The 2020 Art Plan … Then; and Now!

When 2019 came to a close and 2020 was about to get started, I was REALLY energized.

So, I sat down and made a plan.

Here is the thing, 2019 had been a wonderful year, I was happy with the success of my teaching of regional and local classes and workshops; and I had even branched out a bit and taught workshops in San Francisco, Chicago, and Richmond. I wanted to continue in that direction.

Teaching at San Franciscos Palace of the Fine Art, at Fredericksburg’s Libertytown Art Studios, and under the “L” on Congress & Wabash, Chicago.

My July 2017 sketch of the elevated train at Wabash & Congress and a shot of that same location during my USk Chicago Seminar Workshops in June of 2019.

I had also completed a solo show of my large Natural-Family-History series of drawings at Troy University as well as participated in a really fine exhibition of Urban Sketching in the DC area.  I got to make new friends, meet fellow artists and colleagues. and to deepen my connection with folks I have known for a long time. 2019 was full of art travel and art adventures and I wanted to follow up on those without destroying what is good in my more local/regional art practice.  The idea was to continue to add a bit more spice to my mix.

2019 had also been more than a few intensely momentous and life altering events too. Not the least of which were the death in the Fall of my Mom and of her oldest sister. They were the last of their generation on both the maternal and paternal sides of my family.  I wanted to embrace all of this complex life stuff too and make sure that I was centered as I moved forward as a human being as well as an artist and artist–educator.

My studio storage area … in full “reorganizational mess” mode. That time during the process when things have to get far worse before you can make them better!

So, The 2020-2021 Plan.

1.  Hiatus. Unplug through Christmas and take January off, Organize my thoughts as I cleaned, decluttered, reorganized, and inventoried my studio. Research/explore ideas and activities for moving forward in 2020 and even into 2021. 

2.  After my efforts to reorganize and refocus, I resolved to enjoy a short and low key Valentine’s week romantic mini-vacation on the coast of Florida.

This is the small office sized part of my studio. I mostly use this area for doing design work. It is also where I process small works on paper or sketches storage, exhibitions, or shipping.

3.  In mid February, refreshed from the period of contemplative and reflective activity, I would begin to doff the protective hermit robes of seclusion. With a newly completed detailed but still highly flexible plan for the coming year, softly and slowly I would begin to reboot back into an exciting and busy 2020. A major part would be bringing my two major studio projects (the Natural Family History series of drawings and the Shaped Landscape series of water media painting) back up to full speed again while still tapping into the excitement of urban sketching!  

4.  New classes and the newest sessions of my regular classes awaited my attentention, workshop planning for 2020 and 2021 were ramping up, opportunities for exhibitions and workshops were at my doorstep, and unfinished and new art projects were calling for my attention!

But something else had been emerging in January, February, and March! The official name is SARS-CoV-2; best known to most of as Covid19.

By mid-March my plan wasn’t looking very healthy. And over the past few weeks, I think the specifics of my 2020-2021 plan have all withered away. As of today, I have pruned all of the “busy, out in the world” projects from my calendar through 2020.

Here, as the late Spring days of early June wane and the Summer’s solstice beckons, the ideas that birthed my joyously busy and fulfilling calendar are very much alive and well. So, what do I have left and how do I proceed?  Obviously my goals aren’t really going to change much; but my shorter range objectives need to shift/pivot and because of that my actions have all been adjusted.

This is the larger part of my studio; the area where I work on mylar, large paper, or mixed aqueous media pieces on panels.

So, I have a NEWER 2020-2021 plan.

1.  Make Art. Use the time at home and the newly refreshed studio to create new art. Revise some of my older abandoned and unfinished works of art. Concentrate on the Natural Family History series, the Shaped Landscape series, Maybe revive my large (30×40) studio watercolors that I used to enjoy so much.

2. Make lots of Sketches. Post them online more so that folks can see and enjoy them. Also make sure ALL my new small pieces are also in my online SHOP just in case those folks can get them if they want to do that.

3.  Give more! Start sending out free educational handouts (materials and techniques, design ideas, color theory, and other art info) to former students and other interested folks. No charge, no strings attached. Gifts.

4.  Learn something new. Explore the use of modern video technology. Make art videos with my digital SLR camera, my iPhone and a little GoPro Hero camera. Play with iMovie to learn how to edit videos too. (Give lots of little videos away as well … see #3 above).

5.  Try Re-connecting. Learn to use video technology and other social media to reach out to art colleagues, friends and even clients. Personal mail and phone calls are good too.

6.  Stay centered. Be safe and vigilant. Be patient and hopeful. Be thoughtful and playful. Be ready to be kind and helpful to others. Mostly, simply and humanely, be myself.

Actually, at the core, I guess that was the purpose of the previous plan too. The new one is just without the physical handshakes and hugs, without sitting together and having an iced tea or a cold local beer with old and new friends. There are no gigs, no airfares, and no driving all over the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast or into the Ohio River basin. I will miss those every now and then.

But there is art. There is reaching out as best I can. And there is being whole, being me.

So, here is a video to seal the deal … to start pushing myself down the path of my new plan just a bit! https://youtu.be/q0KoIKVGlcQ

’til next time … Wishing you peace, beauty, safety, and good health!

Thanksgiving … Thanking You!

It is now fall, and here in the U.S. we have a day, today, set aside for celebrating and giving thanks. For many folks, it is centered on gathering with family and loved ones and a modicum (?) of feasting and other similar festivities. Yes, I will be doing that quite soon as well.

I have some extra reasons to be particularly thankful. For me, this year has been rich; a rich feast of work adventures and intensely rich with artistic and some deeply personal challenges that I hope may have prompted growth.

In light of all those challenges, one of the things I am extremely grateful for was the opportunity to share some of my and my family’s stories through an exhibition of my Natural-Family-History series of drawings and sketches this fall at Troy University.  Kudos to my colleague and friend Greg who installed the exhibition and made the show and the whole experience absolutely marvelous. I owe him and Kerry a major thank you!

It was great to see the older pieces up on the wall again; it was really exciting for me to see the newer pieces alongside them for the first time too. Talking with viewers from the university and community was a joy and helped me recall details of family stories I hadn’t thought about in years! 

 

 

And, as the show came down and I began the post show logistics (inventory, inspection, transportation, and storage), I had time to reflect on all the folks who have commented, encouraged, and even challenged me about these works and my studio process. They (and especially YOU, my readers) keep me focused on what is at the heart of this series. Thank you.

At the heart of this series is a desire to make art that reflects and engages memory. Memories of living in/with family. That reflection is a kind of celebration and most especially a thanksgiving. Thank you for helping make it possible.

 

 

PS: My next post will be about my other major series, the Shaped Landscape paintings. PPS: Look for my next post about the slowly emerging next drawing in this Natural-Family-History series very soon!

 

Change it? Okay, YES, Change it!

“But will it be any better than it was before? Will I ruin it trying to make it into something I couldn’t quite achieve the first time around?”

Those are the questions I was asking myself this week in the studio.

Nascent, a mostly graphite, white conte, and ink drawing on a 50 x 36 sheet of Mylar, (as of February 2014).

It is not all that frequent, but sometimes when I finish working on a piece I have a nagging feeling that there is another solution available; a different way to wrap up a piece, not always better but a resolution that I haven’t yet discovered.

That is exactly how I felt about Nascent, a drawing from my Natural Family History series. I had originally worked on Nascent in late 2013 and early 2014. I knew almost the moment I had “finished” it that there was at least one more way to solve the content vs structure issues of this drawing. Back then, I had to move on at that very moment so I put it in its designated storage tube and tried to mentally leave it there.

