ArtHouse23

A challenge to write an essay about what inspires in 2,500 characters or less led to what’s below. In this Thanksgiving week it occurred to me that it also described some of what most grateful for–Our ArtHouse 23….

Art is what makes us human. Without it we eat, sleep, build, breed and protect like other species. The small-town beauty shop owner, Truvy, in Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias puts it another way: “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize”. A trivialized interpretation, but the principle remains. Art belongs to humanity in every sense of the word. 

In WWII thousands died to save the art.  World leaders, especially the Americans, understood that in art there is an intrinsic, even if unnamable, value worth fighting for, even worth dying for.  Art says who we are.  It defines culture–the sum of a people–and preserves it for future cultures to build upon.

Despite the willingness of today’s society to dismiss art as frivolous there is an undeniable connection to certain objects of art that can cause cross-continental shivers. It’s a rich and powerful thing. But few feel as if they can indulge in its making–if you haven’t been branded with the word “talented” you have no business being creative.

What inspires me is turning that idea upside down and seeing the growth, confidence and wisdom pour from those who spend time creating with intention.

When I was a young child in the early ‘50’s I used to sit on the floor of the small closet in the new “TV room”. With the door slightly ajar and in that half-light, I drew on the wall.  I can still see the image. It was nothing identifiable.  It looked somewhat like a horse’s leg with two hooves drawn in dark crayon. Whenever I was in that room and the door to the closet was open, I could see that image under the hems of the clothes. It felt reassuring.  It didn’t really matter if anyone else could see the image or identify it, or that I got in trouble for drawing on the wall.  It only mattered that I was able to make those marks.  I carry this feeling of “being there” to this day and I’m determined to let others know it is not reserved for the gifted or those who can “draw a straight line”.

As a painter I have come to discover that the process of creating is the microcosmic process of living. Daily decisions repeat themselves on the picture plane.  Creating from a place of authenticity means being in touch with one’s center. Reflection is essential. Integrate that with a few instructions, a little practice, some sense of history and an accepting community and it becomes a spiritual experience. The product is much less important than the process. I teach art. Inspiring indeed.

This weekend I was showing a young, first-time buyer two similar properties. In an effort to help him compare I gave my oh-so learned opinion. Me, with all my 36 years of experience, laid on my wisdom.  What an idiot!

Some days, no, many days I have no idea what to write in this weekly blog.  What shall we do?  What will inform and if lucky, inspire or enlighten?  MORE questions–that’s what’s needed—more questions—What area of the process has not been covered lately?  Who could use what to advance their work?  What have I learned this week from whom or what that I can relate to painting?  What quote has stuck in my head? Why? Etc.

I should have simply asked my client more questions.

Among the best ways to approach abandoned work that leaves us blank work is to merely formulate questions:  What does it communicate?  Is there a story? Even if there is, is it something I’m interested in pursuing? What’s my favorite part? Is that part worth saving?  What do I dislike the most?  Can I make that offensive passage work or do I just get rid of it?  If I turn the piece this way or that, will anything appear?  What is the direction my work has been heading?  Is there anything in this “underpainting” that fits with it?  Look. Let the questions bubble up. Then ponder quietly as other preparation for painting takes place.

Ideally inspiration comes from connection to our interior realm and to the exterior world–we can only hope. Unfortunately, hope doesn’t make it happen.  The job then becomes to “stir the pot”— attention to reoccurring thoughts, images, taking psychedelics (kidding-just seeing if you’re paying attention) all stimulate.  Asking specific questions stirs. What to do next will become apparent.

“I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools…I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.”  Paul Cezanne

Piles and piles and piles. That’s what we do –we make piles of would-be art.  Would-be if we had the time or the inspiration or the skill-set or the discipline, or, or, or. Our culture prefers we mark off our to-do list and complete what we’ve started.  But for
the artist whose job it is to explore and “find”—ideas, images, truths– we are often at the mercy of forces with lives of their own. Unfinished is really the norm.  We make piles of the fragmentary.  Renoir, for example, left his studio bursting with over 700 paintings and drawings-many considered unfinished.  It is a natural consequence of a desire to discover.

