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Archive for the ‘Recent Paintings’ Category

The Dark Rise

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on March 8, 2011| 6 Comments »

This was a case of a painting dictating what is was to be, against my efforts to make it otherwise. 

 This new 24″ by 24″ canvas grew slowly and once I was painting  in the sky I kept telling myself that it had to be lighter and lighter.  Since  2002 when I was featuring paintings that featured darker tones (referred to as my “dark work“), I have resisted working in this series.  That work was not as well received as most of my work  and I was responding to the market.  Personally, I felt that this was very strong work, work that excited my sensibilities.  But if they had no place in the galleries, I was hesitant to spend my time on the work.

So when I was in the midst of this piece I began to naturally steer away from the darkness that marked these earlier works.  I saw the sky as being brighter and having high contrast but with each stroke there was a nagging feeling that that was not what was meant for this piece.  I went so far as to load my palette with lighter colors and stand, brush in hand, before the canvas, ready to change this painting in a way that would alter everything about it.

But there was something that told me to stop, that this was where the sky stopped, that this was the destination.  This was what this piece was meant to be.  I stepped back and put down the palette.  It would stay dark.

Now, maybe this will not fit into the marketplace for my work but that doesn’t matter.  When I look at this piece, that is the last thing in my mind.  I am immediately pulled into the picture plane and upward, over the knolls, toward the top of the rise where the sun/moon hovers, urging me to continue climbing.  It is complete and has its own life, its own momentum.  It is what it is and that is beyond me now.

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A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

Posted in Favorite Things, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged on March 2, 2011| 1 Comment »

We’ve been spending a lot of time the past few days visiting our little dog, Jemma, in the hospital at Cornell where she is not doing so well. So I’ve been a bit distracted in my blog and my art, as well.  This is a painting on paper that I finished last week that I’m calling A Thousand Miles From Nowhere, after the title of a favorite Dwight Yoakam song of mine.  It’s about 10″ by 17″ in size and has a feeling of detachment that fits the title and my mood this morning.

Enough said.  Here’s the song whose title I borrowed.

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Finding Inspiration

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on February 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’ve started working on a few new pieces on paper, taking a short break from the larger additive paintings that have occupied me for the past few months.  One of the first was this painting, about 7″ by 12″, which is a continuation of last year’s black and white series.  I thought it would be best to dive back into this work with some black and white work to regather the feel and rhythm of the medium.

I call this black and white but it’s pretty evident that this is not completely accurate.  I still use bits of color, usually muted tones of red or yellow, and the rest is really black and gray.  Actually, now that I think about it, I think I was calling this my gray work several months back.  Writing or talking about the work is the only reason I try to label the styles I use.  In my mind, they are simply different and labels don’t matter.

This reentry into this work on paper is always interesting because there are always tweaks in the colors.  The time away from this style has cleansed the palette and gives me a new chance to see the colors and combinations in a new light.  While there is a continuum with obvious traits and colors in my work,  going back through the years and reviewing my work on a year by year basis shows these tweaks in an obvious way.  Some years, the predominant work is very bright with almost a gleaming white underneath that makes the work glow.  Very clean, very bright and light.  Other years, the colors are deeper and crowd together densely giving the work a very rich feel.  Some years are dominated by cerain colors. In these years there will be mainly blues or golden yellows or deep oranges that seem to jump out from every piece.

Every year is different even in a similar fashion.  So as I go back in for this year I am eager to see how the year evolves and what trail I will follow.  Looking at this piece allows me to see several pieces into the future.  Many new pieces have that effect.  They spark something, some new idea or rhythm, that I instantly visualize and, if things go as I see them, eventually find their way out into the world.  Sometimes they evaporate before I can capture them and I then find myself struggling to recall that spark, that idea.  It’s like trying to recall a story, something someone told you in passing several before.  You can remember being told something but the details just won’t come.  So you let it go and one day something will spark that thought and suddenly bring back the whole story in detail.  That’s what often happens when I look at my work– it brings back ideas that have laid dormant in my mmemory for a long period of time.

So when I look at a piece like this, I take pleasure in the painting itself but also in the inspiration it provides for subsequent pieces.  When this is happening, I know I’m back in rhythm and the work usually shows this.

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Rhythm of the Mountain

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on February 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I see this new piece, a 12″ by 24″ canvas, more as a meditation than a scene.  There is rhythm in the motion of the path’s ascent as well as a rhythm in the chaotic nature of the underlying texture that gives this painting its name, Rhythm of the Mountain.  As I first started painting I had every intention of inserting a tree to act as the focal point of the piece but as I progressed it became evident that it would actually pull away from the meditative simplicity of the barren landscape.  The sun/moon becomes the central figure here and the mountain pass leads the eye upward to it.

I am drawn to the simplicity of this piece.  It has a dramatic calmness to it, like the actor delivering a soliloquy who takes a dramatic pause and in that moment there hangs all that has come before alongside the potential of what is to come, held up for the audience to ponder in the silence of that pause.  Empty yet full.