Now, I have to tell you that I didn’t feel as if I was being called to come back to the piece. It wasn’t that bad a piece; there were things that were quite well done. But, every time I saw the digital reproduction of this drawing, I just knew that I wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t explore some of the possible changes. Of course to do so meant a risk, taking a chance. I could end up destroying the very things that I did find satisfying about this piece. There was some quite delicate drawing and a use of negative space that created a nice tension between the human figure and the lone stem and opening bud of Queen Anne’s Lace.

Facing that fear isn’t always easy to do.

Truthfully, most of the time I decide to just ignore the fear. That has come easier and easier as I’ve gotten older. I have ruined countless paintings, drawings, sketches and studies in my life. If it comes to it, what’s one more? I haven’t died or even broken any limbs botching a piece of art. The studio or the sketch board is the one place that, no matter what poor or brilliant path I take, the repercussions are all in my head. The piece can be screwed up and no one will chastise me for it. I might lament the loss of materials when I use up a large expensive batch but I can’t say that the time was misspent though; I’m bound to have learned something even if the work is a horrible failure.

So, as you can see below, in the early stages of the reworking of the drawing the biggest and most noticeable changes are the inclusion of a lot more imagery based on the Queen Anne’s Lace plant. I have added several more partial renderings as well as hints of an entire field of them. These were derived from photographs and sketches I have made during the past few years. It is a wild native in the fields and roadside all around me.

In the studio, I have continued to use graphites, conte, and lacquer and non-lacquer based India inks. In the section seen below, I have also been using some “new to me” acrylic inks, particularly a transparent burnt umber that I find to be particularly appealing.

Near the center of the sheet of Mylar there are now quite a bit of subtlety rendered plant forms added into this new version of Nascent.

Eventually, I also added more bits of plants imagery behind and below the drawing of my Mom (as a late pre-teen) on the left. You can also see that I have added a map of the coastline and harbor of Kinsale, Ireland. She was born there  and, during the years of WWII, her mother brought her younger children (my Mom and my Uncle John) from London to escape the Blitz.  After doing so much work on the plants and adding the map, I increased the level of detail in the image of my Mom just a bit too.

So, here is the piece as I took it off the drawing board. Is it done? I don’t know yet. I am again putting in it’s tube though. And I will be taking it along with twelve or more studio studies and about 15 or 16 other of my large drawings on mylar, all fellow members of my “Natural-Family-History” series, to exhibit at Troy University in Troy, Alabama.

Nascent, in it’s current state, (2013-2019).

It is a bit of a trek to get there, but certainly not any longer than this piece has taken to get where it is today. The journey I and Nascent have been on are well matched. I have known for a while now that neither I nor my work seem to change smoothly or effortlessly … but both do show up and eventually benefit from challenge!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is good to have my studio back up and running and to be working on larger mylar and paper pieces again!  Don’t worry though, I’ll keep working on my mixed media panel pieces too.

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POSTSCRIPT

Below are a few pics of the exhibition at Huo Bao Zhu Gallery on the Troy University campus. I have not been back to see the exhibition yet but they did decide to use the newest version of Nascent in at least some of the PR for the show. I will be on campus late next month to talk with art students as well as other members of the university and the community. I will also go back for the formal reception and a gallery lecture in late November.

 

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Lovely Respite In The Gallery …

Earlier this week I got to see an exhibition at a local gallery. It was a real treat.

The venue, the Fralin Museum of Art (the former Bayly Museum) at the University of Virginia is small but quite well laid out and is well worth a visit anytime you are nearby. The exhibit highlights early works by Georgia O’Keefe … especially those that were done while she was living in Charlottesville VA and was a student and later an assistant instructor in UVa’s summer program.

Anyone who has studied O’Keefe’s early paintings and drawings knows that she was influenced by many of the contemporaneous art movements including Fin de Siècle design, Post-Impressionism, the Symbolist movement, the ideas of Wassily Kandinsky, and most especially the ideas and later the instruction of Arthur Wesley Dow. You can see all those elements in her work in this exhibition. The curators of the show have included lots of historical ephemera, books and class registration materials from O’Keefe’s summers at UVa, as well as sketches and photographs.

This exhibition concentrates on Georgia O’Keefe’s work as she was transitioning from her more memetic early training at the Chicago Art Institute and the New York Art Students’s League to her much more personal way of working that utilized strategies of abstraction. The two works above are early watercolors of the building on the grounds of UVa that show Dow’s influence with an emphasis on design and the hybridizing of traditional Western and East Asian art.

The old studio art (and sometimes art history) professor part of me really loved getting to piece together what I already knew about her work and life with all the added details located here. And the inveterate sketcher in me was tickled to see the onsite watercolors from the university campus (if you are a UVa alum, sorry for not calling it “grounds”) too.

But my favorite part … what got me really excited … was seeing here the process of O’Keefe becoming a more expressive abstractionist. That is best seen in the small watercolors inspired by the hills and mountains of the Ragged Mountains and Blue Ridge of the Appalachians. She experienced them directly; exploring, hiking, and camping in those peaks and valleys which are visible to the southwest and west of  Charlottesville.

pictured above and below are: Blue Hill II, Pink and Blue Mountain, and Evening.                   Watercolors on paper, all 1916 

These watercolors are are small and simple. And, to me, profoundly compelling in their fresh, simple directness. There is certainly more than a few hint of the much more well known, even famous, early watercolors she created soon after while she was teaching in western Texas. The charcoal drawings and watercolor of this period launched her career as a seminal figure in early 20th century American modernist art. And they are fun to look at too!

If you can get to the exhibit before it closes, I recommend the visit.  If not, I am sorry; but you could contact the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. That museum organized a similar exhibition that ran from 2014-2016. They might just have made a catalog for that show.

Thanks for reading here today. If you have any questions or thoughts, please do comment below or get in touch via email. You can also connect via my website.

 

 

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Fresh … In The Deep of Winter.

I love fresh starts.

All through the holidays I’ve had a hard time being at ease this year. So much has been going on, both the normal and a bit abnormal as well. Family life has been a lovely whirlwind; certainly not a destructive tempest … but not really a placid place of rest either.

Internally though, all I wanted to do was something you and I would likely call nesting. I have seen it in a desire to put things in good order, to organize almost everything around me. Why is this so powerful right now?

It is because something is blowing in along with this winter’s frigid air?

I can feel it as two linked urges growing, becoming into something really powerful once again. The first is an almost physical need to burrow deeply into my work, tackling the hard, even nasty or grimy parts of creating; to struggle with materials, images, and formats that I find so enriching.

The second is a desire to push the work out into the world; to let it fly as high and far as it can go. To be out there for others to see and react to it. I don’t really care what type of reactions they are … it is just helpful to have the reactions. For me it is the process of stretching, a stretching out whatever wings the new work may have and taking to the air. To take work born out of digging and scratching beneath the surface or rooting around in work that just doesn’t seem to want to come to fruition and sending it out to you, to anyone, everyone … a hoping to get some feedback.

So, what I have pulled together this evening is some of the grimy, unfinished work that seems both very exciting and somehow completely wrong at the same time. These pieces I am willing to struggle with right now.  So, let us look first at this odd, potentially “never see the light of day” work.

This vertical panel has been troubling me off and on now for many months. I have drawn and painted, scrubbed and sanded until I think that perhaps I should leave it alone.

While I think that I should leave the image alone, I do not believe that I want it to be a stand alone piece. Instead, it will part of a larger multi-panel work. For now, I am thinking of a triptych that will be 29 inches wide and 18 inches tall. I suspect that I will be contrasting the rich compactness of the image, the highly textured surface, and the very distressed materials of the vertical piece with a much smoother paint application or negative spaces. I am guessing too that I will elect for much simpler depictions of landscape and plant images to offset the richness of the central panel.