In our ArtHouse 23 community we collectively “pile” which means the tray under the table fills up.  The good news is it gives us the opportunity that is the “underpainting”.  Time
to seize that opportunity.

With consideration given to the last couple of exercises, editing and imagination, we will mine that treasure-trove.  A few other guidelines:

*Allow ambiguity.

*Know that, despite what I might say, there is no wrong, only not enough of being “there” .

*Let yourself play, laugh and make seemingly foolish moves.

*Ask yourself this question:  “What would you do next with the piece if you had ABSOLUETLY NOTHING TO LOSE?” You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Systems theorist, David S. Walonick, Ph.D states in his 1993 paper,  Promoting Human Creativity, “There are many obstacles to creativity. The major barrier is the little voice in our heads giving all the reasons why we can’t do something, or why something won’t work. We must silence the voice during the initial stages of creative process. Logical, critical and judgmental thoughts will reduce the quality…(sic) of the creative process.”

Just for the next couple of weeks:

1) approach your work without judgement, pretend your child did it.

2) allow yourself to connect to something outside yourself–music, an image, a story, a memory that leads you on. 

2) act “as-if” you are supreme in intuition and have vision for seeing that which no one else does. No one else does.

3) know that whatever ends up on the page after paying some REAL attention to it is meant to be there—for now. We always have editing…

In the spirit of Halloween, this week we will pay attention to the “guise” of art. (“Guising is dressing up as something you’re not.) Details will emerge when you come to class. Come with your inventiveness sharpened and anything that might seem useful for making art. Use your imagination.

Not only are the paintings from our recent exhibit impressive, the artist’s statements are also outstanding. Reflection, articulation, restraint and even poetry in the intelligent words you wrote are thought-provoking and inspiring.

In preparing your statements you all practiced editing. With our visual language this next week we will also practice editing. Conscious editing hones your vision and helps you discover what is important to your statement. It’s also a great way to tackle the stacks of ‘underpaintings’ we all collect.

David Shenk in his recent book, The Genius In All Of Us: New insights into genetics, talent, and IQ quotes Nietzsche when he writes: “Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration…[shining] down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering. [ p. 48]

Definitions of editing:

1. To modify………. or adapt so as to make suitable or acceptable.
3. To assemble………. the components by cutting and splicing.
4. To eliminate……… delete:

As in history, significance in the composition may be the first tool of editing. Ponder.

Bring underpaintings, maybe more than one. We will add to them with a sensitivity to the picture plane as well as the subconscious, then edit in response to the composition.

The light in the south of France is legendary for its pull on many artists whose first visit was often prompted by health needs to leave a crowded, dank, polluted north for fresher air and warmer climes. For some artists like Matisse and Bonnard the southern exposure can clearly be seen in their work. Strong contrasts simplify shapes. Intense, bright colors communicate the sensation of sun, sea, flora, and the Provincial culture.

”Man has painted in the region since he began to paint,” writes Nicholas Delbanco in his book “Running in Place-Scenes from the South of France” (an autobiographical account of his many trips to the area). ”If there is something in the air of Vienna that renders its citizens musical, something in the drink of Dublin that confers agility in speech upon its populace, then surely there is something in the light of France.”

Interestingly, however, artists such as Braque, Giacometti, Stael and Picasso, who also resided there, responded to the light by exploring neutrals as much as, or in the case of Giacometti and Braque, more than color.

This week we will look at value vs. color; we’ll paint from images of the south of France with strong contrast using neutrals in order to study value.  Then we’ll consider an injection of color to see how that affects the whole. This exercise has a lot in common with our Matisse exercise from last month, but we will concentrate on contrast.  Once you investigate the contrast, add a pinch of color, then take the painting wherever it leads you. Fresh paper, of course.

As much as I wanted to uncover and share more about Georges Braque, synthesizing the material was becoming too time-consuming for now.  Henri Matisse, on the other hand, has a ridiculous amount of easily and wonderfully explained information.  Matisse has always inspired me, so much so that in school most of my art history papers concentrated on a few of his works—“Dance”, “Music” and the Chappelle des Rosaire in Vence. 

