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Archive for the ‘Influences’ Category

Gassed

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , on September 24, 2009| 2 Comments »

Gassed John Singer SargentI’ve always loved the work of the great John Singer Sargent, best known for his exquisite portraiture.  Several years ago I saw a large retrospective of his work at the National Gallery in DC and was overwhelmed by the quality of his work in the show.  It was not in a style in which I work nor was the subject matter always my cup of tea but the beauty of his brushstrokes was gorgeous.  There was something beautiful in  how a nose on a portrait that appeared so perfectly modeled from a distance when inspected up close was a slash of paint, singular and perfect.

But for me the star of the show was his epic painting, Gassed, shown above.  It is a massive atmospheric  painting, nearly 8 feet by 20 feet, and depicts soldiers in World War I who have been the victims of a gas attack.  Blinded, they struggle ahead, linked  together, seeking help.  A departure from Sargent’s  trademark portraiture, it’s a powerful image and really captures the horror of  the first truly modern war that was hitting the entire world at that time.  The War to End All Wars –if only that were true.

I am reminded by this painting of a poem written in that same time, decrying the horrors that had been unleashed and the feeling of chaos that seemed pervasive.  It’s The Second Coming from William Butler Yeats.  The first verse is particularly powerful and the last two lines of it are often quoted and could apply to just about any time of turmoil, such as the present.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Both the painting and poem are interesting spotlights on the time.  I don’t know why either sprang to mind this particular day.  Maybe it’s all the doom and gloom, end of the world, here comes Jesus and he’s carrying a really big hammer stuff that is bombarding us around the clock.  Maybe the chaos and consuming din has caused us to not be able to hear our own falconer, our own guiding voice.

Or maybe I simply like the works of Sargent and Yeats.  It’s a mystery…


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Peaceable Kingdom

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences on September 18, 2009| 6 Comments »

edward_hicks_-_peaceable_kingdomI was walking back up my driveway the other day after picking up my newspaper when I rounded a corner and there, about 60 feet away, was a really good-sized bobcat between the studio and me.  I had never seen one in the wild ( or even my yard) before and had been under the impression that they were only slightly larger than a large housecat.  This was much larger than that , perhaps the size of a 7 or 8 month old golden retriever.  He saw me but didn’t panic, instead altering his course and loping  impressively in that big cat way across the yard and into the pine thicket.

Edward HicksOver the course of the day, as I reflected on all the many animals we’ve observed over our years here, I was reminded of the most famous work of the 19th century Quaker folk painter Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom.  It’s a painting that most of us are familiar with, one that has been reproduced numerous times in it’s many different incarnations, as Hicks painted 61 different versions of the piece.  In it he allegorically paints many creatures of the forest and jungle together in harmony, along with early American settlers standing side by side with Native Americans.  Children often are among the wild animals.

edward -hicksHicks’ repetitive use of his composition allowed him to examine different aspects and elements of each subsequent version, making each piece unique.  It’s something I have done often and something over which I’ve felt a kinship with Hicks for some time.  I also found similarities in the calmness we both try to portray as well in the way he fashions his landscapes, with very flowing, organic lines.  I’ve often thought that if I had painted in the time of Edward Hicks my work might very well resemble his.

But I paint in the 21st century, not the 19th.  And I have been influenced by everything, artistic, cultural and otherwise, that has occurred over those two hundred years.  I can only hope that two hundred years in the future someone takes a moment in their busy lives to consider my work, as I do now with Hicks.

For me, I’ll go back to my own little peaceable kingdom.  Who knows what I might see next?

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Rockwell Kent

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2009| 1 Comment »

rockwell kentI’ve always had a special affinity for the work of Rockwell Kent, the American illustrator of the last century.  Maybe it’s because my local art museum, the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, had a couple of his paintings that had seen over the years.  Maybe it’s the fact that he headlined a show featuring the art of American illustration that hung at Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY back in the mid 90’s.

