Printmaking workshop on Vashon Island
This is a test of flickr's blog feature...
Best Valentine’s Day Ever
On Valentine’s Day this year I was out of town. There was a yoga retreat in Tulum, Mexico that I just couldn’t pass up, Hallmark holiday or no. So off I went but I had one trick up my sleeve to make my man feel special. Here’s an article about it that was published in Microsoft’s newsletter:
Singing Valentines Spread the Love
| The Microsoft Theater Troupe-sponsored singing valentines delivered balloons, chocolate, flowers, love songs in four-part harmony, and, well, love across the Redmond campus on Friday—all for a good cause.
Fowler knocks on Horne’s door and tells him he has a delivery. She blows into a pitch pipe, and the group launches into a four-part harmony rendition of “Happy Together.” “Imagine me and you. I do. I think about you day and night, it's only right…” The words echo down the hallway as people emerge from their offices to see what’s happening. When the group is done singing, everyone except Horne goes back into their offices. As it turns out, Horne used to be involved with the Microsoft Theater Troupe as well as conducting the Microsoft orchestra, “so this is especially lovely,” he said. He opens the card, though he knows exactly who the singing valentine is from—his girlfriend, who is visiting Mexico. He drove her to the airport that morning. The group decides to sing Horne an encore and serenades him with “Dream.” |
The article continues but I captured the most important part. :)
In case you’re curious the message in his card read:
To my Wonderful and Significant Other,
Even though I’m far away,
on this most romantic day,
please know that I’m one of the few,
who has chosen to embarrass you.Te,he… Happy Valentine’s Day Sweetie!
Robin
Ha! This was not my finest prose but I was hoping to surprise him a little – I’m usually sappy and romantic and I hoped that he would be surprised by the little joke at the end.
Here’s a cute photo of Jim getting his card, flower, balloon and song. I was in Mexico and thinking of him the very moment he was getting his wacky surprise. This was the most fun I’ve ever had on Valentine’s Day – and I wasn’t even with my honey.
I have to apologize to my dogs
On Saturday I woke up to a beautiful morning. The sun was brilliant so it seemed like a perfect day to take the dogs for a walk. I took them with me to check in on our bunnies downstairs before heading out. The bunnies are caged fairly close to my paint studio space, so after visiting with them I wandered over to an old painting I had already “finished” (see previous post) and was inspired to scrape a little of the paint away.
Eight and a half hours later, I emerged from the downstairs with two paintings in my hands, gazed out at the night sky and asked my significant other if it was too late to take the dogs for a walk in the sun.
The artist’s heart and mind are powerful tools. It was a sunny day (and I suppose my mood was sunny too) so light literally shines out of this piece. Even the other painting I worked on was infused with much more light than it had in its previous incarnation. Also a few months ago I did a bunch of art deco research for a mural I painted in Second Story Repertory's lobby and even though I didn’t use sharp angles in the mural, I clearly was influenced by just looking at that style. I’m traveling to Mexico in a few weeks. Will the change in scenery -- bright sun, blue ocean and ancient ruins -- show up in a future painting as well? I hope so!
Born Again
In my previous post, I wrote about a painting I completed on New Year’s Eve. Yesterday I finished that painting again.
The saying “a painting is never truly finished, it is merely abandoned” is apt. I wasn’t quite ready to let this one go. I am using it to inform new work in what is becoming a series. Although I would love to say that I could freeze it in time and never touch it again, the painting is there next to me while I work on the new paintings (doing it’s job of informant.) With all that wet paint in front of me I can’t help but dab at it and push it a little further.
People who don’t paint may think this is scary business. After all I was satisfied with the painting. I might have even hung it on a wall. “Aren’t you afraid of ruining it after all that work?” one might ask. But every painter knows that this is the edge that we walk on with every brush stroke and every palette knife scrape. We slowly build our pieces up from nothing, destroy it a little and build it back up countless times throughout the process. Without the experimentation and risk, there would be no joy for me as an artist. It would merely be a craft with handy 1, 2, 3 instructions. The day my work becomes formulaic is the day I move on to find another challenge.
The new painting has a bit more texture and layers than it’s predecessor. I’ve included detail views in the text here. If you click on the images you can look at a larger view and see all the layering and effects.
City Abstract: Exploration
Eighteen years ago on New Year’s Eve I was standing in a hospital gown performing diaper origami on my newborn daughter. It was the first diaper I had ever touched, let alone changed. Shaylyn was so delicate and small, I handled her awkwardly and carefully as I tried to make the tiny diaper secure. As I fastened the last piece, I looked up at the large sterile clock on the wall. The big hand clicked up toward twelve. It was midnight and a new year had begun. I smiled and looked down at my baby. “Yep,” I thought “1991 is going to be full of diapers.” And it was.
Fast forward to the present. Shay went out (sans diaper) with her friends to celebrate her 18th birthday and the new year. Meanwhile I gave birth at home to a new painting.
I finished this abstract representation of a city about an hour after I heard the neighbors ringing in the New Year. I hadn’t meant to paint right through midnight but I could see that the piece was close to final and I didn’t want to stop to sip champagne. I’m no longer a superstitious person but who knows, maybe it does bode well that I was doing my favorite activity as 2009 began.
A little back story on the painting: I struggled with this piece quite a bit since October. It has gone through many, many incarnations as I fumbled my way through to the image I wanted to portray. Now that my urban child has arrived, I know what I’m shooting for. I will create another piece that is informed by this one. If the exploration continues to be satisfying, a series will undoubtedly develop. This may be a pivotal moment or a dead-end but I’m enjoying the anticipation while it’s here.
