Fall #9 Gray Sky

8x8

oil on canvas

In this painting I wanted to convey the dense fall treetops outside my studio window,

the muted, bluish trees on the horizon, and the particular gray of the sky that day. It

was a purplish haze, complementing the warm, mainly yellow middle ground. It is a quiet

little thing with bounce. Seurat worked with Pointillism in a very different way. First, he

didn't really paint complete circles but rather used short brush strokes. Secondly, he was

very aware of the edges between things. He defines form while also diffusing it, which

I do, but he has a much harder edge. The daylight paintings like A Sunday on the

Grande Jatte retain a softness because of the light quality and a rather tender manner

of applying the paint. His night paintings like The Side Show or the painting The Circus

tend to have harsh light and the paint application is different, more graphic, I think. My

work usually isn't so hard-edged, more concerned with paint handling than tight form.

Tenderness really comes through in his drawings, a quality perceived by art critic

Michael Kimmelman. At a lecture at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, I asked

him what art moves him the most and he said Seurat's drawings, the "why" we didn't get to.

The drawings have the feeling of a photograph, not at all in the amount of detailed

description but in the feeling of a moment in time, a concept true to the origins of

Impressionism. Their tonality and softness captures this to more of a degree than his work

in color. I think my September self-portrait depicting myself as shadow is similar in intent.

It is not always easy to discern the subtler qualities between oneself and others, not just in

art, but it is important in defining oneself. "She paints with dots" is about as informative

about what I do as "she is a basketball player" is to conveying who a person is. Trying to

convey what I do in words is so difficult that it takes weeks of circling around it

in this blog to come close. Sometimes I think I should just post the pictures.

Painting Trivia!

Name the artist:

A contemporary artist born in 1945 Germany. His often large scale paintings are rugged often vast landscapes dealing with post-war Germany, German culture and history. They sometimes have broken glass, lead, and dried flowers or plants in them and are thickly painted.

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Name the artist:

"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia!

Name the artist:

"I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I come into the studio very fearfully, I creep in to see what happened the night before. And the feeling is one of, 'My God, did I do that?' ".

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Fall #8 Clouds in the Middle

10x8

oil on canvas, PRIVATE COLLECTION

The photographer Alfred Stieglitz (husband of Georgia O'Keefe) is famous for promoting American Abstraction in his galleries 291 and An American Place and for his photographs of clouds, which he named Equivalents. Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs (also called Clouds in Ten Movements) walks the line of representation and abstraction. Photography, often used to document, was not yet used to explore abstraction in the same way the American painters did. Clouds were a subject both tangible for the camera and amorphous.

Painters don't just look at the total image of a painting but look at paint passages. In Stieglitz's photographs this meant the textures of the clouds and sky and the actual physical substance of print and paper, its particular qualities. Passages are like phrases in music or a line or two of a poem, non-verbal and fully of the particular language of the medium. They convey a lot of information about the approach and attitude of the artist in the work. To the painter-viewer, sometimes thrilling, juicier paint feels like candy, visual caffeine. Paint surfaces are only truly observable in seeing in real life, "in the flesh". Painters actually call the surface of a painting its "skin". It is sensual and holds the content of the work. Paintings that miss the mark for me are disappointingly dry, dead, lacking in sensitivity. It is easy to do this in political work in which the message sometimes overtakes the paint handling. The message is loud and is focused on something else. The art image may still be great but it is not of the kind of painting that makes me tick. An example is Barbara Kruger's work, which would be ineffective in the medium of paint. Diego Rivera painted enormous politically fueled murals but he had a painter's heart and managed to do both. Andy Warhol's genius is in his societal commentary/observation, graphic sensibility and snap. I love his work but if the museum was burning I'd probably run away with this Bonnard (Nude in the Bath and Small Dog). It's like saving family over a book you respect and with Warhol, production is such a theme that there are so many similar pieces in other places.

Fall #8 Clouds in the Middle is a relative of Stieglitz and Bonnard but is my own. Love that paint.

Painting Trivia!

Painting trivia!

This is a blue semi-precious stone mined in Afgahnistan for over 6,000 years. It was used for blue oil paint until the early nineteenth century when it was replaced by synthetic ultramarine.

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia!

