Egg Tempera

“What is high for the cello is low for the violin, and the violin shows its special character in a region which the cello can hardly achieve.” Thompson 4

Like instruments, painting mediums posses differing characteristics which a painter may find more or less suitable for her purposes. It is advisable to both work in media that suit one’s sensibilities and use the natural range of that media to one’s advantage. Thusfar I have experimented with oil, acrylic, casein, watercolor, fresco, and egg tempera paints. Oil, watercolor, and tempera are the only three I have any decent experience in, and at this time I find egg tempera most suited to my sensibilities.

The natural range of egg tempera is somewhat limited compared to acrylic or oil paint. Oil paint has been the most common paint for the last 500 years. Ralph Mayer wrote that there are “nearly as many techniques and combinations of techniques in oil painting as there are schools of artistic thought.” (196) Acrylic painting, though newer, brings with it a vast range of mediums designed to create any effect. Egg tempera is certainly more limited, but these limitations also bring strengths that neither acrylic nor oil paints can provide. Oil and acrylic techniques will in most cases produce paintings that are fleshy, vibrant, and blended. They can easily mimic great depth and capture darks very well. Egg tempera falters in the darker values and therefore is less adept at mimicking depth and form. It is difficult to evenly blend and colors will often appear muted, even chalky and dry in the highest values. However, its sublety in those same high values is unparelled. The rigidity of the paint requires an application technique which will produce a beautifully mottled surface. Lastly, its reticence to mimic form and depth allows for a more contemplative naturalism, enabling greater symbolic possibilities and inviting the viewer to immediately engage on a reflective and intellectual level.

I was not aware of these benefits when I first started painting in egg tempera. I became interested in the medium a year ago while in Italy, but only began to paint in it last Spring. Egg tempera ideally requires two lifetimes and a shopfull of assistants to master, so I am only beginning to discover its possibilities. At first, I wanted to paint in it only because I thought it was beautiful and simple.

And it is beautiful! But it is not simple. What it is, is pure—only pigment and yolk—and craftable to the artists own requirements. Within that craftability there is room for infinite variation. In producing paint one can be very scientific or rather loose. I lean towards loose. Though some painters add vinegar, clove oil, or alcohol to their paints, I follow the basic egg-water-pigment formula.

The egg yolk here is the medium. Mediums have four functions in painting: executive, binding, adhesive, and optical. The executive function keeps the pigment in line, allows it to be applied and spread out on the substrate. If this were the only function of the medium, water would suffice. The second function, binding, is what gives the medium its second common name, “binder”. This is the function wherein the pigment particles are locked into a thin film, protecting them from both the atmosphere and the subsequent coats of paint. Egg yolk is an emulsion, a stable mixture of an aqueous liquid with a fatty substance. Hen’s eggs are comprised of a gummy subststance, albumen, egg oil, and the stabilizing lipoid lecithin (Mayer 266). These elements in combination cause a cooked egg to congeal and have the same effect when mixed into paint, applied in a thin film, and exposed to the air. The third function, adhesive, is related to the binding—the film must not only be secure in itself but secure in attaching to the ground. The last function, the optical is minimized in tempera painting. Whereas an oil medium will emphasize different characteristics in different pigments with its shine, dried egg yolk does not have any refraction properties of its own and will allow the pigment to fail or succeed on its own merit.

Pigments are pigments, no matter in what medium they are applied. They come from the earth and from laboratories in the form of soil, minerals, metals, and synthetic chemicals. All of these differing sources follow the same path—they are ground into a fine powder and then combined with the medium. I order pigments in the powder form and combine them with my yolk—which is from a free range egg, it really does make a difference. Vastly differing palletes (selections of colors) are recommended by different sources which goes to show that it does not matter what you use as long as you use it consistently and in the right combinations. The pallete I have been using is a haphazard collection of about ten tubs of powder and a small pile of watercolor tubes (high quality watercolor paints are almost pure pigment and are commonly used by tempera painters in combination with yolk. I use them for colors which are too hazardous, such as cadmium, or too expensive, like viridian, to buy in bulk powder form.)The pigments I use most are: Mars black, titanium white, burnt umber, burnt sienna, venetian red, mayan red, cadmium red medium, cadmium orange, yellow ochre, medium yellow sun, hookers green, sap green, viridian, cerulean blue, ultramarine, mayan blue, paynes grey, and an unrefined lapis grey. This is a lovely range of colors that I occasionally expand upon.

