 Zion National Park, Oil on Panel 2x4 feet. Zion is was one of my favorite parks to visit this summer. There are plenty of places to go hiking and for me the geologic history is fascinating. Each layer of rock tells a story of past conditions and events. The whole park is a record of Earth's history and one can still see the forces in action today that formed the topography over tens of thousands of years.
This location really lends itself to representation with a complementary color scheme. The greens and reds of the scenery play off each other nicely and contribute to the overall vibrancy of the composition. Not only do green and red complement each other visually, there is a geochemical/biological connection in nature between the two. These two colors are intimately related in that the green chlorophyll of the plants makes photosynthesis possible, which itself produces oxygen as one of its products. This atmospheric component was/is responsible for rusting the Iron that went into the rocks we find all over Zion. These rocks tell us a history of ancient climate/atmospheric conditions and indirectly tell us what life was like on Earth so long ago.
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 Bighorn Sheep 18x22" Oil on Canvas  Driving through Yellowstone, one is almost guaranteed to see several kinds of large mammals. I've seen Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Bison and Elk all from the road. On one occasion I was fortunate enough to snap a few pictures of Big-Horn Sheep, which are imposing and impressive in many ways. These creatures have a large set of horns made for running into things. Plenty of reason to keep your distance. Luckily we saw them from the car about 100 feet off the road.
One of the challenges you face in painting Wildlife and Landscape in the West, is communicating colors in interesting ways. For this painting I chose to increase the vibrancy of the colors from the photo. The source colors for this composition were rather dull, but lent themselves to complementary & split-complementary color schemes. Yellow and violet are complements on the color wheel and on either side of yellow are green and orange. Adjacent to violet are red-violet and blue-violets. These opposing colors harmonize really well with each other helped me by placing constraints on my color choice. Using a color scheme and limiting one's choices like this is analogous to composing music in a particular key or selecting certain chords to create the effect. Cool purples, blues and greens tend to recede in this painting while warmer oranges and yellows provide contrast and move forward visually. I once again used my preferred medium of Gamblin Fast-Matte Oil to paint this picture. After about three days of drying I will protect the work with Krylon UV-blocking Gloss varnish, which is easily removed. Prints of this work are available Here.  Recently, my El's Clay colleague Maribel and I, performed at the Terakedis Gallery in downtown Billings. Our show consisted of three hours of live dance and drawing (see the short clip below). This type of venue/performance was a first for us. Our last show consisted of both drawing and dance, but not simultaneously, so we both learned a lot. Several visitors stopped in over the course of the evening and many paused outside the gallery window to look in. One of our goals as an organization is to bring attention to the Billings Art Scene and this performance succeeded in that respect. There are many creative people in our city and they often go unnoticed. By putting on performances like this we hope to connect more people with art and artists and build a richer sense of community. I ended up completing three more-or-less life-sized drawings (see below) while Maribel danced. Periodically she paused for extended poses so I could work on the composition. Each drawing is about 4x5 feet in size. I had not drawn for this kind of extended period since college, so I was reminded of how taxing it can be. Maribel was tired as well, but remained graceful and energetic through the end. She definitely worked harder than me and is truly a professional dancer. The next El's Clay event will be at the First Congregational Church UCC in Billings on August 4th as part of the Billings Artwalk. We will have live poetry readings, drawing and dance at this event as well as information about El's Clay. This event will run from approx 5:30 to 9 pm with refreshments provided . We hope to see you there.  David Foster Wallace, After Bacon's Pope Innocent X, after Velasquez. Charcoal on paper, 42x60" I've always thought it's important to revisit things. Feelings, subjects, themes etc. Especially when it comes to my creative process. The riches of a subject are rarely exhausted by one visit or experience. We as viewers/creators change as well, which guarantees a novel encounter with the other. We never really see the same thing twice. If what we see has a soul, then we never see it with our eyes. We see an ever changing body and presumably don't encounter a soul unchanged by it's own experience the second time around. If I see a mountain one minute it is changed the next instant. It has gained parts or lost them. In light of this, is there anything that ensures the continuity of such a mountain? Is there an essence to such things? My most recent act of re-visitation was my drawing of DFW above, inspired by two classic works below. Velasquez executed the painting below on the left around 1650. It is of Pope Innocent X. Later, Francis Bacon, a 20th century painter, copied this master-work in his own grotesque and evocative style, seen below to the right. I learned about both of these works/artists in college. I became and remain an admirer of both and now find myself situated in an artistic lineage wherein the younger artist pays homage to the earlier by reinterpreting his work. That's what I've tried to do in my drawing. In creating this work, I honor both Bacon and Velasquez and keep my memory of David Foster Wallace alive.
