patience and impatience

"Now I am again in such a period of struggle and discouragement, of patience and impatience, of hope and desolation. But I must struggle on, and after a time I shall know more about making water colors. If it were easy, there would be no fun in it. And it is the same with painting."
--- Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, January, 1882
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh: Vol. I, New York Graphic Society, 1959

I have focused my efforts on watercolor lately (besides drawing, which is always a part of what I do) because of its appeal to me as a more immediate type of painting material. No painting material is not immediate. But my approach lately feels particularly suited to watercolor. There is a sort of reverse thinking that comes into practice with this technique, leaving the whites white and working down into other colors and values, which is in contrast to the way oil painting is often handled where one works up to white (though I don’t usually work that way in oil, anyway.) But along with this process of starting out with the lightest values and working towards the darkest, I am also trying to simplify the composition without losing anything important.

It can be difficult to control this medium and push it to its maximum effect without going over the line and losing what has been worked on. I am experimenting with different papers and there is a lot of information to keep track of, besides simply putting in the time on it every day (which doesn’t happen, I admit). Painting seriously is a lot of hard work. To do it with sincerity, with a desire to learn and improve, is a great effort.

Besides this I’m often left with the sense that I haven’t started at the right place, that something critical has been overlooked, that I have to return to an earlier point to find the place I should pick up at. What I haven’t gained is a sense of a logical progression, or reduction (these aren’t contrary to each other), yet I do feel I have a better handle on my work than I used to. The past two years have been beneficial.

The outlying areas of central and southern New Jersey, where I grew up, afford some really beautiful views --- broad, flat, almost abstracted patterns of various muted colors and values, especially on those really lovely overcast days. I’ve always been fascinated by them and have been trying my hand at painting their essential visual qualities. I may continue to work on this, as I haven’t really determined what is essential and what is extraneous.

to forms around us

“Drawing can accommodate all attitudes, whether we are reacting directly to forms around us, refining forms from memory, inventing new forms, or even planning complicated relationships.”
- Bernard Chaet, The Art of Drawing

“We should talk less and draw more.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I want an entire year that I can put all my focus and effort towards my artwork. But with time often being dear, I try every day to put some effort towards drawing. The immediacy of drawing, that ability to pick up a pencil and just go at something, free of all the preparation that other mediums can demand, is one of the things I enjoy most about it. I have an easier time getting right to the heart of it with a pencil rather than a paint brush. Drawing is the basis of all the arts and, for me anyway, a continuing and, hopefully, endless effort to describe and make sense of what I see.

The drawing I’ve posted here was very enjoyable to work on. I was staring at this orange inside a plastic bag and suddenly it was not some mundane object. It was full of interest - - - there were both solid and transparent areas, physical weight contrasting with the light, crisp emptiness of the bag. I like these contrasts and they were fun to draw.

the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done

“(E)verything you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different colour from them. It is either seen as a patch of one colour on a ground of another; or a pale thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you can put on patches of colour or shade of exactly the same size, shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best draughtsmen - Titian and Paul Veronese themselves - could do no more than this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done.... If you will not look at what you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there, if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper with ‘vigorous’ lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquility of the thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will find obedience easier and happier than you think.”
- John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (1857), ch. I / 1.(44)

(Well, yes and no on that one, Mr. Ruskin.) One of my favorite passages from Ruskin, it is entirely truthful and, yet, almost misleading. Anyone who paints and draws with any seriousness knows it doesn’t always fall neatly into place. Experience might suggest that Mr. Ruskin is oversimplifying just a bit, but how, really? He’s right. This is all we do. We “put on patches of colour”. That’s all it is, really. But he leaves out that strange alchemy which comes into play with the great painters, that certain element which cannot be measured or described. But he is absolutely correct in making clear the critical and direct connection between painting and seeing.

No one reading these quotes on my blog, quotes from Ruskin, Vasari, and others, should think I believe my work measures up to these standards. These mark the level I aspire to, not the level I have already achieved. But I keep at it, painting and drawing. Like prayers to God which are small and imperfect, I make them nonetheless.

Here are three recent, small works of mine. The watercolor of the onion measures 4 x 6”, as does the watercolor of the blood oranges, which I did after the graphite drawing, which measures 6.5 x 10.5”, of the same arrangement. While drawings and watercolors are a natural way for me explore ideas prior to starting a painting in oil or egg tempera, they often end up being the culmination of my efforts.

daily a stone

“I really have but a few moments to devote to it daily; yet daily a stone, small or great, is laid upon the pile.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It seems that most days I have little time to put towards my painting but I try to grab even 30 minutes or an hour here and there. So the other day I worked up this color study of a group of buildings. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the location of this view. But I wanted to just get down the general effect of these forms and the light that was pouring across them as the sun broke through on a blustery March afternoon. I worked on this at home from notes I made earlier in the day. It measures 8 x 12” and is more than just quick color notes but less than a complete painting. And there are problems with the perspective.

On these March days, when the air is really wet, the buildings liquefy and puddle as the distance pulls them away. It was really beautiful to look at and I wanted to get some of that effect down.

a bad painting

“What shall I wish you: good studies made after nature, that is the best thing.” - Paul Cézanne to Charles Camoin, 13 Sept. 1903

“Paint is worth attention even in a bad painting.” - Lynton Lamb, Preparation For Painting

A few months back I mentioned a watercolor painting I had started that was much larger (19.25 x 26.75”) than any I had previously done in that medium. I also said that, good or bad, I would post it . I’ve been finished for a while now and here it is, perfectly nice and perfectly boring. (The image will be cropped later.)