I mix the paint only as I need, because it will not keep. People always ask if egg tempera smells, and yes, it definitely smells. It does not smell at all when dry but the medium ranges from a wet eggy smell to a sulfurous rotten one if it is not stored in the fridge or used quickly enough. Thus, I never have a full palate in front of me, but only the color or several colors I am working from at one time. The paints are mixed in little porcelain cups and then used immediately. I use a wide variety of brushes, although the most useful ones are soft and small. Sometimes I will even splatter the paint with a toothbrush or dab it with a sponge. Egg tempera is translucent and must be applied in many thin layers, slowly building up highlights and glazing down shadows. It lends itself to a hatching motion, and will produce a beautiful surface if applied patiently. It is certainly a medium which has captured my heart.

 

substrate essay

There are many competing instructions on how to build and prepare a panel for an egg tempera painting. Daniel V. Thompson Jr., in his comprehensive technical book “The Practice of Tempera Painting” describes an arduous process of seasoning boards, building them into panels with cheese and lime glue, and seasoning the panels for several more months before even beginning to gesso them. This process was necessary in order to prevent the natural warp and weft of a wooden plank.

Thompson wrote his book 80 years ago. Luckily for the modern artist we have been inundated with both high-quality wood composites and panels for purchase. Pre-made panels are very uniform but also very expensive. Some control over the final product is lost in this uniformity. They also only come in standard, relatively small sizes. For reasons of both cost and care it was necessary for me to build by own panels.

There are four elements that constitute a panel before any paint is applied. The first is the cradling, small cross boards which prevent warping and wobbling. The second is the panel itself, some sort of flat wood composite glued to the cradling. The third is an intermediary surface—cloth or paper, which aids in preservation, both protecting the painting from the panel and enabling a future restorer to easily separate the pigment layer from the wood. The last is the gesso, the surface to which the paint adheres.

For my cradling I use average quality pine 1x2s. I selected ones which were straight and without knots. I built a fairly lightweight cradling structure using a miter box to cut angled joints and screws and glue to hold the joints together. On the first panel I built I made the cradling structure in complete before attaching it to the panel. This makes no sense and creates a much more challenging assembly. On subsequent tries I built the panel and cradling as one unit, gluing the cradling to the back of the panel and to itself at the same time. This worked well.

The flat surface of the panel is made from birch composite board. I could have used masonite, which is very common, but I already had one 2×4 foot birch panel, so buying birch was hardly more expensive. There is a certain romance to having a real wood panel, even though no one will ever see its surface after assembly. I cut the birch to the proper angles using a jigsaw and guides I rigged with 2x4s and clamps, planing and sanding down any irregular edges.

Once the panel and cradle is assembled, glued with wood glue, and dried, the secondary surface may be applied. My secondary surface is raw, unbleached muslin. Muslin is a good choice for a surface that will eventually be smooth because it has a very smooth weave itself. It is also inexpensive. I cut the muslin to the proper size and then wrapped it in a smooth layer around the front and sides of the panel, adhering it with a thinned gesso.

The last and most evident layer is the gesso. Gesso is, “a viscous or liquid material applied as a coating to surfaces I order to give them the correct properties for receiving painting, gilding, or other decoration.” (Mayer 306) Gesso ground is usually white and differs in effect. For egg tempera a brilliantly white, highly absorbent ground is desired. There are many recipes for gesso involving all sorts of raw ingredients which I hope to explore someday. For now, I used an easy and adaptable method described by my teacher at the Aegean Center for the Arts—bulking a commercially prepared acrylic gesso with titanium white pigment at a one-to-one ratio. This makes the gesso whiter and also dryer, thereby rendering it more absorbent. Several layers of this gesso are applied, with sanding in between each one. After about five layers the surface will begin to have a smooth and brilliant character, and is now ready to receive paint. 

More changes

Much work has been happening. I am really absorbed in my aesthetics research and painting right now. I just bought my website and hosting. I will have that up by the end of the semester. I am prepping panels for three small triptychs. I hope to have at least one done before the Senior Show. I am working primarily on my big painting and also about to begin a small fresco and found object project. I can’t wait to get up each day and there is never enough time!

