Maple, Green

Maple, Green; 12" x 6", oil on panel, 2010

My family did the annual watching of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I love Schultz's* use of color and his watercolor night sky. His landscapes fascinate me. There is a stage-like, comic strip, panel-to-panel, left to right movement throughout. The cartoon is thoughtful; the pieces of color make us feel, qualities I strive for in painting. The music, story, and visuals make it something to return to. The annual ritual is not unlike the Swedish tradition of watching The Donald Duck Christmas Show. A friend told me the whole country tunes in on Christmas and many people are severely annoyed if phone calls come during the broadcast.

Relationships between actors, the drama, keep us coming back. I'm totally hooked on the show Mad Men. The psychology of the characters is layered and complex. Fashion is stunning as is the color of Joan Holloway's hair (played by Christina Hendricks). Most of all, the animated intro is absolutely brilliant. The black and white ad man/mad man is flat and absent of color as standard newspaper print. He slowly falls through the metropolis, the opposite of superman, past colored moving billboards, the creations of his mind, like Alice down the hole to Wonderland. Distress is communicated in both. There is a 20th century angst as in the American novel The Great Gatsby.

Charlie Brown is known for struggling with identity and his own painful growing pains, striving to fit in with kid society. Every year we watch him gets rocks for Halloween and conned by Lucy in her fall football false promises. Great design holds it all together. My dots serve this purpose. They are the actors taking their place, bouncing your eye around, intermingling while still their own. The painting is the unifier. The rectangle is the parameter, the screen, the viewfinder for studying them and seeing ourselves.

*[Who knew there is a Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA? It's more appealing to me than Disney Land.]

Blackberries

33" x 24", oil on canvas

It's been a while since I've painted hands. Previous examples include:

Firefighter 9/11 No.2, 36" x 32", oil on canvas, 2002

and For You, It's Love, 20" x 16", oil on panel, 2008

The earlier paintings have expressionistic, loose paint handling. Blackberries retains some of that in the bottom left corner and especially in the wrist. The energetic blue paint seems set free.

picture plane

Artists need other artists. When I first went to Massachusetts College of Art and Design for undergraduate studies, I was intoxicated with excitement to meet other people who thought like me. Wait, that's not quite right. Artists are defiantly individualistic in their thinking, but there is a commonality in thinking differently from the status quo. "Art School" is a funny thing, even more so, a MFA program. Art is a bit elusive, go ahead, try to define it. I double majored painting and art education, seeing both sides, the doing and the teaching. Visual language can be taught, mechanics. I suppose it is like teaching someone to be a writer. Most of the language of painting, the ABC's and grammar, is taught in undergrad. Using grammar or rebelling against grammar in order to best serve the expression is what happens in a masters program. The process is about articulation, developing ideas, learning about what's out there and finding one's own vision. A MFA program sets an artist out on this life-long process. How to begin, how to continue, how to see direction in one's own work from the work itself. It is so unlike most fields where factual knowledge needs to be consumed in large quantities and tests are administered to make sure it is absorbed. I remember someone almost mocking my degree because it culminated in a thesis exhibition rather than a paper.

In the visual arts, graduate school gives access to other artists as peers in addition to artist-mentors/critics/professors. The latter are generally older, often quite older, and definitely more experienced. They're like Yoda. I'm not kidding - Yoda, Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall. [nerdy Star Wars and Harry Potter reference] In addition to materials and techniques (potions class), there's a feeling that how to use "The Force" is being taught. Now some artists are very concrete and don't believe spirituality, philosophy or anything mysterious at all is involved in their work. Georgia O'Keefe insists she only paints flowers (not sexuality) but Magritte says the painting of a pipe is not a pipe, so he knows there are other layers. The thing is artists are involved in attempting to give form to their experience of the world. Experiencing the world is mysterious. It's pretty strange (I overheard two artists remarking on how weird sleep is). Artists think about what it's like to be in the world and they do it rather uniquely. Each has his/her own points of interest. Maybe they notice more than other people; they think more during the rote tasks. There are probably a lot of people who aren't anesthetized and are observant but don't make art about it. Art education theorist John Dewey asserted that experience is the touchstone for art-making and that anyone can be an artist.

