Art & Inspiration Blog

Money, like art, can be seen and understood as a power that can be used to transform our lives.

For instance, money transforms lives when it is used to pay for a life saving operation or vaccination program, when it supplies a soup kitchen with much needed food or when it brings water to people who have no drinkable water due to natural or industrial polluting causes. Hillel Jesus would have called this “doing onto others as you would have them do unto you”, or more simply feeding the poor and visiting the sick*.”

A sunset is always a promise of a new beginning according to Genesis chapter 1. The new day both ends with a sunset celebration and begins with that sunset inspiring the next creation (day).

“And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” – Genesis 1:4-5

Like a sunset, money can be understood as a kind of new beginning, as a promise to be fulfilled.

Young children when given enough money in their hands to be able to actually purchase a toy often show us the excitement and wonderment of the transforming promise of money as they realize they can perhaps have almost anything – but not everything .

No one, not even the wealthiest person in the world can have everything that money can buy. We must choose. Creation and transformation, from Genesis until this very moment when you are reading this, always involve making a choice: this not that.

“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” – Benjamin Franklin

Sometimes it seems that we lack the chance to make choices with our money as we can have so many bills, debts and expense necessities (like food, gas for our commutes, and clothes for the family). But at some point these were all choices we made and opportunities we selected or are selecting. With the money we have we get to chose to honor these choices and use the money that we have to transform both our lives and the lives of others.

“Time extracts various values from a painter’s work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.” – Henri Matisse

Below is an image of a new Genesis Sunset – In God We Trust painting entitled, $100 Genesis Sunset Alpeh. Many of you are familiar with my Genesis Sunset series, but this image also is a part of the new In God We Trust series that deals with worth, and includes money.

“The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.” – Benjamin Franklin

*Note: In the time of Jesus when visiting the sick meant going to clean up and take care of a sick person as there were no hospitals, nursing homes or visiting nurses. It meant working and providing, not simply bringing flowers or candy and having a nice visit.
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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free PDF copy (opens right up) click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the store.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .

Vincent van Gogh was born March 30, 18 53 in Zundert, Netherlands. He is known as a Post-Impressionist painter, one of the best know artists world-wide and is credited for his influence on twentieth century art.

Vincent van Gogh has been my favorite artist and painter and now greatest artistic influence ever since I can remember.

Since I am founding Post Conceptual Art and a branch of that called as UnGraven Image (free download of manifesto in PDF format, click: here), van Gogh’s art clearly continues to influence art to our twenty-first Century.

The idea that a secular narrative (image) can convey religious or spiritual content stems from van Gogh. Vincent van Gogh’s father was a minister in the Duth Reformed Church. Later Vincent van Gogh had a stint as a missionary himself. He wanted people to view his paintings and feel his passion, and he was very passionate about God and His creation.

What makes an artist a “blue chip” artist is their influence on other artists, especially those who go on to also influence other artists. These ideas can later be found in the works of Kandinsky and Rothko, two of the artistic giants and influencers of the Twentieth century (and obviously me).

Psalm 113 — Vincent van Gogh (color #1) 2011, original tradigital print, by Judy Rey Wasserman

I hold that Warhol, who attended his church weekly all of his life, knew these ideas and artistically applied them to the landscape of his urban life, which was filled with news and commercial imagery made by human hands. My belief of this is backed by Warhol’s latter religious works, where he uses commercial brands, such as General Electric and Dove Soap, to symbolize divine light and the Holy Spirit.

At twelve years of age I was given a bus and then train pass, plus as a student I enjoyed free admission to all of the art museums in NYC. I spent most after school afternoons and weekends visiting them, most especially the Met and MoMA, and art galleries until I left college and the Art Student’s League. So, during my artistically formative years, I spent an inordinate amount of time, including many afternoons, simply looking at and studying van Gogh’s works.

