Andre Pijet » Drawings

Europe 2011 – Illustrated Voyages

Andre — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 20:00:40 +0000

The series of drawings Illustrated Voyages are composed from the sketches made during my 2011 voyage to Europe. The artwork reflects my interest in direct encounter with various places and situations during my travels. I like to explore the moments of visual ecstasy in their real time. What I mean by saying this is the fact of uncontrollable temptation to catch this beautiful feeling of visual enjoyment, which was procured to my senses by the visual perception of experienced realities. To me it is the best way to explore the places I had the chance to visit. The fact of doing fast sketching of the viewed people, situations, and places at the time of my actual presence there induces me with an inexplicable creative thrill. It is a kind of intellectual drug to which I am totally succumbed with all my senses. The fact of drawing in direct is a kind of training camp for my professional skills. This time I decided to use various supports such as linen and cotton canvases for the direct drawing exercises. In addition to sanguine, colored pencils, and watercolors I tried to implement various water base and permanent ink markers. The sketching on canvas with permanent ink markers is not an easy experience. I needed to concentrate totally on what I was doing in order to avoid the perceptional mistakes. It is an interesting exercise. In order to be successful one need to be in total control of the coordination of his mind with his hand. It is always a challenging experiment to any artist exploring the enigma of drawing in direct.

The main purpose of me sketching in direct is to study the innumerable variety of forms and color nuances in order to prepare a source of information which I will explore even further when working on large size canvas. These sketches are for me a kind of coded notebook for the future paintings.

Click here to see images in the Portfolio

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European Vacation 2010

Andre — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:37:17 +0000

The Gallery “Europe 2010″ contain the collection of sketches executed during my recent voyage in Italy, France and Poland. The drawings reflect my personal perception of places I had the pleasure to see and enjoy in a way an artist does.

Click here to see the artwork.

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Click here to see the artwork in Portfolio.

Andre Pijet Art Gallery is open

Andre — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:12:31 +0000

I would like to invite everyone to visit my newly opened Art Gallery.

You are welcome to have a walk through some of my chosen artwork.

The gallery will be regularly up-dated and the content might change accordingly.

Have a great digital stroll!

Bienvenue a ma galerie d’art.

Je vous invite de la visiter et découvrir mes dessins et mes tableaux.

Le contenu de la galerie sera régulièrement actualisé.

Je vous souhaite une belle promenade virtuelle !

To visit the Art Gallery click here.

Life Studies

Andre — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:43:24 +0000

These are drawings done during my travels. For life sketches I love to use the sanguine charcoal and watercolors. It gives a delicate touch to the drawing and a chromatic harmony to the whole composition. The practice of life sketching should be an essential intellectual gymnastic for all kind of artists. There is nothing more stimulating than drawing model, architecture, landscape, or still life in direct. When I draw, I exclude myself from the reality and I concentrate only on the subject of my interest. Only when I am fully concentrated on my model I see the most important lines and colors to follow. My creative mind leads me through the forms of a model and transfer my artistic sensibility on the fields of the white paper. Drawing life, it is always a poetic journey and some kind of creative adventure to try to see just what is essential for the intrinsic unity of artistic aesthetics of the final artwork.

To see the selection of drawings please click here.

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Drawings in direct

Andre — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:47:56 +0000

Collection of sketches from life models.

model1web

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Model studies, acrylic paint on linen canvas.

