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Archive for the ‘Technique/History’ Category

Compromise?

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on February 3, 2010| 2 Comments »

I came across this painting from seven or eight years back,  an 18″ by 26″ piece titled Call of Freedom.  It was quite a different look for my work at the time with its simple design of two two blocks of colors playing off one another.  It may not visible in this photo of the piece, but there was a hint of purple through the bottom block of color that really enhanced the piece for me.

The tree was put in at the last moment.  After I had completed the two blocks, I sat this aside for quite awhile, looking at it in the studio, trying to determine if it held together just as it was.  Was there enough there — color, texture, contrast– to hold my interest, to make me want to continue looking.

This was a tough one for me.  It met all my criteria.  It held my eye.  Had meaning for me.  But I still wasn’t sure it would hold for others.  So I hesitatingly put the tree in place, almost as a compromise.

The tree changed the dynamic somewhat, brought everything closer, but it still allowed the blocks to dominate.  To tell their part of story, so to speak.  It worked without altering my first impression of what I saw in the piece and created an “in” into the painting for others.

This might be considered a compromise.  I don’t know.  For me, it’s about coming across that space between the painting and the viewer and connecting in some way, communicating something I might not be able to define.  So long as it doesn’t alter the feeling or the message I get from the painting, it’s not a compromise but an opportunity for more engagement.  As a result, I often think of this piece as where I want my work to be in the long run.

Is it compromise?  I don’t know.  I don’t care.

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Intangible

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged on January 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’ve been scanning some slides of old work, putting them into a more accessible digital form.  It’s been interesting, seeing a lot of the older work, much I haven’t seen in many years.  It’s enlightening to see the changes in the work and inspiring when I come across pieces where I remember what I was going for in the painting, the concept behind the work.  Sometimes it’s an idea that I’ve put aside at that time, to be used later but end up completely forgetting.  Seeing them anew brings that idea back to life but years later with a different base of knowledge to work with it.

Other times I come across pieces that I remember so well for the feeling they produced while painting them and the feeling of the final product.  This is one such piece, called Neighbors, that is from about 14 years back.  It’s a painting that I remember painting so well.  It was at a time when I was still forming a lot of the technique that became staples of my work and this piece seemed to come together so well.  There was something very delicate in the way I painted this, a lighter touch with the brush.  I don’t know if it’s visible but I feel it and remember it.

There’s also a certain nostalgic feel to this piece that I remember very well.  The location of this scene is not representative of any place I’ve known but strikes a very reactive chord within me as though it is an icon that is representative of something important within me but is there without my knowledge, laying dormant.

It’s an unusual, more complex reaction to a simple, straightforward painting than I would expect.  It makes me wonder what it is that makes me react this way and if this is the same emotional trigger that makes certain pieces raise similar reactions in other people.  What is this intangible?

I’ll have to think on that for a while…

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Raise Your Eyes

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on January 11, 2010| 3 Comments »

This is my first complete piece of 2010,  a 30″ wide by 40″ high painting that is tentatively titled Raise Your Eyes.  It’s a continuation, of sorts, of my Red Roof series.  Instead of focusing on doorless and windowless structures, like many of the other pieces in this series, this painting is actually centered around the multitude of windows and doors present.

It creates very much the same feeling, for me, as the earlier doorless pieces, of solitude and maybe even a bit of alienation within an inhabited space.  However, there’s more of a busy feeling as though the windows were actually eyes.  It’s that feeling of being on a busy street yet feeling completely anonymous.  That’s what I wanted to make the lone tree stand out a bit more as the central voice in this painting, as it stands in relation to the sun.

I painted this with  larger brushes than I normally use for this type of painting.  It gives the structures and their doors and windows a little rougher, less precise and fussy appearance.  It creates a rhythm and motion of its own within the picture.

