I have been trying to talk myself into the belief that Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 is complete. But every time I touch the painting, it gets better. Yesterday I learned something important. I worked on the hands of the man in the right panel. I was startled by the importance of these hands, not just because of the emotional expression they add to the figure, but also compositionally. The fingers on his right hand (on viewer's left) act as a small plane which helps the viewer fall into the composition using its third-dimensional aspect. I am bolstered by this success. That right man's hands are not complete, but I will wait a day or two for the oil to dry before completing them. Today I will work on the woman's feet in the left panel. Tomorrow I will report to you my perception of this seemingly minor change. I thought the man's hands I changed yesterday to be a minor alteration. Perhaps defining the the woman's feet will be just as important as the man's hands. I really would like to move onto the next painting, but the knowledge I am absorbing as I continue to work on Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 is just too important. What I learn now will stay with me forever.
I wrote in yesterday's post that I am accepting my total fascination with the surfaces of three-dimensional forms. You can see this in yesterday's drawing. Yesterday I reproduced a Lucian Freud etching in order to exhibit a common thread between him and I. Today I show you an early Matisse, where he, in his imitable way, plays with the color and light on the three-dimensional surface of the face and upper torso of a woman. It is difficult for me to go through the ups and downs of internal, physical, intellectual, and consequently, creative energy. The last few days feel creatively low. But, who am I to judge? I am just the guy making the stuff. In any case, right now I feel today will be the day I return to full creativeness. Yesterday was a typical day of energy seeping back in, a day of returning to the way I prefer to feel. Yesterday's middle drawing is the best, so I show it first. My interest in surface it apparent in drawings #2 and #3. These exhibit my great interest in the emotional subtlety that minor forms emote within the overall form of the human face. Knowing this, I looked back at the works of Lucian Freud, which is a relevant comparison (see an image of a work by Lucian Freud after my work).
The painting Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 is very close to complete. Yesterday's entire studio session was devoted to it, obviously! It is time for final decisions about minutia. Let's think back to some of Henri Matisse's work between 1905 and 1910. Matisse made decisions not to over-detail things like limbs and extremities. In those works of Matisse, feet and hands often appear awkwardly drawn. The viewer is forced to look at those paintings in terms of color, composition, and surface (e.g. Dance of 1910 or Nymph and Satyr of 1909, shown below). As I return to complete Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 I will be making decisions about hands and facial elements (the minutia). This may not happen today. I think I need to step back and breathe a little before I proceed to finish it off.
Today I show you the work I did on 06/20/2014 — that's 3 days ago! I was away. During my travels I saw a painting by my youthful mentor, Philip Guston. It hung in the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts, a gift of Philip's wife, Musa. Guston's painting was reassuring. Its demanding overall conceptualization demonstrated a resolution similar to the one I am questioning as I move toward the completion of Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014. The question? Where in Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 do details became important? I am beginning to believe Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 is so much more about the overall impact of the composition than it is about individual details. I must know when to stop painting. It looks very good right now. I believe it will be done with a little bit more work on the faces, and with some clean up of the muddy areas of the surface created by painting wet over wet.
I handled the the drawing I show here easily, despite its complexity. In some ways I feel I went too far. I pulled the drawing away from its more expressive middle development to finish off the details. Not abnormal enough! My quest for more expressive and engaging art is taking over. I should say, "At last!" What have I been doing all these years? Answer: I have been gathering knowledge, intuition, and skill.
