Throwing Caution to the Wind

Late last week, a wonderful facebook friend of mine, Lorna Crane, encouraged me to participate in a drawing show opportunity in Ireland opening next month.  At the last possible hour, I decided to go for it even though this meant temporarily setting aside my painting, moving into a back room in my attic studio and digging out myriad drawing materials with just three days to finish the work. I love to draw, however what surprised me was just how challenging, but also fascinating, this  process proved to be in opening up new ideas about marking making and abstraction.

Throwing caution to the wind, and jumping into somewhat unfamiliar waters, I embarked a on a messy three day extravaganza with sumi ink, acrylic, graphite, charcoal and pastel. Everyone in “The Drawing Box Belfast” show is sending five drawings to Ireland at an A5 scale – a humble 8.3 x 5.8 inches. This guideline coerced me into working quickly and intuitively. I tried to move freely back and forth from one to the next and made about twenty mixed media pieces in three days. When something wasn’t working, I added more layers, turned it upside down, scraped away or started another one. Some of the drawings were made to scale and sometimes I worked slightly larger, looked at compositional possibilities and cut them to size. When I did the latter, I often worked back into them a little after they were cropped.

It was a pleasure to play with a constantly shifting palimpsested surface. I worked on seven or eight at a time striving for and finding relationships between them. As working in a series tends to do, the drawings started influencing each other. This kind of call and response between works happens with paintings in the studio as well, but the expediency of this project meant everything happened much faster and perhaps with more happenchance and unpredictability.

Both light and shadow are the dance of love.

Rumi

I have been experimenting with the ways in which the fluidity of manipulating digital images shifts my perspective while in the process of creating paintings. When I see my works, constructed through many layers of color, change into black, white and grays with a touch of a computer option, it gives me a brand new insight into the space and design of the work. I am not sure why they sometimes look better to me in grays than they do in color. Maybe it’s just the fascination with seeing them so differently when altered into a grayscale mode via the never-ending wonders of Adobe Photoshop!

As much as I love color, I have also always been drawn to works reduced to more neutral and monochromatic values. Artists such as Cy Twombly, Antoni Tapies, and Stephen Croeser, a few favorites that come to mind, exude a visual strength through a limited palette in many of their works. While I often respond to the seduction and allure of color, I respect the restraint and elegance of less.

Sometimes people make a distinction between ‘value painters’ and ‘color painters.’I’ve worked for decades sitting comfortably in the latter camp. When thinking about visual opposites, I lean more towards warm and cool than light and dark.  However, I find myself yearning to at least explore the other side where value shifts rein, if only to learn more about how color is functioning in a painting.

I am working from the premise that if the value range is wider, or at least more considered, the color is stronger. So, in the spirit of learning from what is unfamiliar, I have been using this photo manipulation tool in the midst of creating, in order to view the work through both an achromatic and chromatic lens. I appreciate seeing the same work in a new manner, and I am learning more about incorporating this process midstream to inform the next stages of layering paint.

I explore this shift back and forth in a few different ways.  At times I start a piece, even one destined for full color, in a monochromatic values in the initial layers. In other paintings,

I document varying stages of works in process and look at them in both color and black and white versions that feeds ideas for the next layers. Also, actually looking at a grayscale and color versions side by side, I can compare both in relationship to one another.  This interplay has enhanced my understanding and I appreciate its potential to chart visual and conceptual maps while making a painting.

My recent paintings are all made on panel with oil paint, cold wax, and other mixed media such as powdered marble, chalk, plaster, dry pigment, and gold leaf. Many unpredictable layers are developed through intuition, experimentation and chance. The process includes adding and subtracting paint, erasing, excavating, scraping, and improvisational mark making. Ultimately, I want these paintings to represent the beauty that is found in objects and places that are continuously shifting within the transformation of time.

http://www.convergeartnyc.com/

YOU TUBE VIDEO of the Opening Reception

You’re invited to the opening reception of “Converge: Where Classical & Contemporary Art Collide,” a fine-art exhibition and sale curated by Allison Malafronte and featuring 31 emerging and established artists who embody the best of the classical and contemporary art worlds. The exhibition will be on view at 25CPW–a gallery and event space located at 25 Central Park West and 62nd Street on the Upper West Side–from November 15 through November 27.

The opening reception will take place on November 15 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., with many of the exhibiting artists in attendance.

