Just about 2 weeks ago my little artist gang, 4 Artist Friends, went on a road trip to see the only Picasso Figures Exhibit in the United States. We loaded up in my van and headed to Nashville, Tennessee just over two hours away, to have the opportunity to view his creations in person.

We had a great time not only at the exhibit but getting there and coming home, too. As you can imagine, we chatted and laughed the whole way. The girls fed me my favorite goodies like Snickers and Hot Tamales on the way there. Hah! It’s good to be the driver.

We’ve been planning this Picasso Exhibit road trip for a few months now. Just like anything, it took forever to get here and was gone in a flash. It was a special trip though because this is the only exhibit where the Picasso Figures will be shown in the United States. How lucky for us to be within driving distance. We were all excited to see the paintings in person.

As you can see, we were fighting the rain. We were pretty lucky though, we were supposed to have a chance for storms with heavy rain, wind and hail but it just rained on us.

I’m not a huge Picasso fan, but I certainly can appreciate the work. I wanted to share a few of the ones that I liked the most.

The Barefoot Girl, 1895

The above painting, The Barefoot Girl, was painted when Picasso wasn’t quite 14 years old. Pretty impressive. This probably isn’t the type of work you associate with Picasso’s work, but he was extremely technically talented at painting and in his early years painted similarly to seventeenth century Spanish Masters. He just chose to not remain painting that way. He explored all new worlds of painting that he made up. I gotta respect that.

Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937

This is probably my favorite painting of the exhibition. I like the colors in this painting the best out of any of the others. I think that is why I wasn’t a fan so much, his color choices are not pleasing to me. It was brought to my attention though that he did that on purpose. You might be familiar with his Blue Period but I’m not sure if any of the figures were part of that movement.

The Acrobat, 1930

I also liked this one. It was quite large. Most of the pieces were not nearly as large as I had thought they were. There’s a part of me that’s drawn to surreal art and this fits into that. I also think the background wall color made this piece look appealing to me for whatever reason.

Woman with a Pillow, 1969

I’m not sure why I’m drawn to this one. It felt very sensual to me. Much of his work in this collection seemed very sexually driven. He definitely had an affinity for the female form, but I wonder why he massacred it so? Unless he was trying to intentionally come up with a new style, that might explain it. I just don’t remember if they even touched on it in my Art History class. Maybe there’s a Freudian theory in there somewhere.

It’s funny, we as artists, were standing around the paintings really inspecting them. We were all curious about the canvas sides. They stretched canvas a little differently then. Nails or some sort of attaching metal could be easily seen on all sides and you could really see the age of the canvas even though these really weren’t that old. I mean not centuries at least. It makes me wonder how my canvases will look in fifty or one hundred years.

And I was combing through each painting looking for remnants from the artist besides the obvious. Bits of hair or whatever… that somehow ends up in some of my paintings. It’s like I’m leaving a little of my DNA in all of my work. Surely, Picasso did as well. There was much to see, so I couldn’t spend as much time as I would’ve to inspect each one but I know there had to be some in there somewhere.

There was a room that showed a film of Picasso painting on glass so the viewer could see him while he painted that I thought was pretty cool. I had seen this somewhere before but enjoyed seeing it again.

After we bought a few souvenirs at the gift shop, we looked for somewhere to eat. I always like to use Yelp to find off the beaten path mom and pop shops and found a really neat local restaurant called Hi Fi Clydes. The atmosphere was so fun and it was just blocks from the museum so it was perfect. I ordered appetizers of handmade pretzels with beer cheese and omg they were so yummy. I left them a nice review on Yelp with photos, too. That’s Sandy taking our photo while in our booth waiting for the food.

In the photo above listed left to right: Vicki Wilson, Lori Rivera, Moi (Jaime Haney), and Sandy Dodd. Below, we’re missing Lori, she’s taking the photo. Who knew we’d match the signage! If someone had something purple on, it would’ve been perfect. Hah! That was done totally unintentionally.

We heard there is a Van Gogh exhibit in Atlanta I think later this year. I want to see the real paintings, not the immersive exhibit. I’ll have to do a little more research on that. That’s a much longer road trip and will probably require a night’s stay. I think it would be fun with friends though. It’s always nice to see things together that we all have in common, like painting. I’m sure my husband and son would be bored to tears. It’s good to have friends.

I hope you had a nice Mother’s Day, mine was pretty good. Today, I’m taking down my Spring Painting Collection from the exhibit at Alexandrian Public Library. I have another exhibit in June at Red Bank Library. I better get painting!

Catch ya soon. – Jaime

← New Spring Painting Collection Released

A few paintings from Delights of Spring

Learn more about me on the ‘About’ page under the additional links menu. I’m an artist – a painter mostly and an avid gardener. I paint a variety of subjects including birds, koi fish, my gardens, ponds and flowers as well as anything having to do with nature especially trees and tropical scenes. I also enjoy painting abstracts and have started created more and more of them. My most favorite thing to try to achieve in my painting is is mystery and telling mystical stories.

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