SOLD Greenway Path

The Greenway Path
Copyright 2011 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 24"
SOLD

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky,

which through the summer is not heard or seen, 

as if it could not be, as if it had not been!

-Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Yet another sold painting.  Thank you Art IN Hand Gallery!

SOLD "Awake" Painting

Awake
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
SOLD

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: 

but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. 

-Plutarch

"Art Marketing 101" Class starts Thursday- Join us!

Give and Take
Oil on Canvas
18" x 24"
Prints available on Fine Art America

Art Marketing 101

Indianapolis Art Center

August 29- Sept.19, 2013
Thursday Evenings 6:30-9:30pm

Getting the word out about your art has never been easier than it is today. In this class we will learn about the many new options for marketing and promoting your work! We will cover website creation, blogs, facebook fan pages, photographing work, as well as "old-fashioned" methods. Get a fresh start by refining your goals and learning new methods of sharing your message with the world.

Join us!

Register here:

http://reg131.imperisoft.com/IndianapolisArtCenter/ProgramDetail/3133393732/Registration.aspx

Autumn on the Canal Painting

Autumn on the Canal
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
8" x 10"

Are you ready for fall?

Autumn is the second spring when every leaf is a flower.

-Albert Camus

This lovely landscape of the Broad Ripple Canal in Indianapolis has hung in my kitchen the last year and I am finally ready to let it go.

To everything there is a season! 

The Climbing Tree

The Climbing Tree
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"
SOLD
Prints available on Fine Art America

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

-William Blake

This painting depicts my daughter's favorite climbing tree in Broad Ripple Park, Indianapolis.  It is her favorite because she can climb it while it is my favorite because it is so oddly shaped.  It curves around like the interior of a shell hugging the ground.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

-Martin Luther

SOLD: "A Path in the Woods" Painting

Path in the Woods
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"
SOLD
Prints available on Fine Art America

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious;

but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet,

and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

-George Eliot

The Festival of Venus

The Festival of Venus

Oil on Canvas

12" x 16"

Are you ready to celebrate the "Festival of Venus" everyone?

September 26th was the ancient Roman holiday of the festival of Venus.  This marked the time when the summer cycle is at an end and the apples weigh heavy on the trees.

Cleaning the Slate and a Studio Makeover

My Studio BEFORE

My studio had finally reached the point where I couldn't work in it because it was so messy!  I reorganized, took out furniture, put in furniture and created a much more inviting space.

My Studio AFTER!

After my big art show at the Sanctuary I felt that that series of figurative work was complete.  It gave me a new sense of calm and I was ready to clear the slate for my next projects....

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:  I have been working on illustrating my first picture book.  I am also starting a new shadow puppetry theater show in collaboration with a fellow musician.  I will be posting more on these projects on the blog soon!

My Studio AFTER (Note that I can now reach my sewing machine!)

 

My Studio AFTER

Some things never change!

Join my email newsletter for monthly updates! 

SOLD: "Work of the Soul" Painting

  The Work of the Soul
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"
SOLD
Prints available on Fine Art America

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

-Edith Wharton

This is the work of the soul- the work that all humans are meant to do.

To bring warm winds to cool places.

 Where there is darkness we bring light.

Open House Tonight!

 

Join me tonight for the 2013 Indianapolis Art Center's Open House!

Visit the Art Center's Annual Faculty Exhibition and create your own magnificent artworks in our open studios!  The painting below will be featured in the show which will be up through August.

Hope to see you there!

My Life Belongs
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 36"

Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Ink on Paper
Original available on Etsy

 All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate...
Snow...unceasing snow.

-Hashin

Tulips

Tulips
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
9" x 12"

But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.

-Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Sidewalk Sale this weekend!

Join us this weekend at the Art IN Hand Gallery!

Tonight there is a free wine tasting with live music from 6-8pm. Tomorrow is a sidewalk sale where you can pick up paintings like the one below for a steal!

The Dream
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas

 Hope to see you there!

Art IN Hand Gallery

211 South Main St.  Zionsville, Indiana

Editing

Movement (Work in Progress!)
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"

I'm not sure if this painting is finished or not. I keep adding layers to it. We shall see.

