How to Edit a Landscape with Help from Twyla Tharp

How do you decide what elements to include in a landscape? I am regularly challenged by this. I typically want to paint it all... every damn leaf.  I watch other plein air painters include three people, not twenty, move a tree, change a tree shape, omit a building, or add clouds to a clear sky, without a hesitation. Exclusion for me is an inaccuracy, maybe a lie. I think plein air paintings are creating a moment of history. Cave walls tell us about the animals present, and sometimes the dress of the day… Not that I expect my paintings to last millennia.  Yet, I do see merit in editing for the composition especially.

Over the last couple weeks I began savoring a Christmas gift, reading, not too fast, Twyla Tharp’s 2003, The Creative Habit. Her stories of musicians, writers, and artists of all kinds are entertaining in themselves, but the exercises she suggests have inspired me. They are different from many other creativity books I've read. The one I want to wax on about, is led into with a story about Neil Simon, which you'll have to read for yourself.

Back to the challenge of editing a painting. Twyla talks about the power of seeing, you know, like Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by watching.” She recommends watching a couple and making a list of their actions and gestures until you have twenty. He puts his arm around her, she picks a piece of lint from his coat, she crosses her legs, he man splays, she pulls a Kleenex from her pocket, she blows her nose. It’s not hard, to list twenty items in a brief time, Twyla
comments. The second phase of the exercise is to watch another couple and list the actions that please you aesthetically or emotionally. A sign of tenderness in a touch on the arm, the slide of sunglasses onto the head, to see something more clearly, an elbow jab with a laugh, a slight step back at some news. Now judgement is added to powers of observation, and being selective becomes essential. 

Twyla’s point is that what catches your fancy is not as important as the difference between the two lists. What one includes or edits speaks to how you see the world. My thought is that what catches my fancy in a scene are the items I’m going to paint with more intention, might even be my focal point. And, if not my focal point, I will create a relationship to it… place it where it best tells the story I am painting. 

Once again, Twyla danced me into a new way of thinking.

As I wrap up this post, it reminds me of another one, I wrote a while back on making word lists to create a more accurate and interesting piece of writing. That process, coupled with asking yourself, what pleases you emotionally or aesthetically, offers another way to consider what to edit. This link will get you to it Lexicons and Writing. And, "That reminds me of..." is as always another powerful creativity prompt.

Photo: From Twyla Tharp Pinterest Page
Painting: Waiting for the Magic, Mary Longe, 2019, 16x20" Oil on Canvas

Fundamentals of Drawing and Painting: A Course in Courage to Become an Artist

I’m struggling with a painting of a beekeeper in a field calming bees by smoking a hive. An 18”x24” panel sits on a wood easel I bought last year to bring my painting practice inside. Until then, I’d painted only outside, en plein air, except for classes, since 2014. This morning, I sit on the futon in the room I call, with a bit of self-suspicion, “my studio”, and look hard at it.

Twice I’ve scraped it and started over. I may do so again. Two days ago, I stood in the Milwaukee Art Museum looking at Winslow Homer’s paintings in awe of the people he painted in the English fishing village of Cullercoats. Setting aside my surprise that Homer is actually American, and that I wonder if he picked that particular village because of its perfect-for-an-artist name, today, I wonder if my beekeeper isn’t the same story as the woman standing on rocks, above a tumultuous sea, a sail in the background, knitting. We viewers look up at her. She stands in the very middle of the picture… a frequently mentioned no no done well. Horizontally, she takes up the painting, her arm outstretched pulling on yarn from a skein in her apron. The painting foreground is no larger than the bottom of her shoe to her calf; the space from the top of her head into the sky, is that length plus up to her knee.

I know now, that’s “the story.” It’s the placement, the emphasis Homer gave her in space. The fishermen on the boat are not the story, her knitting is what she does while they are away. Her skirt billows like the boat’s sail. She’s as much a cog in the fishing village life as they are.  Like Ginger Rogers dancing all the same steps backwards without Fred Astair’s acclaim from the masses, she knits standing. My beekeeper needs a story. How do I know that? How do I do that?