I have been taking quick photos for the last week showing the progression. These are unedited and with a poor camera but they are evidence of change.

Here I still had the old, bad table. In my combining of different sources I messed up both the space for the table and the table itself. Eventually it became clear that the table could just not fit in this space. There was just no room between my back and the window for a table of this size.

The table had to go! I decided it would be easier to just get rid of it entirely and then painting back in what worked. I painted it out (Except for a little bit on the floor) and focused on developing the wall and windows.

I made up a table that worked– a small table at a different angle to the window. Using a different angle is good for the composition but also allows for more fudging on the table. I figured out what worked using a sketch of a table from a similar angle, basic perspective theory, and Mylar which I stuck over the painting and drew on. This table has the potential to relate well to the figure– the leaning effect and scale are not quite clear yet, but with reflections, shadows, and scaling objects the connection will begin to work.

This is the most recent. I have been working on developing the glancing light from the window, starting on the figure, the foreground of the left panel, and the river motif on the bottom of the side panels. I have also started in some underlayers on the bottom of the main panels– the colors are looking VERY funky right now, but it’s not a problem, they will be buried under many layers of paint.

In the next few days I want to finish the river motif, finish the foreground on the left painting, and get tones and then the flower pattern on the dress. This weekend I am going home and am going to play around with some framing options.

Center panel progress and future plans

I have been working primarily on my center panel. I cannot believe I am completing a 4 foot egg tempera painting but it is happening. At some moments it feels unbearably slow but to see the slow building of tones and forms and complexity is extremely satisfying. The last few days I have been feeling so much energy and desire to paint and it feels great.

Here it is as of this afternoon:

Areas that are nearing satisfaction: the plant against the wall, the receding shadows, the tone of the sky.

Areas that require much work: all else, especially the figure, table, and window frame, which has no depth yet. There is a slow balance between building up a light, dropping it back, building up more, all to work with the translucence of the tempera. Here are a few detail shots to show how miniscule the brushwork is:

Each layer is built with hundreds or thousands of brush strokes. The many layers slowly begin to even eachother out. Here, especially in the second photo, the brushstrokes are shallow and sitting on the surface, but as I lay down more tone they will develop into a rich, subtly mottled surface area.

There are many areas of the painting which do not even exist yet, including the inside of the windows, all shadows and reflections, and the many small surface objects and clutter I have planned. Right now things are blocky and floating, but I hope that the painting will evolve past that soon.

Now, for the future plans:

I have confirmed both in my heart and with my landlord that I will be staying in Orono through the spring. There are a couple of reasons for this (feeling of contentment, community, apartment love, nothing better to do) but the number one reason is to continue with the body of work that this painting has spawned. I hope to work a nice job 20-30 hours a week (I am actively searching for this job!) and devote the rest of the time to the things I have floating around in my head. I will begin on several of those things this semester. I hope to have a nice small body of work together by the end of the spring (I would like to write a post soon about the various ideas I am mulling about). I will then head out west for a seasonal job with the intention of saving a good chunk of money, which I have done before. In the fall, a year from now, with a little money and a good portfolio, I will apply for residencies and other educational opportunities abroad, likely in Southern Europe, and use the opportunity to travel, live, and and work abroad for a few months to a few years, depending on what comes up. I feel extremely happy with this plan and it is the path I will aim for barring life changing events or massively awesome unexpected opportunities.

