Refreshed Tabletop?

I was feeling like my series had run its course. What had started off as an abstraction of reflections on living- fragments of recognizable objects, broken words, letters and numbers - had congealed into some objects on a tabletop. First it was in abstract space. It slowly evolved into a more concrete symbology and moved into the landscape. Looking through my sketchbooks, I realize i haven't really taken on my interest in architecture of public/private spaces- bars in particular. I've got a pile of drawings made in various bars. So when i came back to the canvas, it was only natural that i bring the tabletop back into a barspace. What i found surprising is the rendering of the people in the reflections/windows. It is another language to the painting. More pressing is the color- sense of darkness glowing and glazed colors reacting in extremes to natural or incandescent lighting.

Breaking Reticence, 36 x 48 inches. oil. 2007

Entice Existent, 48 x 36 inches. oil. 2007

Displaced Interiors

14 x 11 inches

Interjection

In the face of the unknowable, we tend to impose simplistic notions of how the world works. It would be easy to never notice anything beyond our self imposed/created visions of the universe, but I cant help but think there is more out there. This might capture some sense of the interruption with its ominous pure abstraction of the monolith.

Epic, 68" x 83"oil on canvas, 2007

The story: Here I am going along my way trying to figure out with all my heart, what combination of luck, beaurcratic ability, talent, skill, and determination it takes to bring my little world of art to the pantheon (yes, call me a self absorbed and egotistical artist if you must) and along comes a hint of mystery so large and strange, that makes it all seem incredibly futile and piddly. Is that the life of the artist?

Gesture Fields

I recently had the itch to do some gestural abstraction- which is something that i've done much of in the past. It starts with a personal calligraphy, a set of marks which form a visual phrase. It is as much about the space between the marks as the nature of the marks themselves. Through a process of layering my calligraphy and attempting to fit gesture within gesture, a field is built up which is simultaneously flat and voluminous.

36 x 24 inches

36 x 24 inches

17 x 14 inches each

In the past I had the tendency to look for a composition to pull out from the field of gestures, which would eventually develop into a figurative mode in an attempt to discover purpose and meaning within. This time around i've allowed for it to just be itself.
I have to admit that it could easily fall into the category of an 'art by the yard' process.

Concerning rabbits and the importance of experimentation

Much of painting is about trying to find some little piece of magic which will make the piece come to life and take on meaning beyond the image. I find myself occasionally struggling along and then somehow, after periods of despair that it has been a wasted effort, manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat. That eureka moment can come from any direction. Recently while painting a landscape, the moment came from a mode of abstraction used to render the sensation of leaves overhead, creating a mass of flatness and volume..



And other times i know i've got a few tricks up my sleeves to help solve a given situation, but wary of the gimmickyness factor that can squash the essence of discovery that i hope to achieve in each piece. A trick repeated too often looses its magic. In the weeks prior to painting this landscape, i had been working on some abstractions (for fun) that seemed to me to be not much more than pretty "art by the yard" process painting. It was a revisiting to a prior mode of picture making that once held my passion, but couldn't seem to come to a point of true fruit.

Summer Excursions

San Francisco in the summer is generally a pretty cold place. I'm lucky enough that when the weather does become nice, I can often take advantage of it and go out and paint plein air landscape- usually in Golden Gate Park or the Presidio. The window of opportunity might be brief, and the wind can make the most beautiful of places bearable only for brief visits. Standing around in one place for a few hours is another thing. Luckily, I've found a decent spot that can be roughly in the sun and out of the wind and with a decent compositional possibilities.

So here are a few..

Largeness

I was presented with the opportunity to work large when an offering of pre-built stretcher bars came my way. I've worked large a few times before and was excited to have a set of 6 stretchers all the same size (68" x 83"). The uniformity of size/proportion can help with a sense of continuity.

Confronting a canvas that is larger than yourself can be quite liberating and daunting. The sheer expanse of canvas and the massive block of color mass seem to have a gravity of their own (at least in person- - reproductions leave one ignorant of that experience).

The first one came out rather fast. I made a number of sketches and eventually settled on one, guessing what i wanted the color to do. And it felt great! Loose gestures and tight, quiet, refined passages all seemed to work together. The scale changed within the painting despite being roughly the same size as what i might normally put into a smaller painting.






The next one was a bit more finicky. Again i chose a few parts from sketches and created another drawing to familiarize myself with the composition, hoping for a repeat experience of the previous painting. One thing about working large is it is difficult to imagine how an expanse of paint will read in person. When looking at smaller painting, or a reproduction, the forms become more condensed. Eventually i managed to get the colors right- switching a few of the relationships around. Still- it was quite a fast, fresh painting.








The next piece has been another story. I suppose it picks up where i left off with a grouping of 3x2 paintings- where the form, colors, and content demanded drastic changes and minute refinements. A few months fly by as it seems to near completion but then demands something extreme. A confrontation of sorts. Perhaps it reflects an attempt to break the slight case of summer malaise that has crept in.

but more about that later...

Phases

Cycle.
Excitement about the current and upcoming painting.
Satisfaction with the previous work.
Anxiety about finding a place that someone else might see them.
Disappointment that they remain invisible to the world at large, cluttering up my storage space.
Repeat cycle a few times.

Experiment with other subjects and styles, eventually returning to the main theme with a few more elements.
Repeat cycle.

Elemental Conflicts

One of the ongoing conundrums in my painting (and painting in general) is the separation between the subjects implied narrative elements and the more formal painting elements. The essence of the story and reason for the picture wants to be the primary interest, but the pure abstraction is often what engages me while i'm making the piece.

A current example: trying to find the right balance between two blues in relation to two greens. The 'story' (as i see it) is about the scattering and isolation of elements- perhaps a drifting apart, or (hopefully) a coming together. or maybe it is stages of a journey? Some would push for leaving out the 'narrative subject stuff' and only have the abstraction, but that isn't enough to hold my interest. In the end, I'll enjoy the curious, veiled id expression and the open koan nature of relationships between symbols. In the meantime, it's about feathery vs. flat, blue and blue to green and green etc.

so it goes.

open and closed

I'm in the process of trying to make my painting more like my sketchbook drawings (18 books are currently scanned in and up on my site under 'drawings'). In general, i see a back and forth over time between open and closed forms. That has always been a big question- how does one go from line to shape if the line doesn't connect to close a shape? The mind is good at filling in the gaps and accepting vague form, especially in drawing. In painting however, color begs the question- where and how does one color end and another begin. sharp or fuzzy? Not wanting to deal with all this perhaps explains why i love color field painting when it works. So here are a few recent little paintings.

Presentation

So I just returned from New York where I ran around to as many art fairs as I could fit in. Unfortunately there was no way for me to do them all. I had some paintings with Andrea Schwartz Gallery who was in the Red Dot fair. The Red Dot is a new fair, held in a hotel. The gallerists had a restriction that they couldn't put holes in the wall (no new hooks), and no lighting assistance, so there was much improvising.

What I learned from seeing my paintings in that less than ideal situation is that i need to bring more painted light into the work. They need to look good in the dark. My studio is super deluxe in that i have gallery lighting with some natural light, but paintings don't usually live in that condition very often. To see it in a dull ambient incandescent/fluorescent light made me realize that the work could stand to incorporate a bit more (?what's the word i'm looking for?) glowing tonal richness. Still, lighting is key to optimize the viewing of any subtle work. And i'm interested in a color field variation, not Thomas Kinkade/ Bob Ross style illustrated drama.

Another thing- Framing! It is popular to show unframed paintings, and i think that can be fine if the stretcher is large and substantial, but one thing i learned from all my gallery experience is that frames can make an artwork seem worth the price tag. Even an artist gallery frame (something to protect the edges) helps make the work feel a bit more finished. So next time....

I also got to catch up with some old friends and see that they're up to some great painting.

Little Fast and Loose

The year has had a pretty good start. For a release, I've been making small paintings with an artificial time limit while I labor away on a 3' x 2' painting which has fallen off the map. The speed and scale (and lesser commitment of materials) allows me a greater experimentation. It is much easier to accept a total failure of a painting if it isn't going to hog up a bunch of rack space. Now of course I'm wanting to put that looseness into the larger works which i've been avoiding.

Attendance, 14" x 11"

Circumbendibus, 14" x 11"

Redfield: Embark, 14" x 11"

Lingering

I'll try to blame it on the holiday season and its many distractions.
I walk into the studio and stare for hours at the same painting. Put something in, wipe it off. Repeat. I stand in front of the painting waving a brush in front of the thing, never making contact. I had already done the fun explosive growth part of the picture making process, and perhaps even figured out what it was all about. Call it 80% finished. Unfortunately, a large percentage of time in painting is fine tuning. I'll even take a photograph of the piece and play with a few ideas on it in photoshop before executing what feels like a bigger move. At some point I put it aside and move on. It could be done, or maybe in a few months (or years for that matter) i'll realize precisely what it needs. So here it is, another painting.

Labyrinth, oil, 36" x 24"

flow

perplex encounter, oil, 36 x 24

I'm not entirely sure about the title. Something offstage looms- enticing and strange.