back at the easel

I am just back from a long-planned week of painting that became a kind of retreat for myself and my friend and fellow cold wax painter, Phyllis, at the Studio Group facilities in Helper, Utah. With rooms and studio space of our own, we shared a communal kitchen and lounge with a group of five artist interns studying with David Dornan for the summer. The entire building, once a hotel in the old railroad days of the town, lives and breathes art. There are few distractions other than the beauty of the country and the small river that runs through town. It is hard to imagine a more nurturing environment for getting back to painting. Almost overnight, the rhythm of my days changed from those of convalescence to those of creation.

Each day we woke early, breakfasted, took a walk along the river or through the town, then settled in to work, sharing thoughts as well as adjacent studio spaces. When it seemed time, we broke for lunch, then returned to work until late afternoon, when it usually seemed time to do something else. We watched videos (Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and tides, Paula Roland's Encaustic monotypes), interacted with the other residents, talked art, and generally relaxed. Dinner, then a DVD film or game of cribbage, although since the living quarters are on the second floor and the studio space on the first, it was easy to run downstairs to contemplate work or get another half hour of painting in before bed.

The multiple fractures of my right wrist last February had prevented me from painting until this past week. Even three months later, the wrist and hand are not back to normal, and every hour of work in Helper consisted of 40 minutes at the easel and 20 minutes elevating and icing the arm. Still, I did this for about six hours a day for six days, and was able to function normally at the easel. I completed one painting, nearly completed a second, and halfway completed a third (all shown above, in the studio space at Helper). I am more than pleased. It feels as though my winter has ended.

a different rhythm

I had assumed that when the cast came off of my broken wrist, I would quickly return to normal activity. Alas, recuperation is slower and more complicated that I had thought, and although daily progress in flexibility and strength is encouraging, regular use is still a long way off. The rhythm of my days, so different from pre-Pecos times, has assumed a kind of normality now that allows me to relax into it and maintain patience and kindness toward my arm.

The challenge of physical therapy is balanced by the luxury of catching up with books and videos that have been waiting on my physical and digital shelves, some of them for years. Among the art-related books: Inside the painter's studio (Figg), A memoir of creativity (Halasz), A Giacometti portrait (Lord), Color: A natural history of the palette (Finlay), Seven days in the art world (Thornton), A painter of our time (Berger), Daybook (Truitt), The creative habit (Tharpe), The age of insight (Kandel).

Although my left hand is proving remarkably adept -- I can even write legibly with it -- occasional attempts to paint are met with pain and frustration. So, as the weeks roll by, I stoke the fires and cultivate mindfulness.

medical leave

The rhythm and tempo of my days in the studio have been seriously interrupted, first by a ten-day midwinter vacation in early February, and then by a broken right arm on the next-to-last day of the trip. It was a gorgeous winter day in Pecos, NM, when I broke my arm, as the photo here attests. We were exploring the ruins of the historic Pecos pueblo outside of Santa Fe, and I lost my balance on the uneven ground. That was four weeks ago, and although we came straight home, regular activities have been on hold ever since, including writing here. My right arm is in a fiberglass cast, and two-finger pecking at the keyboard with my non-dominant left hand is slow at best. I cannot write longhand at all, nor paint with any worthwhile results. But the cast comes off in another two weeks, and I shall happily get back to normal routines, with some help from the physical therapist. Meantime, lots of reading, and planning, and rest.

assemblies

The philosophical resolution of my small painting angst (see previous post) was all well and good, alleviating the"product" dilemma, but it did not help the "process" aspect that had been bothering me. This was confirmed in the studio, since I continued to be frustrated working with the 6" x 8" panels. No matter how I approached the little things, I felt constricted by the edges. I had a vague idea of recreating my larger pieces in miniature, but in addition to the fact that this would be difficult in the physical sense, implying tiny strokes and miniature marks and little bitty patches of color (not exactly the free and easy approach that I am trying to cultivate), it also seemed inappropriate. But, how to be free and easy within a 6" x 8" parameter?

