Musing on Directions

 These paintings are examples of the effects popping up in my work.

1.    These are are all suggestions of form.

2.    Pallet is limited.  Colors results from mixing.

3.    The paintings are fast, for oils.

4.    Figurative work is new ground for me.

5.    I need to paint more cats to improve.

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Personal Notes

The one's where a single color dominates appear to have more presence.

Figures appear to add something to landscapes that make them relatable.

9 by 12 inch paper is a good size for most days.  I wonder if a larger canvas would reveal more mysteries while painting.

 

Art For Art's Sake

Leroy,

Art for Art's sake?   Such a thing probably exists.

Somewhere.

Field of color painting
July 2022
Oil on loose canvas.  18 by 24 inches

I have no intention of stretching it. 
It will be hung similar to a scroll painting.
 

Generally, if someone can imagine something, then it can be created - with a lot of effort usually.  (It's easier create an image if one has access to someone who has already done it.)

However......

Most of what I have seen is art serving a purpose.  A protest, a contemplation, a meditation, or a bit of escapism, the list of purposes is endless.  

Field of color painting
July 2022
Oil on treated paper 9 by 12 inches

This painting will be mounted and framed, eventually.

I don't have a cause to champion.  I am certainly not protesting through my art.  There are spiritual elements present, which apparently is more common among painters than I realised.

So I am offering a glimpse into my soul.  It is not a particularly nice soul; but, it is the only one I have. 

Looking forward to more of these discussions.  

B Powell

musing on paintings

This was from a class in oil painting
my first effort at pallette knife painting,
and in some ways, my most successful attempt.

 It is on my studio wall, not stretched or framed.  It's a reminder of where I was, and a sign post of how to move forward.   

Someone said there really is not any future, only the past and the present.  He was a designer.  I have always felt this was a fairly important statement, but I have never understood why.  

I could take a stab at it here.

I can only imagine anything in terms of what I already know.  By extension, I can only create images in terms of what I already know.

Painting starts in the mind?  I suppose that makes sense.

Cat Photograph

Photo of Alex my sister's cat.

 

Cats are almost a required image on the internet.  Cute little predators.  

But, in terms of what this blog is about, this sort of image would need to be broken down into basic shapes and reconstituted as a painting or drawing.

In fact, that is an exercise assigned to me a long time ago in a water color class.  I seem to remember it helping.

Conversation With Myself

Breakfast at the diner,
a time of introspection.

,

 Why don’t I work digitally and skip the material art world altogether?  A lot of people are doing this, and their work is, for the most part, exciting and intriguing.  

I can’t really give you a clear answer.  It’s not like I can’t, or there is no opportunity.  

That medium just does not appeal to me.

It doesn’t take up any space outside of the digital world.  As long as we have computers, the images are permanent, no decay, and no need to work at preservation.  Things in the real world are mortal, unless they fashioned out of gold or ceramics.  Those materials don’t seem to fall apart with age.

There is a certain beauty in maintaining something seen as worthwhile.  The labor, the effort, the struggle - whatever name you choose, that marks the importance we place on an object.  

Example, in city politics, the neighborhoods where sidewalks are maintained are affluent and near city officials.  The broken sidewalks, they are in neighborhoods that feel, with justification, that the current government just doesn’t care.  Yet, the houses the people live in are kept up to the best of the residents ability.  The yards are kept in shape.  People care about their neighborhood.

You just don’t have that relationship between art and people when you uses digital images.  You can forget about them and they don’t change.

The other thing that bothers me is the potential to make infinite and indistinguishable images.  We have already seen what that sort of thing does to a well designed object, like chairs.  It devalues the individual chairs and soon they are just ignored because they are everywhere.  

In Between

 

Landscapes are starting to dominate my works.  What I am focusing on?

Earth and Sky meet in between them, people dwell, either pushing the sky up or pushing the ground lower.  A created space between the two if dwellings are involved.   

