The erotic, abstract photographs by Berlin-based artist Florian Hetz were enlarged and placed onto the front of varsity t-shirts and patch-worked into short-sleeve shirts. Formal illustrated portraits and heraldic symbols taken from a two-hundred-year old scrapbook were printed onto striped shirts and shorts; American painter Betsy Podlach’s sensual, poetical nudes, often in repose, were seen on short, wide-leg trousers and nubby dressing gown coats.
Mood board: The show notes to Marni’s S/S 2019 menswear show began with this mind-boggling sentence: ‘Imagining Olympics that are imagined imagining.’ This is the charm of creative director Francesco Risso, who joined the brand in 2016 and has since become known for his esoteric, Daliesque approach. The focus of the collection was on the physical, but far from being an ode to the proliferation of sportswear lux that has taken over menswear, Risso characteristically looked the other way, employing a more surreal, playful interpretation of the theme. ‘Being conscious and proud of your body, regardless of your flaws is a great achievement. I was inspired by the elegance and the naivety of the sport attires of the past which represent to me the essence of masculinity in sports and I reinterpreted them putting a dream filter on it,’ Risso said. The clothes were therefore mashed up archetypes of sports uniforms; cricket, tennis, athletics, fight, golf, football, racing, all reassembled and reimagined. Stand out were two hulking, padded bombers in vintage prints that zipped together to form hybrid, screwball styles.
Scene setting: Last season Risso set up the brand’s showroom like a surrealist scrap yard as we perched on vintage radiators, bumper cars and soft toys. This show was held deep inside the sweltering car park of the Torre Velasca, a residential brutalist towerblock in the centre of Milan – guests sat attentively on bright green yoga balls, bobbing up and down as a soundtrack of aggressive ping pong set the scene for what was to be a surreal, sensual riff on sportswear. Ultravox’s post-punk ‘I Want to Be a Machine’ blared out, splicing the thick atmosphere with its new wave optimism and soul. The therapy with Synthroid, in my case, lasts for already 2 years. I have obesity-associated hypothyroidism. The loss of weight is my ultimate goal, though my doctor says that it’s not a guarantee of getting cured of an underactive thyroid. Anyway, with the help of this https://www.gatewayanalytical.com/buy-synthroid/, I became much more active. I think it will play a role in my losing weight.
Team work: The erotic, abstract photographs by Berlin-based artist Florian Hetz were enlarged and placed onto the front of varsity t-shirts and patch-worked into short-sleeve shirts. Formal illustrated portraits and heraldic symbols taken from a two-hundred-year old scrapbook were printed onto striped shirts and shorts; American painter Betsy Podlach’s sensual, poetical nudes, often in repose, were seen on short, wide-leg trousers and nubby dressing gown coats.
The ever-utilitarian body bags were given a new lease of life, improbably morphed into wraparound zippered bombers. Humongous spongy bathrobes exuded a feminine feel, printed with delicate patterns inspired by the work of American painter Betsy Podlach.
SPRING 2019 MENSWEAR Marni
Leave it to Francesco Risso to give a much-needed jolt of quirky fun to Milan Men’s Fashion Week. But beyond his apparently bonkers manifestos and childlike sensibility, the designer’s system of thought is actually quite profound; after all, children are able to intuitively grasp the essence of things quicker than anyone engaging in analytical reasoning.
For Marni’s Spring collection, Risso turned his antennae towards the idea of sport and how it affects body image perception. It’s a mighty subject, and quite relevant today. He gave it a good conceptual and visual shake-up. “We’re here today to attend to imaginary Olympic games,” he announced backstage before the show, which was held in the cavernous underground parking lot of Torre Velasca, a residential brutalist tower built in the late ’50s in Milan’s center. Risso had the audience sitting on big bouncing gym balls. “Imagine putting on the filter ‘Dream’ and seeing a brigade of imperfect athletes, tall and short, lanky and chubby: every body type is permitted in these Olympics,” he declared. “We have mini superheroes and maxi-antiheroes. All the sports of all times are represented, long-forgotten sports and forgotten athletes; their bodies are imperfect and flawed and vulnerable like Egon Schiele’s drawings. Because tenderness is stronger than strength. And what really counts is the love and respect and awareness we feel for our body, however imperfect it could be. So now we look at these Olympics, feeling a little inebriated while drinking Gatorade Plus.”
