Redtree Times

A New Cornucopia detail

For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

I began writing this post a while ago about a painting, A New Cornucopia, that is included in my solo show that opens tomorrow at the Principle Gallery. After setting up the image of the entire painting and the Dostoyevsky passage, I began to write. However, I was totally distracted by the lower part of the painting that showed on my screen. I kept stopping to look at the colors of the flower beds and how they played and flowed together.

A New Cornucopia— Now at the Principle Gallery

There was such a richness, an opulence, in its colors, forms and texture. I decided to begin again and put that cropped detail at the top of the page, just as I had done yesterday with the Archaeology painting. It was a potent illustration of what I felt from Dostoyevsky’s word, that the world surrounds us with an abundance of sustenance and beauty, yet we sometimes struggle to have a purpose in our life that allows us to fully see it.

And since A New Cornucopia is included in what amounts to be a sort of semi- retrospective show of my work, it also a great example of something I started doing with my work many years ago. My belief then– and now, for that matter–was that if every square inch of a painting held some sort of visual impact, the whole of the painting would have even more impact, both visually and emotionally. There should be no part of the painting, even a single square inch, that would not enhance or contribute to the whole.

And for the most part, I found this belief and attention to that detail well-founded. At the time I was working primarily in water media, both watercolor and the transparent inks I work with to this day, on very smooth surfaces. I used watercolor paper but after a while of experimenting had settled on an all-cotton matboard that had a layer of vellum near its surface. This prevented the pigments in the inks and watercolors from absorbing into the matboard, allowing the brilliance of the transparent pigments to better show against the whiteness of the matboard. It gave the work asor of inner glow.

But as the work grew in size, it was more and more difficult to keep to this every-inch-must-have-visual-impact rule. The larger fields of color sometimes flattened a bit making an individual square inch sometimes less impactful than the whole. My eye would go to those less than impactful areas and I felt if that were case for me, it might well be the same for others. I know that sounds nit-picky but in my head it mattered.

To counter this, I began to integrate layers of gesso on my surfaces. I could create chaotic under-textures throughout the painting that would capture the pigments in a variety of ways that gave each little bit of the painting its own visual pop. It has been a process that has answered my own somewhat neurotic rule that my paintings must follow.

Of course, as the years passed, I began to keep that rule less in the front of my mind, believing that it was ingrained in my work process by then. And I think it has become just that, for the most part. I sometimes now find a piece that has left the studio that doesn’t meet this standard, but the work still carries big impact as a whole. But I find that the pieces that have the most powerful presence tend to still adhere to my rule.

This detail section of A New Cornucopia brought that home to me this morning. Of course, after that, I had to neurotically zoom in to every corner and inch of this painting and was pleasantly pleased that it easily exceeded this self-imposed rule with a mixture of texture, colors, and brushstrokes. Though someone might focus on the immediate and easy attraction of the flowerbeds, the wholeness this painting possesses is created by those individual square inches, each serving as an important small building block that gives it solidity and strength.

Of course, that’s just how I see it. You might see and feel something other than that.  Or maybe just think I am crazy for focusing on an individual square inch in a painting that has 400 of them.

You might be right about the crazy part. But it is the only way I can do it.

And it makes me happy.

Here’s song, a big hit from Sheryl Crow that ties into this a bit. This is her If It Makes You Happy. Like she says: If it makes you happy/ It can’t be that bad…

PS: My annual show, including A New Cornucopia, opens at the Principle Gallery tomorrow with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. Hope you can make it in to chat for a bit.