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“The Interpenetration of Realities”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Sea of the Six Moons– At West End Gallery

What we, thanks to Jung, call “synchronicity” (coincidence on steroids), Buddhists have long known as “the interpenetration of realities.” Whether it’s a natural law of sorts or simply evidence of mathematical inevitability (an infinite number of monkeys locked up with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing Hamlet, not to mention Tarzan of the Apes), it seems to be as real as it is eerie.

-Tom Robbins, The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)

I came across the passage from author Tom Robbins, who died in February at the age of 92, while doing some research. One phrase from it, “the interpenetration of realities,” really jumped out at me. I am not ready to tell you what I was researching or why the phrase struck me as it did. That will be forthcoming and self-evident in the coming weeks.

But I will say that, for some reason, it reminded me of a favorite song, That’s the Way the World Goes Round, from the late John Prine. I think it has something to do with the constancy of the inevitabilities of life– the sun coming up and the sun going down, the tide coming in and the tide going out, the joy and sorrow that comes with living and dying, and so on. They all come to us at some point while this old world just keeps turning round.

That doesn’t really answer anything about the interpenetration of realities, does it? All I’ll say is that it made me wonder if the rhythms of our life cycles are modulated by other dimensions or worlds of reality that we may never know. Do they serve as a sort of unseen natural force, much like gravity, that keeps on track?

I don’t know. But rereading that just now makes me wonder if there was a little something extra in my coffee this morning.

I think I’ll just leave it there for now and share the song with the promise that I will sometime soon explain how the interpenetration of realities comes into play. Well, that is if I don’t forget…

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A Lifetime of Effort…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Art is a human product, a human secretion; it is our body that sweats the beauty of our works.

–Émile Zola, Le Moment Artistique (1868)

Calvin and Hobbes from artist Bill Watterson has long been a favorite comic strip of mine. Though the strip ended its run in 1995, it is still rerun daily in newspapers around the country. The strip above was rerun yesterday and while Calvin’s sales spiel made me chuckle, it also reminded me of a blog entry from back in early 2009. It concerns the question of how long it takes to finish a painting, a question that has been asked of me many, many times at openings and gallery talks. I usually tell the story of a commission I did for a Finnish diplomat a number of years back and how the work I did on that piece became the template or rehearsal for a larger piece soon after.

The answer that I gave in 2009 still pretty much applies although I have noticed that in recent years that it is taking me longer to finish paintings. The processes I employ in my work have evolved, sometimes gaining steps that were not in place in the earlier years. I also tend to dwell on each piece a little longer now and am more apt to set them aside so that I can simply consider them before forging ahead. But there’s even a variable in that– sometimes the energy and direction of a piece is so determined that there is a danger in losing its momentum by setting it aside.

So, there is no one answer to the question. Here’s what I wrote in 2009:

I am asked this question at every opening and gallery talk:  How long does it takes to finish a painting?

Though it’s a question that I’ve answered a thousand times, I still have to stop and think about my answer.

You see, there are so many variables in my painting technique at different times that sometimes the actual process can be much longer or shorter on any given painting. Sometimes I can toil over a piece, every bit of the process requiring time and thought. There may be much time spent just looking at the piece trying to figure out where the next line or stroke goes, trying to weigh each move. Then there are times when the painting drops out effortlessly and I’ll look up after a very short time and realize that it’s almost complete. Any more moves from me and the piece would be diminished.

I often cite an example from a number of years ago. I had been working on a series of paintings, working with a particular color and compositional form. Over the course of a month, I did several very similar paintings in several different sizes from very small up to a fairly large version. Each had a very distinct and unique appearance and feel but the technique and color were done in very much the same way.

One morning at the end of this monthlong period, I got up early and was in the studio at 5 AM. I had a very large panel, 42″ by 46″ if I am not mistaken, already prepared and pulled it out.