I confess, I probably wouldn’t have known that was the issue with my painting, nor would have looked at Homer’s as critically, till discussions recently in the Palette and Chisel’s Fundamentals in Drawing andPainting class. Unfortunately for me, yesterday was the last day of that class. It’s a series, like college classes where you take 101 and learn basics about shapes, color, drawing, and 102 and 103 where they build on those knowledge and skills, and offer an understanding of what it really takes to create a successful piece of art. Yesterday was graduation.

I’m certainly not saying that now that I have completed the class I know exactly how to create the story. At best, I know I need to tell one. I am also saying that the difference from when I began 101 in March of last year through completing 102 and 103 is as if Fred had found Ginger a year before suffering from vertigo and never having danced. 

Until last March, I’d been struggling to move from hobbist to artist. Bob Krajecki and Dale Popovich the instructors who’ve taught this class together for years, gave me steps, not the choreography. I’d taken many classes and workshops, had dozens of critiques, but still couldn’t create a painting that I could envision as successfully completed. Fundamentals gave me language about art and about my art. It’s given me check lists, both in notes and in my head of how to start a piece, how to develop it, what to look for to complete it, and how to self critique it.

This post is as much a thank you to Dale and Bob. Though I’ve learned tons from previous instructors, it wasn’t until I had this core structure, did the previous teachings make sense.

I am grateful I came to the class with experience in painting, critiques and hours outside painting landscapes and cityscapes in wind, sun, rain, snow and fog. Those experiences teed up many aha! moments in class.  I’d heartily recommend this program at the Palette and Chisel for anyone who comes to painting, without formal training, no matter if they prefer, oils, watercolors or pastels. I don’t recommend it for those who aren’t willing to do the exercises or have a tendency to defend their finished pieces, it’s a place to learn from every nuance, not turn out masterpieces.

I received an email on Saturday, that a painting of mine sold from a plein air competition in Northbrook, IL. Currently, I have two paintings hanging for a year as “public works of art” in my home village of Deerfield, IL. These are signs of acknowledgement of my development as an artist since I began the class. My palette knife is ready to begin the third scrape, and I with the help of Krajecki, Popovich and Homer, the beekeeper’s story is about to be retold.

+++  

The following posts are in chronological order from most recent to the beginning of my journey since 2014 when I began to view myself as artist. 

• How to Pack for Plein Air Painting
• 2017 - Progress on Becoming an Artist
• The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event
• Your Creativity - Early or Late in Life? Quick or Never Done? Malcolm Gladwell makes sense of it
• Unpacking The Evolution of Learning and Mastery of the Creative Acts
• Self Confidence and the Up Hill Climb of Learning a New Craft
• Dabbling Is My Creative Process 2015
• You Calling My Art a Hobby? 2014

Your Creativity - Early or Late in Life? Quick or Never Done? Malcolm Gladwell makes sense of it

Are you a Jackson Pollack or a Cezanne... an Elvis Costello or a Leonard Cohen? Is your creativity iterative or a one and done? You gotta hear this excellent Malcolm Gladwell podcast, Hallelujah, if you want to better understand your creative process. And, it's even more poignant with the passing of Leonard Cohen.

I got hooked on the series after watching Malcolm Gladwell on Stephen Colbert. The Hallelujah segment spoke to me and helped me understand my process as more Paul Cezanne and Leonard Cohen. (Ha, I drafted this post two months ago.) It offered a connect-the-dots of ideas about creativity. He began with an Elvis Costello song that he likes and described how it changed when you recorded it many years later a second time. He likened the process to Cezanne who was never finished with a piece of art and contrasted it to Jackson Pollock who found his voice early and had many one-and-done paintings. He then went through a list of people and called them either Pollacks or Cezannes. For another example he used the many iterations of the Hallelujah song which I love and now appreciate even more.

Are you a Pollack or a Cezanne?

The podcasts are all 35 to 45 minutes long just about the time to drive into Chicago.

Unpacking The Evolution of Learning and Mastery of the Creative Act

It’s nearly ten weeks since I returned from Spain. That first night, with my essentials... contacts and glasses in my purse… I left my suitcase unopened, turned on the tv to missed episodes of The Good Wife and after twenty-five hours of being up, went to sleep in my own bed. Four hours of jet lag later, I woke and began to unpack the trip.

