DRAWING CHALLENGE V

We are thrilled to announce Mary Didoardo, Herb Greene, Jon Rappleye, and Carol Warner
as the featured contestants of our Drawing Challenge V, which used an excerpt from
Gertrude Stein’s “The Winner Loses: A Picture of Occupied France“,
an article written in Bilignin, France and published in The Atlantic in 1940.
We would like to thank the artist Karen Schiff for submitting these lines.

"I had begun the beginning of May to write a book for children, a book of alphabets with stories for each letter, and a book of birthdays each story had to have a birthday in it and I did get so that I could not think about the war but just about the stories I was making up for this book. I would walk in the daytime and make up stories, and I walked up and down on the terrace in the evening and made up stories, and I went to sleep making up stories, and I pretty well did succeed in keeping my mind off the war except for the three times a day when there was the French communique, and that always gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach, and though I slept well every morning I woke up with that funny feeling in my stomach."

-Gertrude Stein, 1940

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Carol Warner, Such a Thing as Day, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 22 x 28 inches

“This image relates to the Gertrude Stein quote because I think of my paintings as visual sentences. The light and imagery in this piece evoke feelings of joy or rebirth signified by "birthdays." The instability of the floating, turning images represent the reality of social upheaval.”

- Carol Warner, 2020
www.carolwarnerstudio.com

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Herb Greene, Untitled, 1952, colored pencil and ink on trace paper

“I completed this drawing in 1952 for a conceptual design project while studying architecture under Bruce Goff, a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright and early contributor to the American Organic architecture movement. Goff's innovative pedagogy encouraged inter-disciplinary thinking and a holistic approach to design solutions. The European Surrealists and the writings of Gertrude Stein were of particular influence during my time as a student and throughout my practice as an artist and architect.

An event enables us to think about the contents of an experience as a happening selected out of the profusion of sense presentation. While an event is a perceptual demarcation of entities, the content and meaning of these entities stems from a synthesis of feelings and ideas that we process into various scenarios of meaning. My work explores the time-space continuum as a generative realm, capable of transforming cognitive experience into adaptive states of alternate meaning and perception. There is a sense of ordered chaos in my art and architecture, suggesting that harmony exists within the balancing act between tension and fluidity. I endeavor to evoke spatial and temporal relationships that collapse our notions of past, present and future. Gertrude Stein's essay from 1925, "Composition as Explanation", in which she introduces the concept of a 'continuous present' has been a significant source of inspiration for me since the 1950s. Her ground-breaking philosophies encouraged the intermingling of artistic forces that otherwise may not have intersected at the time. In this way, Stein and the visionary thinkers she influenced, acted as a nexus for artists, writers, composers and architects, striving to produce forms of expression that better reflected the fractured environment left in the wake of WWII and The Great Depression.”

- Herb Greene, 2020
www.herbgreene.org

Mary Didoardo, The Tea Strainer, 2020, gouache on mounted paper, 20 x 15 inches

”My paintings from the past ten years have been abstract and process driven. I am doing something I've wanted to do for a long time which is to draw again from observation. It requires a kind of rigorous concentration. I'm relishing the properties of fast drying gouache as it allows me to revise and to work very quickly. Choice of objects and arrangement are fairly random but together floating in the white space with no overlap or cast shadows they form a narrative.”

- Mary Didoardo, 2020
www.marydidoardo.com

Jon Rappleye, Waddleback, media, acrylic and spray paint on paper, 21 x 14 inches

“Emphasizing process and content, this work conveys an eclectic layering of media and imagery, working in oil and acrylic paint. Characters derived from childhood memories are ways of exploring the human psyche and issues of identity, sexuality, and gender roles. Decorative and decadent, satirical, and whimsical, I combine a historically rich vocabulary with popular culture. Abstract and representational modes form a fractured narrative that is played out in front of patterns that are abstracted from classical antiquity, or which recall fifties and sixties domestic design motifs. Within the visually profuse fields are metaphorical allusions to tradition and culture. Decayed layers of information reveal or conceal an images identity.

I use humor to irreverently dissect established hierarchies and deconstruct pop culture, humor also becomes a way of dealing with serious issues and person strife growing up in a sheltered Mormon community and identifying as a gay artist. Inspiration can come from just about anywhere, paintings of old masters, decorative pastiche, media, and cartoon imagery are all treated with equal consideration. Comical and beautifully grotesque, the work confronts the viewer with a wealth of information meant to be explored over time. Presented with many alternatives and possible meanings, the viewer is thus allowed to make their own discoveries.”

- Jon Rappleye, 2020
www.jonrappleye.com