I haven’t pos…

I haven’t posted in a long time and it’s for the same reason I am behind on my letter writing… everything now is happening so fast and I keep waiting for a point to come where I can sit and say “this is what has happened and this is what it means” but that point never comes, or it seems like it might but then something major happens the next day and everything changes.
I believe the last time I wrote much was at Haystack, which was over a month ago, and since then I have returned, moved into my new apartment, started again with classes, MPAC, research etc, and continued painting. I have been living in the zone and I need to remember to keep up my paperwork (not that I have ever been able to do that effectively).
So, here are things of note in regard to the thesis and general art practice:
1    I had and amazingly inspiring time at Haystack and found it to be a major leap on the journey of opening to artistic and personal possibilities. Fresco being so quick compared to egg tempera, I produced a nice group of paintings in the two weeks. I actually took all the leftover supplies (slaked lime, marble dust, pigment etc) home from the class and plan on producing some frescos very soon (much more art time is about to open up because after this week I am leaving my little job for a while).
1    I am 80% leaning towards staying in Orono through the spring after I graduate, working part time and mainly working on this body of work I have in mind. I have so many related ideas at the moment and I want to dig right in. Putting a cohesive body of work together would be extremely helpful with post-grad travel/residency/learning plans and I am also feeling so happy and rooted here that I don’t want to leave quite yet. I mean I could go on and on about the food I have preserved and  renovating my apartment and book group plans but that is not exactly the point of this blog so KEEP IT ON TOPIC.
1    I have an amazing deal on a quiet one-bedroom apartment with STUDIO SPACE, which I feel is all any young artist could possibly ask for. The space comes at the cost of holes in the walls and a very bad bathroom, but I could really care less about that. I am ecstatic to have a whole room for just working in. It has two desks, many surfaces, shelves, and even pegboard for my tools. It makes things very nice.
1    The thesis is progressing well! October is going to be a very busy month if I am to keep on track. I can’t believe September has already happened. A lot of September was about adjusting to a variety of social things, and October will be a good time to dig in. As I mentioned, I cleared out my schedule and won’t be catering anymore. I will look for a new job closer to the end of the semester, but soon it is just me and the painting.

Websites

For my capstone class and for myself I have been thinking about a website. I would like to have a website launched by December. I want the website to be a real one, carolinerobe.com, well designed. I am a little sensitive about such things and I want a website I can be proud to pass around! 

Part of this will be learning a little web design. I have some vague historic experience with buying a domain name and linking it to a hosting service but no experience in creating content. However, I am confident I can figure this out given a few books and tutorials.

The larger question is what kind of website do I want to create? To that end I have been observing site formats as I do my usual art stumbling on the web. I know I am definitely drawn to clean, simple, modern formats. Nothing bugs me more than a dark background, lots of unmatched color, and a serif font. I definitely will go for a white background and a simple, NO serif font, in black.

Today I was reading the NYTimes wedding section (I know, I love it) and there was a recently married couple of painters who live in Brooklyn and had both just finished their MFAs at the New York Academy of Art. I am always excited to see artists who end up together, because it is my not-secret desire that this happens to me some day, and I was also excited because they are Academy of Art grads, because it is a nice program that I admire. I hopped over to their websites to check out their work and do a little site-design investigation. 

While I am more drawn to Jane’s work, I prefer Jason’s website. In fact, the simple clean format with a image-based opening page is exactly what I would like to aim for. I like the grey and black text, although I think I desire something slightly less graphic. A neat bit on Jane’s site is the scribble section, which is kind of an informal update on her work. I have a teacher from Greece whose site links to a blog which performs a similar function, except he includes a lot of drawings and sketches. I would love to do that. A downside of Jason’s site is that there is no way to view all the images at once and click to the one you want. A slideshow is necessary but I believe there should be a way for a person to return to or find a particular image without having to flip through the rest. 

Something I must do is bite the bullet and buy carolinerobe.com. I am lucky to have an unusual name and have been aware of the availability of this particular domain for a while now. It would be sad if it got taken because I am too lazy to shell out my credit card info and pay 11 bucks. Search-ability and being easy to remember is so nice. 

This is another project to work on this fall. I am tempted to stay here this spring and just keep working. I have so many ideas and I know I won’t have time to finish them this fall before I leave. All unfinished ideas will then be put on the back burner as my life becomes more transient for a while. I am not sure I want this to happen and I may make the decision to commit a little longer. I have so many nice friends and community in Orono and it would not be a sad place to stay a while longer, working part time and being committed to my artwork. The next few months will tell if that is the option that tugs my heart. 

Eve plants the tree, Caroline eats an apple

Right now, at Haystack, I am working on a little fresco triptych which I already know will be called “Eve plants a tree, Caroline eats an apple” or some such like that. It is a little pithy. I started making the base for the triptych today and knew I wanted a large tree in the center panel. I have been very interested in the tree of life motif of late, and I have always been interested in trees in general. I also knew that I wanted a sky pattern arching over the three panels.