Another painting that I have been at odds with for several months is one that I thought was going to be very simple and straightforward. This 12×12 panel with a pretty simple depiction of ginkgo branches and leaves against a blue sky was begun from sketches and photos that I made on the street my daughter lived on when she was in college.  My intent was to pair it with a continuation of the same tree and leaves as they traversed in front of a darkly shaded building.  I tried. I couldn’t make it work!

So, I am taking a different tack now. It will still be   a paired set (not bolted together, just side-by-side). But I am really rethinking what the darker one will be doing. I have scrubbed out some of the pencil, watercolor, gouache, and inks that I used. And as you can see I’ve have added some masking to begin creating some geometric elements as well. Just not sure what the next step will be.

 

I adore simple, direct, almost spare images that are organized using lots of negative space and the clarity that type of image create for me. Hopefully for the viewer too. At the same time, I do love making a mess sometimes. That seems to be what is holding me up in both of the two previous pieces.

And that is also part of what intrigues me about this next work. I have played with other images from the physical site that this piece comes from. It is of a pine that sits atop a nearby pass through the Blue Ridge; something I traverse at least three or four times a week. Stopping to sketch, draw, paint, or photograph on this site has been a fairly frequent part of my practice for almost 15 years. It is almost a seasonal ritual. I have done several really nice simple drawings, quick sketches, and even a few paintings up there. Some I have sold, some I have shared with friends and family, some that I even put in major exhibits of my work. This one has started off a bit different though. Instead of simplicity … it will lean towards a bit messier but highly connected imagery.

In this piece, the far left panel closes in on a single (as yet barely depicted) pine cone. The central panel is about the shadows between the deeper interior of the huge pine and will be far more abstracted. My current thoughts are that it will probably be comprised of a combination of simple mimetic line work distilled from branches, bark, and pine needles, arbitrary color marks/surfaces, and some geometric passages. The large right hand panel will depict the lowest branch of the pine, its shadow on the ground of the hilltop and between those a hint of the trees seen on the next ridge.

I seem to be eschewing the simplified, essential image in favor of multiplicity, the visual equivalence of dissonance. I am going into the deep end of my image pool, willing to sink or float long enough to really get a feel for where these images take me. I don’t know if they will ever work out.

That isn’t the point is it?

It is about the freedom to embrace the freezing cold and the blistering fire … to stay in the fight no matter how it turns out.  In fact, to be excited by the ever shifting fresh challenges.

 

 

Success & Options

Well, it seems that late summer and early fall, as in many years past, is proving to be a fruitful time of year both in and outside the studio.

This time of year can be swelteringly hot and humid or interrupted by intense tropic storms (as is the case this week) but the produce being harvested is just so very bountiful. The joy of prepping or cooking with such freshly harvested fruit and vegetables is, well, visually and gastronomically delightful … almost overwhelming!

Like the kitchen and table … working in the studio has also been very rewarding of late. Fresh ideas for new work are popping up at an almost dizzying rate.  Older pieces, set aside and unfinished, even some work that seemed to have gone dormant, no longer of much interest, are suggesting ways to move forward again. It is possible that this time of year, which had been exciting for me because heading back to school was always ripe with possibilities both as a student and later as a faculty member too.  Maybe it’s the clear, drier, and cooler air, hints of fall coming soon, that until this week have been seeping down from further north has freshened and awakened my brain and heart.  It could also be that having set aside a few weeks to really concentrate on the visual work has kick started my creative and visual life a bit. I suspect it is all three that are increasing my artistic harvest and enriching the visual larder of late. It is a delicious feeling.

Above is an example of a piece I all but abandoned in early 2017.  It is one of my regular formats, a small 12×12 watercolor panel.  (This is the Aquabord panel by Ampersand; the kind with the 2″ deep side/cradle.)  I had decided to use it for one of my Shaped Landscape series pieces and below you can see the the nearly completed left section of the square and one of the photographic prints that I had as part of my packet of reference images … photos and sketches.

In this next image, you can see how I had divided the pane to accommodate at least two images in unequal sections of the panel. the left part was mostly completed early on, it was based on sketches and reference photos I had made driving home one day. I felt good about the design and the execution at this point but I wasn’t quite sure what to do next.  So, I moved the masking from the right edge of the left portion, completely coving up the left and contemplated how to proceed.

I pretty quickly decided to contrast the very traditional and very carefully layered  execution of the left side with a wetter and more random process on the right hand side.

So I loaded the panel with water; but not evenly! Then I dropped, poured, and splattered paint and additional water onto the surface and let it dry without intervention. Only after it was dry did I begin to draw onto the surface with pencil. As I started to paint, I resolved to use both watercolor and gouache in this piece. That allows me to create areas where I could augment the existing color … and with the more opaque gouache, I could cover up areas as well. Later, near the end, I also contemplated adding some inks but finally decided to forego that option.

Exploring the first layers of pencil and paint over the wet-into-wet underpainting, you can see that I decided to leave some of the leaves and branches as negative spaces. This allowed more of the multi-color ground to remain visible in the later stages of the painting.

Below is the panel as it appears today in the studio. The masking of the left has been removed; you (and me too) can finally see the two images side by side. So far I think that I really like it! Of course, I could try to finesse it’s color and value design. Maybe I should fiddle with it and add a few more naturalist or simplified/abstracted details; or consider addition random random drops of water or color to create some additional visual dissonance. Or it could be done.

 

And yes,  it could be done. But right now the plan is to have this piece be part my Shaped Landscape series of aqueous media works on panel.  So … I will be considering additional ways of planning what comes next with this piece. It could stand alone as you can see in these “digital studies” that I have included below.

 

 

The different options above are fun to contemplate. Any added geometric shapes could easily vary in hue, value, or intensity. The range of options are nearly limitless. And, as has been obvious to folks for a while now,  I really do enjoy contrasting all the subtle complexities depicted in my varied representational approaches with the fairly simple geometrical visual elements. But despite the simplicity of the geometric shape, I am almost always willing to make the color choices for those shapes complex … striving for additional visual richness.

Despite all the complexities shown and alluded to above (and I have even more options I am NOT sharing), I am leaning towards an even more complex assemblage. Below are two conceptual pieces. These are just “mock-ups” of potential formats. Only the current piece has been executed so far; the other panels have not even been made yet.

Options. Yes, I have a few. I may leave it fairly simple; Something along the lines of the single panel design in the second or third option of the first nine I showed you above. Or I way assemble/ arrange this piece with two, three or more other panels into a very challenging but much richer format.  Both could be really delicious.

It really is easier and more exciting to cook with fresh ingredients!

 

 

 

One Really Big Fire; A Lifetime Passion!

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, from the River                                                                       Joseph Mallord William Turner, watercolor on paper, 1834

Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy looking at the watercolors and watercolor sketches of Joseph Mallord William Turner.

And what I love about his work is the process and progress of his painting over the span of his decades as an artist; the nearly radical simplification and experimentation that he undertook that seems to have been a passion.  I’m especially drawn to his sketches using watercolor and other media on paper; it is those that I want to share with you here.

 

At the beginning of his career, Turner made meticulous drawings, usually with graphite, and laid in multiple layers of transparent or translucent color to create images portraying not only light and dark values but evocations of depth, mass, and texture. As you can see to the right, his early color choices were typical of the English School of the time. Turner used a cool transparent blue and an earthy orange that would produce a natural grey tone when overlaid on each other. Only at the end would he add just a few touches of more vibrant color.

Below, in this next apparently unfinished piece that he painted in Oxford, you can see just how these opposing tones create a grey.

