DOMENIC CRETARA
$40.00 + $4.00 shipping and handling
softcover, 84 pages
to purchase a copy email to: domnbetty@aol.com
"A Painter's Journey"
“This book is both a record of my lifelong relationship with the art, history and culture of Italy and a concise investigation of sketching as a source of inspiration for artists and a tool to help them gather information from their studies of master works and from nature to apply to their own creative work.
The reproductions illustrating this book come from my sketchbooks which are packed with drawings and sketches from over 45 years of travels and teaching in Italy, principally in Florence, Rome and Venice. They consist of studies, analyses and personal interpretations from master paintings and sculpture as well as visual memoranda about people, locations and travel experiences such as sketches from hotels, studio class rooms, etc.”
-Domenic Cretara
Since 2002 Domenic Cretara made trips to Florence, Italy every other year in order to teach intensive work shops in Renaissance art (history and practice) to students from the CSU system. As an Italo-American, he was a figurative painter whose work and life was powerfully shaped by Italian culture and history. This book has relevance to any artist who draws from art history for contemporary art. It consists of a brief introductory essay followed by a series of drawings, some finished and others more sketch indications of his emotional and intellectual collision with Italy.
This is a book about how to open one's eyes to great art and beautiful places and how to use that experience to fuel one's creative artistic practice. Ateliers, academies, art schools and art workshops proliferate today and even those artists who don't get a chance to travel there, study Italian art to learn the secrets of drawing, painting and composition that it so wonderfully communicates to the enlightened viewer. It serves as a guide and source of practical information as well as inspiration about how to use the process of sketching to unlock the information and emotion inherent in these works. As well as how to make studies that are informative and useful, it demonstrates how to use sketching as a way of responding personally and interpretively to this place of beauty and knowledge. The illustrations are beautiful, informed, spontaneously well-crafted drawings.
Dimensions: 9" x 9" inches x 1/4"
ISBN: 978-0-692-904-62-6
Language: English
Softcover
84 pages