Keep Going Back

Saturday January 3, 2009

The last few days were just what you would expect from living in New England. We went out to a friend’s house Thursday night and came home to a frozen drain pipe in the bathroom. It took alot of messing around in there, a space heater, and climbing around outside with a hairdryer to get it undone, but it finally let go and thawed out. With all of the wind the house has been pretty chilly, so we’ve been spending alot of time loading the wood stove and keeping the fire going. And then today, after swimming at the Y, Kathy and I went out ice skating on a lake at a friend’s house. It was alot of fun, and we saw a buddy sailing around on his ice-boat. That was pretty amazing.

But on to the important stuff….

16×20”

I thought it would be interesting to post a couple of paintings of the same place, but painted at different times. This house needed some work when I first moved to the area, but I liked the look of it. Not long after I painted this first one, the owners started fixing it up and I thought, “oh well. That will be boring once everything is cleaned up and put in order, but I still found the scene intriguing at certain times of day. Specifically morning into early afternoon. So I started with this smaller painting:

16×20”

This house looks entirely different now, but the way the sun hits it in the morning is lovely, and parts of it reflect the colors of the landscape around it, or the light bouncing off of different walls makes each part of the shadow side of this house it’s own color. I enjoy looking for these subtle color changes on a surface that we think of as just one color. A flat wall is a surprisingly interesting surface, when you spend the time to look for all of the color there.

30×34”

This was the most recent painting I did of this home, and I thought the chimney shadows made for playful shapes/lines in the composition. The house now has a metal roof, which is part of what draws me to this scene. The metal roof throws off more light than an asphalt shingle roof, and that makes the house stand out from it’s surroundings. It also creates more contrast with the landscape around the building. If I remember right, the house’s walls are grey, but when playing around with creating the sense of light in a scene I’ll often exaggerate the color temp. The other difference that stands out to me is the proportions of the house. Sometimes it looks more solid and settled into the ground, and others, as in the second version here, it looks more like it’s standing up tall.

Anna Karenina

Wednesday December 31, 2008

“Harbor Nights” 6×8”

I’ve been reading Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, over the holidays, and I was pleasantly surprised when a painter entered the story for a little while. He was an interesting character who had some real gems. One of them is the paragraph below.

“He had often heard this word ‘technique’ and decidedly did not understand what it implied. He knew that it implied a mechanical ability to paint and draw, completely independent of content. He had often noticed, as in this present praise, that technique was opposed to inner virtue, as if it were possible to make a good painting of something bad. He knew that great attention and care were needed to remove the wrappings without harming the work itself… but there was no art of painting, no technique here. If what he saw had also been revealed to a little child… they too would have been able to lay bare what they saw. But the most experienced and skillful painter-technician would be unable, for all his mechanical ability, to paint anything unless the boundaries of his content were first revealed to him. Besides, he saw that if one were to speak of technique, he could not be praised for it. In all his paintings, present and past, his eye was struck by defects that came from the carelessness with which he had removed the wrappings and that he could no longer correct without marring the whole work. And he still saw on almost all the figures and faces the remains of wrappings not yet completely removed, which marred the painting.”

First off, notice how disappointed the painter is in his own work. He sees all of the flaws first. It’s hard as an artists to come to your own paintings and see the image as a whole and with fresh eyes. We spend all of our time as painters working on fixing the problems in an image, and when it’s all over and we look at our handiwork, it’s very difficult to stop listening to the critic.

It’s interesting to me that Tolstoy did such a good job of getting inside an artist’s head. I wonder if he was close friends with a painter, or was pulling from his own experience as a creator. This passage happens to be 474 pages into an 800+ page book. It seems like it might be a bit autobiographical. I think anyone who is seriously working on a creative endeavor will have alot of these feelings at some point in time, and the beauty of a writer like Tolstoy, is how effective he is at putting these feelings into words.

The comments on technique caught my eye because I can sympathize with the painter to a certain extent. I disagree with this character in the sense that I think technique is very helpful at translating an idea into an image. But what I like about this paragraph is the distinction between technique and content. The ability to paint well is not the same as the ability to make a good painting. There are a ton of painters (just look through alot of the art magazines today) who have the skills to paint, but create paintings that don’t hold my interest. The paintings seem like they are all flair, and no substance.

The way this painter is picking apart the word technique as praise for his paintings, reminds me of how I sometimes feel about the use of the word talent. I just looked up a definition and the one I like the most is, “a capacity for achievement or success.” I find this one the most fitting because of the word capacity. When I’m outside painting I meet alot of people. Quite often I’m told that they could never paint or draw. Or they used to be pretty good but they were never going to be THAT good. Maybe that’s true, but I feel like the implication is often that I was born with the ability to paint, which is not the case. I may have had some natural tendency to understand how paint works, but I learned what I know by painting ALOT and studying other painters ALOT and reading ALOT about art. I will accept the use of the word talent as the capacity to learn a certain skill faster than others… but I can’t accept it as the idea that some people are born able to do something. Even Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, who have some lucky physical gifts that give them a leg up, have worked hard to get where they were. No matter how much “talent” you have, you have to put in the hours also.