It was the first real museum show in which I ever participated and while I never considered my work illustration, gallery director David Kwasigroh saw something in my work and really wanted it to be part of the show.  I was really honored to have my early work hang among some of the giants of illustration such as Kent and Lynd Ward, and felt as though I had taken a big step, even though it was really more symbolic than actual.  I was far from ready at that time to move on but it gave me the impetus to do so.

rockwell kent cover fieldsI also felt a bond with Kent in that he lived part of his life in the Adirondacks, an area that has always hit a chord with me.  A lot of his landscapes are immediately recognizable as being from the center of the Adirondack Mountains.  When I look at his work I get the feeling that he was coming from the same place inside when he created his works that I do when I paint mine.  There’s a sense of familiarity that I can’t explain.

rockwell kent moby dickI’ve also always loved his graphic work, for instance the prints he did for his work illustrating Moby Dick.  I seem to take a lot from black and white work such as engravings and woodcuts.  It’s all about composition and subtlety of tone within the print and I think that is the real bones of painting.  I figure that if I can absorb some of the way a striking picture is put together it will find its way eventually into my own vocabulary of imagery.

There is a lot to absorb and like for me in the work of Rockwell Kent such as his use of mystic imagery in natural settings, trying to add that unseen element in a visual manner.  For me, he has always succeeded.

rockwell kent 2

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Potential

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Opinion, Painting, tagged on September 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

Elmira Street 1994This is an old piece from 1994 when I was still just beginning to realize that I might find something in all the time and effort I was putting into painting.  It’s not a great piece but there are things I like about, things that gave me a feeling of potential, at least in my own head.

I bring this up because of a brief conversation I had with a friend this past weekend.  I attended an opening at the West End Gallery and ran into a friend, also a painter, so naturally our conversation turned to baseball.  We were discussing a well known pitcher who had great abilities, great stuff, who, while occasionally displaying his brilliant talents, often performed far below his talent level.  His efforts seemed to betray his potential.

In the conversation, I equated the pitcher to a painter we both knew.  I had followed his work for a number of years ever since he had graduated from a pretty good college program, having seen a group of his collegiate work at a time not too long after I had painted the piece above.   I remember being very impressed at the time.  Actually, envious is a better word for what I felt.  I saw real potential in that work and realized that I was struggling to achieve things that obviously came easily to him.  I remember being a little disheartened at the time at my own talents compared to his.

But his subsequent work has yet to live up to the potential I saw.  It has been okay but hasn’t made any leaps above that early work.  It’s always puzzled me and made me feel he was somehow betraying his obvious talent and potential.  I pointed this out to my friend this past Friday and he had a different take.  He thought I was seeing more potential in that collegiate work than may have been there, that while there was talent most of what I was seeing was the result of a lot of supplied direction from his instructors, not the result of his own natural output.  He also pointed out that the other painter had other avenues that he was following, that his real potential might not even lay in the same field I was seeing it.

At that point in my head I immediately realized that I was so wrong in my appraisal of this painter’s potential.  I was seeing his potential against my own desires, not taking into account his own desires, which might include goals that were a million miles from my own.  I was imagining what I could do with the talent I saw in that early.  I was assuming that he had the need to express himself solely through his art, the same as I did.  His failure to followup on the potential I placed on his work was not his failure, it was mine in not seeing that his potential had merely moved in different directions.

It made me look at my whole attitude on the expectations of other’s potential.  What I might see as important might not seem so important in the lives of others and vice versa.  I see this artist’s life and potential in a whole different light, one not shaded with my own expectations of what he could or should be.

Phew, that feels good to get off my chest…

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Labor Day

Posted in Biographical, Current Events, Influences, Opinion, Quote, tagged , , , , , on September 7, 2009| 2 Comments »

fasanella great strike lawrence 1912

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

——Lane Kirkland

On this day, Labor Day, I am showing a a painting from the great American folk primitive  painter Ralph Fasanella, depicting the famed Bread and Roses strike that took place at the textile plants in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.  I thought it fitting that something be shown that is closer to the spirit of this holiday which has faded from the public’s knowledge in recent years.

I was a union member in my first job at a Loblaw’s grocery store when I was sixteen years old and a few years later I was a Teamster at the A&P factory where I was employed for several years.  I was the union steward in my department for the last few years, a position that I took because nobody else wanted the hassle of it and meant that I was protected from being laid off so long as my department was operating.  The hassle came from the fact that there was always an argument to be had, either with company supervisors who tried to twist the rules to their advantage or with co-workers who felt the union didn’t go far enough.  It was a very educational experience.

The image of labor unions over the years has crumbled, perceived now as corrupt and self-serving.  Probably a well deserved image.  But the failings of these unions are the failings of men, the same failings that the company owners possessed that the early unions organized against.  Greed and a lack of empathy for their workers.  It doesn’t take much research to discover that the work conditions of the last 130 or 140 years were deplorable.  Long hours.  Low pay.  Incredibly unsafe conditions.  Dismissal for any reason.  No rights whatsoever.