 Buffalo, Large Version. 27x48" Oil on Panel After painting a small (6x12") version of this composition (see my earlier post) I decided to scale things up a bit. I chose to stay with the double-square format, so I could bring attention to both the Bison and field vegetation. I had a piece of plywood handy, which was about 2x4 feet, so I primed it and set to work. I used a combination of cadmium red light acrylic, mixed with clear acrylic gesso, to provide the ground, then began blocking in large areas of color (see time-lapse below). The main difference between this and the earlier smaller bison, is the size of mark I used. On this scale I intentionally use larger brushwork, it just makes more sense in the context. In the same way, I used larger charcoal a while back to draw my large Tetons picture (seen here). The resulting larger Bison has a stronger presence, not just because of the increased size, but the increased color exploration I can do in that space. The smaller Bison painting was a study, because it forced me to look at the subject for a prolonged period of time and get acquainted with the colors and composition. When I painted this larger version I didn't really refer back to the smaller one. I re-examined the picture I was working from and tried to see more detail the second time around. The result was that I found more colors in the big painting. It's not necessarily a better painting, but it is different.
I framed this with a simple oak frame, mitered at the corners. The plywood I painted on is dimensionally stable and will not warp. On future panels, I'll use thinner plywood, maybe 1/4 thick to minimize weight, as plywood can get heavy and be an obstacle to hanging the picture. This work is currently at the Art House Cinema and Pub, in downtown Billings.  Buffalo, Oil on Panel 6.5x12 inches.  If you're hiking in Yellowstone, you shouldn't approach certain animals, especially Buffalo. But sometimes, they put themselves right in your way and you stumble upon them suddenly. This is what happened to me last October while hiking in the backcountry. My two friends and I had to go off trail to avoid this bull. Behind him were numerous others in his herd and he seemed to be standing watch. It was obvious that we weren't going to use that section of trail so we quietly scrambled up a nearby hill to avoid being gored or trampled.
I took the photo above about 30ft away and was pretty nervous as we crept by. We had one more similar meeting with a Buffalo on a later hike. It's surprisingly easy to miss something so big as you crest a hill, but it happens and reminds you that you can't let your guard down that far from civilization. Luckily we didn't have any bear encounters during our time in Yellowstone, though there was no shortage of bear tracks and scat. Healthy reminders. A few days ago, I decided to work from this photo and experiment with some recently acquired oil paint. Traditional oil paint takes several days to dry, unless you add dryers and mediums to it. I purchased Gamblin's trial set of their Fast-Matte colors because I wanted the working qualities and open time of oil without the days of waiting. The difference with this paint is that it's composed of both oil and alkyd resin, which explains the quick dry times. The Paint also dries to a matte finish, so it must be coated with gloss varnish if you want saturated looking colors. I was very pleased with how this painting turned out in terms of working qualities of the materials and the formal elements of the painting. My first paint layers were dry and ready to be worked on top of after one day. By day three I was finished with this picture and able to varnish on day 4. This pace was very satisfying and I can see that this paint is going to open some creative doors for me. My next project will be a larger version of this same composition. The larger scale will create a very different experience of the Buffalo, and further enrich my appreciation for this creature.  Tetons, Charcoal on Paper, 42x84 inches.  CLICK TO ENLARGE I can't overstate the importance of reworking an image (and while I'm at it,re-imagining work). This is the time and context in which we rethink and re-examine what we're doing. Re-visiting an image forces us to confront the prejudices we bring to the experience of translating a scene into a shareable medium. This experience has a strong analogue in daily life. It's of at least equal value to regularly examine how we experience, think about and inhabit the world. Having long ago come to terms with being an artist, I realize how iteration fits into my everyday life. Each day presents me with opportunities to relive the ordinary and be-in-the-world differently. My most recent series of drawings is no exception to this. One of the most compelling and moving sights is the Teton Mountains in Wyoming. They are fault-block mountains and rise dramatically from the valley floor. I've visited the mountains several times and on my last visit took several photos of the range one very cold morning. My first step on this project was a smaller drawing, 8.5x24 inches. The second was larger, 30x44 inches. Finally I scaled up the image to an imposing 42x84 inches (7 feet wide). This is one of the larger drawings I've done and in so doing, I was reminded of how important scale is. The effect of working large is that the visual presence of the source scenery is retained. A larger format requires different marks and mark making devices. As a result I resorted to a 2x6" inch piece of specialty charcoal from Nitram. This stick of charcoal was reminiscent of smaller vine charcoal in terms of texture and pigment darkness. It didn't give the darkest blacks, but was very good for initial expressive layout marks (See Video at the end of the post). Surprisingly, each of the three drawings took about two hours. This was a very satisfying series to complete and I now have works that can fit into a variety of display spaces. I'm also left with a deeper appreciation for the sublimity of the Tetons.  Last year, I was struck by the tragedy of Alan Rickman's death. It was especially poignant because he died on my birthday, January 14, 2016. Rickman was always one of my favorite actors. He was unique and I found myself enamored with his characters, no matter the role. Rickman was the perfect actor to play Professor Snape. Sinister, mysterious and subtly endearing. I thought it appropriate to honor him and his work in my most recent Icon painting.