Immediately, I started on the panel. Every move, every decision was the result of the previous versions of this painting I had executed over the past month. I was painting solely on muscle memory and not on a conscious decision-making thought process. I was painting very fast, with total focus, and I remember it as being a total whirl. The piece always seemed near to disaster. On an edge.  But having done this for a month I trusted every move and forced through potential problems.

Suddenly, it was done. I looked over at the clock and realized it had only been two hours. I hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Surely, there must be so much more to do.

But it was done. Complete.

It was fully realized and full of feeling and great rhythm. I framed the piece and a few weeks later I took it to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA with a number of other new pieces. This painting found a new home within hours of arriving at the gallery.

I realized at that point that every version of that painting was a separate performance, a virtual rehearsal for that particular painting.  I had choreographed every move in advance, and it was just a matter of the having that right moment when plan and performance converged.

It had taken a mere two hours, but it was really painted over the course of hundreds of hours.

And perhaps many years of painting, listening, reading, and observing before that.

I hope you can see why I always have to think about this question…

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Painting Demo/ Solo Show/West End Gallery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Work in Progress 2025

If you’re a painter, you are not alone. There’s no way to be alone. You think and you care and you’re with all the people who care. You think you care and you’re with all the people who care, including the young people who don’t know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew this, Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much.

–Franz Kline, Evergreen Review interview, 1958

Just taking a moment to announce the dates for two upcoming events at the West End Gallery in Corning.

The first is for my annual solo exhibit at the gallery. I have normally had my solo show at the West End Gallery in July. This created a short turnaround between my annual June show at the Principle Gallery and the July show at the West End which was very stressful. It has become more and more difficult as I have aged and my processes evolve. By that, I mean it simply takes longer to complete each painting. As a result, we have moved this year’s West End Gallery show– my 24th solo effort there— to the autumn.  The 2025 exhibit will open on Friday, October 17 and run until November 13. The date for the accompanying Gallery Talk will be announced later, closer to the show opening.

The second announced date is much sooner and for something I seldom do for a variety of reasons. However, after being asked for a number of years, I will be doing a painting demonstration at the West End Gallery in a little over two weeks, on Saturday, April 26. My demo begins at 10 AM and runs to about 12 noon or thereabouts.

This event is being held in conjunction with the Arts in Bloom Art Trail of Chemung and Steuben County which involves open tours of artists’ studios and events such as this in the area’s art galleries. Painter extraordinaire Trish Coonrod will also be giving a demonstration at the same time. We will both be in the Upstairs Gallery so if you’re interested it serves up a nice two-fer. A chance to witness two starkly different processes.

As I said, I seldom do these demos. However, I felt that it was important, with what looks to be a challenging year for the artists and galleries, to do all I could do to support the gallery that has been my home for 30 years now.

It’s definitely out of my comfort zone and I am more than a little self-conscious about painting in front of people. I think it’s partly because, being self-taught, I don’t necessarily paint in a traditional manner. It’s not always flashy and fast. I also worry that someone will be there only when the painting is in one of the flat and unflattering stages that almost all my paintings go through.

But despite my apprehensions, I am certain it will come off well. Things usually do okay when I am this nervous.

I know it’s early in the day, but if you’re interested, please stop in at the West End Gallery on Saturday, April 26 to watch and chat for a bit. It might be fun. No kibitzing though!

Here’s a time-lapse video from 2011 that shows the stages some of my work goes through on the way to being a painting.

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Bring the Light

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Between Order and Chaos– At the Principle Gallery

Most people live in almost total darkness… people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which — if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can define — you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you. You are being used in the way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function. It is impersonal. This force which you didn’t ask for, and this destiny which you must accept, is also your responsibility. And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only, you know, your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope — because only an artist can tell, and only artists have told since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad. Hymns don’t do this, churches really cannot do it. The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you. You can only have it by letting it go. You can only take if you are prepared to give, and giving is not an investment. It is not a day at the bargain counter. It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go — everything, and this forever, forever.

