Laying the Painting Aside to “Compost” Awhile

Closing in on the Finish of this Experiment

It’s been tedious but enjoyable.  I purchased a mechanical drafting pencil so as to keep a sharp point, and carefully, joyfully, drew in every thread of screen mesh over the white areas of the coffee can and surroundings.  Then I dragged an eraser over much of it take away the uniformity.  I continue to rough up the white painted slats to make them grimy in appearance.  I feel that I am getting close to finishing this one out.  I’m going to set it aside and “compost” awhile, deciding what, if anything, needs to be done further.  Perhaps the Cave will be more conducive for painting later in the day.  The 40-degree morning has chilled me to the bone out here.  I think I’m ready to go back into the house and pursue some serious reading.

I’m excited to have a holiday off from school.  I have been aching to read and have so little quality time for it.  The time has arrived.  So many books laying open all over my study desk!

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

The Pulse of a Holiday Morning

Man Cave on the Holidays

Imagination is the outreaching of mind.  It is the individual’s capacity to accept the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images, and every other sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious.  it is the capacity to “dream dreams and see visions,” to consider diverse possibilities, and to endure the tension involved in holding these possibilities before one’s attention.  Imagination is casting off mooring ropes, taking one’s chances that there will be new mooring posts in the vastness ahead.

Rollo May, The Courage to Create

There were obstacles to clear before creating this morning.  I am a sucker for NHL hockey and stayed up late watching Stanley Cup playoffs last night.  School is out today for a Texas holiday, but I set the alarm for 6:00 anyway so I wouldn’t waste a good day with studio potential.  However, it is 41 degrees outside and gusting winds, and I knew the garage studio would be chilly, so I lingered awhile longer under the quilts, trying to talk myself out of getting up.  I’m glad I pushed through anyway.  A breakfast of fried potatoes, grilled onions and scrambled eggs shook loose the cobwebs, the coffee is made, and I’m ready now to face this screen door and see about redrawing the screen wire in front of the white areas of the coffee can, and then finding out how to diminish the starkness of the lighter masqued areas.

Rollo May was my companion this morning, as I reached for inspiration and camaraderie in the studio.  I’m ready to paint now.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Objects Embodying the Stuff of Revelation

The Screen Door and Coffee Still-Life, Unmasked and Stained

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands?  Because it is up to you.  There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain.  It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.  You were made and set here to give voice to this,your own astonishment.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

William Carlos Williams, the poet/physician, daily drove the streets of Rutherford, New Jersey, household to household, making his calls, and gathering images and ideas for his poems.  He was always engaged, always interpreting and re-interpreting his life.  Andrew Wyeth wandered the rolling hills of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, his eye taking in the images of his surroundings and the village life of Little Africa, all the while his romantic nature extracting meaning from the objects he found in everyday households.  Neither of these artists made apologies for the enthusiasm they felt as memories associated with the everyday mundane warmed their hearts.

Several blog readers have posted to me their warm memories of the slapping screen door from childhood, and the amusement they gained from annoying their elders with that irreverent pop.  All day long at school today, I could think only of getting back into the Cave and resuming work (play) on this screen door and coffee tin.   My mind drifted over all those popping screen doors (at both grandparents’ farms, Marlin’s general store in the grandparent’s vicinity, the wonderful old general store in Pine, Colorado where I stopped for provisions after a hot day of fly fishing at Cheeseman Canyon, feeling like Ernest Hemingway).  I cannot explain my fascination as a child with that screen door, and later as an artist when I looked more closely at its features–blistered painted wood, a hook that left its arc carved in the wood from its years of swinging back and forth, the cut of the spring into the wood, leaving its rust stains over the years, the sloppy paint job that left white paint around the perimeter of the screens–all those things excite me for reasons I can never put into words.  I guess I’m more of a painter than a writer.  These things I just cannot explain.