Plants also occupy this space, especially trees.  Digging into the earth and opening towards the sun.  

In some ways,  I guess, the writings of Frank LLoyd Wright and Louis Sullivan are my guiding lights.  Not really painters, but architects who sought inspiration in nature.  Men who felt that their contemporaries were in need of a new vision, something besides the Neoclassicism of the day.

There are no grand aspirations for what I am doing.  I leave that to the egos of those who seek to change the world.  Drawing, painting, are far more personal than architecture.    

I am just wondering where my place in the world is.  In between, is just a good place to start.

Working Out My Approach to Composition

title: Study of White
oil paint on 8 by 10 inch board

When planning out paintings in detail, beyond basic compositions, the results have left me less than satisfied.  The control freak approach to composition works for some people.  Personally, I think a painting will tell me where it wants to go while I'm holding the brush or knife.  (I'm not going to stop trying the control freak approach.  I change over time and it might start working for me.)

The big question for me is when to stop painting.  My goal in painting is simplicity.  

A professor once told me simplicity, simplicity, simplicity was the key to design.   He was not talking about paintings, but the advice seems to work for me, or at least get interesting results.

Currently, simplicity is achieved by a sort of process of elimination.  Starting with thin, transparent layers of paints a complex, over done collection of shapes are created. As more layers are added the composition emerges as parts of the painting fade into a blurred background.  

Achieving simplicity is difficult for those of us who tend to over think or over do paintings and other projects.   This is a personal struggle against the desire to keep adding one more detail, one more brushstroke, one more anything.  It destroys the feel of  spontaneity that I seek in paintings.

 

Artist: JMW Turner
Landscape with Water

Now what makes a painting attractive?  

If we are were talking about flies, then the answer is scent.  

My silly friend, we are discussing people.  Specifically, people who want to purchase our paintings.   

Ah, yes, my print of the Turner I keep on the wall.  The original is worth a lot of money these days.  I'm glad the museum has not sold it.  Prints are good, but nothing replaces being in front of the it.

Did you know he actually made a living as an artist?  He was not wealthy, but his works supported him.

He had patrons who supported his career by collecting and commissioning works.  And, he worked his way through his education employed by architects and artists.  Remember, he did not live in our world. Having a patron was being employed in those days.

His painting were popular, even the ones that approached abstraction, like the print on the wall.

A good start for our subject.

Apparently he was reclusive, and the following puzzles me, did not really care about about how long his pigments would retain their color.   His work faded quickly, a fact the critic Ruskin complained about in his writings.

A clue of sorts..

John Ruskin was the critic of his time.  If Ruskin was writing about your work, those who read articles by art critics would take the time to see your work.  Generally, this was middle class to wealthy people who were not working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.  To get noticed by Ruskin, you had to have your work accepted in the salons and shows of the age.

For this to work you had to have talent.  You had to hone that talent.  You had to put your work into the public eye for Art Critics to see.

So, you really didn't need to be an extroverted showman.  JMW Turner certainly wasn't that.

Today's world is a lot different.

For starters, our poor has the time to appreciate art, if they so desire.  There are a huge number of industries that employ artists.  It is possible to survive without selling one's own art.  

Oh, Patrons still exist, but they are not as prominent as they were in the 18th and 19th centuries.

No one has to leave their house and go to a gallery to see new art.  That is an option.  We have the internet, thus the world.  For all practical purposes, Turner was limited to London, and the European wealthy classes.

The world's population is what, around 8 billion right now.  Let's say 7 billion are not, for whatever reason, not interested in purchasing art.  That leaves 1 billion potential customers.  Say two artists for every customer.  That is two billion artists competing for attention.

Exactly how should I comprehend those numbers?

I can't.

We, my silly friend, are looking at this wrong.

Okay.  Okay.  

A bowl of cat food is set on the floor; and, Alex's patience pays off.   Her artist limps toward a camera tripod and he ends the video feed, called Alex vs Alex.   It's time for him to paint.