restraint versus ambition

I’m great at starting pieces, I get very excited about new mock-ups, new paintings, but then I lose energy. I hit the mid-point where the painting has as much that is awkward and not working as is does nice moments; or even the almost done but not quite stage when my painting method requires a very slow, rather tedious refinement of what’s already there to bring it to finish and I run out of love for the piece. This energy and love is then directed to the next thing, the next piece which is no doubt going to be so much better than the current one(s) that I shouldn’t bother finishing the current one, it’s only a waste of time compared to the genius not yet accomplished.

The appropriate thing to do at this point is to have discipline, to show restrain, to push on and finish the current piece. And usually when I do push on the painting will turn a corner and move past its current awkwardness and get good or great. But it is so very hard to have faith that this effort is worthwhile or to merely summon the energy to push on when something else is calling me more urgently.

color values

The most important thing that I learned in Jef Gunn’s Intermediate Painting class was to consider the value of colors. Value refers to light and dark, the lightest value 10 being white and the darkest 0 being black and a spectrum of grays between them. One usually hears values discussed in reference to black and white photography, see for example Ansel Adams’ zone system. Color is a made up of Hue, Value and Chroma, but generally when people talk about color they talk about hue, as in Red, Yellowish-Red, or Cool Red.

Many aspects of Munsell’s color system and color theory in general get excessively complicated, but remembering to consider the values of the colors I’m using in a painting has been become important to me. After having this revelation about value I reviewed some of my older paintings that I disliked. When putting the image into grayscale I noticed that many of my problematic areas occurred from having too many colors of a similar value in the painting or having colors of great disparity in value next to each color.

In other parts of this blog I refer to the fact that I try to have some modulation and rendering in the forms in my paintings, such that there is a light and shadow within the form (though not really a consistent light source for the entire painting) or light and dark informing the foreground and background of the painting. Now periodically I check photos of my paintings in grayscale to look for value disparities.

If I’m being vague or convoluted or just uninteresting, let me bring up a different example. My favorite artist for the last few years is Raimonds Staprans. Like most of the Bay Area artists that I like he was an abstract expressionist at the beginning of his career and transitioned into figure painting in the sixties. He has referred to himself as an abstract realist and that he only paints real objects as a means to play with color. While this might sound contradictory, what it means in a practical sense is that in a painting of a pear you can tell that it is a pear, but at the same time there are colors used to paint the pear that are not generally pearlike, teal, blue-violets, and pale oranges. Below I have one of Staprans’ paintings of a chair, the first in second in black and white, the second in color. In the b&w everything looks like its been rendered realistically (with exception to the post-modern/pentimento fifth leg), clear highlights, midtones, and shadows. In the color version instead of the highlight being a pale tan, the midtone being a ochre brown, and the shadow being a warm sienna as you might expect there are instead yellow-green highlights, gray green midtones, orange midtones, cool and warm blues as the shadows. One’s first perception of the color version could be that it’s wildly expressionistic, but the colors have been chosen very carefully to create realistic values.

ode

While working on the In the Shadows series I got frustrated enough with the drawbacks of direct painting to return to indirect painting, which is what I’ve concentrated on since. Do you notice a pattern of frustration and vacillation in my history? Anyway I’ve learned a lot of lessons in the process of vacillating from indirect and direct styles, such that I was able to solve a number of my issues and find methods that lessen my frustration for other aspects. So pretty much everything created in 2009 will reflect my new and improved indirect style. This does means slow paintings, and by slow I mean about 5 sq inches per hour – or to put it another way an area the size of this paragraph would take me two and half hours. I dislike that I can’t be as prolific as I would like, but I do like the finished quality of my paintings. The primary example of this at the moment is Ode.

Ode was my piece for Launchpad’s ‘4th Annual Love show’. As previously mentioned with the ‘Dreams’ show, I try to tailor pieces to a given show’s constraints, so I wasn’t going to just pick a random painting that had red and titled it Love. Although I did figure I’d include some pinks and pale violets in the palette, and also that I would base it on the bloom of a flower, with the overlapping petals creating the primary rhythms in the painting. Now I knew this was cheesy, but I figured by the time I was done with it no one would look at it and say ‘Look, a flower’, so it wouldn’t matter.

