Rebecca Cristante

Happy Mother's Day 💐
I wish I had more time to come up with a heartfelt or humorous post about the rewards and challenges of motherhood, but I'm still too busy in the thick of it to reflect upon it....!
So, instead enjoy 33% off anything in my Etsy shop today and tomorrow with code MOTHERSDAY

Sometimes a piece of art just reaches out and trips you, knocking you down to your knees. You can try to explain it away with color theory or composition or look for the answers between the lines of a clever artist statement. And while we've yet to understand the mechanics of how an artist can weave a piece of their humanity so mysteriously into a canvas or a rusty piece of sheet metal that it can survive generations to look back at your humanity in this way, I do know that it only works if you see the piece in person. This screen is a filter for blocking whatever that "feeling" is.
Ronald Lockett (1965–1998)

"slow steps
Like snake slithers
then sleep.
My charcoal skin
still warm
and loosening.
I break free

(Born again.
With this new tougher skin
underneath.)"

-Rebecca Cristante

"It's never been so entertaining to be poor."
Besides the gas it took me to drive two hours, the $3 it costs to park ALL DAY in downtown (I'm sure there were free spots, but not knowing the area well, I chose to pay), everything in these photos were FREE to see.
I did want to finish reading this book, so I ordered a second hand copy online (sorry Barnes and Noble).📖
(Also, I wish I knew more about the ingredients and printing process that made gold ink on leather look this good after 300 years...)
Thankyou, Birmingham 🩵

Happy birthday
and Happy Aries Season to those of us who celebrate ♈!
🔥
This Saturday, April 18, join us for The Aries Show: a group exhibition featuring artists Kat Ivey, JJ Garrison, Viviana Barreto, Justine Rubin, and Rebecca Cristante.
🌱
6 to 10 at Sycamore Place Gallery
🌱
LIVE music by Tom McGill and Ana Balka
🌱
Hope to see some of you there!

This penniless and scrappy Scotts-Irish-Italian immigrant kid from South Georgia just doesn't know when to give up! It's been more than two decades since this newspaper article from my first solo art show at 19 was printed, and despite the worldwide sales and millions of views on some of my images, I have yet to EVER support myself or my family full-time from art. I continue to work second and third jobs that I am also grateful to have, because they give me insights and real connections with humanity that I would not get by being alone and in my studio all day. Of course, don't get me wrong, the goal is still to be alone in my studio all day!
It's not that you all don't buy it (you do!). It's just that life as a single parent raising a family is too damned expensive in America. You know the story... As soon as you can afford good groceries, the prices go up. As soon as you can afford healthcare, it gets taken away...
But
I
Am
Still
Making
Art.
(Somehow)
And I hope you are, too. 🩵
I'm starting my annual 50% off birthday sale a day early. Get some affordable original work before I am forced to raise prices again!

I remember a time when seeing one of my paintings out in the wild meant that my discriminating gaze would lay upon some flaw that I had not noticed before, and like a historical restorator I would want to break out my little traveling case of paints and brushes and get to work on it right then and there, reminiscent of a statement some of us might remember from art history class that "art is never finished, only abandoned."

But now when this happens I am pleasantly surprised, as if seeing a friend's child who has grown several inches since our last encounter. But of course it is not the painting that has changed; it is me. Every day there is something in this world that breaks my heart just a little more than it did the day before. That is the nature of life. So the fact that after four decades of living I still have the uncanny ability to fall in love with the bloom of a flower, a sunset, or the way the foam sits just right in my coffee cup, is now what I see when I run into my own work.

What (or whom) have you fallen in love with today?

I wish you all LOVE Today, and everyday 💘.
(And in honor of my son's birthday today, original prints are 50% off in my Etsy shop this weekend. My Valentine's Day gift to you! 💝)

We survived ❄️January ❄️.
(And, Thank you, performers of for ripping our hearts wide open with this highlight of the New Year. 🩵)