Painting Process - Autumn
It's autumn, and the colors of the woods and prairie are coming into the studio. The doors and windows are open, the air is sunny and fresh.Paintings begin on the ground, where thinned acrylic paint is pushed into the canvas, using gloved hands, brushes, gravity and sometimes brooms. This forms the atmosphere in which the painting lives. Then the canvas is pinned to the wall, where more opaque mark making is laid down. Sometimes it goes from floor to wall and back again, numerous times until it is completely resolved.
Big Stormy Grays
While working on a commission, I rediscovered the pleasure of richly colored narratives overlaying neutral atmospheres. These four 60x90 pieces were very satisfying to paint.
Navigation Series - Essence 63x90
Navigation Series - Back to the Known 64x90
Navigation Series - Converge 64x90
Euphrates 56x86
The Ochres of Roussillon
Ochre pigment is buttery warm, divinely tactile to the eyes, in varying colors from yellow to orange to red. These colors are my work's life's blood. This spring I visited the small village of Roussillon, in the Luberon Valley in southern France, built on an ochre ridge, mined for it's pigment. Walking along the ochre trail, immersed in the earth's rich warm color, was an ecstatic experience. I can still feel the buzz, and am now working on a series titled "The Windows of Roussillon", soon to be completed.
Painting Process Video
I have been recording some painting sessions to watch how things unfold. It's helpful for me to see what works and what doesn't, and how it's resolved. These clips of a piece completed last week, seemed to call for music, so I thought I'd post.
Music by Count Basie and his Orchestra, "Goin' to Chicago Blues".
Storms
Storms are rolling in and out of central Florida. Opportunities to work outside have been minimal; one day I tried to sandwich some painting time between storms:
A storm blew in while the canvas was still wet, ultimately with 125 mph winds.
I couldn't drag the canvas inside with wet paint. It was left to the fate of the winds.
First light the next day revealed the 24 foot canvas to be wrapped around 2 palm trees, pigment washed out, dirt embedded, destroyed.
I decided maybe it was time for input, not output. While it's strange to not be working, peace and ease is setting in. Beauty on the beach....
Coming Up for Air (Really, this time)
Coming up for air after an intensive time in the studio.
Scissors and gloves with E.J. Rost.
Getting Out of the Way
When I'm getting ready to paint, usually there is a quieting period, taking the edge of high excited energy down to a harness-able wattage. Sometimes I'll take a few photographs, mill around looking at the work that's in process on the walls, smooth out some canvases, or often sit quietly for a very long time, listening to the wind or the stillness, so that the focus shifts to the senses and out of my busy and more linear mind. I think of this process as getting out of the way, so that the distance between ideas, what is seen, what is felt, and what goes down on canvas, is very small. I was curious to see if I could capture this process of "getting out of the way" on video. This take was 23 minutes long, but compressed into one minute.
The Impact of the New Studio - A Photojournalist's View
Kansas City's esteemed photojournalist Julie Denesha was interested in the impact of the new studio on my work. It was an honor to be interviewed and photographed by her while working. The resulting product is here, click the "Listen" button below photos for the interview:
Photo Essay - Paint, Rust and Open Air
I am enchanted with painting the combine. The scale! There is nothing to prepare in order to paint; it lies in wait. Last night I dreamed about it and woke up with new ideas, barely waiting for the dew to dry to paint some more. The beautiful thirsty rust is already gorgeous in the patterns that have been created over the years. Keeping a delicate touch on what is painted and what is left natural, is the dance. The purples against rust makes me swoon. My work on canvas is benefiting from these new eyes.
Yard Art
This old Oliver combine was beautiful as it stood, but was hidden in a patch of fast growing trees on the north end of the property. With a 4020 tractor and a lot of enthusiasm, we pulled it out into the light and placed it near the studio. The lichen covered rust is a beautiful neutral background for some color.
Everything is a Universe (the beginnings of inspiration)
I'm on the Florida gulf coast in large part to work; it always having been such a fertile place for painting, but it hasn't been happening. Having come off of an extremely intensified time in the studio in December, perhaps it's creative fatigue, and surely in part physical fatigue, given that my methods for painting and scale call for considerable energy and strength.
A fresh 30 yard roll of canvas is propped up against the kitchen wall, breathing it's coppery breath down my neck as I go by. Paint bottles mixed, brushes, pencils, paper, boards set up outside to work on, not a single inclination or movement towards them is detected. I walk the beach, walk and walk and walk, no urge to consider shape, line, color. I feel guilty.
This past year, intensely focused OUT - studio building, negotiations, concrete pads, vistas, horizons, mass bird migrations, space, canvases large enough to depict space, series multiplying and expanding to 12 paintings deep, every foot of wall space having something pinned to it. But January has been an inward turn.
On the shore, Instead of as usual watching the vast body of water, the birds in flight, the horizon line, I keep finding myself kneeling, pulling in closer and closer to the intimate, camera held as close as it will focus, to see the tiny jewels of the sea, the bubbles from retreating waves, bird tracks, the tiny shadows of bird tracks. Seeing that each is a universe. Everything is a universe!
(The cosmic so readily available by the sea.)
With 3" square pieces of paper, a few pencils, some watercolor - the beginnings of inspiration.
Ground and Space
I worked all of November in the dazzling, illuminated tall space of the new studio, painting with some tired colors and a rusty process that was no longer alive. It was painful and unchanging, with dark days of autumn reflecting the mood.
At last, I gave up completely the idea of painting and began to simply live in the studio, day after day, bringing nourishment for body and soul: art related books and magazines, Japanese tea, piano concertos, breakfast lunch and dinner. Lovely but grim at first.
Gradually, in all that quiet space and time, a tree or spine form and the space around it, began to form in my mind's eye.
Canvases very wet, grays, blacks, dark greens over weird yellow under paintings, slamming paint filled brushes along edges for the joy and freedom of the process, rather than for the result, discovering new cause/affects. Discovery is so vital to keeping one's art alive, thrilling!
When completing this 12' piece, I realized the series would be called "Ground and Space". I'd been wallowing in space, and lacking ground! The studio enveloped me; I enveloped the studio. It has been a warm embrace.
Pattern and Light
Inside, outside, negative, positive, gravel and fur, rolls and rhyme, scarf and steps.