My intoxication with an art community was even more fervent in entering Penn. When touring the MFA program I saw a final critique of a graduation painter, Brian Kreydatus. His work reminded me of Marsden Hartley and Lucien Freud, high quality. Even then he showed he is one of these people who see more in daily life. I am still totally nuts about his work, especially his Self Portrait on 41st Birthday. You must, must click on the link to see this painting depicting himself shaving. The shaving cream is almost like a mask, as if he is trying on a white beard, imagining aging before the mirror; the birthday title marks years. It is a moment in time during a typically morning ritual; the shaving cream isn't going to stay but will be gradually removed to reveal something else. The brushstrokes mark locations describing both the form and light that won't always be there. It reminds me a bit, not by what it looks like but by what it means, of Bonnard's famous self-portraits, many also done in a bathroom. The MOMA's description is fascinating, much of which could equally be said of Self Portrait on 41st Birthday.

My hand paintings have some of this searching, temporal vulnerability. Blackberries is more of a statement, a proclamation. It shows the viewer the fruit, individual clusters, small things worth looking at in the human hand that found them.

Iris Series, 4 iPad, 1 oil on panel

#1

#2

#3, Flowers and Chair

#4, White Flowers

Iris, 24" x 18", oil on panel

I would like to draw your attention to the new exhibit by artist Iris Osterman at the Bowery Gallery in New York City. An excerpt of her press release:

"Bowery Gallery is pleased to present the third exhibition at the gallery of works by Iris Osterman, whose starting point are the streams, falls, rock formations and forests around her home in Massachusetts. Working with a restricted palette in oil and encaustic, the images come from the area where she has lived for the past two decades, as well as from trips to Maine, New York State and California."

For more information and to see images from the show, please consult the Bowery Gallery website.

This series of irises were done from life. The iPad images informed the oil painting. I like their boldness, snappy, and the complementary colors of purple and yellow, yellow-green. Some of them relate to other abstractions I have done including Blue Yellow Radiant from 2009.

I love the way Matisse uses chairs in his work as in the stolen drawing, Nude in a Rocking Chair, and the painting, Interior with Yellow and Blue. He loved curves and arabesques and he used the structure of an arch-backed chair to make those, not unlike the arms of the figures in Dance I.

Strong verticals provide visual support for the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles, energetic lines, curved flowers, and the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles. If you want a smile and some nostalgia, check out the Comin' Round the Mountain 1949 cartoon on You-Tube and head to 4:10 in to get to the song. I just love that and remember singing along to others like it. So there's your pop culture reference. You can stay tuned if you are a die-hard paint fanatic.

Technical shop talk:

Color in oil painting can be very rich, a quality I wouldn't use to describe digital color; that would be better described as "vibrant". The oil painting leans more toward organic color rather than synthetic. Even within oil paints there are some considered "organic" and others "synthetic" in actual composition. Newer colors like quinicridone mageta and the pthalos are synthetic while cadmiums, olive greens, ochres, etc. are considered more organic (not in the farming sense but as more natural :). Synthetics began being made in 1935, followed by many more in the 1960's, from raw materials taken through chemical reactions. Organic pigments are made with mined ores or other earth substances (clays, mica, silicas) .

[Mayer, Ralph. The Painter's Craft. An Introduction to Artist's Methods and Materials. Revised and updated by Steven Sheehan, Director of the Ralph Mayer Center, Yale University School of Art. New York: Penquin Group. 1948. 1991. ]

Rainy Day Window and Green Tree Seen

Rainy Day Window, Sketchbook Pro on iPad

Green Tree Seen, 8" x 8" oil on canvas, PRIVATE COLLECTION

On the creative process and new media:

I recently posted paintings about the blank page. Artists of all kinds confront how to get the juices flowing. Transitioning from the activity of regular life to the state of mind of creating can be difficult even though it is craved. It feels great when inspiration self-propels but if the time set aside to work doesn't coincide, it can be hard to break through. I heard a discussion on the subject within an interview of southern writers on NPR. The new book of short stories selected by writer Sonney Brewer called Don't Quit Your Day Job is about the jobs the writers had before writing full-time.

