Resurrection

An oak tree in the garden.

Dimensions: 11 x 11 inches (image), 13 x 13 inches (sheet), 13 7/8 x 13 7/8 x 1 1/8 inches (framed)

Figure and Ground

The ground or field upon which we appear.

Wonder

My thoughts are a troop of monkeys swingin’ through the trees most days — not always panicked, sometimes just having some fun. This day I thought all was lost, that this drawing was a disaster, and I was a failure. It was only through some fluke that a photograph was made.

Not everybody responds to it, and the most surprising people are intrigued. I feel joy and a certain awe every time that happens.

Small Batch Reproductions

Both original artwork and small batch reproductions in handmade basswood frames may be seen by appointment in Buellton, California.

CONTACT me to arrange studio visits.

Original artworks are graphite, watercolor, or color pencil on paper. Edition are prints produced in house or at Candela Fine Art Printing in Oakland, California.

CONTACT me for more info.

More IMAGES.

Blue Reference

I’ve had these images in a folder since 2011. May they imbue my work with blueness. May I live to see them all in person.

The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise, Giovanni di Paolo, 1445, tempera and gold on wood, 18 1/4 x 20 1/2 in. (46.4 x 52.1 cm)

This little panel is part of a larger altarpiece presumably commissioned by Holy Mother Church as my dad and uncle would say. My friend Tom cracked, “I told you kids not to use that plate,” when he saw it. A poem by Dante inspired the image. It lives at the Met, and there is a lot of cool information about it on the website, linked below.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/458971

The Ceiling, Cy Twombly, fresco, 3,767 square feet (350 square meters)

It’s a big deal that the Louvre commissioned a living artist to create this fresco for the ceiling of the Salle des Bronzes. You will appreciate the article linked below if you are curious about what it all means. Greek sculpture and modernist painting, a sky of spheres and ancient Greek. Very romantic.

http://www.diptyqueparis-memento.com/en/the-antic-sky-of-cy-twombly/

Mark Rothko, No. 61 (Rust and Blue) [Brown Blue, Brown on Blue], 1953, oil on canvas, 115 1/4 x 92 x 1 3/4 in. (292.74 x 233.68 x 4.45 cm)

Painted the year I was born. A holy sight, cathedral bars of light. At MOCA Los Angeles.

https://www.moca.org/collection/work/no-61-rust-and-blue-brown-blue-brown-on-blue

Edvard Munch, Starry Night, oil on canvas, 135.9 × 140.3 cm (53 1/2 × 55 1/4 in.)

So erotic I can hardly bear it. Ecstasy! At the Getty Center in Los Angeles most of the time.

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/750/edvard-munch-starry-night-norwegian-1893/

When the Morning Stars Sang Together, William Blake, 1820, watercolor, 11 x 7 1/16 inches (280 x 179 mm)

And William Blake, bringing it all back home with the Old Testament at the Morgan Library in New York City. An illustration for the Book of Job.

https://www.themorgan.org/collection/drawings/84883

Close Reading

I don’t know what else to say about this except that it is me, doing what I do. It’s sort of like having one’s nose in a book.

Details

The mysterious surface of the ocean at high tide on a quiet morning in the cove. It’s deep here, deep and clear with pretty rocks, seaweed, and fish beneath. The sand is coarse. The rocks are conglomerate. When there are waves, it can be wild and swooping. Other times you can swim way out like a mermaid.

The impossibility of verisimilitude triumphs when it comes to rocks, and every day is different.

The sky with my crooked horizon line and an integrated passage of marks for water, earth, and air.

The images you see here resemble the print, which has the feeling of the pencil drawing. Shop for prints here.

Up Close In Person

We see three drawings by Annie Yakutis up now at Lo-Fi Wines in Los Alamos, CA. From left to right, first moon, shoreline, tree of life. You can’t hang out because there’s no tasting for now, but somebody interesting is there on weekends from noon to five. You can buy wine and art in person, masks required.

Here is a pencil drawing of an old walnut grove out Santa Rosa Road as seen from a speeding car.

This image faces north toward space launch complexes at Vandenberg AFB. Thanks to Brad Boca and Candela Fine Art Printing in Oakland, CA, I will be offering panoramic views of California in small, medium, and large formats very soon!

Virtual Lo-Fi

The tasting room in Los Alamos where my work can be seen in person, Lo-Fi Wines, opened for two weekends. It was sweet, and short. We had just enough time to refresh everything and make a sale. Now they hang in solitude once more, waiting for a time when one need not risk one’s health to hang out with interesting strangers, listen to records, and rest one’s eyes on something beautiful while wine tasting.

Here is a virtual peek for the time being. Prices are available upon request. Shipping to the US and Canada is available. Thank you!

Large Painting 12-5, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 96 inches

Walnut Grove, 2019, graphite on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 43 x 43 inches

South Rock (Right), archival inkjet print, basswood frame, plexiglas, 14 x 15-3/8 inches

Headlands 3, archival inkjet print, basswood frame, plexiglas, 13-3/4 x 15-5/8 inches

South Rock (Left), archival inkjet print, basswood frame, plexiglas, 14 x 15-3/8 inches

Branching 2019, graphite on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 24 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches

Surf with Space Launch Complex, 2018-9, graphite on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 36 x 73 inches

First Moon, 2018, graphite on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 32 3/4 x 32 3/4 inches

Shoreline 1-2020, graphite on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 43 x 43 inches

Tree Branches 4-2020, watercolor and color pencil on Rives BFK, basswood frame, plexiglas, 23 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

An online store is under construction. We’ll be starting with the prints, which are small inexpensive to ship. To inquire about these or original artwork, please contact me by clicking HERE or using the CONTACT tab in the navigation menu above.

