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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

Influences: Death on the Ridge Road

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Painting, tagged , , on December 26, 2010| 3 Comments »

Well, it’s the day after Christmas and I’m trying to clear my palette from the holiday and get ready for the new year.  Not the holiday but the actual year 2011.  I’m starting to really begin to think about moving in new directions, even in a subtle fashion.  I’ve talked before about how this change is important to me and how it keeps me excited in the work.

Sometimes this new direction comes in the form of new compositions or a differing use of the materials at my disposal.  Sometimes in entails visiting past work or influences and seeing how they interpret at this point in time.  The same composition painted at different times often brings surprisingly different results.  Maybe my color palette is different at one time versus the other or maybe my emotional state is different, which has a huge effect on my work.

As for past influences, sometimes the time that has passed allows me to see different aspects of the painting I’m looking at and take this aspect into my own work.  The painting I’m showing today is an example of a past influence that I have used.  It’s Death on the Ridge Road from the great Grant Wood in 1935.  I love this painting.  It has so many aspects to ponder and take from.

When I first used this as an influence, in this painting from 2001 on the right, I focused mainly on the movement in Wood’s painting.  The curve of the road and the shapes and positions of the vehicles hurtling at one another, along with the lean of the telephone pole at the top of the hill set against the moving sky, all give this piece a sense of motion and action.

At the time, I wanted my painting to carry that same sense of movement as I felt in Wood’s piece but in an even simpler composition, without the drama of the vehicles potentially crashing together.  In my painting the road and motion in the leaves of the tree carry the action aspect.  It very much a different piece, compositionally and emotionally than the Wood painting.  At that time, when I painted this, that was what I took mainly from the Wood painting.  Now, I might focus on other aspects and create work that is quite different than what I first pulled from this influence.  For instance, today I might want to pull something from his shadowing at the bottom of the painting, something I actually have used in a number of paintings over the years.  Or the symbolic aspect of that lower telephone pole and the way it creates an almost shadow-like effect of a cross on the hillside.  That is filled with possibility.

So I will spend the next several weeks taking some time to look at past work of my and work from those I consider influences, such as Grant Wood, and hopefully something new will merge.  At least, a newer version of my work with a new facet.  We shall see.

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Continuing Upward

Posted in Early Paintings, tagged on December 16, 2010| 2 Comments »

This is a piece from 2002 called Continuing Upward.  It’s a 10″ by 16″ image on paper and is from has been called my dark work, which was painted over a dark base.  Despite the name given to this work, I’ve never felt that were dark undertones in the feelings that these pieces brought up in myself.  I think that this piece, for instance, feels light yet  rich and uplifting. 

  I’ve always liked this painting a lot and particularly like the way the piece is divided by the bluish tone which continues upward from the road through the tree.  There’s a real coolness in this bisecting path of color that plays well off the golden, warm tones of the land and the sky, a coolness that I associate with a movement of air like a cool refreshing breeze.  It was the upward rise of this path of blue that gave me the title and gives me a sense of spiritual uplifting, an ascension from the dark base of the landscape to light.  This defines this painting.

I haven’t seen this piece in many years and wonder how it stands up in person now.  Over the years my surfaces have changed and it’s always interesting to see how a piece painted even only eight years looks to my current eye.  Would I change anything now?  Would I make different choices in the way I applied the paint or in the colors used?  It’s purely an academic exercise because the piece stands as it is and always will be just that.  These questions allow me to take certain things from this piece for possible use in the future.  Maybe the bisecting blue swath.  Maybe the golden undertones in the color.  Many things.

Or I could just stop thinking for a moment and let the piece be just what it is– one allows me to enter it easily and raises my spirit immediately.

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The Writing’s on the Wall

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged on December 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is another from the Exiles series of 1995, one that is called The Writing’s on the Wall.  It’s the smallest of the Exiles series at a mere 4″ by 6″.  But, for me, the size does not diminish the potency of this piece. 

Painted at the time of my mother’s death from cancer in 1995, it’s about the resignation  that comes from seeing the life of one you love about to end.  The hope for recovery has passed and an end seems imminent, leaving you somewhat empty.  The world around you moves ahead and you are left struggling to regain the pace, not wanting to for fear that leaving the past behind will mean that you’ve left that person behind as well.  It’s a daunting moment that actually lasts for weeks and months.  Maybe years.

As I painted this piece and the face began to take shape, the intent was to have an expansive landscape in the background.  But the circumstances at the time began to make clear the inevitable was coming and the landscape closed inward, walled in.  I mostly seek ambiguity in the message for my work but here I wanted to be unequivocal with the message from this piece and opted for the graffiti that stated it clearly.  For me, this piece meant only one thing and I didn’t want it to read any other way, at least for myself.