I removed the masquing first thing this afternoon.  Since then I have been re-staining the screen wire to get rid of the stark white left by the successful masquing.  It’s not going away willingly.  I still have more staining, more darkening to do.  I haven’t yet decided how to re-draw the screen wire over the white label of the coffee tin–I’ll have to experiment with that on separate paper.  I’m thinking about a hard-led pencil, perhaps even a mechanical pencil.  Perhaps a Prismacolor Verithin pencil which features a pretty decent hardness.  Again, since I’ve never done this before, I’ll have to experiment.

I have really enjoyed roughing up the wood and blistering the paint textures on the screen door frame.  I finally worked up the nerve to paint in the hanging spring and gouge the rusty imprints it left along the horizontal frame.  In all of this I am finding pure joy.  For years and years I have gazed upon the Andrew Wyeth drybrush renderings of whitewashed sidings of houses and window sashes blistered by the sun and weather, and always wanted to give it a try, using watercolor, pencil, fingerprints, smudges–anything that would simulate that weathered appearance.  Finally I am getting into it and absolutely loving it.

Yesterday afternoon, the Texas temperatures climbed to 83 degrees and I had to have a box fan running in the Cave to survive working out here.  Now it is 42 degrees with arctic winds howling outside the garage door, and I am wearing a heavy pullover sweater and drinking hot coffee to stay in the Cave.  But I love it.  The Cave environment has been welcoming, quiet, affirming.  I’m thrilled to enter a three-day weekend (no school tomorrow) and hope to have long, uninterrupted hours painting and reading in the cave.

I’m going to post a picture below of the painting after I removed the masquing, for anyone curious about this process.  When I apply the masquing to the untreated, white watercolor paper, it bonds well and does its job, but once it comes off, the stark whiteness is unacceptable.  I always know it’s going to happen, so I no longer feel those “uh-oh” moments when it comes off–I just know that there is plenty of work still ahead, staining the white areas, toning them down, getting them where you want them.  And that part does not come easily for me.  I have to keep applying more layers of wash, continue rubbing with my fingers, getting rid of that stark white.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

The painting unmasqued, before re-staining and re-working

The Man Cave Studio as I work Tonight

Why the Abstract Expressionists Matter to Me

Screen Door Study Coming Along Slowly

I have this conversation with my high school students so much, that I cannot remain silent about it on the blog.  Especially when we come to the end of the year in art history and my students, knowing the kind of work I do, ask me if I truly enjoy studying and teaching about the Abstract Expressionists.  I tell them that they are among my favorite artists and muses.  I have read major biographies on Rothko, De Kooning and Pollock, and have read The Collected Works of Robert Motherwell.  Of course it goes without saying that I have read biographies of Wyeth, Hopper and Homer and have studied their works extensively over the years.

But I draw much inspiration from the lives of the Abstract Expressionists (New York School) and have learned a great deal, studying their works.  For two weeks I have been poring over Willem De Kooning’s works, and the textures I saw in his painting “Excavation” made me decide I wanted to try a close-up study of this paint-peeled, abused screen door.  As I’ve worked on scuffing, scumbling, scribbling and texturing the wood on this door, I’m reminded of techniques I’ve seen from De Kooning, Motherwell, and Cy Twombly.  Many of the techniques that contribute to the overall paint quality of De Kooning’s paintings I have tried to put into this watercolor.  And for years, I have joked with plein air painters that I copy just as much from Jackson Pollock as Winslow Homer when attempting to render tree foliage.

Robert Motherwell is a kindred spirit, because he was a scholar of art history and philosophy and a lover of literature.  He was also a splendid writer.  I haven’t found too many “published” artists that I’ve enjoyed reading more than him.  I understand that he was perpetually conflicted between studio time and reflective, scholarly time in his lifestyle.  I love that conflict, and love reading that a man was successful, not having to choose one over the other.  That is one reason why I’m choosing to leave the studio for the night (unless the creative bug bites me again, or the muse whispers in my ear).

