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Blog
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Last Waltz
watercolor, 21 x 29 inches, 2019
This watercolor was painted in the cottage of our dear friend, Bev Bevilacqua—one of his favorite views out the south window.
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the birds, the birds, the birds
Some areas and figures in the Hallowell mural went in solidly after long and careful planning. However, the birds near the top of the mural started as an abstract concept in my head–I wanted birds but somehow abstracted birds, perhaps out of folded paper, flying in front of a realistic scene. I did sketch in the drawing pad, which is the only sane way to plan a section of a mural. But what can I say, sometimes I like to just jump in with paint and see what happens.
These are some phases of how these birds evolved over time. I am pretty sure they are almost done. Sad to see some of the birds that fly in then fly out again, but the mural has to be the final judge of what stays. And as I have found, something that disappears from one painting often shows up in another. -
the scaffolding
Here I have local Hallowellians of various periods of time standing, sitting and climbing the scaffolding that was erected around the 36 foot granite “Faith” sculpture that was carved here in Hallowell in the 1880’s.
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Pushing toward finish
This is a section near the top of the mural. I have been going over various parts to pull up details and add finishing touches. This is Benjamin Vaughan and on the right is a small section of the scene depicting the midwife Martha Ballard delivering a baby.
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those who served
Here I include a representation of some of the many generations of men and women who have served our country in the many wars. This is some of the men…and I have important woman elsewhere, in a section still being painted.
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Adding Granite textures
This is the large “Faith” sculpture that was carved in Hallowell in the late 1880’s. She is 36 feet tall, carved from local granite and she is the largest granite sculpture in the United States. She is the centerpiece figure of the National Monument to the Forefathers, in Plymouth Massachusetts.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Monument_to_the_Forefathers)
Here I was adding or layering the granite textures. I had build the forms of her head with simple gray tone paint but that makes her looks like dull concrete. So to build a bright, clear grained, Hallowell granite I splattered many layers of lighter paints on top until it had the density of texture and natural stone-ness that I wanted.
The 36-foot figure of Faith was based on a 9-foot plaster model by William Rimmer in 1875,[6] that was enlarged and altered by Joseph Edward Billings and a sculptor named Perry (probably John D. Perry). The subsidiary statues were executed by area sculptors including Alexander Doyle, Carl Conrads, and James H. Mahoney. -
farm woman and daughter
This is a section at the top center of the 24 x 29 foot mural, depicting a colonial period woman tending the fields with her daughter. Hallowell was a major international shipping port on the Kennebec River, so at any given time a good half of all the boys and men in the town were off at sea. This, of course, mean that the women tended to everything to maintain and build a community. This is why I have place this pregnant woman and her daugher prominently at the top of the mural.
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Art, a 5 step program
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.
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Signature Style
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.
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Celebrity Bar Mural
A 9 x 34 foot mural of celebrities in a bar. The mural is at Patsy’s Restaurant in Tysons Corner outside Washington, D.C. Painted in 2019 with fellow mural artist John Gable. Patsy’s Great American Restaurant.
