and Casey thrives on exploiting those pits which open in the deepest and darkest corners. This is what makes him such a proliferate artist and will continue to profile him for years to come.


Terry Gildow


There is a reception Friday, 5-9 PM at the Life Center Clearstory Gallery.  Color & Expression Now. (509)327-4422  
1202 N. Government Way, Spokane WA 99224.

05 June, 2012

Absalom Shade & Galt in the Rain


The name Absalom Shade sounds like a character Johnny Depp might play in a movie, but he was actually a city father in southern Ontario.  The eighteenth-century founder of Shade's Mill would be proud of this singularly beautiful little hamlet today.  Part of Cambridge, and now called Galt, it is also the location where I taught my workshop this past weekend.  My full report will follow soon.


Galt in the Rain
8" x 10"
Pastel
Casey Klahn 


The Grand River in one-time Shade's Mill.




02 June, 2012

At The Pastel Studio of Canada

Large workshop space!

I am pleased and proud to be teaching at Canada's exclusive purveyor of high-end pastel materials, The Pastel Studio of Canada, in Cambridge, ON.  You will find Diane Townsend and Roche open stocks and sets, just to mention two of the brands carried.

Yesterday I set up the space for my workshop, and took a short break to walk around beautiful, old Cambridge and Galt, with its Scottish stone-mason built structures and the river.  Of course it rained like mad, and yet I took an old fold of paper and a pencil and did up some proper sketches as references to paint.  Back in the studio, with the proprietor Edward, I created a pastel scene of Galt in the Rain.

Galt in the Rain
@8" x 10"
Pastel on Lava Grit, Mounted
Casey Klahn
Abstract Expressionism, Art Criticism, Artists, Colorist Art, Drawing, History, Impressionism, Modern Art, Painting, Pastel, Post Impressionism