The central tree is also a bit against type for my work.  It’s not the red tree you might normally see.  I chose to go with a green leafed tree for this piece, to counter the reds of the roofs.  Again, it makes it stand out a bit more

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this and there are a lot of things that I like about this piece.  The size and the warmth of the colors makes it  a pretty dynamic piece to view.  Hopefully, this is a good start to a good year of painting…

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Arthur Dove

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Influences, Technique/History, tagged , , , on January 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

When I was first starting to paint, one of the painters that I admired when I first ran across his work was the Modernist painter of the early 20th century, Arthur Dove.  As I was beginning to form my own visual vocabulary, I found many similarities in how Dove and I represented certain elements in our paintings. This gave me a feeling that I may be following the right path and gave me a little more certainty and confidence in my own work.  I was also drawn by the duality in his work between the abstract and the representational.  There was always the sense that you were looking at something recognizable and familiar even when there was definite abstraction present.  This was something I have aspired for in my own work.

I didn’t know much about the man but was also pleased when I found that he was from the Finger Lakes region of NY  and had been educated just up the road at Cornell.  No big deal, obviously, but it gave me an insight into the influence of the local landscape in his work and his eye that I could compare to my own.

One of the factors in being self-taught for me, was in finding an artist that I could identify with , who seemed to have a similar feel for how things would translate in different media.  I am surprised, even today, how much of my early work resembles some Dove pieces that I have only seen recently for the first time.

I can’t say I loved all of Dove’s work.  I don’t know if anybody can say that about any other human if their work fully represents them.  But I do admire the spirit and feeling of his work and know my work is better for it.

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Back in Rhythm

Posted in Influences, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on January 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m back to painting after a hiatus of about five weeks, one of the longest periods I’ve went without lifting a brush in the past fifteen years.  I really felt it was necessary at this point to just step back and take a pause.  Take a deep breath and let things build back up inside.

The last few days I’ve been working on a new piece that is a continuation of the Red Roof series.  It felt pretty odd, at first, to step before the easel again after such a long period.  In fact, I kept delaying it for the days before I finally started.  There was a slight fear that it would be a struggle to find anything there and it was easy to let myself be distracted by any and everything.

But I was finally there.  I had a knot in my gut and was really unsure but, as I do with the Red Roof pieces, I started with a block of color in the bottom left corner and suddenly the anxiety began to lift.  This first block started a chain of actions that began to spread, even before I painted them, across the canvas.  All the distractions receded to a point far in the distance and I was completely in the moment there in front of the easel.

Man, it felt good.  Felt right.

There are still distractions that pull time away from this feeling.  It still is going to take several days to be in full rhythm which is, as I’ve described before, a very important aspect in my process.  The rhythm I’m talking of involves total immersion in the surface, free of all distraction.  Every action is effortless and immediate.  There’s a freeing of something in the mind that allows color and form to flow easily out.

That’s still some time away but that first hour or so with the brush in hand let me know it was there to be attained.

It felt good.

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Revving Up

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, tagged on December 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s a slow, cool Monday and I’m still trying to get my bearings.  I’m getting ready to get back to painting in the near future with some determination.  I have some ideas, some thoughts on what I want to see and feel on the surfaces.  A building excitement.

I try to to let this excitement grow to a point where I am rearing to get back at it.  It’s a little like those toy cars that have dynamos that you rev up by moving it back and forth on the ground then let go and the car dashes off on its own.  That’s how it usually works for me.  I build the excitement then let it go and hope it fires ahead on its own volition.

So excuse me, I have some revving up to tend to…

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Time of Change

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on November 29, 2009| 2 Comments »

It happens every year.

There’s a period in my year where I’m sort of on hiatus from my painting.  I’m in the studio still,  doing small tasks and tidying up.  Looking at older work.  Thinking.

Thinking about what my next cycle of work will bring.  This is a natural point for me every year, when I’m sort of  mentally spent, from a painting perspective.  I’m in need, at this point, of new energy, new inspiration.  Something that set me off in a new direction or at least a new aspect.

I always look at this point with both a little trepidation and a little excitement.  The trepidation comes from the possibility that I may be a dry well, that I’ve drained off all my creative energy and it’s not replenishing itself.  The excitement comes from knowing that this isn’t the case and soon the change I’m anticipating will be at hand.  Something new will be here that will focus my energy, drive me into the new year with new direction.

How do I know this?

Because I am still trying.  The effort put forth will bring at least a few new thoughts and these new thoughts will spark other new ideas.  New possibilities.

