#10: The Rewards of Serendipity

"Who's that coming?"

"Who's that coming?" (detail)

"Who's that coming?" (detail)

My Fellow Art Lovers:

First, I want to apologize. I hadn't posted a new entry for a while for some personal reasons. To keep you from wondering, that reason was the wedding of our daughter. As I mentioned in the past, I'm an emotional painter, and when I feel pulled in another direction, for either positive or negative reasons, I just can't paint.

The wedding was wonderful for a lot of reasons, but now I am back on the job. I pushed and pushed to refind my groove, to clear my mind, to find a tranquil place. I believe the struggle was worth it. I believe that "Who's that coming?" is a good painting that gets across a fun idea in an artistically and graphically interesting way.

In detail, what impressed me about the scene were: The independence of the frisky dogs, the owner's tranquility, the familiarity of the location, which is my neighborhood, the pattern of light and shadow breaking across the scene, and the complex of colors in a lot of the elements.

Once I refound my groove, the painting was a pleasure.

What do you think?

Thanks for listening to me twice (Oh, my gosh!) in one day. I promise my blog entries will not come so fast and furious in the future.

William Kosman

#9: New Opportunity for Landscapes

On this blog, I have emphasized my work of Philadelphia scenes and people. I'm painting more and more scenes of people I know or may not know, as they face life in many different ways, but with one similarity: they face life with courage.

But, for those of you who have visited my website, you know that there is another side of me. During the summer, I am lucky enough to spend perhaps three months in Normandy, France, and paint some of the spectacular beauty of the Norman countryside - the fields of wheat and hay, rows of trees blowing in the wind, country roads winding through farm land, and powerful forms of clouds in blue, and sometimes, gray skies.

When I work in Normandy, I set up my portable easel on the sides of roads and in fields and near beaches, I use big canvases, and I work almost exclusively with a set of palette knives. Once I start painting, I have little control over the final result. Something happens, and my right hand works almost automatically, mixing colors on the palette and squishing them onto the canvas. I've been asked to explain the process, and I can't. It happens.

I could try to draw some conclusions about it, and I would say that I feel a whole lot of emotion about the beauty of the scenes I paint, and those emotions work their way out in my paintings. In fact, I do feel a lot of emotion for the scenes I paint. I can be standing on a roadside, looking at a roadway and a line of trees, as they wend their way away from me, as the wind pushes the leaves and the branches and the stalks of hay and the wild flowers, and the white clouds shift above my head, and I tell myself: Boy, God sure made a beautiful scene, and I'm so lucky to be here and able to offer a few lasting impressions of it.

And some of the people who have bought some of these paintings, tell me that they slow my love for this corner of the world, and this is very true.

But, since I can't explain the process, I've decided to accept it and appreciate it.

Now, because a good person from the Philadelphia Museum of Art reviewed my website, one dozen of my best and largest landscapes are on exhibit in Center City, Philadelphia. They are being shown, along with the work of three other artists, in the lobby of Two Commerce Square, which is at 2001 Market Street, between 20th and 21st Streets, on Market Street.

I've posted photos of three of the works being shown. In addition, a few others are on my website. (A link is on the blog.) I would be honored if you visited the exhibit, reviewed the paintings and gave me your impressions of them. If you are interested in any of the paintings, please call the telephone number listed on the Philadelphia Museum of Art panel (215-684-7965). If you want to talk about my landscapes in general, you can e-mail or telephone me.

One small problem, which I hope will be corrected soon. The panel in front of the show announces it as the winter show and does not list the names of the current exhibitors, including mine. I'm told there has been a delay in the production of the panel.