I thought about the tree of life and then I ended up thinking about Adam and Eve. Interested as I am in religious painting, I have studied many paintings of the dynamic duo. An emerging theme is playing with biblical painting patterns for my own purposes. A feminist emphasis is emerging in that play. This is not surprising, as I have been engaged in a lot of feminist activity recently and am very interested in women’s voices. I did this in my center panel of my thesis painting when I ripped off all the depictions of chaste Mary reading. In the thesis I turned it around, using myself as a model in a short dress, in the active moment of writing (creation) instead of reading (receiving the word of God).

A similar idea evolved regarding Eve. I Googled “Adam and Eve” and looked at lots of paintings depicting sexy Eve offering Adam the apple. At first I had a lovely image in my head of Eve ripping off her fig leaf, staring at the viewer, and flipping Paul Ryan the bird. HOWEVER, this is a little blunt for a painting. Next I thought about women and their roles of creators, literally as creators of babies, and in general. I believe women have excellent creative capacities from being so in touch with emotional currents. We also have the mother Earth story. I am also interested in agricultural themes, so there was my idea. Nudie Eve, standing in contrapposto, one foot pushing a shovel into the earth– planting a little apple tree, no Adam in sight.

Now that I had this highly heretical image of feminist Eve planting the very tree of knowledge itself (there are a lot of things here—the historical role of women in the teaching profession, or as the first educators of all humans in the act of raising, etcetera), I worked to fill out the rest of the narrative. I knew the Eve panel would be the small one on the left. The mature apple tree/tree of life would take up the large panel in the center (I have some ideas on how to embellish this one).

I wanted contrast for the right panel. I recently read The Hours and had an image of a 1940s housewife baking an apple pie in my head. This could have served as a contrast to heretic Eve. There were a couple of reasons I decided against this. I did not want to create a depressed painting OR imply that traditional “women’s work” causes the women to be less than. I believe in systems and I did not want to create a painting that said “oh, look at this poor sad woman having to run the house, pity her”. There is a strain in modern feminism that implies that anything in the sphere of home life is degrading to women. I believe this is a confusion of factors. It is not home life that is degrading, it is being oppressed that is degrading, whichever sphere the oppression relegates one to. Finally, this contrast was a bit heavy-handed for my taste, not rich enough.

However, I did want something more modern, more personal, and having to do with apples. My teacher here has done a lot of self-portraits of every-day activities. I thought of eating, and I thought of myself, and I thought of apples. So, the last panel will be a straight on self-portrait in the unbecoming act of eating an apple.

There are a lot of narratives combined in this painting. There is the creation, distribution, and consumption of knowledge of good and evil (the apple). There is the feminist theme. There is a nice contrast between sexy contrapposto Eve and a straight-on portrait of myself eating. There is fertility and nourishment, femininity.

I thought about these different interlocking narratives and wondering how much one could fit into one piece without it becoming burdensome. The answer I came up with was “many”. In creating a story one does not set out saying “I want this, this, and this to happen”. There is an inkling of an idea which spawns many other ideas and sub stories. In good fiction there are MANY things going on at once. In life there are many things going on at once. If you froze an image of a group of people at a party there would be infinite hidden stories. It is one of the facilities of the arts to make these stories apparent. It is fake and also boring to pretend that there is only one.

Tonight, I will dive into painting my apple tree.

 

Run, Craft, Haystack

This morning I hitched a ride into town and ran the eight miles back. There is only one real road here on Little Deer Isle—all the rest are named driveways. I like to do a longer run at least once a week, usually Saturday mornings. The first few miles are sluggish. They are the lethargy of being at ease. I think about the same inconsequential things that have been on my mind all week. A romance I will forget in six months, plus the romance before it for good obsessive measure, and one that happened in the middle—I must examine all my bases. Disgust at the eight cookies I ate yesterday, four after lunch and four after dinner, some pumpkin, some ginger. Eight miles absolves any sugary sins. Dogs! What will I do about dogs? I fantasize about stopping, turning out my arms, and staring at the dog. It will run away, tail between legs. I think of two big hounds that chased me up the street when I was younger. I believe they had jumped the fence with the explicit intention of eating me.

I quicken my step and lengthen my stride. I imagine the time my feet spend on the ground to be approaching a limit of zero.

Each quickening brings me closer to flying, a millisecond divided by two into infinity. I think of all the dreams I have had where running turns into hovering—much easier on the knees. I imagine my hips are on a conveyer belt through space and my bones and muscles are smooth machinery underneath. I imagine my elbows a perfect square, correct my shoulders into unwavering pendulums, lift my chin, tense my stomach and lean the weight of myself over my conveyer belt legs.