The other reason I am backing out of this painting is the need to look at it from a distance, study what is going on, and decide on what exactly to do next with it.  Again, I find that Willem De Kooning was often ridiculed for that.  He would look at a painting for thirty minutes, pick up the brush, stare a little longer, add one or two strokes, and then sit back again for another thirty minutes, looking, contemplating, deciding.  Sometimes, at the end of the day, he scraped every bit of the painting off the canvas and onto the floor, completely obliterating his day’s efforts (I don’t plan to do that with this watercolor).

So, I plan to spend the rest of this evening, reading, journaling, contemplating, looking at this watercolor, and deciding my next move. I’m very happy with what has happened so far, and hope it continues, tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

So what, if you have to move the whole thing over just two inches?

Close Up View of the Screen Door and Coffee Can in Progress

He would work on paintings for enormously long stretches of time, just simply be dissatisfied.  I would come in and there would be a terrific painting of a man, and Bill would grudgingly admit that it wasn’t bad, but then say: “But he has to be moved over two inches”, and he just eradicated him.  He was very discontented constantly.  It was what kept him going.

Elaine De Kooning, describing the painting habits of her husband, Willem De Kooning

This anecdote always amused me about Willem De Kooning and his constant studio revisions.  Long ago, I had been taught that some revisions were just not possible in watercolor.  Slowly, I’m finding all of these statements to be untrue.

Andrew Wyeth relayed the story that he was working on this composition of Karl Kuerner in drybrush, and it sported a gigantic moose head trophy on the wall.  When Anna walked in on him, perturbed, snapping at him in German, “Why didn’t you come down to breakfast when I called,” Wyeth was fascinated at the sight of the man turned away from his wife and the high-powered rifle pointing at her.  She allowed him to put her into the portrait, and he sanded the moose head trophy off the wall between them.

When I read that account, I thought, “Wow! They always told me that you could not erase watercolor, you’re just stuck with what you’ve got.”  So, I went back to a painting that I had recently finished and regretted.

Blues on the Corner

Once this watercolor was finished, I regretted not having put a guitar player seated in a chair on the corner.  Having read of Andrew Wyeth’s revision, I purchased 150 grit fine sand paper from my local hardware store, sanded a full circle out of this painting until it was white, and then drew and painted this guitar player inside the circle, finally retouching all the background colors and textures I had obliterated.

Why am I going into all this detail?  Well, when I awoke this morning and looked at my current painting before leaving for school, I realized to my dismay that I had drawn the left frame of the screen door too narrow in proportion to the coffee can and the horizontal screen door slat below the can.  I was 3/8″ of an inch too narrow.  And I had already painted in the dark screen interior with masquing and painted the left margin as dark as I could get it.  My first reaction was “Too bad.  Nothing can be done about that now.”  Then I remembered Andrew Wyeth’s “Kuerners” and my own “Blues on the Corner” and thought “Why not?”  I laughingly recalled Willem De Kooning saying his man had to be “moved over two inches.”  I came home from school, measured the new margin for the left frame, and sanded the devil out of it, turning the entire page surface blue-gray.  A good scrubbing with the eraser turned the page white again, and then I started all over “aging” the wood with drybrush and graphite work.  I’m happy I decided to do it.  The widened door frame looks right now.  (Incidentally, the door frame is straight; when I shoot close-ups with my camera, the lines curve, and I don’t know enough yet about Photoshop to straighten those lines again.  The painting of the door frame is actually straight-edge straight).

I had to stop painting to put this stuff on the blog.  I really wanted to share it, with all the fun and laughs.  I feel “madder” than ever, as the scientist noodling around in his laboratory again.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Mad Scientist in the Watercolor Studio, Part 2

Second Day on the Screen Door Experiment

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to the world if you paint or dance or write.  The world can probably get by without the product of your efforts.  But that is not the point.  The point is what the inner process of following your creative impulses will do, to you.  It is clearly about process.  Love the work, love the process.  our fascination will pull our attention forward.

Ian Roberts, Creative Authenticity

I could not agree more strongly with Mr. Roberts on this point.  I get far more joy in the studio, in the midst of a painting in progress, than I do sitting back looking at it on display, or sitting in a festival booth, waiting to find out if patrons like the work or not.  The joy is in the doing.

