"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment". Claude Monet

Willows in Spring, Claude Monet, 1886

After I started to paint at outdoors, I did a research about art history of famous plein air painters and found a fantastic series of documentary about the impressionists by Waldemar Januszczak . In my collage years, our art history teacher used to show us diapositive slides in the dark classroom. Each slide displayed for aprox.10 seconds and hundreds of painting, after a while it was getting very boring. Us, trying to see the notebook to take notes in the dark room, mostly missing her conversations. Students didn't have a fixed art history book neighter, the art books of the school library were almost impossible to get it, the most incredible and of course there was NOT internet in the early 90's. I failed 2 times from art history class, because I didn't like to memorize all this artist names, years, it was nonsense to me... Well, I passed this class repeating after few times and left it all behind with my nightmare of school memories. It's true that I was not a good student but I was very curious about art. That's why, the second year of my collage, as soon as I had enough money to travel, I bought an interrail ticket (an unlimited train ride pass, valid for a month in Europe) to see the real artworks. Starting to my journey from Istanbul, I visited, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and Hungary, I visited museums and art galleries in Paris, Rome, Firenze, Madrid. In Musée D'Orsay I saw these fabulous impressionist paintings of Courbet, Monet, Manet, Pizarro, Bazille, Cézanne, you name it... The influences of impressionism was very important in my early artworks, even though still my favorite artists are the expressionist... See below

Kabatas parki, oil pastel on craft paper, 1991 by Birsen Ozbilge

Today , I drew a lonely tree in our neighborhood, this little sidewalk park by the side of the highway has a great view. The winter is a little bit chilly this year, I am waiting for the good weather for plein air painting. Follow me at google.com/+BirsenozbilgeArtistPainter I am building a new page there. Please leave a comment if you liked my artworks and share with your fb, twitter etc. 

See you soon, have a great weekend!

View from Centro de Salud Carrizal, pencil on paper, Jan 30, 2015

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Plein air painting with sea breeze

Plein Air Working in Progress

Yesterday afternoon the weather was beautiful. My husband and I took advantage of it and made a plein air set up by the coast close to our place. I worked with acrylic paintings this time. They have some advantages and disadvantages to paint. The advantages; the acrylic dries very quick, they are water based paints, so it's easy to clean afterwards and they are non-toxic. It's not too difficult to handle mistakes if you are not used to it, you cover the colors and create different layers. Most colors get much darker once they dried. You have to have some experience and patience with it. Disadvantage is blending them can create muddy tones and the texture is not the same like oil colors but many people cannot distinguish from oils if expertly painted.

I enjoyed painting in plein air, directly looking to the peaceful sea landscape. I admit that I am very fortunate to live in Gran Canaria island, We have year around good weather and beautiful nature. Of course the good weather by itself is not enough. Painting is an expensive job. You have to sell in order to get good quality materials.  The appreciation for the hard work which is a necessity for any artist and more important than that is the support from art lovers which will help to keep creating new artworks. 

If I had a normal 9 to 5 job or not even needed to go to work, you know what would I do? I would collect artworks to support living artists. All I had to do not buying that brand name accessory which I did not need it really. And believe me it will be enough to support a living artist... And I would feel myself such  a generous and a good person. Contact me if you are interested in with any of my artworks. Too see them visit my website at www.birsenozbilge.com 

View to city of Las Palmas from Las Terrazas

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