just working

Yesterday was a little odd.  Prior to that I had not painted in three or four weeks, maybe longer, what with the holidays.  I don’t like spending that much time away from the activity of painting, but I’m also not one of these artists who claim they “would just die” if they didn’t paint every day.  I love to paint more than anything else, but I also spend as much time looking at and thinking about painting as I do doing it.  Or building stretchers and frames.  The actual painting time is just one fraction of my “art making” time allotment and I’m ok with that. 

But this break felt long, and I both missed it and felt a stranger to it.  Returning to the studio yesterday with time and inclination to paint felt like seeing a summer friend for the first time after a school year apart.  I felt awkward and unfamiliar, and unsure of where to start.  In my own studio I was a sailor back from sea, almost unable to walk steadily on solid ground.

I started by avoiding it altogether, the studio, as any good procrastinator would do.  I went upstairs (to the house) and did laundry.  I cleaned the toilets and vacuumed.  I put away the Christmas boxes.  I did anything that I could find to distract myself.  When I finally walked down to the studio, I spent the next hour cleaning it.  Half done or completely done paintings were stacked all around the painting side (my studio being made up mainly of two rooms, one dedicated to storage and one to painting).  Chop saw and sawdust and wood scraps, extension cord and note pads all covered the floor.  And of course the toilet needed cleaning (that being a third room of the studio).

(it's important to note that the above photo is probably five years old, and while it IS actually my studio, it does not represent my current studio layout as described herein nor my current output in regard to style or lack thereof.  it is merely included to show the general disarray that occurs as paintings begin to stack up and therefore provide a visual connection and a break from the writing...)

After the studio chores were done and my land legs were feeling stronger and more adapted, I began to contemplate what to paint.  Actually the contemplation began earlier, during the chores.  As I went about moving the leaning paintings to a more proper location, I surveyed several of the half-done ones and decided that they were really more like 90% done.  Four of five paintings, in fact, I liked quite a bit save for small areas which needed attention – weak marks mostly, or marks which weren’t consistent with the rest of the painting; marks my friend Emery might say about “I don’t believe that mark”.  I decided I would work on these paintings. 

I feel it’s important to note that I don’t typically work this way – I don’t typically get a painting 90% done, and then some time later go in and nail the last 10%.  My typical way of painting is all-over, and all-at-once.  I mark up the whole canvas, and usually pretty quickly, and then, while the paint is still wet (I use acrylics which dry fast), I work over the bits that need refining until I’m either happy with it or unhappy but exhausted and spent, the painting to be returned to for an all-over makeover sometime later.  So it’s unfamiliar territory for me to work on a painting that I mostly like, and am mostly weary about destroying, in the hopes of “correcting” a small portion that is not working.

Today is different though.  I feel different and everything is different.  I’m even listening to podcasts of This American Life instead of music.  I never listen to anything but music in the studio.  So why not paint differently?  These paintings are good, but not great.  In their present state I will never exhibit them.  These are the things I have to tell myself to conquer the fear of ruining them in my attempt at improving those small areas of weakness.  I put two on my easel and begin to study them and consider what they need.  My easel consists of two eight-foot long 2x4’s leaned at a slight angle and flat to the wall, touching at the top and maybe ten inches out at the floor, placed about seven feet apart.  There are four pegs, ¾ inch in diameter, protruding about three inches from each of these “columns”, spaced about a foot apart from shin-high to sternum.  Spanning from one column to the other, acting as a shelf on which to set paintings, is another 2x4 laid flat, with a wooden lip at its back like a shallow trough with one side open; viewed from the end it is a sideways L.  Paintings rest on this shelf, which is anywhere from eight to four inches away from the wall depending on which peg it rests, and then lean back to the wall.  The whole easel is a wide H leaned up against the wall.  This set-up allows me to hold very large paintings by moving the “shelf” down to the lowest peg, and smaller paintings, sometimes two abreast, with the shelf on the higher pegs.  It is on one of the higher pegs now, holding two of these nearly-complete paintings.

I sit across the room, my back to the east-facing window, and look at the paintings and listen to the podcast.  I walk around them and up to them, sometimes using my hands to either gesture a swath of paint that might be applied to an area, or to cover an area and consider it empty and visualize what it might need.  Eventually I pull out my buckets of paint and place them on my table, and fill another container with water to prepare for storing brushes while in use, to keep them moist.

(another old photo, included for similar effect.  the light is coming from the east window and that's me, contemplating.  get it?  the wall my shadow is cast upon now holds the herein mentioned home-made easel.  here you see a painting pinned to that wall, which I also do occasionally, but once they are stretched, they set upon the easel I describe.) 

I changed my studio practice about a year and a half ago, after seeing photos of how De Kooning worked and looking for a way to preserve the moisture of my acrylic paints in between sessions.  I now fill one-gallon plastic buckets with acrylic paint, watered down to a consistency slightly thicker than house paint, and keep them lidded between sessions.  This has allowed not only less waste of leftover, dried out paint, but also keeps me in an always-ready state, able to begin a painting with only a few minutes of set up involved.  It also had a dramatic effect on the marks (more drippy) and texture (more soupy) of my paintings.  These were unanticipated, however obvious the result may be.  One other thing it brought to my work was a greater consistency in the palette, since my buckets consist of essentially two each of reds, greens, blues, and yellows, along with black and white.

