the struggle, part II

There is No Easy Way Out.
Hard Work Is The Only Formula.     I sound like my dad.
     I am struggling with this new set of paintings. In my mind's eye the finished pieces will be fresh and instantaneous but I am finding that achieving this effect is anything but quick. I sit hunched over these tiny heads captured in full sunlight - trying to balance the lights and darks, limiting myself to minimal "layers" (glazes) so that the colors can stay translucent. In attempting to have the highlights appear to glow it's necessary to push the darks down in value, but then they tend to get "heavy."
     This set of images came to me while I was zooming in on a painting of mine to check the resolution in my photo editing program. Unexpectedly there appeared on my screen just the corner of a head and an iota of blue background and some sweepy strokes of wispy hair entangled in the sunlight. It was perfect. My work had suddenly been simplified for me. This was all I was trying to render, the beauty of life in the sun: beings connected to their surroundings. However, in my effort to render a full figure, this main point had become a sideline thought, "oh... and look at the hair!" Suddenly I could focus in on just the head and the play of light on hair and angled face, pare the image down so that there isn't a fully realized setting or a complete figure to render; find a way to be quicker, fresher, and maybe even produce more art... But the bringing of something new into the world is anything but easy. And if it's to be ART, then quicker is never an option.
     I've done this one image three times - and I think I'm going to have to do it again.

First try - I'm happy with the hair but once the
face was obviously overworked, I continued to
experiment with layering color for different effects.

Second attempt - this time I limited myself to
just two colors: Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna.
I've used this combo before to great effect, but
it still got overworked.

Third try - I brought the full palette back and
managed to keep it from the brink, but I'm still
not completely satisfied with the result.  

     When the third drawing was complete I planned to be VERY brave - with the first wash being an intense value, and then just keeping the second wash the warm skin tones - and only slightly tweaking the final details - three layers would be the best - but no matter how I try, it seems to move into five, then tweaks, and I sit there for HOURS going forward and back between warm and cool in the darks, mix more ultramarine in... nope, too blue... more alizarin, nope... more Naples - searching for the right balance of shadow depth and glowing skin. I squint to judge the value range, then look away and focus on the ceiling to let my eyes re-balance their internal color processing. I lean back to stretch, warm-up my cold fingers near the light-bulbs in my swingarm lights, have a sip of tea, then hunch some more - it's a constant push-me-pull-you between freshness and depth of value - more pigment in the mix... more water... test... squint... more pigment. 
     I've overworked this image again... Maybe I won't be able to achieve the freshness AND the value range with watercolor... 

the struggle... part I

     Formulaic and Anecdotal are two descriptions of art to be massively avoided - this is what I learned during my study of the history of art. Only fresh interpretations of imagery, deft use of line, and original use of media would be worthy of study by future generations of artists. If an artist had a settled way of rendering an image or pattern of composition (a formula), or if the subject matter was worthy of note only because it was quaint, titillating or in vogue (anecdotal), then it wouldn't "stand the test of time."  ...it wasn't ART.  And as a student of art history, I know this, I can see it, I have internalized it. So how can I approve of less in my own work? There are shades of gray - I mean, Picasso's blue period? ...he kind of had a formula going... but then he moved on to discover new things. So, is Alex Katz is formulaic? He certainly sticks to a color palette... Is Norman Rockwell anecdotal? He certainly told anecdotes with his images... If a body of work has similar characteristics, does that make it formulaic?

 This 3" x 3" image is one of a set of new
works I am struggling to help emerge.
I feel I'm not quite there yet. But will
I frame it for sale? Yes.

       If it takes me my whole life to find what I'm trying to say (and how to say it so I feel others grasp it) but manage to sell some of the stuff that was created during the struggle, does that make me a hack? still emerging? never emergent? an also ran?
    