Some notes about the painting:
- it is painted on deep canvas (it will remain frameless)
- the four front edges have been scrapped away to show the canvas (it is a nice framing element and emphasizes the depth)
- color strategy: I moved away from my usual saturated complimentary palette with blue and orange hues and opted for a heavily neutralized primary triad instead
Here’s to my future offspring and a Happy 2009!
Ribbon Painting
This piece utilizes a color strategy that was introduced to me by Julia Ricketts. The first step is to create a palette of hues based on an object from nature. I used a lovely branch from a tree in our yard. It’s a very exotic tree with burnt reddish blossoms and greenish wood that is covered in ochre fuzz. I generally work very quickly so it was refreshing to slow down and focus purely on color. The hues are similar to my usual palette except these are much more neutral. Instead of using the colors to create a still life of the branch, the next step is to apply shades and tints of the hues to a design of one’s choice. I had been working on ribbon paintings over the summer so I thought it would be interesting to see how this palette affected the overall look. The natural tones really complement the organic quality of the design.
The imagery and colors together with the shape of the canvas work well to signify diversity, interconnection, family and unity. Overall I think this painting is about relationships. The ribbons are simultaneously intertwined and independent. This shows that through a mass of undulating shapes, twists and turns, balance is possible. The goal isn’t to make nice, neat little lines out of the messy spaghetti-like material in our lives. It is simply to find the balance in what is already there.
Abstract Sketches
| Most of the pieces I've produced in the past five years have been abstract representations of the human form. Although the results varied, my process has been similar in each of my paintings. I painted from a model posed on a model stand, I quickly devised color and composition strategies and I leapt into the process. I moved quickly and confidently and the piece came together fast. However in the past couple months I have been exploring something a little different. I have been creating many, many spontaneous abstract studies created from exploring with materials, approaches and mark making under the guidance of Julia Ricketts and Olivia Britt at Gage Academy in Seattle. This seems like an important stage in my development. I have gotten past a certain level of frustration around mixing color so I feel more agile and free to express myself. As technique becomes less of a focus, the spirit of what I want to convey has a stronger pull. To that end I am exploring new and old materials. Some are traditional art materials like paint, glue and paper. Others are more random: contact paper, duct tape, office supplies, crushed egg shells -- in the midst of these explorations nothing escapes my grasp. I am also experimenting with different approaches that abstract artists have employed in their work by trying them out for myself. I've played with loose, spontaneous marks like the ones found in Mark Tobey's work and also taken a more calculated (literally) systematic approach like that of Sol LeWit. Here are just a few of the sketches that I have created. I'm working on a couple pieces (not shown here) that I hope will become successful paintings. No matter what the result, I will post them here. |
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Going back to collage
Collage is a perfect artform for summer. I came home after work the other day and spent some time in the sun on the back deck slathering paint on watercolor paper. These exercises in abstract color and form would then be used as backgrounds for collages. It's a very free process -- very easy to get into a state of flow because you know the paint is just going to get covered up so it doesn't make a lot of sense to nit pick.
Here's my first experiment. It incorporates a photo I took of a punky girl from my car as I waited for the light to turn green. It also gives a nod to Robert Rauschenberg; I pulled in an image from one of his collages that hangs in MOMA.
A Departure
Thank goodness for cave people and their doodles on cave walls. For years I have used their work as an example of why it's OK to "leverage" another artist's idea. It's one of my little sayings: "If artist's didn't steal each other's ideas, we'd still be making cave paintings." Picasso said it was OK, too but then again he was kind of a schmuck.
Actually I love the Picasso quote (it's way better than my cave painting mantra.) He said, "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
Which brings me to the work I stole today.
I stumbled upon Jane Wynn's site with her shrine art that caught my eye because it includes modified toys. How cool is that? Seemed like it would be a lot of fun to create. She even has a really beautifully done book with descriptions of her techniques. Technically I don't think it's stealing if someone creates a manual on how to heist the goods.
This afternoon I created a nifty little box with prissy little pearls and a gold hollowed out egg and contrasted it by slamming rusted nails along the top and side. fun. My favorite part is the way the nails are rusted on the outside of the box but the tips that are emerging inside the box are brilliant gold. This piece oozes with symbolism.
I could seriously get into this stuff. You start with a wooden box and some paint and then you find yourself rummaging through the house for little items to maim, destroy and repurpose. I played around with her toy modification techniques and I'm happy to report that my next objet d'art is going to include a winged anteater.
Here's a sneak preview:
Lucian Freud at MoMA
I am standing in front of an oversized painting of an oversized woman lounging on a couch. The perspective of the floor boards is dizzying; the paint is spackled on in thick slabs. I am in MoMA's Lucian Freud exhibit and I can not pull myself away from this piece. I step back to view the overall effect, then dart in to examine the heavily textured brush strokes.
I remember my own work at home. How I struggled in the studio just a few days before with the new square canvases I have started to use. I have always worked on vertical canvases and the new wider format was making it hard to view of the model while simultaneously painting on the far right side of the canvas. So now I stand in front of this 160 cm wide painting and I wonder how he did it.
I must internalize this; I want to experience it as he did. The painting is hung on a narrow wall and I can see past it on either side. I hold an invisible paintbrush in my right hand. I am "painting" on the left side of his work, peering around it to view the nonexistent Benefits Supervisor resting on the couch. Then I move to the right. Did he tilt his easel toward the model so he could see both her and the painting surface? (Is that why the perspective is so unsettling?) Or if not, did he dash to the left, hold the image in his mind and then dash to the right to paint in what he saw? (As I do now to see what that would feel like. The painting is huge.) Or perhaps he is ambidextrous so I switch my fictitious brush to my left hand, peer around the right side and dab at the canvas. I step back to appreciate "my" work.
