Archive for October, 2009
San Antonio, Texas
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Buildings, San Antonio, Texas - 22 x 15 inches Watercolors on 140 lb. acid free, cold press premium paper
The Campsite
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Above, finished Oct 29th: The Campsite, Maine, USA - 15 x 22 inches Watercolors on 140 lb. acid free cold press premium paper
Thumbnails: 1) Value sketch using Payne’s Gray 2) Oct 21st in progress 3) finished, left detail
~ 2nd week of Watercolor course offered by Jo Williams ~
The Studio Affair
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
The Studio Affair
See also October 28th, 2008 and October 30, 2007
Simple Beauty
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Simple beauty, McKinney Ave. sidewalk, Uptown Dallas, Texas
Sounds of Silence
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Sounds of Silence, 36 x 24 x 2 inches acrylics on canvas, gallery wrapped sides painted - finished today. After a second application of mask medium only on the snowflakes this time, some unbleached titanium and yellow ochre brought color back to the trunks. Snowflake mask was then removed. Still deciding on a price for this, and Dawn at Bell Rock also.
Oct 13th, above: Phase 01 and 02
Oct 14th, Phase 03 and 04: Mask medium removal, then highlighting snowflakes.
P.S. View Virginia Wieringa’s coincidental blog entry: a relevant poem by Thomas Merton, and an icon painting entitled Holy Silence.
Brushing up on other skills
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Red peppers and pear, left: second study, 14 x 11″ watercolors. I just started watercolors classes today with Jo Williams in Denton, TX. Watercolors are in a league of their own…that’s what I learned today. Acrylics are my favorite medium because of their versatility, and I always start out covering the canvas using watercolor techniques, but even though both have similar properties at the wateriest level, they are nothing alike. Brushing up on watercolors skills though, will positively add to confidence in using acrylics. I haven’t worked alongside others for a while either, so class critique will be really helpful too.
500X Gallery: Landscape
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
October 10 - 31st, 2009 500X Gallery Open Show: Landscape, 500 Exposition Ave. Dallas, TX
Opening Reception Saturday, October 10th, 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
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Saint Catherine's Sunset, 11 x 11 x 3 acrylics on canvas, gallery wrapped sides painted | |
| $350.00 |  |
______________________________ more news: ________________________________
Oxide Gallery 1st Year Anniversary celebration today, Tuesday October 6th, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Happy Anniversary Oxide Gallery!
I’ll be giving a demo on the use of Masking Fluid in acrylics paintings, so come and reveal one painting by helping to peel off the rubberized mask - I don’t even know what it looks like underneath, so it will be a surprise for all of us. Techniques on applying the fluid will be demonstrated on another painting already in progress. Three pieces accepted in the current show at Oxide Gallery are:
To purchase these and of this work please visit the Exhibitions Page.
Perpetual painting
Monday, October 5th, 2009
Like music
where silence between the notes sets the rhythm,
not painting is half the work.
For all artists, the most mysterious question of all might be “is it finished?” , but for the sake of clarity and the examples here I’ll just refer to painters. One popular opinion is that the best painting is one that’s finished quickly; one that retains the artist’s first fresh impressions, otherwise it should be painted over or tossed in the garbage and a new one started immediately. There are solid reasons for not lingering too long on a painting, but in matters of the Art I’m always suspicious when I hear the word should being used in a sentence containing advice. Some art rumors are accepted as absolute when they could stand some explanation. It can be confusing enough for the experienced, but especially for beginners looking for ground rules and a map to follow.
In Art though, for every should there is another option. The same suggestions don’t work for everyone. Have you ever felt guilty or embarrassed – even ashamed - because you took a painting too far? I have, but it’s only when I’ve compared my work and methods to others’ judgment that I should’ve quit while I was ahead…and guilt has no business hanging around in our daily work if it isn’t useful! (Frustration can be an excellent motivator if it’s allowed to be, but that’s another topic).
If it’s going to make sense - not exclusively the sole intention - every painting reaches stages where we need to make the call to leave it alone and say it’s finished, or proceed; stages where placing one more mark means the entire painting has to change and be brought up to par around it. If things that need correcting are not dealt with honestly, the work will not be as successful as it could be. There are phases in each painting that are truly intimidating, when painting is anything but leisurely; when we’re faced with: do we climb that mountain or not?
A lot of Plein Aire artists swear that their methods of painting outdoors on-site produce the highest quality work. The limitations of sunlight, location, outdoor temperatures and so on, mean that to finish successfully they need to splash down a lot of information within a short period of time. Doing so, when the thinking brain is disengaged and just responding to the subject, a lot of amazing unintentional surprises show up in the painting. Spontaneity and spurts of enthusiasm for being fully in the present tense can bring great results that need no further efforts at the end of the day. Plain Aire artists are in a field of their own (literally too!).
It’s a curious thing how creativity warps and reforms into amazing things when pressure is applied. Many people who aren’t artists will agree that the greatest ideas can occur when under pressure to produce them. For those who have orders to complete, at its best the challenge is like a beautiful sort of panic, where there’s an understanding of the time restrictions while fully trusting that whatever needs to happen is going to be successful. The abilities are less trustworthy when the pace and demand for finished work increases, time allotted decreases and the quality of the product diminishes. If this imbalance continues over extended periods of time, like years, sloppy and care-less habits take hold too easily. If there is work that must be accomplished though, these things can be controlled to some extent –this is one benefit of pushing personal boundaries: it puts tenacity to practice - but creativity is fickle and that’s a fact.
What has all that got to do with the question about finishing? The best paintings are not necessarily those that are finished in a few hours or a day. There are other purposes for painting besides finishing it to admire, be admired or to sell. Nothing replenishes the quality of our creative energy like being lost in the timeless, pure enjoyment of study and detail for no reason in particular. “The Zone” is like an addiction where the high is fairly elusive but we’re compelled compulsively to track it down again and again, discovering and rediscovering the source of it all. One painting could be someone’s lifetime of work.
I’m saying that if you personally feel you’d like to keep going with a painting for days or years… or never finish, then you ought to follow your own intuition about it. I’m not saying you should. I just recommend considering what other artists say, but also consider each painting as a new experience with new rules, new goals and new circumstances.
Experience, masterpiece to failure, will always apply to future work somehow. That’s the great thing about painting: no time spent searching for answers is ever wasted. It’s all recyclable material! Every decision about finishing – or not - is relative to individuality, and relative to each new painting as it develops your way.
Breakthrough: a sneak peek
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Breakthrough, left side detail of 2 vertical pieces, each 48 x 11 x 3 inches, canvas strips over a gallery wrapped stretcher frame. A number of things have been tried over the 4″ pieces of canvas woven across the frame; colors upon colors: scarlet, yellow, purple, blues, black… crackle glaze, burnt umber wash, sanding, peeling the paint, and an overall coat of white.
There are so many competitions and exhibitions to look forward to in the new year, and I’d much rather be painting all day, but there are deadlines to meet. I’m anxious to post something though, because it’s been a while. I have been working, but in a non-linear habit, even more than usual. The results of about 5 projects are still unresolved, but I’ve learned to trust that plugging away at work continually, eventually it all comes together. Just try and aniticipate when! With only a few minutes to spare now and then off the computer, this two-part piece is the ideal thing to work on. Sometimes an idea goes off in a direction of its own and it’s not always agreeable to the initial plan, but I’m not as concerned about when it comes together. I only trust that it will.
The title I’ve had in mind is “Breakthrough”, and it certainly will be by the time it’s done. These thumbnails just show details of the left half of the pair. Next: the other half.