As fatigue comes so does quiet, and then the kind of thought you have to pass through quiet to find. I think about craft and materials, projects and passion. I am here at a place called Haystack School of Crafts to learn about fresco painting. Other people are here to pound metals, create jewelry, sew quilts, turn wood, and work clay.

I wonder at the difference between craft and art. I get stuck at defining art. The very act of defining “art” has become unbearably cliché. The term has been commercialized, printed on the t-shirts of our culture, packaged and stacked with love and peace. These words mean so little now that people who truly care about them often try to find other words. We say nonviolence, we say compassion and caring, we call ourselves makers. Many people here call themselves makers or craftspeople. I will still call myself an artist, and I will still say I love you, and I will still say I want peace on the planet, and I will mean it.

Losing the semantics, I know we are makers. What about makers? Some people are consumers, some are producers, and some are makers. At times I thinking making is special but I know it is not. In fact, the exact thought that making is special is what prevents most people from making. Remember the Chinese woodcarver. What craft is, is caring. A crafts-person cares about things, about materials and form. They care enough to devote their time to realizing the bell stand inherent in the piece of wood. The crafts-person knows it is there, and has spent years learning to uncover it. I yearn to uncover it.

I run on a causeway across empty mud flats. Tide out, a great black heron flies overhead.

A summary of the last few months

Tomorrow is the end of this particular phase. It is a few weeks yet before the emotional, social, and intellectual madness of the school year, but tomorrow I am leaving for two weeks at Haystack School of Crafts, which is a new phase in itself.

So, what has happened here? This is a big question for me. This blog is about my thesis, but my thesis has been so integral to my life this season that I cannot extract personal changes from artistic changes from the advancement of the project.

This Spring I had a conversation with Ed where he talked about how artistically productive his twenties were and told me to take advantage of mine. At the time I laughed and could not possibly see how this time in my life would be an artistically productive one. I felt so confused, so at the whims of others, and so scattered in my process that I produced virtually no finished artwork during the spring. I turned in my projects, and got fine grades, but there was no cohesive growth or production at that time. In retrospect, I can see the intense personal changes I was undergoing, and see where my productivity went. At the beginning of the semester my then-partner and I made a choice to end our relationship, which had been my primary support for most of college. Losing that invoked a lot of changes and was a real period of personal blossoming, but art fell by the wayside.

I’m not sure if was the pressure of completing a thesis that compelled my focus, or my newly developed focus gave me a shot at completing the thesis, but midway through the summer, things began to click. I began to feel capable and strong in all sorts of ways. I started feeling comfortable living “alone” (I have roommates but we are not especially close), I started taking adventures, I lost 15 pounds and felt healthier, and generally got organized. Getting organized included REALLY working on my thesis, and lots. The focus was all of a sudden there.

The feeling of focus has only snowballed as the summer has passed. I always wanted to feel this way about ANYTHING other than basically, a relationship, and now it has happened. I am absorbed and obsessed. I have cut out superfluous things so I can do more. Now, I will naturally work 8-10 hours a day. There is no rigor to my working– I simply wake up without alarm but usually between 5:30 and 7, spend maybe 2 hours drinking coffee and reading, catching up on news, or writing to people, and then begin whatever work must be done. As the day passes I will take breaks to eat a meal, go to the river, go running, take a short nap, dinner with a friend, etc. Between the working and the breaks it will soon be 10 pm and time to get ready for bed. It is a very pleasant not-routine.

After some time of that, I am well on my way to completing painting by November (my goal, so I have time to complete the rest of my defense and hopefully exhibit the piece). Sometimes people see it and imagine I will be done in a month, but egg tempera is slow, and I will tickle it until the last moment.

Here is the entire piece together, as of today:

A short description:

The narrative of the artwork proceeds from left to right but the intention is circular. As the Italian alterpieces my concept is modeled on tell a story of redemption, I tell a little story of redemption here. Unlike the biblical tales, it is personal, “bottom-up”, and only what I know. In the end, I had to commit to painting what I know, even if what I know is only small and personal.