It was a tone Turner used as the basis for much of the image’s structure. This is not far off the method used by earlier artists … from Jan van Eyck to Holbein … a grisaille underpainting with layers of ever stronger clear color glazing and a touch or two of possible semi-opaque or opaque color at the very end.

As Turner matured, we can see that he became surer and surer of using more direct modulation of color. He still often began the sketches with graphite line work, but even those marks, as well as much of the subsequent brushwork, became less and less purely definitive of physical detail; ever freer and more expressive of visual and emotional experience.

Above we have again have an unfinished piece. Notice how both lines and color marks, while very much related to the things, the physical phenomenons, that they record, these marks a not as physically precise. Instead they are more spare and simple, leaving more room for the artist and eventually the viewer to complete the intent of the image.

We can see in this late (1823) sketch of a coastline with a lighthouse, the now bolder, even rougher use of brushwork.  And as his career continued he even achieves an a nearly incorporeal quality, images were composed only of the shaped wavelengths of light we call color.

 

I was recently reminded of all this when a recent article came across my desktop. That e-article highlighted five of my all time favorite artists (I admit to having at least a top 25, maybe more). Each of these is a painter who

worked on easel paintings as well as aqueous media on paper. The problem was that, while the it was well written and talked about the specific paintings of these five near heroes of mine, it only showed the works of four of them. The author wrote about Turner’s watercolor sketches of the burning Houses of Parliament, but omitted any example of those pieces. Ouch!

 

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament                                                                                                            J.M.W. Turner, watercolor, 1834

So, I guess this is my visual form of a rant of sorts; sharing the images they might have included in the e-article (the first and last images in this blog) … and a few more to boot.

Here’s hoping you enjoy them.

Beginning A Watercolor

Whether one is working up a large and complex piece or the smallest of watercolor sketches, getting started well can be one of the most important, even crucial, parts of the process.

Late Summer/Early Falls Pasture, Augusta County

When I start a piece badly or in a confused manner, I end up having to struggle so much harder to get it all worked out, Now don’t get me wrong, getting lost in that struggle can be a wonderfully fertile process. I find that wandering about in a painting project and searching for a way through that visual disorientation can eventually open up new and exciting pathways in my work.  But starting a new work, staying focused on my original vision, and following through as best I can be a very productive path as well.

A good example of this can be seen in Shari Blaukop’s latest posting about her approach to watercolor sketching.. It is quite close to my way of working up a smaller pieces and she does a really great job of verbally and visually explaining her process.

via A step-by-step street scene

a recent watercolor sketch by Shari Blaukopf

Shari is a Montreal based artist whose painting and blog I have known and enjoyed for several years now. I even had the pleasure of meeting her this past summer when we were both in Chicago for the Urban Sketcher’s Symposium. Take a look at her blog post. I think you will find Shari’s painting and writing to be fresh, evocative, and engaging.

 

 

Blue? Oh Yes … I LOVE Blue.

My first favorite paint color was Prussian Blue!

I have gotten older and painted with many other wonderful blue colors. I think that maybe, just maybe  Prussian Blue is still my favorite.

As a young kid, my box of 64 colors had several blues. There were light blues, bright clear blues, and a darker blue to be sure. Maybe that was navy blue … but I don’t remember anything like Prussian. Because I didn’t wear jeans much growing up, I didn’t know the beautiful intricacies of indigo (or woad) as a dyestuff. And early on, living under a Florida/Caribbean sky, anything close to Cerulean just did not register as a true “sky” blue at all. But by the time I was a teen, I had seen a bit more of the world and it’s variety of blues. The hues of summer night sky in the British Isles and the color of the Atlantic at rest and during foul, angry storms were in my head. I had lived beneath and experienced the searing blues of the dry air midday sky on the Great Plains; I had marveled as well at the hazy, smoky, just barely blue-grey sky of the southern most Appalachians.

So, by the time I became serious about painting, I had decided that Cerulean was OK, Manganese a little bit better, and those new Pthalos, well they were eye-catching but far too strident—almost unmanageable in a realistic painting.  I was drawn to Cobalt blue; immediately! I was even more excited by the very rich, deep violet-blue qualities of Ultramarine.

My attraction to that ancient color we identify as Ultramarine, traditionally made from lapis lazuli, has never wavered. The bright blue lapis stone, famous and highly valued since even before the Pharaohs ruled Egypt, has been used as a coloring agent and in jewelry. In fact, I wear a lapis lazuli stone on my ring finger every day. (Thanks Mary!)  Despite that, the paint color that lapis makes can vary quite a lot depending on the quality of the raw material and the paint maker’s craft.  So, for me as a painter,  the chemically derived version which is known as French Ultramarine, is much more consistent and preferable.

A fairly new watercolor sketch using Prussian Blue, Prussian Green, as well as Ultramarine Blue.

But, just before I went off to college, there was a new color on my palette—Prussian Blue!

 

 

 

It was divine!

Not a “pure” or boldly simple hue like Cobalt or Ultramarine – nor is Prussian as smoky as Indigo. But it is a rich and complex color, first available as a paint or dye when this synthetic pigment was created in the early 1700s. When I first came across Prussian Blue in the 1970’s, I was painting almost exclusively in oils. At first I thought of it as a sort of midnight blue.  The richness of  Prussian Blue oil paint felt mysterious and a bit hard to pin down.

Prussian Blue IS hard to pin down. You see, sometimes Prussian just looks like a dark blue … but most of the time it edges towards violet. This makes sense … it is listed as having a red slant in all the official color charts.  But under some conditions (in light tints or in very pale washes) I have observed that it can oddly hint at green too. You can see that subtle greenish qualities of the lighter tints of the hue in the color sample above.  Violet AND green in the same color? This was astounding to me as a young painter.

Prussian is beautiful alone but in combination with other blues it really sang to me, it made other blues seem richer and more harmonious. It also made wonderfully sophisticated light blue tints when mixed with titanium or zinc whites. And because it has a violet quality, as well as its ability to contain hints of green or grey, the colors it can make … especially the greens … that are really beautifully subtle to my eye.

Test strips of various brands Prussian Blue watercolor. (Source: Handprint.com)

Despite teaching color and design to hundred (OK, thousands) of students over the years … and espousing the idea that working with the cleanest, clearest, and purest pigments is the best way to learn about mixing color for a painter … I have a confession to make. When I am actually painting, I still love the slightly less than pure but very vibrant and deeply complex qualities of my Prussian Blue!  Recently I learned that, in the 19th C, chemists also created a green by omitting a step in the process of creating the blue. This chemical pigment was used to make a Prussian Green paint. (Later on most paint manufactures replaced it with a mixture of Prussian Blue and Cadmium or Chrome Yellow. Today, most paint companies use a Pthalo (yuck!) instead.

I have studied more and more about art and about color over the years; I have also become intrigued by Egyptian Blue and Mayan Blue … as well as Chinese or Han Blues. And what art geek could ignore International Klein Blue (IKB)! So, yes, I love blue, all blues. BUT … in terms of paint, I love a complex and “imperfect” color of paint … Prussian Blue!

PS … For those of us who simply love blue, there is a NEW blue pigment out there too! It looks a bit like Klein’s version of the synthetic Ultramarine. And Crayola is going to be the first to use it. I think Gamblin will soon follow. You can read about  THAT story at Hyperallergic.

Blue is GOOD!

Springing into Summer: The Studio Work & Sketching Afield

I have been working up several designs for new multi panel pieces recently, pieces for my “Shaped Landscape” series. One of the new challenges is to come up with formats that I haven’t used before. During the winter and early spring months, I spent a lot of time playing on gridded paper. Trying to come up with new multi-panel formats  is fun and I am intrigued by several that are radically different from my earlier attempts. There are also some panel configurations that I will try that are tweets of old shape arrangements … but in a new scale or with a very skewed scale relationships.

