Corner of My Home- Maggie

This week's corner is my corner fireplace mantle. Since it's such a focal point (being above the fireplace!), I wanted some important things up there. So, some of my favorite pieces of art reside there.

On the left-hand side are two small nudes, on male and one female. We collect nudes, and these are two of my favorites. I love the copper one- the figure sort of "floats" inside the box, and when the light hits it right, it has such depth with the shadows. The other I like because it's such a classic-looking sculpture, and I like the asymmetry of it. On the right are three "pillars". These aren't necessarily favorites (although I do like them), but I just think their simple design and repetition are a pleasing arrangement.

And in the center is my absolute favorite piece of art. It's by an artist named Gary Curtis (this is the only place I can find his work unfortunately), and I bought it a couple years ago at an art fair. He is primarily a ceramic artist/sculptor, but at his booth, he had several boxes absolutely overflowing with drawings torn out of his sketchbooks. The boxes were labeled "under $300","under $200", "under $100"... I dove into the "under $100" one and found three pieces I liked (I limited myself to three- could have found many more). There was also a face sculpture we loved, so we negotiated all four for $250.

He told us that this little girl's name was Maggie, and pointed to a couple of his ceramic sculptures also of the same little girl. At the time, I sort of liked all the pieces equally, but the more I looked at them once we got home, the more I just fell in love with this piece. It has so much depth and emotion to it. I don't know how well it comes across on the computer, but it's done with blue ball point pen, pencil, white paint, black ink, and red colored pencil. There are scribbles and writing in the background that create a wonderful texture, and the white paint mixes slightly with the blue ballpoint so that the white areas actually have a barely blue glow to them. He has painted or drawn so intensely in the eye areas that the paper is actually torn through slightly in the pupils. Such emotion both in the execution of the piece and in the finished product- I wish I could capture that in my own art- sometimes I feel like I succeed, but if you had seen the rest of his art, you would see it in every single one of his pieces.

I've gone back to this art fair since, hoping to find this artist there again, but haven't had any luck unfortunately. I count myself lucky to have at least found him that one time. I don't know what it is about Maggie, but I just cannot look away from her-maybe she is trying to tell me something...