The subject is a roof line and water tower, visible from the intersection of East 17th Street & University, and is typical of the many thousands in New York. Water towers fascinate me. The plaster and brick walls, weathered and discolored, along with the random accumulation of antennas, vents, ducts, and other objects, make each one entirely different than the next. It’s fascinating, like people or snowflakes - - - you wonder how there can be so many with no two the same.

I have a growing amount of sketches and watercolors of these water towers and their adjacent roof lines. I also take photos, for backup. This painting was worked up from one of those small sketches and other notes. I see now I should have made more sketches and more notes.

But I didn’t want to get caught up in detail. Rather, I wanted to approach it in a simple and straightforward way. I am fascinated by the work of the English watercolorist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842). The simplicity of his paintings is almost deceptive. They have such beautiful, broad handling. That’s what I was attempting - - - not his effect, since that is his own, but his approach. This may appear to conflict with my ongoing efforts in (so-called) “realism” but it doesn’t. Really.

And I failed. This is a bad painting. But even failures are valuable. I will have to do it over. Despite my original intentions, I spent too much time on it and tamped the life right out. This was an attempt to work in watercolor at almost four times larger than I normally work at. The size of the brush, the relation of the brushstroke to the size of the image, is entirely different here than at one-quarter the size, as you can imagine.

When I paint it again I will further simplify my approach. But, for now, here it is, overdue and full of problems.

we're all happy in Jamaica

“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
- Henry James

“With the real travel snobs I have shuddered at the mention of pleasure cruises or circular tours or personally conducted parties, of professional guides and hotels under English management. Every Englishman abroad, until it is proved to the contrary, likes to consider himself a traveler and not a tourist.”
- Evelyn Waugh, Labels (1930)

“Come on Jamaica
Everybody say
We're all happy in Jamaica . . .”
- Elton John


I had the good fortune of being invited to Jamaica to do paintings for a store the last week of January. Air fare, painting supplies, accommodations, ground transportation and meals for the whole week, everything was paid for. Outstanding! It was a lot of work - - - more than any of us had accounted for, and I was very happy that my brother David and my friend Jim were both there. They had their own work to do but helped me out plenty. Two school children wandered in and I immediately turned them into apprentices. Look how talented they are.

The butterfly was painted on the front of a display counter. Other images were painted on the windows but that’s a bit difficult to make out in photos. Reflections on the glass and such.

The week went very, very fast and we all three wished to see more of the country. I had never seen water that color. It was sapphire and sparkled like the sun. It was so clear you could read the morning paper under water if you wanted. And the people were very charming.

We ate all our meals in the small, local restaurant, all but one being fewer than six tables. We stayed in a house in Negril, along the island’s northwestern coast. We effectively avoided the tour package experience. We were comfortable and well fed, but we did need some help with the language. Periodically, I couldn’t understand the local pronunciation and at some point would give up (who was it who said England and America were two countries divided by a common language? Likewise Jamaica.). I didn’t have enough time to really get an understanding of the money down there. A cup of coffee was sixty Jamaican dollars (about 70 cents American). Our driver for the week, Andrew, helped us out tremendously.

Our days were spent about an hour east in Lucea, a small coastal town that appears to have one main road wrapping through the center of everything like a ribbon. Two cars can barely manage to pass without clipping off each others mirrors. There were few sidewalks, the pedestrians just staying along the edge of the roads. Children walked along, side by side, in their various school uniforms. Voices were everywhere. The quarters were close and compact, and the brightly colored buildings all called out for attention. The sky and the water were both equal in their blues and the white plaster and the doorways painted in reds, blues, greens, and yellows all competed and then merged in my mind, adding to the visual energy all around me. Most business signs were hand painted, some carved, and described goods and services in color combinations unimaginable. But for all this dazzle Lucea was a town unhurried and there was a slow, easy pace to the streets.

A whole week in the Caribbean and I came back just as pale as when I left New York. Leave it to me.

only abandoned

“And first of all,
whatever good work you begin to do,
beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it.”
- St. Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, tr. by Leonard J. Doyle

“A movie is never finished, only abandoned.”
- George Lucas

Mercy. Where does the time go? Here it is, 2009. One year passes, another takes its place, and I am again hit with the realization that there are so many paintings in my head that I want to work on but only a finite number of hours in a week to put towards them. I want this to be a year of real development with my work and know that total dedication and single-mindedness is required. The creative act is an eternal optimism that one enters into. But it comes up against the reality of daily life and one is forced to make cuts here and there. It's where the want for perfection meets up with the need for compromise. It isn't nice at all.

But without the discipline of making a decision, putting down a color, and moving on, little is accomplished. All those paintings just stay in my head.

Drawing is an important discipline for a painter and is crucial in my work. Not only do I try to fully work out all aspects of an idea for a painting through drawings, I also draw as an end in itself and believe, in most situations, it should describe the total form. Not just the shape but also a sense of the object's weight - - - the physical center of the thing, not only its outer surface. I'm always working on getting better and always feel that I have a long way to go. Vernon Blake believed that sculpting helps a draftsman develop the understanding necessary to represent form, that creating an object in three dimensions helps in comprehending it. He may have something there. So much of drawing is mis-handled as outline and ignores the physical stuff that comprises the whole thing. But a painter has to know what to focus on and what to ignore. It's all about making decisions.

In The Art & Craft of Drawing (1926),Vernon Blake insists against using an eraser, whereas John Ruskin, in The Elements of Drawing (1857), assures the reader about "rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your paper is dirtied". Even my heroes contradict each other.