So now I’m face to face with these two paintings, my table at my side set with open buckets of paint, several different sized brushes, and a bucket of clean water.  I’m standing in front of them making mime-like gestures with my hands over their surfaces.  The best of the lot, the painting on the right on the shelf, is really pleasing to me all over except for the lower left corner where I struggled at the end of my last painting session.  There is a spray-painted yellow line about fourteen inches long meandering across it, and completely out of place.  I decide it needs a fat mark and I decide that a medium blue would look good there.  I dip a two inch wide house-painting brush into a dark/medium blue, and then dip the wet brush into a lighter blue and, considering the painting one more time and imagining the motion my arm is about to make, I streak the paint onto the canvas.  It looks great, I think.  It’s a big soupy textured mark and it’s starting to drip, but I don’t want it to change so I take the painting off the easel and lay it flat on the floor.  I look at it for a minute to see how the soup reacts to its new horizontal environment.  It’s pretty stable and I like it, and hope it doesn’t change shape much.

Done.  First mark is made and whew, I don’t think I ruined the painting.  In fact I may have actually finished it and with just one swift movement.  The next three paintings I work on do not enjoy the same success, but still, I am painting again and that feels good.

In retrospect I felt like my session was more as a graphic designer than a painter.  The paintings were less about nature and more about … well … more about just the marks – the colors, sizes, and shapes of them.  When that realization first struck me I was discouraged.  You see I pride myself in being all about spontaneity (which this process was the antithesis of) and all about nature.  So I felt like a bit of an imposter in my studio to have worked in that way.  After further consideration however, I realized that what occurred yesterday was actually a microscopic view of one part of the painting process that I do employ, and feel is equally important as the spontaneous, nature-based part.  It’s the “slow” part of the mantra that I try to follow which is to work in a “fast-slow-stop” sequence.  

I have said before that my paintings, while influenced by nature, should, at the end of the day, exist on their own as independent objects.  They should succeed as paintings first and foremost, and in this vein what I did yesterday was simply to take these nature-based paintings and (try to) make them succeed as paintings.  John Cage, in his list of rules to follow in the creation of art, suggested that the creation and analysis should occur at separate times.  Create, then analyze.  Then create and analyze again.  This is essentially what I did, and while the paintings (except for one) are not necessarily successful from the process, the experiment was itself successful.  Chris Ofili is right: the studio is a laboratory not a factory.

the object

most of my painting involves obliterating the object. I rely on visual stimuli from nature, but then boil it long enough that only a few of the strongest ingredients remain.

but sometimes, and usually in my drawing practice, I long for representing actual objects. it could just be a reaction to all of that loose, slapdashery that is my typical painting process, but the draw is strong none the less.

yesterday, here in Astoria, we walked by this dilapidated machine part (no idea what it is or was) sitting in the river just off the bank. it is probably twenty feet tall, and it is fantastically animated. it is like a sad, tired old robot that has been left in the sea to die. it reminds me of Rouault's Old King or the moon-skiing robot from Wallace and Gromit. sad and beautiful and funny (Rouault's king isn't funny... just sad and beautiful)

anyway, I felt compelled to draw this thing this morning.

the bravest artist

philip guston was certainly the bravest artist of the 20th century.  in the 50's and 60's he was creating these fantastic abstract paintings that put him in the ring with Pollock and De Kooning.  his dealer loved them, collectors loved them, and critics loved them.  they were challenging and original.  he was at the pinnacle of success in every way imaginable.

Philip Guston, "Dial", 1956

 
but then he starts painting like this.

Philip Guston, "By the Window", 1969

everyone tells him he has lost it.  even his artist friends ridicule him.  and yet he perseveres and continues to paint these incredible, shocking images for the next decade.  critics panned the first public exhibition of these paintings in 1970. imagine what was going through his mind.  imagine the conversations around the dinner table with his wife.  does he go back to what was "successful" in the past?  has he made a terrible error of judgement? 

no.

unthinkable. 

cowardly.

and thankfully, ultimately, the paintings came to be understood and embraced by many as among the best of their day.

for his bravery he is one of my heroes.  i pray that i can muster the courage to be so honest in my work, in the face of everything that strives to conform it to expectations.  "define success", as my friend Kurt says. 

studio visit

i visited the Hirshhorn museum last week and spent a bit of time in a room full of de Kooning's women.  somehow he ended up coming home with me, and now he's hanging out in my studio.  de Kooning has been in my studio before, along with Mitchell and Guston.  they are the most frequent visitors anyway, and the hardest to get rid of.  i had, through great effort, just recently gotten rid of them; but now he's back.  it's going to be hard to get rid of him this time.  i'll just have to paint a lot of bad paintings and then he'll get pissed off or bored, and leave.  that or i'll run out of beer.