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 Rim Rock Billings, Pastel 8x10 inches |  Grand Prismatic, Yellowstone, Pastel 8x10 inches |  Sunrise Billings, Pastel 8x10 inches |
The snow in Montana is very different than NC. Here it is very powdery and doesn't pack together well. What I find most interesting is how radically different the landscapes are in winter, compared to summer. The temperatures are consistently cold enough for the snow to stay around for most of winter. This makes for interesting warm-cool relationships between the local sandstone rim and the snow on the ground, which reflects a myriad of blues and purples.
Buffalo, Sennelier soft pastels and Panpastels on Ampersand Pastelboard. 16x20 inches.
Last week my wife and I found ourselves in Yellowstone National Park, then in the Tetons. Both locales were exciting, wild and invigorating, while still affording us much relaxation. Upon our return I decided I would try something new with my pastel work, I would include wildlife.
On our trip, we had the chance to visit the National Museum of Wildlife Art outside of Jackson Wyoming, which served to catalyze my interest in painting an animal. This place was great and I recommend it to any one visiting the Tetons or Yellowstone, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself there. The artworks were not the trivial or cute sort one often associates with animal art. These were serious paintings of beautiful landscapes.
My main pastel painting interest up to this point has been landscape. The great thing about animals, is that they almost always show up in a landscape, so I figured painting a scene with a Buffalo was a win-win. When we got home, I was eager to start, as I had recently received 6 pastel panels in the mail. I chose the photo above as my source image. I took it on our way to Old Faithful at one of the many pull offs along the road in Yellowstone.
When I paint, I try to pull out and exaggerate colors I see in the photo so the resulting painting has a pleasing level of color and tonal contrast. I find that when I try to reproduce the exact colors I see in a painting, the result is more dull and unexciting. Another thing I'll emphasize when working, especially with pastel, is the mark unique to the medium. Using pastel sticks limits the visual "vocabulary" at my disposal. The primary marking options are broad strokes with the side of the pastel and lines with the end, as in drawing. This is good, because it forces me to do more with less.
I also used Panpastels on this painting, mostly for the under-painting stage, which consisted of blocking in large areas of color, especially in the background. The foam tools used with Panpastels make a soft mark and are good for atmosphere and visually blurred or out of focus areas. I find more and more that a good painting will require the use of my Sennelier sticks and the Panpastels, each offering distinct advantages.
This painting signifies new possibilities and emphases on aspects of nature other than sky, water and earth. This was a great growth opportunity, something different and challenging. My eyes are opened wider now to the possibilities of painting.
On our trip, we had the chance to visit the National Museum of Wildlife Art outside of Jackson Wyoming, which served to catalyze my interest in painting an animal. This place was great and I recommend it to any one visiting the Tetons or Yellowstone, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself there. The artworks were not the trivial or cute sort one often associates with animal art. These were serious paintings of beautiful landscapes.
My main pastel painting interest up to this point has been landscape. The great thing about animals, is that they almost always show up in a landscape, so I figured painting a scene with a Buffalo was a win-win. When we got home, I was eager to start, as I had recently received 6 pastel panels in the mail. I chose the photo above as my source image. I took it on our way to Old Faithful at one of the many pull offs along the road in Yellowstone.
When I paint, I try to pull out and exaggerate colors I see in the photo so the resulting painting has a pleasing level of color and tonal contrast. I find that when I try to reproduce the exact colors I see in a painting, the result is more dull and unexciting. Another thing I'll emphasize when working, especially with pastel, is the mark unique to the medium. Using pastel sticks limits the visual "vocabulary" at my disposal. The primary marking options are broad strokes with the side of the pastel and lines with the end, as in drawing. This is good, because it forces me to do more with less.
I also used Panpastels on this painting, mostly for the under-painting stage, which consisted of blocking in large areas of color, especially in the background. The foam tools used with Panpastels make a soft mark and are good for atmosphere and visually blurred or out of focus areas. I find more and more that a good painting will require the use of my Sennelier sticks and the Panpastels, each offering distinct advantages.
This painting signifies new possibilities and emphases on aspects of nature other than sky, water and earth. This was a great growth opportunity, something different and challenging. My eyes are opened wider now to the possibilities of painting.
Not having a dedicated space really isn't an excuse not to paint. I just have to do some rearranging and a bit more clean up now that I live in an apartment. I hadn't painted at all in Montana yet and figured it was about time to do something creative, so yesterday I set out to paint a scene I photographed on a recent trip to Glacier National Park. The waterfall I painted is in Avalanche Gorge on the way up to Avalanche Lake, itself a spectacular site.
