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Blog
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less is less in a good way.
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?”
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judging art
I recently read someone’s comments concerning Jeff Koon’s enormous hyper-polished steel balloon dog sculptures.It got me wondering how we can or should judge art. I saw Koon’s gallery show in New York a while back with rooms of these brightly reflective, highly chromatic balloon animal creations. Now I could have reacted in several ways. I could have gone in the gallery wanting, say, Rubens and then felt the dogs were a slap in the face. High art? Ha! No way. This is trivial nonsense on a large scale. Or conversely, I could go into the gallery, just curious, and found a fun room of silly huge but oddly pretty dogs…I could smile, cheer my day and take that away with me.Now I am sure I could also read dense tomes about the deeper meaning of these dogs, a commentary on today’s facile and vacuous over blown society. But by themselves, they are colorful, amusing, very large, well made balloon dogs. Small balloon dogs amuse and a room of huge shiny balloon dogs, amuses me too in a bigger kind of way. My day in NY was cheered.But is it art? Well I think so. It is well crafted, made with an eye to being pleasing and it has a story either big or smaller, depending on if you read the accompanying tome.But is it Rubens? Is it Rembrandt? Is a shiny dog, an equal to Donatello’s David? No, of course not…but that is the point. If I enter the gallery hoping for Rubens or grand sculpture of Michelangelo I am doomed to be disappointed, if not irritated. But then comparison in art is a precarious stance. If I were to look at Chardin expecting Rubens, then I might think Chardin is small, provincial, quiet, bordering on boring. And conversely if I were to judge Rubens with Chardin as my ideal, then Rubens might come off as supremely pompous and overblown.As it turns out, I love both Rubens and Chardin…and yes, I like Koon’s dogs too just for the fun of it all. They are shiny, colorful, well crafted, fun and big enough to create their own environment.It’s a huge shiny dog. Perhaps laughing is the point. I have come to think that tragedy is easy, it is the laughing and happiness that is so very hard to for us to find. Maybe a joyous shiny dog is more important than another tragedy in paint. Perhaps.Emerson said we should judge art anew, each generation. He didn’t want his work to be prejudged by his predecessor poet’s works. Maybe he had a point….to a point.If an artists invites us in to enjoy his work, whether by beauty or story or cleverness or whatever, but stretches out a hand to invite us in, then step one of art is accomplished…then next step is up to me the viewer.For me, Rembrandt, Rubens, Chardin, and, yes, Koons have, in their own quirky ways, extended the invite. -
Murder on the Nile
Playbill design for Gaslight Theater Production of Murder on the Nile, a play by Agatha Christie in Hallowell, Maine.
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The Bat
This is artwork I design for a cast thank you card for a theater production of the play The Bat.
The Bat is a Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood first produced in 1920. The plot relates how wealthy spinster Cornelia Van Gorder and her guests uncover a mystery at their rented summer home while being stalked by an enigmatic, costumed criminal known as “The Bat”.
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Work in Progress
Here is a detail from a work in progress—an oil called At the Villa Paradiso (edit: the painting is finished now, Villa Paradiso). Some paintings slam into me, fully fleshed out and only needing to be “transcribed’ to the canvas, so to speak. Others evolve over time. This one has been evolving for several years.
This detail is only a small 8 inch portion of a 32 x 40 canvas.
Some artists manage to lock onto a certain signature style and can paint that way for the rest of their days. This just doesn’t seem to work for me. My mind wants to try all sorts of things. I pursue things for a while and then just don’t like being locked in, confined.
This painting is evolving through several phases. I have been taking photos all along and when and if it is finally complete I will post a series of photos to show the route it took.
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At the Fairgrounds
A small miniature oil which was juried into the international exbihit sponsored by the Miniature Art Society of Florida. Exhibit opens in January 2016.
Oil on Panel
4 x 2.5 inches -
Art Now
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In his video arguing against modern art Robert Floczak’s selections of both 20th century art and previous periods of art are well, very selective, extraordinarily biased. Anyone who has studied art in any depth beyond a couple of survey books of great masters knows that there has been tons of crap created in any period, and great works as well. If you pick good examples of one and bad examples of another your are making a false argument. And it frankly, just cheapens what could be an interesting debate.Second point is that his view of “good art” leaves out creations from any period or culture except western European art from Renaissance through the late 19th century academy. Where is asian art and its gorgeous but non western use of perspective, composition and anatomy? Where are the fabulous forms created in African sculpture? What about the highly refined art of the Northwest American tribes? Where does medieval/gothic art fall into his narrow little Art alley? By his definition the great art in any 11th century cathedral is not worthy…we might just as well bull doze it, like the extremists do in the middle east.The third point is that if you remove the 20th century from the realm of great art, for starters you lose all the wonderful advances in composition and color use. If he has eyes to see he should have at least included those elements from the 20th century if he can’t stomach art that isn’t rendered to the last pore.I would be the first to admit that many great skills and pools of knowledge were shelved when the academy art techniques were subordinated…but this doesn’t mean that we should now return to the 19th century. But rather we should open our eyes and use everything at hand. I don’t fit in the 19th century, I don’t want to quote greco roman art in my paintings. I don’t wish to paint people in togas. I like the 21st century.If in his view art was a progression over several centuries to its highest pinacle in the late 19th century academy, then that leaves us poor slobs today merely copyists of era gone by.Well, to hell with that. The definition of creativity is not simply to copy. Did rembrandt copy, Did Caravaggio copy? No, they created new…that’s why we like them. Let’s revisit the skills of former eras if we so choose, but make them our own. This is what the high Itallian renaissaance did revisiting greco roman art. The skills are similar but we would not be likely to confuse a Michaelanglo with a Phidias.If Ralph Waldo Emerson is not too avant garde for this Florczak fellow then I would suggest we follow Emerson’s idea that each new generation of art needs to be created anew and judged, not as compared to high dusty ideals of old but but rather judged today, by us, those who live now. But don’t lock me into a 19th century parlor.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian
Illustration from the 1993 book, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian. This is a black and white watercolor.
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Frugal Gourmet, Immigrant Ancestors
Illustration from the 1990 book, The Frugal Gourmet on your Immigrant Ancestors. This is a pencil drawing, a chapter head illustration for the Portugese chapter.
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Frugal Gourmet, Immigrant Ancestors
Illustration from the 1990 book, The Frugal Gourmet on your Immigrant Ancestors. This is a pencil drawing, a chapter head illustration for the Lebanese chapter.
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Frugal Gourmet, Immigrant Ancestors
Illustration from the 1990 book, The Frugal Gourmet on your Immigrant Ancestors. This is a pencil drawing, a chapter head illustration for the Persian chapter.
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The Mermaid and the Lighthouse Keeper
a book illustration from the mid 90’s. Watercolor and gouache on paper.
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Mother and Daughter
I did this drawing back in 1993 when Jen was breastfeeding our daughter Kate. The drawing was intended as a study for a painting but I felt this drawing said it completely and needed no more.
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study for “Barn Dance”
on toned paper, study for oil painting finally called, “Another Full Moon Night“