To the right you can see an image which occupies a small portion of a recently started panel. It is part of a new piece using watercolor over pencil … so far. The panel is 12×12.

Below you can see the reference photo that, along with my previous on-site sketch, I used while working on this piece. My intent is for this panel to be paired with at least one more panel … probably two or three … that present a wider view of the landscape as well as enlarged landscape details.

 I am really not yet sure which of several options I am toying with for the overall panel assembly or arrangement. As I said, during the winter I made a lot of sketches and small cardboard mock ups, sort of 2-D maquettes if you will, of possible arrangements of multi sized panels. Frankly I was a bit surprised at some things I came up with … at once simple but more complex than the configurations that I have been using recently. Can not wait to get images that will match up with the new formatting ideas!

 

 

the partially finished 12 x 12 panel

 

My other project recently has been to get out of the studio, get out of the classroom and be outside sketching, drawing, painting photographing, and writing notes for images. As part of this, I have been drawing more urban images in the towns and cities of my region or in my travels. It reminds me of my youthful endeavors … as a teen drawing the brownstones of Wichita and as a young adult drawing the warehouses and older buildings of eastern NC.

Across From The City Market, Watercolor and Pencil on Paper, 5 x 7

 

 

 

Above are another two recent cityscape pieces … both 5 x 11 with watercolor over pencil. The lower one also has areas of brush and ink and even a little work with a fountain pen.

 

 

These cityscapes have been fun and I will continue them. While they feel like a diversion in some ways, I suspect that something beyond that will emerge from the work. Just not sure what it will be. During the past few years my sketches have been more rural; scenes found along the roads, stream banks, and trails surrounding the Blue Ridge.

It was that kind of work that I have been doing this week.  In fact today was pretty productive; I started three more rural sketches this morning and afternoon … though life logistics intervened each time and I didn’t quite finish any of them. Here is the earliest stage of one of them, when it was just pencil on paper. If you look closely you will see notes about color written on the paper … even within the sketch itself!  Yes, I will have to erase those before I start in with watercolor. Or maybe just ink and ink wash.

I will write more about some these a bit more … but that will have to be later. I need to cook some dinner.

I am thinking about Teriyaki chicken and grilled/roasted peppers and onions served over a bed of lettuce … covered with a big handful of red grape halves heated and tossed with black pepper, cinnamon, and  bit of cumin seed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh Wow … Yes, Blown Far & Away!

Like most of us, as a teen, I was hard to impress. Chalk it up to: intellectual arrogance and rambunctious, an overly serious geeky nature, my faux jaded persona, or any other form of silly youthful naiveté that you can imagine. But back then, even before I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life making art,  I had figured out that art could floor me. Like science or music, art images were able to spin my head around and send me into reveries, into near stupors of joyous confusion and awe.

I had a hunger for seeing and knowing through seeing; drawing as a means of understanding the world became central to me. Perhaps because observation was developing into a key pathway, I began to hold Cézanne and Sheeler as exciting and fundamentally important heroes as Leaky and Cousteau were for me. Little did I know then, that instead of the archeologist’s, naturalist’s, or marine biologist’s adventures in scientific exploration that I had envisioned, I would end up in a life of visual investigation and creation. Once I started to move toward making art, my youthfully arrogant and ambitious ego somehow imagined I would be a great draftsman and an oil painter … the next Sargent, Homer, Hopper, Wyeth, or even Diebenkorn.

A Garden In Nassua, Winslow Homer

So, while still a teen, I began to study art more and more, even taking classes in drawing, painting, and classically based (dynamic symmetry) design with Betty Dickerson. She was a noted artist and art-educator who, along with her husband, the Regionalist era artist Bill Dickerson, had firmly establish the art school of the Wichita Art Association. Soon I began to fall in love with the late 19th and early 20th century American Realists and Tonalists, French Post-Impressionists and German Expressionists, and most especially … the Early American Modernists.

Apples and Green Glass, Charles Demuth

It was only later that I realize all of the artists that I really admired had experimented extensively with and had made major works in watercolor. These artists became formative in my artistic development. And, as many of you know while I adore the act of drawing and that I love painting in all of its many forms … it is the use of aqueous media, especially watercolor, that I intrigues me so very frequently .

Well, if I needed a reminder of what it was that pulled me into this particular version of optical overload and vision based thinking, this spring I need have looked no further than the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art.

You see, there is an exhibition up in Philadelphia for just a few more days that catalogues some of the very best of American watercolor art. The work runs the gamut of the 19th Century and even sneaks in a few of the best watercolor works from the first decades of the 20th century.

There are early artists that I didn’t know well … and even some that I had never heard of at all. One such artist, George Henry Smillie has a delicious small work in the exhibit.  It is a depiction of a beach and the low scrub brush just off the water’s edge. I remember trying to paint similar view when I lived in Florida and Georgia. This one seems effortless.  I know it can’t have been.

 Coastal Scene, New York, George Henry Smillie

There certainly are pieces that many will recognize as well as a few surprises too. There is one of Georgia O’keene’s Evening Star series and even Eakin’s John Biglin in A Single Scull. I had only seen reproductions of Fidelia Bridges, Milkweeds and Tiffany’s Peonies in the Wind; here they are!  Wonderfully idiosyncratic, both of them.

Peonies in a Breeze, 1890. John La Farge, American, 1835 1910. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 37 × 20 1/2 inches. Courtesy Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

    MilkWeed                                Peonies in the Wind                                                                                                    Fidelio Bridges                           Louis Comfort Tiffany

I knew of Thomas Moran’s larger than life, heroically-scaled oil paintings. And knowing how artists of his day worked, I assumed he used watercolor as a study and sketching technique. Still his pieces in watercolor surprised me with both their subtlety and their power. While his figures are not always to my liking (a bit too fussy for my taste), the landscapes do not fair badly in comparison to Turner’s.

If I were to have any reservations at all about this show, it is that it stops too soon. It is an understandable thing though. I saw a similar exhibit detailing the entire history of British watercolors (Watercolour, Tate, 2011) … if you want to read about that show, see my blog posts from August 18th and August 20th, 2011. That show ran on and on, and while I was in heaven, it was huge.

This show stops after giving us only a hint, a tantalizing foretaste, of the exquisite watercolors of the early and late 20th century in America. While I can hope that someone out there will put together a really extensive 20th C. American Watercolor show in the near future (please, please, please!), the PMFA exhibition is super

Whether you are looking for an excellent reason to be in Philadelphia (besides Rodin, a cheesesteak, the Liberty Bell, to sip a Yards, to see all the construction going on) or you just want to take in some of the best watercolors 19th and early 20th century America offered up … check out the American Watercolor exhibit at the PMFA.  You only have a two weekends left!

PS: If you can’t make it … the catalog is excellent. A near rival to the big book detailing the whole history of American Watercolors by Christopher Finch back in 1986.

Large Landscape Works on Paper

I am always on the lookout for interesting art work … in person or out in the digital universe.  Recently, while trying to find examples of engaging artworks for my students to connect to, I came across the work of Michelle Lauriat.

Mixed media, 90×55, from the Phil’s Hill series

 

Frankly, I was surprised and so very excited to find her large works combining drawing and painting on paper. I think my pleasure was so intense because she works much as I do in my sketching … but does so on such a larger scale. The work also reminds me just a bit of the image making path that I was on in my early 20’s.  So, I feel enthralled by the newness and freshness of her work while also sensing a degree of aesthetic kinship.