Limitless - finite

     I settled down in my oversized chair, knees up over the heavily padded arm with the remotes in hand. No firm idea of a goal was in my head, just an unfocused need for mental escape mode. Clicking through the options on my Netflix screen, I saw "new releases" pop up. I'd been feeling the winter blahs ... that stuck-on-the-couch, treading-water mindset of just getting by, not going forward... something new had to be more appealing than the next episode of even my favorite TV escape. Flipping through new options I saw the movie, "Limitless", which I had heard about this past summer and remembered the desire to check it out. With a new sense of direction I clicked on it.
     It's basically about this guy who has found the bottom. A creative person with no will to create, and on a course of self-destruction. By chance he is given this new (imaginary) drug/chemical substance, and within seconds of ingesting it his mental synapses fly open: it's as if he moves to another plane where he can see all the possibilities, all the paths, he has access to everything he ever knew, heard or read, and can synthesize it to now fully direct his life. It was like he could inhale all the information directly into his mind and like a "popper" dancer, direct the energy wave throughout his whole body and SNAP, he was in control. It was a fascinating concept - that with a substance you could gain access to all of your brain power - (some people think it happens when on a current drug of choice, but of course, it doesn't) - and yet watching the actor move through this transformation and seeing the directorial decisions about how to relay the character's feelings and perceptions on screen, I had the feeling that it was almost more a state of mind than a drug induced thing... that the drug didn't actually do anything except give him the will to think, to focus, to be mindful and driven, to never stop doing, thinking, creating, planning - in short - to choose to use your brain.
     We so often get drained by a project or something we are required to do - and therefore in our "off" time, we want to 'zone out'. However, I find the most draining things are those that require little brainwork. The monthly bills, cleaning the bathroom, dishes (ugh), laundry, completing a bibliography page, forms and paperwork, driving to work, meetings where I'm only a passive participant... Our brains are actually energized by newness, creativity, the need to focus and add our two cents. We get energized by brainwork so why, when tired, do we feel we need to 'zone' even more?? 
     So after watching this inspiring movie - I decided to try my best, whenever I could, to keep the focus: keep thinking, planning, doing, synthesizing, making lists and following up on details, NOT letting anything slide because of "lack of energy" - finding the energy.  Most of what goes into my day is mental - so it's not really about physical energy, but about the focus it takes to stay on task, and when one is done, to instantly take up the next. And this, in itself, can be energizing.
     Choose to use it.    However, there's nothing wrong with Netflix. :)

Winter Sun, w/c on clayboard, c. 2012

[along those lines, here's the first of a series for a new set of cards - I've found that winter sells well - there not being many artists doing winter - so I have (another) new project.]

grand scale, small scale

   "Mum, check this out." I leaned over and peered at her laptop screen which displayed a view of earth from the Voyager spacecraft as it was exiting our solar system - the well known photograph, unknown by me until this moment, entitled "Pale Blue Dot." It shows earth as a tiny, partial pixel against the vastness of space - a dust mote floating in a beam of sunlight - and of course, Dr. Seuss's brilliant Horton Hears a Who comes to mind. An image pops into my head of the dust specks floating above me in the morning sunlight as I lay quiet in that moment before volition, and I imagine listening for the tiny voices... "We are HERE! We are HERE!"
   For me, it brings into focus the reality of the simultaneous co-existence of enormity and insignificance - we are both/and, not one or the other. Each life, each pebble dropped into the wave function of earthly existence, is the most important - the only thing that matters, AND it is completely insignificant in the hugeness of "reality". It's like a camera zooming way in and way out really fast, so that you see the detail immediately juxtaposed with the wide angle. Like Schrodinger's cat - which is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box to check, we are the center of the universe, AND a dust mote. There's a great moment in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, where the crusader Balian asks Muslim commander Saladin what Jerusalem is worth. He answers, "Nothing," and with a gesture of dismissal, strides away. A moment later he turns, grips his hands into fists and breathes, "Everything." He didn't change his mind, he simply grasps that both are true. It is also like the baby in the manger - on that night, in that place, his birth was absolutely insignificant, AND the pin-sharp focal point around which so much human history has whirled. Every child born is just one of billions, another squalling babe, AND the aggregate of events upon which the future will turn. This duality is built into the fabric of the universe - and when people start to grasp it, like my college friend who called to recount that while stuck in traffic she became suddenly aware of the utter, underwhelming ant-like existence she leads, we call it an existential crisis. Some can't balance these two realities. Coming back to the pale blue dot, I think that without this reality there is no balance - without awareness of the smallness of ourselves, humans tend to get carried away with self importance. Here's what Mr. Sagan had to say...
   "There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." 
   If this photograph was to be displayed on every classroom wall to be pondered daily by young minds, would it bring the world's future generations together? would it cause an end to individual striving? Would it cause a new philosophy of life to be widely adopted on our little dust mote? Would it be just another NASA image that's world-view shattering and yet has no effect on our daily lives? 
   The sun is rising, glowing pink under the blue cloud cover. Two fellow earthlings (deer) just passed by outside my window on their way to whatever important events fill their day, as unaware of my importance in the grander scheme as I am of theirs. I think, however, that we each do have an inkling of the insignificance of ourselves, as they stroll through the snowy field under a gray sky and I sit here on my couch watching them, protected by a wooden structure, connected to a mountainous landmass, spinning on a rocky planet around a middle aged star on the edge of the galaxy.... preparing for an annual human ritual of rebirth we call Christmas Eve. 
   "Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." - Carl Sagan
 "We are HERE!"