I can’t say that this is a good painting, can’t compare it objectively with other work.  The feeling for me is to close to the bone here and makes such comparisons moot.  It is what it is and that is what I want it to be.

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I Hope He’s a Doctor

Posted in Early Paintings, Neat Stuff, tagged , , on December 9, 2010| 2 Comments »

I saw this the other day on one of my favorite blogs,  American Folk Art @ Cooperstown, which serves up great American folk art and the stories behind it on a regular basis.   Paul D’Ambrosio, who writes this blog and is an authority on folk art, featured this wonderful protrait from the early 1800’s, probably from eastern New York state where the painter  Ammi Phillips plied his trade. 

Having your portrait painted at that time was the only way that one’s image might ever be recorded and therefore took on a great importance, the sitter wanting to give a full accounting of who they were.  It was not unusual to display evidence of your trade, to show the tools that enabled the sitter to afford the luxury of such a painting.  But I doubt that many went quite as far as this man.

He is obviously a doctor.  Well, at least I hope he’s a doctor because I really wouldn’t be comfortable if I were the man whose eye is being held open if he were, say, a carpenter.  This appears to be a doctor about to perform cataract surgery.  You wouldn’t think so but this surgery, in different forms, has been around since well before the time of Christ, as early as the  6th century BC.  It’s one of those things thqat makes me very thankful for the time in which I live, for all its flaws.

It’s a  portrait that makes you wonder about the lives of the people in it, which I think  makes it a great portrait.  It has an oddball quality as well that transcends mere portraiture.  Just a wonderful and strange piece of Americana.  If you wish to know more about the world of American folk art, check in at the American Folk Art blog.  It is a treasure chest of information and stories,

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Trio

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things on December 7, 2010| 4 Comments »

This piece hangs in a back bedroom in my studio that acts as a storage space of sorts.  It was done back in 2002 and has long been one my favorites.  A tryptych consisting of three 5″ squares in individual windows, it’s been shown a number of times in galleries but has never found a home, which is fine by me.  This is one of those examples where I find something more in a piece than the outside viewer.

I don’t know what it is in this piece that does whatever it does for me.  Perhaps it’s the harmony in the way the colors play together, creating a palpable vibration, which is what I immediately think of when I look at this work.  A vibration– something else I can’t fully explain.

I guess that’s what I like about this piece- the sense of satisfaction that it gives me with  no need for explanation.  It induces a primal reaction in me that goes beyond the need for words and explanation.

That being said, I will now shut up.

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Getting Ready For the New

Posted in Early Paintings, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on December 3, 2010| 3 Comments »

Now that we’re in December, I’m beginning to tie up the year’s work.  I’m tryiong to finish up a few obligations such as a couple of smaller commissioned pieces befor ebeginning to gear up for the coming new year.  I ‘ve been mulling over going ahead with some concepts that I’ve been pushing aside for years now and I’m getting pretty anxious to get at them. 

I have plans to doing a few larger paintings, including a couple that are very large.  I am also working on a series that relates to the Exiles series that I did back in the mid-1990’s, such as the piece shown here.  The newer pieces will not emulate this work as they were surely emotional products of that time in my life and, as such, cannot be simply replicated.  At least, I can’t do that.  So they will emerge with a different look and probably a different feel, which is exciting in itself.  One idea involves a large assemblage of small paintings in this theme.  I will reveal more as the work comes about.

This period of getting ready for the upcoming year is always exciting, for the most part.  I have had years where I struggled early on to find something to move me ahead, something that lit the fires under me.  Inevitably, the ignition came but it feels much better to start the year with a fire already ablaze.

There are also a couple of other things in the works that I will announce in the new few months that I am pretty excited about.  Hopefully, they will turn out as well as I hope.

And if not, we’ll make it work…

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Ragin’ Cajun

Posted in Early Paintings, Video, tagged , on November 26, 2010| 2 Comments »

I was looking for an old piece as past of a project I’m mulling for the near future and I came across this little piece from about 10 years back.  It’s one that I remember very well.  The movement of the fiddler reminds me of seeing Doug Kershaw as a child on many TV variety shows during a period where he was very visible to the greater public.  The Ragin’ Cajun, as he was known, was unlike most other performers that you saw at the time.  He was this gaunt, bony creature with dark eyes and big sideburns that had an energy that seemed to always be seething below the surface.  He played his fiddle with abandon, cradling it low against his skinny bicep and sometimes flailing at it with his tattered bow.