When I was a little girl, I asked my parents if I could take a giraffe home from the zoo. I told them I would keep it in my bedroom closet. Now I want to take this painting home with me, put it in my garage and reproduce it. I would learn so much. It would be easier to care for than a giraffe.
Lucian Freud: Benefits Supervisor Resting
1994, Oil on canvas. 160x150 cm
1994, Oil on canvas. 160x150 cm
Seated Figure
I may make some changes to this piece but here's how it stands at the conclusion of three sessions with the model. Any alterations I make now are a little more risky because I will be doing it all from my head -- not that that's a bad place to tap in to but the brain tends to want to shore things up with right angles and parallel lines (i.e. all things that don't exist in nature.) But surely darkening up that back leg could only help. I'm tempted to go in with some line work on the figure but chances are pretty good that I would end up ruining it. If only 'command-Z' existed on a canvas, alas.
Oil 36" x 36"
Work in progress shots from the first two sessions:
It's kind of fun to compare the latest work with a similar piece I painted a year ago.
I was actually thinking of this painting when I added the pthalo blue to the floor of the one above.
Looking at the painting above, you can see that I'm starting to play with less saturated hues. It's tricky business; I'm neutralizing the colors on my palette but trying to avoid sucking all the life out of them. It will be interesting to see where this investigation takes me.
I like this excerpt
"You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen, he took his inheritance—seven hundred kronen—and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas."
- from Steven Pressfield's book "The War of Art"
He's right; it is an overstatement but nice use of exaggeration to make a valid point. Creativity realized takes courage, perseverance—and some talent doesn't hurt either. I'll have to check this book out.
Painting Quickly in Seattle
I created a 24" x 24" oil painting Tuesday night using a direct painting method handed down to artists by the Impressionists. I've been working with Barbara Fugate at Gage Academy in Seattle for the last couple years to study this approach.
This style of painting suits me quite well because it leverages my natural inclination to render images with gusto!
The image to the right is the piece in the early stages when I have some simple goals: cover the canvas with paint as quickly as possible, employ an intentional strategy with my color use (in this case reds and violets) and block out shadow and light (forgetting about the form in front of me) in simple forms.
The painting was completed in two and a half hours (with model breaks it's probably a little under two hours of actual painting.) I mention the time only to give you a sense of what it feels like to paint something this way with no under-painting as a guide and little time to think. Direct painting is reactive. One quickly lays in a color in various places on the canvas and steps back to see the effect. Then the mind races: how to fix, how to retain a perfect mark, what to do next.
Detail shot:
Seated Nude
Here are some in progress shots of a painting that is almost complete. I'm working with a limited palette - primarily blues and oranges with a touch of green for contrast. I'm building up the surface quite a bit and then scraping it back, a process that I find risky and exciting.
I've exaggerated the legs intentionally. The next and hopefully last thing I'll do to this painting is to add color and crispness to the legs so that they really pop and maybe highlight the shoes some more.
Two Girls and a Motorcycle
(And the Google search hits keep coming...)
I'm only a few hours in to this painting so its pretty rough but I like where its going:
The background needs to change dramatically. The figures and bike are coming along nicely and will just keep getting more refined.
Ribbon Painting: Nearly done
I made more progress on my ribbon painting on Saturday. I could work on this for an eternity but I think I'll clean up the edges, add some more depth to some colors and then abandon it so that I can move on to the next incarnation. I'd like to tackle another one but make a change in my approach. I am going to start the next one with no under-drawing. Instead of planning out the design in advance, I'd like to see what emerges if I paint one ribbon at a time and see where it takes me. It's riskier but could have a bigger pay off (such is life, eh?)
When it's complete I'll write about the inspiration for the piece and the reason I am pursuing this particular exploration.
Hopefully I'll have another start of a painting to post later today. I'm starting a new piece as an assignment for a painting class I'm taking. I have been studying with Barbara Fugate for some time now and she offered me and another long time student some additional mentorship. She is giving us assignments to work on outside of class and will be giving us feedback along the way. Today's assignment: "What is Red?" Stay tuned...
New Painting(s): One Work in Progress
I am making good progress on two paintings. The one below is unfolding at home -- acrylic on canvas, dark jewel tones in the background with warm orange and yellow tints on the ribbons in the foreground. The white that you see is bare canvas. I hope to have this finished in a week. I'll post a better quality photo of the final piece -- the shot below is pretty bad.
I'm working on another painting in the studio -- oil on canvas, a nude seated with her legs and arms crisscrossed and angular. Using a similar palette as the one above: orange, blues, yellow-greens. This painting will take a month to complete.
New paintings are up on RobinTroy.com
Q: How do you know when you're ready for a gallery show?
A: When your living room looks like this...
Painting with Barbara Fugate
My blog used to be on Windows Live Spaces which was unfortunate because the site's code of conduct policy didn't allow me to post images of my artwork. I was forced to delete figure drawings and paintings I had posted after receiving a threat by the site's administrators that my Space was going to be deleted unless I complied. The painting on the right is the one that got me into trouble. It popped up on somebody's radar (eek! breasts!) and soon my entire Space was called into question.
I wanted to start a new blog on a more reasonable service but it felt like an overwhelming task. I had been using Spaces since 2004 and had a lot of memories stored there. I kept using my Space but stopped writing about my artistic pursuits. It's really too bad because I made some big strides in my work that year. It would have been nice to capture some of my thoughts along the way.