France, Limoges
October 2009

Satyrical Artwork

Andre — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:11:19 +0000

I began to draw satirical drawings from 1983. It all started by accident. I made a few funny commentaries on our life in socialist realities in Eastern Block to my friend during one of our conversations. He was then already recognized cartoonist in Polish press media, He invited me to draw something funny for two festivals of satirical art. One was taking place in Montreal, Canada, and another in Casino Beringen, Belgium. I thought about it and it appeared to me like a new artistic adventure. I did two drawings responding to the festivals themes. One was about a censorship in press media and another was a free gag. He sent my drawings together with his in the same envelope, in order to economize on the mailing cost. The results were quiet encouraging. The drawing about the press won a prize in Belgium and in Montreal my artwork was accepted to the festival final exposition. Both drawings were published in festivals’ catalogs. These two facts encouraged me to pursue my artistic carrier in the field of satirical art. I begun to participate in different national and international festivals of satirical art and started to collect various prizes. One of the most important was the third prize in the International Biennial of Graphic Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was the first time, when I received financial remuneration for my artwork. It was approximately four hundreds American dollars, what represented at that time a small fortune in our socialist realities of Eastern Block. At that moment I started already publish my drawings in various publications getting at the same time more and more confident about my satirical abilities. It is in part the facility to see the ridicule and draw visual commentaries about it. It helped me to make my living when I was staying in Greece waiting to immigrate to Canada. I am definitely a painter, but the various forms of satirical art, like caricature and cartooning are with me since the beginning of my carrier. Drawing cartoons and caricatures is a passion to me, which I do exercise regularly since 1983. I always wanted to be a writer and journalist, and what I am doing in my satirical artwork is commenting on our contemporary realities. It is for me a kind of visual journalism. It is my way to perceive the ridicule sides of our world today. It is unfortunate that in the artistic circles the cartoon art is considered as lower kind of art, because of its commercial aspect. At the end what kind of artistic activities in our Contemporary World are not commercial? All forms of artistic production, even the over intellectualized, are created to be sold. It is why I do not agree with these megalomaniac statements. The satirical art is also created emotionally and involves certain knowledge in order to express various issues in researched and intelligent way. It is an important creative activity, which make people laugh and think. It is a pity that most painters ignore its importance and reduce it to a simple commercial activity. The satirical art is a product of intelligence and interior intellectual poetic sensibility, as any other form of artistic expression, but enriched with a wit and spicy seasoning.

To see the selected artwork click here

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Caricatures

Andre — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:03:23 +0000

Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) is generally considered by various scholars as a creator of the caricature due to his drawings and paintings depicting various characters in somehow caricaturist way. Before Carracci, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) also sketched of his contemporaries the particularities of their facial characteristics . Giuseppe Archimboldo (1527-1593) also had his own way to compose from various objects a caricaturist portraits of the Habsbourg court personalities. However, it was Carracci who actually developed the art of caricature in his artistic productivity. The caricature as we know today was introduced by Honore Daumier (1808-1879), a French print maker, painter, sculptor, and caricaturist. His drawings represent a mastery of deformation not only the human physiognomy, but also an elaborated intelligent critical regard on sociopolitical realities of his times. To some extend caricature as a form of art accompanied people already in the early beginning of our Western culture. The Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans were scrubbing on the city walls images of heir rulers not always in quiet favorable way. Facial deformations drawn for fun were very popular long before some of its creators made of their activities recognized and admired profession. Personally, I like to draw a life portraits and caricatures. The direct contact with the model it is the best way for me to work. Working from the pictures is not as much fun as it is to look at the drawn person in direct. For me as an artist to draw caricatures is a great pleasure and I do it as often as I can. It is yet another form of art I am practicing and I am enjoying every moment of it. I work also from pictures, especially when drawing editorial caricatures, then I do not have a choice, but if I could I would prefer the model to be life in front of me.

To see the selection of caricatures click here.

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The First Nations

Andre — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 01:16:55 +0000

The artwork “The Premonition in the Badlands” represents the compact summary of the imperialist attitude towards The Native Nations. Symbolically it depicts the general attitude of the Colonizer towards the Colonized and its evident consequences. I have appropriated one of Edward S. Curtis’s photographs in order to depict the essence of the conflict of interest existing between the Colonizer and the Colonized. My artwork represents the incompatibility of interests and values held by the Colonized and the Colonizer. However, the artwork was created with the use of two different mediums that combined together, also show the possibility of peaceful cohabitation of the Native Nations and the “White Man.” It suggests also the existence of hope for common understanding and mutual respect between Native and Western cultures within our Contemporary realities.

In my recent paintings I am approaching the issue of Western interference in cultural values of the First Nations by confronting the figurative interpretation of Edward Sherrif Curtis’s pictures of the West with the chromatic abstract compositions reflecting allegorically the Contemporary World. Both realities confronting each other symbolically on the same surface of the canvas. It creates a kind of unity and underline the necessity of coexistence of both cultural values.

To view the selected artworks about the First Nations Contemporary issues click here.

To view the selected sketches from the Kahnawake POW WOW click here.

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Selected drawings: The First Nations

Andre — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:00:58 +0000

Collection of life sketches from the Kahnawake POW WOW, 2009

Dancing Girl

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brown marker and watercolors

Selected paintings: The First Nations

Andre — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:38:04 +0000

Collection of artworks reflecting the Contemporary realities of the First Nations

The Prairies

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Artwork inspired by the picture of Edward Sherrif Curtis, acrylic paint on canvas