Provincetown Painting...

So the weather has been good and I have a ton of things to take care of and plenty of distractions to keep me from getting to all of those things. I’m afraid that all of this good weather may keep me from posting as frequently as I did all winter. I’m still going to aim for at least one post a week.

In the meantime, I’ll just mention two new sources of inspiration for me. One is a book that was suggested by a friend, “What Painting Is” by James Elkins. I am still in the beginning of this book, but so far it is great. The other is a movie that I was just told about, “Painters Painting.” It’s a documentary about the abstract expressionists and some of the artists that came after them,  and it has alot of interesting interviews with them. This movie is chock full of goodies. It may be hard to find, but is REALLLY interesting. And I love watching these heores of mine move around and talk about their work. It’s so fun to get a sense of what their personalities are like, since some of them are painters I have looked up to for a while. I’ll try to get some quotes from the book, and thoughts on the movie into a future post. Until then, I’ll be painting, framing, stretching, gessoing, gardening, reading…

Long Overdue Post...

This is a painting of a dam right down the street from my house. It’s a 20×24″ canvas.

This is a 12×16″ painting from the past week.

I’ve been lazy about posting lately, and I apologize. I’ve been distracted by a lot stuff, notably the nice weather that is keeping me outside painting. Today is yet another sunny day, so I’m getting ready to head out for an afternoon of painting. But first I wanted to throw up a quick post here. The two paintings above are new paintings that I really like. And below is an excerpt from a blog I visit regularly. It’s a quote of Robert Motherwell’s that I enjoyed and thought I might share here. The blog I found this on is, www.dailygusto.com. It’s a fun place to read some interesting art reviews. You should check it out if you have the time.

From his essay “What Abstract Art Means to Me,” 1951:

Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need.The need is for felt experience–intense, immediate, direct, subltle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.

Everything that might dilute the experience is stripped away. The origin of abstraction in art is that of any mode of thought. Abstract art is a true mysticism–I dislike the word–or rather a series of mysticisms that grew up in the historical circumstance that all mysticisms do, from a primary sense of ugly, an abyss, a void between one’s lonely self and the world. Abstract art is an effort to close the void that modern men feel. Its abstraction is its emphasis.

Painting light on a red building....

This is a painting I did this morning in Spruce Head. It’s one of the places I like to visit now and then to see what grabs my attention. I was planning on painting a view of the water, but I kept looking at this building and wanted to give this a try. I was drawn to the challenge of painting different reds. Part of that challenge is making it clear that the fuel tank in front of the building is a faded red, almost a pink. I also would have to deal with creating a sense of light on the walls of this red building. This is always a challenge. I usually rely on color temperature differences to create this illusion of sunlight, but a red building has so much warmth in it, that I have to do a subtle temperature change and rely more on tonal differences. I like to keep the warmth of the local color, even in the shadows of the building so I tend to just darken up the red a bit, and use some deep sienna colors to create a rich warm shadow. Then getting the light side is always hard. I want to make a strong contrast between light and shadow, but I have to restrain myself and just lighten up the red a bit and add a bit of yellow to give it some glow. If I go too light the red just turns pink. Capturing the light is always harder on a red building. On a white building I can really exaggerate the contrast of light and dark and create alot of drama. With a red subject I have to rely on the strength and drama of the color itself and how it will relate to its neighbors. Reds tend to attract enough attention on their own that I try to sit back and figure out how to create a more subtle sense of light.

I’ve also been playing around with paint application and really piling the paint on occasionally. Parts of this painting are still thin, but other parts are piled on thick. I’ve been looking at some other painter’s work this winter and have been reminded of how much thicker my paint application was when I was in college. Two of these painters are Glenn Dean and Joaquin Sorolla. You can find some of their work online and get an idea of their paintings, but seeing them in person is what really won me over. The lusciousness of their paint has made me think much more about what I want my paintings to be. It makes me remember what made me first love oil painting; thick, juicy, decisive, delectable, irresistable, powerful pieces of paint. Hopefully it’ll help me bring my paintings more towards that goal.