The bag exploded all over my living room with sock and underpant shrapnel everywhere. Laundry was folded and put away before the end of the day. I refilled my pallets with paint, my board with watercolor paper and repacked my easel, tripod, brushes, clips and other tools into my backpack ready for the next outing.

Between loads of wash and calls with family, an impromptu lunch for four of us on my patio that included a couple bottles of wine, a salad bar salad and a rotisserie chicken, I’d told the headlines of my trip four times. Each opened pockets with souvenirs of ideas still to uncover… traveling alone... with a group, the meaning of art and painting, unscheduled time and talent, my talent.   

I loved the trip. I learned so much from the leader, Timothy J. Clark. I'm aware now of how much I need to learn about the art world and how it works. His presence, knowledge, accomplishments are driving me to learn more. 

Since then, I’ve taken a figure drawing class, which Tim highly recommended for me to learn to draw accurately. Lucky me, I stumbled on the right teacher. Did you ever see a painter hold up a brush and seem to measure? That's about accuracy. The first thing Stuart Fullerton gave us in his class was a stick to measure and check to make sure the figure on the paper aligned with the figure we saw. 

For any trained artist reading this, it must sound, Duh. It is. But I now know I want to learn the fundamentals, not just paint because it feels good to paint. That's what I really learned in Spain. I don't want  a park district understanding of painting and art. Tim opened my eyes to the difference, though there is nothing like getting lost in painting. For me, when I'm lost it it, it's an expansion of that moment when I hit the water when diving or the minutes after an O. And, then, the thinking starts again and I wish the colors weren't as muddy or the lines a little straighter or whatever. 

I'm committed to getting in my 10,000 hours, so I'm using up ink, paper, paints and panels daily. In the past week, I did a pen and ink at Wrigley Field and painted at the Emily Oaks Nature Center in Skokie. I've sketched at the Historical Society Gardenin Glencoe, along the Lake in Highwood, on the train, as well as a scene of a pine tree and ball field lights that I see from the platform every time I take the train. I've taken that same picture more than 60 times, in my own OCD Monet way to watch the shadows and position of the sun throughout the year. 

After lunch that first Sunday, after my company left,  I threw my backpack in the car and did a quick painting by The Lake. I was up again the next morning when I heard about dense thick fog and went back to the same spot. In the ten weeks since, I made a switch from watercolor to oils. I've taken two, two-day plein air workshops, one from Stuart another from Errol Jacobson and a one day program from Don Yang during an Urban Sketchers of Chicago Workshop.  I join the weekly Plein Air Painters of Chicago through the Palette and Chisel most Saturdays and try to sketch daily. 

At some point, I will find my voice in my art.  I have a pile of watercolor paintings seven inches thick that I've done over the last couple years. There is not one in that pile that I would show anyone... or, that i like. Something's happened though with using oils. In my own estimation, I've ascribed to the Cub's Coach mantra, "Try not to suck today." I'm making progress. I figure I am about a quarter of the way to the 10,000 hours. My oils don't suck and my vacation is still with me. 

###

This is another in what is becoming a series on creative practice. The earlier ones were written over the last fifteen months and speak specifically to what I've encountered and learned, but, I suspect that nearly all my posts are about my own creative process. 

Self Confidence and the Uphill Climb of Learning a New Craft

Dabbling is my Creative Process

Ideas and Life and Hope

Great ideas, it has been said,
come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then,
if we listen attentively,
we should hear amid the uproar
of empires and nations
a faint flutter of wings,
a gentle stirring of life and hope.

Albert Camus

From Peacemaking: Day by Day 1985 http://paxchristiusa.org/

It Was Imagination I Know

Music to Accompany the Story...

It Was Fascination I Know 


Yesterday, still a block from the train station, I heard a distant announcement for the outbound train, alerting me to eight more minutes before my inbound ride... time enough to walk an extra neighborhood block. I crossed the tracks to the sidewalk falling two houses behind a boy with no calves, wearing a red backpack, a dark hoodie, board shorts, black socks and high tops. Probably hearing my foot steps, he turned around, peered at me, turned front and began to march. His arms swung and knees lifted.  Hup two three four, hup two three four.

His arm movement changed. His right hand caught a strap from his back pack, his left grabbed one on the other side, both arms and straps stretched taut. His step and arm movements became a wooden, marionette soldier. 

