Some landscapes

I can only hope the weather warms up again soon for some more landscape painting while I have the time and the light. The wind in San Francisco can take the fun out of standing in one place for a few hours. The locations I choose are often determined by presence of sun and lack of wind (and maybe the proximity of a restroom). I suspect that if i were to drive 20 miles north, south, or east, this wouldn't be an issue. I know that serious landscape painters would laugh at my thin skinned approach - bourgie bourgeois, a pleasant picnic in a pretty place with nice weather. Ahh the life!

I do want the paintings to have a pleasant seriousness about them. In contemplating form from nature and the thing we call 'art', i hope to capture more than a picture of a place.

Presidio - Lovers Lane Tree, 2009, oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Presidio - Grove Receding, 2009, oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Reflecting

While I didn't set out to make paintings about the crashing of the economy, the paintings from the first half of 2009 have certainly reflected it.

These empty hallways have a story to tell. Their pictures within converse with each other, simultaneously pulling you in and pushing you out. There is a purposeful 'kookiness' to them with their distorted perspective and loose rendering a mild affront to 'civilized expectations'.

Of course, on another level they are continued explorations of picture plane and color theory.

The Hammering, 2009, oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

Emptied, 2009, oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

Herald, 2009, oil on canvas, 28 x 22 inches

Floor space

I am adjusting my working methods to the new realities. I had been spoiled before with the option to leave something on the floor, walking around it or simply not going near it for weeks. The floor gods and i were on pretty good terms. Nowadays, anything on the floor is in the way and must be dealt with immediately. Learning new habits isn't easy though. Another difference is going from a slick wood floor to rugs on carpet. There is a stickyness to walking on rugs on carpets. I feel i may trip over myself at times. So it goes.



I also knew that changing my studio space would change my work. Not having the space to set aside and contemplate almost finished work, the next grouping has felt like it was filling a vacuum. In the past, one work flowed out of and responded to the recent and nearby works. The current set of paintings feels separated, revisiting instead an idea that had begun previously. Now it is taking on the feel of the space. The following three paintings are small. Cramped corridors.

Carrot and Stick, 2009, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches

Interjection, 2009, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches

Happy Couple, 2009, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches

Studio transition paintings

To help make the transition to working in the new space easier, I purposefully left a few paintings in a 'mostly finished' state so that i could walk in and start right up. The overall forms and scheme had been established, leaving a few decisions to make, but mostly they needed some minor adjustments and surface refinements. And it did work. I was excited to get into the studio and work on them.


Changing the workspace has definitely affected the 'headspace' that i need for contemplating the final touches. This is the time that the painting looks pretty good and seems like it might be almost finished, but still needs something. That something can be dramatic (change all the colors, add elements) or subtle (shrinking sizes, adjusting angles etc). Often during this phase of painting i'll leave the work up and start another or do some prep work on new canvases. I like to see it out of the corner of my eye, and have it catch me by surprise in order to see it with fresh notions.
But this is a luxury that has been erased by the new studio. The limits of wall space leave me no alternative but to focus on the painting. The process feels more concentrated than contemplated.



So here are the transition paitings

Negociation, 2008-09 oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches

Elusive Assessment, 2008-09 oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Pass, 2008-09 oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches

Transition

Sprawling in the Onramp studio. 36 contiguous feet of working wall, and room to make a mess.










The new walls.


I'm interested to see how my work and working habits will change in the new space.

End of OnRamp Studios

All good things come to an end. We heard the warnings- the owner of the building had died, and left no will and had no direct heirs. His real estate friends are in charge of the estate, and as they are in real estate, they have no use for a building that is in a strange location and renting under market. To sell the building, they had to bring the tenants up to market rate ($1/foot), which is great (don't forget the 15% 'building load fee'). For us, we had too much space- about 1000 square feet of hallways, and then another 800 of under rented space that would need walls built (and people found and manged). And we would be put on a 1 year lease (with the implication of a rent increase or eviction with a new owner). Regardless, there was/is no way we could afford $3000. The new manager whose job it is to sell the building was quite friendly and willing to cut the space down for us, but by the time this became an option we had already mentally moved out.