Once again, talking with a fellow artist brought the gift of a new idea: connect the small boards together and paint them as one larger board. The issue of confining edges disappears. The image above shows the four 6" x 8" panels, now taped together to create a 12" x 16" expanse. I did the same with four 8" x 10" panels that have been plaguing me, creating a 16" x 20" surface. All of the smaller pieces already had five or six layers of paint on them, but I scraped them back, arranged them in a pleasing manner, taped them together, and now have two larger surfaces rather than eight small ones on which to work.

I liked the fact that the smaller pieces were already underway: Although I could tape together blank boards and start from scratch, the colors and textures already existent provided something to react to and build upon. My expectations are open-ended. Although I have promised my galleries some small pieces, I have not been specific. If these assemblies come apart and provide viable small paintings, that is fine. But I am also aware that they might end up staying together, either bolted edge-to-edge or floating in a frame with space in between. Who knows? Part of the joy is that the outcome is unknown -- rather the opposite from the hemmed-in feeling of painting an individual itty-bitty board. It is an experiment!

large and small

Sometimes I get myself tied up in knots over questions that, in the end, seem pretty simple. Much of my thinking in the past couple of weeks has been almost Gordian in nature. It all started with a simple question from a friend to whom I was describing the challenges posed by working small (I was working on some 6" x 8" panels). What, she asked, is the difference between your small pieces and your large ones?

How are small pieces different from large (other than the obvious fact of size)? I had never stopped to ask, at least in terms of my present work. There are clearly two parts to the question: differences in process, and differences in product. It was the former with which I had been concerned, but the latter came to mind almost immediately.

Researcher that I am (25 years as a librarian doesn't fade quickly), I turned to my favorite sources of art wisdom to see what they had to say. Robert Genn has addressed size in his twice-weekly newsletter, but from the opposite end of the process: choosing the right size of canvas for the subject matter. In my case, the subject matter (such as it is) grows out of the process, and there is no predefinition to determine what size of panel to use.

I then searched Rebecca Crowell's informative blog for related discussions. In February 2008, she addressed the topic of size:

When I paint something large, I love the sense of being surrounded by the paint...while the challenge is to make something that justifies its own scale. I feel there needs to be something monumental about the piece, that will hold up in its largeness, over time and repeated viewings. 

Very small paintings have to be intriguing enough to withstand close-up viewing -- to have presence though occupying little physical space. It's really pleasurable for me to give due importance to slight shifts in color or texture, or to a few lines or some interesting mark -- and to bring that appreciation to viewers, whose faces will likely be inches rather than feet away from the work. 

In between these extremes are paintings (with) medium dimensions (30”x28”). I think the challenge here is to rise above what seems an ordinary or expected kind of scale. To stand out in a world of objects of similar size -- not just other works of art, but all the things in ordinary homes and buildings that vie for visual attention -- windows, computer screens, furnishings. While this presents a challenge, it's also a strength -- this is an accessible scale, that requires no special exhibition space, and feels comfortable to people as an object to contemplate. 

Rebecca's thoughts were helpful, but I still felt caught up in questions such as, can small pieces be anything but decorative? Small paintings have to relate to their surroundings in a way that a large piece does not, precisely because the edges are part of the viewer's experience: A 6"x6" panel cannot surround anything. Can I create a small abstract painting that also has meaning?

It is perhaps part of the phenomenon of midwinter blues that I let this whole subject bother me probably more than it should have. (It didn't help that I wasn't happy with the 6" x 8" pieces.) How could I avoid small pieces being denigrated from "art" to "decor"? Then finally, walking back into the house from the studio yesterday, I realized that I was letting "product" get ahead of "process" and intent, and it all became quite simple. If my intention, with all pieces of all sizes, is to fulfill my artist statement (see post of October 17th), then the product will flow from that intention, and although Rebecca's points remain completely valid, as does the "decorative" issue, my purpose/intention remains primary, and the other issues secondary and, with luck, not dominant.