At the Met I saw and learned that like Da Vinci, Rembrandt and J.M.W. Turner, van Gogh is a master of dualities. For me his later works burst with passion that at once expresses joy and glory along with pain and fury. As an adolescent, my life (and hormones) also raged with these seemingly disparate emotions, which The Cypresses and Sunflowers echoed, so I felt somehow heard and understood van Gogh in a way that no one else in my world managed to convey.

Van Gogh’s works also helped inspire my idea of using symbols (letters/numbers) for the strokes in a painting. At 8 or 9 years old, I was absent when the rest of my class learned Morse Code. I returned to take a test on it that I utterly failed but the class moved on. All I had was an introduction to the idea that dots and dashes could stand for letters, and to me the dots and dashes looked like the dots and dashes I was familiar with in van Gogh’s paintings. Since I could not read Morse Code, I never spoke of this to my Dad on our museum visits as he was a veteran who knew Morse Code, and my question would reveal my ongoing failure to learn it. For several years I actually thought van Gogh was somewhat painting in Morse Code.

As an adult, I have learned to see the “footprints” of the words of The Divine everywhere and always – even in the darkest moments. There is always a duality, light coming from dark as in Genesis 1. As an artist I work to show this understanding, which I learned from van Gogh in my own unique way, in my art.

The greatest lesson I learned from van Gogh is that visual fine art can change lives. It can inspire new understandings, bridges between people and cultures, and that great art, whatever the narrative, is always somehow holy and inspirational. I doubt that I would be an artist today, or even as good a human being as I continue to strive to become without his influence and spanning across time, his visual friendship, for which I aptly thank God, as van Gogh would have wished.

Close up section of Psalm 113 and Genesis 1-2:7 — Vincent van Gogh Sunset study, 2012, mixed media on board, by Judy Rey Wasserman

Each year I donate a postcard to Visual AIDS’ Postcards from the Edge mainly because I have lost friends to AIDS and this happens to be a well run charity that I can support. Plus, of course, they solicit art from artists and I get the fun in exhibiting my postcard (along with 1000 plus others) in a top tier Chelsea gallery.

This year’s event was at the prestigious Cheim and Read. Many of the very best Chelsea NY best galleries have served with the event moving to a new venue each year.

At the time this blog is posted Postcards from the Edge benefit has raised over $83,000 and displayed the work of 1,475 artists. Thousands of guests attended, including those who pay to attend the jam packed opening night where they stalk out the postcards that become available the following morning when they sell for $85.00 each.

So far, I have only donated Genesis: Sunrise Sunset painted postcards. Partially because since my first donation I learned that they sell, but also as Genesis I:7 is the theological (but not scientific) basis for Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art theory.

VisualAIDS Sunset 2011 is created of strokes that are all the original letters from Genesis 1-:27. It is a part of my Genesis: Sunset-sunrise series.

Visual AIDS Sunset 2011

By Judy Rey Wasserman

To see the postcard I donated last year go to: http://ungravenimage.com/blog/2011/03/genesis-sunset-for-visualaids-2010

The basic Essence Portrait of Picasso is created with strokes that are the original letters of Psalm 46. It was completed at near the end of December 2011, just in time to be included in my annual card/print and blog image.

It is a departure for me. Previously I have somewhat mimicked the actual styles of the artists whose basic Essence Portraits I made. The Picasso portrait somewhat adheres to his earlier style, but includes references to his life and work “hidden” within the image.

The Harlequin pattern, again from his pre-Cubism works, can be seen at the bottom right of the image. Several of Picasso’s Harlequins have gone for near record breaking (at the time) amounts at auction.

Less obvious are the blobby looking fingers imagery that Picasso used in Guernica and other works. There finger tips can be found at the top far left of his head.

Also, the line of shadow on the portraits right forehead is basically the Atlantic shoreline that runs from Spain to France.  Picasso was born and educated in Spain, but spent his artistic life as an ex-patriot living in France , in protest of Franco’s regime. He is strongly associated and claimed as their artist by people in both countries.