I set up in a corner of our living/dining room on a bench. As usual, I first taped the pastel surface to a board. In my situation, leaning the surface up against the wall was the best way of supporting the painting. I sat on the same supporting bench and spread out pastels all around me on whatever flat surfaces I could enlist for the task. The painting took about three hours to make and measures 19x27 inches.
This was a good reminder to me of how easily external constraints can be overcome or worked with. It's good to remember that to make any art requires sacrifice and as your conditions change so does the nature of the sacrifice. I'm glad now to live in such a beautiful state with its many natural wonders to inspire a new body of work.
I set up in a corner of our living/dining room on a bench. As usual, I first taped the pastel surface to a board. In my situation, leaning the surface up against the wall was the best way of supporting the painting. I sat on the same supporting bench and spread out pastels all around me on whatever flat surfaces I could enlist for the task. The painting took about three hours to make and measures 19x27 inches.
This was a good reminder to me of how easily external constraints can be overcome or worked with. It's good to remember that to make any art requires sacrifice and as your conditions change so does the nature of the sacrifice. I'm glad now to live in such a beautiful state with its many natural wonders to inspire a new body of work.
The artist is a translator of human experience, and one who tumbles headlong into life’s recalcitrant questions of meaning and purpose. To the extent that one engages in this way of life to that extent one is an artist and arguably everyone is always creating something. Erwin McManus expresses this well when he says “humans create futures.”
We often find ourselves on the borders of human experience, between events and people, mediating meaning and giving form to the relationships among things. The artist self-consciously codifies and preserves events, feelings, thoughts and imagery in a way that their products continue to shape culture through an expressive echo.
My preferred medium (2-D or otherwise) is pastel. Experiences are often fleeting and insights short lived. Sculpting for instance, has rarely afforded me the opportunity to solidify ideas that don’t linger long. Pastel though, gives an immediacy that lets me compile my visual experience in a short time while also allowing for a great deal of revision. Revision is the process that shapes me and how I see and it’s through this means that I am better able to see, record and examine a subject.
With any medium comes a certain bodily attunement. Because each medium provides different postures and ways of being and moving in the world, they all confer some benefit and unique perspective on the subject studied or source used. Participating in different expressive modes, from dance to printmaking to poetry, allows us to see and know in novel ways. So even the two-dimensional artist stands to gain from occasionally dabbling in other art forms. The disequilibrium of novelty breeds insight.
Possibly my most important role as artist is that of restoration. Artists have historically and continue to call our attention to suffering and pain in the world. In doing so the artist has to in some way enter in to the experience of the other and begin to understand the weight of that suffering. Every historical era has its artists who serve as record keepers and those who bring our attention to world events. In part, some of the Abstract Expressionists working after WWII embodied this role. The existential plight of so many of the post war years can be seen in the art of painters like Gorky, Kline and de Kooning. The frequent lack of referent in these works alludes to the moral uncertainties that attend times of war, and force us to ask what undergirds our actions and beliefs, what explains horrific events? These sorts of movements often allow the healing process to begin, by expressing realities in ways not accessible by other means such as newspaper stories or second hand reports of events. The artist has the great privilege and responsibility to grapple with current events and invite others to do the same.
Artists diagnose the cultural condition as well as their individual longings in a way that tends to develop in them a sensitivity to human needs. The work we produce has a salutary effect on our communities by unifying, teaching, convicting and providing fertile ground for reflection.
We often find ourselves on the borders of human experience, between events and people, mediating meaning and giving form to the relationships among things. The artist self-consciously codifies and preserves events, feelings, thoughts and imagery in a way that their products continue to shape culture through an expressive echo.
My preferred medium (2-D or otherwise) is pastel. Experiences are often fleeting and insights short lived. Sculpting for instance, has rarely afforded me the opportunity to solidify ideas that don’t linger long. Pastel though, gives an immediacy that lets me compile my visual experience in a short time while also allowing for a great deal of revision. Revision is the process that shapes me and how I see and it’s through this means that I am better able to see, record and examine a subject.
With any medium comes a certain bodily attunement. Because each medium provides different postures and ways of being and moving in the world, they all confer some benefit and unique perspective on the subject studied or source used. Participating in different expressive modes, from dance to printmaking to poetry, allows us to see and know in novel ways. So even the two-dimensional artist stands to gain from occasionally dabbling in other art forms. The disequilibrium of novelty breeds insight.