"you can't worry if you're singing."

   It's 6 a.m.  I peer out the front door as I come down the stairs ... it's still full dark outside but I can see the new snow covering the step in the glow of Christmas lights from the other side of the house.  In the half-light of the window candles, I putter over the tea pot, and spooning the tea into the ball I notice it feels overly cold... colder than the 64 degrees I've been keeping my heater at this year to save some money. ($4.25 a gallon - sheesh!) When I glance at the heater the little yellow lights says 52, which means the power must have flicked last night. I peer out the big front window through the not-yet-sunrise darkness and see the huge spruces across the street, visible against the dark sky because of their newly snow-covered branches, swinging and tossing in an obviously mighty wind. ...re-set the heater, fill the kettle, burner on high... I pull both throws around me and settle on the couch to watch the growing light illuminate our newly winterized world as the house slowly re-warms. I feel a small pang of guilt for our bird - parakeets ARE tropical.  Poor creature, what was I thinking?  

Blanketed - watercolor - 3" x 3"

   Snow removes the color from the landscape and replaces it with values, such that what was just yesterday a big blob of variegated green (those stately trees across the street) is now an intricate study in black and white with every every branch and twig limned by its perfectly sculpted cloak - 5" of heavy, wet loveliness. The colors of full summer are lovely, but the values of the winter landscape are truly, deeply beautiful. 
   Last night during the holiday concert, (we wouldn't have a "holiday" concert without Christmas, but we call it a holiday concert...) which was amazingly well attended (thank you supportive community!) one of the last pieces we sang was a counterpoint melody to Silent Night, and our director arranged it so that throughout four verses, first the counterpoint was introduced by itself by the men, second the women sang it as the men ooo-ed Silent night quietly underneath, third the men sang Silent Night against the women, and for the last time through, the entire chorus sang only the counterpoint and the audience sang Silent Night, led by Sue, our director. Well, when it was the audience's turn, they heartily started singing full voice, and all the beautiful voices around me on the risers filled with the counterpoint and I could just hear this amazing swelling of the entire building with perfect harmony and it was so overwhelmingly beautiful I started to choke up. Since any kind of decent singing effectively ends when choked up, I blinked back tears and looked down at my music. I struggled between trying to tamp down that feeling of all consuming joy and amazement, or to just enjoy the now - and feel it wash over me... but I wanted to sing too, to be a part of it, not a spectator. So I looked up at the big window at the back of the balcony, the one with four individual lights giving it a cruciform shape, and out into the deep blue of the night sky beyond the walls and started to mouth the words, focusing away from the emotion just enough to say the correct words with my croaky, choked up voice, but also listening outside of my self, so I could hear all the voices and our one big voice of sound of joy. Humans do amazing things.  Kind of like the crickets in spring. I bet some of them get choked up too.