The artists featured in “Converge” are: James Daga Albinson * Daniel Bilmes * Stefán Boulter * Rachel Constantine * Allison B. Cooke * Marc Dalessio * Alia El-Bermani * Diane Feissel * Ben Fenske * Sandra Flood * Amaya Gurpide * Quang Ho * Greg Horwitch * Geoffrey Johnson * Karen Kaapcke * Alex Kanevsky * Michael Klein * Maria Kreyn * Leo Mancini-Hresko * Jeremy Mann * Dan McCaw * Danny McCaw * John McCaw * Kevin McEvoy * Adam Miller * Gregory Mortenson * Tibor Nagy * Carolyn Pyfrom * Richard Thomas Scott * Jordan Sokol * Peter Van Dyck

To view the artwork of the exhibiting artists, read their bios, and learn more about the exhibition, visit http://www.convergeartnyc.com. To learn more about 25CPW, visit www.25cpw.org.

en route  -  adverb  on or along the way, on a route to some place

Some weeks are more dramatic in the studio than others.  I am used to experimenting and its what ultimately drives my work, but last weekend was definitely a whirlwind  of change and new excursions. I am in the habit of posting ‘works in progress’ in facebook on a regular basis. I enjoy sharing, always receive some great feedback (for which I am grateful) and somehow it amplifies my own connection to the process. I know I thoroughly enjoy seeing other artist’s works as they are being made. It also makes me realize just how much works can change when I can refer to this digital trail. What starts out as one thing can easily transform into a completely different painting. Its always fascinating to balance the risks and rewards in making a painting that builds over time. I love the interplay of what is lost and what remains.

Sometimes I title paintings early in the process of making them. This is especially true when I post them. For one thing, it helps me keep track of the work! Once in a while, I change titles if they don’t fit any longer as the work transforms. This week work changed dramatically every time I worked on it and a few titles changed as well.  Maybe is the energy I feel in the cooler air and the early tinges of fall out there?

I am also energized with some upcoming exhibitions. The most exciting one is a group show in New York City in November, curated by Allison Malafronte,  called “Converge: Where the Classical and Contemporary Collide.” I will return with details of the show in a future post. Something was driving this whirlwind of activity and it was an interesting ride!

Here are a few moments of  from the studio this week.

This little painting started out as a rather loose interpretation of a wall I shot in Florence this summer. As I worked on it, there was some interesting new territory, but I think it felt too literal. I don’t usually work directly from an image, and when I do, its only a jumping off place. When I was looking at the digital of it on the computer screen, for some reason, I decided to look at more photographs from this summer.  I started  playing around with combining things.  I want to get explore this idea of digital compilations feeding my painting process midstream.

Compilation of a digital of a painting in progress collaged with one of my photo images.

The painting below is in a response to dramatic grafitti marks I saw all over Florence. I liked the visual shifts on what otherwise is a more continuous field of color. Here is a close up of that gesture.

I am experimenting more with thicker texture and glazes.

I am also trying to build surfaces more slowly with more subtle shifts. Here is work in process at two different stages called Memory Place II.

Fragment of Memory Place II

I am appreciating how these digital trails map my thoughts and ideas, trials and tribulations, and what kinds of things transpire in building the paintings.

It’s quite the adventure in the studio these days!

Painting in a makeshift studio while in Italy has become a summer tradition. It’s so interesting to make the transition from one of two studios at home (one an old attic and the other a converted industrial space) to a table or desk. I have now lived in four different apartments while teaching at Santa Reparata in Italy, but in each case the studio was not much bigger than a  22 x 30 sheet of paper, quite literally. I am not only working on a table, but in a pristine room where one false move involving paint or a bag of dry pigments could prove disastrous. I can’t let it fly, so to speak.

Somehow within this so-called limitation there is a new freedom and this miniscule studio seems to ‘disappear’ anyway as the process takes over. Painting while in Italy is exhilarating. Florence exudes art from every corner and is an inspiration in itself.  Once I have made the decision to forego an afternoon of museum visits, I relish the time painting.

A temporary studio space shares something with the experience of travel in the thrill of unfamiliarity. It is unrealistic to use my beloved oil and wax in this environment. So, this year for the first time, I experimented with water based media and abstraction. I quickly lost all preconceived notions as I tried to figure out what ink, watercolor, powdered marble, dry pigments, and homemade egg tempera could do in this genre. Here are a few pieces that I made over one weekend in late July from a small jerry rigged studio in the middle of Florence.  These mixed media works are approximately 12” x 9” on archival paper.

The painter Francis Bacon said… “The job of an artist is to always to deepen the mystery.”  I greatly relate to that sphere of thought and find endless pleasure in the experience of painting from and into the unknown.

Detail  - Eternal Loop       12″ x 9″    egg tempera/mixed media

Eternal Loop

Opening

Sky Ships

Via Guelfa Mystery

Detail – Via Guelfa Mystery

Detail – Sky Ships

Rolling

Boundless