Possibly my most important role as artist is that of restoration. Artists have historically and continue to call our attention to suffering and pain in the world. In doing so the artist has to in some way enter in to the experience of the other and begin to understand the weight of that suffering. Every historical era has its artists who serve as record keepers and those who bring our attention to world events. In part, some of the Abstract Expressionists working after WWII embodied this role. The existential plight of so many of the post war years can be seen in the art of painters like Gorky, Kline and de Kooning. The frequent lack of referent in these works alludes to the moral uncertainties that attend times of war, and force us to ask what undergirds our actions and beliefs, what explains horrific events? These sorts of movements often allow the healing process to begin, by expressing realities in ways not accessible by other means such as newspaper stories or second hand reports of events. The artist has the great privilege and responsibility to grapple with current events and invite others to do the same.
Artists diagnose the cultural condition as well as their individual longings in a way that tends to develop in them a sensitivity to human needs. The work we produce has a salutary effect on our communities by unifying, teaching, convicting and providing fertile ground for reflection.
About a month ago, I had a chance to spend a few hours with my good friend (Brother)Eric. What resulted was good clean fun and several successful open-screen mono-prints. In this method of printmaking, a silk screen with a rectangle masked off, is used to create abstract designs. One can introduce a variety of mark making by painting/drizzling ink on the back of the screen, as well as introducing torn stencil pieces directly on top of the paper's soon to be printed surface (the paper sits underneath the screen and the ink is forced through with a squeegee, seen in the foreground). The jagged edges in the image are a result of the torn paper blocking out the ink. The smoother more organic shapes/marks result from the drizzling and direct application, which comes through the back of the screen (which is the side seen in the image at left).
Part of what makes this process so exciting is the harmony between and among the images. Though each print ends up quite different there is a visual echo between images. By clicking through the slideshow quickly the similarities can be seen. A body of work produced this way has a cohesion too it while each print maintains a uniqueness, by which it can stand alone, visually interesting in itself.
Mono-prints are made quickly and involve several layers. The element of the unknown is ever-present, yet one develops an intuition about obtaining certain general results. Each print has 2-3 layers of printing. Each sheet of paper receives a first layer of ink marks and is set aside. The sheets are cycled in underneath the silk-screen a number of times until you like what you have and aren't willing to risk another layer. Complexity in the images comes through repeating the process, sometimes emerging quickly, so that you might stop printing after two layers in certain cases. The result is a print with spacial depth and graphical richness, a diversity of both clear and ambiguous mark-making and a visual invitation to seek out imagery and symbolism.
Part of what makes this process so exciting is the harmony between and among the images. Though each print ends up quite different there is a visual echo between images. By clicking through the slideshow quickly the similarities can be seen. A body of work produced this way has a cohesion too it while each print maintains a uniqueness, by which it can stand alone, visually interesting in itself.
Mono-prints are made quickly and involve several layers. The element of the unknown is ever-present, yet one develops an intuition about obtaining certain general results. Each print has 2-3 layers of printing. Each sheet of paper receives a first layer of ink marks and is set aside. The sheets are cycled in underneath the silk-screen a number of times until you like what you have and aren't willing to risk another layer. Complexity in the images comes through repeating the process, sometimes emerging quickly, so that you might stop printing after two layers in certain cases. The result is a print with spacial depth and graphical richness, a diversity of both clear and ambiguous mark-making and a visual invitation to seek out imagery and symbolism.
Last night I decided that it had been too long since I last silk-screened something, so I dusted off the epistemology screen and got to it. At first my idea was to arrange the TVs in a two by two grid in the center of the paper with a bit of overlap. I wanted to do this so the colors would mix visually at the overlapping points, giving me the secondary colors in addition to the process colors (more on that in a second). I was also going to print a black TV as well, opposite the blue one. I abandoned this however after I printed the blue (cyan) and magenta, opting instead to print the yellow atop these first two colors, which would still give the overlap I wanted.
I used the process colors for this little project, which are magenta, cyan (blue) and yellow, these are the basic colors your printer uses to mix all the others (plus black). They can be mixed to attain virtually any color (even red, go ahead and gasp!). My desire was that through their overlapping I would achieve some kind of orange, green and purple, which I did to some extent. The mixing/overlap wasn't as obvious due to the linear quality of the image. In other words, the shapes don't cover a lot of area, something I'll consider the next time I overlap colors.
On a technical note: the magenta and blue I used lacked the viscosity I like in an ink. Anything thinner than mayonnaise will pass through the screen to quickly and is hard to control. The result is blurry lines, as you can see in the photos. My black ink is much thicker and more user friendly, as you can see from the results of a former project involving the epistemology design.
Part of the problem might have been that I was using fabric inks, which might need to be thinner to penetrate cotton and other fabrics, although the black is for textiles too. The black is from www.dickblick.com (it's the Blick brand) and the three process colors are Speedball brand. Speedball's yellow is nice and thick and I think this is because the three colors are intended to be mixed to achieve the desired color and a good resultant consistency, as opposed to use alone. The inks might also benefit from a good stirring as some of the polymers might have settled to the bottom.The results might also be from the squeegee I used which had a round edge instead of the square edge of my other one. I'll have to do another run and see if there is a difference.
