Influences

Okay! While I drink my morning coffee here (slow morning) I’d like to write a bit about some recent artistic influences. Talking about influences is a funny thing to me because so many of them are more subconscious and organic than conscious and rigid. It’s not like I conceive of a subject and then look at how my favorite artists did it and make a viewbook. It’s more that I will have an idea, probably vaguely shaped by another painting I once saw, and then I’ll start working it out and other things will come up, and I’ll search for something or discover something new, and eventually it will all coalesce into a composition. To capture that, I’m not going to talk only about my sources, but also the chronological process of remembering, discovering, and incorporating them. I will specifically focus on the most recent drawing I did for the center panel.

Source 1. My own recent work and experiences

One of my most exciting artistic developments of late is just simple continuity– I have some ideas that I have been exploring over a period of time. A couple weeks ago I did a large pencil drawing which is a self portrait in my kitchen.

This drawing had me thinking about using a familiar space to evoke emotion, and using my own figure as a prop. I am very interested in the human figure and love life drawing. I model for a figure group as well (yeah- live nude girl). Through modelling for the group I began to be able to see my own self as a form and not always a self. I saw many talented artists drawing me and learned from the ways they manipulated my body to capture my spirit, but also their own. I started working from my own self in this way. At first I thought it was narcissistic to draw myself two much but I realized two things: one, I am a little vain, so I might as well be honest about it, and two, it might be worse to pretend I can draw something I don’t know. It is honest to work within my sphere of emotional knowledge, which is yet small.

So, while I originally had a different composition planned, I decided it might be more evocative and honest to work within the confines of this gloriously familiar space– my own figure and my own kitchen.

 

Source 2. John Pack’s photography and lessons

Recently Ed commented that my drawings had a film sensibility. I know very little about film but I can guess where this is coming from. While I was abroad I took a digital photo class with John Pack which is retrospect had a HUGE impact on my developing aesthetic.

Using curves to manipulate the tonality of my photos allowed me to realize what I was drawn to much more quickly than I would have figured this out drawing. My photos at the time had a painterly sensibility that my drawings and paintings did not yet have, because I did not know that they needed it.

This photo by John is especially special to me:

Kambos, Paros, John Pack. Go to http://www.greaterjourney.org/Greater_Journey/the_journey.html to see more.

And here is one of my photos from the class:

This is not the best but the rest are Tiffs so this will have to do. In the photo class I developed a strong interest in mid-tones and a desire to make my greys sing!

 

Source 3. Andrew Wyeth and the Olsen House

I’m an Andrew Wyeth devotee. He was an incredible draftsperson. He was also much more radical than most people give him credit for. Recently we went to the Olsen House in Cushing and saw how he formed his compositions. This gave me a lot of license in my own formations. In working up this kitchen desk piece I had this watercolor in mind:

This is Christina in that crazy kitchen. One thing he does that really works– despite maintaining an overall appearance of detail and realism, most of the passages are simply tonal. The shadow areas are completely abstracted and the lightest areas in the windows are just brightness. Wyeth shows how to create better than reality. I kept this in mind for my own shadowy passages and windows.

 

Source 3. Robert Vickrey.

Vickrey is one of the first egg tempera artists I discovered. He wrote a great book on the subject. What I really look to him for is glancing light and shadow compositions. He almost always uses either a shadow or a flat pattern as a major part of his composition. I am also drawn to shadows, and a strong shadow fits well into the symbolism of my work right now. When I do the actual painting I will look to his figures, which have beautifully bleached-out highlights.

 

Source 4. Merode Triptych.

This was a symbolic influence as well as a visual one. Here, I was looking at both the figure of Mary and the way the rooms are so nicely contained by the borders. It was important to me that my room also fit within the borders. Mary’s reading also inspired me, and I twisted it so that my central figure was writing. Mary is demure and passive and waiting to be filled. A writing figure is a different story.

 

Source 5. Simone Martini’s Annunciation

The use of pattern and treatment of textiles in this piece has stuck with me since I saw it in Florence this fall. The textiles are not so beautiful in this image but in real life the Angel’s plaid cloak and the hem of the Virgin’s robe just sing. It is not obvious in my drawing but the dress I am wearing has a distinct floral pattern. I plan to emphasize that decorative element and contrast it with the pattern in the floor and the squares of the window. I also included the same pattern in those decorative triangle bits between the center painting and the sky. I think this will create a pleasing play between the frame and the interior, the decorative and the real.