 

 

Mixed media, Echo Lake Series, 55×42

Ms. Lauriat’s pieces hover between drawing and full-bodied painting; making use of discrete but rich patches of color as well as subtle staining of the surfaces. Using copious amounts of negative space along with fields of color and value, she carefully articulates space/depth and a tentative feeling of solidity. While there is much visible evidence of early exploratory gestural mark making that she has left exposed and even foregrounded, there are also areas that she fills with marks and passages that hint at or describe perceived textures and also bolster the visceral activation of the surface design of her work.

I see Lauriat’s working method combining a decisively bold, and at times elegant, editing process with an eye for richly observed and rendered details from the natural world.  The results are exquisite combinations of mimetic accuracy and dramatic abstraction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her website is visually easy to explore and she blogs at … http://blog.michelelauriat.com

Enjoy!

 

The Monument – An Ink and Watercolor Sketch on A3 sized paper

Tofan Gheorghe is an artist living in Dublin, Ireland.  Perusing his blog site reveals some very nice loose watercolors/watercolours! Having just posted a very different watercolor and ink sketch showing part of a local monument here in the States … it was nice to see another artist’s very different take on a similar subject.

Hope you enjoy his work and blog. JH

 

Tofan Gheorghe's Creative Blog

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Working up a Watercolor Sketch … or is it a small Watercolor?

Last Wednesday and Thursday, I was supposed to be teaching a plein-air watercolor workshop at a regional art center. That plan didn’t quite gel; I took the now unscheduled time to work unfettered as a gift from the universe and I painted outside in the wondrous fall air! I even had some extended time to paint some in the studio. It was a nearly perfect compensation!

While working on one smallish piece, I assumed that I was creating a watercolor sketch.  Soon, I began to question if that was what I was doing. You see, I am not always sure when a watercolor sketch really becomes a small painting. I have been drawing, working with sketches, making paintings, and sometimes a lot of other types of art as well, for many years now. But I am still not sure where, or even if, there is a line somewhere between those watercolor sketches and watercolor paintings. ???

Let me back up and set the stage. Earlier in the week I had been helping some adult students with techniques and processes used to work with watercolor on wet paper … what many call wet-on-wet or wet-into-wet watercolor. If you have looked at my work, you know that in my pure watercolors, I mostly utilize what is known as the wet on dry techniques.  But as I do every so often, I responded to all the wonderfully rich and soft colors that Autumn has served up this year by making room for some wet surface painting.

Beginning as I usually do, with a brief pencil line drawing … I was soon adding some delicate layers of color … mainly to the slanting ground of the hillside, the bushes along the “ridge-line” of the hill, and the foliage and trunks of the most forward cluster of trees. These forward trees’ trunks, branches, and leaves cover almost two-thirds of the top tier of the watercolor.

As this completed my initial mapping of the image, I quickly moved on to adding some rich golden yellow color into background on the upper left side.

 

Before the thick golden yellow dried, I moved in with two very dark green, one a bit blue and more neutral … the other a bit darker but a “purer” green.  As I watched this new rich green-yellow mix began to set up and dry, I turned my attention back to looking at and working all around the image, finally concentrating on the far right side of the image … especially the deep background visible under the canopy of main “central” trees as an area of shadowed blue and violet-blue.

At this point I wasn’t yet sure if:  #1) I wanted to make the dark bright trees at the center as bold as the ones to the left … or #2) if I wanted to paint a deep blue violet into the now bright wet blue on the right side of the composition. NOT making a nearly instantaneous rational or intuitive decision was my first hint that I might now be painting rather than sketching.

Instead of tackling that decision … choosing one of those two major options … I once again began to “play” some more all over the image, making small tweaks to the  composition. I also spent some time working on the small bushes that appear out from under the central trees, descending along the hillside in front of/below the still extremely wet dark yellow-green mass that I had painted just a few moments before.

I scrubbed out most of the dull rose hue I had started with in the main clump of bushes. Next, I made a darker mauve-burgundy blend that I pushed into the other reddish plants along the edge of the swelling line of the hill. Finally, I scraped and scuffed the paper of the main bush before applying a purer, warmer red … as well as a few touches of the burgundy.

Well, as so often happens … life and many other tasks intervened in the process of finishing this piece.  Dinner finally called. The next day, my students, doing necessary work out in the yard, a few household tasks, visiting with family … even another painting or two begged for my attention!

A couple of days passed before I returned to work on this little image. Luckily for me, I had made a photo or two of the location … as well as having a clear memory of my slightly agonized struggle to clearly see and process the image on location.  I carved out an hour or so to reconnect with all that and spent a bit of time looking at what had started as a simple sketch. It was time to finally commit and finish it!

Above the Rockbridge Line, watercolor w/pencil on paper, 6.25×9.75

About 20 minutes of painting spread out across an hour and a half or so of evaluating … as well as drying time between new color layers and it was done!

As I said at the beginning, I am not sure when a watercolor sketch crosses some type of delineation and becomes a small painting.  In this case, I am sure of two things …

… 1) This was excruciating and deliciously fun …

and …

… 2) I would rather know which one YOU think it is, a sketch or a small watercolor?

Please let me know!

 

 

Below this line there may be adds of some kind. I don’t pick them or sanction them or their product or services they advocate. But WordPress has to make a living too … so we all smile and cope as we will.

 

A trip to Water Colour anyone?

It is SO nice to get a note or postcard in the mail, especially if it has some fun or exciting art image(s)! And while I can’t pin it to my studio board … I can savor an e-message or even a digital post about art almost as much.

That was why I was happy to get a post from Mari French today.

Mari is an English artist whose blog I follow. Her quick sketches are forcefully simple, very direct, and often really spot on; joys to see!

Old landing stage and channel markers. Sketchbook, Mari French 2016

Mari’s more extended works seem to flow out of her mode of sketching and making studies. To me the larger pieces are rich and sophisticated in terms color and design.

Salt & sand series,#2. Mixed media on paper, 70x50cm. © Mari French 2016

Ms. French’s blog today showed some of her pieces and other’s works included in the 2016 Royal Institute of Painters of Water Colour exhibit. She focused on several artists, especially those working in minimalist or boldly conceived abstraction; styles which she obviously enjoys/has a deep interest in … her work show an obvious affinities for those approaches. [Get a look at her post by clicking here: Mari French’s most recent blog ]

You might also consider linking to the exhibition of that show’s website too. [a link to the 2016 R.I. WC Exhibit]  There you can peruse the other watercolour (watercolors), gouache, and acrylic paintings that members of the Royal Institute are displaying this year.  It was a wonderful treat for me to see some very exciting new work by folks that frankly, I never meet … even if I travel to Britain again any time soon.

Now, any group show has a few works that are completely and totally respectable efforts, but sadly … way too predictable.  However this is a really fine show; there really are large percentage of works that are absolutely exquisite in their craftsmanship, design, or handling of content.  And a few are so amazingly simple in their execution that they astound.

Sails across the Marshes, Norfolk, by Fred Beckett

Mountain Village, by Ralph Dalzell

One or two (look for pieces about topiary prisons by Karen Charman) are even funny; beautifully fresh takes/touches on the best visual traditions in early and mid 20th century illustrations, comics, and cartoons. That type of work intrigued me as a kid; Ms. Charman’s pieces do the same today.

Ultimate Humaliation Topiary Prison, Karen Charman

Take a digital trip, Fares are low. The rewards are really high!

 

The Showers of April … Have Brought Opportunities and Gifts in May!

Better news!