It was fun, despite the material challenges, so I'm glad I did it. More to come...
I used the process colors for this little project, which are magenta, cyan (blue) and yellow, these are the basic colors your printer uses to mix all the others (plus black). They can be mixed to attain virtually any color (even red, go ahead and gasp!). My desire was that through their overlapping I would achieve some kind of orange, green and purple, which I did to some extent. The mixing/overlap wasn't as obvious due to the linear quality of the image. In other words, the shapes don't cover a lot of area, something I'll consider the next time I overlap colors.
On a technical note: the magenta and blue I used lacked the viscosity I like in an ink. Anything thinner than mayonnaise will pass through the screen to quickly and is hard to control. The result is blurry lines, as you can see in the photos. My black ink is much thicker and more user friendly, as you can see from the results of a former project involving the epistemology design.
Part of the problem might have been that I was using fabric inks, which might need to be thinner to penetrate cotton and other fabrics, although the black is for textiles too. The black is from www.dickblick.com (it's the Blick brand) and the three process colors are Speedball brand. Speedball's yellow is nice and thick and I think this is because the three colors are intended to be mixed to achieve the desired color and a good resultant consistency, as opposed to use alone. The inks might also benefit from a good stirring as some of the polymers might have settled to the bottom.The results might also be from the squeegee I used which had a round edge instead of the square edge of my other one. I'll have to do another run and see if there is a difference.
It was fun, despite the material challenges, so I'm glad I did it. More to come...
Magic Markers 2. 14.5x27 inches. Pastel. Jan 13, 2015.
Magic Markers. Pastel, 9x12 inches. March 2014. It's very instructive to shift the scale of your work and look at it with fresh eyes. It can be dangerous to venture into a bigger space because of all the unknowns, the terrain is alien. Lately I've had many occasions to look into the unknown. To help me through all the changes around me, I've painted, drawn and made collages. The painting above is a revisit of a smaller earlier version (see image at left) of a scene I painted almost a year ago (I wrote about it here).
I decided to work larger this time, which I find produces effects in the work not possible on smaller scales. A lot of this has to do with how we make marks and how they relate to the bodily movements that produce them. The most recent version has a different presence because of it's size. I find that the bigger the landscape is the more it invites me into what I think the real space would be like. As though the picture has more to say to me for a longer period of time. Similarly, looking up a mountain is different than looking down off the same mountain into a valley. From that high vantage point you might even see that there are even bigger mountains, painted with grander more sublime scenes. It's easy to miss the rest of the world, when we're lost in the shadow of our near-by hills.
A lot of what I've thought was safe in life turns out to be small or just familiar. It's easy to stay where you are, just don't do anything. But when you do this, you miss how wonderful and huge the world around you is. When you work out into the world you discover the beauty there on a scale you hadn't been able to see before. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with being where you are or something being familiar. What I want to emphasize is that that's not all there is. And those things that you know that are familiar and admittedly wonderful and beautiful are things you can come back to again and again. Your ties remain to those people and things that you knew so well and that left a permanent mark on you. But don't miss out on what you could know. And when you've explored that terra nova, you have a new chapter of your story to tell and an invitation to extend to others.
I decided to work larger this time, which I find produces effects in the work not possible on smaller scales. A lot of this has to do with how we make marks and how they relate to the bodily movements that produce them. The most recent version has a different presence because of it's size. I find that the bigger the landscape is the more it invites me into what I think the real space would be like. As though the picture has more to say to me for a longer period of time. Similarly, looking up a mountain is different than looking down off the same mountain into a valley. From that high vantage point you might even see that there are even bigger mountains, painted with grander more sublime scenes. It's easy to miss the rest of the world, when we're lost in the shadow of our near-by hills.
A lot of what I've thought was safe in life turns out to be small or just familiar. It's easy to stay where you are, just don't do anything. But when you do this, you miss how wonderful and huge the world around you is. When you work out into the world you discover the beauty there on a scale you hadn't been able to see before. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with being where you are or something being familiar. What I want to emphasize is that that's not all there is. And those things that you know that are familiar and admittedly wonderful and beautiful are things you can come back to again and again. Your ties remain to those people and things that you knew so well and that left a permanent mark on you. But don't miss out on what you could know. And when you've explored that terra nova, you have a new chapter of your story to tell and an invitation to extend to others.
Sunrise December 19, 2014. Pastel, 19x27 inches It's been several weeks since I last painted. Overwhelming is a fine descriptor of the semester of teaching I just finished. I picked up an extra class this fall because of staffing shortages at my school and I began to feel the effects very quickly. One effect was a diminished energy level all around. Less reading, less exercising and sadly less painting. But during the Christmas break I have had lots of time to slow down, refocus and devote time to art.