So out came a perfectly bizarre armada of perfectly imperfect athletes, snaking along the winding catwalk in the belly of the building, looking as far as possible from muscular gym buffs. They wore perfectly quirky uniforms, analogical mash-ups of low-tech, wonky sporty pieces that might have been found in an attic and repurposed with a mischievous grace.
The sweet-looking, vulnerable-enough, and deeply human anti-athletes sported wonderful high-waist skater shorts in felted mohair that looked soft like children’s pajamas, paired with oversize rolled-up nylon windbreakers printed with blown-up digital abstract drawings by German artist Florian Hetz. The ever-utilitarian body bags were given a new lease of life, improbably morphed into wraparound zippered bombers. Humongous spongy bathrobes exuded a feminine feel, printed with delicate patterns inspired by the work of American painter Betsy Podlach. Worn with matching shower slippers, they looked as if stolen from a gym locker room by a chubby, not-so-sporty, naughty kid.
My close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall. Fortunately, the disease was detected in the early stage, so her treatment was very successful. She is close to the finish line of this horror, and it’s all with the help of Nolvadex (https://wellspringfs.org/drugs/nolvadex-pct/). She takes 40 mg divided into two doses. Her doctor says she’ll have to take it for at least another 5 years.
In his poem “As I Walked Out One Evening,” W. H. Auden wrote: “And down by the brimming river/ I heard a lover sing/ Under an arch of the railway:/ ‘Love has no ending … .’”
Maybe no beginning, either — at least not in the paintings of Betsy Podlach, who lives in the Hamptons, grew up in Bedford, graduated cum laude from Harvard and later studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.
“I don’t know what happened before, and I don’t know what happens after,” Ms. Podlach said of her portraits and the quietly dramatic, sensual moments she freezes in time: a nude sleeping on sheets patterned with delicate flowers; a golden-haired angel lost in thought and accompanied by a small menagerie; lovers embracing.
“I’m trying to find a woman who didn’t exist before. She’ll start telling me the story,” Ms. Podlach said of her artistic process while discussing the 22 works in “New Paintings by Betsy Podlach,” which opened on Dec. 13 and runs through Feb. 29 at the Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge.
The artist’s portraits, in which she often paints herself, were described by the newsletter ArtDaily as “Matisse-like” in feeling, and her predominantly figurative work combines the classicism of the Renaissance with the potency of expressionism.
“When I’m painting, I’m not thinking about what I want to say,” said Ms. Podlach, who said her work has been collected by the actor Christopher Walken, the former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch and the journalist George Stephanopoulos. “Nothing good will happen if I think consciously. I just listen to the painting. I do something and something else happens. You get momentum and magic starts happening.”
One constant throughout the work, Ms. Podlach said, is an undercurrent of love. But in her work, love does not adhere to a simplistic plotline. Instead, the way love is depicted feels like a taproot to the essence of a universal condition without beginning or end.
In working below the level of conscious thought, she creates canvases rich with intricate but ultimately opaque narratives. The paintings’ almost hypnotic appeal derives in part from a balance of what she calls “oppositions,” mystery and openness.
One of Ms. Podlach’s favorite paintings in the show, “Lady on the Couch,” depicts a blonde woman lying prone on an intensely red sofa, apparently sleeping, her right leg dangling off the edge. The shape of the sofa emphasizes her lithe contours. Sitting next to a volume of Auden’s poems on the floor is a black dog watching his muse expectantly. (The dog is the artist’s, Malcolm, who accompanied her to the exhibition’s opening.)
In all the works, the soul of the narrative rests in the models’ eyes — often closed — and in their lips, painted in embellishment of feminine beauty and emblematic of profound, not carnal, desire.