My last post talked about how the winter and early spring had been rough … with all the demolition in the studio and the storage areas.  Well, my tiresome kvetching … and the demolition process are done and the major reconstruction is almost over too!  When the space is all new and fresh, I’ll gleefully post those images.

Now, as April has wrapped up and the rains have brought us into May, I seem to have a lighter heart and and a less frenzied head.  Frankly, it didn’t hurt that I’ve been having some fun and some good luck as well. Many of you know that I really love to go sketch outside. Working with pencil, inks, watercolor, or gouache … I make lots of small pieces.  It always feel so good to get lost in that work.

Sometimes I will even whip out a panel or a larger sheet of paper and complete a whole painting on the spot.  Working that way reminds me of my Saturday forays into downtown Wichita (yes, I lived in Kansas for a few years) to draw the stately brownstones … or of the watercolor classes that I took back at Valdosta State.  I used the “plein-air” process for ten years as my primary painting strategy.  And while today I mostly use it to help prep for studio pieces, I still get a kick out of making a good small sketch.

 

A recent quick watercolor sketch, 11×17

Well, I participated in a couple of Plein-Air Paint Outs and Quick Draw events in our region recently.  Painting while dodging the frequent rain showers … and meeting and talking with new colleagues was a joy.  The energy and camaraderie were really nice too.  Of course it didn’t feel bad for the old ego to hear a few nice comments and get a little recognition from one’s compatriots after a long day out making art!

 

 

the artist Grey Dodson and I at a Quick Draw event

 

As I said above, I use these types of sketches, studies, and small plain air works as references for my studio pieces.  I am exhibiting some of those more involved studio works this coming month too.  The exhibit is happening at The Gray Gallery, a fairly new venue in Winchester, VA.

It is a two person exhibit, titled Structured Environments ( http://www.the-gray-gallery.com/exhibitions ) featuring Kung Chee Keong’s and my work.  I have about a dozen pieces in the show, all from my Shaped Landscape series.  The newest piece … finished just a few days ago … is actually a reworked triptych that I started over four years ago. In my eyes, it has always been only “almost” right since I stopped working on it.  I recently had a few ideas for how to improve the design and to make it a lot better.  I am pleased with the new version and I am really happy to see what others think.

I like Keong’s images a lot too, they have lots of movement and energy.  It is an interesting pairing.  These bodies of work will likely create a neat visual dialogue for the viewers; they do for me.  The exhibit is now open and the reception is on Friday, May 6th. The show will run through May 28th. If you are in the northern Shenandoah Valley this month, please do stop by the Gray Gallery and take a look.  The gallery is on Cameron Street in Winchester’s Old Town district … a beautiful and very walkable downtown.  Enjoy the art and, if you have time, maybe grab a bite to eat while you are there.  Make it a day!

“Autumnal Abundance”, one of my pieces (left), a work by Kung Chee Keong (right) from The Gray Gallery exhibition                               Structured Environments

As you see, a few weeks have gone by and life turned another corner. This corner, this turn, has lots of spring showers, thunderstorms, and even downpours to dodge … or to dance in. Whichever approach to dealing with the rain, it is a hopeful season. More later!

 

 

 

Curating the NEW WATERCOLORS exhibition at SVAC

Every now and then a really engaging and fun project comes along.

This time the project wasn’t in my studio or in the studio with some of my excellent students. Rather, it was curating the New Watercolors exhibition at the SVAC (Shenandoah Valley Art Center); it was a really wonderful challenge.

As the works came in from up and down the mostly east coast states, I was really pleased with the quality and variety that I saw before me. When all the work had arrived, I found myself in a bit of a quandary; I could frankly see two or three versions of the show based on the work I had. In the end though, I chose to simply pick the best pieces from each of the major themes and ways of working that the artists had placed at our disposal. The seventeen artists included in the show were: Randy Akers, Ananda Balingit-LeFils, Carol Barber, Jane Forth, Rachel Gaudry, Carl Gombert, M. Colleen Harrigan, Scott Hillman, Annie Parham, Chee Kludt Ricketts, Susan Crave Rosen, Beth Shadur, Jane Skafte, Amy Smith, Chhiv Taing, Steven Wolf, and Junko Yamamoto. Each works in an exciting, new, and/or experimental ways with aqueous media.

The piece that, at first, will probably seem the most traditional in the show is one by Steven Wolf. He is an artist living in Virginia. An artist well versed in the classical techniques of painting, Steven subtly eschews that way of working in his piece, Row of Burnished Trees,

Upon close inspection, you way notice that he has layered his aqueous media over a toned ground; something not seen very often … and often frowned on by many modern watercolor “traditionalist.” In fact though this is a practice that goes well back into the history of water media painting. It gives Steve’s color passages a subtle, and I think, evocative quality.

A number of artists in this exhibit sent in pieces that made use of collage in some manner. This past century has seen artists of all kinds and techniques embrace the concept of collage; from the Surrealists and Cubists of the early 1900s to todays mash-ups and sampling in the performing arts. Collage has become a basic tool for artists.

Colleen Harrigan’s Cape Pogue  is a classic collage with its torn and layered paper merging seamlessly with rough and irregular brush marks to create a Martha’s Vineyard seaside. This work is an interesting take on the watercolor seascape; it is a somewhat more quiet and calm version than one would seen from John Marin’s collage like arrangements of color in his watercolors of the coast. While I suspect Marin’s work has informed Ms. Harrigan, it is just as likely that the late seascapes of Homer or Sargent may have been in her visual memory as she navigated this supple composition.

A totally different approach to collage and water media is evident in Jane Skate’s Four Sisters. The multi-panel piece appears to be a joyously abstract tour de force of swooping, flying shards of color contrast with solid and stable shapes and richly layered hues holding the piece together behind all the action. I have seen her work before and know that her abstractions often stem from careful observation of spaces and objects. Here, anyny references here alludes my eye … and I get lost in the contrast of ragged vs clear edges, the complexity of the color harmonics, and the dynamic movement of shapes.

There is one artist in the show who has taken the idea of collage deeply into his working methodology. You may not recognize it at first though. Carl Gombert layers objects and images on a surface with the abandon of a collagist, but his liquid layers of color may be hand applied or may be stamped onto the surface. And right beside these layers of color you may find rhinestones, glitter, and broken pieces of mirror. Mr. Gombert’s subject matter, well lets just say it is as much influenced by street art, circus advertising, and tattooing as it is anything one might find in a curiosity shop or a 1950’s variety store. His four foot tall Explanation does not fit the standard idea of a genteel little watercolor. That is part of why it is such a wonderful addition to this show!

A very different way of working is evident in a few pieces included in this exhibit. Many artists have begun to paint more frequently on non-paper surfaces in recent years. After centuries of using traditional white papers in the western and asian traditions, artist have begun to explore woods and plastics, even glass as a painting surface for watercolor and other aqueous paints.

One of the artists in this show, Amy Smith, is working on the new plastic sheeting known as Yupo. It is a synthetic fibers material that acts much like paper but has a surface that will not absorb the liquid paint. Due to this, the color sits up on the surface, remains much more vidid in hue and intensity, stays wet longer, and can thus be manipulated much more freely.  

This can scare some artists. Not Ms. Smith, whose Solid As A Rock is a rather raucous jumble of rich color. She has taken watercolor’s liquidity and given us as much “chunkiness” as it is probably able to manifest.

 

 

A very different sense of design

and surface is presented by Chhiv Taing, in Rue Graveolens, which was created by layering aqueous color on paper and translucent film and combined with colored film as well. These are not just layered, but cut into sensuous shapes. The layered density creates a sense of weight and heft while the translucency of all the materials clearly  communicates an airy quality. That contact, and the delicacy of the shapes and hues makes for a joyously realized image.

