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Michelle Paine

Annunciation/Birth

By Painting, Virgin Mary, Motherhood and Art-Making, Art and FaithNo Comments

The Feast of the Annunciation was moved to April 8 this year, since March 25 fell during Holy week. The Annunciation celebrates the moment when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear the Savior. This series of Annunciation master studies I have shared over the last months is about waiting, and the expectation of new life. At times this “new life” has been a metaphor for new beginnings, forgiveness, spiritual renewal, but in 2012 the time of waiting was literal, as I waited, in pregnancy, for my baby girl to be born…

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April 8, 2013
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Fede I, Oil on Canvas, 12x12, Architecture, Price $600

Convergence Exhibit – Reception March 23

By Exhibits and Events, Painting, Architecture, Art and FaithNo Comments

On display now at the Ashland Public Library is a series of my prints and paintings entitled Convergence. The title “Convergence” has two origins, and these two meanings themselves “converge” in the paintings. In part, “convergence” describes how, in ecclesiastical architecture in particular, celestial and terrestrial converge in built space.

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March 13, 2013
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Annunciation after David by Michelle Arnold Paine

Annunciation after David

By Exhibits and Events, Painting, Virgin Mary, Art and Faith, ItalyNo Comments

This Annunciation transcription will be included in the exhibit Compassion: The Good Samaritan, opening at Adams ArtSpace, Harvard College, Cambridge this weekend.

The Annunciation is the moment when God comes to earth – when human and divine come together to become incarnate in Jesus, Savior of the world. The Incarnation, God’s greatest act of compassion.

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October 10, 2012
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Annunciation after del Cossa

By Painting, Virgin Mary, Art and Faith, ItalyNo Comments

Appropriate to post another Annunciation transcription today, the Feast of the Archangels (Gabriel, Michael and Raphael). This particular Renaissance Annunciation infuses Classical architecture into the Biblical story of the Gabriel’s announcement to Mary. The painting also shows off the artists’ knowledge of perspective in the way that the artist places the angel in the foreground.

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September 29, 2012
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Annunciation after Beccafumi, Oil on Canvas, 6x6 ©2012

Transcriptions: After Beccafumi

By Painting, Virgin Mary, Art and Faith, ItalyNo Comments

Another in my series of Annunciation transcriptions. The original Mannerist painting was completed in 1546 by Italian Domenico Beccafumi and is currently in the little town of Sarteano near Siena, Italy. I’m not always a fan of Mannerism, but I like the mirrored swooping curves in this painting and the sense of motion it creates, so different from the very still, stable Annunciations of Fra Angelico.

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August 6, 2012
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Church of the Transfiguration, Cape Cod Art Tour

By Art and Faith, ArchitectureNo Comments

A few weeks back we spent the weekend on Cape Cod for a little get-away. One of our excursions was to the Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, Massachusetts. The Community of Jesus is an ecumenical Benedictine community made up of brothers (friars), sisters (nuns), and laypeople. They began building this testament of faith in 1997, hiring architects, liturgical consultants, and artists from all over the world to complete the narrative of salvation the building tells.

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July 19, 2012
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Annunciation after Duccio, Oil on Canvas, 6x6, ©Michelle Arnold Paine

Annunciation after Duccio

By Italy, Painting, Art and Faith, Virgin MaryNo Comments

What is the purpose of “copying” a work of art? Franklin Enspruch phrases it like this in a review of Wendy Artin’s series of watercolors of the Elgin Marbles: “She is at once paying the sculptures due homage, studying them for artistic clues, and using them to reach upward in ambition and scale.”

Somehow, in entering in to someone else’s creation, one often emerges at the other end with a clearer, renewed sense of voice and direction.

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May 17, 2012
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Annunciation, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1344

Annunciation after Lorenzetti

By Italy, Painting, Art and Faith, Virgin MaryNo Comments

I love the brilliant blue and of Mary and her contemplative gaze in the Annunciation altarpiece by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Lorenzetti was a Sienese painter in the first half of the 14th century and this work of his is presently housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, Italy. My version is tiny, only 6″ x 6″, but I’m looking for the contemplative quality he captures.

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May 1, 2012
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Beacon, Michelle Arnold Paine painting oil on canvas

2012 Olympics and Run with the Fire

By Exhibits and Events, Art and FaithNo Comments

The Olympics are always an Event: even non-sports fans like me turn on their televisions to watch the grace, strength, speed and beauty of what the human body can accomplish. The passing of the torch leading up to the Olympics is also a moving part of the event; it is expressive of our human journey on this earth, of friendship across nations, and fraternity even in competition. I am excited to be included in a digital exhibit which will be released in tandem with the London Olympics.

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March 5, 2012
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Figure Summer

By Exhibits and Events, Teaching, Figures, DrawingNo Comments

This summer has been a wonderful summer for figurative art – both in my own work and in Boston! I have been regular attending a few figure drawing groups and really enjoying the opportunity to really engage with the figure outside the classroom. I have been so busy the last couple of years teaching my figure classes that I haven’t actually taken much opportunity.

