Nearing Completion on a Long-Range Watercolor Project

Nearly Finished With This Watercolor of Hermann, Missouri

The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales

Retiring to bed at 2:00 this morning, I was surprised to wake without an alarm shortly after 8:00.  There is no school today, but the routine 6:00 alarm apparently has me waking earlier in the mornings these days, even when no such alarm is set.  I came into the studio eagerly, ready to take the next step on this watercolor, but instead just sat and looked over it, in no hurry to stitch up the final details.  So instead, I have been sitting in a comfortable chair with coffee, books and journal, and have set the painting on an easel ten feet in front of me in the morning light, and occasionally I look up at it, much as Andrew Wyeth did with his near-completed compositions.  Wyeth would put them in a prominent place in his living room, so he could catch glimpses of them (“from the corner of my eye”, he said) as he walked throughout the house in the course of a day.  Eventually he reached a decision of whether or not the painting needed further work.  I suppose that is what I am doing now.  Two days ago, a student whose opinion I respect highly saw the painting and thought it looked finished already.  Many times I have pushed a watercolor past its completion point and felt disappointed that it had been overworked, overdone.  So, I am letting this one breathe for awhile.

This latest watercolor contrasts starkly with the one I have generally used as a measuring-stick against all subsequent work:

Summer Morning on Sundance Square

Completed several summers ago, I found great satisfaction in the hot sun-filled composition of this piece.  I was at my boldest in the use of color and sharp contrasts not only in value but in the complementary colors.

Last Christmas season, when I trekked through that quaint German town Hermann, Missouri, I felt an exhilaration I cannnot describe as I took picture after picture, all the time hoping, wondering if I could possibly render a watercolor to capture the cold winter light that diffused across that cityscape, and the sense of mist that crept up from the Missouri River far down below.  I knew that a muted, misty painting could possibly come across as boring when juxtaposed with a sharp, summer composition such as this one in Sundance Square.

As the Texas summer approaches, I will no doubt return to plenty of these hot compositions.  But right now, I am really loving the look of my muted, atmospheric piece, and believe I’ll continue to look at it “from the corner of my eye” and make a decision of whether to leave it as is, or look for ways to put some spice into it.  Right now, I just don’t know.

I have some abandoned watercolors littered about my studio, so I believe I’ll find one of them to focus on for the time being.

Thanks always for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

 

Lining Up the Vehicles and Rendering the Streets

Working Late on a Thursday Night

The hour has reached nearly 2:00 a.m.  There is no school for me on Good Friday.  I’m feeling kind of mellow as I sit up late and work on the details of a line of parked vehicles and all the shadow changes on the pavement to the right.  I’m not rushing this and can say that I’m feeling satisfied so far with how it is finishing.  Hopefully I’ll have it complete before I return to school next week.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

A Cold, Rainy Afternoon in the Studio

Quiet Retreat to the Watercolor Studio

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen.  It fills us with surprise.  We marvel at it.  We would continue to hear it.  But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own song.  Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect.  It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace–and we fall back and become our ordinary selves.  Yet we live in the memory of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us.  They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

The day has been physically and intellectually dreary.  Forty-four degrees, dark and rainy outside.  Indoors we have studied A. P. Art History, focusing on the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement fueled by World War I.  George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Ernst Barlach all served in the German army during that Great War.  They entered as enthusiastic patriotic idealists, exited as horrified, burned-out and disillusioned artists.  As we looked upon their paintings and reflected on the writings of Nietzsche that transformed the world views of the young soldier Otto Dix, as well as the chaplain Paul Tillich, I felt the cold of the outside gripping my own artistic sensitivity.  The longer we looked at these works and talked of the war’s atrocities, the more I wished to retreat to my studio and revive the song that has stirred my heart recently, encouraging me to paint and explore beauty.