There is a marvelous video on Matisse.  It is an hour long—too much for class in a way but too good to not watch the whole thing.  So I propose that we watch it while working.  This is going to be harder than it sounds for those with control issues.  The film is captivating, and inspirational. You will likely be torn between watching and creating as you sit in the dark. 

So here’s the plan:

Fresh paper—I suggest not-too -big paper (16”x20” is perfect) because it is easier to manipulate, easier to play with. And that is the spirit in which we will be working.  

Prepare a palette of neutrals—white black, ochre or raw sienna, primary colors,  and 3 or 4 of your favorite highly saturated colors (have a spray bottle to continually moisten the paint so you don’t have to re-load the palette).  Remember, you will be in the dark which is a GREAT way to learn about color and value.  You will be forced to utilize contrast, both in value and in temperature.  (No Whining about the lack of light.  That is part of the exercise.) 

Find a spot in the room as subject.  Maybe augment the surroundings with a still life object or two or three or four, etc. 

As we begin the lesson and the video, begin to sketch your chosen viewloosely with soft graphite or wash pencil or conte crayon.   As you watch the video let your hand dance around the page, you will mostly be looking at the video. The lines will be part of a woven background.

Start adding value with neutrals. (practice mixing neutrals ahead of lights out.)

Make sure you are working the WHOLE and that you are composing the entire picture plane.

When inspired, add color. 

As you develop the painting, the process will be one of simplifying.  It may turn into a mess.  The idea is to not have control but instead to follow, in one hour, the steps of a modern master. 

When the lights come on you may have caught a big fish or an old boot—it doesn’t matter.  The exercise is in the doing.

Alberto Giacometti is primarily known for his sculptures, one of which, Walking Man I, broke all sales records for a single work of art as of February 2010. (Are you saying: WHO?) But as the son of a successful painter born in 1901 in a small Swiss village, he also produced many drawings and paintings before his death in Paris in 1966—most of which are nothing but gray! He says: “If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the
colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should
I use any other color? I’ve tried doing so, for it was never my intention to
paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color
after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!”

To hear him talk, to watch him work, to know that when he
moved into a small rat-hole of a studio in Montparnasse in which he only
intended to stay for a year, but stayed for forty, may simply tell a tale of a
guy with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  But there is also a philosophical interpretation–“When I make my drawings… the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.”

Samuel Beckett, existential poet and author of the absurdist play, “Waiting for Godot” and good drinking buddy of Giacometti’s, said of the artist: “things were insolvable
[for him], but that kept him going.”

His biographer, Michael Peppiatt says: “he stands out in the 20th century as the artist who reconnected art to the great traditions of the Egyptians and other ancient civilizations,
capturing the precariousness of man’s existence, the nobility and vulnerability
of the human condition, which is what all great art is fundamentally about.”

We’ll take a look at this artist this week and see what his methods reveal for us.

For the next 3 or four weeks we are going to turn to the modern masters of painting for advice and inspiration.  Whether or not their work appeals to your aesthetic, and even if it turns you off, I guarantee if you look hard enough you will be taught by what they discovered.

We’re going to begin with Robert Motherwell, a native son to the Northwest.  He was born in Aberdeen Washington in 1915. (I like to think Northwest sensibilities have far-reaching influences. Marc Rothko, a painting god, spent his youth in Portland.) An absolutely brilliant guy, Motherwell remains one of the great eye-openers for me.

As a philosophy major he studied at Stanford, Columbia and Harvard which led him to an intense curiosity about the concept of abstraction—“… the process of peeling away the inessential and presenting the necessary.”*

In New York he joined with the likes of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Marc Rothko and others who “sought to create essential images that revealed emotional truth and authenticity of feeling”.*  Along with dramatic and
energetic brushstrokes that were a passionate response to the imagery and ideas  of the post-world-war, modern world, experimentation in a range of media was also part of the freedom and connection to the subconscious that Abstract Expression came to symbolize. Whatever it took to express major human themes in the picture plane was fair game. Although it was mostly juicy paint and its plasticity that captivated them.

Motherwell, however, found desired manipulability in printmaking and collage as well as paint. What he could convey in a dazzling composition of a cigarette wrapper and a single loaded brush is legend.

We’ll look at some Motherwell work and bat around ideas of how it might influence your own expression.

