Shelving Books...

This is a small sketch of some beach houses in Nantucket from this past summer. It’s a 12×9″” oil on panel.

Here on the home front, Elizabeth and I are doing our best to keep up with the baby and everything else. Today we were going through some things in the garage and looked through some boxes of books from our last move. It was good to get more organized and get a pile of books ready for donation, and others on our book shelves. The best part of a project like this is being reminded of some really inspiring books, and feeling like they are a part of my world again. I already had most of my art books in my studio, where I can study them as I work, but getting some new ones out is fun.

For me, art books have been a huge part of my education as a painter, both monographs full of images and more instructional guides to living the life of a painter. It seems to me that all artists end up heavily reliant on books for inspiration. I think a lot of us even feel like we develop a very personal relationship with our most viewed books, and the artists they share with us. Thinking about that, I decided to update the poll question to ask whether you find more interest in a catalog full of images, or a collection of thoughts by/about an artist, such as The Art Spirit or Van Gogh’s letters. There are certainly merits to both, and I’m not sure exactly where I land on this, but I thought it would be a fun thing to ponder. If anyone has a recommendation of a particularly moving or important book, feel free to share it in the comments section.

As for the last question, we had 73 responses; 68 votes against the occupy museums movement and 5 votes for it. It was interesting to check in and see how people were voting as I left that poll up. I think it might be better if I try not to post my own thoughts about a subject until after the voting is finished and I am taking down the poll. Thanks for participating on this website when you do vote. I really appreciate it. It makes the journal page more interesting for me to update when I am getting that small bit of feedback.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Have a great Thanksgiving. I know I have a lot to be grateful for and I’m happy to spend the day honoring that.

Big Blue Tractor...

I’ve been getting a little studio time in, and having mixed results. Some of the new paintings are really fun and exciting to me, and plenty of others are just complete bombs. It’s really hard to keep my spirits up with such a lack of consistency, but I do think I am figuring some things out. It’s just taking lots of time and lots of paint. The image here is  plein air painting from this past summer. It is 12×9″. Sorry for the small cast shadow on the top… it’s from a pushpin holding the panel on the wall.

In the evenings I’m looking around online for interesting painters to study, and one of my favorites is Eve Mansdorf. She makes really beautiful paintings. I like these paintings on a lot of levels, but the things that strike me the most are her beautiful color relationships and complex compositions. She does a great job of organizing a painting and creating interesting visual relationships.Her paintings are often large scenes that encompass a lot of visual information, but that information is broken down into just the most essential visual notations. There are also some really interesting relationships in the way the figures relate to each other and their surroundings. This psychology within the painting adds to the enjoyment of a well constructed image.

It does not seem that she has her own website, but you can see her work on other people’s sites. You can see some of her paintings on Painting Perceptions, where there is a review of her work. There is also a good selection of her work on her page at Gallery Henoch. I have a few favorites, and hope to see more someday. I would love to get to see her paintings in person also, but for the time being I am enjoying what I can find online. The painting below is currently my favorite of hers.

Under Construction...

Yesterday I went out to lunch with friends, and then painted for the afternoon. It might not seem like much, but this was a big deal. It was a warm, sunny day, and my wife took on baby duty for most of the day so I could have a taste of normalcy and get in some real painting time. It felt great to be out painting, but also a little overwhelming to be out in the real world after being so wrapped up in the baby-life.

I thought it might be fun to show a photo I took of this scene. This was an active construction site, so a few things moved around, including the truck that was one of three or four that would stop in that spot for a few minutes at a time to load up and haul away. I moved a few things in the scene just a little bit, and tried to simplify a lot of the information and focus on color temperature.