Category: StudioJournal

—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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Currently working on studies and design for another mural.  This will be a large almost 1000 square foot mural for downtown Hallowell, telling the story of this enchanting town where we live.  

Here are a just a handful of the hundreds of drawings I have been doing in developing this mural.  More to come.  And watch for the IndieGogo campaign that will help fund the mural.

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New 2 Mural Project with John Gable.

Currently Jack Gable and I are collaborating on a 2 mural project for a venue out of Maine.  Here are some detail images of the work-in-progress.  

Jack and I are splitting the work, literally trading brushes back and forth as needed.  After years of working solo, working side by side with another talented artist is just too much fun.

I will post more images as this mural develops and as we really dig into the second mural.

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My wife Jen Greta Cart has started an online greeting card shop with her very popular paintings at JenGretaCart.com.  Her work is beautiful, a combination of real and fantasy, magic and quietly normal all adding up to a lovely charm.

She has been painting for many years and has quite a following of patrons.  And now her cards can be found in many brick and mortar card shops around Maine as well.

The history mural has begun!

I am designing and painting a new history mural for my home town of Hallowell, Maine.  This is going to be 38 x 30 feet on an exterior wall at the north entrance to town.  Chris Vallee has donated the north wall of his real estate building on 89 Water St.

The mural will tell the history of Hallowell, from the founding in the mid 1700’s onward.  Our town built ships, cut timber, carved granite from our hills for great buildings and monuments of the young nation and had a thriving mill industry, making everything from sandpaper to shoes—all this I will paint into our mural.  Important early settlers, native tribes of pre-western history, key townspeople, stone carvers—all will find a place in the mural.

The wall will be a multifaccetted scene of the many years interwoven into one design.

Focus on the Arts

Hallowell is building a future in the Arts, so I will push the paint into the vision for our future as a mid Maine arts center.

We will starting a crowd funding campaign to help fund the mural.  This will pay materials and supplies—and pay me for the many months of work involved.  I will be researching the key points of history, working with Sam Webber and other local historians.  I have begun the early stage of design and will be posting images as the project develops.

Drop me a note if you have things to include—or if you would like to contribute to the project.  Here are some of my other recent murals:  Kennebec at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, Maine; City of Ships in Bath, Maine; and Entertainers, Beyond the Sea, a mural for a private residence in Hallowell,

Street Art Show, 7.5 x 13 inches, pencil on watercolor paper

This morning I was digging through my flat files to find an older watercolor I did (Autumn Cemetery)—couldn’t remember if I had sold it or still had it tucked away somewhere.  Anyway, while digging I stumbled over this drawing I had done at a street art show years ago.

 

Some evenings it is good just to sit and sketch or doodle.  I like to just noodle around with a pencil and without trying to plan a new painting.  If we get too locked tight, always producing, producing, producing, it is easy to forget to relax and just play.

Drawing is just plain fun so drawing without a plan is a good way to relax.   It loosens the hand and mind.  Sometimes I find things I want to pursue further, but mostly this is just a way to relax.

While I am not a strict anatomist—I am perfectly happy to distort the human form if it fits my painting idea—I do, however, love the study of the human form.  Changing the human form to fit my paintings is important.  Nevertheless, it is very useful to go back and draw some muscles and bones.  I like the review; I like the peaceful study of the body; and it is helpful in my paintings, even those paintings where I freely twist and shape.

I study on my own.  There weren’t really anatomy classes in either of the art colleges I attended, back in the day.

This is just a quick sketch refresher of the front and back muscle groups—just to keep them in mind properly. These are small sketches, roughly 7 x 8 inches.

If you are looking for some interesting podcast interviews with artists from around the world you should check out John Dalton’s podcasts called Gently Does It. Kudos to John Dalton for all he does.

His focus in on talented figurative painters.  There are now over 100 interviews mostly with artists and some curators, the likes of Nick Alm, Vincent Desiderio, Zoey Frank, a discussion with Dr Elaine Melodi Schmidt, the curator of the Venus Visions | Vision of Venus exhibit at Zhou B Art Center in Chicago, April 2018.  (I have a piece accepted in this show, btw)

It is interesting to compare techniques, paint mediums, every artist’s individual “art think” and just hear their great stories and senses of humor.

Anyway the podcast is a great listen.

Just added my new carpet to my studio–to my wall. I have a nine foot square wall built in my studio that I use for painting, as a permanent easel.  I use it for large mural projects, well, small paintings too, and just pinning up reference drawings and the like..  My studio has slanted ceilings and windows on the end walls, not much in the way of regular bare walls, so this ‘easel’ wall is partition built in.

I’ve used the wall for a couple years now, just the plywood, but just added the carpet as a great improvement.  I was listening to one of John Dalton‘s great artist podcasts, this one with Cesar Santos, and he mentioned he had a wall easel as well and he had carpeted his wall to give a bit of cushion to the canvas.  Great idea.  I should have thought of this myself, but, hey, here is a shout out thanks to Cesar for the great tip.