I mentioned the texture of this piece and it plays a central role here.  It has ribbons of gesso that spin  across the canvas which in the sky actually dictated how I was to paint it.  It gives this piece a greater depth and this would be a much different painting without it.

I can’t say if this will appeal to everyone but that’s something I can’t worry about.  The important thing is in satisfying something inside myself and hoping that others recognize that same thing within themselves and identify with it.  Hopefully, this piece will strike an inner chord with others.

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Dissolve

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on February 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This painting called Dissolve is another in the series I’ve been working in for the past few months.  This 24″ by 36″ piece is based very much on the same format as Like Sugar In Water, which I displayed here several days back.  Both paintings grow from the bottom where they begin in structured blocks of color.  The path cuts through, rising from the geometry of the fields up to a plain that flattens out.  The path continues by the red-roofed house and is not seen again as it enters the broad yellow field that runs to the horizon.  The path’s upward movement is continued in  the spreading bare limbs of the distant tree which merges into the broken mosaic of the sky.

It’s a simple concept and a simple composition, dependent on the complexity of the color and the placement of the elements in order to transmit feeling and emotion.  These simpler compositions, when done so that they work well, are often very potent purveyors of feeling and are among my persoanl favorites.  The stripped down nature of the scene takes away all distractions and centers the essence of the work in the willing viewer’s eyes, making it very accessible to those who connect with it.  And that is much of what I hope for my work- to create work that stirs strong emotion within a seeming;ly simple context.

Maybe there’s more to it than this.  I can’t be sure if my thoughts and interpretations are any more valid than those of a first-time viewer.  That’s the great thing about art– there are no absolutes.  It’s also the thing about art that scares a lot of people.  Many people fear the gray areas of this world, of which there are many,  and desire absolute belief and knowledge in all aspects of their lives.   But art most often  lives in the ambiguity, the uncertainty,  of those gray areas and that can be unsettling to some. 

 Dissolve seems absolute and certain at first glance but is all about the gray areas of our world and our belief.  At least as I see it…

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Like Sugar In Water

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on February 15, 2011| 4 Comments »

I call this painting Like Sugar In Water.  It is a continuation of the group of paintings that I have been working on over the past few months and is by far the largest of the series at 36″ by 60″.   The larger scale gives the piece a real sense of  space and depth that I think carries the work.

This painting evolved in a much different way than I originally thought it might.  As I started, I first saw this as being a piece about movement and saw a large tree bowing in the  gusting wind with leaves being released out into the large space created by the sky, which had its own sense of motion in the brushwork.  But as the sky came into being it changed and I found myself sensing a much different feel for this piece.  It became quieter and the sky didn’t feel frantic but rather had a sense of light breaking into particles and quietly dissolving into a multitude of colors.   Because of this change, the central figure in the painting, the tree, changed for me.  It had to have a calmness but it had to have a different function than my typical red tree.  Here I saw it as a connection between the landscape and the sky, like a conduit of energy from the earth upward.  It would have to be less dominate than my typical red tree.

At this point I set this piece aside so that I could fully consider it.  I really felt that the landscape and the sky were strong and could stand on their own but I wanted to make sure in my own mind.  So I went to work on other work and kept an eye on this piece, continually looking at it and pondering what lay in store for it.  Finally, after a couple of weeks, I decided it was time to let this painting complete its metamorphosis.  I had come to see the tree as being bare of leaves with the branches stretching up into the sky, almost dissolving into the particles of the sky. This feeling of dissolving is carried through in this piece by the landscape as well.  I see it in the road that runs through the structured geometric pattern of the field of the foreground, moving up through the spreading branches of the tree and into the breaking sky. 

I see the red chair here, not as I often do as a symbol of memory or of the dead, but as a symbol of the temporary nature of our existence here, living as we do between the solidness of the earth beneath our feet and the particulate nature of the heavens above our heads.  This is reflected in the title as well.  Perhaps the universe is like a large body of water and we are but a bit of sugar.

I don’t know about that.  But I do that I think that there is a lot to be found in this piece and I find myself pondering over it quite often,  taking in whatever message there is in it.

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Painting In Series

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on February 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

The new work I’ve been showing over the past few monthes has maintained a similarity in the color and in the way they are painted.  I often switch back and forth between the two distinct styles I maintain in my work-  the reductive style which is very fluid and transparent  and is about adding paint then taking it away, as though carving the image from the paint, and the additive which is about building layers of paint upon layers of paint to form the image- but when I get in a certain groove where I feel one style is clicking in sync with my mind I will stay in that style for a while, creating a series of paintings that have unmistakable similarities.

I’ve talked about this here before, explaining that one of the benefits of staying in a series is that it reduces the number of conscious decisions, allowing me to focus not on decisions of color selection or composition but rather on qualityand depth of color and brushstrokes.  It also allows me to almost paint without conscious thought, allowing other parts of the mind to enter the equation, which creates a subtlety and nuance that makes each piece distinctive.