Don’t judge or self-edit as you go through these explorations…

give the unexpected room to emerge by allowing each movement to evolve

from the one before and lead naturally

into the one that follows. 

 -Brenda Divelbliss, Speaking on Modern Dance

Two layers ago it looked like this...

My Grandmother on her Deathbed

My Grandmother on her Deathbed
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Acrylic on Canvas
16" x 20"

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

-Edvard Munch

May Day on the Canal

May Day on the Canal
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

Claudia said, "But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day."

"No," I answered, "I don't agree with that.  I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal.  But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything.  If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.  You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them.  It's hollow."

-E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Taking Care

Taking Care
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Acrylic on Cardboard

No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.  Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice.

-Chuck Palahniuk 

This is a quickly done sketch of a rather ghostly ethereal woman.  It is on plain old cardboard so the acidic quality of the paper will probably make it deteriorate fast.  Sometimes it is liberating to think that it won't last.  I can be less careful. Then again this whole thing is just going to rot away.  So what was the point?  It is a sketch.  It can lead to something else, something of higher quality.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

-E.E. Cummings

A Study of Roses

Study of Roses
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
6" x 6"

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun

And with him rises weeping: these are flowers

Of middle summer, and I think they are given

To men of middle age.

-Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale

Spring 2013

Spring 2013
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

This is one of those paintings that reflects my mood for a whole season of my life.  This spring was full of growth and excitement and warmth.  

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

-Pablo Neruda

My Life Belongs

My Life Belongs
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 36"

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, 

and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

-George Bernard Shaw

Last Call for our Expressionistic Painting Class!

Ready to start the "Portraits of Passion" Show at the Sanctuary

This was an exciting weekend for me with my first solo art show on Friday!  We had an elegant evening in the beautiful Sanctuary space.  I talked so much that I forgot to take pictures during the show!  Thanks so much for everyone who came out in support.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand,

as in what direction we are moving.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Reincarnation
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 36"

And now I am on to my next endeavor... our Expressionistic Painting Class starts this Thursday- so this is the last call to join us!  We are gathering an amazing group of people who are at all levels of painting skills.  I tell my students often that there isn't anything I can do that you can't do... it will just come out in a different voice.  This class will focus on expressing that unique voice with lots of fun splashy experiments!  More info below...

Class: Expressionistic Painting
Indianapolis Art Center
Thursdays July 11-August 1st, 2013  7-10pm
Join us in this class as we explore the master painters of the Expressionistic movement. Inspired by their methods and philosophy we will create paintings to release emotion and express the beauty of the world around us and within us.
Register here:
http://reg131.imperisoft.com/IndianapolisArtCenter/ProgramDetail/39393530/Registration.aspx

The world is moving so fast these days that

the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

-Elbert Hubbard

Artist Statement

Open
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
20" x 30"

This is the artist statement I just wrote for the "Portraits of Passion" art show opening tonight...

As I was gathering together the pieces for this event I realized that when I created many of the paintings I was trying to prove something to myself.  I was trying to prove that love is real.

Sometimes I have this deep seated fear that we are just selfish 'spiraling coils of self-replicating DNA.'  I fear that everyone is just out for themselves.  But I don't want to believe that.  I look for evidence of open fun-loving giving everywhere I go, when it is in 'giving that we receive and loving that we are loved.'

I want to believe that we need each other, that we support each other.  I want to believe in love.  Where is the line between love and lust?  It can be blurred.  It is hard to distinguish between the two sometimes.  Yet that can be the spot at which love can be the most exciting, when you can't separate your mind from your body and your lover from yourself.

It is my hope that if you are also in that spot where you are finding it hard to believe in that beautiful sacred energy of love that you will find it here.  It is my hope that we will find it reflected in each other.

Join us tonight:

Event: Portraits of Passion
The Sanctuary on Penn 
701 N. Pennsylvania St.  Indianapolis, IN 46204
Friday July 5th 2013 6-11pm

Silence Sleeping

Silence Sleeping

Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

 The human heart has many treasures, 

in secret kept, in silence sealed.

-Charlotte Bronte

A Labor of Love... Portraits of Passion Art Show this Friday!