Every time I paint I'm reminded of how therapeutic it is for me, how it heals me from my wounds and exhaustion. I know also that the works I make will continue to have an effect on me and others down through time. This is my legacy. When I was ten years younger I hadn't an idea about legacy and its importance. Art is a way for me to contribute to culture, to make something with enduring presence and formative power. This knowledge of the future world I'll shape helps keep me going.
Every time I paint I'm reminded of how therapeutic it is for me, how it heals me from my wounds and exhaustion. I know also that the works I make will continue to have an effect on me and others down through time. This is my legacy. When I was ten years younger I hadn't an idea about legacy and its importance. Art is a way for me to contribute to culture, to make something with enduring presence and formative power. This knowledge of the future world I'll shape helps keep me going.
Click below to enlarge the various states of the painting's development
Veritas (Latin for truth). Charcoal on paper 30x42 inches.
In the last two weeks I've discovered how much truth can divide a community. I've also learned a lot about organizations and their dealings with their parts (parts being people in most cases). I've discovered that being caught up in a controversy will show you who you can trust.
I've been crushed (I mean this in a profoundly real and heavy emotional sense) by disappointment with some people I thought I trusted and surprised by how individuals came to my defense in a time of trial (I can count these people on one hand). I learned that I valued truth more than policy and that I was willing to give up much to defend what I knew was the case. I know that in the eyes of some I will lose, but I've done right in the sight of God, which is supremely more important. My prideful self tells me to be vindictive and vengeful and I have to constantly fight against this impulse and resist doing evil for evil. There have been few occasions in my life where others have really sought to do me harm. I'm learning that I can take comfort in the truth, no matter what happens, or what the personal cost is.
I've seen a group of people discover their voices. I've seen young people rally around doing the right thing. The line was drawn in the sand and they took sides. I drew great encouragement from this. I became aware of how disconnected and compromised adults can become as they enter more fully into the internal structure and logic of an organization. You will be conformed to the laws that govern those things with which you interact, it is inevitable especially if you are not actively introspective about your environment's influence (99 percent of people). I see that when someone reaches 40 or so years old (a generalization) it is nearly impossible to break them free from the constraints and artificial security that come from conformity to an organization. By way of contrast, I have renewed hope in young people who are still plastic enough to resist the status-quo.
Young people (aka teenagers) are still capable of resisting maintenance thinking, because they largely have nothing to maintain yet. This is both terrible and beautiful. Young people have ideals, and they will hold fast to those, because they haven't had time to accumulate like adults have and put their trust in things, in security, retirement, status and jobs. They are still able to acknowledge those things for which their souls cry out. Oh to re-enter that place in life, that newness in experience. My memory brings me close, but time keeps me distant from this innocence and bliss.
We have to be careful not to miss the definitive moments in our lives for what they are. We are made by them. What we look like on the other side will shape those around us. Suffering brings with it great responsibility to suffer well.
I've been crushed (I mean this in a profoundly real and heavy emotional sense) by disappointment with some people I thought I trusted and surprised by how individuals came to my defense in a time of trial (I can count these people on one hand). I learned that I valued truth more than policy and that I was willing to give up much to defend what I knew was the case. I know that in the eyes of some I will lose, but I've done right in the sight of God, which is supremely more important. My prideful self tells me to be vindictive and vengeful and I have to constantly fight against this impulse and resist doing evil for evil. There have been few occasions in my life where others have really sought to do me harm. I'm learning that I can take comfort in the truth, no matter what happens, or what the personal cost is.
I've seen a group of people discover their voices. I've seen young people rally around doing the right thing. The line was drawn in the sand and they took sides. I drew great encouragement from this. I became aware of how disconnected and compromised adults can become as they enter more fully into the internal structure and logic of an organization. You will be conformed to the laws that govern those things with which you interact, it is inevitable especially if you are not actively introspective about your environment's influence (99 percent of people). I see that when someone reaches 40 or so years old (a generalization) it is nearly impossible to break them free from the constraints and artificial security that come from conformity to an organization. By way of contrast, I have renewed hope in young people who are still plastic enough to resist the status-quo.
Young people (aka teenagers) are still capable of resisting maintenance thinking, because they largely have nothing to maintain yet. This is both terrible and beautiful. Young people have ideals, and they will hold fast to those, because they haven't had time to accumulate like adults have and put their trust in things, in security, retirement, status and jobs. They are still able to acknowledge those things for which their souls cry out. Oh to re-enter that place in life, that newness in experience. My memory brings me close, but time keeps me distant from this innocence and bliss.
