Category: StudioJournal

watercolor, 30 x 17, 1999

watercolor, 21 x 29 inches, 1995

watercolor, 1997, 11 x 17

drybrush/watercolor, 1996

Painting interesting things has an inherent problem.  Those interesting things are already, well, interesting.  A tattooed woman is fascinating by herself and maybe a photo of her would be interesting as a beautiful record.  But I feel a painting needs to be more.  A beach scene may be beautiful by itself but there needs to me more than just a record of a beautiful day going on.

Some subjects make beautiful photographs but merely translating this into a painting does not give the painting reason for being.  While photography, film and painting all share the realm of the visual arts, each has its own reason.    Still photography has a power when it grabs an instant of REAL, a fleeting moment that captures something universal.  A scene of a person underwater is fascinating in a real visual sense in a real photographic sense…but does a painting of this add anything? not really.

Film introduces the dimension of time giving the media a power that is initially daunting, to painting artists, when compared with a still painting.  Film has a built-in power of time and also the strength of it being a medium of light.

The argument surfaces periodically that painting is dead…first maimed by photography and given the death cut by film.  However, this misses the point of paint.

Paint has a power all its own.  When we render something in paint each brushstroke is a personal mark.  If a piece is created from hundreds, even thousands of pigmented marks a very personal statement is being made about a subject.  The challenge as an artist is not to create a personal mark or signature stroke…but rather to create stroke that is good, build on another stroke that is good until a piece is complete.

A paintings is sum or quotient of all the things included, things left out and the manner they were brought to life.   A great painting has an unmatched ability to live on a wall and breath with life every day.  Film moving on a wall constantly would be initially fascinating and then soon annoying.  Still photography can be eternal for walls but it is perhaps more difficult because a photograph is inherently mechanical…it takes a true artist to push through or beyond the  mechanics of good photography to make something grand and personal.

Painting on the other hand is inherently personal.  The challenge is not to compete with photography or film, or to try to somehow piggy back on the other two mediums, but rather to find paints core power and use it to create something good.

Picasso is worth looking at, again and again, though the world seems divided on that thought.   Oh, his brush work is simplistic compared to Rembrandt.  His use of color can’t compare with the mastery of a Cezanne still life, a  Klimt or Matisse. Though precocious early with art skills he can’t compare with Bouguereau for beautiful rendering.  And as for gritty anguish, Scheille or Van Gogh give him a serious run for his money.

Labels are clever but, at least in the arts, they do us a disservice.  All too often we stop really looking once we have labelled, catalogued and shelved an artist.  Picasso is a cubist.  Done, boxed and packed neatly away.

In truth in Picasso’s career pure cubism was a sideline….or maybe a door to walk through to get to somewhere else.
Take one of his oft repeated subjects, the simple seated woman.  Picasso is first and foremost a storyteller.  When artists tell stories we often resort to props, drama of theatrical poses, color as mood and setting the scene, flashy brushstrokes to create energy.

Here, with his seated women, Picasso is speaking of a full world of things from simple pleasure of an afternoon, to visions of love, erotic dreams, great luminous joy and playfulness reminding us that not all art need be dark…and bitter anguish…all with a simple Seated Woman.

The brilliance is that he is telling us the stories of these women by his use of form…not with props or dramatic gestures or dredged symbolism.  He creates the endless new forms of a simple seated woman.  Some are joyous, others so sad, or dreaming rich eroticism, and others simply enjoy a quiet day.  And yet others, painted during the war, are often interpreted to show Picasso as a misogynist, but I think these speak more to the anguish during the bitter days of war in Paris.

These are not merely labelled, neat and tidy cubist experiments.  He is speaking with shapes and forms. Telling stories with the actual creation of new arm, leg and head forms.  Brilliance, well worth looking for.

That and the sheer playful creativity if it all.  Picasso is not to be shelved.  He is one of our great realistic storytellers.

Art needs a strange alchemy of several factors.   Imagination, skill, content, vision and perhaps, as some today are saying, empathy.  None of these elements by itself is enough to become Art in CAPS.

Imagination won’t suffice alone.  Without skill riding shotgun, even the most imaginative idea runs the risk of poor execution, and perhaps wasting that good idea. A loud imagination with no skill is often a naive tantrum.

Skill is not enough either.  Mastering paint skills, while important, by itself can merely seem like looking for approbation or proving one’s self by some sort of school day gold stars standards.