As I was drawing some sketches (with a pencil and not digitally for once) I was reminded of a painting I had seen, Esteban Vicente’s ‘Bridgehampton Rose’ seen at the bottom of this post. Vincente’s composition tends to fairly simple, more about subtle modulations of colors than about having complicated forms and rhythms. So I thought what would happen if I took his painting and overlayed my more complicated drawing. I thought making the painting a homage to Vicente could also further it as a piece about love. Of course this little narrative would be completely unapparent to the viewer, but it made me feel better.

I proceeded with this conception for about twenty hours before realizing that it wouldn’t work. I would either have to just recreate Vicente’s painting or do my own thing, I couldn’t manage any sort of melding. So I went back to the computer and did some more mock-ups combining one of my original sketches with a photo of the inprogress painting and of course throwing lots of other digital noise and layers at it as well. This really helped shift the direction of the painting. Now doing additional mock-ups and sketches in the middle of the paintings as a form of problem solving is a regular part of my practice.

Ode is probably my favorite piece of mine at the moment, although the photo of it doesn’t look fantastic. I’m pleased with the journey it took and the lessons I learned in the process. More importantly it looks good in person. It has the slightly inexplicable quality that can only be achieve with glazing, or at least this is the only way I know how to achieve it. Most particularly what I mean by this is that there are a lot of happy accidents of color. Now I love to mix color, I frequently spend an hour or more at the beginning of my day mixing colors for the day’s paintings. However, there are colors that I would never have picked and painted, which occurred because of semi-transparent layers of color stacked on top of each other with light refracting around between them.

time

I did the math this morning on how long I have until POS. At first five months sounds like a lot of time, as in who knows what I’ll be doing by then, or as in think of all the amazing work I’ll have completed by that time. So at first it seems expansive and exciting.

Then I started to break this down into days and hours. Then I factored in my other jobs (writing, bookselling) and the fact that I will be moving into a house in June. That after having moved into said new house I will have a commute in order to get to my new studio. Now it starts to get depressing.

I worked out a whole set of estimates based on all these variables and find that I will have somewhere between 450 and 900 hours available to me. The most likely number seems to 750. I paint around 6 square inches per hour, so that’s 4500 square inches. An 18 x 24 inch painting is 432 square inches, so I might be able to complete ten 18 x 24 inch paintings in this amount of time. And this is and is not a lot of paintings. Since I currently have mock-ups that I’m excited about for considerably more than 10 paintings, not to mention the paintings I’m currently halfway through that will cut into this time, this is not a lot of paintings.
And that I know the limit of what I can achieve in the next twenty five weeks, that’s pretty oppressive. And I can kid myself that I will somehow become superman and work ten and twelve hours days and never see my wife or sleep, I know that this is not true. And not only that, but my currently probably and possible estimate of 750 hours will steadily become my most optimistic estimate as reality and all its contingencies interfere.

a not-so-brief history of myself as an artist, part four

I took a second Painting class at PNCA, this one with Jef Gun. Unlike the class with Cecilia, we only worked on paintings in class, and since I am a slow painter I am fairly displeased with most of the work done in the class. Although I did gain even more appreciation for Cezanne’s early work. The only homework that we did have was to complete one painting during the course of the term applying a concept touched on in the class. I choose to do a painting using the six tertiary colors. Interrupted View, which at 24 x 32 inches remains the largest work I have completed to date (though I’m thinking about making changes so maybe it’s not so done).

Because of the time constraint (I realize most people wouldn’t consider five weeks to be a constraint, but once again my paintings take time) I painted in a slightly more direct manner. And the limit I placed on colors results in less modulation, creating the bolder, more delineated look to the painting.

As mentioned in the previous entry I was somewhat frustrated with some aspects of the glazing process, including the time require, the difficulty to change the composition in mid to late stages of the painting, and the fragility of the painting (when the finished paint layer is measured in millimeters, the painting tends to be very susceptible to scratches and chips). So having completed a couple more direct paintings in Jef’s class I decided to continue painting in this vein for a time.

Now mind you, my interpretation of painting in a more “direct” manner would still be considered by most to be indirect painting, i.e. I’m still painting in semi-transparent layers. Be that as it may, it was at least two times faster and more direct than my usual indirect/glazing style. This period at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 resulted primarily in the In the Shadows series. 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Aside from experimenting with painting methods, the experience of doing a larger series was valuable as well. I didn’t realize that I was starting a series when I began, which was a big mistake. Once I had completed the first one I had to try to make the next three look like the first one. Two of these three I didn’t finish because they were awful and one was okay but looks nothing like number 1. I decided to change the size of the support and the scale of the forms/subject in 5, which is the one I’m probably the most fond of from the bunch. Then I entered a show specifically for square foot pieces on canvas, so 6 thru 9 reflect this with the change of support (I’m not a big fan of canvas, but it had been awhile, so I figured why not) and another change of scale in the forms.