–James Baldwin, The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity talk, 1962

Yesterday’s post was about art enduring times of strife and repression. Today, I am offering a snippet from a 1962 talk author James Baldwin gave at the Community Church in NYC in which he spoke of the responsibility of art and artists to humanity, one in which they were required to reveal and share the truth of our common experience as humans. This would serve as a clarifying light that would diminish the darkness that surrounds us.

I will note here that Baldwin’s talk took place at the height of the Cold War, only weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The war in Viet Nam was ramping up and the struggle for Civil Rights was at a bitter juncture at that same time. It was a dark and scary point in time.

In the here and now, I think we can relate to that feeling of impending darkness.

It is a time in which art– and by art, I include all forms of art: literature and poetry, visual arts, music, dance, theater, etc. — is a necessity. Not as diversion or distraction. But for its ability to reflect the truth and gravity of the moment and cast a bright light against the darkness.

It is a light that allows us to see we have not been alone in the dark as we had feared. It also lets us clearly see the struggle ahead that will require action and sacrifice. And knowing these things focuses our attention which has a calming, centering effect. 

It is then that blind fear is often replaced with clear-eyed courage.

Saul Bellow said a similar thing in a Paris Review interview:

Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, in the eye of the storm… Art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

Like Baldwin’s talk, Bellow’s interview took place in 1962 when the world was in crisis. It was a time that made clear that art was a necessity. It illuminated the issues and brought a focus that, in many ways, swayed public opinion that in many ways shaped the future.

It was a floodlight in the dark. 

Though it is a different time with different circumstances and a world much changed via technology, we’re at a similar point in history today. Art remains a necessity in bringing the light. 

Art will bring the light, people.

Let us make sure we focus so that we may see and hear what it is saying.

 

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Art Endures

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Steadying Light– At the West End Gallery

But hell can endure for only a limited period and life will begin again one day. History may perhaps have an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it, in the image of what we henceforth know to be true. Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.

–Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951)

With the hope that this doesn’t turn into an extended rant, let me point out that the hell that Camus refers to in the passage above from his book, The Rebel, is one created by authoritarian governments. As he puts it:

Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists. In the long run, therefore, art in our revolutionary societies must die. But then the revolution will have lived its allotted span. Each time that the revolution kills in a man the artist that he might have been, it attenuates itself a little more. If, finally, the conquerors succeed in moulding the world according to their laws, it will not prove that quality is king but that this world is hell.

Authoritarians come to power through destructive means and not having the ability to create or govern, stifle free thought, art, and the artistic impulse– anything that might in any way question their right to power. As a result, art dies which creates, in effect, a hell on earth. But he adds that each time they kill the artistic impulse, they weaken their authority, bringing their hellish reign closer to its inevitable end. As Camus writes: But hell can endure for only a limited period and life will begin again one day.

I guess my point here is a simple one– Art Endures. It is the realm of thought, feeling, and creation that cannot be suppressed for long because it is an innate and indomitable part of humanity, more so than the rule of any king or tyrant. 

Like a buried seed, it persistently seeks light and air.

So, though the days may seem dark and hellish, that seed is planted, always there, growing unseen beneath the surface. Waiting to emerge once more.

Art endures. And with it, our humanity and hope.

Here’s a favorite song from Richard Thompson. This is a duet with the great Bonnie Raitt of his The Dimming of the Day, that I haven’t shared here before.

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Miró Blues, Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Blue II– Joan Miró

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The picture should be fecund. It must bring a world to birth.

-Joan Miró

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The thought behind these words from Joan Miró is one that I often keep in mind. Art succeeds when it creates its own reality, when it brings a world to birth in the mind of those who behold it. The artist’s own belief in the reality of that new world is a large determinant in whether this birth takes place.

For myself, I almost always feel like I am taken to a different world, one as real as the world I inhabit in my human skin, by whatever is on the surface before me.