Today, many view industry as this amiable, father-like figure but don’t realize how much blood was spilled by early union organizers and members to obtain the things we now take for granted as our rights.  Industry did not willingly give up anything to the worker without being forced.  I can imagine what our world would look like without the efforts of our unions.  This very holiday would not exist to have it’s roots forgotten.  The idea of vacations would only exist for the company owners.  The pay scale would be similar to those places on the Earth where many of our jobs have migrated, places that allow the avarice of the companies to override the rights and safety of the workers.  Places where sweatshops still operate, as they once did here.  Places where unschooled children toil in dirty, dank conditions, as they once did here.  Places where the health and safety of the workers is secondary to the profit they provide, as it once was here.

You may despise the unions now for their corruption but make no mistake about it- without them our country would look much different.  And not in a good way…

I will be posting more on Ralph Fasanella in a later post but for more info, check out this book from my friend Paul D’Ambrosio, who is perhaps the foremost authority on Fasanella and his work, Ralph Fasanella’s America.

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Trumbo Then and Now

Posted in Current Events, Influences, Video, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2009| 2 Comments »

I Am SpartacusI am Spartacus.

If you’re familiar with that classic line or the movie Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck or Steve McQueen’s gritty performance in Papillon, you already know the work of Dalton Trumbo, the great screenwriter/novelist who died in 1976.  I was lucky to have found him in a high school class where we read his anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun, a book that still haunts me.

I was finally able to catch an episode of American Masters on PBS that focused on Trumbo and his involvement in the Communist witch hunts of the late 40’s and 50’s here in the US.  Without rehashing all the hideous events of that time, Trumbo and a number of others, called the Hollywood Ten, were called before Sen. Joe McCarthy’s now infamous senate committee, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to testify as to their Communist leanings.

It was an ugly spectacle, a black mark on our history.  Trumbo and others refused to cooperate and many were imprisoned, Trumbo for eleven months.  Some that called cooperated and named names, destroying the lives of many.  A blacklist existed throughout the 50’s that kept many people in many different fields from working, although the blacklisted Hollywood writers and actors are the best known.  Trumbo was able to keep working somewhat under fake names and behind fronts, people who would put their name to his work.  There was an incident where Trumbo’s script for The Brave One won the Academy Award in 1957 but was never claimed as it was under another name.  He finally received it in 1975.

It was truly a terrible time in our country, a time of fear-mongering and ignorance.  The reason I bring it up today is that in it, watching those grainy films of the bloated bullies of the HUAC acting like the Spanish Inquisition, I cannot fail to see huge parallels between the behavior of those enemies of free speech and the behavior of those who oppose all change today, awash in stupidity and fear.  And as much as their actions then and now seem, it is the actions of those enable them that most disappoint.  Once you kowtow to the demands of the rabidly fearful and ignorant, all hope is lost.  In the 50’s those participated in blacklisting citizens enabled the hatred of the accusers.  Today, when we allow lies and mistruths to go unchallenged, we do the same.

We cannot let the fearful and the ignorant choose our path.

Okay, I know this is probably not as coherent as it might be.  I highly recommend that anyone interested try to watch this episode of American Masters.  Perhaps you’ll see what I’m flailing to say…

Here is a small bit from the end of the episode, featuring a piece of Trumbo’s writing where he defended his experience as an American to those who questioned his love and loyalty for this land-

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The Gashlycrumb Tinies

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on September 5, 2009| 1 Comment »

gorey gashlycrumb tiniesOne of my favorite children’s books ( well, kind of children’s book) is from the slightly skewed mind of Edward Gorey, the late, American born ( although he is widely thought to be British) artist-illustrator/nonsense writer.  The book is The Gashlycrumb Tinies which is set up as a primer for the ABC’s, a veritable alphabet of the Gashlycrumb children’s demises.

