My Ugly Truth 12.14.12

Last night, after the tragedy in Connecticut, I took some time to reflect as a parent, teacher, and artist on the relationship that this event has with my life, outlook, and work.  I  thought about my painting a lot….in my work, there is a world where things like innocence, respect, goodness….all things tangentially related to beauty can live, and live unadulterated.  It calms me to think that the world can look this way to someone seeing my paintings long from now.  I disagree with many scholars that beauty however relates to truth, because the truth is pretty ugly on days like this.  The Illusion of beauty becomes an ideal or a hope, maybe a position of mourning.  For me, painting reminds me that there are things that transcend the time, place, and world we live in.  

I am horrified that my daughters will hear about this incident in the upcoming days, but i am even more saddened by the fact that they will inevitably know the truth.  My truth is the state that they are in of never knowing, which can only happen in a painting….its a lie that I have to believe for their future.  Why would someone believe in something that they knew wasn't true?  Because the truth is often THAT dismal.  I don't think that beauty can ever be realized when the entire story is told, which is why I like to destroy parts of my paintings that give too much.  I am protecting an untruth of sorts, but one that truthfully expresses my own view.  One of slight desperation and disbelief.  I try to honor the rare occurrences that counteract those feelings and preserve them in plastic.  

As my kids sleep upstairs, I think of all the teachers that I work with that told me yesterday upon leaving my school to hug the kids extra hard tonight…i didn't.  It doesn't take events like this for me to feel that way.  The passage of time, another theme in my work, is always so sad to me, mostly because truth is at the end of this cycle and aesthetic truth is all i am interested in…please lie to me about the rest.

God bless us.

Being Watched

     I have met with my mentor three times now an we have talked a lot about the psychology involved in the multiple portrait, something I am also reading a lot about particularly in Richard Brilliant's book "Portraiture," recommended by Tony.  This piece is one of a couple that I want to make about my daughters watching television.  I am titling it "TV Heads" and I think that the proportion or scale reflects such a complex activity, especially when someone is watching you watch TV.  This is roughly 44 x 52 inches and un-cropped.

Winter Games

     I am temporarily titling this triptych "Schumann, Pepperoni, mini-blinds."  It is about the portrait in general, and what it entails.  I see this as a triple portrait three times, with a distinct shift in focus and intent with regard to the physical and visual dialogue.  This piece is largely about cadence and the senses as the title implies, and I am also trying to show a variety of painting sensibilities under one roof as they apply to the individual.  The paintings are a bit larger as they have been cropped in this collage and the color is more monochrome thus far...the blue in the bottom right of the third is cool but false.  I was working with a slightly wet ground which is tricky and something that I want to make sure to moderate closely.  They are drying with the windows open to my studio and sub-freezing air rushing in.

Looking Ahead

     These are the six paintings minus one that is being exhibited that I am currently working on, and they are in varied states of completion.  The two in orange are a diptych with the old man on the left and are a little more than 5 feet tall.  The paintings of the woman and the man at tables have been re-stretched, then cut down and re-stretched again.  I have done this a lot, I just decide the painting has become about one thing not two, or one person.  I left the remnants of the other person in both paintings and I like the way it looks as a partial telling of a story.  The painting in the top right was from a background of a painting brought back from Japan where I cut both foreground characters out and it went from a painting that was 4 by 5 feet to one that is 2 x 3.  The top left painting is from a series that I am picking up after a very long hiatus in a response to a recently proposed theme critique based on the word "when."  I gave up on the painting years go and decided to basically repaint it right on top, something I have never really done.  I am experimenting with tinted grounds, oil primer, linen, alternative mediums and sennelier paints that contain a safflower oil base.  I have 3 large canvases stretched and hope to do some landscape work as well as more situational narratives that continue to explore the theme of "the visit."

Getting Back

   Upon my return it was very difficult to get my head around my new schedule.  I met with my mentor Richard Raiselis, and had great talks about frescoes, Manet, psychology, materials, and so on.  It was very productive, but short of re-retching the work that I brought home in rolls from Japan and making new canvases that I had planned before I left, there were many days in September that painting took a back seat to life.  I had been here before, so I braved the storm and I now feel that I am through the other side.  In this kind of predicament, there is no replacement for experience.