And the well is flowing once more.

So, while I may not be painting at the moment, I am assembling the base on which new work will be built…

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Adrift…

Posted in Biographical, Technique/History, tagged , on November 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s a funny time of the year for me as an artist.  I’m at the end of a creative cycle and have a little more time at my disposal, which is nice.  Allows me to catch up with things I too long neglect or just don’t make time for normally.

But there is a part of me that is made uneasy by this freedom to do other things.  My next shows and goals seem very far in the distance and I’m unfocused,  floundering around a bit, trying to find my bearings as to where I see my work moving.  It’s as though I am somewhat lost without having to be at work, without having an immediate goal.  Sort of like being rudderless in the waves.

This is not an unusual event for me at this time of the year.  The nice thing in having done this for a number of years now is knowing that this time, and the accompanying uneasiness,  is only temporary.  I realize that this is all part of a cycle and that I have the tools to get through this feeling of being adrift creatively and that the time will come soon when I will be once more fully engaged.

It reminds me of  something I read in the comments of a friend’s blog, when the discussion was about getting through a period of depression.  The commentator said he had learned to accept these periods of darkness as part of who he was and that it became easier once he recognized that when the black crows flew in, they were his black crows.  And eventually he knew they would leave if he could only be patient and wait them out.

I understand what he meant.

Once you know there is a cycle, you know the other side will soon come around.

And I think it’s important to have this part of the cycle, as uncomfortable as it may seem.  For me, it always seems to spur new searching and new creativity.  For that reason alone, I have learned to embrace my own particular black crows…

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Time and Tide

Posted in Influences, Painting, Technique/History, tagged , on November 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I was looking for a painting in my files and came across this piece, Time and Tide, from a few years back.  It was a piece, an 18″ by 25″ image on paper, that  I well remember but had lost a few of the details in the creases of my memory.  I had forgotten how well this piece came together and the impact it carried.  Even though it possesses many of my standard elements, such as the red roofs, it feels as though it is a bit of an anomaly.  Maybe that’s why I had to stop over this image and look for a while.

The title, of course, is a reference to the old proverb, time and tide wait for no man, which is basically saying that all men are equal in the eyes of time and nature, that no man has any greater reign than another in those realms.  We are all equally powerless before the passing of time and the movement of nature.  It’s a message that I often see in my work, or at least hope to see.

When I stop to look at pieces from the past, I’m always looking at the differences in the textures and the way I’m handling the colors from what I’m doing currently.  Sometimes I’m able to find something that I really liked in the piece, something I was using that really contributed greatly to the piece, that I was not consciously aware at the time.  It was just part of the process.  For instance, the texture in the open part of the sky in this piece was just done in the way I normally would do that at that point in time.  But as time goes on there are subtle, unthought of  changes in the process that after a time alter the whole feel.  So when I look back what I’m trying to ascertain is how a painting of mine is different and if those differences are things that I might want to revisit. Perhaps I was at a certain juncture then and moved in one direction yet there was another direction available– do I want to step back and try that other direction?

That’s the beauty of art, one can go back in time in a way and for a while defy time and tide….

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Strata Under Blue

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on November 10, 2009| 2 Comments »

9909-293 Strata Under BlueI’m still on the road today, hopefully in Asheville, North Carolina at the Haen Gallery.  It’s a beautiful space in downtown, on Biltmore Ave.  It has high ceilings and big open spaces so it really highlights larger work well.

This painting shown, Strata Under Blue, is one of the pieces that I’m delivering to the Haen.  It’s a very vibrant piece that has the boldness and strength to hang in the large space of this gallery and not be overpowered by the space, even though it’s not a huge painting.

One of the things I like about showing in a large space is that it forces you to look at your own work in a different way.  You have to be able to accentuate the points in your work that have the most strength and let them grow even more.  When I first showed at the Haen, smaller works with a lot of subtlety tended to be dwarfed on the big walls, lessening the effect that the work might hold in a smaller, more intimate space.

So I would try to direct larger work there, work that was bolder and more dominant.  It’s been a good transition thus far and I have plans for some even larger work for this gallery.

Home tomorrow…

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