One writer said at the end of his writing session he would leave a line unfinished but only if he knew how to finish it. It would wait for him until next time, a hook to resume the process. Another said he would observe what is around him, however simple, and write a few lines as a warm-up. A visiting artist in undergrad said she put on the same music. I did that a lot in the past but now I do podcasts. My favorite is Fresh Air, Terry Gross' voice settling me into a quiet listening space that allows me to focus. Only problem is I run out of episodes, switching to other podcasts which may be equally interesting but don't have her magic. I scrape down the palette and get out my materials. I look to sketches, out the window, or try to remember what an image seen or imagined. When I worked in an Abstract Expressionist style I could make any mark and have something to respond to. Now the white smooth surface is important to me and I like to be fairly clear on what I'm after from the beginning. Both methods are equally valid. Now the absence of a specific idea feels like muddling around and I don't want the picture to get clogged. You can paint over anything but luminosity is facilitated by light going through paint, bouncing off the white ground and coming back to the eye. Art conservators recommend PVA size for canvas preparation over gesso as it is more resistant to water damage. PVA is clear so the natural color of the canvas, not bright white, is the starting point. Sometimes I like it as it operates as an interactive color much like the colored sheets of paper greatly preferred over white for pastel. I might try an oil based white ground. It is a non-issue for digital images as light comes from the screen. This technicality makes them easier than handling oil which can fight against you. Easier isn't inferior. Additionally, it is easier to think rapidly in a succession of changes and save possibilities with a digital art program. It mirrors quantum physics, showing outcomes of a multiplicity of actions (thanks to Chuck and Josh from How Stuff Works, Stuff You Should Know for explaining the science). It can be done in old-fashioned drawing but the stages can be lost unless one uses photography to document them. The exhibit of Matisse on view at the MOMA (Radical Invention, 1913-1917) uses technology to unravel the series of actions he took in making singular works. Now we can playback actions using Brushes' ability to transfer them into a Quicktime video or, as aforementioned, by saving intermediate steps as separate files, some as complete works on their own. The problem of when a picture is done in contemporary painting is stretched, made pluralistic.

Sonny Brewer quoted Truman Capote:

"Truman Capote just said, 'Write something true,'" Brewer says. "It doesn’t matter if it fits in the book or not, but if it’s true that the wind is blowing and that the sky is blue … write the truth for a minute."

"Then, start lying," Groom adds. "A very convincing lie." [Copyright 2010 National Public Radio].

Green Tree Seen was made in this way. I always look around when I'm outside for striking visual situations and I saw a tree which became my own in the studio. Looking from dot to dot is a journey in its greenery. Texture is an important part of the looking experience here as is in Rainy Day Window, something like oil pastel. I took the photo of the window, surprised by the reflection of synthetic colored light from the T.V. I imported the photo into Sketchbook Pro on the iPad and reworked it. So I adapt and utilize the new tools available to painters to bang through to the idea. Much more will come.

That Maple Again (3rd image private collection)

Maple 18" x 12" charcoal on paper

Late September Maple 12" x 12" oil on panel

That Maple Again 18" x 14" oil on canvas PRIVATE COLLECTION

It's not bad for an artist to be obsessive. I've already painted the maple in my yard a few times and the dots are certainly obsessive. I'm not tired of them yet, although sometimes I need a break. The maple is hard to grasp. It's more complex than one would think for a singular object. There are all those leaves, just beginning to fall, and the light that changes the color with each moment. The back lighting was tough this time around. One of my studio windows faces east, the light coming over the tree line and hitting the maple from behind. It's dark anyway and this type of lighting flattens it. I wanted to get what volume I could and needed to do the charcoal drawing to figure it out. The drawing has a breeze in it while the tree in the paintings is nailed, the color-movement coming from me. The dots aren't mechanical. The process may be controlled, a bit stiff, but the experience of looking at the finished painting is not. I paint them as playful units and the patience involved in their exacting delivery is done with the knowledge that each dot leads to a stronger feeling, an amplification.

I don't subscribe to the old-fashioned idea that the amount of time taken to craft a painting is an indicator of quality, however. Paintings can be overworked as well as conceptually poor. After Duchamp conceived of the ready-made, craft went out the window. Photography parallels the philosophy of the ready-made: the idea that the artist's selection of a form embodies his/her intent. Art critic Clive Bell says as much in his essay Art, in which he argues that form is what distinguishes art.

