Author: Kim Blenkhorn

Kentucky Derby

~ Kim Blenkhorn ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby. In fact I didn’t know anything about it except that it was a horse race until a few weeks ago when we were in Kentucky and happened to get a private tour of Churchill Downs by the President of Churchill Downs. We were in Kentucky for our daughters volleyball tournament and went to see “Churchill Downs” I had to look it up because I didn’t know what it was. It’s the entire facility and racetrack where the Kentucky Derby is held for the past 148 Years. So you can imagine our surprise when we were brought up to ‘millionaires row’, the lounge where Tom Brady and Gronk and other millionaires watch the race and then out to see the ‘Twin Spires”, those famous peeks that adorn the background of the Derby. It didn’t mean anything to me until I was there. (maybe that is how heaven will be for some people) After being there and learning about it of course I was all about this two and half minute, one and a quarter mile famous ride for thoroughbreds from around the world (since this is the first year Japan is entering a horse). “its a two week long party and festival” for a two minute long race. I’m not betting but I will be watching May 5 and 6. I feel thankful that we were privy to a private tour by the president, Thanks Mike and I was inspired to paint the horse that happened to be running the track when we visited. Maybe he’ll win and you’ll definitely see more horses in my future artwork, because I was truly inspired.

Look for Light

~ Kim Blenkhorn ~ Leave a comment

My teacher always says, while walking back and forth evaluating our desperately needy paintings, “is there a sense of light and space?” for months she has been saying this. I am aware of shadows and light and always add these things into my art, but i add not because I truly understand. I have been oblivious to what she means by this, even while being able to replicate it frequently. Until it dawned on me. I was looking at my cat and decided to do a quick sketch of her in her bed next to the window. It was a quick simple sketch with almost zero details and it dawned on me, if i get the light areas in, it will give the correct and accurate space. and it did! i was able to capture the cat in the bed just by adding the light areas and the dark around the light. In fact i sort of left the light, it created the space i was looking for and the details were a side thing. It’s not the details that add interest, it’s not the details that make a painting , “good” its the light. If you have no light in your painting, you lose the audience, you lose the image it becomes muddy and uninteresting, it doesn’t make sense, where are the lines where does one thing end where is the “space”? Now i realize, that is exactly what is so appealing to me about everything that catches my eye, its the light. If I can understand the light I can find what is interesting about a picture and I can understand what makes a painting, even a not so great painting, actually quite riveting, if the light is right. Its funny that on occasion i was able to capture this idea in my paintings because i would draw or paint what i saw and that meant transferring the light to my painting but i didn’t understand what i was doing. and had a difficult time with still life or plein air painting. We are good at copying but it takes understanding to bring life to the images we want to recreate.

Every Light has a shape. Every shadow has a shape. when you get the light right everything else works in a painting and drawing.

Jesus said He is the light of the world. I’m Thinking about getting the light right, I’m thinking about light as creating space in my life. I’m Thinking about light as being the thing that creates interest and appeal and draws people in. The bible says Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added to me. What makes my life so interesting to others? what repels them? When we get Jesus “right” in our lives everything else just works. It doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa, it can be an average life or an average circumstance, or an average piece of artwork, but people want to keep looking at it and they don’t know why. It works because Jesus is there in accurate proportions. The very first thing that God created was light. As the greatest artist ever, that was His first choice, He got the light in there to give space and meaning and life to everything else. He oriented the whole picture to the light. We cannot underestimate light in our artwork, neither in our spiritual lives. How often we think because we are parroting what we have been taught we understand what we are doing? How often do we have a wrong understanding of Christ and therefore nothing seems to “work”? He is the Light get him into your life and it will be radiant with beauty even while imperfect.

I’m just saying pay attention to the Light and your art will improve.

Mac Jones

Featured ~ Kim Blenkhorn ~ Leave a comment

“I think just focus on what’s important now is kind of what I tell myself,” Jones said. “On Tuesday, it was practice. On Wednesday, it was practice. Thursday practice, Friday practice. I just try to focus on how I can get better in the past week, and everything else is a distraction.”

– Mac Jones

Pressure

~ Kim Blenkhorn ~ Leave a comment

There’s not a piece of artwork on the planet that was not made without the application of pressure and darkness; neither is there a man who exists or ever existed of good moral character without the same application of pressure and darkness.

I greatly enjoy sitting in my art studio, which is really a mere spare bedroom, I take pleasure in gazing upon the many works of art which surround my humble studio. Pencil Portraits decorate the walls, framed , unframed, men, women, well known, some lesser known, black and white faces, paintings, canvases, brushes, paints and easels; these are my company and I have become familiar and attached. As an artist I know my artwork. I know it intimately, I have to know it well to know what it needs. Every artist understands this. I look at it, and I go back to it, and I turn off the light and leave for perhaps I believe myself finished for the evening, but then I turn the light on again for one more look. Before I leave my house I run upstairs to glance one more time, as I cannot pass by without peeking in from a different angle or distance. Why? I don’t know. perhaps I will catch a little more knowledge of the thing. The faces I have drawn somehow strangely have become my faces, my people. My artwork. I have looked at them so often I feel I know them. it occurred to me one morning as I sat sipping hot cup of coffee in my leather chair staring at all the art surrounding me feeling sort of melancholy, that the painting I was working on was bland it needed something deep and contrasting. I looked around at my favorite pictures and saw yes in fact it is this heavy value that steals my attentions. Artwork is made great with great pressure, pressure from the pencil and with great darkness; darkness that is added again and again, layer after layer, it actually makes the art, it defines it, brings dimension and interest and even the lightest mark on the canvas is still darkness on a light surface. It is this dance of darkness which excites my interest; how it is applied, used and played with on the paper that creates unique and beautiful images. In fact what intoxicates me as an artist is this contrast of light and dark on blank white paper. it is what draws me in to keep looking; the variation in values, the depth which strikes a chord within my soul. In some strange way it is the darkness applied with the greatest pressure which brings life and completion to any portrait I bring forth.

The difficulties in our lives can be understood as dark lines applied with pressure used to define us, make us what we are and who we are to be. It is the darkness and the pressure applied which truly fashions man on the backdrop of God’s kingdom of light. Without it we simply would exist. It brings me comfort to know that.