Sidewalk

This picture happened on a summer day with bright sun. I set up my easel next my car on the sidewalk and enjoyed the breeze blowing through the valley. My dog curled up in the shade and I started to enter that abstract world of shapes. The sidewalk became stripes and the trees became straight poles fading into the distance. The houses far away were bright jewels peaking out behind the trees.

Painter Susan Jane Walp recently had a show at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in NYC. This is an excerpt from the description of her show in which she talks about “the abstract world” and Hawthorne’s color spot theory:

Walp’s approach to painting was deeply influenced by the artist Lennart Anderson whom she met when he was teaching at a Boston University summer program at Tanglewood in 1968, and she again studied with him at Brooklyn College in the 1970s. Anderson taught a method of painting pioneered by the American portrait and genre painter Charles Hawthorne. Hawthorne’s technique was known as the “color spot” method, where a painting was begun by laying out areas of color, and then using the relationships between the colors as a springboard. Anderson learned this method from Hawthorne’s student Edwin Dickinson, Anderson then passed it on to Walp. In speaking of Anderson’s influence Walp states: “For lack of a better word (and one he might not approve of), it was an abstract world. Entering it was entering a realm of infinite possibility, and from the very beginning I loved dwelling in it.” Thus a tradition begun in the 19th century continues, through Walp's distinctive body of work, well into the 21st century.

I got to study with Susan Jane Walp in Italy in 2017 with the JSS in Civita program. She helped raise my awareness of the abstract world and challenged me to become more sensitive to it.

Painting on the sidewalk I looked at each stripe of light as its own particular color tied to all the colors in the picture’s own specific light envelope. Though the stripes on the sidewalk looked nearly identical, I found that each one had a slightly different character. I believe that it is this sort of character that takes a picture from a painting of “things” to a painting of a reality that feels specific and familiar.

“Sidewalk” began as a much larger painting. I found that this picture photographed here was the driving force of the image and the only necessary piece. I often crop or add on to my pictures in order to get the point. I find the useless information doesn’t need to be there. As Shakespeare says:

“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.” -Hamlet

Happy Valley

Have you ever been to a special place? Like something in the air just felt good? I’ve heard artists call it a place of predilection. I made this painting in one such place. This spot is a pavilion next to some soccer fields that sits right under some mountains and a creek. The wind coming off from the mountains is something magical.

In preparation to visit this special place brought 4 canvases to choose from. I started with the biggest one and found that the picture needed to grow so all four pieces were utilized.

While I was painting I spoke with a musician for a while. We were comparing choral singing to painting. She mentioned overtones. I had never heard of this phenomenon. She said that when she sings in the choir and everyone is really on pitch, there is another harmonious note that can be heard that no one is singing. Sort of like an audio rainbow. I thought that was so mystical and wonderful and, of course, wondered how the idea could be translated to painting.

I’ve heard painters use musical terminology when they talk about their process. Charles Hawthorne in Hawthorne on Painting said that when the color notes are tuned just right, there is a sense of reality that sets in. I wonder if that sense of reality is sort of like musical overtones. What do you think it looks like when a painting has perfect pitch?

Library Vans

Mountains before they have turned green- I love that time of year. This picture was made standing behind the South County Library in Roanoke VA. I set up by the staff entrance- they have a great view! The trees had not leafed yet, but the grass was a beautiful yellow green and some of the trees were full of white blossoms. Everything about that day felt like the quiet before the boom of spring. The sky was a white light blue and so big. There were two vans parked near where I stood. The way the sun shone on their roofs looked so peaceful and still. When I look at this image I’m reminded of fish sleeping lazily on the bottom of a riverbed in the noon-day sun.

While I was working a woman arrived before her shift and she sat near me eating a meal, looking at the mountains and catching up with a friend on the phone. It was so sweet sharing that bit of private life with her watching the mountains and the sun. I love this picture- for its stillness, quietness, and vast sense of privacy.

Blue & Red

It was a Wednesday morning. I remember it because May and my Mom went to the local library for Book Bugs. For some reason I couldn’t drive my car so my Mom dropped me off that this park down the street from the library. I never knew the park existed because it was so well hidden from the road.

I love how a place unfolds its secrets over time. As I slowly explore Roanoke I’m finding so many beautiful pockets- like this park!

So I set up under the pavilion with my easel on a picnic table (the leg on my french easel had snapped the day before so I used the picnic table as a support.) A few families were enjoying the playground nearby and the weather was strange. It was sunny and also sort of misty. It was hot and humid but still fresh- it seemed all the leaves on the trees had been born and were growing from yellow green to a bold green color.

I looked around to see what might turn into a painting. In the distance I saw a couple of warehouses and some equipment. One of the buildings was a lovely dark turquoise and the another a dark red brick color. They faced each other and beyond the two buildings was a white warehouse. The arrangement in space looked very abstract me- a block of blue, white and red sat in space in a row surrounded by green and enveloped in sunny misty air.