I'm still not happy with the 6" x 8" pieces, but I've set them aside for the moment. The image above is of my most recent finished piece, 24" x 18", as yet untitled.

scraping back

In a moment of impatience this morning, I employed my painting knife, which I was using to mix some fresh paint on my palette, to scrape off a lump of oil stick from the panel I was working on. The knife -- a blunt, triangle-shaped metal blade angled down from its handle -- left an ugly mark, at which of course I scraped some more. Apparently I used a different angle with the knife, because the mark it made was completely different from the first. My attention diverted, I forgot the paint on the palette and continued to scrape the panel with the painting knife, investigating the effects on the semi-wet surface. The angle of the blade was critical to the result, as was the pressure used against the surface. I spent the next several minutes exploring this new (to me) phenomenon.

The use of the smaller painting knife produced more subtle transitions than broader-bladed scrapers (see post of November 1, 2012), and allowed for blending as well as separating the semi-wet paint. With appropriate pressure, lower, drier layers could be removed as well, producing a rich and complex surface that revealed hints of the history of the panel. I had gotten into the habit, as my technique to reveal lower layers, of dissolving applied paint with mineral spirits and then smoothing or lifting it off. This scraping with the painting knife provides a completely different effect.

To the experienced artist, this revelation will seem simplistic, since scraping with a painting knife is assuredly neither a new nor a sophisticated technique. I felt a little silly at it being a "discovery" for me. But it is not a technique to which I've paid much attention in the past, for whatever reason, and I was intrigued by the difference between the effects it produced and the effects that scraping back with wide flat-blade metal scrapers produces. In my exploration, I put down more paint and more oil stick, and kept scraping. The result, shown in the image above, was a more active, more colorful surface than I usually create. It is not a final surface, but it is a lovely preparatory expanse for some calming top layers. And in taking the time to follow my curiosity and experiment, I found a new way to develop the lower layers of my work, one that complements my intentions and goals. Scraping back is certainly a geologic phenomenon of the Colorado Plateau, if on a somewhat grander scale!

And I learned another lesson, which is how unconsciously entrenched I can become in habitual techniques, and how valuable it is to follow a serendipitous discovery no matter how seemingly simple and basic. My painting process, and my finished work, will be the richer for it.

color play

Four small (8" x 6") panels are developing together but as separate pieces, in part so that they are coherent with the rest of my work (I tend to wander off on tangents with individual small panels), in part so that I can try different techniques across similar compositions, and in part with the idea that they might end up for sale as a group. I am not forcing the latter idea, but I also am interested in the idea of series of paintings, and this seems a good opportunity to investigate it.

Working small is a welcome change from my recent struggles with larger boards, and is also educational: For example, perhaps one way to address a large board is by dividing it into smaller sections for detailed work. Also, it is less intimidating to experiment with techniques on a smaller piece; one has less invested, especially at the later stages.

I had conceived of a theme of the four seasons as a way to approach the quartet of panels, to differentiate among them while at the same time relating them to each other. As often happens with what seems like a good initial idea, the theme didn't take me far except in the area of color, since I differentiated among spring, summer, fall, and winter in terms of hue. In terms of marks and composition, my actions were fairly random, and I couldn't identify lines, shapes, or divisions that self-differentiated as seasonal.

This morning I explored color interaction among closely related hues. I was partly inspired by a 2013 wall calendar of Rothko's works that I recently hung on the studio wall. I knew that I was not yet at a final surface, which gave me freedom to play and to steal ideas from the calendar. My main purpose was to create four surfaces that reinforced the color ideas that I was developing for each "season". I also used the opportunity to experiment with creating deliberately shaped patches of color with deliberate edges, whether sharp and well-defined or blurred and fuzzy. The image above is the result for the "spring" panel, which I find particularly pleasing.