Taking away these decisions simply makes the flow of the painting smoother, like a piece of music in the hands of a musician after monthes of rehearsal.  I’ve often thought of my paintings as rehearsals in a way, each often a fine tuning from the last.  Actually, I think performance is the better term.  Each is complete within itself, each stroke being done with the intent of that piece alone, like a note being played for the beauty of its tone at that moment, not as a rehearsal for a later performance.

I am usually pretty excited by the work I do when I am am painting in series.  If not, I wouldn’t be able to stay in the groove long and wwould move on.  Maintaining my own excitement is pretty important for my work, and I think for most artists.  I don’t know where I heard it  but the saying goes that a bored artist makes boring work.  I have certainly found that to be true.  Though there are always exceptions to the rule, if a piece moves or excites me in some way it generally will do the same for others.  If I am not moved by a piece then I know it should not leave the studio.  Simple as that.

So far that has been a good rule to follow…

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Regal Bearing

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on February 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I call this new piece Regal Bearing.  It’s 30″ square and is a continuation of the style and color of much of my recent work.

I find myself viewing this not as a landscape but as a piece of portraiture.  There’s a seense of orderliness and formality in the composition that brings this sense of a head and shoulders pose to mind.  When I look at this I see the red tree as the head atop the neck formed by the mound which is emerging from shoulders formed by the fields.  I see this as a portrait of a monarch from the 19th century dressed in grand military regalia, the field comprised of alternating rows creating a sense of a sash or epaulets.  It’s this visualization that forms the title.

There is often a personification of the red tree in my work but this is perhaps as overt an example as I have done.  I’m sure there are other ways of seeing this painting but for me I only see that  image of a ruler who has the bearing that puts forth the belief that it is both his right and his responsibility to lord over a people and a land.  Here, the landscape that extends beyond the tree is its realm.

I don’t see this as a glorification of a system based on monarchies.  I am certainly no fan of ruling classes.  Rather, I think it is about the belief in oneself and the certainty of ones own place in the world that I see in this piece.  It is something that I  see in some folks who are far from being royalty.  Call it what you will, confidence or pride or something else.

Whatever the case, I see strength and resolve in this painting that appeals to me…

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Prism

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on February 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

I wasn’t going to show this.  Part of being an artist is in creating and maintaining a certain facade,  playing up the more favorable facets of one’s personal prism.  To show something that might be perceived as contrary to this nurtured persona is always a risk, at least in an intellectual sense.  People don’t always want to know anything beyond the single dimension they might know and to offer more than that imperils their regard for even that single dimension. 

For instance,  several years back I did a series of dark figures that I called the Outlaw series.  Whem they were hung at my annual show, the gallery asked for a separate statement to explain these figures out of the fear that my collectors would think that this was the new direction that my work had headed, instead of it  merely being another view of those same emotions that had created the more calm and placid work that they recognized and were drawn to.  I did, in fact, have several folks ask if this was the new direction and some even asked me to promise that it was not.  I tried to explain that this was not new but merely a different part of the same person.  Another facet on the prism.

I’m not sure they were convinced.

It was painted yesterday in about ten minutes, without much thought or care.  It’s about 16″ by 20″ and painted with one large brush.   Over the years I have periodically dashed off these characters,  calling them my angry pictures.  I am not necessarily angry when I paint these figures.  Perhaps frustrated or anxious. I don’t really know.

 I have had these guys in me since I was child and periodically they emerge.  I don’t know if they serve a purpose or what part of myself, if any,  they represent.  I always feel a bit of release after they are on the surface and perhaps that is the purpose.  They usually go into a sort of file and aren’t often seen after that.  Occasionally, I will pull them out and be slightly baffled by them and very seldom do I show them to anyone. 

 But I felt that I would show a bit more of the prism today.  They don’t change the  visble light coming from the other facets.  It comes from the same source but out in a different manner.

At least, I think so.

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Recent Work

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on February 6, 2011| 3 Comments »

This is a painting that I started in December and on which I finally put the finishing touches just a week or so ago.  It’s a large piece, a 20″ tall by 60″ wide canvas, that really accentuates the panoramic aspect, one that I enjoy working in.  I really was at a standstill on this piece at one point, really savoring the composition and the sky but not knowing how to bring it to completion that fit with where it was at that point.

But it came.

I’ve really been enjoying this sort of groove I’ve fallen in over tha last month or so, feeling the tedium of painting the skies growing, with the thousands of small strokes slowly building to a sort of crescendo.  There’s been a common thread of color running through this work, including a very large 36″ by 60″ painting that I am working on now.  The sky is comprised of dozens of different shades of blue and green and yellow all over deeper violets and reds that peek through  in tiny almost unseen glimpses.  To me, these pieces are really about the light of the sky pulling out the dark colors of the ground below, creating a tension between the light and dark that gives the piece the emotion it emits. 

For me, this emotion goes back and forth between joyous, almost triumphantly defiant, and a bit sad, as though the leaves are moments slipping away, opportunites lost.  Perhaps it is both.  Whatever the case, I find myself liking this piece a lot, looking at it quite often as it sits over the fireplace in the studio.  Now to find a title…

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