The first thing I did when I got home to my studio was put on a fresh pot of coffee to help stave off the cold and wet climate that settled into my bones and offset the dark gray world peeking through the miniblinds of my studio windows.  Then I tilted the surface of my drafting table and settled into drawing, erasing and re-drawing the details in the shadows of the buildings lining the winter streets of Hermann, Missouri.  Slowly, the depressing themes of the morning studies melted away and I was once again looking upon a beautiful watercolor world, unscarred by war and destruction.  The winter atmosphere in this painting is cold and hazy, but within my soul, I feel a clarity and sense of color and warmth.  I still need to add more layers of shadow to the areas on the lower left of this composition, then along the facades of the stores facing the street.  This is going to take awhile, it appears.  But I have time, and renewed energy.  Making art today has lifted me from the despairing subjects of the morning classes.  Once again, I am grateful for that gift.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

 

 

Late Night in the Studio

Working Late Sunday Night on this Hermann, Missouri Cityscape

The ideal modern artist must become this unobserved but “passionate observer” who watches the world yet remains hidden.  He is a flaneur (a stroller), a tourist in his own land, whose scenery of choice is the crowd, “a prince who always preserves his incognito.”  He delights in “the rippling, moving, fleeting, infinite” multitude.  Here is the artist as voyeur, seeing but unseen, “a mirror as immense as that crowd; a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness.”

Beth Archer Brombert, recording the ideas of Baudelaire concerning the contemporary artist

The Entire Composition in Progress

Though I’m confined to the studio, working from photographs, the Texas weather is inching toward plein air capability, and I am happy to see a couple of events on the horizon where I am invited to engage in it.  The Baudelaire sentiments remind me of Emerson’s comments in Nature when he describes the observer as a “transparent eyeball”–he is nothing, he sees all.  Andrew Wyeth enjoyed such a feeling when he sat in the Olsen household in Maine, creating watercolor and tempera works inside the dim interior of their house as they went about their daily chores.  He oftentimes felt that he wasn’t visibly present because of the ease in which they worked as though incognizant of his company.

I felt the same transparency when I walked the streets of Hermann last Christmas holidays.  I know no one in that town, and no one was out walking in the frigid weather that morning.  I was delighted to take photos, knowing I would try my hardest to convert some of these into decent watercolors once I got back to my warm studio.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

 

Watercoloring a Winter Midwestern Town

Resumption of the Hermann, Missouri watercolor

But at the same time this question arises and I am perplexed: where does the painting of a picture begin and where does it end?  At the instant when extreme feelings are merging in the deepest core of one’s being, at the instant when they burst and all one’s thoughts gush forth like lava from a volcano, doesn’t the suddenly created work erupt, brutally perhaps, but in a grand and apparently superhuman way?  Reason’s cold calculations have not led to this eruption; but who can say exactly when the work was begun in one’s heart of hearts?  Perhaps it is unconscious.

Paul Gauguin, letter to Monfreid, Autust 15, 1989, Papeete

I’ve poured a ton of energy into the watercolors today, and am starting to feel the fatigue.  So, I believe I’ll let this painting lie as it is for awhile.  There is always tomorrow.  This particular work leaves me feeling as though I’m working a jigsaw puzzle.  I’m starting to get lost in all the interlocking pieces.  I spent most of today’s efforts on the left side, working on the cupola and foliage.  I also added more pieces to the developing town at center right.  But my eyes are starting to say “Enough.”

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Spring Break and Time for Quality Reflection

Using Spring Break to Catch up on some Watercolor Endeavors

My God, what childish things will be found in these pages, written either for personal entertainment or for the sake of classifying favorite if somewhat foolish ideas, rather than trusting a poor memory, and so many rays reaching to the vital center of my art.  But if a work of art were a work of chance, all these notes would be almost useless.

I don’t think it happens like that at all.  I believe that the line of thought which has guided my work, or part of it, is very mysteriously linked to a thousand others, either my own or those heard from other people.

Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa 

Yesterday I celebrated the beginning of my Spring Break from school, spending about six hours reading from Paul Gauguin’s journals as well as writing in my own.  My own journals date from 1985, and have grown to about 120 volumes.  I still go back and re-read them, finding plenty of junk, but also plenty of quality quotes and ideas that would have been forgotten (amazing at how much we fail to retain in our memories over the years).  My personal journals are my own thoughts co-mingled with what I read and experience in daily life.  Reading back over them reminds me of connections between writers, artists, musicians and philosophers that I have forged from my own perspective.  One thing hasn’t changed through the years–I still journal in an attempt to find myself and determine what I want to do in this life.  The journals have been my greatest source for teaching in the public schools and universities, and have also helped me come to grips with this artist quest that consumes me.

I am re-posting the large watercolor that I resumed during the last week of school, glad now for an opportunity to poke at it without a daily schedule to obey.  It would be wonderful to finish it this week, but I have my doubts about that.  I am enjoying the slowness of its development, intrigued at the possibilites that emerge with each successive stroke of the brush or pencil.  Truly, the process of creating a watercolor excites me far more than looking at the finished product.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Affecting the Quality of the Day

Working into the Night on this Winter Watercolor

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

No man ever will unfold the capabilities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude.

Antoine C. Quatremère de Quincey

There was something about today’s school day that felt it had been extended by several hours.  And I felt by day’s end that I had been treading water in an ocean of humanity.  I couldn’t drive home fast enough.  Entering my home, I turned on soft music, and sat quietly in the winter light streaming through my studio windows.  This 20 x 20″ watercolor lay waiting before me on the drafting table.  I started it on January 21st, but walked away from it after only one session.  It was only a few days ago that I returned to the composition, and attempted to revive it.  This afternoon, finally, I felt the momentum building.  I spent the entire afternoon and evening working on this, and it is nearing midnight as I pause now to write.  I certainly did not set any speed records this evening.  I worked very slowly, very deliberately, and, in Motherwell and DeKooning fashion, spent long moments in silence just gazing at it.  And I can say without reservation that I have felt a deep, deep satisfaction from this encounter.  This afternoon and evening presented me with a Gift, and I am grateful from my depths for that Gift.

An art history student today, during lunch, asked me why I thought so many famous artists throughout history were depressed.  I tried to answer honestly that I believe most people hold that stereotype for artists because of Vincent Van Gogh (we had just finished studying him in class).   However, for those artists who did suffer depression, I offered this possibility–nearly all artists work alone, and those who suffer depression do so because they feel lonely.  Paul Tillich, in his sermon “Loneliness and Solitude”, offered those words to describe our duality as a solitary species.  When we hurt from being alone, we call it loneliness.  When we draw strength and serenity from it, we call it solitude.  Tillich called the former the cross of humanity, the latter the glory.

When I’m lonely, I’m not much good as a creator, or a reader, or a writer in my journal.  But when solitude reigns, I am able to do my best work, or if the work is no good, I can still feel that I put in quality time.  And this afternoon and evening were definitely in the quality column of my ledger.  For that I am grateful.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

A Winter Stop in Arcadia

Whittling Away at the Hermann, Missouri watercolor

An awful lot of painting is just sitting and thinking.

Robert Motherwell

Recently in Advanced Placement Art History, we looked at the art of Nicolas Poussin, and this image of the young men looking intently at the epitaph on the monument has remained with me.  I see their focused scrutiny, and feel that same sentiment often when I lean over and peer deeply into the masterwork of some celebrated artist from the past.

Et in Arcadia Ego, by Nicolas Poussin

For the past couple of days, I have been listening to a new DVD celebrating Andrew Wyeth’s work: Self-Portrait: Snow Hill as I have worked in my studio.  This in turn has led me back into some of my books of his work, and I have taken another look into his brick texturing of vintage buildings, and his incredible build-up of dry brush of winter forests.  I am experimenting with some different techniques on the bricks and background forest in this winter painting I’ve begun of Hermann, Missouri.  My enthusiasm is building as I’m watching some of the results emerge that I hoped would take place.