But Enough About Me

Rohini Devasher. http://project88.in/art-fair-details/3676064 is an amateur astronomer, photographer and printmaker who also makes exquisite drawings. Her work awakens a familiar sense of wonder about being so little in a such a big world.

Agnes Denes. This is a video about her project Tree Mountain, a good place to start. This is about the recent retrospective exhibition, Absolutes and Intermediates, which just closed in March 2020 at https://theshed.org. She is a conceptual artist whose projects include architectural monuments and the world’s first manmade virgin forest (see below).

I bow down.

After Completion

Shoreline 1-2020, graphite on printmaking paper, 43 x 43 inches.

Two recurrent topics, shorelines and tree branches, mapped out. I had these ideas. I thought I knew where I was going. Then all of a sudden things came to a stop.

The transition from confusion to order is completed, and everything is in its proper place even in particulars. The strong lines are in the strong places, the weak lines in the weak places. This is a very favorable outlook, yet it gives reason for thought. For it is just when perfect equilibrium has been reached that any movement may cause order to revert to disorder.

63. Chi Chi / After Completion
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm translation from Chinese into German.

These two drawings are sheltering in place at my studio in Buellton. We offer curbside service.

Tree Branches 4-2020, watercolor and Lyra pencil on printmaking paper, 22 x 22 inches.

Walnut Grove - Santa Rosa Road

Walnut Grove, 2019, graphite on Rives BFK, 42 x 42 inches

A new full size pencil drawing can be seen in the window of the Lo-Fi Wines in Los Alamos, California, accompanied by a panoramic view of Vandenberg, Surf with Space Launch Complex, and a section of Quercus lobata or valley oak, Branching, which attempts to illustrate self-similarity more naturally than a Mandelbrot section.

Meanwhile, down in San Diego, a few prints are appearing in person at Bench Home on Adams in Kensington. A framed tree branches print looks very pretty at Bench Home on Instagram too.

#losalamos #california #lofiwines #kensington #sandiego #pencildrawings #annieyakutis #benchhome #benchsd

First Moon

The mythology of the moon, her symbolism. Her tidal power. Her beautiful light. Photographed by NASA in 1969.

A pencil drawing, First Moon, 2018, graphite on Rives BFK, 32 3/4 x 32 3/4 inches (with basswood frame) is also an archival inkjet print on Hahnemühle Matte FineArt, 13 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches (with basswood frame).

Self-Similarity

Quercus lobata, a native California oak tree, can be seen along coastal highways from Thousand Oaks to the Bay Area. When they start to leaf out in early spring you can really see how their complex branching structures resemble an entire tree, down to each little leaf.

As my friend Eric explains it, you can take a tiny part and imagine it as the whole thing, just tiny, like in the distance. It really does look like a whole tree.

Just a Minute

I’m working on a big drawing of this spot. I got it started yesterday, November 4, 2019.

Coast Live Oaks

This pencil drawing is 42 inches square, a little bigger in its basswood frame. It is up at Lo-Fi Wines tasting room in Los Alamos, California now. Although the drawing is untitled, the trees are coast live oaks, Quercus agrifolia.

The Color Green

RP 13-6, acrylic on canvas, 47 1/4 inches (120 cm)

I usually don’t say much about these abstract tondos because I want to leave them open to interpretation. Their plain alphanumeric titles refer to a series, a year, and their order in a sequence. Here I am free to allow my materials to express their own nature. I can’t see what they will look like when they are dry. I can try to set it all up for alchemical success, but in the end all I can do is stop in time.

This one. Of earth and water. Patience versus anger. Woods and mountains. East. Wind and rain. The planet Jupiter. Dragons. The sense of sight. The holy ghost, life eternal, hope. The time after epiphany. The time after pentecost. Patience versus anger. A pretty scrap of silk my mother wore as a belt for the dress she called her sackcloth and ashes. A very large emerald. China.

Tree Branches

These three drawings combine transparent watercolor with color pencils or graphite. The references are views into the canopy of a certain valley oak. They remind me of embroideries. Each one is on a 30 x 22 sheet of watercolor paper framed with basswood and plexiglass. You can see them in person at Lofi Wines in Los Alamos, California. I made the top two before leaving Santa Ynez for Buellton in 2010. The last one is from 2019. I look forward to making more of these because valley oaks have the most remarkable serpentine branches. In the spring when the leaves are still small you can really make a study of them.

A Place on Earth

An otherworldly view of a location not far from where I live, this is a picture of a large pencil drawing completed in 2018. The image measures 23 5/8 x 70 5/8 inches.

Untitled, 2010

graphite on paper, 42 x 42 inches

Tree branches.
Oak tree branches.
Branching structures in general, but
Quercus agrifolia in this instance.

Certain plant communities. After rain.
Cool and breezy.

All this and more can be yours!

$, Annie