Here are some examples of that work for posterity. These were created in the Spring of 2007 under the guidance of Barbara Fugate.
This first one is fairly large and hangs framed in our entryway:
New Painting
Check it out - there's a new painting on rt.com:
http://www.robintroy.com/figurePaintings.html
There was a key moment when I could have finished the painting but I stepped back and saw that the subject's hand just wasn't cutting it. The position was wrong and it took away from the entire piece. I generally paint with a model who is shared by 10 artists, so I can't make changes to the pose mid-stream -- but OH, bliss! -- with a half hour left to go in our sitting, I asked Zan to change the position of her hand. And you know what happened? She did! And it made a huge difference in this painting. What a great feeling to have control over the story I tell...
Zan is a remarkable woman; very creative, open, a free-spirit. We spent as much time talking as painting. I sense a Zan blue/orange series on the horizon... :)
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New Work
I haven't updated this Space (or my web site for that matter) with my artwork in quite a while. Since the fall I've been taking classes from a talented painter, Barbara Fugate. I've been primarily focused on abstracting the human form, flattening the picture plan and working with a limited (analogous) palette. Here are two examples of this: seated man (on the left) is complete, while the angry gal is close enough to completion to show here.
(UPDATE - 03/09/07: I had to remove my second painting from this entry. I received an email from Microsoft Customer Support threatening to disable my Space if I didn't remove the image that "involved nudity." The email included a URL to the Code of Conduct which states that there should be no images that "incites, advocates, or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity..." OMG. It's fine art; not pornography. The model is only revealing her breasts in the image (her lower half is covered.) Is this the policy in WL Spaces Europe, as well? I find it hard to believe that Europeans would consider a painting of a topless woman offensive.)
I have another painting sitting in the studio that needs another couple hours of work and then it will be done, too. I'll post it if it turns out OK. (03/09/07: Nope, I won't be able to post it here, either. It shows a <gasp!> boob.)
My goal for this year is to show my pieces in public somewhere, anywhere: gallery, coffee shop, bathroom stall, back alley... anywhere but online. :)
Wow!
I'm sort of in shock. At the moment there are only 34 Faces for Life masks that have higher priced bids than mine - 34 out of 245 entries! My Tree of Life mask has gotten 4 bids and is currently priced at $105. Of course this makes me feel good because I'm helping to raise money for a worthy cause. Really. My ego has nothing to do with it ;-)
A Painting for Art with Heart
Art with Heart is an organization that supports kids facing crisis such as life-threatening illness and homelessness. They provide self-expression workshops, distribute a really cool coloring book (with contributions from many artists) to hospitalized kids, and serve food to homeless teens. There will be an Art with Heart auction on November 4th – and I’m so excited! I just completed a painting that I’m donating to the cause! Here’s the description I’m submitting for the auction catalog:
“A painting with a call to action, “Dream” juxtaposes a serene lakeside park with a colorful fish in a bowl of water. Painted specifically for the Art with Heart auction. Artist: Robin Troy. Oil/Mixed media painting. 16 x 20"
It’s painted on a 1.5 inch deep canvas so it goes unframed and looks quite striking with its blue-gray sides. This may be hard to see in the photo but the edges of the fish image is embellished with little pearl studs; printed brads make the word “dream.”
Try not to feel too sorry for the fish. You know what they say about having a will and a way and all that.
Note: This is a detail shot of the painting. I have to dig into the archive to find an image of the full painting. When I ported over my blog from Spaces.live.com, I found the the full size image was no longer on Spaces' servers.
Faces for Life
I finished a piece for charity last night. The Puget Sound Blood Center holds a fundraising auction every couple years called “Faces for Life.” Artists and celebrities paint and decorate masks that the Center provides. I painted the Tree of Life on my mask with branches that curl up to form hearts across her forehead. The five branches of the tree represent the generous hand of the person who bids on and wins the mask.
There are front and sideview pictures below, plus a work in progress shot. (The mask is big, by the way, it's slightly larger than life size.) To design the piece, I sketched out many different thumbnail sized designs and when I had one that I liked, I covered the mask in plastic wrap and drew on top of it. It really helped me to visualize the design coming together.
One interesting thing about my approach to the final piece is that I altered the structure of the mask before painting it. The branches are actually molded on top of the mask, giving it depth and texture (something that shows up in my work a lot.)
The auction will be held in the Spring of ’06. You can view the entries from the 2003 action by visiting http://facesforlife.org/.
Free Spirit: Ilona Royce-Smithkin
I met an inspiring woman on a recent trip to Cape Cod. Ilona Royce-Smithkin was sitting with a friend in Provincetown’s Renaissance Gallery, where she shows her drawings and paintings, when my Dad graciously introduced us. She and I perused her portfolio together and I pointed to a painting that I liked in particular. It was a lovely impressionistic painting of a nude. She told me it won 1st place one year at the Art Students League in New York but she had lost it in a fire.
I like her very much. She’s friendly, theatrical and eccentric. Frequently she sings in a club in outrageous, skimpy outfits wearing fish net stockings and huge false eyelashes (actually, sometimes she dresses like that even when she's not performing :-) She paints in vibrant, complementary blues and oranges. Most impressive is how she talks about her work with such pride. The fact that she’s a sassy older woman has nothing to do with my respect for her. No one is that comfortable in her own skin unless she’s been sorely tested, met the challenges and survived. If life is suffering as the Buddhists proclaim, she may have found the antidote.
My father, Frank Winters, asked Ilona if he could take her photo; she was more than happy to oblige. (Notice her artwork in the background.)