So far I have only created Essence Portraits of artists who have influenced my work. Picasso’s Cubist idea of showing a object or person from all sided on a flat plane – depicting what the artist knows is there, but cannot see from his current perspective – helped lead me to portraying the smallest essences, the pre-matter or energy strings of elementary physics, which we also cannot see.

There is another, purely visual connection, or line that runs from Picasso’s Guernica directly to my work using letters as strokes. In my senior year in the High School of Music and Art, my beloved art teacher, Mr. Bertram Katz assigned me to do an in depth report on a painting.  Although, I would have preferred a van Gogh or Monet, I ended up with Guernica.  I discovered a treasure trove of information in the Donnell Library, that included may versions or studies of the Weeping Woman (also called the Wailing Woman), the bull, Horse, etc. I dutifully traced many of these for my report. It ended up being 30 odd pages of my tracings and written information.

I learned to make studies, multiple studies, until I had what I wanted, and then that it is OK to sell them all. I watched as the misery of the Weeping Woman was accentuated through Picasso’s experimentation. I remember that there were days that I could hardly wait for school to be over so that I could head back to the reference department at the Donnell to unlock more of the mystery of the creation of Guernica.  Plus, it helped that Guernica was still at the Museum of Modern Art so I could walk from the Donnell straight to MoMA to compare what I had just carefully traced to the final painting. I recall my parents questioning me after a week as to where I was actually going as I sort of disappeared for a few weeks, until my dad saw all the tracings and notes.

If you look closely at Guernica you can see that the horse’s coat is comprised of strokes that are lines that are in rows and look a lot like a simple letter I, or small l, or number 1, or Hebrew vav, which I recognized at the time, although I doubt it was what Picasso meant..My tracing of Picasso’s horse in Guernica was the first time I can recall using a symbol as a stroke.

Pablo Picasso (Psalm 46)

by Judy Rey Wasserman

To see more basic Essence portraits by Judy Rey click: Basic Essence Portraits and also check out the links above that page for more info, including how you can commission a portrait of you or a loved one.
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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .

In Watermill, NY, there is a field one passes on a back road to the sea. Multimillion dollar homes are about a half a mile away, but the homes nearby have increased in value and are probably worth at least a million, although elsewhere they would be reckoned as average homes. The field is low enough that it is filled with sea a sea grass. Perhaps when the original farmers were here their cattle grazed on in the field.

For the moment the field is fallow,left to the wild sea weeds. It is someone’s tax deduction, perhaps credited as a wet land. For now it exists, much as it always has, wild, even primal and seemingly eternal. When the sun sets over the field, it is a glorious sight.

The glory of the sunsets over this field comforted and inspired me as I would pass by this field daily, for about a month during a difficult time as this art theory, movement and ministry was just beginning. It was both a time of testing and learning and learning to walk closer and recognize and rely more on my source of inspiration – that “still small voice.”

Water Mill Sunset 2004

By Judy Rey Wasserman
Genesis: Sunset-Sunrise series

Strokes: Genesis 1-2:7. Deut .6:4, and “framed” by Psalm 8

18 x 24 inches, acrylic on board

Click here to see a larger image in the store

Although the paintings have been compared to Impressionist paintings for the vibrancy and action of the strokes, in fact the works are created slowly, with letters piled upon letters and interwoven. In the Water Mill Sunset I experimented with also using the letters as glazes over other layers of letters.

My use of glazes of in this work was a breakthrough in the practice of Post Conceptual art for me. I have used this then new technique often in my work since then. That makes WATERMILL SUNSET a pivotal work and important work.

I was inventing the methodology for working with a letter for each stroke using acrylic paint, which is now known as Post Conceptual Art theory, including the branch of UnGraven Image. My own training was with oil paint and I was learning how to use acrylics more as the Old Masters had used oil. One day. When I have a large studio space, I would like to also use oils, but that would require space as I would need to leave each canvas or board to dry before I could begin the next layer. There are many, many layers.