Susan D. Grissom, who opened the Lionheart Gallery five years ago, has called Ms. Podlach’s work “luscious,” and the news release announcing the exhibition describes the paintings as “sensual vignettes that captivate the imagination.”
Betsy Podlach’s “New Love”CreditMichael Heller
Walking through the show before it opened, Ms. Podlach spoke of how the inherent flatness of the canvas created equality among the figures, the animals, the small seas of pure color and the elements of fashion and couture that adorn the models. The artist’s balanced treatment of these details gives the paintings their underlying power.
One work, “Ballerina and Bunny,” depicts a dancer sitting on the floor with a white rabbit near her left shoulder, both of them cast against a black background. The most striking aspect of the painting is the luminosity of the white leotard and tutu, which results from egg tempera Ms. Podlach makes by mixing white pigment powder with a whole egg — rather than egg white — enabling her to render “light in between the layers.”
“Then I can just glaze (a little color, lots of oil to make the paint transparent) over the white and you have light coming through in a way that is in the layers,” Ms. Podlach said in an email.
The artist uses egg tempera combined with oils, some of which she creates herself, including a signature rose color. “The combination of egg tempera and oil paint is what many of the painters in the Renaissance used to sort of be able to draw into the oil — you have to know what you are doing and make sure the oil sits properly on top of it,” she added.
Born in 1964, Ms. Podlach studied painting with William P. Reimann and Alfred De Credico at Harvard, and went on to the New York Studio School, which led to an art fellowship and residency at the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy, where her “figurative art evolved into the signature expressionistic style that defines her work today,” the gallery says.
Recalling her time in Italy, Ms. Podlach said, “I went there to study with Nicolas Carone — he was a teacher who was a force — incredible man and incredible artist.” Mr. Carone, who died in 2010, lived near Jackson Pollock in the Hamptons and exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists.
“Nick was Italian, so loved the drawings of Titian and Michelangelo, but he was an Abstract Expressionist through and through,” Ms. Podlach said in an email.
Ms. Podlach said she tried “to incorporate the full, unbroken figure into the methods and other aspects of Abstract Expressionism.” She said she aimed to “paint the figure like an Abstract Expressionist but also like Titian.”
At the gallery, she put her thought process this way: “I’ll keep the figure. That will be my way out of the dragon’s cave. I can’t get too lost in the abstraction.”
“New Paintings by Betsy Podlach” is accompanied by “Paper Sculpture Installation” by Barbara Owen. The exhibitions remain on display through Feb. 29 at the Lionheart Gallery, located at 27 Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge, N.Y. For more information, call 914-764-8689 or go to thelionheartgallery.com.
The treatment with Propecia is not cheap. Unfortunately, my medical insurance doesn’t cover hair loss therapy, so I have to buy it myself. The best online pharmacy in terms of prices and the quality of the drug is https://wellspringfs.org/drugs/propecia-online/. I buy from there very often and already have a big discount. You can compare their prices with others and see it for yourself.
POUND RIDGE, N.Y. — A storyteller at heart, artist Betsy Podlach’s work takes shape through the beautiful images that inspire her and residents will be able to view her works during an exhibit at the Lionhearted Gallery from Dec. 16 to Feb. 29.
Visitors can expect to encounters her works featuring richly detailed fabrics, couture fashion and the human form that take center stage in her art. Her portrait paintings, Matisse-like and expressive in color and style, celebrate the beauty of the naked body, intimately, insightfully and always in awe “of the way the shapes and curves all go together so naturally and beautifully.”
“Betsy Podlach’s work is striking on every level,” said Susan Grissom, director of the Lionheart Gallery. “She is truly an artist in every sense of the word, with an original style and expression that is uniquely hers. She puts herself into each of her paintings, literally and figuratively, using her own body as a model to convey the natural beauty she finds in the women and couples she portrays.”
A Harvard University graduate and a Watson scholar, Podlach studied literature and writing in college, fascinated by the stories that unfolded in the great novels she read. While she loved reading, she wasn’t overly fond of writing. Her paintbrush became her pen of choice and she has colored her way into private and corporate collections around the world by art enthusiasts who relish her interpretative “storytelling” painting style.