all colors are in all things

More thoughts about how we are of, not just in, our surroundings...
     Some of my favorite paintings - the ones where I feel I really got it - are the ones where I've kept my focus clear: I am painting sunlight. I'm not painting hair or skin or water or fabric or rocks or hillsides, I'm painting sunlight. I'm painting the stuff that bounces off all those objects and reaches our eyes. When I manage to keep this purpose clear in my mind, my entire composition and the way I approach the image is more unified. 
     In the image, "Mermaid", I started with one cool color flowing through all the shadow areas in the entire painting, and then a single warm tone flowing over all the sunlit areas... and this process works whether the form I'm depicting is water, a figure, a dock, trees, a house - I let the shadow tone flow over all the forms equally, such that the shadows are all connected in the first layer - one big unbroken shadow form. This helps in composition and checking proportions but also illustrates in a concrete manner my constant awareness of how we (or any object) are connected to our surroundings. We are connected via chemistry in the physical realm - we are constantly sharing macro and micro parts of ourselves... esters bring our scent on the wind, we breathe in the air and everything in it, macro particles are constantly floating off and trailing behind us, we are taking in sunlight and giving off heat, there are so many ways that everything, every object or figure, pulsates with everything around it... and this same effect is happening to every surface everywhere. We are also connected to our surroundings via color and light in the visual realm - the set of colors we see in a given moment, a given scene, is completely dependent on earthly conditions: sunlight, clouds, water vapor in the air, land elements and objects absorbing/reflecting light, and how each of these surfaces (sets of molecules) reflect the light streaming from the sun into our eyes. 

Mermaid, watercolor, 5" x 5" 

     Because sunlight is the source of all vision, all color, my thinking is that all colors are in all things. Light is (photons are) bouncing everywhere reflecting, radiating, scintillating - there would be no visual experience without this effect - such that the water behind the girl reflects the sky and the sun, the sun shines down on the girl's hair and shoulders and the water reflects back onto her suit, the shadows in her hair are the same blue as the water... the sunlight flows like water from figure to background, uniting and shimmering over all surfaces. 
     This same thought process can be used for any image, whether it's a dark foggy scene, or an evening scene (the moon still reflects the sunlight) and even for interiors - you can always view a set of image elements as the light they are reflecting, rather than as objects with certain colors. I think it keeps the artist focused on the underlying visual reality and not about pre-conceived particulars, like "what color is a tree?" ... all colors, of course.

more of 'why...'

Starting with 'why' is sometimes a roundabout trip. For instance, 'why' did I spend all of yesterday hunched over my drafting table alternately squinting at the surface of my paper and a few scattered reference photographs - agonizingly balancing color and value and delineating wisps of hair and tiny facial features? Well, so I can eat next month, of course! But also because I said yes to a customer who's kept in touch with me for years after she had a portrait done of her son at three years old, she now has two other children and wanted another portrait. And also because regardless of how much time it takes to get that darker stroke in exactly the right place to make that half smile look just like the way he smiles, I can do it: I can get the likeness. AND getting it is very satisfying. I have only maybe two more hours of work on that triple portrait to have it completely finished - just the final tweaking of darks in the hair, and one more well placed stroke to get the third figure's mouth just right, finalizing the foreground texture in the sand and the figures' reflections/shadows. Then, even though I still have another commission to start, I'm taking a break and painting what I want for a week. 

A portrait of my daughter - we are of the landscape, not just in it.

Why the blond wisps in the wind? There's something so fragile about it. AND it happens to everyone (having the wind pulling on your hair) and yet who stops to notice the beauty of that event? (which can be perceived as an annoyance - everyone reacts by tugging that wayward strand back behind your ear). The way the wind reacts with wisps of hair, the way the colors of the surroundings filter through the strands... it's worthy of being rendered. (i.e. = it's beautiful.) It also illustrates the concept that we are IN the landscape - the wind reaching and pulling the hair away from the body physically connects us to it. We are not a solid body that just moves through the air, we are of the air. It fills us, we share ourselves with it... it's part of us, we are part of it, and my visual representation of that is the wisps of hair being tugged and tossed by the wind.