Commission

i just completed the toughest commission i have ever received.  my friend and his family spent three months in hong kong this summer.  their adventures and routine constantly involved the MTR (hong kong's train system) and the map is a visual reminder of their travels.  he commissioned me to paint an abstract interpretation of it.

painting abstract interpretations is what i do, but the tough part was that the map already looks like one of my paintings.  what i do is take a lot of visual stimuli and reduce it and simplify it.  the map is already the perfectly reduced and simplified representation of land, sea, and rail lines.  in fact it is a textbook abstract painting. 

after many, many layers of paint, each looking too much like the original map, i let go and painted "my painting".  what i tend to do is loose and fast, and the process is more like a dance than a drawing.  once i started approaching the canvas in that way, and let go of the hard lines of the map, i was able to enter the consciousness (or exit the other-consciousness) necessary to paint without restraint.  the colors remained true to the map, and my mantra ("white is land, blue is sea, and lines are journeys") ensured that the map was the inspiration for the painting.

wanting to present my client with two options, i was simultaneously working on another version.  for a period both versions were looking too much alike, then on a trip to the beach, with typical oregon coast weather keeping us house-bound, i opened a Richard Diebenkorn book.  i was instantly struck by the obvious similarity between Diebenkorn's paintings and maps.  here was my inspiration and my affirmation that these simple forms, in two colors, with linear elements, could be handled in a painterly way with strong map-like familiarity.

both paintings are 35" x 56", and involve acrylic and spray paints.  the lower one also includes some conte crayon.

Well, it's a start

Don't know where this is going yet. Haven't yet connected back to making marks and thinking in a visual way. But, I can't stay away anymore, even if the studio is musty and the brushes are all hard. Thankful about my blogger pals who have kept the fire burning. Miss you guys, miss making a mark that moves me. Looking forward to what could be.

what. ever.

I looked at a couple of paintings with a positive critical eye again today. Hopefully that means that maybe even tomorrow I'll actually work on them, in addition to seeking out ways to exhibit them if they turn out OK.

I guess being critical comes naturally, and for painters it can be even more strong. But when I look at my work I want to move straight from, "something's not working" to, "what can I strengthen to make it work."

I think it's really easy to see that a painting isn't currently successful and become bummed out, wondering what went wrong instead of what needs to go right.

man or monkey?

i paint in a spontaneous manner.  if you have five minutes to spare, the below video will illustrate what i mean.  it is from a month ago or so.  my friend Randall watched it and said that i paint the hardest way possible.  i don't know if that's true, but i don't know any other way.

any way, my point is that by painting this way i create an environment where magic can happen.  by being less dictatorial about the process, and by allowing whims and fancies to inspire me as i go, i am open to anything.  don't get me wrong, much of the time this results in a disastrous muddy mess.  it happened last night.  frightful painting.

the painting in this video is not bad.  i don't think it's done, and will most likely go through another ten rounds like it went through this time, but i feel like the process is a good one, and the results, when they are solid, are worth the effort.

tuesday i opened myself up to that opportunity and a good painting came about in less than two hours.  today i was pretty tight and the painting isn't as good.

but get this.  so today i'm driving around and a thought entered my head.  if i thrash about on the canvas as i do, all meat-fisted and semi-conscious, am i just a thousand monkeys with paint brushes?  creating mostly junk but occasionally dipping the right brushes into the right combination of buckets and getting lucky!  is that all i am??

man, i tell you, i was in a panic.  i had a confidence-crisis moment.  that's probably why i tightened up today.  i guess the proof is in the painting.  in my higher state - my more evolved state, i created a less exciting painting.  the other one, the hundredth-monkey painting from tuesday, is hanging upstairs in my foyer and i think it looks pretty darn good.

  

here's the one from tuesday that i like:

A visit from The Past

painting is simultaneously the most frustrating and most fun thing i have ever done. it is such a struggle to wrench a painting out of all those marks.  the mental gymnastics required to jump from scene to painting, and the effort required to be master of each, and not just puppet, is exhausting and exhilarating.

today The Past was my uninvited studio guest.  i got him to leave eventually, but i'm not sure the painting survived the onslaught of suggestions he made while he was here.  he really wanted me to paint another Wilson River painting like "The Hollow", but I threw in these giant white rocks at the bottom to completely reconstruct the composition.

i'll probably leave it alone for a while and show it to my artist friends for criticism.  i think i'm too close to it to know what to do next... time will tell.

to thine own self...

as i sit in my studio today, it is clear that Cage was right about everyone being in here with me.  i keep hearing them.  remarks about composition, mark variations, color choices.  one thought keeps streaming into my mind and fights them off: be true to yourself.  at the end of the day we have no one else to answer to.  the work has to be honest.

Argh

I've been yakkety yak yakking about recent work with one of my artist buddies, whose opinion I take very seriously. That opinion, combined with my crippling self-doubt, is giving me the fucking vapors. I both totally agree with this person, and find that these opinions both make me want to drop sails and totally change tack, and also want to start working on my medical degree.

The most crazy-making part is that this stuff is all backed scrupulously by depth and breadth of knowledge.

In other words, I don't know what I know I don't know what I want to do.

It's no wonder dollars earned becomes the easiest way to measure whether art is successful or not.

I

My painting just told me to finish it up already. Usually I don't know when to quit; never been given my walking papers before!