New Work: Non-representational abstractions
My abstract work is becoming more fluid and a little less heavy. I’m still using a great deal of texture and carefully balanced palettes within each piece but an ephemeral quality is emerging that I haven’t seen before. I’ll add these images to the robintroy website soon.
I took a break from painting for a couple weeks in June; I felt like I needed it. Painting is a messy, unstructured process. While I create, the place I’m trying to arrive keeps slipping away frustratingly often – but I can’t stop. I keep going; I keep pushing until I’m satisfied. It is the antithesis of order. When I take a break from painting, my house gets cleaned more often. 
There are fewer dishes in the sink. During these periods, I feel like I fit into my nice little suburban neighborhood better; I feel “normal.” And yet for reasons I don’t entirely understand, while I’m in the act of painting everything feels absolutely right in my world. There is no sadness, no ecstasy, just this creating – and it feels like I’m supposed to keep going and never stop. I have no idea why.
Chuck Close and Philip Glass
I’m thinking about long, lost friends of mine. I met Jared when I was 15 – he’s the reason I moved to Seattle three years later. He’d be a great example of a Connector in Gladwell’s “Tipping Point.” He became a music promoter, club owner and I have no idea what else – I think he’s in LA now. He used to put me on the list at the door to see bands like Pearl Jam in amazingly small, secret shows. He and I could talk for hours – he brought out the corny, silliness in me. Then there’s Mary: designer, fashion diva – she is the queen of the aesthetic. She has transformed each of her homes into lush, modern yumminess. Bold color, clean lines – fantastic. And she always looks (there’s no other word to describe it) FABULOUS! Ryan: intensely, insanely talented fine artist. Hyper-realism with a very urban sensibility. He used to look at my work and try so hard to say something complimentary. “I love this one brush stroke… here. It’s a great color.” He used to hang with Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Tool owns some of his work... it always amazed me, the people he knows. Myong: she has a very deliberate approach to design – needs absolute control over the visual because (and it’s so true) no-one can do it quite as well as she (but I'm writing what her modesty would never allow her to speak.) Extremely creative solutions that are deceptively simple and very, very beautiful. Her home is exquisite. She turned me on to opera and kept encouraging me to check out the Academy of Fine Art (I believe she knows the founders.)
Memories of these old friends resurfaced tonight after I had been thinking about the inspiring connection between Chuck Close and Philip Glass. Fourty-year friendship, each painting or composing portraits of the other, and so many threads and parallels in their work. (Read "A Portraitist Whose Canvas is a Piano" – their story is wonderful.) They’ve each said that they became embedded in each other’s lives... I think I have some friends I need to contact.
Happy Birthday, Leonardo...
…and thank you. Thank you for taking so long to paint each of your very few paintings. Thank you for all the times you went to your studio, stared at a work in progress and left without picking up a paintbrush. I’ll never come close to your genius but at least I can say that I’m as patient as DaVinci!
At right: VERY ROUGH work in progress (detail view.)
Yesterday, I organized my home office files
Once, many years ago I worked as an art director on a CD-ROM project for Disney. One young guy who worked for me was a keen observer of human behavior. Any time I came into work and cleaned my office, he later told me, he would prepare himself mentally for a big flurry of creativity and work. He knew what was coming.
I’ve long known that this was a pattern in my professional work, but didn’t see it clearly in my fine art until now. I now see the cyclical nature of my creativity. Before an intense period of creating there is always a lull. During that time I always (always!) organize my home, car, studio – some place in my life gets spruced up. It feels like the nesting urge that took hold right before I gave birth to each of my children (something that happens to most pregnant women, in fact.) And perhaps that’s what I’m doing – preparing for the birth of something that has never existed before.
Creation is a cycle – and I believe it’s important to embrace the ebbs and flows. If we agonize over a blank canvas or page, we exaggerate the situation and actually create a problem where one need not exist. Instead we can choose to recognize the signs of our creative phases. How else would we make it through the rains of April, if we didn’t know that it would bring beautiful flowers in May?
Drawn back to simplicity
Once – just once – I created an abstract painting that felt like an inspired piece of work. (It's big, full of texture, and needs to be seen in person to fully appreciate.) I created it in two sessions: the first I honestly don’t remember, the second was painted on my bathroom floor while my (now ex-)husband installed a new glass enclosure for our shower. It was over the course of this second session that I experienced a painting literally fly out of me. (Take note, people who use lack of studio space as an excuse not to create :-)
The painting was shown publicly once, and offers for purchase were made, but I couldn’t bring myself to sell it. Over the course of a year or two, I tried to recreate the experience of expressing something beautiful in a totally unselfconscious way. No symbolism, no realism, no obvious meaning to hold the viewer’s hand or prove what a good artist I am – just a pleasing design created in an effortless way. I tried to do this again, but I couldn’t. (I have 5 tight, controlled, unappealing abstracts cowering in my garage to prove it.)
It’s been five years since that painting came to me. And then yesterday, for reasons I won’t go into here, I felt really pissed at just about everything: life, the universe, everything (and knowing that the answer is 42 didn’t help ;-) I was even pissed at having to do all of these perfect figure drawings – every frickin’ weekday. I thought, “Damn-it! I want to have some (@#$%^!!!) fun!”
And then it happened. Yesterday I laid down the all important first layer in my abstract process – the textured layer – the design layer – the monochromatic modern version of a grisaille that acts as the foundation for the entire piece. And, heaven be praised, I like it!
What will the next session bring? Color is a certainty. But Beauty? Disaster? It’s impossible to know.
SAM, I am?