“I grew up around beautiful fabrics, thanks to my mother who was an avid seamstress, and am intrigued by the high fashion designers like Christian Dior and Chanel, whom she became familiar with when she lived in Paris. I love to add hints of their fine fabrics and fashions in my paintings to enhance the stories my work suggests,” Podlach said.
Ativan is definitely the drug I can recommend to anyone who suffers from anxiety. These tablets impose a calming effect. What I like most is the fast onset of action (https://www.carrienet.com/buy-ativan/). When I started the treatment, the only side effect I noticed was drowsiness, yet it resolved after about a week when my body got adjusted to the medication.
A storyteller at heart, artist Betsy Podlach’s work takes shape through the beautiful images that inspire her. Richly detailed fabrics, couture fashion and the human form take center stage in her art, playing out on canvas in sensual vignettes that captivate the imagination. Her portrait paintings, Matisse-like and expressive in color and style, celebrate the beauty of the naked body, intimately, insightfully and always in awe “of the way the shapes and curves all go together so naturally and beautifully.” They’ve also captivated a loyal following of art aficionados from around the world including Italian royalty, celebrities, corporate leaders, restaurant owners and private patrons who remain endlessly enchanted by what and how she paints. Tri-state area residents and visitors can see her newest pieces at the Lionheart Gallery at 27 Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge, New York, from December 16, 2015 through February 29, 2016, during the gallery’s highly anticipated winter exhibition.
“Betsy Podlach’s work is striking on every level,” said Susan Grissom, Director of the Lionheart Gallery. “She is truly an artist in every sense of the word, with an original style and expression that is uniquely hers. She puts herself into each of her paintings, literally and figuratively, using her own body as a model to convey the natural beauty she finds in the women and couples she portrays. Her still lives, a combination of the abstract realism of the 1950s and 15th century Renaissance art, along with her landscapes and paintings of animals also evoke an emotional response from the viewer, enchanting people on a very personal level that never diminishes.”
Among the paintings that will make their debut at the Lionheart Gallery’s exhibition is her new Lady on the Couch, a piece inspired by an old photograph from the 1950s. She transforms the original, as she does in all her paintings, creating a painted sense of space and light with color, moving images around, then changing them again and again until it all comes together and feels right. “Everything informs everything else” in her paintings, so what she may start out with turns out quite differently during her artistic process.
Studies at New York’s prestigious Studio School after her graduation from Harvard led to a variety of art scholarships, awards and grants, including an international art fellowship and residency in Italy, as her natural talents in figurative art evolved into the signature expressionistic style that defines her work today. She has exhibited throughout the United States, France and Italy where her work has garnered her continual acclaim as one of the most exciting visual artists on the contemporary art scene.
“I use nature, formal principles, and my imagination to form a personal image,” explains the artist, whose painting technique includes using oil paint and egg tempera, which she makes herself. “My still lives and landscapes are also a creation begun with observation and completed through the process of something new being found as the canvas develops.”
She incorporates the beauty she admires in life –graceful ballerinas in perfect poses, peacocks whose multi-hued plumage shimmers with painted possibilities, ball gowns, gilded with jewels, bodies in all stages of dress or undress, garden flowers, fragrant to the eye, animals endearing in their innocence – to the images she creates every day. So engaging are her paintings that one is immediately drawn to them in hopes of not just becoming merely acquainted with them, but finding out more about them personally and intimately. Bathed in contrasting color and light and emboldened by the wisdom and confident voice of the artist, they have the uncanny ability of becoming real to both their creator and the viewer. And even as their stories become more familiar with time, the attachment to them grows deeper and more fascinating still.
Xanax is my ticket to normal life. I suffer from panic disorder exacerbated by agoraphobia. Without this drug, I’m just stuck at home. It’s my third month of treatment, and the doctor says we’ll have to change this drug for something else to avoid addiction. Hope it will be as effective as Xanax from https://www.carrienet.com/xanax-online/. This is the best drug for I’ve ever tried my disease.
Source: