workspace

Part of my activity in the weeks since the Telluride workshop has been to clear out space in my studio. Most of this was the usual semiannual clean-up of accumulated stuff of no real value, and the organization of what remained. (The space is almost too clean at the moment, but I know that is only temporary!) I went a little farther, though, than in the past. I wanted to create a space whose openness reflects and enhances the receptivity that I seek in myself as I paint. I also wanted it to reflect the present clarity of purpose and mind, and the new connection with values and priorities, that are pulling me forward in my life. I got rid of more "stuff" than in the past -- a whole box of interesting, now very dusty bottles that I had accumulated over the years, for example. I also put a new shelf along the south side of the room above the windows, to hold the smaller paintings-in-process that need space to dry but also need to be accessible. This freed up counter space and made the whole room seem larger, oddly enough. The photo above shows the new addition.

By getting rid of a lot of detritus, the purpose of the room seems clearer. For whatever reason, it is a more welcoming space now, a space that encourages immersion into the painting process. My tools and materials are more easily at hand, and my notes to myself are  pinned to the bulletin board for easy consideration. Also, I threw away a lot of old work, keeping only a very few pieces that still seem to speak in a relevant way. A large step was getting rid of drawings and exercises that for years have constituted a kind of back-up justification for seeing myself as an artist: see, I can draw the human figure, I do know linear perspective. That past work had perhaps become a crutch that that I thought I needed to support my creativity, but that also had come to feel almost like an albatross about my neck. Getting rid of it was very freeing.

All this was also a prelude to being gone for a few weeks: Jerome and I are about to leave for an exploration of northwestern Spain that I know will bring new perceptions and thoughts. This house cleaning was in part to create room for that new input after we get home.

activating the surface

One of the early exercises in Expressive Drawing is named "Working with Flux Nonobjectively." Similar to the "scribbling" exercise that we did with Rebecca in Telluride, this exercise consists of short, timed bursts of drawing interspersed with bursts of "veiling" or partially covering over what has just been drawn. The idea is to stay loose, to not try to draw an object, nor even to think much about gestures made and marks created.

I had a couple of panels in the studio, one red and one blue, that needed to be woken up and made part of the little population of paintings-in-progress that are occupying the space. They were monochromatic, simple, barely begun, and almost dusty with neglect.

This exercise was the perfect method for getting back into these two paintings. I laid out both chalk pastels and oil sticks, choosing to stay within the color frame already established, poured some mineral spirits into a cups, and set out a soft 1" brush. Standing back a bit from my table, I scribbled some, then brushed over with mineral spirits, then scribbled some more, then brushed some more. I stopped sooner on the red painting (above) than on the blue painting, because I like the dynamics, and I know that later layers will interact with what is there. But in both cases, the drawing exercise provided the mechanism for a loose, new approach that resurrected a couple of moribund paintings.  Plus, it was fun!

concepts and layers

Further development of my list of conceptual words has provided me with a wealth of ideas to work with. Perhaps it is my librarian background, but I found myself wanting some organization of them (and alphabetization would not do). There were almost too many to consider at any one time. So I created a loose grouping of the words into some eight or ten broader categories, none of which I defined or labelled. They are intuitive rather than logical, though I'm sure that I used some kind of logic in the groupings.

I like this. As I approach creating a new layer on a painting, my first impulse is to decide what I want to do in terms of color -- whether to contrast or complement what is already on the canvas, for example. My next step is to determine the conceptual content of the new layer. Now I can choose, not a single word but rather a group of words that has meaning for me and for the painting. I find using a group more freeing and stimulating than a single word. I have posted a piece of paper that shows the various groupings on the wall of the studio, and I occasionally add a word to one or more of them. It is a little corner of verbal creativity in my otherwise non-verbal work area.

The image above is of a piece I started in Telluride, and to which I applied my then-new approach of a concept-per-layer. It is not finished, indeed it only has four or five layers on it, but I can still see some conceptual work: strata, complexity, stability, scratchiness, fluidity. I hadn't developed my groupings yet, but still, each concept does come from a different group, as it turns out.

being present

A week in San Francisco has offered many art opportunities, and even though I haven’t touched brush to canvas, I feel quite connected to my work. There are many reasons for this. Meg and I visited three museums (SFMoMA, the Legion of Honor, and the DeYoung) and in each one I saw works that resonated with me. Two different art supply stores, FLAX and Arch, offered a richness of materials that opened up creative possibilities. I met Phyllis to talk art and stroll around a small art district in Berkeley.  I sketched with Meg every evening, and I worked on my artist statement (see post of August 20th).  All in all, I don’t feel that I have been that far away from my studio, and that is unusual for me when I travel. There has been active engagement with the artistic world every day, and I have actively “worked” on my own art in some way or another.

I’d like to make this a permanent change. I would love to carry my artist-self at the front of my awareness in my daily life.  For whatever reason, I haven’t done this so far.  In the past, being in my artist mind has distracted me, and I can’t live my life in a distracted state. But maybe there is an alternative. Maybe I can have my artistic consciousness, as it were, traveling alongside me, passive (not distracting) but alert. My art muse riding on my shoulder, looking out for opportunities even while my main awareness is cooking, cleaning, visiting, playing cello, studying Spanish.

As I think about this, I see additional advantages. I want to delve deeper into the details of the geography that I want to portray, and being more constantly aware through artistic eyes of my surroundings would certainly help. I want to find new methods and materials to express myself, and staying alert to such possibilities as I move through my days would undoubtedly feed the process. I want to find ways to express inner reactions and sensations in my work, and the only way this will happen is to become aware of them in the first place, and consider how to express them as they happen.