The Seattle Art Museum Volunteers Association is holding its annual art exhibit from April 5 to May 1. The work will be hung in the first floor hallway of the museum. Some jurying of artwork occurs so I can’t say with 100% certainty that my work will be displayed, but I can write that this Monday I’m dropping off one of my figure drawings at SAM (included in this entry.) Stay tuned…!
04/05/05 UPDATE: I walked into the Seattle Art Museum with a naked man and didn't get arrested. My drawing will be up until May 1st.
Unfinished Works
Photos included in this entry: One drawing, one painting with so much promise and yet left unfinished. The former was cut short by a flat tire, the latter is in need of some glazing. Why is it so hard to finish some pieces? I have a self portrait languishing inside a pad of paper because I can’t bear to look at it again. That one I know I’ll come back to. A gravitational pull will overtake me I’ll be scratching away at it with charcoal before I realize what happened. I do love the magical side of what we do in the Atelier everyday. 
I’m sure all of us at some point has created a drawing, stepped back and wondered how on earth this thing came into being. Some drawings are effortless and come from a source outside of ourselves, while others are constipated, tight and over-done. Not knowing the outcome in advance is what makes this journey so much fun.
Student Show at Seattle Academy of Fine Art
I have a couple of my drawings hanging in the Rosen Gallery at the Seattle Academy of Fine Art. And when I say, "Rosen Gallery" I mean the third floor hallway. Here's the official announcement from the SAFA website:
Rosen Gallery | Exhibitions
"Studio Figures"
Kang-O'Higgins & Stasinos student works.
March 11 to May 8
Opening: Friday, Apr 1, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Jot down the opening info. Go. Meet neurotic art students (neurotic because they draw every morning – who does art in the morning for Pete’s sake? Oh, right. I do.) Well, go for the free wine in any case.
A shot of Mark critiquing our work in the studio. I can tell by the position of his lips that he's saying, "Daft. You're all bloody daft." :-)
Art: the Cheap Therapist
I’ve been playing with a medium that this journal has previously referred to as “the devil’s crayon” but most people just call it Conté. It’s tricky stuff. So far my most successful Conté drawings are quick gesture drawings. I’m not 100% convinced that it actually should be used for longer poses – but that’s what I’m trying to suss out.
Conté is a good medium for me because I have a tendency toward heavy handed rendering – which charcoal seems to exploit but Conté restrains (a bit.) Not surprisingly this heavy handedness rears its ugly head in my figurative oil paintings too – helping me to create true “monsterpieces.” If I’m brave next week I’ll post a progression of that work here. (And when I say brave I mean that I’ll post a progression only if there’s actually noticeable progress. Did I say brave?)
All this has led me to think about how my personality is showing up in my work (and cursing my 7th grade art teacher for praising my intensely dark drawings.) I have to admit that I do live my life with a certain heavy handedness. I find myself having to remember to mull things over and not to make rash decisions. I can be quite black and white about situations. Over the years I’ve had to temper a tendency to either idealize or demonize – in other words, to see no shades of grey, no mid-tones. This is interesting and perhaps sad because in drawing all the action happens in the mid-tones. The highlights are obvious and so are the shadows but the nuances and subtleties, the play of light across the flesh, the surface is gracefully described by the gentle little mid-tones. The mid-tones create the fleshy places, the flexible places, the place where compromise is possible, trust is built… and I’m no longer referring to drawing anymore.
Once upon a time I thought that if I forced myself to write with my left hand that it would make me more creative (something I gave up trying to do after a few hours) and now fifteen years later I find myself wondering what will happen when I become more gentle in my approach with Conté, oil paint and what-have-you. I wonder if my personality will soften, too. Is this why Maslow said that an artist must create to become fully self-actualized?
What Ails Thee, Artist?
Once you get past the initial delusional state that tells you that becoming a good artist will be quick and easy, reality sets in and the real work begins. And to quote Prez. B in all his depth and eloquence, “It’s hard.” It’s hard psychologically, emotionally, physically, financially, and so on.
Suzanne Brooker (another SAFA instructor who I recently began studying with) said that it takes persistence, patience and passion to be a professional artist. (She should know, her work is stunning.) I like how she boils it down to 3 P’s – a trinity of essential ingredients working in coordination: mind, spirit and heart.
During the act of creating I seem to focus most on the middle piece: patience. It’s a meditative process for me, a rising above the ego into a place of calm faith. I have faith that somewhere in the mess and mistakes there is beauty; I have faith that I have the ability to release it; and I know that if I don’t a valuable lesson has been learned for my future work. That’s what Michelangelo was referring to when he said that the statue is already in the rock and he just chisels away the excess. I always interpreted that quote as a humble, clever statement. (Oh, it’s not me, it’s the rock.) But I’ve come to believe that he was actually talking about faith. Having enough faith in yourself to put all that crazy inner chatter and emotions on hold to allow the art to be revealed. Just relax and the beauty will unfold – eventually (you know, after all that persistence.) 
In this vein, I’ve included photos of a drawing which represents 4 days of work that is a both a success and a failure (two for the price of one!) I’m proud of the rendering, but unfortunately the proportions are way off. And it just so happens to be an attempt to draw Michelangelo's David. (Love his work, not his personality – but I have to say that I have a bit of a crush on Raphael. That dude was a player!)
So if you're discouraged in your artistic practice and thinking about the 3Ps doesn’t help, then just read this poem by Michelangelo (tape it to your easel!) This is a man who painted one of the most ambitious projects practically against his will (always signing his letters as “Michelangelo, the sculptor”), in incredibly harsh conditions (although not laying on his back as a mistranslation of the word “resupinus” (bent backward) has led many to believe) – read this and I promise it’ll make your struggles feel trivial.