 

Source 6. Vermeer.

Midway through this drawing I started thinking of Vermeer. I love the Northern Europeans and Vermeer holds a special place in my heart. Once I thought of him I could really see some connections between what I am aiming for and his work. A connection I had not thought of was the green and white checkered floor! Seriously, this floor is so important to me right now. It is my beloved.

Looking at the Vermeer’s really helped cement the direction of my composition. His genre paintings of people sitting and working at tables by the light of the window– perfect. I aimed for a similar feeling of quiet and homely grace.

 

After all that, here it is again, my final composition:

I hope this helps illuminate some of my thought process in the visual development of the thing. The symbolic and conceptual development is a different story for a different day.

 

 

This is exciting! Here’s my drawing for the center panel: about 12 inches high and the photo completely ruins it but one can get the idea:

I know my head is a little big and funny– that will be fixed. It was hard to fit a decent head in that 1 inch space. There will be larger studies of tricky things like head, hands, and feet.

Here’s what I have painted so far, including the sky:

Remember there will be beautiful blonde borders at every intersection.

And here is the super secret sneak preview:’

Of course, it will be a painting, and all the other paintings are only half done, and I have to deal with those white triangles (bring up the skies) and compose the bottom paintings, and it’s a horrible grainy bad-color photo in my kitchen, but this is what my thesis is going to  look like.

Tomorrow: the very personal and revealing updated explanation of the whole thing, as well as a post about playing artist, and lots of art history including Vermeer in his glory. I have many half-finished posts to finish.

Today was a horrible day. I got several bits of bad news- deaths and illnesses etc. I had a complete emotional breakdown at one point and was an irrational jerk to a completely innocent friend who just happened to be around (sorry Bourcard!). Working on this drawing was my solace, and holding it up there and finally really SEEING this crazy thing I am doing with all my days is a white flash of joy.

 

Composing the middle panel

I spent the weekend holed up my apartment painting the universe. Space goes across the top of the three panels. It starts with a cider sky (that dark red sky in the early night) and ends with pre-dawn. In the middle are the milky way and the moon. It is quite effectively celestial.

Starry Night over the Rhone. Van Gogh.

Creating it was a somewhat emotional experience. When I make a painting or drawing I try to draw on a particular feeling or experience, holding that thought in my mind while I work. The emotions find their way from my head to my heart to my fingers and they come out in the strokes of the brush or the rubbing of the pencil. The art then has a lot more depth. Sometimes it is quite easy to find the right feeling, as when drawing a self portrait. If I feel a desire to do a self-portrait it is usually because I am have some sort of personally compelling feelings.

Nocturne in Black and Gold. Whistler.

For most works I have to consciously decide what the thought I hold will be, and then work to keep it consistent. When I started painting the universe I knew exactly what I would hold, and it was a strong one. In recent years I have had two shall-we-say “mystical” experiences where I got to go on a visual tour of the Universe in my own head. The first one was bad and scary, but the second one was full of love and warmth and extreme connection with another person who was really a conduit to caring for all humans. It was a dreamy and extremely beautiful experience. I now feel a variety of conflicting feelings about it, which of course makes it more beautiful. This is what I held in my heart while I painted the universe, and I hope it lent my painting some of that warmth and loveliness, as well as some of the retroactive ache of the whole thing. Staring into space is as much longing as love.

Nocturne IV. Robert Motherwell.

 

 

SO excited

This morning I finished preparing the main panel, did some drawing for its composition, and then TAPED all my edges. I changed it as I went, drawing with the tape. Seeing it in large form I knew some of the edges I had planned were awkward. Now, they are beautiful! The tape is just to help me see the borders, and the actual borders will not look anything like blue painters tape! They will be neutral (either white or stained) flat pieces of wood about 1 inch wide. In each spot goes a painting.

I propped the whole thing up against my kitchen counter with a handy series of wooden spoons and plates. The counter is edited out (Poorly, I know. Hey, I have a netbook with Microsoft Paint! I’ll take it to the library and do it right eventually.) so the scale of the painting is lost. The whole thing is 8 ft wide and 5.5 ft tall. If I stand at the highest point it is exactly my height. Coincidence? YES!