Departure

     I asked the subject of my work for the summer to take a small break from her own endless work schedule so that I could get a picture of her looking at this series of paintings.  She could not understand what was so interesting about her life, and viewed the work with skepticism.  At ninety, she does not have much time to reflect, only to dig, plant, mend, and maybe visit when that is done.  All of these paintings need work after transporting them back home.  To the right in the bottom left picture are crates full of recently dug potatoes...to her that's real work and she takes a lot of pride in that.

     All seven paintings are rolled up and wrapped with tape and craft/wax paper, and my stretchers are fastened to my easel waiting for more abuse next summer.  One last contribution from the flatbread truck, and everything pushed behind the farming tools and baby potatoes ready to be replanted.  The next adventure is getting these onto a plane and home after a couple days of rest in Tokyo.  My next post will be the re-stretching of this work thousands of miles from where it was made, and the continuance of my reflection and painting based on photos, drawing, memory, and yes...feelings.

Just Plain Air

     Today I got back to how I began painting more than fifteen years ago.  Packing up all my stuff, and tailgating Henri style.  The six paintings that I have been working on are ten days away from being stripped from their stretchers and rolled into a tube, so every minute of drying time is necessary.  For this reason I am forced to take a break from the figural works I have been happily struggling with.  Since painting is how I cope, and breathe, some good old fashioned on-site work was well deserved.  Although this was made with oil and canvas, I wouldn't compare it to what guys like the brothers Meyer are doing, this is more of a sketch or drawing to me.  There is no labor-intensive component, very little subtractive methods or nervous anticipation.  No big financial risk with regards to materials, and little expectations.  No underpainting, drawings in preparation or real contemplative spirit...just painting.  Mostly I spent this time working on calligraphic brushwork and playing with emphasis, focus, and color...too much color.  Ironically this painting will sell first if my own history repeats itself.
     I watched a documentary film about a bunch of art experts trying to determine the credibility of a dumpster diver who found an alleged Pollack and was searching for its provenance.  The movie is great if you have not seen it, but the sticking line was from an art historian whom when looking at the piece simply denied it's viability by saying, "It doesn't feel like a Pollack, it doesn't fly like a Pollack, it doesn't fail like a Pollack."  And rather than discredit the great tradition of outdoor painting, I would say that in the context of my own work, this just doesn't fail like a Fontinha.  That being said, tomorrow I will get out there and try to see what I can do about it in a second session.  I will try to post updates as to the state of my figural work while it lives in this purgatory stage of drying.  I look forward to re-stretching them and giving them some final moments of struggle in my studio back home.

A New Visitor

     I have been thinking about why I am working on this series about "the visit."  Above is the beginning of numbers three and four.  A visit requires planning, there are economic considerations, often it means more with time and space.  A visit is constructed and has a precarious set of circumstances within.  Sometimes after a visit I wish I said more or less, and many times this seemingly meaningless event takes an unexpected or important turn.  There is a vulnerability, an area of feeling opened.  These are all things that are true of the painting process, as well as a curious need for human contact.  Why do we do it?  I have thought a lot about a comment from a colleague whom I respect about my figures looking wooden.  This has made me think of the people who first turned me on to painting, particularly Max Beckmann.  His woodcuts and paintings are only separated by color.  Stiff celebrations of drawing and composition, layers of hands like limbs. Wood has a life after death that is intriguing to me.  There is a static breath in these wooden figures that I enjoy.   They are easier to understand than actual people.  After all, movement can be implied in a figural painting, but we know they are still.

     In regards to the paint itself, I am enjoying the increase in awkwardness, and the decision to be less decisive in areas.  I don't want to paint pretty things, or things that entirely make sense, that would be really abstract.  These paintings are of the same subject, my ninety year old Grandmother-in-law.  In these two, a man from next door who I have always admired named Ryokusan (6th son) is the guest.  As is usually the case, she defers to him being the host, everything is for his comfort, and this is why she sits lower in the paintings, I think she would feel awkward about the reverse.

Two Pairs

      The past few weeks I have been working on two pairs of paintings, which has been the perfect balance.  I anticipate returning home with six paintings in total, and since two will be mostly finished soon (the two direct studies of the woman working) I am making sure that there is no lull in the action by stretching two large canvases to match the large double portraits in the series I am temporarily calling "The Visit."  Another friend of my subject whom I have known for many years came by recently and I had been waiting to get some good photos of a visit between the two.  While i am making these new canvases, I am working up some drawings for what will be a second diptych, each panel roughly 44 x 52 if my metric conversion is correct.  This is a size that I have been using for a year and it is simply working so I want to continue the linear progression, plus they fit perfectly in the back of my pickup between the wheel wells.  Because I am going to take the canvases apart to roll them up and bring them home before I depart at the end of the summer, I am excited that these beefy stretchers I made will provide ample painting support for years to come.  I think I will have 3 more paintings sessions on each canvas before leaving, leaving them more than 3/4 finished, and I will touch them up and add some minor changes to them once re-stretched in my studio at home.
     I have been working in this garage at night, and although I have had to dispose of some spiders that could walk away hammers, I have had some pleasant company too as you can see in the bottom right hand corner of the collage above.  The K-truck has sides that fold down and it has made a great work table keeping with the Japanese tradition of maximizing my space.  Oil painting is easy to overwork in my opinion, so this seemingly excessive building has always been a way for me to counteract this challenge.

Back and Forth

Color Feeling

This is the beginning of the color underneath the color, and of the overall "color feeling" of the work.  That term was one used often in my undergrad experience by George Nick, who really emphasized value first, and color as an intuitive manifestation of the painter's feelings toward the subject.  Restraint is a key ingredient in this phase of my work, as the building of the painting is the result of thin veils of color.  I use a lot of subtractive methods so drying between sessions is critical to the permanence of those things past.

Just Vibing

This was the work from this morning, by now the process is self-explanatory.  I'm not making this up, this is really how people live out here.  This is the same woman as in the earlier paintings, which are in a state of drying.  Sketchbook on the left, 3 x 4 foot linen on the right.

Thinking and Dead Color

     I took a day off from the paintings that I have been working on, more drying and thinking.  I cannot however afford to do nothing today, so I spent some time harvesting some stretchers from some old paintings that a local man was throwing away a few years ago.  He said he quit painting.  I never forgot that.  There were two sizes, 40 and 30.  They are some kind of standard sizes in metric lengths.  The smaller ones had a lot of heavy paint on them so I stripped them and decided to add some quarter round from a store called J-Mart around the edge.  They were mysteriously lacking any lip and I like to apply a lot of pressure to my work.  If I don't use these this summer than I will next year when I return.  The two larger ones look like they were abandoned in the under painting stage, so I will sand them and apply a primer on top.  Unfortunately, the linen was cut right at the back of the bar, so i will draw a rectangle within the support so that I have enough material to re-stretch these upon my return home.
     Speaking of hiding and underpainting, I also spent the day looking at my work and doing some research about "dead color."  This is a classic technique of underpainting in a monochromatic fashion, so as to heighten the color balance/value and to create more depth and pop.  This brought me back to conversations I had with Tony Apesos about sennelier colors and their origins.  I looked into some traditional takes on the subject like those of P.L. Bouvier, Thomas Bardwell and John Collier.  I learned a lot about things like shade teint and mars colors.  The problem is that most of the examples shown feature artists who go to great lengths to hide their brushwork, which is definitely not me.  I am interested in finding a way that this kind of technique which I never learned at Mass Art could be applied to my work.  I can see the benefits, but don't want to get too mechanical or tight.  I am going to really think about where, when, and why this could be useful.
     I think a lot in between stages of my work, I spend some visits to my studio just looking and thinking.  As an educator, it always surprises me what little value we put on thinking.  If a kid doesn't have the answer at his or her fingertips, we move on.  Concepts like "time on learning" do not account for time thinking, and I have said to many administrators who have asked, "what is that child doing?"... "I think he is thinking."  I am currently reading Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man as a part of my academic plan.  The relationship between visual art and literature is of great interest to me.  One of my favorite lines so far is when Steven Dedalus says "by thinking of things you could understand them."

Simply Working

For over a decade I have been working in pairs, sometimes it's more intentional than others.  I like to work the problems of one out in the other.  It is not that the first doesn't look right, but it's usually a different feel.  A traditional diptych is one picture separated into two planes, but I have always thought of mine as two movements that combined make a song.  Both usually work on their own, but I would never switch which is on the left or right.  In a way they have a visual dialogue similar to the one we experience when going through photographs.  My studio end wall is just a bit over ten feet wide, and usually I have just enough room to fit two paintings on it.  This just became a pattern over time.  These two are just about 4 x 5 feet each.  I look at them in tandem, I like to move across them from left to right with my eye, and when I can I like to sell them together.  At this point of the process I start to move pretty fast, and a lot of the thinking has been done.  I don't like to think a lot while painting.  I paint to escape from art at this juncture.  A lot of the foundational drawing is now set, although they are a bit crisp for my liking.  I look forward to destroying the images in certain spots.  I also want to be very careful not to get too seduced by color.  I like to have a good reason for doing anything at all to them from this point on.

Raw Beginning

This is a moment I like.  I have a personal policy not to leave the canvas until everything there is something I like, if that means scrubbing out ninety percent of what was done, than so be it.  Once the canvas is stained by a drawing and dry, I can beat it with a hose and it is hard to get rid of the work.  This is most true when working in thin layers such as I prefer.  It helps me reveal the moments that combined create the final product.  These are moments in my life as much as those in the life of my subject.  This is how I walked away from the canvas yesterday morning, and now a day of drying while I look at my other canvas is in order.  I usually work on pairs simultaneously for this reason.  I like to work most of the painting out in raw umber before any or little color is added. That is a bug on her head. The biggest difference so far in working with the oil primer is that it is a little wet, and scumbling takes on a muddled quality, while brushwork is slightly more fluid.  I am enjoying how it makes the drawing a tad closer to the viewer as opposed to behind the canvas.  Overall the work looks more dense, and more worked on, even though it isn't, and this has been in line with my intentions.  So far I am really enjoying this subtle change in materials.

Drying and Drawing

One of my many routines in an effort to maximize my time spent is to do what I call "work up" drawings while canvases are being gessoed and while they are drying between layers.  The oil primer gave me a slightly more extended period with which to do this.  I like to take many pictures, draw parts of them from all angles, and even switch limbs or heads if I feel it helps the composition, the emotional effect, or the narrative.  I spent a couple afternoons at the local library working up some of the drawings I plan to use for my new paintings.  They are based on a visit my Grandmother-in-law had from a neighbor, which because they are farmers only happens during a rainstorm.  I have met this woman many times.  I use pictures, but I use the drawings and memory even more, and I like to revisit the subject personally as well later on in the process.  It's like an all out stocking of the subject.  I remember Francis Bacon saying in an interview that he couldn't work from a photo of a stranger really, there has to be an emotional connection.  He also said that he wants his work to have a trace of human existence similar to the way a slug leaves slime.  I have always remembered that line.  I only want to draw as well as I need to in order to paint.  I remember a friend saying to me about my drawings, "really, all smudgy?"

Picture Building

The linen sure has a different feel.  I noticed right away that it looks different depending on the direction of the mark,  like wood grain.  I feel like I went from painting on white bread to painting on an english muffin.  The surface is everything to me, usually I apply gesso with a brush, and I highlight those brush marks by keeping my paint thin.  It is not like the emphasis on flatness in the classical sense, but it still boasts of flatness in a similar way.  I like when the underpainting crosses from skin to background.  Since it was suggested to scrape the gesso on and then to apply oil primer in the same way by both Tony and Peter, I am doing just that.  I could not see taking a putty knife to the support (I don't know if I still call it a canvas) because I am heavy handed and could picture puncturing it with the sharp corners, so I got a plastic thing that is used to smooth frosting on cakes.  It was also cheaper and easier to find around here.  I can already picture reacting to the natural grain of the linen in a similar way that I worked off of the gesso.  I am excited, scraping the gesso in allowed drying time to be minimal, and it took much less material.  It actually pushed through a bit to the back, and wow was it quicker.  I took the time to build a new easel from parts of my old one and some scrap, I have made this exact type several times.  I like my easel on casters so that when I get aggressive it has some give, like a civil war cannon.  Rothko used to tighten and loosen his stretchers in mid painting for different effects of resistance, that is right up my alley.  This is painting.

Pride

I definitely put in my hours today.  Ahhh...Linen! Why didn't anyone tell me that this stuff stretched so much better than canvas, and it smells like hay.  I am excited to paint on it.  This was made with 1 x 2, masonite, glue, some synthetic corner molding, and hardware.  If I was a rockstar the corners would be mitered, I did hand carve the recesses in the crossbars.  This is the kind of stuff I love.  It's easy to tell if it is done right and when it is over.  While I have been doing this, I have also been furiously taking photographs of my subject, my Grandmother-in-law.  Tommorow it's gesso and oil primer time, which to me is the beginning of the painting process.