I' HO GIA FATTO UN GOZZO
(On The Painting Of The Sistine Chapel)
by Michelangelo Buonarrotii
I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den--
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be--
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind;
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.
Skilz
Yep, I got skills – and they keep getting better. Looking back at my old work, I’m starting to see the missteps more clearly (progress which is extremely encouraging.) So yesterday I tweaked a couple of my pieces from last quarter. That's what's I love about drawing. I can refine until my heart’s content and then quietly put it out there for public viewing. This is why I have such a deep respect for anyone who performs live music or theater. It’s so brave. Take Ani DiFranco for example. She not only plays her music with intensity (loud, fast, charged – far from safe) but she’s self deprecating and silly throughout the show. It works because when she laughs, the audience laughs right along with her. You’d be hard pressed to feel that kind of energy at a gallery opening – but wouldn’t it be something to create an equally intense emotional response with a piece of 2-D art?
Until I figure out how to do that ;-) enjoy my safe little renderings – as I mentioned these are oldies with a facelift.
Squirrel
My last entry got me thinking about my childhood artwork. When I was in the 2nd grade, I completed an oil pastel drawing of a squirrel. I can picture it as if it were hanging on the wall right in front of me. A sheet of large blue paper is filled with the side view of a squirrel with a big bushy tail. It was rendered in blues and grays that I blended until my tiny fingers were sore. I had to take little breaks to let the tip of my finger cool down – but I liked the way the friction’s heat made it easier to produce a smudgy fur-like effect. I was so very proud of that squirrel.
Then one day I was called into the hall by a teacher I had never met before. We stood in front of the drawing (now in a display case) and she offered to buy it from me! I can’t remember how much exactly but I think it was about $20. This was ton of money to me – after all I was only seven years old and my family didn’t have much money. But absolutely without hesitation I beamed and politely told her that I didn’t want to sell it. I was so thrilled that someone thought my work was good enough to buy that I didn’t actually need or want the money.* But I’m sure part of it too was that I loved that squirrel too deeply to ever let him go.
*This is a tendency that I really need to leave behind me. A similar situation happened again with this painting... when I was 33!
Pride
I teach kid’s art classes for the Boys and Girls Club (ages 6-12.) Today was the first day of a Creative Painting class that I’ve been itching to teach. I'll be exposing students to relatively simple but powerful techniques to give their work outside of class a little extra pizzazz. So armed with straws, brushes and ink we set to work on creating tree paintings. The kids totally got it – they blew paint around, asked if they could use their fingers to make leaves (Yes! of course!) and (a third thing, there has to be a third!) uh, they had a lot of fun.
I usually post images of my own work in this blog, generally work that I’m proud of, which is something that I’m not able to do today. Truthfully, my last two pieces just haven’t panned out. But all is not lost. Each study in mediocrity taught me how to do something better: pick better paper, allow myself more time, dot, dot, dot. So instead I’m proudly posting a piece of work that one of my students produced just hours ago. (I have it because I'm submitting it to a Boys and Girls Art contest in the fall and I want to make a print for the student to keep in the meanwhile.)
But here’s the thing – I feel much more elated about this creation than I have ever felt, not only from my past posts, but from anything I’ve ever produced. I mean, look at this beautiful piece of art – with its strong trunks and subtle light filled leaves. And just like my list of “three things the kids understood,” this painting has an absolutely ideal number of trees. And don't get me started on the composition – the uneven spacing, two trees in the background positioned close while the one in the foreground stands alone. OK, I’m gushing – but look at this art! Look at it now – and when you do, repeat after me (out loud, please): “This was created by a 6-year old.”
Focus
Mark always encourages us to continually step back and view our work from a distance while we draw. This helps us clearly see the overall effect that our marks and smudges are having on the drawing – which in my mind is pretty damn important. At first it was a difficult practice to adopt because it’s easy to get swept away in the meditative act of drawing. But after the first week or so of forcing myself to stop, walk away and view from afar, this has become a habit. In fact I totally rely on this now; without it I feel like I can’t see what I’m doing.
Implicit in his instructions is that we’re to assess what’s working well and question what’s wrong – but I’ve added my own little twist. When I step back I say to myself, “What do I need to do to make this more beautiful?” I think I actually shorthand it and just think the word “beauty” but you get the idea. The cool part is that I didn’t decide to start doing this – it just sort of happened. Drawing is all about focus: when drawing at the easel, you focus on the model; when you step back, you focus on what is most important to your work. In my case, I’m shooting for beauty.
Smokin'...!
Studying with Mark Kang-O’Higgins is wonderfully challenging. As I’ve written before, he’s brutally honest with his students. I overheard him critiquing someone’s work this week (read this with an Irish accent), “This is looking good. She’s a bit scary looking, but it’s good.” Or my favorite, “I hate to tell you this, but it was looking much better yesterday” or worse “two days ago.”
But this isn’t what makes studying with Mark such a challenge. The process of learning with Mark can feel like swimming in a thick pool of taffy. It’s amorphous and undefined. If your work is tight and technical, he pushes you to loosen up and become more expressive; if it’s expressive, he drives home proper proportion and tight rendering. Perhaps taffy comes to mind because of all this pushing and pulling he does. But one thing is clear: the fact that he doesn’t propound any particular style for us to conform to is much more psychologically demanding than it would be if he gave us a clearly defined prescription of what to create – and that is his gift to us as well. He pushes and pushes (and pushes) us to make great art – no matter what the style. And in the end, we will all develop our own voice and create art with our own distinct story to tell.
