Nirav Patel Photography

My wife often sends me people, ideas, and links of inspiration. This week she sent me Nirav Patel.

“I am drawn to quiet moments,” writes, “I think it originated from attempts at self-preservation when I was living in neighborhoods that were...difficult” (via).

“I still look for the glimpses of quiet when the world is turbulent. These images are a window into my world” (via).

Reminds me of Tupac’s “The Rose That Grew From Concrete”.

You can follow Nirav on instagram or his website.

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-N- Stuff  :  Photography : Art : Nirav Patel

Stunning Native American portraits, by Kirby Sattler

Using an extremely thin brush, the main focus is now on the eyes - the most essential part of the painting. 

That last line needs repeating - "the most essential part of the painting." These are paintings, not photographs, and they are truly fantastic.

As this precise work is demanding and tiring, the work must alternate channeling the soul of the subject through the eyes, and other less involving details such as feathers, "models" for which are temporarily taped to the canvas.

The background and landscape elements are sketched as rough outlines. 

Out of all the stages of painting a portrait, this stage is the most crucial. This is when the painting's future is being investigated. 

If Kirby decides that he did not portray the emotion he envisioned, he will destroy the canvas (via).

I came across Mr. Sattler because, in my junior English class, we're studying Native American mythology. The other day, we used these paintings to discuss the inherited worldview of the various Native American people, which, although varied, tends to agree upon a few basic truths: mankind is subject and responsible to Nature. In many of their mythological stories, it is Nature - not the heavenly beings - that bring and sustain life. So it is Nature that they respect, worship, and honor. 

Their intricate headdresses are an extension and manifestation of their beliefs, their answers to the essential questions of life: what is the role of God, the role of Man, and the purpose of Life?

So we studied their faces.

This activity was the product of a hopeful new adventure in my teaching - Art Starts. It's a new theory and practice that stems from Gene Roddenberry's quote, "All art is an attempt to answer the question, 'What is it all about?'"

Not only do I fully agree with this statement, absorbing its truth into the classroom has provided me (and us) a powerful foundation to begin the school year, a sure rudder to guide each discussion, and an answer to the repeated question, "Why are we doing this? Is this important?"

"Because," I tell them, "Someone is giving you their answer to the greatest question we can ever ask, and if we aren't careful, we might begin to believe it. Whether we want to or not."

This methodology is in its infancy stage, so as of now there isn't much to write or produce, but I hope to share more as the year continues. 

But as of now, only two weeks in, I'm loving. So do the students because, whether they've been able to articulated it or not, deep down, they agree with Lyndon B. Johnson: "Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish." 

What better place to dissect, discuss, and interact with art than a classroom?

You can see more of Kirby Sattler's ridiculous art at his website.

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-N- Stuff  :  Portraits  :  President Bush paints those who went to war  :  Art

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President Bush : in search of atonement

George W. Bush is painting portraits of soldiers, and they're pretty amazing.

"In his book, 'Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors'" Peter Schjeldahl writes, "President Bush has painted ninety-eight portraits of "physically and/or mentally wounded Armed Forces veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars" (via).

The quality of the art is astonishingly high for someone who—because he “felt antsy” in retirement, he writes, after “I had been an art-agnostic all my life”—took up painting from a standing stop, four years ago, at the age of sixty-six. Bush’s eye and hand have improved drastically since hacked images of a couple of clumsy, apparently nude self-portraits in a bathroom surfaced, in 2013. (He made those, he said, to shock his painting tutor—the first of three plainly crackerjack ones whom he acknowledges in the book.)

Bush now commands a style, generic but efficient, of thick, summary brushwork that aims to capture expression as well as physiognomy. There’s a remoteness in the use of photographs. The subjects aren’t present to the artist. They’re elsewhere. But they look honestly observed and persuasively alive.

I love this acknowledgement because it highlights the closeness, the intimate connection, President Bush has with these men and women - even if they're not physically present. He isn't painting their portraits as a publicity stunt or to merely "be liked" by a country that criticized him so often. He's doing it because his heart and mind are wrestling through the immense responsibility of being a President, of sending people he didn't know into war, while he stays behind.

A responsibility and weight we'll will never understand. 

President Bush sent these men and women into harm’s way, and they came back harmed—often minus limbs from I.E.D. and mine explosions—and, in all cases, traumatized to some degree. Ex-President Bush met them in the course of running a charity, the George W. Bush Institute’s Military Service Initiative, which he set up to honor and aid veterans.

Bush’s portraits are accompanied in the book by upbeat tales of recovery . . . the book’s tone isn’t self-congratulatory. It’s self-comforting, rather, in its exercise of Bush’s never-doubted sincerity and humility—virtues that were maddeningly futile when he governed, and that now shine brighter, in contrast with Trump, than may be merited.

Having obliviously made murderous errors, Bush now obliviously atones for them. What do you do with someone like that? (via)

I love that concluding question, and I love that a New Yorker journalist asked it because a journalist of such caliber is supposed to answer questions, relieve doubt and confusion, and articulate a way we should and want to think. 

But he doesn't. Which makes it a perfect ending. Because it leaves it up to us - we are responsible for figuring it out - for concluding his thoughts. 

What do you do with someone like that?

Well, we Forgive,  empathize, and allow him to live outside of our constructed single story. We allow him to be a human who lived out his humanity on the grandest of stages, for everyone to see. And we allow him, and learn from, his attempts to seek amends. Because that's what heroes do.

And, if Michelle Obama can take to the former president, despite their vast differences, I think we all can.

I just love this photo and all that it represents. 

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-N- Stuff  :   Humanity  :  History of the "President"  :  A Mapping of US Presidents

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