Today I will try again. I am certainly not there yet. I am tired of complaining. I am not there because I know I will never be there! I am here! That is why I must not complain about the years I have spent in search. Always I have been here! Knowing is not a sudden reality. It does bite one's mental ass. It pokes the brain with small bits of new knowledge. It does not slap the knowing into an instant wake-up call. This brings me back to today. I anticipate no more than more of the same. Not more of the same in images produced, but more of the same in process experienced. A note about the reproduction of the drawing reproduced today: The reproduction of the left head is not as crisp as the reproduction of the right head. This is not due to focus problems, but to lighting problems. Pencil marks produce a subtle sheen on a paper's surface. In this case the light which reflected off the pencil marks of the left head dulled the contrast of the pencil marks relative to one another and relative to the white surface of the paper. Consequently, in this reproduction, the left head does not sing as forcefully as the right head. This diminishes the impact of the overall image reproduced here when compared to the actual drawing. The remedy to this problem of inferior reproduction is better placement of lights and better use of a polarizing filter. Winter is icummen in, Well, well, well. You figure it out. I will be back in two days to explain!!!!!!!
I'm watching and wondering. This is a lonely business. This feels particularly true when I delve into the realm of knowledge which springs from my abstract internals, rather than from the stuff that sits on my dinner table. Some objects in Painting-07·28·2013 are unknown objects. They animate the space. This is visually exciting. It is not the concrete matter of the real world which excites me visually, it is the play of abstract objects in an artificial and artful space. This includes the surface of the objects, and the space which these objects inhabit. Like Vincent van Gogh, I want to touch everything, and leave my mark on everything. You can see me search the surfaces in yesterday's drawing and in yesterday's painting. Since I referenced van Gogh I will show you one of his paintings after mine.
The drawing and painting from yesterday, at first glance, appear to be by two different artists. They are interested in two different approaches to making art. Nonsense. They are both me, and these works are about the same thing. Both began with my interest in drawing objects in a space with depth and perspective. Both feel their way through forms, surfaces, and textures. Animating the composition is important, as is the emotional significance of each object, and their details, from the twist of the lip in the drawing, to the spikes radiating from the central object in the painting. Not strange together at all.
All I can tell you is...it feels weird. There was a time, not too long ago, when I struggled to feel the form as I made marks on paper and canvas. Now I feel the form as I create the form, so struggling to feel truth in form is now a secondary problem. The primary problem is struggling to find authenticity in the image. The weirdness of this statement is in my questioning the relevancy of image, because I am not sure it is relevant. In the past I have shown you works by Egon Schiele, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Vincent van Gogh, and Francis Bacon. I would argue, the images created by all these artists are not as important as the energy and expression translated to viewers by the abstract and formal qualities of form, surface, and composition. To prove my point I give you two Giacometti images after my drawings from yesterday, plus I refer you to my post of 05/30/2012 for images by Egon Schiele and Francis Bacon. And then, of course, there are my images I show today. It is my practice to begin my art-making in the most abstract of ways, simply marking the paper, allowing the recognizably, referential forms, to appear. Do the images these forms create really matter?
"You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. The surface is all you've got. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surfce. All you can do is to manipulate the surface—gesture, costume, expression—radically and correctly. And I think Schiele understood this in a unique, profound, and original way. Rather than attempting to abandon the tradition of the performing portrait (which is probably impossible anyway), it seems to me Schiele pushed it to extremes. He shattered the form by turning the volume up to a scream. And so what we see in Schiele is a kind of recurring push and pull: first toward pure 'performance,' gesture and stylized behavior pursued for its own sake; then these extreme stylizations are preserved in form, but disoriented, taken out of their familiar place, and used to change the nature of what a portrait is."
-Richard Avedon I was disappointed with myself yesterday. Yesterday's one drawing is mediocre. I look forward to a good day in the studio today. I did have an important insight, which is described well in the quote from Richard Avedon. Often I have wondered about my affinity for the work of the artist Egon Schiele. The Avedon quote clearly expresses the reason Schiele's approach has similarity to mine. Below my drawing I show a drawing by Egon Schiele, a photograph by Richard Avedon, and a Self-Portrait by the painter Francis Bacon. Avedon appears in his photograph with Francis Bacon. Bacon is another artist whose works strongly informs my work. As with Schiele and Avedon, Francis Bacon's work is all about surface. Richard Avedon must have enjoyed making this photo with Francis Bacon because they share a way of perception. |
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April 2024
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