So the short story- we had move on to another smaller studio space, for more money. Dana, Tina (my studiomates) and i found a reasonable space in the 'dogpatch' area of the city. I promised myself i wouldn't compare it to the previous space, which was a dream. I like to think of it as 'back to reality'. Now when people walk into my studio, they won't be in awe of the space and ignore the paintings.

The final twist is that during this time, the economy tanked and the new executor realizes that the building isn't going to be sold anytime soon for the 15m that they are hoping for. The exeuctor also now sees the benefit of artists in the building renting out smaller spaces, and is working with two studio profiteers (who we actually introduced into the building a couple of years ago) that feel comfortabel charging artists $600 for a 275 sq ft room.

And that's enough of that.

Summer

Okay, I'll start off with that i've finally posted an update to my website (www.bencressy.com) and made a few changes. Well, maybe i'm testing a change. Instead of forcing the viewer to navigate via 'superthumbs' to pages of a few select paintings that fit together, I've put all the thumbnails on one page. The page ends up being 315k and this is what i would call sloppy web design, or maybe design for the broadband age. Of course, it probably doesn't work so well for those lucky enought to be able to browse the web on their phones. I also implemented 'thickbox' which makes it easy to browse through images via 'next/previous' links instead of having to go back to thumbnails and then click the next image. For the time being the change is only on the studio side.

Anyway, on to painting news. I've been plugging away and trying to finish a couple of paintings. One is another exploration of a 'bar' painting. I've been battling the color relationships of the major forms, and spent some time moving tape to find the placement of the pure abstract element that i have yet to label with an easily understandable explanation. Well, here it is... I think it's close to finished, but anything can happen.

Icarus or Annunciation, 2008, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

Another painting that I had been working on for awhile is complete. It stands out as something different, so i'm not sure how or if it will be presented within the current body of work. Perhaps a few more will follow it and flesh out the notion. It came out of the earlier hallway interiors.

Guardian Exit, 2008, oil on canvas, 48 x 36inches

I made a few studies of the figure (admitedly from a photo) before diving in and enjoyed that each time had a very different expression.

Situational experience

I've been thinking about how a painting lives in the world.
Most artist spend inordinate amounts of time contemplating an individual piece while in the process of creating it, and there by gain a multitude of insights and associations that are rarely communicable in this age of elevator pitch statements. But 'expressible content' and immediate 'visual parsing' aside, there is often so much more to the reality of the individual piece that gets left out of the representational image that we're used to seeing. Much of this is dependent on the situation that the painting is seen.

To get specific, I have a painting (Entice: Existent) that looks a warm red-purple under regular household or gallery lights (which are super yellow). Seen in natural light the color has a strikingly different experience - it turns to a periwinkle blue purple. And then there is the reality that there is often glare in a house that can make a painting difficult to see, but if you're lucky it shows off another aspect to the piece. Relative reflective qualities are something that i've been trying to incorporate for awhile, and it plays nicely with between colorfield and 'object' elements .
Here is an example.








The presence of surface qualities is something that never really comes across in a photo. Seeing the play of glazes, or the sensation of bushwork is almost always lost. I would rather have the painting give more to the viewer in person than the representative image of print and web though, but sometimes it is frustrating knowing how much is lost.

The final thing worth mentioning is how a frame finishes a piece. There has been a trend in contemporary art to not frame a painting. It gets expensive quickly, and framing styles tend to date a piece, but simply addressing the edges makes for a more elegant finish... Call me old fashioned.

Threshold revisted

A painting can be perfect in a particular situation and fail in another. I had a painting that would absolutely sing in a dark red room. Unfortunately, i don't have a dark red room, and while i know it would look great in that situation, it looked a bit heavy on white walls. The gallery situation of white walls is unfortunately the standard, and most people have light colored walls. so it goes...
So i decided to revisit this painting and make it more 'white wall pleasant'. Now it might go even better on a dark red wall ; )

Threshold, 2007-08, oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches