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.