I kept thinking about what artist Ken Kewley says- paint what you love because the love comes through. So I selected the shapes in space that spoke to me one at a time and built a fiction. The picture is very small and almost square - less than 5 inches on one side. When I look at the picture I’m reminded of home and hidden spaces in the visual world and hidden spaces in the mind.

Easter

Before going to have Easter meal with my family I had a few hours to paint. I went to Lakewood park and watched the sunshine dance across the field. At the end of the field there was a road and a shopping center. It appeared as though the center was closed for Easter Sunday and the pink bricks of the building looked a soft mauve purple against the brilliant sunlight.

The holiday got me thinking about narrative. The building reminded me of the tomb- a restful sleepy sort of closed box waiting to be open for business by the next day. There was an exciting expectant sort of waiting about that spring day. It’s a feeling I always attribute to that holiday.

I grew up in the Episcopal church. One of its traditions is that no one says Hallelujah during the forty days of lent before Easter. On Easter Sunday everyone seems extra happy to say Hallelujah like they were holding their breath not saying it for forty days. The tradition reminds me of spring. The earth is holding its breath in winter for life to begin anew in the springtime.

Easter 2019 was one of those days where the clouds skated across the sky so that one moment the grass would look a dusty green purple and the the next it would be a shining soft yellow green. The leaves on the trees were new so when the sunlight hit them the trees looked as if they were glowing. Cars zoomed by me on my right and the wind picked up as the day grew long. It was a beautiful day.

Easter 7.5”x7.625” Oil on Canvas mounted on birch panel

I Paint with my Feet

No I don’t mean I stick a paint brush between my toes (though that IS on my to do list)- I mean I paint with my feet in the same way I paint with my eyes.

Let me explain.

I’m a huge Yoga with Adriene fan. She has a YouTube channel where she releases a free yoga practice once a week. I’ve been practicing with her most days for the last five years. So as I’m painting at my easel I sometimes think about my yoga practice of the day and how it might inform my painting practice. Here’s where the feet come in:

In yoga practice Adriene says to be conscious of all four corners of your feet on the floor. When I’m standing at the easel I think about standing this way activated and aware. My soles and heels are what are physically tying me to the motif. My feet and the motif are both touching the same ground. The motif and I share the same foundation. So I like to think that if I work to be aware of them, my feet can interpret the motif as much as my eyes.

I think that feet can read the energy or “vibe” of a place. What role does the vibe of a motif play in a work of art? To me the vibe is the unseen livingness connecting all things together. The vibe is the mysterious music between colors and forms. The vibe is the language a scene speaks when it says “paint me! See me!”

When Adriene begins and ends her practice she brings her hands together at the heart and then raises her thumbs to her third eye and with a little nod she says she is bowing the mind intelligence to the body intelligence. How does this attitude translate to a painting practice? I think it could mean that the awareness required in painting can extend beyond the head and hand and into the whole body.

When I studied in Italy in Israel Hershberg’s masterclass I was happy to meet lots of other artists who also practiced yoga. There seems to be an interesting connection here. Readers, do you paint? Are you yogis? Are you both? How do you think the two practices might be related? Leave a comment below!

Yoga with Adriene’s Mountain Pose video- this is one of my favorite poses to think about at the easel.

Overcoming a Creative Block

I’m a painter. And like most painters I know, I sometimes find myself in an anxious, dark place that is the creative block. I find I’d rather do anything else or even nothing else than sit in front of my easel. I have had to work out a strategy for getting through those times, for getting from being stuck to getting into the flow, from being distracted to getting into the zone.

When I don’t feel like painting, the first thing I do is focus on setting up:

• I walk into my studio.

• Pick a project to work on.

• Set up my easel, glass palette, paint box and chair.

• Then I sit down and study my project.

One thing calls out to me and then 100 a hundred things call out for attention. It’s easy to then become overwhelmed at this point. This is the most important step in getting unstuck. I remind myself I can only mix one color at a time. I go back to the first color that I observe in nature—the one that jumps out at me and I focus on mixing that one color, Then I try to focus on making that one color exactly right.

This requires staying present in that one task. It’s not easy. I’m inclined to allow my mind to drift towards other tasks that need doing. But if I can stay razor edge focused on that one first color, things happen. A nice steady pace sets in and tends to keep me going for the rest of my studio time.

Again, I start with my first best guess of what that first color is. Then I look at nature and back at the color I just mixed. I ask the color I just mixed: “What do you need?” over and over again until the color replies, “ I don’t need anything!”, and it starts to sing with the colors around it. I suspect you know that feeling, when things just start to resonate on the canvas.

This is my preferred flow state. To get to this point I periodically close my eyes and take five breaths—thinking only about those breaths. This works as a sort of reset button to clear the cache, quiet the noise, and pick one color. 

Artist Chris Gallego offers more tips for getting in the zone: https://www.chrisgallego.com/how-to-paint-when-its-the-last-thing-in-the-world-you-feel-like-doing/

I hope this helps! If you have any tips for overcoming a creative block, leave a note in the comments below. 

This is my trusty old palette. I made it out of some glass from an old frame, a piece of foam core and some masking tape. What does your palette look like? Leave a photo in the comments below