This artist was a court painter to Marie Antoinette:

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia! Name the painter:

"I love my old paintings as postulates, as fresh starting points, but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto.."

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia! Name the painter:

"Every good painter paints what he is."

Let's add "she" to that. Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia! Name the painter:

"In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature."

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia! Name the painter:

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."

Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Self-Portrait October 2009

12" x 9"

oil on panel

Hi. It is time for a new self-portrait. I don't have a time-frame in mind for how often to make them, but time is marching on so Carpe Diem.

My face is not fractured as in previous paintings. Fracture/facture. The facture of a self-portrait is often more noticeable in ones that are fractured, when pieces of paint are laid to denote the framework of a head, related to the planes of Cubism. Cezanne, who came before Cubism, studied such planes in space but was also sensitive to color as form rather than decoration, frosting on a cake. [I love making sentences with "Cubism" and "cake frosting" in them.] In Self-Portrait with Rose Background [c. 1875 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 66 x 55 cm (26 x 21 5/8")], he defines the facets of his head with pieces of paint and even turns one such stroke into his delicate lower eyelid, the pedestal for his piercing gaze. He is as intense as the red-rose background. It swirls, breaks into his form, defining his ear, the space between his beard and moustache, his lips, and even cuts into his neck threatening decapitation like Nearly Headless Nick from Harry Potter. He plays a similar game with the background and figure interacting in his Self-Portrait 1878-80 [(160 Kb); Oil on canvas, 60.3 x 46.9 cm (23 3/4 x 18 1/2 in); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.] He is supposed to have been a quiet person and I've noticed his mouth is often obscured in his self-portraits while his eyes are very alert. His voice is his vision. The mouth in this gets lost in his beard of yellow ochre and greens with black marks, exactly like the background. His hairline continues in the sharp line of his collar, accentuating his vertical, solid presence. The word for his stare that keeps coming to me is "shrewd". Even a used car salesman would back down.

Now back to me. I don't want it to be all about me, but it is self-portraits we are talking about and they are reflexive in nature. I'm not looking shrewd. I can't say no to Girl Scouts selling cookies, but I am old enough to see a scam despite the clarity of my face. Landscape colors are the background with dots like my current paintings. They visually interplay with the blue circles of my collar and eye; this is what I see. A patch of purple background is the springboard for the purple turn of the collar; its blue is the mixture of the landscape yellow and green, completing the land with sky, blue hollow circles make for white cloud centers. The curl of my hair and its red highlights (not natural : ) suggest playfulness, very different than Cezanne's brewing. You can check out my blog of archives for my own brewing Self-Portrait With Gloved Hand from 1999. Both Cezanne paintings and the Degas Self-Portrait in the Getty Museum that I haven't forgotten (I saw it more than ten years ago) are in three quarter view, as is mine. Answers.com defines three-quarter view as, "A view of an object which is midway between a front and a side view." We don't disclose all but you get a good look. Speaking of museums, art museum lovers will get a laugh from this article in The Onion. Take time to play.

Painting Trivia!

Painting Trivia! Name the painter:

He began to insist that he was not an abstractionist, and that such a description was as inaccurate as labeling him a great colorist. His interest was:

"... only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions . . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point." Thank you Wikipedia for the quote. Check back tomorrow under "comments" for the answer.

Painting Trivia

A new feature of Art Weekly is painting trivia in between Sunday posts. Look for the answer to each trivia question the following day under the comments section of the post. What artist said:

"I've got myself a goiter from this strain,
As water gives the cats of Lombardy
Or maybe it is in some other country;
My belly's pushed by force beneath my chin.

My beard toward Heaven, I feel the back of my brain
Upon my neck, I grow the breast of a Harpy;
My brush, above my face continually,
Makes it a splendid floor by dripping down.

My loins have penetrated to my paunch,
My rump's a crupper, as a counterweight,
And pointless the unseeing steps I go.

In front of me my skin is being stretched
While it folds up behind and forms a knot,
And I am bending like a Syrian bow.

And judgement, hence, must grow,
Borne in the mind, peculiar and untrue;
You cannot shoot well when the gun's askew.

John, come to the rescue
Of my dead painting now, and of my honor;
I'm not in a good place, and I'm no painter (5-6)."

The answer is...

New Art Trivia!