The Hourglass
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

 When I gathered up all of the paintings for my art show tonight there was a total of 73!
 

73!  I am going to have to narrow it down.

This is what we call a labor of love.  My art is my expression, my safe-place, my love, my passion... it is just plain fun for me and it is wonderful to have yet another chance to share it!

 Event: Portraits of Passion
The Sanctuary on Penn
 701 N. Pennsylvania St.  Indianapolis, IN 46204
Friday July 5th 2013 6-11pm

 Live music with the HoosierTones Danceband and Troika!
 

Full Many a Glorious Morning Have I Seen
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
Prints available on Fine Art America

Controversial Stuff...

Since I started this sharing my experiences through paintings I have received hate mail from religious extremists for my work.  What steams people up is that I create both religious paintings as well as works that celebrate sexuality.  These messages make me feel that I am being asked to be silenced. I feel that I am being asked to not speak the honest truth about what it is like to live in a human body.  

So I am go on record and make a statement here.

I believe that the human body is a sacred object.  

The divine energy that propels all life forward pushes us to love and lust in that messy act of creation.  Ethically speaking as long as you aren't hurting someone else through abusive coercion I do not view any act of sexuality to be 'wrong' or 'right'. One of the main purposes behind art is to be a vehicle for expressing inner emotions and desires, things that we can't always put into words.  And although it often makes me feel exposed and vulnerable I throw all of my messy honest truth into my paintings in the hope that it will bring comfort to others... in the hope that you will see yourself reflected in it.  Then we will transcend the petty differences that keep us apart.  We will be united. By depicting the beauty of the human body and nature I am celebrating what I see as the divine spirit.  In the words of the Roman playwright Terence, "Nothing human is alien to me."

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful,
for beauty is God's handwriting.

-Emerson

Several of the paintings that have been targets of negative criticism will be part of my art show this Friday.  I welcome you to join us there:

Event: Portraits of Passion
The Sanctuary on Penn
 701 N. Pennsylvania St. Indianapolis, IN 46204
Friday July 5th 2013 6-11pm
 

Friday Feature: Watts Mortuary Chapel

Another place on my bucket list to visit before I die:

Watts Mortuary Chapel in the village of Compton, Surrey, England.  

The creation of the chapel was orchestrated by the artist Mary Fraser-Tytler. Many villagers contributed to both the design and construction of the ornately carved gesso plaster paintings adorning the interior walls as well as the terracotta exterior. The intricate weaving of design was obviously influence by Celtic calligraphic manuscripts but I also see a hint of Indian architectural painting as well.  Perhaps this was influenced by Mary Fraser-Tytler's early life in India.  Regardless it is a unique and stunning example of both the Symbolist and Arts & Crafts movements.

Inside the chapel "the morning stars sing together" and the tree of life grows up to the heavens.

Creation from chaos is natural.

We've come to a place where we've realized that we have this actual physical need to create things. We've discovered that we hate people en masse, we're sick of homogenized culture, and these realizations have left holes in our hearts. We create to fill those holes, to be able to sleep at night knowing we've done something, even a small something, to confront the manufactured culture that is currently being churned out.

-Renee Rigdon Zabet Stewart

Before this River Becomes an Ocean

We Come From the Water
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"
Prints available on Fine Art America

This is another painting that will be part of the "Portraits of Passion" Show next week!

Join us July 5th 6-11pm at the Sanctuary 701 N. Pennsylvania, Indianapolis

Before this river
Becomes an ocean
Before you throw my heart back on the floor
Oh baby I reconsider
My foolish notion
Well I need someone to hold me
But I'll wait for something more

Yes I've gotta have faith.

-George Michael

The Nativity 2

The Nativity 2
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"

I know, I know...

here I am celebrating Christmas in June

and probably giving you an earworm of "O Holy Night"

but inspiration strikes when inspiration strikes.  

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Floribunda

Floribunda
Copyright 2013 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
18" x 24"
Prints available on Fine Art America

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

-Dylan Thomas

One Life

One Life
Copyright 2012 Addie Hirschten
Oil on Canvas
16" x 20"

If I can stop one heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain.

If I can ease one life the aching 

or cool one pain.

-Emily Dickenson