That is, when it works. Sometimes it is difficult to climb into that new world and that new reality that wants to be born on the surface is nothing more than a lifeless mishmash of paint blotches and lines. That is frustrating, to say the least.

But when it works, it is an easy glide into that new world with its own atmosphere and landscape, so familiar yet new and fresh in the nose and to the eye. It’s a thrill just to be in there for that time when taking on its lifeform.

Joan Miró (1893-1983) did such a thing with such ease. I am showing his Blue triptych from 1961 today. I find it interesting how intimate and alive they feel as single images on a screen where their scale fades away. These could easily be small paintings. But when you see them as they are in the two photos below, you can see their size and how it magnifies their lifeforce.

They are a world unto themselves.

Take a look for yourself. I have also included a video of Dave Brubeck’s Bluette at the very bottom of the page that is played over a slideshow of Miró’s work. As Brubeck fans know, he sometimes employed Miró’s work in his own as well as on his album covers. All in all, just plain good stuff…

Didn’t feel like writing this morning and wanted to start out the week with something not troubling my mind. Something that is more about art, something that perhaps inspires or at least eases the mind. Something to make me feel fecund, to use Miró’s term. This post is from five years ago and felt good this morning, especially with the Dave Brubeck accompaniment to Miró’s paintings.

 

Blue I- Joan Miró

Blue III- Joan Miró

 

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Yellow and Blue, a la Rothko

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 2, 2025| 1 Comment »

Mark Rothko –Untitled (Yellow and Blue) 1954

“You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”

― Mark Rothko, 1956 Interview with Selden Rodman

I used a representation yesterday of the colors of the flag of the Ukraine that was actually a detail, shown above, taken from the large Mark Rothko painting shown at the top. I had used this detail before in a post around this time in 2022, one which drew a lot of attention yesterday. Enough so that I went back to check out that post which I am sharing again today as the quotes in that post from Rothko speak so clearly to a lot of things that I have been focusing on recently, on both this blog and in my work.

And since it is Sunday, I am also sharing some Sunday Morning Music at the bottom. In light of what is taking place in this country, the calming effect of Gnossienne No. 1 from Erik Satie seems like the right choice to accompany Rothko as Satie’s work followed similar paths of deep expression and silences. The version I am sharing is a mesmerizing performance from celebrated Finnish guitarist Otto Tolonen.

Busy morning ahead with painting and plowing from what I hope is the last snowfall of this winter. But I thought I would share a Mark Rothko painting (the image at the top is only a detail of its lower section- the whole painting is shown here on the left) and a video on it from Sotheby’s auction house (where it sold for $46.5 million in 2015) along with several Rothko quotes.

Rothko (1903 -1970) was a big influence on my early work. The idea of expressing the big human emotions through simplified forms and color really spoke to me because I never looked at painting as a craft but more as a means to express those forms of emotion that well up inside because they are sometimes too difficult to express in words and voices.

Another aspect that attracts me to Rothko is that he, like Kandinsky, was often eloquent in speaking about his work and art in general. And in those words I found that my own already developed perspectives often largely meshed with and echoed both of these artists’ words and views.

For example, in the quote below the idea that a picture lives by companionship is one that is central to my work.

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.”

Here a few more that also speak to me, things I have often written about here, about the need of emotional expression in art and of the searching for silence.

“It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.”

“When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.”

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Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 18, 2025| 2 Comments »

Passing Through Blue– At West End Gallery

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine.

—A Summer’s Evening Meditation, Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825)

I had come across the short verse, taken from a much longer 1773 poem, above a few months ago and set it aside with the intent of using it in a blogpost at some point. I wasn’t sure how to use it or if what I was reading in it was the intent of the poet.

This raised a whole bunch of questions, beginning with: Does the author’s intent matter in what I was seeing in her words? Or does what I see in one of my paintings matter in how others see it? Is someone’s else interpretation of it equally valid even if it differs greatly from my own? 