Tested it out yesterday and that really does make the brushes feel so much nicer.

March 10 – Update: The carpet on the wall is fabulous.  Gives a nice cushion for the brushes and makes scraping the canvas so much better.  Highly recommend a carpeted wall for painting large pieces.

 

excerpt from article art review in New City:

“In one of the most poignant pieces, New England artist Christopher Cart presents a nude woman turning away from her mirror in confusion and dismay—perhaps she just realized that she is no longer nubile. In another engaging piece, Polish artist Anna Wypych shows us a “Venus/Demon” who appears to be sexually available but also threatening. Don’t most sexual relationships end badly for someone? Chicago artist Kyrin Ealy Hobson shows us a struggling African-American family where the powerful stare of the mother is contrasted with the awkward, shy glance of the daughter. For many women, sexual appeal might be the least of their concerns.”

 

Risking Rebuke in the #MeToo Milieu: A Review of “Visions of Venus” at the Zhou B Art Center

Composition is one of those aspects of paint learning that will never be complete.  You can never sign off and say, “Well, I learned that now on to painting”.  Composition possibilities are endless and fascinating.

An art friend and I were talking composition a bit ago, specifically joking about JPI–jolts per inch.  In truth not a laughing matter.  In many schools of composition the punch of your composition or design takes precidence over everything else in the painting.

Any of your favorite illustrations and movie stills have that NOTAN/JPI punch and drama.  The rest of the story is subordinate to that initial kick in the teeth, mainly with your values.

A design of lights and darks that frame the design and all fits within that.

This is one important school of composition.

One thing I have been experimenting with though is applying the composition concepts of Pollock, and Tobey to my figurative work.  Not designing with NOTAN punch but subordinating image elements to the overall flow of the color and rhythm.

In this portrait I broke up all the architectural rigid forms, the lighting and even the figures.  This same composition could have been a very crunched NOTAN design of crisp dramatic lighting and dark shadows. but i purposely broke everything up with pattern and sun dapples.

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]One of my goals lately is to make my technique organic, to the story in the piece, not try to impose one technique or process on the entire composition, but rather to have each bit of the vision speak in its own technical voice.

I mean if I decide to paint a scene in a very realistic sense then I impose that technique evenly over every aspect of the scene, the figures, the lighting, the perspective, the bricks and mortar and the atmosphere–to make it all work as one cohesive illusionistic whole.  This is all well and good.  However, if there is one thing that the 20th century artists taught us is that even if you are a realist, there are myriad ways to tell that real story.  For example, Picasso has some powerful paintings of his children, a mother teaching her child to walk, children on the floor drawing.  These have a visual strength, punch in a simple story that had he painted them in a late nineteen century style the paintings would have been trite, treacle.

So different things call out to be painted differently.  And I have never, in my head, been pinned to one style.  But only recently have I been trying to bring that style choice into the workings of one canvas.  In stead of deciding the overall style language first and building within that frame, now I am trying to lefft style choice be left open and to be planned within the painting process on the brushstroke level.  Each to its own voice.

The serious risk is off course, total and ugly disastrous chaos.  But hey, no risk is boring.  If I didn’t love risk I’d be working a paycheck job.  I may end up with all disasters but maybe somewhere in all the trying will be a small gem that shines.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”5257″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

watercolor, 12 x 16 inches, 1990’s

I painted this back in the ’90’s after a night beach walk on Popham. While we were walking along the beach Jen told me a story about a seelie.

A paradox?
A paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!

We’ve quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

A paradox,
a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
This paradox.

Pirates of Penzance
Gilbert and  Sullivan

Creating art is not your everyday affair.  You have to take it seriously or you produce garbage.  But on the other hand if you treat your latest creation as a holy relic you will also produce crappola.  So your work has to have all your attention and be the most important thing in front of you and at the same time you have to be willing jump in and change it all around or even tear it up, casually, if it is going wrong.

You have to (try to) be honest with every brushstroke.  Some look great but are wrong for the painting.  So in spite of the individual beauty of a brushstroke you have to remove it to be honest to the whole.

 

In the sketch pad lately I have been paring things down to the barest essentials.  Trying to tell my stories with less and less.  Merging forms; enveloping them in shadow and bleached out light.  Or trimming things to the most essential lines.  If it produces something good, well that is a plus but the process is the thing for me right now.

It seems more art can get in.  Lots of highly rendered detail seeems to wedge the door against art.  Just thinking out loud…

…or sketching out loud, but it will be interesting to see where this leads and to see how it impacts my bigger paintings.  The great thing about this job is that it doesn’t end.  Every day you go into the studio and say, “Holy crap, where do I go today?”