Picket Fence...the American Dream

Picket Fence   oil/canvas   40 x 30 x .75

is a notion that has been around a long while...the desire to own a safe and happy place of one's own...a place to be and a place for family.  The woman in this painting is my maternal great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Pitchford Black Kannard.  The reference photo shows her in front of a log cabin home with, yes indeed, a picket fence out front.  The children in the photo are not relatives....they are her children with her second husband.  My great-great-grandfather (her first husband) Adam Black did not return from the Civil War. She was pregnant when he went off to war.  The picket fence dream hasn't changed much.  The notion of what constitutes that dream has changed drastically however.  The average American home was 983 square feet in 1950, the year of my birth.  In 2004, that average had climbed to 2,349 square feet, an increase of 140%.  Since then we have seen the advent of garage mahals, Hummer houses, starter castles and McMansions.  It appears that we have become greedier and greedier, moving from a "being" mode to a "having" mode.  Even Don Draper in the popular series "Madmen" cannot understand his wife's serious emotional problems since he has provided her and their children with just about everything a person could want.  Being.  Having.  A continuum along which we must all declare a point.  Erich Fromm's book The Essential Fromm:  Life Between Having and Being is a good place to start.

Hydrangea Bloom...the first fresh stroke

Hydrangea Bloom   oil/wood panel   9 x 9 x 1

I love the blooms that spring from hydrangea  plants!  This was my first time painting on a gessoed wood panel and found it to be much like painting with watercolor on hot press paper.  Strokes are much more hard-edged...crisper...not bad...not good...just different.  I had a difficult time finding a place to put the bloom for painting.  I settled on putting it in a water glass right beside the painting on the easel stand.  The first session revealed lots of negative space where the blooms had not yet reached maturity.  The following day the blooms had opened further...much more beautiful...but lacking the artistic aesthetic of having the background show through those spaces.  I chose to keep painting from my day #1 memory.  My goal was to load up the brush to mimic the direction and stroke of each petal and allowed myself very little diddling around.  For me, for flowers, the first fresh stroke is the best.  Ah....experience.

I am not a painter of flowers...but....

Knock Out   oil/canvas   12 x 9 x 1.5

every summer I manage to complete a couple of florals.  I don't believe that any subject matter is quite as complex...they teach the artist about convex/concave; slight variations on the warm/cool temperature gauge; and prioritization supreme.  One of the reasons why florals do not call to me is indeed those very complex forms....with that kind of detail, things must be rendered pretty true-to-life in order to be understandable.  Painting them is an exercise that stretches me and takes me out of my comfort zone.  My preference for larger simpler forms allows for a more creative and expressive use of paint.  OK.  My own like-to-dislike scale of bouquets  would be:  random bouquet without container laying on a surface; followed by monochromatic simple blooms in a clear simple vase.  The scenarios continue downhill from here:  multi-colored bouquets; patterned vases that demand attention; and classical bouquets that appear to have been sprayed with hair spray.  That being said, this bouquet of knockout roses caught my eye.  Knockouts are a recent addition to the rose family....they are easy to grow, disease and deer resistant; heat tolerant; and have a generous bloom cycle.  AND THEY HAVE SIMPLE BLOOMS.

"Knockout" was painted a couple of weeks ago, after my exposure to these glorious blooms.  Will I grow them?  Probably not.  Will I paint them?  Just did.

Flowers are cheerful.  That plop of color would be welcome on any wall.

Reunions...

Reunion   oil/canvas   40 x 30 x .5

are abundant this hot time of year.  Every year.  Every other.  Every five.  My friend's annual reunion is called the "Am Slam Jam" stemming from the Ammerman family name.  Our own, which is less frequent, has become "Hutch Fest".  A few months ago, I found some older family photos...the one that inspired this painting.  All of the people in this photo have passed, but the similarities in their facial structures and their personalities urged me onwards.  I have been searching for so long so find a way to create a universal human experience without pinpointing a particular face, a particular place in time.  Without, I might add, the homogenization that sometimes makes a work just too generic....like the sweet little girls or the angel faces that become the greeting card generic.  I found such similarities between this reunion of yesteryear and the photos that we have taken at our own festivities...the alpha male, the retiring and overdressed female, those who "jump right in", and those on the fringes.  Different photo.  Same scenario.  Everyone has an Uncle Henry.

For this group gesture, my goal was to reduce the importance of each face, while, enhancing the importance of the group gesture....its flow, its animation , its negative spaces.

Roller Coasters are no longer constructed of wood.  High "divies" have been removed due to liability.  But there is always an Uncle Henry.