I did about twenty mockups after I had started 6, but once I had finished 7-9 I was ready to move on. With 7-9 I finally realized that if you want things to look similar in style you not only have to not only do the mock-ups for them in advance, you need to paint them all at the same time. This makes sense but also means that you have a lot of unfinished work for a long time and then all of sudden finish a bunch in a week. But again I had made the mistake and completed 6 first, then tried to make 7-9 look like 6. I haven’t managed that skill yet, and I spent more time trying to make paint recipes to keep my colors similar and making sure that the level of contrast and values were similar than working on refining the composition. With a deadline and trying to make the paintings look similar I never quite finished them to my satisfaction. But I learned some lessons which I am taking into the next series I have started underpaintings for and another series that I have mocked-up.

a not-so-brief history of myself as an artist, part 3

As previously mentioned, though I felt assured in my painting skills in one way, I was lacking confidence in another and these mixed feelings inspired me to take a Beginning Painting class at PNCA. I figured that I would know most of the material, but that if I learned one or two tricks of the trade that it would be worthwhile. In terms of that expectation, the only thing I learned was that it is permissible to mix different mediums together. I had assumed that this was at least slightly an oil and water situation or that people simply should prefer a single solution over a concoction. I am pleased to have been corrected of this ignorance. Otherwise there was no basic painting instruction that I was lacking. Which in itself was a sort of confidence booster. Sort of like if you try to figure out how the electoral college works based on what you half remember from eighth grade, what you’ve overheard, and wild assumptions and then you find out that your guesswork is correct.

More importantly, I was fortunate with my teacher. The teacher that was originally slated for the class was replaced by another occasional PNCA teacher, Cecilia Hallinan. At first I was wary of her exuberance, the way she could rave about certain colors or lines. I am generally a reserved and reticent person and as such I am suspicious of people who are laudatory, not that I necessary assume that they are disingenuous, I just find it a slightly unnatural quality. Since this was a continuing education there was also a little bit less discipline and skill in the class than I was expecting. So I was rather discouraged after the first class thinking that this would not be beneficial for me in any way.

However, Cecilia noticed that I was not taking the same copious notes as the rest of the class and then on seeing me paint immediately inquired as to why exactly I was taking a painting class. I explained my fears and she volunteered to spend extra time before and after classes with me, since she felt I wouldn’t get much out of the lessons themselves. So despite my initial cringe reaction, her willingness to reach out and support me and her general exuberance quickly became very important to me. She had me bring some of my finished and unfinished paintings into class for her to see and she was extremely encouraging about my painting abilities and potential.

Even after the class had ended she had me bring several paintings that I was working on to her studio. These were #50 which I had finally finished after many many months of work and the Driftwood series, #53, #54, and #55. William Park came by her studio and she asked him to comment on the paintings as well. They both exhorted me to view myself as more of a professional and to present my work as being of professional quality.

All of this support was vital to me and I definitely wouldn’t have pursued exhibiting or selling my work without her encouragement. Cecilia had named Launchpad Gallery as a place I should look into and when I saw that they were having a non-juried show later in the year I signed up.

The painting class had also been the first time in several years when I had really tried to paint a subject, and the first time since high school when I had worked on still lifes. I had also done a landscape, #52, which I then turned upside down and abstracted to some extent, while still retaining some of its perspective. Having dipped my toe back into realism based expressionism I decided that for Launchpad’s ‘Dreams’ show I didn’t want to pick a random painting and say that it was about dreams, rather I wanted to paint a larger and slightly more realistic painting specifically for the show. This paintings would be #57 – Dream Canyon. It’s still important to me that if a show has a theme or guidelines that I work on a painting specifically for that show or those constraints.

Dream Canyon was hung in the ‘Dreams’ show at Launchpad and I was delighted to have the first line on my résumé’s exhibition history. The piece didn’t sell during this show, but it did illicit some praise, particularly from the gallery owner Ben Pink.

a not-so-brief history of myself as an artist, part 2

So one Friday night I bought a pad of 12 x 16 inch sketch canvas and set to painting. I painted for a solid three hours and was reasonably pleased with the process and the result. My wife came home and was pleased with at least a portion of the painting. Within a day or two I took a photo of the painting and played around in photoshop with various croppings. Since I had done no preliminary sketch there was a fair bit of repetitive elements (rectangles within rectangles) and the painting would be more effective if cropped down to half its size. In the process of looking at various crops I noticed a section of the painting perhaps four inches square that I particularly liked and I decided to make this into my next painting.

