The Artist of the Month for December is Romare Bearden.  He experimented with many different mediums and artistic styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages.

Bluer than Blue -- 1981

For more information about Romare Bearden, visit the following web site. 

www.beardenfoundation.org/index2.shtml

 I would like to assure all my students and their parents that I grade on EFFORT, rather than on TALENT.  Some students have natural artistic abilities, and some do not.  What I look for are students who a) stay on task, b) ask for help when needed, and c) put in their best effort.  A student who does those three things will do very well in art class, regardless of how much artistic talent he or she may have!     

Grandma Moses is the Artist of the Month for November.  Her real name was Anna Mary Robertson.  She lived to 101 years old.  She was alive during the Civil War and both World Wars.  

She painted pictures in a folk art style that depicted outdoor home scenes and many are themed of Christmas and Thanksgiving.

For more information about Grandma Moses please visit the following sites.

www.gseart.com/moses.html

www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0907.html

October's Artist of the Month is Katsushika Hokusai (1760 -1849).  He was a painter and printmaker that had enormous influence over eastern and western art.

His most famous woodblock print The Great Wave.

For more information about Hokusai and his art please visit the following links;

www.andreas.com/hokusai.html

http://www.artelino.com/articles/hokusai.asp

September's Artist of the month is Piet Mondrian.  He was a Dutch Neo-Plasticist painter.  Which means It is a rigid form of Abstraction, whose rules allow only for a canvas subsected into rectangles by horizontal and vertical lines, and colored using a very limited palette. 

He lived from 1872-1944.

Below you will find two links that are excellent resource sites about Piet Mondrian.

 http://paintings.name/piet-mondrian-biography.php

 www.mondriantrust.com/