Today, I took my Art History classes through the legacy of Andrew Wyeth and his drybrush watercolor studies from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  And the whole time we looked at and discussed his work, all I wanted was to be in this Cave proceeding with my latest “mad” experiment.  But alas, I had a list longer than my arm, of details I had to chase down after school, and heavy lesson plans for tomorrow’s class load, and couldn’t get into the studio for nearly five hours since the close of my last class.  It was total despair.

Finally, I got to get in a few strokes, working only on the coffee can and the left border of the composition.  The door frame will be white, so I had to lay in a left-hand darkened border.  I’m already wishing I could remove the masquing and take a peek at what is happening, but that cannot happen for a long time still.  My only anxiety now is to get this looking the way I really like it, only to find a disaster when the masquing comes off.  But . . . I cannot think of that right now.

I am still a little tired from Saturday and Sunday’s output, but really feared that if I took a little time off to rest, that I would find myself already into the next weekend, that a day off would turn into a week off, and the momentum would have stalled.  Several years back, I attended a workshop led by J. Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He had just flown into DFW airport and was holding a session at an area hotel in Dallas.  The session, for me, turned out to be life changing.  The only question he had for the artists assembled that day was “How prolific are you?”  I sat there in shame, realizing that I had used my full-time job as an excuse for turning out an average of ten watercolors a year.  I left that class, determined by year’s end to have at least thirty completed.  I completed nearly a hundred, and have completed at least a hundred a year since then, though many of them are small watercolor “sketches” or “vignettes”, I nevertheless can say for the first time in my life that I am “prolific” as an artist, and thanks to the blog, feel a compulsion to keep cranking them out.  So many good things have happened as a result, but the greatest is that I have rediscovered a joy in the learning process that I had not known for years.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Feeling Like a Mad Scientist in the Painting Studio

New Still-Life Set Up

Wet and Soupy Watercolor in its Initial Stages

The picture was no longer supposed to be Beautiful, but True–an accurate representation or equivalence of the artist’s interior sensation and experience. If this meant that a painting had to look vulgar, battered, and clumsy–so much the better.

Tom Hess,  ArtNews

Two weeks ago, when I purchased my antique screen door, I immediately knew that I wanted to try painting the screen with an object visible in the gloom behind it.  Then I took my temperature, fearing I was crazy.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Yesterday I posted my first experiment in masquing the screen-wire pattern on a small portion of my screen door to see if I could capture a screen door appearance on my watercolor.  I was satisfied enough with the effect to take this next step–painting a Kimbell’s Coffee can behind the screen.

It took awhile for me to adjust the doors and lighting to get the gloom I was seeking in the composition.  Then I had to draft the screen door frame and draw the Kimbell’s can with all the lettering in place as best as I could. Then came the tedious task of taking the Masquepen Supernib, placing a ruler on a couple of  books, one-half inch above the surface, and zipping the pen along, squirting out the fluid in parallel ruled lines all the way across the composition.  After letting it have plenty of time to set up and dry, I then had to repeat the process with the series of 90-degree cross lines.  This took a considerable amount of time out of my afternoon.  Once all of it was dry, I then began to flood the entire screen area with washes of Winsor Violet, Transparent Yellow, Cadmium Red and Phthalo Turquoise.  Now the painting is very wet and soupy, and since it is on a block, there is no place for the water to go, so the lake is going to have to sit quite awhile before it is dry enough for me to proceed.

Feeling the role of the mad scientist, I have to acknowledge that this experiment might fail.  I have a notion of what I’m going to do, and think my strategy is sound.  But I’ve never tried it before.  So it’s going to be exciting watching in the days ahead to see if this is going to work.  If not, then it will be back to the drawing board.  Because I have decided that I do indeed wish to develop a technique of watercoloring dim, dark interiors with dramatic lighting the way Andrew Wyeth did.  And the screen door is such a profound part of my childhood memories that I really want to work it into some future paintings.  We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

A Wider Look at the Reconfigured Workspace

Musing About Andy Warhol’s Factory

Finishing the Cafe Still LIfe

Cafe Still Life

I think Kerry Cash is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, luthiers in all of north Texas.  I have taken guitars to him a number of times for him to work on, and noticed that he would easily have more than fifty guitars arranged around the shop, with work tickets, waiting their turn.  My father, a retired auto mechanic, said that was how you could always tell a good and trustworthy independent mechanic with his own shop–if you saw his entire lot filled with vehicles waiting their turn.  People were willing to wait, knowing the mechanic was excellent and honest.

