Figuring things out?...

In the last week or so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the ideas are behind my paintings. It’s easy to just coast along and paint without really challenging myself on why I paint and what makes my paintings different, and what I can do to focus the content of my work. Last week I was trying to talk to a friend about my work and was feeling pretty incoherent and a little lazy about my painting. I found myself unable to defend my paintings as interesting landscapes. I like to think they are relevant to contemporary art today, but I have always had a love hate relationship with both the contemporary art world and the more traditional realist painters. The more traditional landscapes can be boring; devoid of idea or aspiration for deeper meaning. But on the other hand, the work I see in contemporary galleries (which I am way less in touch with now, than I was when I lived in NY, so my impressions are admittedly dated) can come across as soulless and unexciting visually. I’ve decided in the last few years that I want to walk a line in between those two. I think we can pick the part of the art world that most interests us and try to find a home there. My home in the art world doesn’t feel all of that populated these days, but it would be a place between traditional realism and contemporary work, where beauty and sincerity still matter, where art can also challenge the viewer and demand a bit more thought from it’s audience, and the most important thing is striving to find what’s missing in one’s work to make it more resonant.I want to make paintings that are visually exciting, technically well done, paintings that relish in the beauty of what paint can do, but also sometimes stray into subject matter that is less typical. I want to paint any damn thing that interests me, whether it is a lighthouse, or a dumpster. And I want to find a way to make that scene interesting in a new way, for myself and for others. I want to paint because of the passion and excitement I have for painting and the world I live in.

As I’ve been thinking about these ideas I’ve noticed that the things that make me want to paint are fairly vague and unfocused, and I want to work on bringing those ideas to a finer point. As I paint this spring, I want to think about what the underlying motivations are behind my work, and try to clarify these thoughts in a way that will help me focus and develop my work. This is something that everyone should probably be doing all of the time, but it seems to me that things like this come and go as a focus of attention. Right now it’s in the front of my mind.

Thawing Out...

This week spring seemed to roll in, so I’ve been out painting on location again. I am way happier to be outside working, even with some chilly winds and muddy ground. I’ve mostly been working on smaller panels, 6×8’s and 8×10’s. It’s funny how easy it is to get wrapped up in a certain scale of painting. When I do a series of smaller paintings like this, it’s almost inconceivable to start a 30×40″ painting. The 12×16″ canvas I did the other day seemed like a substantial piece, when I was used to doing paintings half that size. Lately I’ve been drawn to these smaller sketches, and creating some intense little moment of detail, while having a large brushstroke right next to it that will encompass a huge amount of information.

The newest paintings are still wet and create too much glare when I photograph them, so the image above is from last spring. I’ve been out cruising around looking for some new places to paint, and I’m pretty happy to be finding some places that are interesting. A bit grungy, but with their own special appeal. I keep stumbling onto views as I drive around Union and Appleton, both rural inland towns. The views are not typically picturesque, but I like that about them. They are places that are gritty, but seem to compose into interesting images. And I like the idea of doing paintings of the Maine that is more a part of my daily life.

Here’s another quote from the novel I finished recently, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”:

“Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.”

Also, for years I’ve gotten emails asking me to have a comments section. So now that it’s there at the bottom of each post, feel free to throw your two cents in.

New Website...

This is an older still life of my studio desktop.  I think the size is about 40×30″.

My friend Doug and I have been doing a redesign of my website for the past several weeks. There are some fun new features, like the ability to sign up for my email blasts in the drop down menu on the top right of every page. Just enter your email in the box and click “Join.” If I already email back and forth with you you are probably already signed up to receive me email newsletters. There’s also a calendar, so you can see what I’ll be up to in the next few months. I’ll be posting about workshops and art shows that I’ll be a part of, along with any other art related news. The paintings page will be a little different in how it’s organized, but I think it will make a bit more sense. When you go to the paintings page you will be brought to the page for available paintings. You can also see images by the type of subject matter:  still life,  landscape,  figure. The whole website is a bit cleaner and has a color scheme I’m really happy with. Doug has made a site that is much easier for me to update with new information, and one that should be more fun for you all to navigate. Doug is a good friend who has a web design business here in Camden, ME and if you want to browse through some of the stuff he can do you should check out his site.

I’ll try to keep putting up some new images in the paintings section, to keep that fresh. And for the journal, I still have archives of all of the entries from the old website, but I’m only posting some of the most recent ones, and then I’m going to go through and put up a few of my favorite older ones. I’m not sure how many of you waste away the hours reading my old journal entries, but if you are intersted in seeing any specific entry you remember from long ago, I’m happy to try to hunt it down. In the meantime, I’ll be filling up this site with new posts.

Sushi...

Glowing Grape...

Blue Cloth...

Blue Geometry...

Monhegan Still Life...

Kitchen Corner...

Nine O’Clock Light...