A painting should be compelling from a distance and rewarding from closer inspection.

Similarly the subject matter of a painting is a priority at the beginning of a work but becomes increasingly a loose guide for interesting brush patterns and color pairings toward the end. A painting with the wrong priorities will hence be either uncompelling or unrewarding or both.

This image is a loose sketch: finding the subject matter and forming the composition while gambling and testing a color scheme. It has since changed quite dramatically. 

Striving for Imperfection

To take the female form and simplify it, distort it and create the decorative nude
without losing any of the beauty of the original form.

Gustav Klimt painted his Water Serpents with an impossible angle of head and body. It is the wrongness of the figure's structure that makes the image so appealing. Picasso used it famously but inconsistently.

Painting the figure in this way adds a dimension (while removing much of the extraneous detail) that gives the work a depth that is compelling.  This in contrast to a meticulously painted object that, surprise! looks just like the object. Admittedly, I have no interest nor the technique for photo realism and I am rarely moved by strictly abstract work.

Most of my paintings are failed projects, frozen in transition between where I began and where I had hoped to go.  By failed I mean within the context of my original strategy. Too many anatomical details seduce me into including them. Much of my work is more representational than what I had imagined when I first stood before a blank canvas with a palette of paint and a handful of brushes.

Take the female form, reduce it to it's most simple geometric shapes, render it uniquely and decorative, then re-infuse the form with the charm and melodrama of the human spirit.

Sharing one's work

 

I originally wrote a post to accompany this painting two weeks ago. I thought it was an interesting and insightful post. I shared it with a couple of friends, writers of whom I respect their respective talents and opinions.

I reread my post like a proud father.

Later, I looked at the post again and found it much less interesting and insightful than I had originally thought. In fact, I found it thin, boastful and generally badly written. The aforementioned friends/writers never made any comments about the original link. They either bit their tongues or shook their heads, respectively. Or both.

I took the post down, rewrote it, removing much of the original material and re posted the edited version. A short time later I reread the post; still I was shocked and mortified by the arrogant voice I found.

I deleted it again.

Writing, like painting and many other media, stands in evidence of itself.

I met this young woman modeling for a life drawing class. She was a firefighter. She was also quiet, and slightly withdrawn. Shy. 

I completed at least two good paintings from the photo shoot (a matter of opinion, sure). Chances are good I will go back into the photos at another time and work on more; one of the great options one has when working from photos.

As is often the case with student models I have not seen her since.

Selling

During a recent exhibition, in a restaurant, I sold two paintings. One was marked NFS (not for sale). This illustrates a couple of things: one, a good restaurant where people are sitting around and enjoying themselves for an hour or two is not a bad place to show and two, I needed the money more than I needed a favorite painting of my wife.

My strategy these days is to have any painting I sell digitally scanned before I hand it over. I am quite happy with this option. I'm less happy with the fact that I paid a professional photographer years ago to photograph many of my paintings (that are now sold and lost -to me) and the resulting images are of such a low quality/resolution that they are useless to print anything besides a postcard, which by the way, no one buys anymore...

He's now of course out of business thanks to digital photography.

It is not that the technology wasn't available at the time; he did one set of "four by five transparencies" for me that are excellent. But this was apparently too troublesome and, he argued "overkill" and therefore talked me down to a larger (smaller) format slide.

I saw the proprietor of the restaurant recently. She told me a customer was interested in another painting marked NFS but informed me that she had told him he was out of luck, it was a (another) painting of my wife... Is she crazy? A month of mortgage is lost to sentimentality.

Blogging

Over half of the people who have stopped by this blog page were using Firefox. Mac's Safari comes in second at 19%... Internet explorer, once the only dog in the woods sniffs around a distant third. Chrome is neck and neck with IE. That's right. Mobile Safari gives Mac another boost with 4%. Never heard of Mobile Safari. But then, there are a lot of things I have never heard of. Tons of popular technologies I have no experience with what-so-ever.

This free blog for instance technically blows my mind. Did you know I have had 16 page views from Russia? Didn't think so. I didn't either until I found a tab marked "stats" on my internal behind the scenes blogger instrument panel!

That's not all. I have more intriguing facts: The browsering system Opera came in with one percent of my viewing audience. I'm vaguely familiar with that name. Vaguely. Like, not really. But how about you? Have you heard of the NS8 browser? Because TWO people from somewhere on this planet surfed my turf with NS8. They might have been from Qatar. Three of my worldly web-surfers were. Or Germany, France, Australia...Who knows? Perhaps you're pretty worldly and you whisper to yourself, "Oh yeah, I'm familiar with NS8..." Well, how about Konqueror or SeaMonkey? Because those engines are bringing eyes and minds to the light, Searching for Sparks also. Chances are they didn't stay long. I know my attention span is pretty short these virtual days.

