it seems artist are being “ripped off” by art scam emails. any artist new to the internet approach to selling their pieces is a highly likely target. i, myself, just learned about this through artnewsblog.com. the following list of scammers (arranged alphabetically by their first name) was posted by the art news blog and they ask that you please send the name & email of any other art scam emails you might receive, to be posted on their blog . . .

claire - clairepinkii@jojomail.com
claire pink - clairepink@fastmail.co.uk
crewford - shiper@myway.com
dave frank - free4allwe@yahoo.com
garritt miller - m_garritt01@yahoo.com
george craige - gcraige108@yahoo.com
janet rumsey - janet_rumsey75@yahoo.com
jessica - kelvinjessica777@yahoo.com
johnson mark - johnson_mark_arts01@yahoo.com
lisa benson - lisaben100@googlemail.com, lisa_benson10@yahoo.com and lisaben100@yahoo.com
nicole roane - nic_ane01@yahoo.com
precious - precious_llyod@jojomail.com
raymond hyslop - anitagatlin1010@Yahoo.com and remystore333@yahoo.com
robert cole - robert.cole81@yahoo.com
sandra haddock -
sandra williams - sandrawills_sandrawills@yahoo.com
susan cutter -
swane mackerel - swanemackerel@gmail.com
tina brown - tina_brown100@yahoo.co.uk

british artist, david hockney, has gifted the tate museum with his largest painting to date . . . “bigger trees near warter”. the painting is around 40 feet by 15 feet consisting of 50 panels depicting an actual setting called “warter”, not a misspelling of the word “water”.

“i thought if i’m going to give something to the tate i want to give them something really good. it’s going to be here for a while. i don’t want to give things i’m not proud of.” hockney also said “i feel loyal to the tate. more artists should donate. they should think about it. you can’t quite trust collectors who say they’ll give to the tate and often don’t.”

one of cuba’s supreme exemplar of naïf painting (a naive, simplistic, childlike style), ruperto jay matamoros, passed away in havana just one month before his 96^th birthday. the national plastic arts laurate and national visual arts prize winner in 2000 was buried in his home town of san luis, in eastern santiago de cuba.

matamoros started creating on canvas at an early age with expressions of what he saw in the local landscape, the flora and fauna, and the people that lived in the countryside. however, it wasn’t until later in life when he finished his duties as a driver, plumber, gardener, messenger, and interior decorator, did his artistic talent truly blossom.

among the shows that propelled him to fame were the exhibition of watercolors and sculptures shown at the ministry of justice and the prize he achieved at the national museum of fine arts in 1964, the personal exhibition of his works at the havana gallery in 1965, and the successful emergence of his paintings at the 2nd triennial of naif art in bratislava and the grenoble biennial (france) in 1969.

according to the newly released annual list of the most popular museums in the world, art newspaper registers the first place to the louvre in paris. the most popular exhibition was at the tokyo national museum in japan. drawing the most attention at the exhibition was leonardo da vinci’s painting “annunciation”, which was on loan from the uffizi gallery in florence.

the top 20 most popular art museums in the world as compiled by art newspaper are:

composer inspired by artist’s letters

composer michael gordon was so moved emotionally by vincent van gogh’s letters to his brother, theo, that he wrote a suite of music. van gogh communicates the artist’s confession of “emotions and encounters that I wouldn’t want to admit to myself”, in six tracks corresponding to individual periods in van gogh’s life. “hague 2” developed from letters about his struggle to persevere in the face of criticism . . . the energetic “aries” was created out of his life in france when the artist was painting as many as three canvases a day . . . the final track “st. remy”, is named for the asylum to which vincent, with theo’s support, admitted himself in 1889. “instead of chaos of the asylum, i sense a certain peace” in these letters, says gordon. “he knows he’s become a painter, even if that’s not recognized by anyone else.”

a hummingbird, so small, such a tiny anatomy, how could it send out anything but a soft & quiet sound . . . the exception, the male anna's hummingbird, which researchers have just determined produces a loud chirp with its unusually shaped tail feathers. the sound fills the western american skies during the mating season, as they dive from heights of 100 feet or more spreading their tapered, narrow-tipped outer tail feathers at the swoop's depth. in that moment, the feathers act like a clarinet reed, with the wind singing the single note. the frequency of the sound is nearly four octaves above middle c, the highest key on the piano, and has been expressed by observers to the flight like a beep, chirp, or whistle.

the wooden zoo of cuba

the author, roberto fabret, seems to have an artistic talent as well. he has been altering fallen trees of oak and honduran mahogany, which are both destroying the sidewalk pavement and precariously leaning over apartment buildings in the eastern city of bayamo, into sculpted wooden animals. while living in the sierra maestra mountain range, he dexterously began his carving of animals with small pieces of wood. to create his zoo, he has been using a chisel and hammer. an amusement park built in the surroundings of the jesus manandez district of bayamo, cuba attracts locals bringing their children to be in awe of this original wooden zoo.

a group consisting of six czech artists called ztohoven, face possible prison time after being accused of scare mongering and propagating false information. in june of 2007, the group hacked into a czech republic television tower and replaced images of a live weather broadcast with a nuclear explosion going off in the czech countryside.

The ztohoven group released a statement on their myspace page . . . “we are neither a terrorist organization nor a political group, our aim is not to intimidate the society or manipulate it, which is something we witness on daily basis both in the real world and in the world created by the media…we hope our action will become an appeal for the future and remind the media of their duty to bring out the truth.”

take a midnight stroll or ski this christmas eve for a view of a full moon shining down from the skies at a height which won’t be reached for another sixteen years. more astonishing will be mars, just to the west of the moon, which will be extraordinarily bright with a golden glow. the red planet’s shine is due to it being exactly lined up with the sun & earth, fairly near, and a full face lit up when viewed from earth.

. . . merry christmas and a glorious new year . . .

Yesterday morning, thieves broke into the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil, a heist lasting only three minutes being captured by security cameras. Stolen was “Portrait of Suzanne Bloch”, painted by Picasso in 1904 during his Blue Period and is among the most valuable pieces in the museum’s collection.