The Painting Wizard

Street Painting in Houston

The new Via Colore Festival in Houston Texas brought me out last week to present a workshop to their participating artists.  The event benefits the Center for Hearing and Speech which helps children with hearing disabilities. 

I just went out for a day but I had the best time.  The festival had about 50 artists sign up for the workshop and they flew me out to give a powerpoint presentation on the history and the techniques of street painting, using my own work as an example, and then a hands on demo where the artists could paint their own small square. 

The festival will be held November 18 -19th in down town Houston.  It will be a wonderful event and I am looking forward to returning to Houston to paint as a featured artist and also have some wonderful Koloches.

Here is the sketch of the painting I'll be doing.

      

            

Holland Street Painting

Several years ago  my friend Julie Kirk and I were invited to come to Holland and do a streetpainting.  A wonderful guy named Peter Westerink  brought us to his beautiful country to paint a promotional streetpainting and hold a workshop for interested Dutch artists.  His hope was to start an international festival in Utrecht which is about a half hour from Amsterdam and one of my favorite cities.  Peter and his organization Kayoo invited us back the following year to paint for there DomFest. It was an international festival celebrating the 250 year anniversary of the Dom Church.

Julie and I have been asked to come to Holland again this June for another cultural celebration. Hopefully we can each make it.  We'll know soon.

Visit Peter's sites  -  Kayoo.com
                               StreetPainting.web-log

Germany

This is a detail of the image I painted in Germany the last time I was there. It was for the international streetpainting festival in Geldern which is about an hour from Dusseldorf. It was my 2nd year participating as the only American artist. I won 1st place in the Meisterklasse which is the equivilant to the Maestri category in Italy. Geldern is a lovely little town with the nicest people. The best thing about Geldern is the ice cream. With the money I make in coin donations from streetpainting spectators I buy myself a little treat (Ok, by little I mean huge. But streetpainting is a lot of hard work in what can be pretty severe weather conditions). They have about 3 ice cream parlors in the small town square with the most outrageoulsy decadant creations you have ever seen. Beautifully sculpted into a frozen mountain of sweet, mouth watering delights, the ice cream is garnished with an avalanche of chocolate and fresh fruit garnish.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.

This August!

This is an in-progress shot I took in of my work in the 12th hour of the 24 hour international street painting festival in Mantova - the most romantic city in Italy. My 3rd time at the festival which always takes place on August 15th for their religious holiday- the Feast of the Assumption. You begin painting with the ringing of the cathedral bells at 6pm on the 14th and finish painting with the closing bells at 6pm on the 15th. Most painters, including myself, work through the night in hopes of finishing enough to take a break when the sun really kicks in around 2 or 3pm the following day. With over 200 artists, most participants are Italian but there are also artists from Germany, Holland, and the US.

The festival is split up into 3 categories.
Simplici- the lowest category which every artist has to begin in.
Qualificato- Only a 1st place win in Simplici allows you to paint in this level.
Maestri- 1st place in Qualificato must be received. This is the highest honor you can receive.

By winning two 1st place awards I am now a Maestri but have yet to win the Maestri 1st place award.
I will be traveling to Italy this summer to participate in the festival and do my best to win that coveted prize. Been thinking of painting an image by Tiepolo...not quite sure yet.