Support Living Artists… The dead don’t need to make ends meet.I typed the phrase “support the living artists” on a search engine and I discovered many interesting posts, including advertising for t-shirts sold online with the “Support the living artists – the dead don’t need to eat.”

I understand that you might like art movements from the past. I do as well. My favorite periods are Impressionism and post-Impressionism. For the past, we have museums such as the Musée d’Orsai in Paris with an amazing collection of painters from these two movements. In San Diego, I enjoy going to Balboa Park and visit the many art museums we have there as well.

At home, I have many paintings from living Belgium painter Guy Moreaux, and living Australian painter Cindy Parsley, and of course some of my own. Although I have two reproductions from the French (dead) painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, I did not buy them - someone gifted them to me. I would never buy a print or reproduction and spend a cent in framing it because I truly believe in supporting the living artist.

Of course you might think that this statement is a self-serving purpose. It would be if I have not bought paintings from other living artists but I did. I own eight Moreaux! 

These are some of the reasons why I want to help push this movement of supporting the living artists, besides the fact that the dead ones do not need the money, many did not leave descendants that would enjoy the profit of their posthumous sales, and auction houses are the ones that get the most from the sale of dead painters’ works.

I list the reasons below:

1. Art is an investment – If you buy from an artist that, like myself, participates in juried exhibitions and receives awards, then your painting will increase in value. A painter will either maintain its original value or increase. It will not decrease its value.
2. If you buy from a local artist, you are helping the local economy. Artists pay a lot of taxes each time we sell a painting, and those taxes go to support the local library, schools, road projects, etc.
3. When you hang the painting of a living artist on your wall, you can almost feel the story that inspired that painting. All of my paintings come with a Certificate of Authenticity that describes the inspiration or raison d’ tre for that particular painting.
4. There are many forgeries being sold in the art markets and even experts sometimes have a difficult time asserting the authenticity of a painting. When you buy from a living artist that provides a certificate of authenticity, you are receiving an indisputable proof for that painting.
5. When you buy a unique and original painting rather than a print or a reproduction, you are hanging something that nobody else has. This is the reason why my paintings are not available in print. I only sell the original so the owners of my paintings feel special because they have one of a kind.
6. When you buy the works from living artists, you are helping advance the future of the art world. I understand if you want to own a Picasso or a Pollock. If you can afford it, go for it (as long as you buy the original). At the same time, I would like to see in your home some paintings from a living artist as well. This way, you balance the scale. You also impact the career of the living artist.

I hope that you find any of these reasons compelling to go peruse my website or visit my art studio / gallery in Ramona, California, and hang one of my paintings on your walls. 
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Thank you for reading.

​Virtual Art Exhibition - Wednesday, June 30 2021 - 5 pm Pacific Time - Link for exhibition https://meet.google.com/zyd-mjvc-pst
This is an exhibition of contemporary abstract paintings by Cecilia Anastos

Liberty Station - August 7-8, 2021

Little Italy - October 3-4, 2021

La Jolla Art and Wine Festival - October 9-10, 2021

This painting is my interpretation of Django’s near fatal accident. The gray and yellow background represent the smoke and fire that engulfed Django’s caravan. The guitar with the French flag because Django made France his home.

I absolutely love the way Django plays this song which was composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. This song was originally written for the musical Very Warm for May (1939).

Title: Django’s All the Things You Are      Year: 2020
Size: 48x24”     Medium: Acrylic paint     Surface: 3 mm wood panel  Price:$1200

Django Reinhardt was born in Liberchies, Pont-a-Celles, Belgium on January 23, 1910. He was of Manouche Romani descent. His official name was Jean. Django is his Romani name. He was the major first jazz player to emerge from Europe and to this days he remains as one of the best jazz guitar players in the world.

Django spent most of his youth in Romani encampments close to Paris where from early age began playing guitar, violin and banjo. From the time he was 12 years old, he was learning how to play guitar by watching Jean “Poulette” Castro and Auguste “Gusti” Malha play. At the age of 15, he was playing in cafés in Paris,

When he turned 17, he married Florine “Bella” Mayer (also Romani).
Django’s first recording took place in 1928, when he was 18 years old. He was playing banjo-guitar with the accordionists Maurice Alexander, Jean Vaissade and Victor Marceau, and the singer Maurice Chaumel. Then, on the night of November 2, 1928, he accidentally knocked over a candle that ignited the entire caravan. He suffered extensive burns over the left half of his body and spent 18 months in rehab.

​His pinky and annular fingers of the left hand were so badly burnt that he could not use them again. He taught himself how to play guitar again using the burnt fingers just for chord work and making the left index and left middle fingers do all the work.
Around 1920, he met Emile Savitry, an American jazz player whose record collection included Louis Armstrong, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang and Duke Ellington. Here is where Django decided that jazz was going to be his music. During that year, he met Stéphane Grappelli, a young violinist who had played with Joe Venuti. A partnership was born.

Between 1923 and 1939, Reinhardt (with his Selmer guitar) and Grappelli worked together as soloists of their quintet Quintette du Hot Club de France. When the WWII broke, Django returned to France and Grappelli remained in the UK where they were playing at the time.
After the war, he played in the United States in 1946 along with Grappelli. They debuted at the Cleveland Music Hal with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra.
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He had a hard time adjusting to post war France. He retired in 1951 to Samois-sur-Seine and he died in 1956.

The answer is always NO. If anyone has to derail from the moral and ethical compass to execute a mean with the excuse of justification for the end result, then that individual has lost the sense of what it is to be a wholesome human being. 

I am sure you have seen the scenarios on the movies, and probably at work for those who work in law enforcement or the DOD, where they give you the example of the ticking thing, or where a kidnapper is hiding a victim, etc. There is no scenario that will ever justify means that are contrary to the Western civilization moral and ethical values.

Former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan, a man I admire for always upholding ethical values when confronted with the scenarios described above, has written many books worth reading where he shows the way to uphold the principle that the end never justifies the means. 

Let's take the movie John Q starring Denzel Washington. The film tells the story of John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington), a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart and who finds out he is unable to receive a transplant because HMO insurance will not cover it, before he decides to hold up the hospital and force them to do it.

He holds up the hospital personnel at gun point. That is a crime. He is justifying the mean of committing a crime to achieve the end result. In this moment, he becomes at the same low level as the hospital personnel. I strongly believe that when life throws a fallen tree on our path, we must find a legal solution to the problem, and sometimes accept that whatever it is happening in that moment and there is no legal solution to it, it is nature who becomes in charge and we must accept the end.

Virtual Art Exhibition - Wednesday, June 30 2021 - 5 pm Pacific Time - Link for exhibition https://meet.google.com/zyd-mjvc-pst
This is an exhibition of contemporary abstract paintings by Cecilia Anastos