American Impressionist landscape with Birger Sandzen

Discussion: 

Birger Sandzen and the artwork

PINES AND ASPEN, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO, 1929, crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA

Impressionism

Pointillism

light values 

stencils

matisse method of painting with scissors for stencils

pollack method of spraying paint (we will use toothbrushes)

Artist: Birger Sandzen  (5 February 1871–19 June 1954), 

he was a Swedish-American painter best known for his landscapes. 

He produced most of his work while working as an art professor at the Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas.[1]

A painter and printmaker, Birger Sandzén was one of the first European-trained, avant-garde artists to settle in the American heartland. 

Born in the village of Blidsberg, Sweden 

Took classes with the internationally known Swedish Impressionist painter and etcher Anders Zorn. 

In 1894, he moved to Paris to attend a painting class by Edmond François Aman-Jean and encountered firsthand the Pointillism of Georges Seurat. 

Sandzén was drawn to Kansas to teach at Bethany College

He immediately assumed a leading role in the cultural life of the Midwest, exerting enormous influence upon the development of art in Kansas and surrounding states. 

He traveled to find his subjects, not just in Kansas but extensively in the desert Southwest and Rocky Mountains of Colorado. 

This painting of Rocky Mountain National Park is a scene that the artist depicted often. 

As in much of Sandzén’s production, the subject matter of rocks, water, and trees is secondary to the artist’s expressive color and application of pigment. 

With thick areas of impasto and brushwork left evident, highkeyed colors exist side by side in full intensity, mixing optically to produce an expressive surface that celebrates both the topography depicted and the art of painting.

For additional information: www.crockerartmuseum.org/art?page=shop.product_details&category_id=43&product_id=596%3D0

PROJECT: students create pointillism landscape using stencils tape resist and toothbrushes

picture landscape in your mind: trees in middle ground, mountains behind, pond in foreground

Step1: in the middle ground draw a rock shape

Step2: in the foreground draw a pond

Step3: using blue tape tear and place in your tree onto your rock in the middle ground

Step4: using poster board cut a mountain range

Step3: place mountain range on to your paper protecting all below

                tape down your painting and the mountain stencil so that they won't move during the 

                splattering

Step4: using a toothbrush and scissors spray in your sky in teh background

Step4: remove mountains paint in mountains and middle ground using the side of your medium brush like oval dots

Step5: paint in your pond using the tip of a q-tip small round dots

Step6: remove your tape from the trees using the side of your small brush add in black side brush ovals creating a birch tree

Step7: using the small point dot of the tip of your paint brush add in the leaves of the tree.

MATERIALS: 

watercolor paper and paints

q-tips

blue tape

poster board

card stock or poster board for mountain stencils