Anyways it is so amazingly exciting now to see it all laid out and know that it is progressing and I will finish it. Really exciting. Time for some vegetable lunch, and then I think some painting out of doors.

Upcoming topics include playing artist and why Texas is turning into Gilead of the Handmaid’s Tale.

Middle Panel, little panels, two progressing paintings, under painting for river frieze. Working on this only now– got a lot done in the last two days and expect much progress in the next three weeks. It’s nice to just paint all day… I guess this is what it means to be a painter. Tomorrow, painting on the river frieze and continuing with the other two. If nothing else I am learning how to work.

A mad mess

Here I am after two more days of painting. I fear I am creating a mad mess of leaves. Time to let this one rest for a bit. The light and the depth of the painting is developing well though. I’d say it’s about half done. I estimate 20 hours work so far, not including canvas preparation.

Next step is to destroy everything thesis-related I worked on all summer (the one painting I putzed through for 2 months). Now that I know my narrative I know what needs to go there, and it’s not the landscape I have currently. Luckily my progress was so slow I can easily get to where I’m at again in three days of focused work. Sandpaper, now.

Update

Well, well, well– It’s be exactly a month since I last updated this sucker. I have been doing things in this time– mainly, taking classes and learning a TON. These two summer classes have set me forwards leaps and bounds. I am just really ready for the learning now. I have also been working on my thesis, and taking what I have learned in classes into my thesis work. Notably, I began on the second panel. I hope to get the third one built next weekend and then I will be able to work on them simultaneously, which is important as the pictures develop. I need to see how they work together. Here follows a photo update on the second panel:

Preparation station: The panel has been built of birch. I put a thin layer of gesso on it to serve as a glue before covering it in muslin. The muslin makes it archival– the paint could be removed in one layer.

Before the muslin dries I flip the panel over and put in tack nails for extra stability and also because they are beautiful. I paint the back a clean white– again for beauty, and also because it protects the wood and keeps it from drying unevenly. The next steps are repetitive. I mix a more brilliant and absorbent gesso by adding titanium white to the regular gesso. I apply this in many thin layers, painting in opposite directions and sanding in between. After several layers (in this case, about 6) I have a matte, smooth as glass, absorbent surface.

Here I prop my perfect new panel next to the old one and get excited about the possibilities… behind it is my bread bowl with some rising dough, yum!

Already I had my plan for the first and largest painting.This is the sketch I am working from. Those who live in Orono may recognize this as the path to the river near my house. It is beautiful in the afternoon when the sun glances off the meadow and breaks through the trees. I’ll save the allegorical explanation for another post, but suffice to say I finally nailed down my narrative and it will make sense all seen together. This is mid-size sketch in pencil, about 12 x 16 inches. I have a few tiny ones too.

Working on the floor, I began to paint. The floor and the taped edges are because the beginning is crazy time. I used a big brush, a simple paynes grey mixture, a spray bottle, spong, toweling, and even coarse salt. I had a general idea of the movement and texture I wanted in different areas of the painting, and I used all the tools to build a dark underlayer with those specific qualities. I know it works well for me to work light into dark– I like to build  up my tones slowly and have the benefit of the body of the darkness. This is something I discovered in my landscape class recently.

Next I moved to the upright easel and began to create structure. I choose an orange color to contrast with the blue-grey and aid me in creating the breaking light effect later on. I minded my drawing but also made compositional choices to emphasize the rhythm and direction I want in this panel. I changed shapes and spaces, continuously moving around and asking what the painting needed. The bread has moved for safety’s sake.

Here is the painting after drawing out all the linework:

It looks nothing like the final image will, but it is the beginning! Today I got 5 hours of straight work in and made a lot of progress. This my plan every day until I leave for Haystack. I started in the state you see above, and ended with this:

As you can see I concentrated fully on the light background, ignoring the dark foreground for now. I have been thinking a lot about the Luminists lately and I can see that in this painting. I can also discern my continued obsession with Andrew Wyeth. But mainly– this is me. That is the most satisfying part of my summer and my art education so far– seeing my own style begin to emerge in my painting and drawing. I am happy with where this is going, and look forward to working more tomorrow.