Although many photographs are manipulated in the dark room and now in Photoshop, there are plenty taken directly in a quick point-and-shoot process. It took time, therefore, for photography to rise to the level of high art in people's minds and "fine art" photography first imitated painting in the movement known as Pictorialism. Alfred Stiegliz, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and Edward Steichen were pioneers and moved beyond Pictorialism to "Straight Photography" i.e. photography behaving as itself, not derivative of another art form.

If you get a chance, visit the International Center of Photography in New York City. They always have incredible exhibits* including the photographs of journalists and political work.

Appreciative of the medium but not a photographer, I'll keep building from the ground up.

*[Currently on view are "Rediscovered Spanish Civil War negatives by Capa, Chim, and Taro, September 24, 2010–January 9, 2011 and Cuba in Revolution September 24, 2010–January 9, 2011]

Hill and Rectangle, The Page (Canvas)

Hill and Rectangle, 20" x 16", oil on canvas

The Page (Canvas), 13" x 10", oil on canvas

First I would like to draw your attention to the very fine exhibition by painter Barbara Grossman currently on view at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia through October 6th. [127 S. 16th St., Gallery Hours: Tues. - Sat. 10-5]

Second, this post is regarding intellectualism. These two paintings, while pastoral, have a particularly intellectual bent. They have the color impact of Blue Hydrangea but also comment on the artistic process. The title The Page references the blank page of a writer and parenthetically, the blank canvas for the painter. Blankness is an infamous stumbling block. The page‘s physical geometry in Hill and Rectangle cuts through the landscape but also structures it. Sometimes I work on two pictures at once but inevitably I am continually faced with the problem of how to approach the next. Sketches can get me started but I think in color and the iPad art apps like Sketchbook Pro and Brushes are helping.

Hill and Rectangle celebrates the excitement of possibility and creativity. The rectangles in both pictures are confrontational, a standoff, and are large like heads, a face-to-face showdown. The white rectangle in The Page (Canvas) seems like a character. the space wraping around it, giving the sense of a standing figure, a three-dimensional albeit thin form. The gray squiggly line arching above it is like thought bubbles or curling smoke from a cigarette. I don't smoke but smoking and thinking have a history of connection like the painter Philip Guston painting himself smoking and tons of famous writers like Raymond Carver, Ayn Rand, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jack Kerouac, and contemporary David Sedaris. I just like decaf coffee, less angsty and maybe I'll live to make more work.

The importance of intellectualism and society parallels that of intellectualism in art. Some artists embrace the idea, i.e. conceptual artists, while others are reactionaries such as the Dadaists (they think it’s all nonsense) and German Expressionists. Expressionists, both German and American Abstract, had sources in emotional catharsis and the subconscious. Art critics like Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg wrote their interpretation of the Abstract Expressionists’ intellectual underpinnings.

Wikepedia provides a guideline for intellectualism:

"Intellectual’ can denote three types of persons:

1. A person involved in, and with, abstract, erudite ideas and theories.
2. A person whose profession (science, medicine, literature) solely involves the production and dissemination of ideas.[1]
3. A person of notable cultural and artistic expertise whose knowledge grants him or her intellectual authority in public discourse."

I am particularly interested in number two with regard to spreading ideas as ideas can change people's perceptions. Intellectualism is currently Obama's problem with popularity. The general populous is feeling disconnected from him. It sees to many that he doesn't have strong feelings nor can understand their situations. This is despite his family's economic state while growing up, reflected by living in a two-bedroom apartment in Honolulu and his father's origins of a village in Kenya. His American mother, Ann Dunham, earned a Ph.D. in economic anthropology and rural development, relevant fields to the current economic state of America. She set a family standard for education. It is ironic to punish someone for living to their full potential, developing themselves, achieving graduation at Harvard and becoming president. Charisma can carry a long way toward relating with people, however, like the frequent statement that George Bush was someone the average person would like to have a beer with. The Right plays up this buddy-buddy attitude, an example is McCain's use of "Joe the Plumber" in his presidential campaign. I for one want a smart, articulate, lucid president who is going to carefully think through his actions. Obama not only sees the struggles of the American people but is working to lift them.

As far as painting goes, my job is to clarify my vision through the medium. I'm not going to solve any big problems but can impact people personally like poets and painters do. Thanks for taking the time to look.