Along these same lines, remember my nice little drawing of a reclining nude? After that tightly executed piece, Mark encouraged me to begin my next drawing by using a 20-minute gesture drawing as the foundation to loosen up my work. Compare the reclining nude with the one below to see the impact Mark has on my work. Personally, I like both drawings, but the important piece is that there's a clear exploration of technique happening.
Now here’s the fun, slightly crazy bit: last night while I slept, I had the word “sfumato” rolling around and around in my dreams; all sorts of people, including myself, kept saying sfumato. As I woke up I almost said it out loud. Sfumato (derived from the Italian “fumo” which translates to smoke) is the technique that makes Da Vinci’s work so mysteriously beautiful. It’s a blending of color and tone without hard lines to define features. Think of the Mona Lisa and you’ll get the idea. And from out of my dreams and into real life, this is what I was trying to accomplish today. Check out the image below and notice where the background melds into the figure: at the arms, head, and legs. (Forgive me, Leonardo. Forgive me. ;-)
P.S. I learned about Sfumato from, guess who? Yep, Mark.
Morning Warm-ups (aka gesture drawings)
Every morning in the Atelier we warm up by doing gesture drawings of the model. We begin with quick one-minute poses, and then move on to five-minute poses and conclude with a ten-minute pose. I’ve added some of my gesture work to this post. As my instructor Mark says, we have to work with a sense of urgency (always) – but it’s especially true with these gesture sketches. I quite like the energy that comes through them.
Two Day Pose
I completed a two-day figure drawing today. I've included an image of my work at the end of both days, plus a detail of the face in the final drawing. It's hard to say exactly how much time went into this drawing because we do warm up gesture drawings in the morning and there are breaks throughout the session. I'm guessing this is about four hours of work.
Also, I started helping out the print/web designer at the Academy today. I'm organizing and scanning their instructor’s slides, and creating CDs and contact sheets for each. It's production work, yes but the odd thing about me (there's only one?!?) is that I really get a sense of satisfaction out of projects like these. It's brainless but I can catch up on some reading while I wait for the images to scan, and I'm doing something tangible to help out an organization that I love.
Anyway, enjoy the images – and please leave a comment if you like what you see. :-)
Tony Ryder Workshop
In three weeks of December, I attended two workshops given by Tony Ryder. Here's some background on Tony from his website: “Tony Ryder studied at the Art Student's League of New York, the New York Academy of Art, and at the Ecole Albert Defois, in France, with oil painter Ted Seth Jacobs.” Tony speaks about Ted and his teachings with a deep admiration and respect - think Luke speaking of Yoda.
In order to create his extremely realistic work, Tony works at a slow pace to carefully observe and mix each color for every minute brush stroke. Similarly, he is thorough in his descriptions of how his painting process works and patiently provides positive support to his students. He employs many analogies to help convey concepts – something that many students found quite charming.
As far as my work went: the position of my easel in relation to the model wasn’t, shall we say, a standard view. I had the rim light position so I had the challenge of finding color in shadow. This has really sensitized my eyes to subtle color – it’s kind of like being given a new set of eyes. The world is a really beautiful place once your eyes are calibrated correctly.
Our process was as follows:
1.) A “poster study” (a quick study of the color and light of the subject and surroundings):
2.) An initial drawing of the subject :
3.) Final piece (I need a pic of this.)
Portrait Drawing
Toward the end of the quarter we focused on portrait drawing. I was grateful to have time to refine these skills because I had signed up to do a portrait painting workshop in the end of December that I feared was a little out of my league.
Blog entries from 9/04-12/04
"Figure Drawing"
Below is a progression of figure drawing work from October to December. Notice marked improvement through these (they’re posted in the order completed) and lots of improvement since my first. The last image (the reddish one) is done in Conte and posed some "interesting" challenges seeing as I’m new to that medium - but I like the way I blocked in the hands.
"Master Copies"
In the tradition of classical fine art training, we study and reproduce master copies of work. I chose to reproduce a Da Vinci drawing that was a study for a painting of Leda and the Swan. Doing master copies is important because it forces the student to slow down, closely observe the master’s work and (hopefully) get into the heart and mind of the master artist. Of course it also helps refine anatomy skills (when reproducing a piece with the figure) and drafting skills as well.
"Self Improvement"
The self portrait is tough. One has the usual challenge of trying to create a drawing with a reasonable likeness to the model skewed by the fact that the artist is the model. All sorts of freaky psychological components come into play. Some students create self portraits that are dark and morbid. Others portray themselves as stunningly beautiful. Interestingly I think over the last 3 months, I’ve managed to create one of each in the following order: There’s the “I’m so pretty” one created the weekend before school started in September; the dark and disturbed one created in October (AKA the "I’m trying to be like my instructor and failing miserably"); and finally the “OK, I think I’m getting a handle on this hand eye coordination thing” one done in November.
"New Student at Seattle Academy of Fine Art"
I'm creating this blog to document the work I do while attending the Seattle Academy of Fine Art. I'll be adding a bunch of entries today to show my work over the last 3 months.
Since September, I've been a student in Mark Kang O'higgin's Atelier at SAFA. It's an intense program. Every morning we draw from the model (although one week each month is spent on personal projects: cast drawings, master copies, etc.) while Mark criticizes the hell out of our work. I'm not complaining: honest feedback is what I'm paying for... and I get my money's worth! Mark has had years of training and is fabulously talented. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to learn from someone of his caliber.
This is a figure drawing I did back in September at the start of the Atelier:
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