It is somewhat odd for me to realize that several of these habits are ones that I have maintained. I still crop my paintings, in fact this is one of the reasons I work on panel, because it’s fairly easy to get out a saw and trim a problematic two inches off. And I still cannibalize my previous work for ideas for new pieces.

At any rate, I painted another half dozen of these alla prima sketches with little to no preliminary outlines. These paintings have a lot of white, flesh tone, and blue and are mainly populated by nearly rectangles and nearly squares, but all a bit lopsided or squished. There are several that are clearly influenced by Diebenkorn and others that were achieved by more random means, painting the outlines of random forms and then filling them in with whatever color.

The next dozen or so paintings, some now on 16 x 20 inch canvas sheets, vary between the previously described method and by method of making a photoshop outline first. For the first such, #8, I cropped a photo of a man in a rumpled shirt and jacket and then processed it through several photoshop filters.

Painting #15 was done without any prelims and was an awful painting, much worse than the first painting I had done, enough so to convince me that faced with a white canvas and left solely to my own imagination I tend to paint overly simple and overly geometric. This pushed me almost entirely into using photoshop outlines from then on. Inspired by Diebenkorn’s writings about flying over farms and deserts, which then resulted in his wonderful Berkeley paintings I started to search out aerial photographs.

At some point around this time I shifted away from flesh color and towards ochres and siennas. Perhaps inspired by Still or perhaps inspired by buying more paints. So by late 2006 or early 2007 I was settling into a palette not terribly unlike the one I use now. The number of paint tubes have accumulated since then, but I still have the same penchant for uses dark reds, siennas, ochres, neutral yellows, and either green or blue.

Also around this time I discover Francoise Gilot. Already looking at aerial photos, Gilot’s work further influenced me towards flat shapes, irregularly shaped forms, and the use of lines to outline, create contrast, and create rhythm. She also inspired me to briefly switch to painting with a palette knife. #29, #30, and #34 are particularly representative of her influence.

Having gained some confidence by this time I tried four figurative paintings. The brushwork was much improved from my previous attempts, but my color was still random rather than expressive. The backgrounds were awful and I still tended to monochromize each section of the body. Disappointed by these results I decided I had to stick with abstraction for a while longer.

After having tried the hard edges and subtle texture of using a palette knife, I wanted to return to the soft edges of charcoal and pastel. I executed several abstract drawings that I was pleased with, including #35, except that I couldn’t find a support for them that I liked and which I thought was suitably professional.

One aspect of the drawings I liked a lot was the level of detail I could achieve. #41 had way more detail in it then I had achieved with my paintings thus far. So I decided the appropriate solution was to do a thorough under-drawing and then paint on top of it. Which is what I did for #41 and #50 and what led me into glazing. The trouble with finishing the drawing too much was that it made it hard to change forms or values in the painting layers. This results in the colorized photo look seen in #41.

Just before leaving California for Portland, I completed #43, which synthesized the influence of Diebenkorn and Gilot and yet felt like one of the most original pieces I had completed.

I had started #46 in California when I was first looking at aerial photos. In Portland I applied the lessons I had learned since then to finish it. By the time I had finished #46 in January of 2008 and had started #50, I was enjoying abstraction for its own merits rather than at least partially thinking of it as a means to an ends. Perhaps oddly, this confidence in my work also made me want to take a proper painting class. I thought my skills were vastly improved, but I was wholly unsure of my technique. This uncertainty that the finished product could look good but that it would have been achieved improperly is something that continues to haunt me.

During high school, my maternal grandmother died I inherited her oil paints. I attempted a painting and I was frustrated by not only how hard it was to blend or to change the values, but also how interminably long it was taking to dry. I expressed this complaint to my step-mother

She immediately asked, What medium are you using.

Medium? I said.

Yes, like linseed oil, she said.

What’s linseed oil, I asked.

This sums up my fears. I regularly think that I am lacking some trick or even essential component that every artist who has had “proper” training knows. So this fear led me to enroll in a continuing education beginner’s painting class at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.