Pensees

Pensees   watercolor   10 x 6

Painting flowers is not for the timid.  I have often felt that they are the most difficult subject on the face of the earth.  Complexity and detail abound.  It has literally taken me years to understand (from time to time) how to take in all of this complexity and reduce it to a more understandable version of what is before me.  Pansies are tender and bendable.  They love cool and moisture.  Thus is the challenge for a painter like me who loves the bold and sculptural.  In earlier watercolor days, I like to ignore its boundaries and press it into an all-encompassing duty....making a watercolor painting that would stand up to the strength of a pastel, an oil.  But that was ignoring its finest quality which is also its limitation...the quiet, the sublime, the delicately layered.  This painting is small and achieves just what I had hoped...the nature of these tender flowers.

Pensees is a French word for thoughts...and for pansies.

Empty Nest

Empty Nest   Watercolor   10 x 10

is a term that usually refers to that stage of life when the children have gone their own ways and parents are left with a nest that that is quieter, less active and just different than it was in previous decades.  Yet, I would offer the notion that each nest, empty or full, is full of all kinds of possibility, all kinds of beauty.  Feathers, leaves and small bits of string remain.....even bits of dirt.  I guess it is up to each of us how we choose to feather our own nests...empty or full.

Purpose

Purpose   oil/canvas   24 x 18 x 4

My watering can has seen better days.  It has multiple dings and a leak that has been repaired with duct tape.  It was originally purchased at Rootstown Hardware, owned by my cousin, which has since gone out of business.  I love this can.   As I am not a plastic-person, I continue to use, appreciate and love this well worn can and will continue to do so until a worthy replacement can be found.  I shot some photos of the can last summer in a late-afternoon light while it was perched on the arm of a patio chair.  The painting began mise en scene (in a context) containing the chair, the plants, and  the brickwork along with the can.  When will I ever learn that this approach is just not who I am?  After a couple of passes, all supporting actors were sent home while I used the design approach to carry out my vision.  There is a patterned border on the left which was created by pushing a linoleum block into the fresh oil paint.  Lots of layering, mushing, pushing and pulling.  This work took many many months to resolve.  For me, minimizing the number of shapes in the work allows more power to each.  After all, my purpose was to elevate the stature of this much-loved and worn household object.

Tooting your own horn?

Tooter   oil/canvas   20 x 10 x 1.5

is a questionable pastime, in my opinion.  Although we visual artists work, for the most part, by ourselves in a solitary endeavor, we really are engaged in a common goal, i.e. promoting the visual arts and one-or-a-kind works that elevate the buyer and sustain the artists as well.  It would be healthier for us, again in my opinion, to think of ourselves as members of a team.  One is not better than the other.  One is different than the other.  There is room for everyone.  Teams of musicians.  Teams of architects.  Teams of athletes.   I believe that hierarchical thinking is a thing of the past, gone the way of old boys' clubs and debutante balls.  Perhaps it is lateral thinking, our connectedness to others and the world around us, that will help us evolve into a world where each person commands respect.  No more us versus them.  Most of the tooting that goes on in my world is between artists themselves and is designed, I guess, for some to feel superior to others.  It just is not necessary.  We all experience successes.  We all experience failures.  I was reminded of this notion last week in a re-read of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield......excellent, excellent, excellent.  He speaks primarily to creative resistance to which we all succumb.  A slight bump in the creative road causes us to doubt ourselves and our abilities.  For Pressfield, "tooting" is in the amateur category...elevating those whose need to fit in surpasses the feelings of others.  One artist I know says that he has given out no less than 9 copies of this book to friends....well worth the read.

This particular beaten brass horn was stashed on the shelves at the art center.  My original idea included a blue background with tonal variations.  I guess I thought of the brass and shiny, light and gleaming.  Not so......rather....dark and tarnished.  So the background ended up light.  Scraffiti was added to energize the work.

Tooter.

Keep Those Hands Busy!

 

I am a fidgeter...real and imagined slight discomforts arise when I try to sit still for longer than, let's say, 10 minutes.  So, drawing while listening provides that needed nervous release during the long evenings of critique.  And, I must say, that doodling also allows for a more intense listening.  My mind doesn't have the opportunity to meander, as both brain parts are functioning.  These small portraits of artist friends were sketched this past week.  Oh so many good paintings were displayed!  So many ideas and so much beauty!  My favorites this time around were three powerful works that shared the element of simple shapes:  the wondrous dark 6 am clouds of Judith Carducci done in a narrow horizontal format (one of my favorites); an early morning patchwork Irish landscape by Ann Emmitt (small but packing a large punch); and the almost-abstract work of three warehouse garage doors by Dan Lindner, the color being pushed to the max.  Perhaps my adoration of these works arises from the fact that these were so very different than my own paintings.  Perhaps I just like them.  But what they all shared was a powerful simplicity.  And our critique leader Jack Lieberman peppered the evening with so much knowledge....knowledge that has accumulated from a lifetime of work and study.  We are a lucky bunch....support and constructive comments.  A perfect evening, methinks.