Content, while important, both small and grand content—quiet stories and dramatic stories—is not enough and may smell weakly sincere or rankly of propaganda.

Vision can sometimes pull a piece up to lofty heights simply because of the unique quality of the life-view the artist instilled in the piece—in spite of weak skills and plodding imagination or execution—but this is rare, not to be counted on and vision often is a wondrous soap bubble that will not last.

Empathy for your subject and, yes, empathy for your viewers is interesting as an element of art.  By empathy, do I mean all art should be kind or gentle, non-confrontational?  No, but it does mean that instead of kicking in your viewers teeth, we as artists should try to give the viewer a hand to enter our work.  Make them not the enemy initially, but give them a key or door into the subject.  Confrontational movies often do this in rough story lines by giving us a neutral normal character we can hang onto.  That character brings us into the rough story, and she may be shocked by the scene the way we are.  That is giving us an empathetic entrance into the scene.  But again, by itself this may mean kindness, consideration and may make us a polite society but does not guarantee Art.

So we need a combination of at least few of these these things.  If a piece has all five elements then it might, just might, be a masterpiece to last a few years or more.

One more thing that is important and I am not sure it is as much a part of execution of a piece as a product of the resulting art—the art needs to be relevant to our today, our NOW.  It can be big art or small but it needs to talk to live people today, engage them with the visual language we have today. If not, it is merely nostalgia for another time.

That visual language is in constant flux.  Today the paint world’s visual language seems to be heading back to appreciation of skills of rendering real things.  I think this is fabulous.  Painting a real looking figure is a wonderful skill. (From the artist’s perspective, developing these skills is intoxicating.  It is just plain fun to be able to scrub some paint around and find you have a real looking arm or leg.)

However, and this is a big however, the most relevant art today is not ignoring the masterful work created during the 20th century.  To negate the discoveries in art of the big and little masters of the 20th century “modern” movement is to blind yourself as an artist.  Maybe you didn’t like the work of the modern art century.  But from an artist’s perspective there were very inventive doors opened that can and indeed, should be influencing us as we paint in this new century.

Yes, Pollock, Rothko and Toby should be getting into our heads and finding their way out our brushes…even if we want to paint a naturalistic figurative scene.  We should not ignore the lessons of Hoffman, Kandinsky, Stella, Hockney, Freud, Warhol…the list goes on…

Picasso and Braque opened a door to what came to be called cubism—a new way of looking at an object and painting it, not by creating illusionistic space but by making a brand new honestly 2 dimensional object on the 2 dimensional flat canvas that quoted the original thing, if you will.  I don’t think that space beyond that cubist door has been fully explored.  The great modern master, Nicolas Uribe, is one who has worked with the idea to create some fabulous things…though in a sense I feel his direction is more an experiment of merging time frames rather that merging understood concepts of a form.  But hey, not a critique, it is cool to see new things.  And Nicolas’ hands are pure, unadulterated wondrous magic.

I’m sure I missed stuff but enough for now…off to paint, seeya

the painting detail above is from my oil, I Fear What You Fear.

 

Some artists perfect a signature style.  Their work fits into one general theme or look, and as their work matures that style is honed into perfection.

I have tried to do this but I can’t pin my head down.  It wants to try different things.  It doesn’t mean I don’t create true feelings, but for me one piece needs to be painted one way, while another screams to be brought to life in another form.

For example, for me both these pieces come from the same place.

Dear Mr. President,

Don’t call me a fascist on this 4th of July. I am an American.

People are crying, “Something is wrong. All is not right.” I have listened. You have not.

If my black friends and brothers are saying equality is not here, I will listen. If my gay brother is in pain, I will listen. If my Latino brother says all is not well, I will listen. If my wife and my daughter and my sister say equality is not here, I will listen. I love them; I trust them, so I will listen — as they would listen to me, if I said all is not right, because they love and trust me in return. You have not listened.

If my family is not content, how can I sit idle and be content? I can not.

The honest American fight is to make life better for others, not simply to take for myself. By lifting each other up, we help lift up us all. That is the American spirit from our greatest of generations.

Our imperfect founding fathers wrote brilliant documents that created a country, not as a fortress of immovable stone, but as a path. It is this path we have been striving to properly find and then follow for 12 score and 2 years—amending our route when we strayed from the path toward equality. Our country has been deeply flawed in the living of it — and yet, the ideal we strive for is beautiful.