He turned around again. Apparently noticing that the distance between us had closed, he dropped the straps and ran two more houses. He vaguely stopped as he approached the corner at Hazel Street and walked into the intersection. A 10-foot hedge blocked my view of traffic. My breath caught as the boy leapt like a cat, straight up and landed facing into the street. His feet fell ninja-wide apart. He stretched his arms and again taut at his side. The hood of an blue-grey Pontiac rolled into view and halted a few feet in front of the boy.

The child stared down the driver while his hands, palms splayed forward, motioned to back down the car. It didn't move. The man behind the wheel took a swig from a travel mug. The boy spied me, narrowed his eyes at the car, jumped high to land once again facing the sidewalk and took off at a run. I lost sight of him a minute or so later when I climbed up the stairs to the platform.  

So creative... so oddly wonderful, I would love to have a peak into this boy's inner-life. I hope there is an adult who will nurture it.

Dabbling Is My Creative Process

Dabble. Onomatopoeia? I think so. I like that… a term that blends writing and the sound of painting. Not having thought about this for more than it takes to brew a Moka pot of espresso, I declare I am a serial dabbler. And, I am good with that.

To dabble for me follows in a vein like the stages of grief... only different. I try something like, non work-related writing at a class at Taos Summer Writers Conference.  I deny talent. I write more stuff, get workshopped and then get frustrated… I am not as good,

as creative, nor as grammatically correct. I take a class, try a different style, a different length, a different genre. I chafe (more onomatopoeia?). I cycle back to frustration and take another class, join another group. A couple people respond to an odd piece that resembles a poem but, in my mind needs an illustration. I try something – plein air watercolor painting at Madeline Island School of Art in Lake Superior. I deny talent. I paint more stuff, get workshopped and frustrated… I am not as good, as creative, nor realistically correct. I take a class at the Palette and Chisel and on line at Sketch Book Skool. I try a different style, a different medium, a different process and chafe some more. I stop and blog about my process. I put words to my painting. I paint scenes to my words.  I'm blogging... while the paint dries.

I declare acceptance of my process - Dabbling. 

Handsome Global Jetsetters

Watercolors have become an important part of my creative life. I continue to learn by doing, by taking classes and by emulating other artists. Today on a Sketchbook Skool posting I saw another student's watercolor that I admired. I decided to try her technique which included layers of color. Today, she posted www.MargaretMcCarthyHunt.com her 301st daily painting. I admire that too.

Here is my first painting which I like, and I used her technique. The male subject told me what to call the sketch, Hansome Global Jetsetters. 

Here is the sketch I did yesterday of the flowering cherry blossom tree across the driveway. I spent about ten minutes on it, had it shaped and the background sketched, when my neighbor pulled up in his truck and blocked my view. I stopped at that point, waved at him and said, f*it.

Though not in a obsessive compulsive way, I too have been painting and sketching daily. I have great faith and conviction that one day I will be able to see growth in my work. Right now, not so much.  I do feel more confident however, as I approach paper, pull out a brush and take my first strokes.


I am going to post a few I've done at Fort Sheridan over the last year. It's not really the most interesting scene, but I've gotten to know it in a way that allows me appreciate it and pay attention to how I render it. 

I would like to get to a more impressionistic style, but, I find myself wanting to realistically observe it. I am working to include other media and bought a couple pens. It's funny, when I start in pen, my watercolors feel sullied, like all I'm doing is coloring in a sketch.

I painted the next two on winter days. The top one was done on a snowy day in January. The temp must have been close to 32 degrees, so not blistery, just wet. The problem wasn't that the paints froze, it was that the snow fell so fast and furious,  that it melted as it hit the pigment, pooled and diluted the paints. I couldn't keep a consistent color.

I liked painting in the winter and though, I don't want it to hurry back, it gave me a new view and appreciation of my scene. There are few things that I have so deliberately looked at so many times. This is a zen sort of exercise. 

The sky is so blue and the lake is bluer in the next one. Fall 2014 turned the grasses brown and swept away most of the leaves. 

Everytime I go out, part of the pleasure is seeing what color the Lake and sky will be. During the summer when there are leaves, I can't see the Lake as I turn the corner into the parking lot but once the trees are bare, I come around the corner and it's like seeing an old friend and I am refreshed immediately. 

