medium explorations

As I begin the preparation for my residency at CAN (see my post of June 4), I find myself working on least two levels: Conceptually, I mull over my "roots and tempests" idea and probe it for both integrity and depth, while on a more practical level I contemplate getting myself and all my art supplies from here to there. The Centre d'Art i Natura is in the tiny town of Farrera, in the Pyrenees mountains close to the French border. The final stage of travel, after various flights and a two-week car trip with Jerome around northern Spain, will be a five-hour bus ride from Barcelona. In terms of what to take, lightweight and compact would be two good qualities.

Following Phyllis's example when she flew out to Utah, I easily decided to use paper rather than board as a support. Following my colleague Rebecca Crowell's suggestion, based on her numerous residencies in Spain and Ireland, I've also decided to use watermedia (fluid acrylics and watercolors) rather than oil and cold wax. There are acrylic products now that can simulate the oil-and-cold-wax process, allowing for layering and texturing. Water-based media are lighter in weight than oils, and they avoid the airlines' prohibitions against carrying flammable materials on board.

So I have pulled out my old acrylic and watercolor paints as well as my drawing supplies, and have retrieved from my flat files a variety of papers that I have accumulated over the years. I am reacquainting myself with the paints and their properties, and pushing them beyond where I took them back when I was just beginning. At the same time, I am testing the various papers, from 140# cold press watercolor paper, to the same paper in a heavier 300# weight, to a supposed "multimedia" paper, to an innovative "multimedia artboard" that is as thin as paper but has been impregnated with resin and is stiff.

I have always enjoyed water-based painting, although it is oil paint that resounds most strongly with me. To undertake to express myself in fluid acrylics and watercolor is an exciting and intriguing challenge at this stage in my work. As I remember how to manipulate the paints, and explore the various gels, pastes, and mediums with which I'm not familiar, my compositions remain based on my Colorado Plateau concept about which I've written here in the past. The concept, and the cold wax process, guide my experimentation. If I can be satisfied with the use of the new (to me) materials to express a concept with which I am so intimate, I will be ready to use them to explore the "raices y tempestades" concept that I have proposed for CAN.

So far, I haven't played with all the different papers, so I haven't decided what I prefer. None that I have tried (the 140# and the multimedia papers) stand up to the type of layering and texturing that I hope to do. Fortunately, I have about two more months before I need to purchase what I am actually going to take. A summer project!

The image above shows the final version of Soundings (30"x24") that I didn't quite finish in Helper last month. Along with Passages, it will go to the gallery next week for our 4th of July open house on the 6th.

more assemblies

During the week in Helper last month, my friend Phyllis worked on paper rather than board, to avoid the need to carry heavy and awkward supports on the plane from Oakland. She cut the paper into 12" squares, then taped them together, overlapping, into a 30" square, and painted them as a single piece. The interplay between the whole and its parts was charming, and the finished pieces are lovely.

Inspired by her adventure, and wanting to paint something big without a huge investment in a single support, I am trying an experiment. I have nine (as it happens) 12" x'12" uncradled  panels that I have carried to various cold wax workshops over the years, in order to have inexpensive surfaces on which to play without committing to a "real" painting. None are finished pieces, and most only carry two or three layers of paint. But I like all of them, for one reason or another, and can't bring myself to throw them away. Nor, it seems, can I bring myself to paint over them individually. They have been languishing in my studio, moving from one dusty corner to another, each carrying fond memories. So there is an emotional investment in them as well, come to think of it. No wonder I don't want to toss them.

After I left Phyllis at the Salt Lake airport for her flight home, and before heading home myself, I stopped at an art store and purchased a large piece of lightweight foam-core board. Over this past week, I fashioned it into a 36"-square, and glued the nine tiles onto it. The result is shown above. Unfortunately, the foam-core board is not strong enough to be completely rigid, so the assemblage feels a little wobbly, but a second piece of foam-core glued onto the back should cure the problem. I have to wait for a trip to a big city to purchase that, and I don't want to work on the whole until I have reinforced it, so nothing is happening with it right away. But I think that the wait is a good thing: For the moment, I am so captivated by the piece as it stands that I am loathe to paint over it. By the time I get it ready, though, I will be happy to cover up and unify the conglomerate of ideas and impulses. And I look forward to working with the built-in grid lines, to push and pull against them, to counteract their straightness, to play with the compositional fact of their existence.

roots and tempests

Looking out the window above my desk, I see the stable, rusty-pink wall of sandstone cliffs that line the north side of our valley. Above them, in contrast, shifting thunderheads gather in advance of an afternoon storm. This contrast between the solidity and depth of the earth and the instability and storminess of the sky is one of the things I love about living on the Colorado Plateau.

I like to feel my feet on the earth, to feel its support against my weight. At the same time, I like to watch the sky, to see it change, to watch storms gather and disappear, to send my spirit outward. Just as the contrast in the natural environment fascinates me, so too am I intrigued by the contrast between the core solidity of my life (my feet on the ground) and the series of events -- some tempestuous -- that mark its history. Two aspects of myself: Continuity and change. Earth and sky. Roots and tempests.

I have been thinking a lot recently about how to bring a greater depth to my painting practice. My current work engages me technically and intellectually, but I would like to feel more deeply involved at a personal level. When I paint what I think of as "land", I feel its solidity. When I paint what is in my mind "sky", I feel its transience and lack of substance. What if I added to that my personal sense of roots when I paint "earth", and my personal experiences of tempests when I paint "space"? What if I just painted my own roots and tempests?

These themes are the substance of a project proposal that I submitted for an art residency this coming fall at the Centre d'Art i Natura in Catalunya, Spain. I will have nearly three weeks on my own in a small community dedicated to "art and nature" to explore new concepts as well as new materials (I plan to paint on paper and/or lightweight artboard, given the travel involved). I feel as though I've been given a gift. More to come!

The image above is Passages (24"x18"), which I finished in Helper. It is headed for our local Gallery 24.

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!