As I write this and as I paint, a cold, grey northern winter light is slanting through my studio windows.  And I like it, deeply appreciate it.  There is a mystique to the winter light that I have been cognizant of since my early childhood, and I always wished I could capture a sense of it in my painting.  That is what I’m earnestly seeking now in this watercolor as I focus on the photographs I took last December when I tramped through Hermann, filled with delight at what I saw.

Funny thing–a cold, overcast day could just as easily lead to depression, I realize.  But today, it is filling me with a desire to paint, and I feel an exhilaration as I enter into this Arcadian zone.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue . . . 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

The Pivot Point

Hermann, Missouri–watercolor in progress

You know, it’s not easy to retrace the development of one’s own sensibility.  One can readily see what one has become, which events have shaped the course of one’s life.  But what always stays out of reach, what remains more or less concealed, is precisely what might have catalyzed these events, the “something” that caused one’s mental life to take a particular turn.

André Breton

As I lingered over these words from an interview with surrealist André Breton, I began to think back over the experiences in life that caused my life to pivot.  That certainly is a broad question, but I know unmistakably what first turned me to watercolor.  As a dreamy ninth-grader, terrified of the enormous high school that had become my new educational home, sitting in an Art I class peopled with beefy, sideburned varsity football players, I was surprised one morning when my teacher laid in front of me an enormous coffeetable-sized volume titled Andrew Wyeth.  It was a 1968 Houghton-Mifflin publication.  As I opened its leaves, my eyes widened at the sight of those drybrush studies that combined meticulous scrutiny with spontaneous splattering and staining of the media.

Forty-eight years later, I am astonished to see what a turning point that would be.  Though the years ahead would bring a college art degree focusing on oil painting and art history, two seminary degrees focusing on biblical studies and theology, and teaching tenures straddling university and high school, I will always feel that I came back home when I picked up the watercolor brush, determined to recreate the Americana of my memories in a style reminiscent of the likes of Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.

This afternoon, as I bent over my drafting table and watched this image pull focus from beneath the tip of my brush, I relived the same delight I knew from ninth grade when I first pored over Andrew Wyeth’s detailed studies.  It was a good moment then, and it is a great moment now.

The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Painting Again, with Some Added Thoughts about Style and Technique

Back in the Watercolor Studio, and Loving It!

Expression . . . is the very soul of composition–it animates its characters and gradations, as the human soul doth the body and limbs–it engages the attention, and excites an interest which compensates for a multitude of defects–whilst the most admirable execution, without a just and lively expression, will be disregarded as laborious inanity . . . 

John Flaxman, “Lectures on Sculpture”

I felt a renewed sense of joy and vigor as I left school this afternoon and returned to my studio.  My reading early this morning was so serendipitous that I just had to post this quote.  I re-opened a volume I had put down several months ago (I hate it when I get distracted from excellent books!): From the Classicists to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the 19th Century, edited by Elizabeth Gilmore Holt.  This volume is replete with primary source material handed down by the artists–some are speech manuscripts, some are published pamphlets and yet others are lecture notes recorded and preserved by their students.  I am mining so much gold from the discussions.

I love this notion of expression (or style) animating one’s work the same way the soul animates the body.  Without it, we are left with only mechanical skills.  I appreciated so much reading the comments posted today from my blog responders.  Once I got back into the studio, I thought of that line from the film Bull Durham: “Just throw the ball!”  The pitcher was off his game, because he thought too much about it; he just needed to throw the ball.  So, today I am throwing the ball, and feeling so much relaxation as I draw, revise, paint, revise, re-draw and revise some more.  I am not thinking about style right now.  I am just painting, and enjoying the quiet immensely.  The afternoon winter light slanting through my studio windows is so inviting and so affirming.  I have really missed these moments.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.