On Obsessive Planning

Part of what has enabled me to keep working while maintaining a full time teaching job and raising three kids is obsessive planning.  Like I said in a previous post, I like to have some canvases in all stages.  When you have a family like mine, and you make time to work, there is no time to get into the studio and think, all of my thinking has to be done ahead of time.  Many people marvel at how a cheetah will hunt.  Speed, determination, and skill.  What most people don't know is how much a cheetah's life depends on catching what he chases.  So much energy is spent on a chase that the cheetah's life depends on him/her succeeding at that moment.  My painting regiment is similar.  In this life, when there is time, I must be productive.  For this reason I have countless pages of notes in my book about ideas for paintings, as well as an ongoing inventory of materials.  If lacking motivation when I get to the studio I gesso something, stretch something, or at worst clean.  I try to play chess, and think ahead, I can't afford to waste time.  These pictures are typical pages from my sketchbook that I call "ART NOW."  On the left are the pages from the work I brought to AIB, and the right, my current planning of paintings to be done on this trip.  I enjoy the build up, the preparing...this is where painting becomes metaphorical for life.

Revisiting Gogol

Over the years I have also accumulated many books over here in Japan.  I bring a few each year, as reading generally replaces television due to my own lack of understanding of the local language.  As a part of my academic plan this semester I will be reading Joyce, who has eluded me thus far.  Last year I read short stories of Kafka and Gogol, and when I arrived I quickly opened the books to passages that I underlined.  I tend to use this kind of material to inform my work.  When I was younger, I would paint characters from Crime and Punishment, I was into allegorical painting, and Russian literature.  Now I use such things in a less literal way to inform my work.  The first passage that I turned to was in a short tale called The Portrait. 

 "Here in the portrait before him there was something strange.  This was no longer art.  The eyes actually destroyed the harmony of the portrait.  They were alive, human!  It was as if they had been cut from a living man and inserted in the canvas.  Here was none of that sublime feeling of enjoyment which imbued the spirit at the sight of an artist's endeavors, regardless of how terrible the subject he may have put on canvas.  There was a painful, joyless sense of anxiety instead.  'What's wrong?'  the artist had to ask himself.  After all, this was only an imitation of something from life."

 This is such a mouthful.  So many assumptions about beauty, the sublime, portraiture, and art in general.  Gogol spent most of his life traveling, and wrote books on painting and architecture.  The amazing thing to me when I read it was that it was written in 1842.  This was pre-abstraction for the most part.  Concepts of ugliness as beauty had not yet crept into the aesthetic consciensness of the time.

Raw Material

Over the past ten years that I have come to Japan, I have slowly built quite a comprehensive painting kit by bringing more materials on every trip.  My family with whom I stay is kind enough to afford me a shelf to store things among their farming equipment.  We share a love of tools and tradition.  Art materials are close to impossible to find here in this remote location, yet the idea of traveling abroad to paint like Beckmann in America, or any number of Americans in France, really forces me to contemplate how artists and especially painters have adapted to their own personal frontier.  This year I had a gallon of gesso delivered from Tokyo, and somehow I was able to smuggle a huge and heavy can of oil primer, a large bottle of Liquin, and some other items on the plane.  Before I leave to go back home, it has become tradition to do an all out inventory of supplies in preparation for next years visit.

Literal Backdrop

This is the first picture I took after arriving in Fujimi, which means view of Fuji.  This is a typical view down a slope of rice fields and commercial seed manufacturers, but the mountains and their ever changing clothing of clouds are for lack of a better word, sublime.  You would think that this would inspire me to paint landscape, but quite the contrary.  Some things shouldn't be figured out, or can't be.  Some scenes can't be improved with paint.  This is where Constable was on to something, making broccoli into a landscape seems less daunting.

Starting Point

After painting 15 years, it feels right to call this work that I brought to my first residency a starting point.  I was apprehensive bringing it because it was so different from the work with which I applied.    The work also wasn't completely finished, but because the finish of the work was my primary concern, I brought it anyway.  I have never thought of myself as a figure painter or a genre painter as Tony called it, but I have learned over the years that I need to paint what gets me to the easel.  The words of my colleagues were extremely helpful.  Even the words that were hard to hear.  I plan on working on many of these a bit more when I return home, but I have always liked having many paintings going, all in different stages.  This aspect of drying time is something I really enjoy about oil painting, they are alive, and I live with them.