Heading into 2009

Monday December 29, 2008

As we look forward into the new year, and back at this last one, I decided to post a painting that is an older one for me. I used to play around alot with abstract painting. This is still one of my favorites. It’s one of the last really abstract paintings that I did. It was from my first year in Maine, so it’s about 6 years old, and its 34×30”.

It’s almost the New Year and I wanted to think of some kind of interesting “best of” list for 2008. I couldn’t decide on a specific topic, so I went ahead and just put together a general list of my favorite moments from the last year. I feel pretty sure that I’m forgetting something, but this is what I had come up with by last night.

In no specific order, some of my favorite things from the last year are:

1. The trip Kathy and I made to New York for a weekend in October. We had an absolute blast all weekend running around the city and getting a heavy dose of all of the excitement and range of cultures of NYC.

2. The opening reception for my first solo show at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine was a very exciting night for me. I was so happy to be a part of that gallery and I was thrilled to get to see so many friends.

3. Teaching my workshop on the Schooner Roseway in August was more fun than I expected. We got lucky with the weather, and it felt like being in summer camp with a bunch of friends. I had a blast!

4. Being a part of a panel discussion at the Farnsworth Museum was very exciting for me. I was honored to be in the company I was in, and it got me back into reading and thinking about the ideas behind why we paint.

5. The election and the days leading up to it were great.

6. Getting together with a bunch of other painters in Port Clyde for a week of painting. The first couple of nights there, I laughed harder and more often than I have in a long time. It’s so nice to meet so many great people who are dealing with similar things in life. And I’ve never met someone who could rattle off as many stupid jokes as Jerome Greene.

7. Going to my friend Fritz’s house in the summer, where we would swim, go dancing with some friends, all make dinner together, and eat, sing and play guitar while sitting on his porch looking out over the ocean!

8. Getting a little better on water skis, to the point where I could occasionally get around some of the outer buoys in the slalom course.

9. Getting asked by Connie Hayes to be a part of a fundraiser show for the Farnsworth Museum. It was a show with several established artists along with one emerging artist chosen by each of them. She’s been one of my favorite painters for years, so this meant ALOT to me.

10. The occasional trips where I could spend a week or so getting to surf every day. It’s so much better than the norm for me… where I get out on a surfboard once a month or so. I got to do this in Puerto Rico, Higgins Beach in Maine, and a short trip to Hawaii.

I hope you all have something fun lined up for New Year’s Eve. Let’s hope we all have a great year in 09.

Heading out the door.

Tuesday December 16, 2008

Today was a mad dash around town running errands. I had to get a few things done before leaving for vacation. Our vacation is a little earlier this year than usual. But as a result we’ll be home a little earlier than usual. It’ll be nice to go away for a little bit, and no, I’m not bringing my paints! When there are paints around, I can’t help myself, and it’s nice to have the occasional stretch where I don’t even have the option to paint. It feels more like a vacation that way.

Also, my new laptop showed up yesterday, so I had fun setting that up. I’m thinking of how I can organize files better than I organize on my desktop. Plus I’m playing around with ways to use it for cataloging info for all of my paintings, and business stuff. It’s really fun to have a reason to reorganize everything and try to find ways to streamline this part of my life.

I still have to get the cats ready to go and stay at a friend’s house (they will not be pleased!) and pack up some food. Then I’m headed out the door. I was hoping to put something together here that was more about painting and less about my daily life, but I didn’t have time to squeeze it in. Sorry to disappoint there, but I had to at least give one last post before leaving you all to gift giving and merrymaking. Hope you all have a great time over the holidays and I’ll be back on the journal soon.

18×24” Snow Shadows. I think this was in a post a year ago, but I really like this painting and it fits the season.

Ho Ho Ho!

Crate

Friday December 12, 2008

Yesterday I shipped a large painting out that I had to make a crate for. I’ve never had to do that before, but the customer requested it, so I decided to look into how a crate should be built. Usually I just drop a painting off at the local pack and ship store in Camden, GPS… and they do a great job. Every painting they have sent out has arrived safely, but this painting was a bit bigger.

So I looked up a bunch of ideas online and studied how other crates were built. I also called my friends at Twin Brooks Stretchers in Lincolnville, who do all kinds of useful construction projects for artists, and asked how much they would charge to pack the painting. They gave me some advice and described how they build crates, and said I should try it myself. To save my customer money, I went ahead and built it in my studio. I did cut a couple of corners, and tried to find ways to cut down on weight, but I think it was still a really sturdy and strong crate that I am totally happy with.

It was an interesting project, and it’s always fun to have more knowledge, but I hope I don’t have to build another one any time soon. I didn’t get any painting done that day, and that’s always a bit tough.

Next time I’m sure I’ll be able to build it much faster.

New Website!!! »