Perhaps the most intriguing work for me was in some ways the simplest of the works that came into the exhibition. It was sent to us by Junko Yamamata. The work, titled 05, was created using paint and ink on strips of an oriental style paper mounted on wood.  Despite the relatively small size of the work, Yamagata has created a forceful and dynamic presence through the sheer intensity of color and the utter intentional clarity of shape.

 

As I said, this has been a wonderful experience for me; visual surprises almost always are!

The exhibition, at the Shenandoah Valley Art Center, located in Waynesboro, Virginia, opened on Saturday, December 5th, 2015 and ran through January 23rd, 2016. If you would like see more of the works from the exhibition, there are several ways to do so. The large and small printed catalogs are still available at Blurb.com. There also two ways to get to see all the images for FREE as well; you e-mail me and I can send you a pdf of the catalog … or for those who would like an e-book version,  you can also download the free one from Blurb.com site.

The link for all of the Blurb.cpm books and the free e-book is:

http://www.blurb.com/search/site_search?search=new+watercolors%2C+hancock

 

 

 

Abstract Art 101 A 1/2

Hello all; hope you are having a good start to the new year.

HERE IS A REPOSTED BLOG … written and recently posted by Michelle Andres on her site The Art of The Well Lived Life ~ Musings on Art, Life and the Art of Life … it is one that I think some of you, my readers, just might enjoy.  

 (JH, 01.09.2016)

ABSTRACT ART 101 A1/2                                                                                              “A good abstract will pull the viewer in and make them want to study it further. It may remind us of an experience, a place or a time in our lives. Abstract art is to the eye what music is to the ear.“

Many people don’t understand abstract art. Truth is, there’s not so much to understand as to enjoy. Here’s a brief explanation for beginners ….

Let me preface this lesson by disclosing I’m not an art historian; I’m just a writer and painter. I mainly paint non-objective abstracts (that means they don’t look like anything recognizable) and I’ve noticed a considerable number of people are baffled by abstract art. Some people don’t know what they’re “supposed” to think about it.

Now, this could turn into an art history lesson – but I’ll do my best to spare you. I’m not an art history teacher and have no desire to overwhelm or confuse you. Okay, I like to confuse you a bit, but overwhelm, no. My main objective is to engage your curiosity and get you to perhaps look a bit longer, think a bit more openly and try to see art with your heart.

While abstract art has been around for centuries, the formal movement sprung from the movements of Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Basically, the Church was the largest art collector of the day and they began to tighten the purse strings. Artists had to appeal more to private collectors and also got that itch, as they always do, to express themselves. So, rather than work within the confines of the church and society, these crazy artists began to colour outside the lines. They were scoffed at and considered renegades – in today’s terms – we would call them “fresh” and they would be highly desirable. So, I guess you could say, they peaked early, or they were before their time.

We all have our preferences for the types of art we like, but consider, when it comes to abstract art, you might be over looking some interesting, exceptional art under the guise of “not getting it.” Abstract art appreciation does not reflect your level of sophistication – but it does reflect your level of experience. In other words, you might have to look at a LOT of abstract art to recognize a good piece – but like wine – if you like it, that’s good enough. Appreciating abstract art is about pleasuring your eyes.

So, how should we approach such art?

If you would like to read the rest of the blog, here is the link: Abstract Art 101 A 1/2

Consecration, Missa Mater Series, (jh, ’89, 32×90, watermedia on Kozo)

Working … on and over … Watercolor sketches

 

Fall, 2015

It has been an interesting fall season. Out making sketches, working with students, and curating a water media show. I am not sure that I have had the greatest success balancing all of this.  I do think that I have learned some things though … mostly when I was out working on my sketches!

My work has been sporadic this fall; maybe it has been too chopped up by my schedule. More likely it has been one of those periods in the life of a studio artist when a lack of really disciplined focus slips in and nests for a while. I am not sure what is distracting me. True, I got to spend more time than I wanted in the dermatologist’s clinic than is normal (a heads up to all my fellow plein-air folk) … but I think I was off my game a bit earlier in the year. Oh well, kvetching isn’t productive either.

Anyway. Here is a sketch that I made fairly recently. At this early stage it seemed to be going along just fine. I really liked the large space that the foreground tree on the right took up compared with the “row’ of trees trunks receding on the left. I felt felt like it maybe needed just a few more details and I would be ready to move forward with color.

So I continued drawing. But even before I finished the pencil work, I was telling myself it was getting too fussy, too detailed … and that it was really an extremely old fashioned design. I figured it would be ok as long as I kept the painting to a minimum … staying as loose and visually frugal as possible for most of the piece; picking out just a few bold details with the color.

Well that was my PLAN. I somehow forgot that strategy as I worked on and on through the stages of the image! Instead, I over did everything; spending to much time on details instead of the larger, overarching design of the sketch. It has no bold, abstracted simplification!

So what do you do with a composition that is overladen with dull and fussy details and little else to say for it?  It is just a sketch after all … maybe it can just end up in the pile of discards without much worry. (Ok, you caught me there, I am already sure that the preserved preliminary pencil sketches will find a use in the planning stages of a larger panel painting or two … but more about that process another day.) For now though, I wanted to try and salvage the little guy, that plain air sketch!

Rather than tossing it, I have employed the traditional “Third Process”  for watercolor painting.  (It was regularly taught back in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in England’s Royal Art Academy.)  In this method, the painting is taken back into the studio and immersed in a bath of clear water and selectively rubbed, gently or aggressively, with a soft brush. The historic use of this technique was to unify the dry and overly separate layers of paint, thus creating a more cohesive image. So, I am hoping to salvage the sketch in much the same way.
 I did recently bring a more successful quick field sketch back in to the studio. I had been working along the same stretch of road and still looking slightly up-hill into the fading light of the day.  With this one, I stayed much closer to the idea of working quickly, more boldly. When it was completed, I had been able to preserve some of the simplicity of my first response and achieve a delicacy of color harmonies too.

So, I’ve learned something working out there this fall season. It is not something “new”; instead I have been a bit humbled … and relearned what I have known most of my painting life.  1) Stay focused and intentional. 2) Remain willing to ruin something to make it better.  3) Be open to unexpected visual excitement. 4) Find a way to keep it simple. Those are always good lessons!

 

 

 

 

 

Cooler Weather? Cool Open Studio!

I for one am hoping …

Back in late August we had some really beautiful fall-like days here in Virginia; then for several weeks in September it has felt as though summer has roared back in. I spent quite a bit of time outside making photos (lots!) as well as watercolor and pencil sketches (not enough) for my studio work.  I was seeing lots of colors changing out there … so I was quite excited that Autumn weather was on the horizon!

As the change of season came upon us, I participated in an Open Studio Tour event for the first time ever. Well, sort of for the first time. Years ago, I had a studio at the McGuffey art center in Charlottesville, Va. It is a public co-op and we had open studio event every month as part of a First Friday art gallery walk.

But this was the first time I had folks coming to my home studio. The studio tour was sponsored by the local arts council/center (SVAC) and there were a number of studios here in the southern Shenandoah Valley that were open … a few, like mine, for the very first time. The event took place on September 19th and 20th (Saturday and Sunday) from 10 am to 5pm both days. We had some refreshments, new art, … and some fun. It was a good experience and it made me get the studio back in order after an odd little summer.

Next time we do this, I’ll be sure to broadcast the invites a bit further out, maybe a little more loudly … and early. Come visit!

As usual, I will be sure to put info on Facebook and on my website : JohnAHancock.com/exhibitions.html

The nights are getting chilly … even a bit nippy; some of the days have some warmth to them, and the light is fabulous!

Enjoy the last bit of the fall season!