During this time I was working at a short-term temporary day job to bridge the gap until my initial funding came through. I was working as fill-in for an Academy Award winning actor whom I greatly respect for his courage as a human being. This went on while his assistant was away, plus I was teaching him various computer programs, because I am a bit of a geek.

It was a job I enjoyed because the boss was such a dear, plus it was a kind of relaxing break from painting, which I continued to do once I returned home. I think it lasted six weeks until both my funding came through and the real assistant returned.

By then I was painting a new work where I would apply the glazing techniques I used in this artwork, plus I had also moved bravely to tackle a larger supports. As I have moved up in the size of paintings, my skill and courage has grown as much of each painting is created using the very smallest brushes available. I now have very large works also.

WATER MILL was a breakthrough painting in another way. The free flowing method that the grasses are painted with using the name of the Lord (yud-hey-vav-hey) was also a breakthrough moment.

Before this painting my strokes were usually far more ordered, in chains or precisely applied. The very way the grasses would blow in the late winter then early spring breeze inspired this. Although the Hamptons have a reputation for being green and lush, at this time, only evergreens are green in the late winter here. There are no leaves on the trees, no flowers and even the famous Hampton hedges are bare.

My area has a wild, even stark beauty in the winter that has a peaceful feel. There is an essential wild splendor here that I aimed to capture in WATERMILL SUNSET.

What do you think of it? Comments are welcome below.

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.

Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

The new basic Essence Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci is created with strokes that are the original Torah font letters of the Bible’s Isaiah 48.

Isaiah 48 (Leonardo Da Vinci) by Judy Rey Wasserman

This portrait is based on the self portrait by Da Vinci. However, here Da Vinci is slightly turned to face and view the viewer.

Using a text, which can be understood as a code, to create a portrait of Da Vinci seems appropriate and a special salute to the master who not only wrote his journal in codes, but has been recently discovered to have hidden letters in the Mona Lisa. Note: SEE Did Leonardo Da Vinci Envision Post Conceptual Art?

This Essence Portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci joins pervious portraits by Judy Rey Wasserman featuring great artists who helped influence her work and her theory of Post Conceptual and UnGraven Image art. Other artists depicted thus far include Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol.

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Watch a short video (second video down from top) that shows you how Judy Rey Wasserman’s signature-logo-self portrait is created from her name in Hebrew HERE: http://ungravenimage.com/essencevideos.php
Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke. Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .

The best known painting in the world is a portrait.

For great portrait painters, the challenge is to create a portrait that shows the paradox of the eternal essence of a person in a fleeting but immediate moment on the edge of transforming into a new facet of the eternal self.

The portrait shows a unique moment of the present: the now – and some of the best portraits ever seem to catch their subjects mid action, or at least about to inhale or exhale. The best portraits also imply the past simultaneously with the future.

The implied future in every portrait leads to another paradox involving the duality of life and death. To fully paint a person in a moment of life, the shadows of age and death always encroach the work as before the portrait is complete, the subject has aged.

A great portrait is not necessarily a perfect likeness, nor one that can be used to promote an agenda of fostering a person’s position in life, as historically most portraits are.

Every president of the United States had his portrait painted.  These paintings are are on view at the White House and on its web site. We learn to recognize the earlier presidents, Washington, Jefferson, the Adams, etc., from their painted portraits. Since Abraham Lincoln, most people are more familiar with the photographic images (including movie and video images) than with their official portraits.

At the turn of the last century, having a black and white portrait taken by a photographer was a significant event. The portrait was cherished and passed down to family members.  In many families portraits continue to be passed down providing a rare record for current and future generations.

