Twins First Artist and Our Collection
Paley's 5 year portrait by Dave McDowell
Every year for Paley’s birthday we’ve commissioned an artist we love or collect, to do a portrait of Paley. We typically use a photo we had done during our yearly holiday portrait session. I plan on keep the tradition alive for the twins. I know it’s crazy sounding, the kids will each have 18+ portraits of themselves by the time they are adults. But how amazing to have a moment of your history immortalized by an artist, who may or may not be someone famous, 20-30 years from now. I hope our next home has a huge wall in it to eventually display all of the paintings.
If you know me and Clem, we love art and have been collecting it now for over 15 years. I like to keep track of the artists we collect and we remain very devoted to collecting their work. I also love to find new artists to collect or admire. Some people have asked what kind of art do I like to collect. My true passion is very early DaDa (which is very rare to find thanks to the Nazi’s destroying a lot of the early DaDa era pieces). My prized DaDa piece is a collage done by the early founder of DaDa, Tristan Tzara (Margot’s namesake). He was known for poetry, essays, performance art pieces but he did a few pieces of art under the pressure of Kurt Schwitters, a lot of those pieces are now long lost. The collage piece was a great find at an auction house in Germany. Still waiting for someone to do a documentary about Tzara’s life. He was truly inspirational in his dedication to the art and humankind.
Paley's Second Birthday Potrait by June Glasson
I am also a huge admirer of midwest WPA artists, WPA is the Work Progress Administration Fund which was created by the new deal and born from depression art movement. Of coarse the grand daddy of the midwest movement was Jackson Pollack but I fell in love with obscure artists like Eleanor Coen, Max Kahn, Richard Florsheim and Bhuell Mullen. To be more current we are huge fans of the Pop Surrealism movement happening today. Pop Surrealism is broad spectrum of mediums, from posters, sculpture and paintings.
Right now I am struggling because the one artist I truly love right now and am crazy about is Kris Knight. Paley’s 5 year portrait was a first for us, having the artist Andrew Hem run with his esthetic. My first reaction was not completely positive when I saw the image via email but once I had it in my hands, I was in love with it. As you can see she’s long and gangly but she will probably be that skinny awkward girl when she gets older. We expect her to be 5’10’’ or 5’11 by 18. Kris is very similar to Andrew, so my only fear is having back to back pieces looking the same. Turns out Kris doesn’t do portraits at all. Sad Brian
I am toying with a the twins 1 year portrait, possibly done by cartoon artist because I feel it would be a waste to use a likeness artist. The twins still look like babies, they haven’t developed a character yet. I think this is why we were never really in love with Paley’s 1yr. portrait. So the hunt will continue.