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August 5, 2011
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stpeters-sm

In honor of John Paul II on his Beatification

By Italy, Architecture, Art and FaithNo Comments

Some recent paintings and drawings of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, on the occasion of the beatification of Pope John Paul II. John Paul II prayed for a “Primavera dello Spirito”: a Springtime of the Spirit. His prayer for a “Springtime of the Spirit” was answered in a multitude of ways, from the flood of youth who attended the World Youth Days (which he began).

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May 1, 2011
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Cover of Ruminate Magazine

Sound and Silence

By Exhibits and Events, Architecture, Art and Faith, Painting, Press and PublicationsNo Comments

The theme of the winter issue of Ruminate magazine was “Sound and Silence”, and I was pleased that two of my prints and one of my paintings were chosen to as a visual representation of the theme. Sojourners Magazine’s Julie Polter recently said Ruminate has “staked a claim in the publishing borderlands where grit and religious devotion”.

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January 1, 2011
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Collaborative Student Master Studies

By Drawing, TeachingNo Comments

The compositions of frescoes by Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli (to name only a few), are so complicated they can be overwhelming for a viewer — and even more overwhelming for a student of drawing. I have found that working on a team and looking for simple moments of overlap and intersection can allow an entry point into serious investigation of some of these masterpieces.

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November 29, 2010
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New Church Interior Drawings

By Architecture, Drawing4 Comments

When classes are in session I don’t always have the time I would like to engage in long studio sessions, but I always try and keep things moving by doing small drawings, watercolor studies, or even just taking a few minutes during my figure drawing class time to make a few gesture drawings while the model is posing. These drawings are some small studies I did in my parish church (Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton).

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October 19, 2010
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Finished Commission for Jamaica Plain Parish

By Painting, Architecture, CommissionsNo Comments

I am pleased to be able to share the completed painting for Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. I worked on this painting through the spring and finally finished in July. I love being able to share my love for church architecture with a living community. The painting has been printed into notecards for sale for the benefit of the parish.

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September 4, 2010
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Sketchbook – Art Institute of Chicago

By Drawing, PaintingNo Comments

I visited the Art Institute of Chicago on Thursday during my vacation for their Target-sponsored Free Thursday evenings. What a wonderful a gift to the people of Chicago city to offer free admission from 5-8pm once a week – there was a line to enter at 5:00 and the museum was packed with people all evening. The new wing is huge, with the capacity to give their spectacular collection of 20th century art the viewing space it deserves.

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August 6, 2010
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Summer Exhibit

By Exhibits and EventsNo Comments

Summer is a time for water and blue sky — I have had some opportunities to make some small drawings, but also to hang an exhibit of my church interiors at a local venue. Prints, paintings, and drawings of my series of architectural interiors will be on exhibit during the month of July.

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July 8, 2010
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"Resurrection" – Goetemann, Mahler, Signorelli and Maitani

By Art and Faith, ItalyNo Comments

On Friday I made a little trip to see a cycle of paintings by  Gordon Goetemann at Andover-Newton Theological School in Newton Center, MA. The cycle of large paintings is inispired by Gustav Mahler’s 2nd Symphony in C Minor — the “Resurrection” symphony. I had found out about it from a friend who had seen the show at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester. We were both interested in it because of the time we spent in Orvieto, where there are two great artworks representing the Resurrection of the Flesh…

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March 15, 2010
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Our Lady of the Barren Tree

The Call to Beauty –

By Art and Faith, Painting, Virgin Mary, ItalyNo Comments

Cardus has just published another of my paintings in their online journal Comment.

Our Lady of the Barren Tree is an image of hope: the strange beauty of winter, in which it requries faith to believe that trees and grass are only “sleeping” and will return with new life and growth.
The tree, the vine, the branches – these images evoke the memory of Eve in the garden of Eden whose disobedience eventually brought on the exile of humanity from paradise. Eve’s disobedience was eventually redeemed in the act of Mary’s obedient “May it be to me as you have said”.

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January 31, 2010
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New Landscape Painting: Cemetery

By PaintingNo Comments

I am very excited about this new landscape painting from this beautiful summer day. The Cemetery is right on the Charles River and very beautiful. It is a very peaceful place to work — and attracts quite a bit of traffic as walkers from nearby offices take their lunch break. I hope to return to complete more paintings there as the year progresses.

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October 13, 2009
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Teaching in Italy — Soon!

By Teaching, Virgin Mary, ItalyNo Comments

This is one of those days I would love to be back in Italy – it is warm, but not too warm, but somehow the lure of my suburban street is not as strong as the lure of an Italian street – when I am there I am always pulled outdoors to smell and see and greet and experience some one or some thing that is “new”. But part of the lure is that there is so much that is not new – it is the very, very old which is so appealing.

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September 25, 2009
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