Blue Hydrangea

Blue Hydrangea, 24" x 24", oil on panel, PRIVATE COLLECTION

Blue Hydrangeas popped up all over my neighborhood this summer, a burst of color along my runs. I have a bush on my doorstep and was disappointed it isn't blue, but then I learned changing fertilizers can determine their color from pink to blue.

"The color of the hydrangea's flower is based on the acidity or pH level of the soil. The plant will maintain a blue flower color if the soil is between 5 to 5.5." It apparently has to do with an amount of aluminum in the soil. I know this thanks to EHow. I'm a terrible gardener.

I had to think of how I would translate them to paint, how much I would embrace or deny the volume of their spherical blossoms. I worked through it as I went along, having a general feeling of what I was after but not knowing what it would look like in the end. I painted in extended and brief sessions, sometimes stealing moments in the evening to throw in a few more dots. The dots are drawn, as it is impossible for me to make a dab of the brush that would make a circle. Impressionists worked with dabs like the painting Port St. Tropez by Paul Signac.

Dabs, circles require diligence, labor is evident. It isn't drudgery, however. Each piece of paint is painted with joy, or at least the belief in joy. There is an insistence fulfilled through the repetition, a sense of certainty. It is an attitude to bring to the start of each day, hoping it will sparkle.

Martha's Vineyard

20" x 16", oil on canvas, PRIVATE COLLECTION

A main focus, both structuring and informing the meaning of my work, is my interest in open spaces and, alternatively, woven/pixelated color. This can be seen in airy, luminous, large painted areas, Minimalist squares or dot paintings. There has to be an impetus, a spark to draw me to a particular visual situation often lending itself to big spaces or commingled color. Walking up the planked path leading to the ocean on Martha's Vineyard this summer gave me such a spark. The turn from the parking lot to the path brings an initial sun-filled view of the water and sky while the dunes wrap around one. The water is magnetic. I sought to capture this flash, immersion, dazzle and calm. Shapes are painted with enough subtle texture to leave as open areas. Open space is key here. I'm currently preferring this to woods, unlike earlier paintings in which I used the tangled density of trees and thickets.

A recent podcast on NPR concerned itself with a new book on etymology (wish I could remember/find the title) discussing the word "fathom" as coming from the ability of getting one's arms around something. [See The Online Etymology Dictionary definition below.]*. It also means "to get to the bottom of, to understand". These definitions imply the physical experience leading to knowledge. This is my point. I utilize a physical and perceptual experience while I paint and sometimes before I paint in order to create. This true for all artists, I would imagine. I'm just trying to articulate the process, the phenomenon. Many people share experiences but artists make them into art. Artists orchestrate experiences. Life is encapsulated in art. This is why art is valued. Perhaps it could be valued more.

*fathom (n.)

O.E. fæðm "length of the outstretched arm" (a measure of about six feet), also "arms, grasp," and, figuratively "power," from P.Gmc. *fathmaz "embrace" (cf. O.N. faðmr "embrace, bosom," O.S. fathmos "the outstretched arms," Du. vadem "a measure of six feet"), from PIE *pot-/*pet- denoting "stretching out" (cf. Gk. petalon "leaf," L. patere "to be open"). The verb meaning of "take soundings" is c.1600; its figurative sense of "get to the bottom of, understand" is 1620s. Related: Fathomed; fathoming.

New iPad, Reflections on Artist Hitoshi Nakazato

iPad images, byNicole Maynard

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Master printmaker Hitoshi Nakazato died July 17th from a head injury due to a fall in his studio. He was seventy-four. I had the opportunity to study printmaking with Hitoshi at the University of Pennsylvania where he showed me how to do etching, lithography, and silkscreen. "He called Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania the place of his intellectual awakening," said his wife, Sumiko Takeda Nakazato. Teaching from 1971 until the present and serving as chair in the mid-nineties, he had a strong commitment to the school. Always full of stories, he told us to appreciate relationships with our peers as we journeyed through graduate school at Penn.

His paintings and prints focused on the particular placement of simple geometric shapes: the circle, triangle, and square, vibrant in color and zen-like. The Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts in Tokyo exhibited more than 400 of his works this summer. He was a very kind man in addition to being an artist and teacher.