These are the days of the wild cyber frontier. Unlimited possibilities and space for everyone. The frightened and greasy Dark Lords of Infinite Economic Growth haven't spoiled this apple yet. Rejoice.

Whoever you are, from where ever you hail, huge, galactic, virtual, curious and spirited greetings to you. Really. And thanks to the Googles of minds and bodies that make this technical playground available to me. For free.

Thomas Kinkade

The painter of light.
Really light.
54 years old.
How could he be so big and so bad so quickly?
Norman Rockwell he was not.
His alcoholic tendencies almost lend some empathy. Curiosity.
Nah.

Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori

A painting a day. Tha'd be great. Hell, a painting a week would add up. Twelve new paintings a year. That's not stellar but it would still be an exhibition. "Wished he'd been more prolific." That might possibly be my epitaph. At least a part of it.

Bittersweet: Twenty-four hours and things to do. Things we want to do, things we have to do, things we oughta do. When you're a child there are things you cannot do because you are not yet an adult. Before you know it there are things you can't do because you are no longer young. And then there's the being dead thing. That pretty much puts the brakes on everything.

Right now I have to stop doing this and do something else. I won't say what. And then I have to go some where. When I return many hours will have passed and I can promise the world one thing: I will not have created another painting.

The Salesman

I don't know how it is with others, but there are times when I am working and that is all I have time for. Color, composition, value, contrast, themes and what size canvas I should use are all I care to think about.  During these periods the salesman is dormant. I am not looking for the next place to exhibit or attempting to contact influential persons. I am experiencing my craft and nothing else matters. Of course the day to day demands of modern life must be met but aside from that I am only interested in how to most effectively express myself in a two-dimensional manner. These are really the great times. This is after all the concrete act.

Other times, for whatever reason, I am unable to work at the easel as much as I would like so I attempt to spend my time wisely. I have something that needs selling and that something is myself.  I'm not necessarily looking to find a buyer for a painting. I'm looking for an audience. I'm looking for galleries that might be receptive to my work. I research contemporary painters and see what other people are doing. This depresses me.  I either find successful painters whose work I can't stomach or I see really impressive images that make me envious. Envious of style or technique or unique and thoughtful content.

Still I have these wares I need to hawk. I've put too much time and energy into this thing I call myself to call it quits. What else am I going to do: competitive topiary?

Would I go so far as to take out free ads in major US cities on Craigslist? Advertise myself as a painter searching for his own modern Guggenheim relationship, complete with painting samples and links to a website offering prints of my work? Become frustrated with Craigslist's ability to limit my ad to one city at a time unless I completely rewrite the ad and use different images each time because they're apparently on to me and my desperate plan?

Would I begin writing a blog?

Working

I search the web for places to plant my blog address like a seed, like messages in so many bottles. Fishing for a readership that will somehow raise my art out of the concealing shadows of the undistinguished and into celebrated light. Prints will start selling like joints in 1978. Collectors will line up at my door. Historians sift through the garbage. My slightest penciled motion will receive accolades and jeers. The intuitive yet random color placement of background paint smears will send academia scrambling to articulate hidden meaning. The rich and famous will squabble and fuss to have images of loved ones tattooed on my canvas.

Sometimes when laying out a painting on canvas the paint strokes used to sketch the figure are themselves of interest. Including them into the composition they begin to suggest other components and if you let it happen a different painting will result. A sculptor friend and gallery owner I knew made wire sculpture that were then wrapped in copper. He told me if he dropped a piece he was working on to the floor he would pick it up and study it before fixing the damage. Sometimes the drop had altered his work for the better. Similar instances of chance can change a painting.

I begin with a plan which is often vague but occasionally specific. When the pigment is applied now a third thing exists. I have the original reference material, I have a vision, and now I have an image developing on the canvas.

With water color things happen very quickly and the windows to take advantage of what is happening on paper open and close like hands clapping. One is often seduced to continue applying pigment (by the moisture content of the paper) to keep the magic going,  just like a gambler at a casino. And I mean exactly like that. Sometimes you're on a roll and everything you do is the next perfect thing to have been done. Other times everything is lost because one too many applications of pigment were gambled.

The pace of oil painting is much more laid back. Nothing is ever lost from pausing to consider the consequences of your actions and yet you can apply pigment at a frantic pace if you want to.

I look forward to working with oils again.