Photographic portraits, including videos and film of people, bombard us through print, TV, film, email, our phones, T-Shirts, mugs, billboards, etc. We see images of people we know, people we don’t know and people we think we somehow know (like celebrities) and people who are not even people, are fictional characters. We humans seem to never tire of seeing images of our selves and others, as the people who create magazine covers and advertising executives know well.

Yet, the traditional painted portrait or sculpted bust continues, partially as a status symbol as it has been a hallmark of the rich and powerful since antiquity. Since ancient times, this kind of portrait has been one that is usually somewhat idealized, showing the prominence and often might of the subject. Successful pharaohs, emperors, kings, queens, CEOs all learned how to use the power of their own selected image to present themselves to gain and keep authority.

Alexander the Great used imposing heroic statues of his image and placed his portraits on coins to control and foster his vast conquered empire. With the exception of the portrait of John F. Kennedy, all of the portraits present their subjects as leaders of a great country and are posed, showing a static moment where the subject is presented at his best.

Artists have painted themselves, their family and friends in more realistic or certainly less than heroic portraits since the Renaissance. They also painted images of people who were less than heroic in dramatic paintings that dealt with historic or mythical scenes. However, creating portraits that were less than flattering and unusual in their approach for any notable subject really begins with the emergence of photography.

Photography readily captures a physical likeness. The mechanical camera has a greater chance of accuracy as to proportions shadings and color relationships. Andy Warhol, who was trying to remove the artist and make his art somewhat as a machine, understood this.

The accuracy of photography encouraged artists to create portraits that revealed the personality and the reality of the person in the moment.

We are always in a state of being and becoming simultaneously, as one moment of being flows into the next. We are always transforming into who we are at the next moment.

One of the first and for me one of the best, portraits of is that new era is Monet’s Camille Monet on her Deathbed. Monet, a master of catching the fleeting light, paints a transcending moment of a woman transforming from one moment into another. Although she is dying, barely present and seen as if in a mist, Monet manages to suggest the recently vibrant and young woman his wife was.

Van Gogh, who knew Monet and quite possibly had seen this painting before he moved to the South of France, paints two pictures that revolutionize modern and contemporary portraiture. He paints Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe and Gauguin’s Armchair. There insightful portraits of the two men, their painting styles, colors and occupations show van Gogh’s perception of the differences between them, although he is kinder to Gauguin than himself. But, van Gogh never created a really flattering self-portrait.

Like Monet, van Gogh is capturing a moment in time, which definitely points both to the past and future of himself and Gauguin. On van Gogh’s empty chair his pipe is in the process of being filled, while Gauguin’s empty chair holds a lit candle and two books. Each man’s chair is askew, as if push back and aside during a hasty and unplanned exit. As such, they are slightly turned away from each other, not companionably side by side nor facing each other for discourse.

Psalm 113 (Vincent van Gogh) By Judy Rey Wasserman

Vincent van Gogh’s pair of chair paintings can be understood as a precursor to conceptual art portraits. They have inspired many Modern and Contemporary portrait artists to create portraits where the image of the person may be unseen, but the person referenced is unmistakable. An excellent and relevant example of contemporary portraiture is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, where the plates and dinnerware depict the essence of the renowned women while the chairs are not just empty, but missing!

Picasso abstracted the images of the people, often his mistresses and wives, in his portraits, revealing more sides of their physicality and personality. Even when the subject seems posed, she seems to be in motion, the subject’s past and future, which often seems to include sexual encounters, is implied.

Andy Warhol managed to obtain commissions for portraits that were not essentially flattering of their subjects. Many of his subjects were not then famous (but they were paying!) so he would take photographs and then turn his selected images into silk-screened images and paintings.

Warhol’s work challenged the school of portraiture where the wealthy and renowned pose for a static, flattering, possibly imposing portrait that promotes their power and authority and even wealth. Instead, Warhol abstracts and simplifies the features of his subjects into black planes that are “enhanced” by and placed with fields of bright, even garish color. He takes his simplified black image and stamps it in row upon row of a canvas, changing the colors, altering the look and hence the time behind the ever unchanging image, creating icons that are both of there time and without real time, eternal and fleeting.

