Spring Landscape #26, #27, & #28

Spring Landscape #26 Maple, 24"x18", oil on panel

Spring Landscape #27 Turquoise Picnic Table, 12" x 6", oil on panel*

Spring Landscape #28 Yellow, Green, Blue, 24"x18", oil on panel*

Landscape is an accessible subject, "pedestrian" as I said before. Critics chasing new media art might say it is "done to death". That leaves me an outsider to artists trying to dig up rules to break, which is ironically mainstream. What a pain in the neck. I like it all, as long as it's good. Neil Diamond's popular song, Sweet Caroline.

I sang it with the rest of the stadium at a recent Rhode Island Pawsox game. It seems to be a baseball favorite, thanks to production agent Amy Tobey who arranged for its play during the eighth inning at every Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Diamond performed it live (click to see) there April fourth, opening day. Inspired by Caroline Kennedy in 1969, it has nothing to do with baseball. Everyone knows the words, even the very young as sung by a boy in his car seat on America's Funniest Home Videos, the "buh, buh, buh" enthusiastically belted out. It reached number four on the Billboard Charts way back when, not number one and here it is ingrained in our culture in 2010. I shouldn't like it. I like alternative rock. I like classical music. I like jazz. I shouldn't like it but I do. I love it. Why? It's sentimental, romantic, nostalgic, descriptions to be shunned in art like the plague but I have a feeling that I shouldn't publicly admit that landscape painting draws people along the same lines. Diamond even sings about spring turning into summer, touch, emotions in the seasons. It's simple but it speaks to us. Lyrics:

"Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who'd have believed you'd come along

Hands, touchin hands
Reachin out
Touchin me
Touchin you

Sweet caroline
Good times never seemed so good"

I'm in a quagmire now, talking about my art and Neil Diamond in the same sentence. [Gawd, few painters get so many fans.] He has passion. My paintings aren't passionless. They're not geographical maps. They're not documentary photographs. They are trees, sky, and heart translated into paint. Buh, buh, buh.

*More on these paintings:

These are the last of the spring landscapes for the season as I move on to summer. They show two different approaches. The paintings have parallel intentions.

#26 defines areas of color: yellow-green grass, green trees, purple maple, gray and white sky. Those generalities are broken down or rather expanded within the areas and are simultaneously harmonized within the whole painting. The tree is symbolically like a human figure, strong and solid as the sky (larger world) keeps changing.

#27 is a tracking of space. There is a plotting, pinpointed by dots, in a line of sight that takes us up to the sky. The first thing to step over is the turquoise picnic table reduced to a triangle, painted thinly; the contrast in paint handling is unexpected. It is the cornerstone of the painting, weighted at the bottom. At the same time it is luminous and it seems as though one is turning a page of a book, one landscape picture peeling back to reveal some other image. I can't describe the something that happens in the painting between the layered dots, only that it takes a pedestrian subject to a deep experience. Don't dismiss it with a label, with a fleeting assessment, because there is more there. Everything I write about my work in this blog beseeches the viewer to look longer, to stretch the mind. This is in the work, this is the process of that work.

#28 is lighter. Ebullient, upper circles suggest leaves. They carry us along. The larger circles on the bottom are stamps (not literally), louder proclamations of the same idea. The tree divides the space, dark and denser than the red-brown stretch of paint that also means "tree" on the right. The blue and green have a playful dialogue. The yellow is in between, making for an analogous color scheme, a short-hand fitting the graphic nature of the picture. The temperature is cool with the blue and yellow both warmer than the green. The dark tree has purple and black tones to complement the lightened yellow dots. #28 is bold in its statement while #27 is strong as well but thoughtful and tender in a slower way.

Oil Spill Paintings

Portal, 12" x 12" oil on panel

Oil Spill Series (on canvas):

#1, 14" x 16"

#2, 15" x 10"

#3, 10"x 10"

#4, 10" x 16"

It's hard to be very optimistic about oil spills. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico by BP is on every one's minds. It has marked our thinking about oil consumption even for proponents of offshore drilling. Marked, marred, these are minor words to describe the devastation of so viscous a substance, an expansive, coagulating dark shadow, a creeping blob from a horror movie. I will be deeply, continuously saddened if I dwell on it beyond the news so making these paintings is a way of putting it through myself then outside myself. The concept is an erasure of landscape not by white space but by this enveloping, black mass. Openings shrink like the Warner Brother's Looney Tunes cartoon tunnel/shrinking circle, the one with Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig looking out. Porthole was painted first, before the spill. I like the circle of light made by a window in a boat and the horizon dividing, splitting and simultaneously binding the sky and water. Visually, portholes are a lot like stained glass. Porthole can also be read as a part of this series. The paintings #2 and #4 reference water, #1 and #3 land. The black in the paintings is sticky and it presses in on the water in #3.

In 2006 I painted Homage to Al Gore in which I write, "I see me and the world disappears." My intent was to comment on the way self-absorption can be like wearing blinders against our environmental impact and that non-sight (opposite of insight, opposite of painting which requires vision and reflection) can directly make flora and fauna disappear. Non-sight is a blank, an erasure. So much of conservation relies on getting the message out, MAKING VISIBLE what is at stake, what will be gone unless there is change. The website If It Was My Home allows one to visualize how the spill would look over the area where you live.

While we are in control of how we speak out, vote, and our personal consumption, it is an outrage when large companies are negligent. We lose control at that point and it feels like the oil has gotten away from us as we stand on the shore powerless, experts disagreeing on clean up methods.

www.terrapass.com gives us ways to take back some control and take responsibility, by attempting to make up for our fuel use by funding correlating carbon reduction projects. You can calculate your carbon footprint for your vehicle, flights, and home here.

I'll have something more chirpy for you next week.

Bowery Gallery 40th Anniversary

As an Associate Member of The Bowery Gallery in NYC, I'm included in the 40th anniversary of the oldest co-op gallery in NYC. There is an exhibition and catalog titled Pages (complete catalog viewable interactively on-line), an all black and white show. It was really fun to have the group photo done which is included in the catalog along with one of original members. I'm in the upper right hand corner by the window. Here are the dates:

June 22- Show opens to public

June 24 - Gala reception, 5- 8 pm

July 10 - Show closes to public

More information at The Bowery Gallery's website.

Spring Landscape #25 Yellow Green Tree

Spring Landscape #25 Yellow Green Tree, oil on panel, 12" x 12"

Art and science overlap but it is a little hard for me to delve deeply since I'm only expert on one side. Here goes:

Aristotle, 340BC) The first Science (Metaphysics) is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance.

What I can say is basic: even air is made of matter, a primary substance. Landscape painting is all about objects in air; objects having more density than air. It's hard to do, perceiving anew, not just following a formulaic cliche. That is the difference between what I do, what I seek, and "pictures of landscape" which may also be in the medium of paint. It's what keeps me from being a craft fair vendor. Not everyone notices the difference and I don't want my work to be mistaken for something less.

Lines do not exist between things. Impressionists* (Monet, Seurat, etc.) eliminated the line. Post-Impressionists (Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin) returned to the line in order to define form more clearly on the two-dimensional plane. Monet and Seurat were two of the only Impressionists, in my opinion, to really push the elimination of line in favor of marks/color in space. Degas and Cassatt never let go, asserting solidity, in love with form and the figure.

My dots are like cells, units, maybe enormous generalizations of atoms. They are also like the stitches in a tapestry. I'm fascinated by the interwoven air and form and their color interaction. It was a challenge to find a way to articulate the tree in Spring Landscape #25 Yellow Green Tree and make it simultaneously be independent of and integrated with the foliage behind it. Art has its own way of mirroring science. Monet was criticized, called "an eye" for his scientific like approach to analyzing colored light. He worked on a new canvas each hour on site, returning on another day with similar weather conditions in order to capture the changes. His work is emotional despite the structured approach. My work is also highly structured, a measurement to placement of dots and their careful articulation (yes they're freehand, as I'm often asked). In this painting the sky is rolling like waves and the dots bounce around the space like foliage ping-pong balls.

Art's purpose is distinct from science. Writer David Shields quotes Samuel Johnson, "A work of literature** should either help us escape existence or teach us how to endure it." Shields adds his own response, "And the works that I love the most teach us how to endure it. To me, a crucial idea is this: that we are existentially alone on the planet, I can't know what you're thinking and feeling and you can't know what I'm thinking and feeling. The very best work constructs a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness." Shields' new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, discusses literature's new role in connection to reality. Science and art, both investigating reality from different angles. Science is factual, art is involved with the perception of the factual which is it's own reality. Approaching a blank canvas is intimidating with this cooking in my brain. I'm off to take another stab at it.

*Wikipedia describes Impressionism: "Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. The emergence of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous movements in other media which became known as Impressionist music and Impressionist literature."

**insert "art"

[For researching this post I went to Teachers' Domain, a website to help teachers use digital media in the classroom is great for explaining topics in science, art, social studies, language arts, and math to kids and adults who might have missed that day in school : ) ]

Barrington River

6" x 12" oil on panel

"This is a serious attack on the heritage of humanity," said Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary of France with regard to the recent art theft at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (see the full article in The Guardian). Artinfo.com has a list of the titles of stolen works by Picasso, Matisse, Leger, Modigliani, and Braque. The latter three are often dropped in the articles with attention focused on Matisse and Picasso because they have had the highest auction sales. I'm miffed for the other artists. Much more importantly it is very sad when greed asserts itself in the art world in the form of theft and in other ways such as owning a work of art as a trophy rather than because of sincere appreciation. Private ownership is necessary to support the works of artists (buy art!) and often leads to recognition and acquisition into a museum via direct purchase or donation. It is in museums, however, that art is democratic and available to all (at least on free nights). There is very little in this world, if anything, that isn't effected by money. We want art to be part of an ideal, something intellectual, cultural, and for many, spiritual or at least in some sense sacred. Paintings are objects and so are tied to ownership. I admire performance artists and artists involved in the ephemeral which take the object out of art; their work is anti "objet d'art".

Doing this plein air (painted outdoors on site) water view brings me into some uncomfortable territory. 1. it's a painting and already an object tied to commerce 2. landscapes inherently relate to ownership, territories, land values, public vs. private, etc. 3. sailboats are depicted which are most often for leisure and require expendable income 4. such water scenes are often collected as souvenirs of the shore or by boat lovers. It's complicated, though. Most boat lovers appreciate nature, the elements, and the beauty of being on the water, things that aren't things but are immaterial. They are the subjects I was painting, color and light being a part of them. While I was out there I thoroughly enjoyed a few people who came by to talk to me and look. Two construction workers walked over from the bridge they were repairing, pronounced it "beautiful" and remembered watching Bob Ross on T.V. A man who lived in a house behind me and owned a boat just to the left of the ones I painted talked to me about the town. He first introduced himself by miming the idea of being in the painting by walking into my field of vision; it was friendly and cute. I mention it because it reveals how people are drawn to art; art is for everyone.

It's all in the painting of the Barrington River, as well as this painter's perceptions of it all.