Thursday, December 28, 2017

2017 - Progress on Becoming an Artist


On Facebook, the art supply company, Grumbacher tossed out a question about the year’s accomplishments in art.

I decided not to respond and closed my laptop… except the question nagged me. I showered and went about my day, with this nudge inside, asking myself, what have I accomplished not just in art, but in becoming an artist. 

The process began in earnest in July of 2014. By then, I had a vision of what I wanted, simply to stand at an easel and to paint outside. I’d learned that act was called, “plein air” and that plein air was a real thing with a long history. I bought an easel, paints, brushes, paper and a vat of sunscreen. I took a weekend workshop at Lill Street and a week-long workshop at Madeline Island and learned I needed to learn how to draw, let alone distribute paint so that it was recognizable. Classes, sketching, and painting, as much painting as possible, ensued.

 A fifteen-inch pile of water color paintings, a couple filled drawing pads, several sketch books and bins, shelves and wires hung with canvas boards filled with oil paintings are evidence of a continued pursuit of art since then. Yet, I still need to draw better and I still need to distribute the paint better. My inspiration to find some success is my former neighbor (by a mile or so,) Michael Jordan, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." 

Fast forward to 2017. My drawing has improved, but I don’t trust myself with the game winning line. My painting has improved but I’m still missing shots, but at this point, a lyric from Hamilton comes to mind, “I’m not throwing away my shot.” I continue to learn, ask for criticism and paint some more. In 2017, I completed (life changing) Painting Fundamentals 101 and 102 with Popovich and Krajecki through the Palette and Chisel, a 7-week perspective class with Krajecki thete too, a class taught br phenomenal artist, Steve Puttrich at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and a figure painting class with Ken Menami at the Evanston Art Center, and managed to have critiques by five other respected artists through the Plein Air Painters of Chicago. (Fred Polito, Don Yang, Errol Jacobdon, William Schneider, Nancy King Mertz.)

My easel accompanied me to paint plein air nearly every week April thru Oct and, I never went a week not "arting." I painted in two countries, three States, many states of mind and in two mediums. I painted over earlier paintings because they stopped being precious and I needed the canvas. I spent more money on paint and supplies than clothes, and found paint smears in more places than dust.

Firsts included: a plein air competition, a large format painting, a sale to stranger and one (almost two) off my easel, and, a paid commission (won't do that again.)

I bought a studio easel, took over a bedroom as a studio and stopped saying studio, as if it had quotes around it.

I participated in four shows; one juried. Two paintings were selected as year-long public works, two others are hanging in another town’s historical museum. An art critic reviewing one of the shows mentioned one of my paintings in a kind way. This year my Christmas list pretty much listed colors of paint. Gratefully, I received some. I continue to miss the majority of shots, but, I've hit a couple, for a change.  And, this year, the thought of painting as a hobby, never entered my mind. It's become my way of life. 

Monday, December 4, 2017

The Challenge of Painting a Tree

Painting a tree is hard. I say hard as part whiner and part pirate. It’s haarrd.

Children make drawing a tree look easy. I watch them as they fill a page of the sketchbook I offer when they seem curious about the painting underway on my easel. The encounter starts when I feel a presence at my side, a head near my elbow.  Sometimes I ignore it, but usually, I’m ready to take a step back. As painters, teachers encourage us to step back, to compare our painting with the scene in front of us. The masters wore carpets to threads in their studios and ruts in the grass outside. “What do you like to paint?” I ask the child beside me. 

If they respond, I ask the parent if it’s okay, and offer the child my black, spiral-bound book, with the instruction to make a picture, and the provision that I get to keep it. Invited to draw what they see, they draw trees. Clouds and sun are the usual embellishments, though a cat and dinosaur have appeared. I sometimes continue painting the scene in front of me, and, sometimes I just marvel. When they are done, I request a signature, and the parent requests a photo of the child with the picture, and, sometimes with me, the artist.    

In painting outside, John Carlson, a famous author on plein air painting, says, one should stand two and a half times the subject’s height, away from it. Me? I like to be up close. I like to see the curl of the bark, the overlap and shadows of leaf upon leaf, and the way branches mimic the human body. Starting at the trunk, at the shoulder, that big bone of the upper arm, the humerus, each branch grows like the split to the two bones that create the forearm, to the twenty-seven bones that make the hand.

As painters we’re taught to get the shapes in first, to paint background to foreground and dark to light. Today, I chose a location that I’d painted previously in the summer. Then, the trees were three-leaf clovers with strokes of greens made of cadmium yellow medium and cobalt blue. It was lush, and easily meshed with a titanium white and cobalt sky.

My teachers regularly remind me to blur the edges.  We don’t see sharp lines through the atmosphere, they say. I made a scraper tool from an old credit card and dragged it once from tree to sky and once again from sky to tree. It blurred and blended till the trees appeared taller and further away. It became for me, my mother’s dressing gown; a chartreuse satin, with threads of yellow embroidery against a peek at a blue lace slip beneath. I heard my father’s keys jangling, muffled in his pocket, and watched as he pressed the crease in his fedora. She said, as she dried her hands on a kitchen towel and surveyed the balance of dishes in the drainer, “I’m almost ready, John, I’m dressed underneath.”

One teacher told me that when I paint trees I should paint the roots, but I can’t paint the roots. I don’t see them. In the scene today, I do see a sidewalk heaved and cracked by a Hulk from the underworld in search of water and nourishment. The broken sidewalk is dark, as if an artist had blended the color of the grass, the dirt beneath and dried leaves upon it. It’s clearly marked 1938. I can’t paint the roots, but I can paint their power. I only wish, that I could paint the hubris of homeowners who’ve recently planted saplings next to concrete slabs stamped with 2002, 2009, 2012, because, I know the Hulk will return.  Painting a tree is hard, I say to myself again.
The children paint the trunks brown. Tree trunks aren’t brown. They are made of colors that sometimes make brown and those same colors sometimes make purple and shades of grey.  I stare at the line of trees and I see brown trunks too. I squint and colors separate. My mind separates. I see her there among the other trees. A breeze blows. Her dressing gown disintegrates. I see a trunk with limbs of grace and strength, curves at life’s grand junctures. Seasons took a turnm nourishment in some years overflowing and in other year’s light. Her limbs flow from branches to fingers where the last of the leaves become her bravest bit of bling.

I stand back with my brush in hand, and, I miss my mother.

Painting a tree is hard.