Happy new year!

Arguably Klee’s most famous piece Senecio (1922, oil on canvas), currently housed in the Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland – another reason why I must visit Switzerland one day.

Painter, Paul Klee (1879-1940) was influenced by his friends (Kandinsky, Marc, Macke and others), as well as nature and his travels. I have never had much love for the afore-mentioned artists, although there are pieces of Kandinsky’s that I admire. There are many similarities between all four painters, but I only feel a great sense of spiritualism and wonder from Klee.

My personal favourites of Klee’s work are his fish pieces.

Klee particularly admired children’s art, aiming for his own work to have a similarly unaffected feel. I’ve always wondered why this is not the case for more artists.

Many people look back in awe at how they saw the world as a child, yet not many strive to recreate that feeling for artistic purposes. I think that trying to present what’s in my imagination, immediately and without too much thought, is far more important than mastering a skill such as painting or etching.

Of course, many of my students would argue that such work is only created by those who have no skill and who therefore need to produce something ‘weird’ or ‘shocking’. But, there’s a big difference between art and craft in my opinion.

The famous Twittering Machine, also 1922.

Port Scene, currently housed in the Antheneum Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland.

Rotes Haus (Red House), 1929, currently housed in MoMA, San Francisco.

Klee also worked on unusual material from time to time. For example, this Boats in the Flood Waters (1937) was painted on wrapping paper stretched onto cardboard. This is currently housed in the Beyeler Foundation museum in Riehen, Switzerland.

This is another of my favourites, Diana (1931, oil on canvas).