Summer #3, Sky, Field, Trees & Summer #4, Blue Cloud

8" x 8"

oil on canvas

So far I am more a studio painter than a plein air painter. These paintings are done from memory. I look, look, look and then paint, paint, paint. I was amazed the first time I learned of how the painter William Bailey works. [He served as a guest critic in Tuscany when I studied there for a summer month after my junior year] His still life of simple vessels in monochromatic warm tones are done from the memory of these objects; they aren't directly in front of him as he paints. There is something Grecian about them, the Platonic ideal, perfection. Although executed in earth tones, I wouldn't call their modesty "down to earth".

I think my paintings are approachable. The Blue Cloud has subtle, dark dots in the trees. I like the feeling of heat in these paintings, summer warmth, and the active sky suggesting the day is moving on. We've hit fall now and I confess I am less than inspired to paint the foliage this time around. The leaves are uncharacteristically dull and muted in Rochester this year. I've only seen one lucky house to have a bright red tree glowing in their yard. I like browns but sigh.

Summer #2 Birch Trees

36" x 24"

oil on panel

Here we are. Three triangles, do you see them? If you are a regular at Art Weekly, I should have you eagle-eyed by now. Pressed forward, "in your face" the painting shouts "Look!" Scale, texture, and brightness of the trees provide foreground. They are angled like theatre curtains abruptly, energetically pulling back to reveal color center stage, a reoccurring theme in my work. Landscape is seen afresh. I resist the urge to check my e-mail on my iphone while I'm walking past trees. We're all so twitchy now.

The upper corners of the central triangle of dots allow the viewer to drift back in space away. The mainly red-purple-brown dots represent a maple tree. Lemon-lime grass on the lower right is less dense than the maple; the eye has more room there. The birches themselves are tough, dramatic, and feel akin to Marsden Hartley's paint handling to me. the dots have the preciousness of gems, raw amethyst, particularly due to their conduction of colored light. I don't want to own jewelry. Sometimes tempted by the sparkle, I prefer to paint beyond what it has to offer. Paint itself has a history of containing semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli, replaced in the early 19th century by a synthetic ultramarine blue. A great article on the history of pigments is in Wikipedia. Back to the studio I go, no Tiffany's for me.

Illinois Trees

12" x 12"

pencil on paper

There's a diagonal split of the top and bottom: the top half is about the compression and density of dots/leaves and the bottom is dark verticals in a white field. The top also focuses on the exploration of a range of values while the bottom sticks to stark contrast. I found the light situation interesting, the spaces between the leaves and trees allowing the light to seep in and the strong sun that can bleach and burn grass. The bottom plane recedes with a vanishing point two thirds over, a convergence of lines behind some dangling leaves looking like grapes from a Greek fresco.

The circles seem to move as one looks at them as a whole. Soft, they are different in feel than my work done in color. They remind me of the enlarged grain of an oil photograph and there is something nostalgic about them. Done while visiting an old friend; it was a good day.

Pastel Landscape #3 and #4

24" x 18"

oil pastel on paper

A red maple is bracketed by two slanting birches made of gray paper and white highlights. The dynamic, spontaneous brushwork of my large Abstract Expressionist paintings done ten years ago find new life in a different medium, scale, and subject. Working in the former manner gave me an awareness of the picture independent of the subject, the thing the viewer is going to see. Vigor can be deadened when the artist becomes enslaved by the subject, feeling a sense of loyalty to do it justice. The artist's feet become stuck in cement. Abstract painting can be lifeless too, shapes without soul. It doesn't have to do with how "finished", refined, or detailed a picture is; it is the vitality and passion, quiet or loud, that makes a picture go.

Chardin (1699-1779) a representational painter with a tender eye, quiet and sensitive to seeing, known especially for still life and scenes of daily life. Pollock literally poured his angst and energy into his pictures, qualities missing from wanna-be's. He was very focused, something that escapes people who dismiss the splatters as out of control. It is always sad to me when art is misunderstood. Maybe that is why I write about mine.