Allaura's Blog

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Helen Huntington Hull, granddaughter of William Brown Dinsmore, who acquired the painting in 1873 for "The Locusts," the family estate in Dutchess County, New York, 1977.107.1 This beautiful painting was done by Albert Bierstadt in the 1860s. The subject of this painting was the Sierra Nevada in California. Most of his paintings were of the spectacular views of the frontiers [1]. It uses an array of earth tones, blues, grays, and whites to create a realistic landscape portrait. The vast mountains have a haze of gray and blue to them to really showcase the distance in perspective to the deer in the foreground. There is a still lake that is framed by the distant rocky cliffs, the mountains that reach the clouds, and the wild trees. Gorgeous waterfalls flow into the small lake and barely displace the water, causing almost no movement from the current. This al

  Emily Kame Kngwarreye,   Earth’s Creation  , 1994, synthetic polymer paint on linen mounted on canvas, four panels (private collection) Description The twenty-foot wide and nine-foot-high painting (1) is incredibly vivid, and the scale alone is monumental. The piece is seen to be covered in bold contrasting colors and deep muddy splotches. Each of the colors seems to be applied onto the canvas with thick, bold strokes. The movement of the artist around the painting can almost be sensed in this abstract expressionist piece. Analysis  and Interpretation The color palate selected seems to not be limited, but rather, it made use of bold, vibrant colors. The colors she chose almost invoke a sense of tropics or humidity. Even though there is no set form, the piece seems to be inspired by nature, given the title, the artist's history as an aboriginal, and the natural environment she grew up in (1). The blues form pools for the yellows, reds, and greens to sit atop. The greens can be s