He seemed pretty cool compared to the Steve Lawrences and that sort that often populated the variety shows of that time.  I see the Cajun in this little piece and am thankful for YouTube because I can reference someone like Doug Kersahw and know I can find something to illustrate my point.  Here’s a little bit of him from the period, doing Johnny Horton’s Battle of New Orleans. 

Have a great  Friday.

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Western Stars

Posted in Early Paintings, Video, tagged on November 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I just want to be quiet this morning, let things just settle in.  Think just a little but more or less just be.  I think the piece shown here, Blue Speculation from 2003, pretty much sums it up.  Just sit back and ponder, just a bit.  The emerging daylight of a Sunday morning has washed away the stars that hung in a cold November night sky but the memory of them remains.

So, I sit quietly and think on stars this morning.

Here’s a little music from KD Lang to fill out the mood.  It’s Western Stars…

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Night Clouds Creep In

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , on November 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

This is an early piece, a small painting on paper that was completed in 1996 or 1997.  Called Night Clouds Creep In, it is one of those pieces that quickly left my hands but whose image remains with me vividly, forever burned into memory.  Unfortunately, I had no real image of this piece.  I had somehow either misplaced the slide of it or had not taken one in the first place.  There were times early on, when this happened more than I would like to admit.

But the collector who acquired this painting those many years back recently brought several early pieces of mine that he owned back to the Principle Gallery so that they could photograph them properly for his records.  I was thus able to be reunited with this image and several others that also fell into this category of  lost images of mine.

As I said, this piece resonated with me.  It’s a great example of my early work, with its spase composition and two distinct blocks that make up the sky and the foreground separated bya thin white line of unpainted surface.  It is a continuation of a series that did early on that I called the Haiku series, inspired by the evocative three line poems of Japan.  These paintings were meant to be simply put yet very imbued with feeling.  Most were field scenes like this.

This piece really captures everything I wanted for this series.  Quiet and still, yet filled with the anticipation of what is to come.  There is a calmness and a tension at one glimpse.  Soothing and ominous, but balanced. In equilibrium.  It just works for me as I see it.  I am grateful to have it back to reinforce my memory of  it.

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Collectors

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, tagged on November 9, 2010| 10 Comments »

I pulled up this early study today, a smallish piece on paper from 1994 that was one of my first efforts in the technique that I developed for myself from which all my subsequent work derived in some way.  I can still remember the excitement of discovery that was in every piece at that point, how each brushload of paint seemed filled with the possibility of  showing me something I hadn’t seen before.  It was all I needed then– me and the paint and a place to lay it down.  My own eyes were enough.

There was a comment yesterday that inquired as to my use of the word collector in describing the attendees of my shows and buyers of my work.  I’ve been thinking about the importance of  these people for some time and this comment brought back the debate I have internally in describing them.  Customers and clients seem too cold and businesslike as words for how I view them.  As does buyers.

I’ve always felt funny using the word fans to describe  my collectors.  I don’t exactly know why but there’s something a little too egotistical, too self-aggrandizing,  in  saying my fans. 

Followers is close to being okay but there is an element of the cultish in it that makes me nervous.  Besides, there are plenty of collectors who have bought several apintings of mine without following the progress of the work over the years, people who happen to simply like the work and come back again to add to their collection.

So, I’m left with the word collector.  I like the sound of it and have earmarked as an important word to myself ever since I realized that there were people who might someday collect my work, which was a short time after I began working on pieces like the small study at the top of the page.  The word has become more important to me over the years.   There is the obvious reason, in that collectors provide the income that sustains me.  But collectors have provided me with more than mere money.

There have been times, over the years, when that initial excitement as I described above had faded and the process itself was not motivation enough to make me want to spend my days alone in my studio.  Though I think I am well suited to isolation, there are times when it is daunting.  But it has been during these times when the remoteness has been overbearing that the thought of my collectors, of people who take an active interest in my work, who give it thought and time in which to flourish, have pulled me through.  Given my work a purpose.  Knowing that there were collectors out there willing to view the work I made in the solitude of my studio made the isolation fade away, as though there were hundreds of eyes looking over my shoulder as I worked.  It’s hard to describe the gratitude I feel for this presence that they give me in the studio, not to mention the motivation they provide.  I find myself always wanting to push for something more, something new to pass along to these collectors, if only as a small repayment for what they have provided me.  I feel that they have placed a trust of some sort in my work and it’s imperative that I not betray that trust by giving less than my full effort.

So, if  there’s a better word, please tell me.  But it will be hard to push out the meaning and importance of the word as I perceive it for those who I refer to as my collectors.

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