For more on Robert Motherwell: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert.htm

*Quotes are from PBS American Experience.

Almost three hours of sitting in a dark room with Ann, her broker Rod and a couple of bottles of wine told quite a story of ArtHouse 23.  We looked at close to 100 works of
art. In this new context it was easy to see the strength of visual statements rise
from this group. It was most impressive. And Rod agreed that everyone from our
group who submitted is worthy of being in the show.

The weakness came in the area of artist’s statements.  Some were good—Sue’s, Sheila’s & Marley’s.  A few might need a re-read by an objective support person for slight edits. But many were not at all what they should be.  And because this is a very special opportunity
we want to make Ann and us proud.

We refer to the elements and principles of design and the expression of the brush, knife, charcoal, fingers etc. as a visual language. Now we need to translate that into a
verbal language.  Trust me—this will strengthen your work and add confidence to the process.

Some guidelines:

An artist’s statement is not a bio or a resume.  If you have not had significant art education from some accredited, respected school that influenced you tremendously—leave schooling out.  However, if you graduated in a field that informs your work, even if it is completely unrelated, include it.  Example—if Nan sees a relationship between
the chemical elements she came to know as a pharmacist and the visual elements
in her work, she might make mention of it. Otherwise, nobody cares.  You might say how long you have been painting or mention other forms of art you have pursued if you think it is instructive to the viewer.

An artist’s statement should illuminate the work verbally.  It doesn’t need to describe every part of your technique, but if you use techniques that are unusual or that the viewer is left asking “how’d they do that”–tell them.  Examples would be scrubbing, glazing, collage, throwing it wet under the wheel of the car, or upside down in the bark dust and gravel, etc.– that is interesting. (Don’t laugh—Robert Rauschenberg did just that at Black Mountain College in the ‘40’s.)  Also, if you have observed that most of your work ends up looking: geometric; atmospheric; shiny; textured; dark; etc., try
to articulate why—what is the impetus for that common thread? Make it
interesting. Recall when someone has described their technique and a light bulb
went off for you.

Keep it short: It should never be more than a couple of paragraphs–half a page.  But for this and for most purposes it should be between 100-150 words.

There is no doubt there is passion and gratification in pursuing creative endeavors. Don’t reiterate it. One short sentence mentioning the satisfaction in the process might make a good segue, but otherwise assume anyone looking at your work is
aware that if you didn’t like doing it, you wouldn’t.  They might care what you learn from it, but they don’t care how happy it makes you. (Although I think it is always good practice to reflect on the happy part of art-making because there is plenty of frustration to go around.  Kinda like golf.)

Ask yourself questions in order to formulate your statement.
What subjects draw you in?  What interests you visually—light, shadow, movement, global warming, etc.?  What thoughts reoccur as you paint? (A lot of people talk about enjoying being hypnotized as they watch the paint move.  Although I can appreciate that, it does not tell the viewer anything about your art.  It adds no insight.) What other artists or art movements do you like?  Have any influenced you? If you had ten of your paintings on the wall, what would they all have in common—a strong sense of light; high contrast; a nod to architecture; organic, undulating forms; short bursts or staccato lines, repeated rhythms,  etc.? It all means something.  Although you don’t have explain what that is, it will benefit you to be self-aware. And perhaps that awareness will enlighten you as well as the viewer.

How would you describe your work to someone who cannot see it? What is the surface like? What were you trying to accomplish? (In my work I try to capture the illusive sense of atmosphere, light, time, temperature and recall in a place. Ann said to me the other night that she thinks I try to paint the air.  She is right!! and I loved that she knew that and described it that way. Those words helped me understand my work better.)  If you don’t know, that is ok, but thinking about it will inform. Once you answer those questions string the answers together and edit from there.

With all of that said there is a lot of art BS in artist’s statements.  A funny You-tube video by a British artist speaks to that: http://youtu.be/3v8DbLWAXvU   There are many sites on the subject—Google “How to write an artist’s statement.”  The first
two looked interesting.  I didn’t look further.

It’s a little like school, I know.  But if you spend the time making the stuff it
is worth a little time trying to understand “what’s it all about”.