We have to be careful not to miss the definitive moments in our lives for what they are. We are made by them. What we look like on the other side will shape those around us. Suffering brings with it great responsibility to suffer well.
Here are a few things I've worked on this semester. My work load at school has kept me out of the shop more than I would like, but I've managed to put out work here and there. Click images to see the captions/descriptions.
I had the happy occasion a few years ago to discover paper chromatography. When and where I learned of it, I don't remember. Then I learned of its use in separating leaf pigments. This technique is very useful for revealing to students the colored molecules present in leaves that give them their colors at different times of the year.
Separating the pigments in a leaf (or pine needle or presumably any plant matter) consists of pulverizing the plant matter (mortar and pestle works nicely) and soaking the pulp in an alcohol like ethanol or isopropanol, found in vodka and rubbing alcohol respectively, if you don't have access to a chemical supplier. Methanol (wood alcohol) doesn't work as well as those two. Soaking for about an hour is long enough, then you can stand up a piece of paper in about 1/2 inch of the solution against the side of the vessel (paper towels or drawing paper work well). Capillary action will draw the alcohol and pigments up into the paper. The pigments will separate into colored bands depending on size and other factors. Once the alcohol has evaporated, you have an interesting set of bands that fade into each other.
Upon doing this for the first time with leaves, the painter in me couldn't help but notice that the strip of paper I'd used had an uncanny resemblance to a landscape. The different colors had an unmistakable quality that suggested tree lines, horizons and the effects of accumulated atmosphere nearer the bottoms of hills and mountains. This realization delighted me to say the least, in addition to my present and growing fascination with the multiple pigments that made up the color of any one leaf. The experience was multifaceted and profound on a small scale. This led me to intentionally exploit chromatography to produce an overtly landscape quality. I did this by scaling up the procedure larger pieces of paper in a primarily horizontal orientation. Additionally with certain micro-landscapes, I would use only one leaf type or color (sometimes only red maple as in the second picture from the right above).
This experimental journey has heightened my curiosity about the potential of using other plant material and pigments, such as flowers. The possibilities afforded by increasing the scale of these experiments also excites me. I'd like to see how large I can make these (22x30 inches for instance, the standard size of printmaking paper) to see what if any material limitations there are to the process.
Finally the issue of light-fast-ness comes to mind. Inevitable the sun will take its tole on the color as well as the oxygen in the air. The pigments in leaves have always been transitory, recycled from season to season. By trying to fix and preserve them I'm reminded of the constant flow of energy and matter around me and the inevitability of thermodynamics. My appreciation for the beauty of trees has taken on another dimension, the unintended result of micro-revelations. A page within a page of the Book of Nature.
Separating the pigments in a leaf (or pine needle or presumably any plant matter) consists of pulverizing the plant matter (mortar and pestle works nicely) and soaking the pulp in an alcohol like ethanol or isopropanol, found in vodka and rubbing alcohol respectively, if you don't have access to a chemical supplier. Methanol (wood alcohol) doesn't work as well as those two. Soaking for about an hour is long enough, then you can stand up a piece of paper in about 1/2 inch of the solution against the side of the vessel (paper towels or drawing paper work well). Capillary action will draw the alcohol and pigments up into the paper. The pigments will separate into colored bands depending on size and other factors. Once the alcohol has evaporated, you have an interesting set of bands that fade into each other.
Upon doing this for the first time with leaves, the painter in me couldn't help but notice that the strip of paper I'd used had an uncanny resemblance to a landscape. The different colors had an unmistakable quality that suggested tree lines, horizons and the effects of accumulated atmosphere nearer the bottoms of hills and mountains. This realization delighted me to say the least, in addition to my present and growing fascination with the multiple pigments that made up the color of any one leaf. The experience was multifaceted and profound on a small scale. This led me to intentionally exploit chromatography to produce an overtly landscape quality. I did this by scaling up the procedure larger pieces of paper in a primarily horizontal orientation. Additionally with certain micro-landscapes, I would use only one leaf type or color (sometimes only red maple as in the second picture from the right above).
This experimental journey has heightened my curiosity about the potential of using other plant material and pigments, such as flowers. The possibilities afforded by increasing the scale of these experiments also excites me. I'd like to see how large I can make these (22x30 inches for instance, the standard size of printmaking paper) to see what if any material limitations there are to the process.
Finally the issue of light-fast-ness comes to mind. Inevitable the sun will take its tole on the color as well as the oxygen in the air. The pigments in leaves have always been transitory, recycled from season to season. By trying to fix and preserve them I'm reminded of the constant flow of energy and matter around me and the inevitability of thermodynamics. My appreciation for the beauty of trees has taken on another dimension, the unintended result of micro-revelations. A page within a page of the Book of Nature.
J0hn Hunter Speier
Recent work, and explorations of techniques, aesthetics and poetics.
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