The image above, a Rauschenberg, fills an entire wall at SFMoMA with its structure and energy.

marks again

I presented an updated version of the mark-making presentation from Wisconsin (see post of August 27, 2011) on the last day of the Telluride workshop. Two days before, Rebecca led us though a drawing-scribbling exercise that set a path in the direction of marks. Six of us at a time stood around a table, drawing implements at its center, with a stack of 4"x6" paper in front of each of us. In response to a rapid sequence of instructions ("Pick any implement and make a single mark." "Pick up any implement and draw what you do."), we each filled about twenty sheets. The pace was so rapid that at some point the left brain just gave up. In addition to loosening us up, in the end we each had a significant record of our individual mark-style.

The exercise provided me with some spontaneous marks that I really liked. Or, more accurately, I liked the fact that they came out of me unimpeded and were visually pleasing. (The image above is of one of my favorites.) As we returned to our painting stations, as it were, and to our now-dry panels from the day before, the emphasis was on drawing, and I practiced further and on a larger scale the types of gestures that I had made on the small pieces.

Rebecca had also brought to the workshop a copy of Expressive Drawing by Steven Aimone. The author approaches drawing as essentially line and mark, without worrying about representation. Short chapters present various aspects of drawing, but what I found most valuable were the exercises, which emphasize loose, gestural, and spontaneous drawing -- exactly my focus right now. I've ordered myself a copy of the book just for the inspiration it will provide for practice.

I'm in San Francisco visiting my sister-in-law, Meg, and today we revisited the alphabet work we did last year (see post of May 6, 2011). This time Meg's suggestion was to write  some text (a letter or a poem, for example) but to turn the letters into a series of gestural expressions that cover the surface without looking like letters. It was a stimulating, freeing, and amazingly difficult exercise, one that I plan to repeat.

So I feel well supplied with a variety of means to further develop the marks that I make, without resorting to representation, and bypassing as much as possible my controlling, analytical left brain.

digging more deeply

One of the pleasures of working with Rebecca is the feedback that she very generously gives about one's work. Talking with her in Telluride was one of the highlights of the workshop for me.  In addition to remembering my Wisconsin insights about the Colorado Plateau from last year, she had creative ideas about how to move forward with them.  This included using a list of concepts such as I described in my last post, but using them more deeply than had occurred to me, by building a relevant concept into each layer of a painting. This makes so much sense: It enhances the idea of building a painting "the way the landscape was built" -- in terms of my work, building the layers of cold wax and paint in an echo of the way the Plateau was built. This was the breakthrough insight that I had last year in Wisconsin, but by adding conceptual meaning to each layer I put down, I also echo (though perhaps not literally) the individual history and nature of the various layers of the Plateau: Moenkopi with its chocolaty, crumbly consistency, Navajo with its creamy, smooth curves. The very method of painting pulls me more deeply into contact with my muse. I also had the idea to "age" each layer, stressing it by buffing and scraping, the way the strata of the Plateau have been weathered, and to "erode" some layers to reflect the way the sandstone has been eroded by water and wind.

These ideas for specific techniques enrich my sense that my painting guide/muse at all times is truly the Plateau and all its subthemes and concepts. I do not need to look elsewhere, though from elsewhere do come ancillary themes that are a part of me, such as the music~poetry~dance at the end of my list of concepts. They all fit together, in my mind, because they are all part of me. But my "aha" here is the acknowledgement that the Colorado Plateau is not just one idea; it is a mini-universe of ideas, all of which feed my creative expression. My process thus becomes an interaction between the various painting concerns (methods and materials) and the parameters of the various concepts (meaning). I use a concept in each layer while at the same time interacting with the painterly dynamics that are taking place (color, texture, space division, etc.). It is a conversation. And the conceptual focus is on essences and iconography rather than on things and labels, and it digs more deeply into the Plateau than I had considered doing before.

"Madrugada" (8"x10", above), also named after it was finished, is another of my pieces from last spring. It will be interesting to compare these with the pieces I create now that my concept and method are more fully developed.

toward an iconography

During the workshop in Telluride, Rebecca shared an exercise in conceptual thinking that centered on choosing a conceptual word and keeping it in mind as a guide while painting. The idea appeals to me as I grapple with getting away from my literal mind and into my conceptual/emotional side.  So I am developing a list of words that reflect either my perceptions about the Colorado Plateau or other concepts that resonate with me.

The exercise suggests that the words reference open-ended ideas, and concepts rather than emotions. (This appeals to me -- I freeze when someone suggest that I "paint joy".)  It also recommends using words that do not reference concrete objects but rather their essences. In short, adjectives and adverbs rather than nouns.

It was fun to take this on and develop a list of words for myself. I didn't think much about it, I just let an initial set of words flow onto a piece of paper.  Then I looked at them a bit analytically.  Not surprisingly, in yet another reflection of my current orientation toward materials and methods (so tangible and well-defined!), over half of my concepts were nouns, references to concrete objects rather than to the more elusive qualities of those objects.  

The initial list, offered below for the record, will no doubt evolve. The next challenge is to use these words to develop a personal iconography that pervades my work and that the viewer of my paintings has to interpret. This will bring a depth of meaning to what I do.  A step along the path!

The image above is of "Puerta Escondida", 8"x12", from last March, in which I found "doorways" after I had finished the piece (another recommendation from Rebecca: let the image emerge or be decided toward the end of the process!)

concept list

ancient

calm

complex

compress

contrast

decay

delicate

empty

ephemeral

eroding

fragile

horizontal
heavy

layering

meditative

reveal

rust

secret

serene

silent

solid

spacious

weathering

wearing

cliffs

doors

earth

fossils

grasses

history

keystones

maps

mountains

pentimento

petrified wood

plants

pueblos

rivers

roads

rock

roots

strata

stratified

surfaces

time

traces

earth ~ air ~ water           

music ~ poetry ~ dance