A new feature of Art Weekly is painting trivia in between Sunday posts. Look for the answer to each trivia question the following day under the comments section of the post. Here we go.

This Mexican artist was depicted drawing butterflies on her body cast in a biographical film. A critic once said, "It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography."

The answer is....

Two Trees with Orange/Blue Trees with Orange

Two Trees with Orange, approx. 4" x 3" ceramic relief

Blue Trees with Orange, 20" x 16" oil on canvas

Here is another conversation between painting and relief, the relief coming first this time. The color and different textures (matte vs. shiny) in the relief create space when the black lines of the trees want to flatten this rather Gothic arch form. The trees are muscular, sinewy in their black and orange. I saw Body Worlds in Toronto a couple years ago and it completely changed the way I think about the body, not just in terms of anatomy but physicality. I drew the figure as a student and later taught life drawing with a live model as well as a skeleton. Seeing the muscles and nerves is different. There is tension, power in muscles while the nerves are about impulse and communication, speed, feeling. A body that is cared for is physically participating in balance.

Likewise these trees are balanced, active in their symmetry, united in direction, purpose, reach. They stretch and contract, tense muscles about to spring despite being rooted, blue-veined. The fluidity of life, time, and change are shown through the diagonal landscape. A tilt is the opposite of a horizontal, stasis. This isn't a Waiting For Godot set (where nothing ever changes) despite the minimalism and there are two trees, not the one presented by Beckett. The trees in the painting are going to go out fighting while the ceramic ones are nestled within the process. The human condition has a foot in each.

Fall #7, October Sunrise

oil on panel

18x24

This is done the same day from the memory of looking out the window at approximately seven a.m. at the sunrise. A golden light came across the treetops, the grass was pale and cool, and the sky light pale blue-violet to violet. The color moment seemed so short compared to the rest of the day. I knew how I wanted to do it.

Dots are like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae, of supreme importance, bright, celebratory, and excitement inducing. They are tempting but the rest of the picture also has something to offer.

In graduate school I painted a portrait of a fictional person. The painter Jake Berthot saw it and told me that I needed to paint the whole thing with the attention I paid to the woman's earring, a roundish piece of green. It was not to say that the whole painting needed to be made of that shape but that that piece of paint conveyed more in its delivery that the rest. Painters need to make sure that paint passages aren't just filled in areas like a coloring book but are functioning parts of the picture. This doesn't mean that all parts need to have the same thickness or level of description or saturation of color; it is a bit tricky. It is kind of like paying attention to someone else as an active listener and not zoning on parts of the conversation. I think I have learned how to do it and this painting is an example. Another example is this drawing of trees by Matisse. Even though it is made of simple lines, the negative spaces are considered. The space between the trees, for instance is hour glass shaped, echoing the curvy trees and complimenting their duality with the upper and lower parts of this shape, two for two.

If you look at this fabulous jpeg of Shoes by Van Gogh, 1888, you will see what I mean. Check out the floor. This reproduction is big enough to get into the paint passages. I can't get enough of it. You can see his thinking as he defines planes, observes variation in color, and physically describes the turns of the leather, it's facets made by the form of a shoe and the history of the individual wearer. It makes them a kind of portrait, intimate, through the appreciation of this everyday object and the life it represents. It is done with the care and tenderness one regards the clothing of loved ones who have passed and we have the sometimes difficult decision of keeping or donating them. People are passionate about Van Gogh because he understands this. He paints what he can't hold onto. The subject is shoes, the content is life.

Self-Portrait 9 2009 #1

photograph

Of great interest to me are passing bits of strong light that make geometric shapes, particularly on walls. The shape of the light here in addition to the inclusion of the door connects to a previous painting, Another Door Opens. Both images are angular and luminous in the center with dark edges. I step into the picture in the photograph like the green in the painting. I typically don't set out with a camera as I think more about painting and drawing, but sometimes an ephemeral image stares me in the face that wouldn't be the same in any other medium but photography. I see myself ghostlike, a flash of life within the long continuum of time. Occasionally I need to "dust the relatives", what I call it when I take the old pictures of my family and my husband's down for a quick brush off. They are compelling; some are people I've never met. In making pictures I think about what I am doing in the flash within the space of the doorway, my frame in the time-line that someone might dust off to consider.

36" x 24", oil on panel, 2008

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.