Artists' Christmas cards

John Piper: Design for a Christmas card

John Piper also used to design stained glass windows and wrote a book that is still recognised as a go to piece of writing when people are considering how to evaluate any new stained glass installations. As stained glass is one of those image tropes associated with Christmas, I thought therefore he would be a good opener for my annual post on artists' Xmas cards. 

John Piper and stained glass

The video looks at some of Piper's drawings for stained glass and if any readers are interested in doing work in this area, I would as always suggest that you begin by drawing your ideas. 

Terry Frost: Xmas cards

Terry Frost always used to send my old friend Patrick Oliver a Christmas card, the examples above I found on an auction site, the lower one you could buy at today's prices for £1,500. Merry Xmas Patrick, art is the gift that never stops giving. I shouldn't be so cynical but art can be so commodity entangled; I hate it that the simple gift of passing on best wishes at the end of a year, can be finally framed up and sold off to the highest bidder. Patrick might now be dead, but Capitalism still rules.

Me

So, I have produced my own card this year, but only as a digital collage, feel free to copy, print off and use as you may. It celebrates the fact that I was really enjoying working in glass at the beginning of the year and that I had to resort to paper collages as the year advanced, due to a certain world wide pandemic. 

Below are a few other artists that have in their day made Xmas cards, I've added a more representative image of their work below each card, I would hate people to think that these artists were going to be defined by their Christmas card production. 

Saul Steinberg

Don Baum

Don Baum

Elsa Schmid

Elsa Schmid

Bob Stocksdale and Kay Sekimachi

Bob Stocksdale

Kay Sekimachi

Kay Sage

Kay Sage

Julia Thecla

Julia Thecla

Philip Guston

Philip Guston

Happy Christmas everybody and lets hope that the New Year brings in some new ways of thinking about our world; ways that are more communal, more environmentally friendly and less about how many commodities we own. 

As we begin to think of Christmas presents:

No more parcelling up and selling off the Earth's resources!

.

X

XX

XXX

XXXX

XXXXX

!

Happy New Year

See also:

The artist's Christmas card

Artist's Christmas cards

Dali's Christmas cards

Drawings for Easter

Victorian Xmas cards