The left panel:

Is the most finished and begins the story with a winter scene. This winter I was very sad and spent a lot of time walking around the fields and forests behind the school. This is taken from a sketch of one of the fields in very early spring, when the snow was gone but the grass still dead. It was a depressive and empty time, but also bleakly beautiful. Yet undeveloped is a contrail through the sky, the ever-present “elsewhere” that touches most all places in modern America. I remember seeing the contrails on this day, and thinking of all the people flying through the sky, on their way to something possibly quite exciting to them, and my own times in transition, and the technologically miraculous danger of it all.

On this panel also begins two continuing themes. The first is a small river motif on the bottom, which at this point only has rocks, and no water. The particular river is the Penobscot. The river is symbolic of many things which I mentally touched on when choosing to include it here, but primarily the washing away of all things by the passing of time. The second theme is the night sky which arches across all three panels, beginning with a “cider sky” dusk, touching on the milky way, and ending with an ambiguous dawn. The night sky is my favorite thing so far and impossible to capture well in a photo. The dark tones are so easily lost.

The center panel:

I originally intended this to be a family portrait around the table– a play on the last supper. I truly value my family and my community, but I have learned that above all things, salvation is in myself. As surrounded by love as I may be at times, and as good as that feels, in lonesomeness the soul emerges with its strength, or not.

Thus, the central painting is a self portrait in my kitchen/studio. It is really a painting about this summer. It is also a play on many paintings of the Virgin, where she is shown chastely reading in long robes. As a modern female human my body is not excessively covered, and I am writing, which, though now quite commonplace, has been historically regarded as transgressive. As an activist and an artist I truly believe in the value of creation and ideation. It is not passivity and virtue which will change the world. Concentrated behind the figure, myself, is a dark and jumbled mass, while the table and space beforehand is clean and light, representing both the ever-present contrast between interior turmoil and exterior poise, and the focusing of the turmoil through creative action. There are a variety of small symbols packed into this painting, including

parsley: taking away the bitterness

sage: strength

rosemary: remembrance

and thyme: courage (all together, a recipe for love)

strawberries and milk: from The Seventh Seal, in which the gypsies enjoy a meal of strawberries and milk and escape death (for now) through simple oblivion and pleasure

ruler: rigor, order

& others.

Currently this center painting is in the ink drawing stage. The ink drawing is nearly done except I am still sorting out some problems with the figure, especially the head. When I get back I will finish that and start on the painting and color.

Below this painting, in the thin strip on the bottom, I have a memento mori planned– a film-like strip of small, square, paintings in some way dealing with death. I have had a heightened awareness of death lately.

The left panel:

The last panel is derived from a path near my house. Here, the path fades into bright oblivion, a beautiful but possibly dangerous place. This painting is only half done. I still have to extend it all the way up and do lots of work in general on it. I see this as a representation of the end result of a cycle of creativity and change.

That’s all for now. Forgive the messy edges– they will be covered by a frame. It is a work in progress but DEFINITELY in progress. I look forward to resuming with the new creative  energy I think I am likely to pick up at Haystack. This has been a beautiful summer and it’s possible my thesis has both saved me from and led me to something resembling myself. What a nice gift from what began as a school project.

 

 

 

Ink drawing

This morning I finished the ink drawing on my large panel! I have been working on this pretty much nonstop since Saturday. Before I left for my bike ride I had the basic composition worked out, but getting it on the panel involved many re-dos, especially of the figure and the floor. I could tickle this ink drawing forever, but I think it might be a good time to move on and start tickling in color. Here is a far-shot and a close-up. Given the aesthetic of the altarpiece, I think the far shot is more accurate. The feeling of entering an interior space is lost without context. Looking at it now, I think the shadow below the figure is too dark, so I will give it a quick sanding.

The next few days mark the end of a phase and a transition to a new one. There are few weeks left in summer, but I will be spending them at Haystack School of Crafts studying fresco. When I get back it will be time to move into my new place, reconvene MPAC, enjoy returning friends, and get ready for classes and a different work-flow. My goals for the next few days (leaving Sunday) are: get a little color on here, collect images and sketches to work from at Haystack, and pack my apartment. I also have to take my business math final! (hahah) Before I leave I plan on doing an extended blog entry with higher quality photos of everything done so far, reflections on work done and work yet to be done. I think I am well on track to finish painting by November, with enough time to exhibit (somewhere, I hope!) and prepare the rest of my defense.