Psalm 19 (Andy Warhol) Double Un-Denied By Judy Rey Wasserman

Warhol’s greatness as a portrait artist is proven by the fact that when we recall most recent presidents we think of moving and still photographic images. However, more of us know what Mao Zedong looked like from one of Warhol’s portraits than from the many photographs of him. Of course, by simplifying the images of Mao that were meant to inspire respect, recognition and even awe, Warhol made him very human and far less imposing and about as much a figure of perfect leadership as Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe.

Andy Warhol was well acquainted with the work of the painter who created the portrait that was the best known painting in the world then and remains so now. That work does not glorify its subject, although it probably was a commissioned work, but simply presents a human being. Warhol actually seems to have revered this artist since he appropriated from that artist’s work in some of his own later paintings.

It seems that when essential identity is revealed in a portrait, the fleeting eternal, which implies references to a fleeting past and future are inherently depicted, but when a subject is posed and the portrait flatters special qualities, the element of time becomes static, a mere advertisement for the image the patron and artist seek to present.

Those imposing, flattering portraits may be beautiful and skillfully present an excellent likeness of individuals and we may be impressed. Their splendor decorates museums, stately homes and board rooms. But, we do not love them. We do not travel to see them, put them on our mugs, shirts, posters and address books. They fail to communicate to us the way the portraits by artists such as Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso and da Vinci do.

The best known painting in the world is a portrait: the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci depicts a lady, looking at us but clearly thinking of something else, he captures the movement of her thought and in doing so we look and wait expecting her to breathe in or out or even blink. It is a painting of paradox of the eternal essence of a person in a fleeting but immediate moment at the edge of transforming into a new facet of her eternal self. Time and identity are brilliantly portrayed and we are intrigued and inspired.

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Watch a short video (second video down from top) that shows you how Judy Rey Wasserman’s signature-logo-self portrait is created from her name in Hebrew HERE: http://ungravenimage.com/essencevideos.php
Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke. Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .]

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 1606 – October 4 1669) was one of the first artists who inspired me as a young girl as I often visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Granted, he was very well known and acknowledged so my Dad, who began taking me when I was still in my stroller, definitely must have introduced his work to me.

Rembrandt’s works continue to inspire and beguile me today. Whenever I have an opportunity I visit or revisit his work. If I am traveling and know that the city or area has a Rembrandt, J.M.W. Turner, or van Gogh, or late Warhol, I will go out of my way just to see the work. As an artist, I continue to learn from these masters.

Rembrandt was a master of light and dark, ahead of his time in painting light, which of course, inspired and informs the above mentioned artists.

Although Rembrandt met with early success, as his work matured and the very work showing great emotion, humanizing the common man and, of course his work with light developed, that then strange seeming and iconoclastic work cost him commissions and patronage bring his financial problems and some heartbreak.

What is truly new in art has always been met with initial resistance. This is in no small part due to the biological fact that we need visual memories to see, and actually have difficulty seeing art that is radically new.

Below is an Essence Portrait of Rembrandt created according to the tenets of radically new Twenty-first century Post Conceptual and Ungraven Image Art theory by me, Judy Rey Wasserman. If you are familiar with Rembrandt’s work (and also the above mentioned artists),  I bet you can see their influence, although my work is fully contemporary as it uses symbols for every single stroke.

Psalm 22 (Rembrandt) by Judy Rey Wasserman

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Judy Rey Wasserman is an artist and the founder of Post Conceptual Art theory and also the branch known as UnGraven Image Art. Download a free copy click: Manifesto of Post Conceptual Art– A Painting’s Meaning is Inherent in its Stroke.
Check out the limited and open edition prints in the estore.
Follow her on Twitter at @judyrey .
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