Some tough ones there.

I often use quotes and short passages from literature to initiate a post. While I try to discover their original context and meaning and adhere somewhat to it with my use, I take liberties in my interpretation. I may read something into them that was not part of the original intent, just like you may look at a painting of mine and see something that speaks something to you that is different from or beyond what I saw in it. Something that speaks in a personal language that only you know, something drawn from your own life experiences and sensations.

I think it’s all appropriate so long as the differing interpretation is not employed as justification for anything harmful or denigrating to others. I worry sometimes about that, more so with the writing here than with my painting. Sometimes, in trying to not be too specific on a subject, I recognize the rhetoric of what I have written might be equally applied by those who have a viewpoint that is in complete opposition to what I meant. For example, the definitions of freedom or revolution I write about might not be the same as someone else.

And the vice versa applies here.  I check for the original meaning and context because many years ago I used a quote without checking. It’s been long enough that I can’t remember the subject of the quote or from where it came. Whatever it was, it seemed to serve what I wanted to say. I later found out from a reader that its original meaning was the complete antithesis of what I read into it and was trying to convey in the post, that it came from a person associated with hate groups and was meant to advocate some form of white supremacy.

I was mortified and deleted the post immediately. Since then, I try to find the context of anything I use.

But for the most part, the meaning and purpose one takes from a piece of writing, music, or art is theirs alone. I have often told the story of a lady approaching me at an opening. We stood before a painting of mine that was simple composition, sections of two tree trunks that intertwined around each other as they bisected the painting’s surface from bottom to top. I saw in it a certain human sensuality, one that spoke about how we depend on the assistance and affection of others. She hated the painting and let me know that she saw nothing but the subjugation of women and male dominance in it.

I was stunned. I didn’t see anything like that in that piece before she spoke. I saw it after even if it still didn’t register fully in the way she saw it. But I could see what she was seeing.

I didn’t try to tear down her viewpoint or justify my own. No matter how hard I might try to assure her that it was never intended that way, what she saw was what she saw. Her reading of it was as valid as my own. And I let her know that.

And I guess that’s the way it should be, in most cases. You do what you do, you try to express what you are as a human in a way that you hope comes across clearly to others and that whatever you do, it doesn’t harm or be used to harm others. For the most part, it works out okay. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

You just hope you’re not too badly misunderstood. Or worse than that, not heard at all.

Here’s song on that subject. It’s a fine interpretation of a favorite Animals‘ song, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood from Cyndi Lauper. Good stuff.

At least, that’s the way I see it…

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Daytripper

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Daytripper– At West End Gallery

The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.

–John W. Gardner, Living, Leading, and the American Dream, 2003

This is another new Little Gem that is now at the West End Gallery for their annual exhibit of small works. This piece really hit me in a visceral way when it was done. It exuded a lot of different things that all hit the mark for me. The color was right on with its mood, tone, and temperature harmonizing perfectly. The shapes and forms felt right in relation to each another and the small figure in the foreground added great depth to the scene.

There was a lot packed into this very small painting. Yet, I struggled with what it was saying to me. The wildfires in LA were burning at the time and I thought that with its extra warm coloration it might be saying something about fleeing the heat and flames.

But that didn’t feel right. The nature of the tiny figure was a nagging question for me. Was it fleeing the city’s hustle and bustle? Or was it returning from the city to its home in a cooler, calmer remote place? I couldn’t answer that definitively, but I loved the ambiguity. It didn’t really matter whether the figure was  seeking diversion in the heat of the city or in the cool of the country. The point I saw was that it was seeking something different, if only to provide a contrast to what it experienced every other day.

The daytripper, of course. 

I looked for a short quote or passage that somewhat summed up what I was seeing here and came across this short passage from a posthumously published book the late John W. Gardner (1912-2002) who had served as the U.S. Secretary of Heath, Education, and Welfare under LBJ. I wasn’t sure it spoke directly to this painting, but it spoke to something that had been on my mind, something that seemed to manifest itself in recent times.