What always surprised me about Kerry, is that he would take my guitar, tell me he had 50-75 guitars in the shop already, and it could be a couple of weeks before I would hear from him.  Yet, I would always get his phone call in two-to-four days.  One day I asked him how he did this, and his response was that, when the guitars stacked deeply as to 50-75, he would dedicate a particular day to “cleaning up” by moving to the top of the list all the “small jobs” that didn’t take long to complete.  By day’s end, he was delighted to have more than twenty guitars leaving the shop.

That is how I feel about the watercolors that have been stacking up the past week-and-a-half.  I’m ready to start cleaning some of them out.  Hence my blue pail and my cafe still-lifes.  On this cafe piece, I’ve been working all over on the table cloth, pushing it more around the perimeter of the composition, extending the pattern in all directions.  I’ve also tweaked the shadows and definitions on the spectacles case.  I think I am very near finishing it as well, and will lay it aside for now.

I have titled this blog entry “Musing About Andy Warhol’s Factory,” because I have loved for over ten years every story I could read about Warhol’s Factory before his 1968 tragedy.  I was always amazed at his output, his energy, and the way he kept so many art projects going at the same time, and kept cranking them out, as though on an assembly line.  Ever since I have set up this garage studio, this Man Cave, I have laughed at it being my Factory, without the parties, the company, the drugs, the rock music, all the craziness with which Warhol kept himself surrounded during those wild years.  My Factory is quiet, especially at night, and even now during this Sunday. And I’m glad to be finishing up some work.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

The Fatigue Factor in Painting

Cafe Still Life in my Studio

Watercolor Still LIfe

I was an insomniac again last night, not falling asleep till nearly 3 a.m.  Up at 6:00 to get to school.  Tomorrow begins the TAKS testing, and I will need plenty of sleep (and intestinal fortitude) to endure that.

My rule is never to work on an art piece when I’m fatigued.  I came home and did some things to this.  Added more pieces to the checkered table-cloth, reworked the postage, stained the envelope some more, added the handwritten address, darkened the spectacles case, manipulated the shadows further.  Then I got sleepy and decided it was time to lay down the brush before I did something I would regret.

I tried to read further from the Steinbeck biography I’ve recently opened, but could only get about half a dozen pages under my belt before nodding off.

So, I will throw  in the towel and get some sleep.  My sincere hope is that I can go after this with renewed energy, and maybe even finish it tomorrow.  I’m already thinking ahead to three more compositions I want to go after, and that makes it kind of hard to stay devoted to this one.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Falls the Shadow of the Night

Studying the Shadows

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

                        For Thine is the Kingdom

            Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

                        Life is very long

            Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

                        For Thine is the Kingdom

T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

Funny how the mind works, how words arrive in the still of the night.  I was poring over this watercolor that has held my fascination for a couple of days, wondering what to do next.  And, for the first time, I noticed the shadows beneath the spectacles, weaving serpentine-like around the case and the envelope underneath.  I started laying in the shadows, looking at the warm areas and the cool areas, trying to match warm and cool neutral colors, watching them flow along the wet trail I had initiated with my pointed brush.  I got lost in the shadows, and suddenly these words from T. S. Eliot, that I hadn’t read in months, or even thought about, rose in my consciousness.  I liked the feelings that came with them.  And I’m fascinated with that idea of what exactly falls betwixt the idea and the act of creation, whether it be a watercolor, a short story, a poem, a song–anything that we can call “creation.”  The interval between the idea and the process of actualizing that idea is what stirs my blood.

Thanks for reading.