a few new things

I spent the summer, after moving into the new studio in a good deal of pain, and finally ended up in surgery this past fall.  While I was trying to cope through the heat and exhaustion of a Tucson summer I was able to focus on the changing colors of the sky.  I wanted to watch the events above but not paint them in any literal way.  Watercolor is great for fast applications of washes.  I was thinking about Eveningglow, one of my abstract observational oil paintings from Minnesota, where I tried to capture light from evening walks.  The first watercolor is in that spirit where I washed one color on top of another and turned the surface 90 degrees.  I would come into the studio with a color in my mind and place it on the surface, trying to leave some white of the page.  Usually only one paint application per day so that the surface had time to fully dry.  Some days I could get away with two, it's so hot here.  Then another color on another day.  The process is super important to me.  A painted image all at once seems to imply a certain level of pre-meditation.  I'm not interested in that kind of visual manipulation.  Ideas are great, but when a painting is all mind and no lung I get a bit bored. The same holds true if it's too feelly.  I mean paintings need to make the viewer breath as well as think, otherwise we're caught in a Cartisian mind/body separation all over again.  I think the two working together is the way we experience the world, so that's how I try to make a painting.

In these watercolors I respond to the the light of the page still emanating through the density of washes.  I also respond to the failure of watercolor to remain on the surface after repeated washed.  In the center(ish) portion of the painting you can see ghost markings beginning to surface.  I like when a mark is created as a byproduct of process.  It's a mark not made by the hand, failure of materials as a distinguishing feature of art production.  To my mind this is an exciting moment.

Old things

One of the greats things about the new studio is having walls again.  It's been a long time since I've been able to unpack old paintings and look at them.  This one is 5 of 5 Sky with Key arranged randomly.  I painted it about 15 years ago.  Back then I was really interested in the surface of polaroid film.  I loved the way the rollers squished the dyes and emulsion onto the little card thing to make a photograph.  The process was just amazing.  This painting started as a polaroid of a cloud scape out of the window of my Best Studio Ever.  In those days I would scan the Polaroid into the computer and break it up into smaller gridded parts.  I'd adjust the color and balance in Photoshop and print the image.  Those I would use to make the painting.  5 of 5 Sky uses 11" and 15" panels.  I called the recognizable visual representation the True View (the name used in traditional Chinese screen paintings).  I was curious when I hung it this time if there would be a sensation of sky and cloud if the image was unrecognizable.  I like the twisting turning thing that's happening with the random arrangement, and I still get the feeling of some sky event.  The bigger question at this time that I was thinking about was could a painter define a linguistics of landscape?  Through color, space or something of the like.  I mean do we know what the world and space looks like?  The color tiles are the main hues used in the overall piece, that's the Key in the title.  It's a pun on the key of a map and also the word 'key' as higher value pigments.  

new studio

I had to move studios all of a sudden in March.  My landlord was in danger of losing his property and told me I should go.  That was a tough one.  I was beginning to settle into the old space.  I loved the light, the lizards and the little back room became a wonderful small painting space.  But it had it's drawbacks too.  It was on Grant and I hated the traffic, it was loud and there was a lot of foot traffic going to the quicky mart.  It's good to be in a new space.  The studio is a more painterly one.  There's light from a very large skylight.  It's beautifully even and comfortable to be in.  The space is physically cooler than the Grant space, the ceilings are higher and thereby creates less feeling of confinement.  I read an essay on art studios once and the author suggested that a higher ceilings create a greater sense of loft.  Thoughts are free to roam in an open space.  I like this, but am aware of my own predilections for Classical thinking and those higher loftier spheres.  I think there's something to be gained from more contained spaces too, almost as if contemporary life happens there.  In some ways I miss the old space, maybe I just miss the settled and safe feeling I have while making things in it.  I don't have that sense yet in the new space.
 

Deathliness

Since moving to Tucson I've been thinking about death a bit.  So, I've started painting a few death masks from 18th C Britain that are a part of the National Portrait Gallery collection.  There's something wonderfully relaxing about the image and process.  I mean, there's no tension in the physical attributes of the individual.  I wouldn't call it peacefulness.  It's more of an absence of the expected.  I find that appealing in some way.  The paintings are smallish, based on the size of the Musica Britannica that came out in the 60's & 70's.  I've been reading a lot of English Renaissance music--they had a thing for death and tears that I find very compelling, a liminal parallel to the conditions of our time, a bubbling sadness if you will.  So there's a relationship of the size of the surface to the size of the information I'm consuming, it's something familiar that you can hold in your hands. The paintings themselves are are hand made oils over egg tempera on chalk ground on panel.  There's a layer of rabbit skin glue between the chalk ground and wood panel too. It's nice to have all these parts and layers, somehow it helps buoy a little painting in a sea of history.

Gaurdians

I was thinking about the strange power of art and artists.  As a visual maker you have to listen to yourself and trust yourself.  Oddly though, you also have to listen to others and look at other artist's work.  It's tempting to take advice or borrow someone's ideas.  It's difficult to stay firmly rooted.  These two images come from two different Memling altarpieces.  I was interested in the subject matter.  St Michael and St George slaying demons and dragons.  The metaphor seems simple.  We all need protection sometimes.  I used charcoal made from my Minnesota willow tree applied with my fingers.  I was thinking about what CR said many years ago, "Ha, painters are always trying to find the fingerprint of God."  Well...if not God, at least myself in time.