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Creative Briefs
Liz Hager
Artist
Creative Briefs is a collection of short pictorial essays on the people, ideas, and techniques that inspire and inform my creative practice.
This I Know To Be True
A personal essay addressing the question “what’s the big deal about Mark Rothko?”
When Walls Move: The Caves of Dunhuang & Stuart Davis
What the Buddhist art from the caves of Dunhuang and a Stuart Davis mural say about art out of context.
Surfing the Alpha Waves
“All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.”— Julio Cortázar In The Work of Art author Adam Moss footnotes an intriguing query: is there a connection between the game mind and the...
Orange Skies At Night, Painter’s Delight
As I looked through my portfolio recently I was struck by an extensive reliance on orange hues. As far back as I can remember I've had a natural affinity for the orange. Perhaps, as I am an October baby, it's to be expected. Nevertheless, it's hard to think of a color...
To Finish A Painting
To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow—the coup de grâce—for the painter as well as for the picture.
—Picasso
Describing the World
There’s a particular pressure in the art world to present a cohesive, easily recognizable body of work. Like many painters, I began with a deep desire to capture the external, tangible world. For a decade I have worked within the representational tradition, striving...
Color Diaries: Opposites Repel
WARNING:This post contains high contrast patterns and may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy. Liz Hager, sketchbook color experiment Several years ago, I unknowingly juxtaposed vermilion (reddish orange) with a turquoise akin to cyan in a...
All That Glitters: Basilica of San Vitale
The Presbytery and Apse of San Vitale(Author's photo.) Note: A recent post on Instagram of photos from Ravenna gave me a moment of unexpected pleasure remembering my own trip there more than a decade ago. The following is an edited (and amended) version of a longer...
The Heart of the Madder
Lavender, lilac, plum, periwinkle, eggplant, grape, amethyst, mauve, mulberry. Purple as a category descriptor seems pedestrian by comparison to its offspring, until one learns it derives from the Latin purpura, the Tyrian snail, the subject of a gobsmacking story of...
The Whole Richard Diebenkorn
In a successful painting everything is integral—all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness. —Richard Diebenkorn Over the past month, while working on a particularly challenging project, I have immersed myself...
Shedding the Props of Painting
How adverse situation led to breakthrough in painting practice.
Jacob Lawrence: The Power of Pictorial Narrative
"I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe...
Birthday Observances: Agnes Pelton
"Discovering" an accomplished artist who marches to a beat so outside the acceptable songs of his or her time can be refreshing. In retrospect, when civilization has caught up, the artist often seems to have been prophetic. The Age of Aquarius has familiarized us with...