Oil painting is like a fine wine or maybe the sipping whiskey of visual arts. Watercolor is a cold beer growing warm too quickly. Or perhaps shots.

One begins the idea of writing about oneself in any shape or form with the reasoning that others would find it interesting if you did.

My thoughts seem so enormous, my perspectives so all inclusive at five a.m. Crawling out of my cranium and shooting from my eyes all over the dark cityscape like tendrils of empathy and genius tapping the soul of dawn. Before dawn. Quick like that. And sensitive. But firm and illuminating in a mysterious way. Mysterious to me because I don't really know what the hell but I'm thinking hard and inseminating the world around me with my consciousness.
My credit card debt began with the habit of living beyond my means on a regular basis, something that was encouraged by my decades in the fine dining industry. When you work around exciting ingredients and get creative with them daily, tasting wine to compliment your endeavors, you tend to want to eat and drink well when you're away from the job. Completely forgotten is the fact that the people that patronize your establishment make ten times more money than you do. Add to that your insistence on this pastime of making paintings and then hanging them somewhere for others to see.
Watercolors in particular require backing, matting, glass and something that holds it all together. My choice: a nice wood frame. Framing my paintings to exhibit was a form of gambling on myself and the next show. One credit card topped off I was soon searching the mail for one of those offers of a low low interest rate so I could transfer my already significant balance over to a new lender. Smart. Now I have two credit cards.
I cooked full time, painted full time and lived life in between like I had a right to. I would fantasize that success was right around the corner and that someone could purchase all of my paintings at my next show. I would pay off my credit in one sweeping motion and sit back savoring the good life.
Sixteen years later I'm budgeting hard for the first time in my life, trying to erase a mountain of debt.  Right now, after a long day at work, I'm relaxing with a refreshing cup of hot tea. Yeah. One hundred bags for six bucks. I can lift and drink and pour it down my throat. I can sit and hold it in my hand. Hell, I can get a refill.
Cheers.

Week End, Weakened

I spend what time I have available at the drawing board or standing at the easel but it's not enough. Too much relearning and getting back into the zone. The zone is not an easy place to find if you don't put in the requisite time. So I talk dirt on other painters, dead ones and local ones, rereading my words and feeling taller in my chair until I visit their website: good paintings there. Even small JPEGS which are often easy to dismiss. The evidence was evident: the painter had done their homework. Put in their time. Black feathers chew terribly, leave a foul and bitter taste. 

Balance is a bitch. Compromise is compromising.

Maybe next time it will be more successful. Something to show worth showing.

On the other hand, my garbage is decorated with spent minutes and thoughtfully applied graphite. Quite impressive from a glance. Here I am prolific.

How do you describe your paintings?

Having recently done a search of the inter-web  for "decorative art" I found a group of painters and the work they perform and websites with members and pictures of motel rooms with wall art... It was a world of fruit and flowers, vases and striped table cloths and birds on a limb. It was all of these things and more done very badly as if painted with dust and the vast and surprisingly fresh palette of pigment scraped from the color plates of a 1960's Italian cookbook, mixed with dishwater. Paintings so lacking in luster as if a great skill were applied to keep them so. I should not be so attached to the description of a genre that flaunts it's mediocrity, like a sculptor longing to make knick knacks.
During the process of drawing and painting there is a mental dialogue going on. Much of this dialogue is designed to make the finished piece look better to the prospective viewer. Firstly it must satisfy some basic criteria but thinking of a larger audience as the painting evolves is a type of editing that is not at all censorship. It is a maturing of the work. Taking a moment and thinking about the potential viewership gives one a different perspective. It's not as if I paint for my mother, this would not be a useful voice. My mother would prefer I joined one of the afore mentioned groups and painted flowers. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with painting flowers: I once got an erection viewing a Georgia O'Keef. It was a black flower but i digress.
It is simply a process where a painter decides is this good enough? Is it worthy of taking the time out of someone's day and asking them to view it? This could be in relation to many aspects of the painting; contrasting colors, shapes, hard and soft lines; has one been bold enough? Defining form; has enough information been given? Too much? Has the negative space been used to it's full potential? Does it help move the viewers attention in and out of the painting's subject matter or is it a distraction? The list goes on (indeed, you say). At some point you have to turn the critical voice off but I think one has to ask themselves: Has the effort been successful or did the painter actually fail at bringing the piece up to a standard worthy of viewing?
 When a painting is scrupulously conducted and worthy of viewing, worthy of hanging on a wall or making a statement in a room or corridor, is it not decorative? My usual antithesis to this idea is the work of Frida Kahlo. An absolutely riveting personal life story, but she couldn't draw her way out of a terrible painting.  Good therapy perhaps and I understand the attraction, but, here with the word: not decorative. On the other hand is say, Jackson Polock, another incredible personal drama. The man's passion is almost unmatched. I'm not a big Polock fan either but, it IS decorative. It has what it takes to command a space and lift the room to another level in lieu of the painting's inclusion.
So I wrestle with this term. I am not a fan of the company it affords me, but I find it's execution to be a purifying process.