It is macabre and perhaps not really for children but it is full of humor and imagination that Gorey brought to much of his work, up until his death in 2000.  You can easily see the influence of Gorey on the work of Tim Burton and others.

gorey a is for amy

It starts with A is for Amy who fell down the stairs and finishes with Z is for Zillian who drank too much gin.  In between are 24 other little scenarios that play (or haunt) on the imagination.  My favorite might be N is for Neville who died of ennui although I do like B is for Basil assaulted by bears.  If you would like to see the whole alphabet simply click on the image of Amy or Basil and you’ll be whisked to it so you might enjoy it in it’s entirety.

gorey b is for basil

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September Song/ Django

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , , on September 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

djangoWalking down to grab the paper this morning and everything was shrouded in fog.  It was very early, before 6, and the morning light was still trying to gather,  giving the scene a haunting, ghostly appearance.  Chill in the air.

September.

It really made me think of one of my favorite songs, September Song, the beautiful old Kurt Weill song that has been performed by hundreds of artists over the last seventy years, from Sinatra to Willie Nelson, who does a lovely, delicate version.  On this cool, misty morning I am reminded of one of my favorite versions, that being the one from Django Reinhardt, the jazz guitarist from the middle of the last century whose distinctive gypsy-tinged plucking, the result of basically playing with only two fingers on his left hand as a result of an injury received in a fire in his youth, has influenced artists long after he passed away.

Here’s Django’s September Song.  Hope you’ll enjoy…

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Ali O’Grady

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on September 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

ali in irelandSaw this in the paper yesterday, about Muhammad Ali making a trip to visit the home of one of his great-grandfathers in Ireland.  It turns out that Ali’s ancestor emigrated from Ennis in County Clare to the States around 1860 and settled in Kentucky, where he married a freed slave, Ali’s great-grandmother.

muhammad_ali_versus_sonny_listonI only mention this because Ali has been one of my idols since I was a very small child.  I grew up watching his fights, seeing his wonderful combination of speed, grace and power that made him seem different than the other fighters who entered the ring against him.  There  was something very beautiful in the way he glided around the ring, feet barely touching the ring as he circled.  It belied the brutish, ugly aspect of the sport, gave him an almost ethereal quality, especially in the early part of his career.

Then there was his personality that absolutely glowed from the TV screens in those years.  His float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rat-at-tat poetry and his over the top mugging before and after his bouts were candy to the kid I was at that time.    There was a level of intelligence at play with Ali that seemed so unusual for a boxer.  I remember reading Wilfrid Sheed’s early biography of Ali (a beautifully photographed book I bought when I was a kid and still get shivers when I open it today) where he wrote that Ali had been tested and found to have a very low IQ in standardized tests of the time.  Knowing Ali, the author deduced that the tests were deeply flawed and couldn’t measure the natural brilliance and innate  intelligence that Ali possessed.

There is so much to say about Ali, who may possibly be the most recognizable man on the planet, his photos hanging in mud huts in Africa and thousands filling the streets in Ireland to see the aging king.  The controversies over the name change from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali upon his conversion to Islam and his subsequent refusal to enter the armed services made him a polarizing figure but never quieted his voice.  And that trueness to his beliefs, agree with or not, made him even larger than life.

Even his last fight, his tragic struggle with Parkinson’s, has grown his myth as this man who was truly a beautiful creature in his youth has somehow gracefully made his fight public, raising awareness for the disease.

And now, he adds the luck of the Irish to the myth.  Good for you, Ali O;Grady.

ali with crowd in ennis

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Hundertwasser

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Uncategorized, tagged on August 27, 2009| 10 Comments »

hundertwasser-friedensreich-strassenkreuzung-2000-2631956I ran into the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser , a contemporary (1928-2000) Austrian artist,  several years ago at a gallery in Boston and was immediately drawn to his work.

It was probably not a surprise as his work focused primarily on color and organic forms with few straight lines and had a strong individualized vocabulary.  His work was his work and that spoke to me.  Creating something that was my own individual expression was always my highest priority.

I was also interested into his forays into architecture and urban environmentalism, both of which are often reflected in his work.  But it was primarily his colors and forms that drew me in.  Whenever I come across his work I have to stop and look for a few moments, taking in the whole image at first , letting it register as a single form. Then moving in closer to look at individual elements, seeing how each shape and color plays off the next.  It’s the way I hope people look at my own work.

hundertwasser_shop_fridge_magnet_setThe piece shown here is not one piece but a group of refrigerator magnets massed together but would make an interesting piece.  I was also attracted to his use of black in his edges and underneath his work, something that I have somewhat adapted for my own work.

There is a total commitment to vision in his work that I admire.  And while I don’t feel raw emotion in the work I do find it compelling.

And that is saying something…hundertwasser_fax

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