It was this idea that we have become a country that leans into constant diversion, that we seek easy, instant, and short-lived gratification in lieu of working or sacrificing for something that would more deeply satisfy our needs and desires. Something that would benefit us in a lasting manner. It’s a tendency that has been exploited by the powerful and influential for their own benefit

It is a hard offer to resist. We all want things to come easy., with little thought or effort. on pour part. And after being exposed to easy diversion for so long, we expect and demand it. We no longer value the day trip– we expect it each and every day.

It’s all an illusion. And a dangerous one at that. We have lost that muscle memory of the need for work and sacrifice for something greater, something more lasting.  We have exchanged that ability for shiny trinkets. 

I know that sounds much like the rants of an old codger at the local diner crowing about how things were so much better back in the day. To be honest, it wasn’t any better. We still wanted everything to be easy and thoughtless. That desire just wasn’t being as fully exploited as it is now. 

I’m going to stop now because I can’t fully link that thought to the painting outside of saying that we need diversion and the occasional day trip. But it should remain that– a day trip. Not a life filled with diversion that keeps us from attending to the real needs of ourselves and others. We need to pay attention, to look away from the shiny and easy a little more often. 

Divert ourselves not with the meaningless, but with things that feel our souls. 

And I think John W. Gardner was correct in believing that most people today would be willing to shuck constant diversion in order to have something worth working or fighting for. 

Maybe that tiny figure is turning its back on the diversions presented to it in order to seek its purpose? Or maybe the painting itself is a diversion?

I don’t know.

But like I wrote earlier, this little painting has a lot of things packed into it. 

Here’s the song that gave the title to this little guy, Daytripper. I am sharing both the Beatles’ original along with a wonderful version from fingerpicking wiz Tommy Emmanuelle that also includes Lady Madonna from the Beatles. If you like watching a master guitarist play, this is a must see.

A little diversion, yes, but it feeds the soul. Or so I think.

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Balance/ Wyeth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Andrew Wyeth-That Gentleman

It’s all in how you arrange the thing… the careful balance of the design is the motion.

-Andrew Wyeth

I am running a bit late this morning but wanted to share the post below from several years ago, to feature the paintings of Andrew Wyeth but to also highlight the importance of balance in any work of art. I have lately been trying to reconcile the desire to have large fields of color within my work that will have instant visual impact with the need to also have balance and a sense of motion for the eye within the piece, even in pieces that depict stark stillness. It’s one of those esoteric conundrums in every piece of work with an answer that is only known after the fact– you don’t know what it is until you see it and even then, you don’t know how you got there. 

It’s something I can’t easily explain, if at all. But for this morning it serves as an excuse to look at some wonderful Wyeth pieces.

I recently read this quote from the late Andrew Wyeth then looked over a large group of his work, examining each piece with these words in mind. I could really see the importance of the placement of the elements in his work, how it was the characteristic that truly defined his work. It was this that gave his work a poetic feel.

His use of negative space is masterful, the empty areas taking on an important role in the overall feel of the work. Placing the central character, the focal point of the picture, in any in any other spot would change the whole piece, would make it feel less.

It would feel off balance, at least in the form that Wyeth defined it. That balance is his signature.

And I think that is true for many artists. This idea of balance and motion makes up the artist’s eye. Every artist has a slightly different way of seeing things which creates their own unique visual voice.

Myself, when I feel stuck or blocked or feel that I have painted myself into a creative dead end, I look back at older work. It is often the balance and motion with the composition that affect me the most. It serves as a reminder to not lose sight of this idea of balance, to not focus too  much on other parts of the painting that, while important, may not have as much effect on the overall impact of the piece.

Balance in the design creates motion. Good advice from Mr. Wyeth.

 

 

 

Andrew Wyeth– Spring Fed,1967

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