Viewing Local Art

There is one local artist in particular whose name is bandied about whenever the subject of 'success' in the arts is mentioned. He has of course a working knowledge of color and a sleeve full of technique. His landscapes are decent enough although nothing that would motivate me to drive a nail into my wall, but a series of portraits that I saw him exhibit were nothing short of embarrassing. Seventeen of the first nineteen comic book illustrators you might hit with a penny could have drafted a much more interesting, and less clumsy figure. Besides poor basic anatomical skills the faces had no character. No light. No energy or gut emotion. Cardboard. Successful.
His wife however is pretty good. Paintings worth standing in front of. Paintings worth a frame and a nail.
He seems to be quite prolific.

Most Days

Perfect burning desire to create. Effervescent notion of how to attack the figure today with a ruthless will to distill the crucial elements and abolish the plethora of unnecessary details like a gardener pruning with abandon. The day is barely born, dark and cold but the warm quiet inside is the perfect environment to germinate this fist of will tickling my cortex. 
Instead, I will shower, dress and drive to work. Hack and wrap some dead beasts. Ponder dinner. Drive home. Cook, eat and sleep; then do it all again hoping that, 48 hours from now I won't be too tired to find the same stomach and vision and magic I'm wasting now.

The Model

As a child I drew from imagination, although often inspired by something I had just viewed: an animated program or comic book/magazine. The simple but stylish animation of a Pink Panther cartoon I recall leading to many a sheet of paper. The elegant background art in a Roadrunner and Wiley E. Coyote episode... Fractured Fairy Tales, an epic frame from a fresh Mad Magazine. These medias would fill me with creative energy and send me into long minutes with pencil, ball point and felt tip pen (Flair).
The female figure is hard to argue with for visual and creative interest. I think more artists would use the figure in their work if A) it was more salable and B) they weren't so terrible at it. As a figure painter The Model is indispensable. Without using a real model, one can at best, draw the same (type of) woman over and over (see Frank Frazetta). The way a shadow defines the myriad terrain of each unique woman, changes enormously with the slightest move and differs from time of day and season is a mystery that is only revealed by the human eye and a helpful and courageous art model. Without a model (or the reference material supplied from same) I am a painter with a clutch of brushes standing before an incredibly blank or dull canvas.
This being said there are two camps with regards to the use of a model. One camp says the painter must paint the sitting (standing, laying, whatever) model on site. The other camp says, the pose captured of a live model is likely to be less interesting than endless possibilities captured with the camera's lens. The first camp says paintings from photos are "dead". The second camp say "oh yeah?", etc. One certainly doesn't want a painting to look like a painted photo, and as I wrote in a previous post, a photo will give you much more information than one will NEED for a painting. That's where the painter has to make decisions.
Back to the model for a moment, enough has not been said. Beyond being given the information that a painter needs to begin working, a model gives the painter energy and fire. This combined with technique is what makes a painting worth viewing.

Recent Painting

Going back to watercolors. Allows me to use pigments and attempt to capture some images without the commitment of an oil painting. Like Charles Bukowski said of his poetry, "Get in and get out." It's easier and more difficult. Prior planning is necessary. Soaking the paper over and over again making trails for the color, leaving highlighted areas dry. Adding more and more water, then, dropping in the pigment and adding contrasting color. As the surface quickly begins to dry adding a bit more localized color where one sees fit. Stopping: waiting for complete dryness, planning for the next water trail for a darker pigment load. Finding the way between too bold and brash and subtly boring.

waiting for the bus

Picasso had it right.
The part about finding the bare essentials. Eliminating extraneous detail. I've never really seen a lot of his paintings actually succeed in this arena but that isn't the point. Knowing what the target is and aiming, that's the battle. That and finding the time to enter the fray without being a failure in every other area of your life. Twenty-four hours to be artist and human being. Paint regularly but brush your teeth, play with the baby, exercise and eat well. And paint.
Of course the seduction of the very details one is trying to narrow and eliminate is very strong. Particularly in regards to the human figure. Every curve and niche entice and seduce your attention demanding inclusion. Photographers have it easy, play with the contrast a little this way or that, keeping and erasing with a click. Eliminating while drawing is tough. Not for wimps.