TODAY'S FEATURED POST

INSPIRATION vs PERSPIRATION

Greg Ruth

As artists we always in making our work, dance with two partners, and we are often held to the same regard as most pop cultural ideas of art making, the artist pondering some vital landscape... the artist receiving like a ball of light the revelation of some new piece... When in fact more than 80% of the total experience of making art is sweat and grit and work. It speaks well of the distilled and…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

Familiar IV – The Owl

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

Rückenfigur

Lauren Panepinto

September 4, 2025 - I didn't know there was a word for this until recently, but of course there is, and of course it's German. Rückenfigur (literally "back-figure") is a compositional device in painting, graphic art, photography, and film. A person is seen from behind in the foreground of the image, contemplating the view before them, and is a means by which the viewer can identify with the image's figure and then recreate the space to be conveyed. (from Wikipedia) The textbook example of this is this image is Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog: And in fact, I only heard the term Rückenfigur at all because there was just a Caspar David Friedrich exhibit at The Met. He loved this device and it shows up in his work a number of times:   Obviously Friedrich…

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