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SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL Fine Art Presents George Clinton’s “Free Your Mind” Art Exhibition

Painting by George Clinton
Painting by George Clinton

Guest Post by Ken Davis of Funkatropolis.

Things are going to get real funky in the art world in October. New Orleans gallery SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL Fine Art and Spring McManus Art Advisory are presenting “Free Your Mind,” the first solo exhibition of funk legend George Clinton’s visual art. The exhibition will run throughout October. It will showcase 26 of the P-Funk mastermind’s paintings and a selection of his drawings, all original works. The artwork was selected from more than 200 paintings that Clinton has created over the last 30 years. Clinton’s approach to his visual art is similar to his approach to making music—inventive, daring and unbound by convention. He employs various media in the creation of his artwork, including acrylic, vine charcoal, pastel and spray paint. Some of his visual artwork is inspired by themes in his music, such as “Atomic Dog” and “Mothership.”

All of the artwork at the exhibition will be available for purchase. A percentage of the proceeds from the sales will be donated to Clinton’s foundation Protecting Our Legacy, which assists musicians and their families in acquiring and maintaining rights to their work.

Clinton, who celebrated his 80th birthday in July, has had a tremendous impact on the music world. He’s one of the most important artists to emerge from the ‘70s funk scene. He and the super-talented groove army Parliament-Funkadelic were a dominant force in funk music from the mid to late ‘70, creating a dizzying amount of incredible music. They were at the cutting-edge of the genre, expanding its boundaries and taking it to a new place. P-Funk’s sweeping influence can be heard in many corners of popular music today.

The opening reception for “Free Your Mind” will take place at SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL on Saturday, October 2, from 6 to 9 p.m., and Clinton is scheduled to be in attendance. The event is free and open to the public. It will be held in conjunction with Art for Arts’ Sake in the New Orleans Art District. The exhibition will run through October 30. SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL is located at 866 Camp Street, New Orleans, LA 70130. For more details, visit one of the gallery’s social media pages, Facebook and
Instagram
.

SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL Fine Art was established in August 2020 by best friends Leslie-Claire Spillman and Amy Blackwell who have a combined 27 years of gallery experience between them. SPILLMAN | BLACKWELL, a gallery and consultancy, features a diverse selection of artists, ranging from rising talent to seasoned veterans of the art world.

Pierce Brosnan’s “Earplugs”

Earplugs painting by Pierce Brosnan
“Earplugs” painting by Pierce Brosnan

Actor and artist Pierce Brosnan says that he painted “Earplugs” in 1995 at Leavesdon Studios in England, while he was filming the James Bond movie GoldenEye.

He says:

When shooting action sequences, the prop master would hand out packets of earplugs; on the back was an illustration of “how-to” put them in your ear. I found the infographic to be intriguing, amusing and engaging. I wanted to see if the composition would work as a painting. I had long admired Roy Lichtenstein’s ability to organize a graphic element into a painting and amplify the mundane into a bedazzling image. This became the inspiration for a 48 x 48 inch painting where I rendered my interpretation of the “Earplugs” by hand.

Brosnan has collaborated with Seasons gallery in Los Angeles to release hand-signed, limited edition silkscreens of “Earplugs”.  The prints will include a certificate of authenticity and a photograph of Pierce with the artwork. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to A Sense of Home, an organization that strives to prevent homelessness by creating first-ever homes for youth aging out of foster care.

“Earplugs” was also used to create BIG NOISE, Pierce Brosnan’s first NFT Collection. About the collection, he says:

I am exploring the digital art landscape with illustrative graphics reminiscent of mid-90’s multiplayer video games. Each graphic segment is embedded into a distinct color which moves the eye from one quadrant to another, creating a visual storyboard; each scene is inherently isolated yet tied together. The collection of works features self-recorded elements – my voice, my son Dylan playing the piano, and the sound of the Pacific Ocean at the end of my garden.

 

Visit PierceBrosnan.com for more about Pierce Brosnan and his artwork.

Artwork by Kevin Nealon

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Painting by Kevin Nealon

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Painting by Kevin Nealon

Actor, comedian Kevin Nealon has been posting what he calls his “sketches and doodles” at his Instagram for a couple of years. The early postings were mostly rough sketches and drawings, often of other actors, athletes, or other well known figures. However, more recently he has been posting much higher quality caricature paintings to Instagam and Twitter.

In a discussion with illustrator/caricaturist Jason Seiler, Nealon says that he began drawing as a child and has never really taken lessons or studied art. He says he learned by watching other people.

Nealon recently posted a painting in honor of the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He also posted a short video of what he calls his “home office art gallery exhibit.”

Joni Mitchell – Morning Glory on the Vine

Joni Mitchell Morning Glory Book Cover
Joni Mitchell, Morning Glory On The Vine, Book Cover

In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell handcrafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for a select group of friends. The book is a compendium of Joni Mitchell’s handwritten lyrics and watercolor paintings.

Last month Mitchell made the book available to the public for the first time. Morning Glory on the Vine Early Songs and Drawings by Joni Mitchell contains a hand-written selection of Joni Mitchell’s lyrics and poems, illustrated with more than thirty of her original paintings and watercolors.

In a past interview about her artwork and her music she said, “I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance.”

Mitchell recently Tweeted about her book release: “I always dreamed of seeing my book in a bookstore window. This feels even better than I imagined.”


For more information about Joni Mitchell and her artwork, visit jonimitchell.com.

Paintings by Gloria Stuart

Watts Towers by Gloria Stuart
Watts Towers I by Gloria Stuart, 1960s

Oscar nominated actress Gloria Stuart began acting in the 1930s. However, she was probably best known for her role as 101 year old Rose in the 1997 movie Titanic. Stuart did a number of movies in the 1930s and 1940s before taking a 3 decade break from acting from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s. It was during this break from acting that Stuart began painting.

In her 1999 book I Just Kept Hoping, she says that it was on a 1954 trip to Paris to visit her daughter, where she saw the works of Impressionist and Postimpressionist painters such as Monet, Manet, Seurat, Fantin-Latour, and Degas, that she was inspired to become a painter.

Seeing those paintings for the first time sent me into near Hysterics. Having paused forever in front of each canvas on the way, looking at Rousseau’s Sleeping Gypsy at the end of the first gallery, I burst into tears.

She goes on to say:

The end result of this happening was my resolve to become a painter.

I knew I could do it!

Stuart’s first of many shows was in 1961 at Hammer Galleries in New York City. It sold out, according to her book.

Stuart says in the book that the subject of her two most important accomplishments is the Watts Towers, referring to the towers built by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia in the Watts community in Los Angeles. She says that the large canvases took about three years of very detailed painting. These paintings are now in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Prints of the paintings  are available for sale in the LACMA store.

She said that her favorite subject in figure drawing was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. She says that she did three very large versions. In the first, a black Adam is taking the apple from a white Eve. One of these paintings is currently available for sale at 1stdibs.

Adam and Eve by Gloria Stuart
Adam and Eve by Gloria Stuart, 1965.