Spine Poetry - The Promise of a New Day - Creative Women

The Girl Who Played with Fire                                     
Girls Like Us                                                                 
Virgin with Butterflies                                                   
Stoking the Creative Fires                                              
All Will Be Well                                                             
Living Deeply                                                                 
The Promise of a New Day                                             
(but) Cowboys are My Weakness                                    

W.T.S. Keeping the Birds Flying

     W.T.S.… What the… Nope. Worm Tending Station, a perfect shelf to feed and take care of the kitchen compost bin. And, a perfect shelf to pot plants and a perfect place for a bar…. If ever needed.

     A few weeks ago, after using the hood of my car for the third time, I began to mull about a flat place, in the garage, where I could work with my kitchen vermiculture compost bin or re pot a plant and not scratch the car. My first serious thoughts included a hinged board with a chain hooked to the wall bent up, a second idea was a hinged board with the chain going up, but the board going down till I pulled it up, and a third idea was a hinged board that someone else figured out. I turned to my brother.

Luckily we discussed the shelf idea while he multi tasked through a garage sale. He understood the vision of a hinged board and called me back to discuss the merits of using a fold up podium he found at a Rotary Club (or some such) garage sale. His wife had a different vision, told him to grab it, they cleaned it up and doubled their money. Another time he called from a Habitat for Humanity store. I could tell this project grabbed him, he wanted to know preferences… width and depth, table or counter height and he asked for the measurements between the studs in the garage. He’d found something.

     But we hit a snag. He asked for a photo of my garage. Unfortunately, I left my car parked in it to take the photo… with the Obama bumper sticker. I didn’t hear another word for two weeks.

     Last Sunday at his grand daughter’s second birthday party, where we didn’t talk politics, he asked me how to get into my garage. Coming home late last night, I opened the door,  pulled in, put the car in park, turned the car off, turned the car on, put the car in reverse and backed out of the garage trying to decide whether to call the police.

     Once when I lived in Chicago, I returned home from work still in daylight and noticed my apartment window was ajar. I didn’t think anything of it, even though I don’t leave windows open on cold days so I opened the front door and realized within a few seconds, I’d been robbed. When the police arrived, they asked, Why did you enter (dummy)?… The robber (they probably didn’t use that word) might be still inside. That never occurred to me. It was then I asked them to check my closets. That robber got in through the window, went to the left and pulled a pillow case off my bed, filled it with jewelry, went to the next room… the bathroom and utilized it…(I hate the word utilize but I think it gives the word picture veracity; the police wouldn’t take the unflushed evidence for a DNA sample), he walked into the kitchen, swigged some scotch but neither swiped the bottle nor finished it, walked into the dining room, did nothing that I noticed, walked into the living room by the window where he  entered, pulled my bike from the wall, put on my Ray Ban Aviators and rolled out the front door with my stuff. I don’t know the chronology of events for sure, but I’ve watched The Mentalist.

     I didn’t call the police last night because the tip off that someone was in my garage was a plastic bag of phone books hung on the door leading to my mud room. Even an anal retentive robber isn’t going to take the time to hang something on the door. Scanning the garage for more evidentiary clues, I noticed the W.T.S. graffitti on the wall. Though I live in the suburbs, it’s highly doubtful a robber carries masking tape, unless maybe HGTV fired Nate and he’s desperate. I unlocked my now locked doors, got out of the car and examined how Jim constructed the shelf. It is masterful, an efficient use of space, the legs fold neatly under and are hung in a way to give it strength for the heavy bag of soil or case of beer. The worms, my original use for the shelf, weigh like feathers, beer or soil is a better measure of its strength. Which reminds me of a story my dad used to tell about a truck driver who stopped his truck more and more frequently as he neared a weigh station. He’d get out of the cab, walk to the back of the truck and pound on the door. Another trucker saw him a few miles after that weigh station at a truck stop (truckers probably call it “a stop”, like public school kids call it school), and asked him, why he pounded on his truck? “I’m carrying about two hundred extra pounds of birds and I gotta keep ‘em flying.” Clearly that truck driver's ingenuity is a driving force in our family.