It seems I come from abolitionist Quaker stock. My ancestors trace also to Robert Lee. So this fight of equality is in me. I fought to keep people enslaved, and I fought with blood and sinew to help free them. Do not tell me I am not America. I am a piece of this land, the good and the bad. Don’t tell me I am un-American because I speak out for freedom and equality today. I know this fight of old. We will win again. We will win again, because it is the good fight.

And yet, today you call me a fascist? Is this because I love equality and justice for all, enough to fight for it?

Most sincerely, on this 4th of July,

an American

There is a new website for the Hallowell Mural Project, the 700 square foot mural for downtown Hallowell, Maine. You can see it here: https://hallowellmural.org/

A few small details of the work in progress.

Summer Comes Slow This Year
For Bev Bevilacqua

Thick coastal grove of pine,
limbs twisted, entwined.
close kin branches, needles warp and weft,
failing, sieve like, to hold their resin scent.

Endless sea breath,
with her perfume tells,
rent from futile needled clutches,
salt and bay and juniper, as well.

Yes, I see them cling there
their roots up on that edge
edge of grove
or edge of sea

Ledges peeled to granite bone,
My path today, not quite,
not quite land and not quite sea
with forest fringe and seaweed cloak

Summer comes slow this year,
the season when heaven
just touches
just touches, just brushes by the earth.

Dahlias and apple trees
Salt, sand and sea breeze,
I’d have wished he could
have just one more, just one.

Strange, near a century of summers
a century, he’s been walking here
enjoying, seeing, hearing here
scenting saltpinebay and juniper

Smells of land near sea
Today, a deep sea whiff is snagged
belched by waves, rolling big,
from far.

Summer comes slow this year,
seems reluctant this year,
waiting
walking slower than years passed.

Or maybe, she came early,
for just a day,
touched down lightly
and took my friend away.

I lost my friend this week.
My friend, my friend
a friend of many days
I could wish he had just one,
just one more
just one more summer here, with us

But maybe, yes, perhaps,
I’ll think she came and took him,
early
he’s with her
one long summer by the sea.

He seemed happy, when he went.

Jack and I finished the Carnival Mural, 14 x 28 ft. Here is the final full mural and some details. Enjoy.

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Yesterday, we scarfed on a second piece of canvas to lay in the top 4 feet of the sky…a 14 x 28 foot arched mural. And I scrubbed in the first of the hot air balloon stuff going partly on the lower canvas part above. Painted basket on lower canvas, charcoal scribble on the bottom edge of the upper canvas….figures just scribbled in so far.

Jack and I have been on a serious push the last couple of weeks to get the Carnival Mural for Washington D.C. finished–due to hang on March 2. Here are some updates of progress.

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[thermometer] A 750 square foot mural for downtown Hallowell. Fundraising is going well for the project…about halfway to our goal to get this mural done. Here is a link to our Indiegogo Mural Campaign–just one source of funding: Hallowell Mural Project–You can contribute here.

—a color study for one figure in the Hallowell Mural. acrylic on panel, 24 x 18—

In the ongoing Hallowell Mural research, Sam Webber, our grand historian, introduced me to the story of James Matthews—a man from South Carolina, born into slavery in 1808, who eventually escaped, making his way north to finally find refuge in Hallowell.

In 1838, in the Advocate for Freedom – a Hallowell-based abolitionist publication,  Matthews told of his days of enslavement, in an account entitled Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave,  a story that spread nationally and became important to the abolitionist movement. You can read more here:

https://www.journalscene.com/news/the-story-of-the-dorchester-county-slave-who-escaped-to/article_3dd32038-891e-11e8-b0b1-c7d02eaab43f.html

Hallowell has been a haven or sanctuary for many over the years and I felt the chapter of James Matthew’s life was important to include in the story of our town.

This is an early color study as I develop the idea of how he will be woven into the tapestry of the mural, how best to represent him, his physical type, pose and setting. Here I envision him first making his way to Hallowell through the northern forest.

Matthews had a troubled life, even after his escape from slavery. However, when he died in June of 1888, people of Hallowell raised funds so he could be buried in the main cemetery. You can see his grave there today.

You can support the mural project here:

https://igg.me/at/hallowell-mural

Work continues on, what, for now, we are calling the Celebrity Mural, because if includes the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Ellen Degeneris, Marilyn Monroe..a cast of over 30 people of note.

This is acrylic on canvas, about 8 x 34 feet. Oh did I mention, Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Samuel L Jackson, Princess Diana…the list goes on.

This is a collaborative mural project with artist John Gable.

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