a multi-disciplinary dialog
Children’s Water Dreaming 1972, 62 x 44 cm, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi
Aborigines used Australia’s wealth in ochre colors (iron oxides) to paint their mythologies on sand, cut bark of stringybark tree and their bodies. In 1972, acrylic paints and masonite boards were made available to a few Aboriginal men congregating in a ‘painting club’. While the usage of contemporary materials served to adulterate, it also helped to popularize Australian Aboriginal art. more… »
I’m back in Portland, Oregon, from my six-week Nevada sojourn. But I haven’t unpacked my big linen canvases yet. I am almost afraid to do so, fearing that they are completely banal, hence total failures (banality is worse for me than bad).
In part, this reluctance has to do with various coming home challenges — burst pipes, unreliable contractors, relatives using the house in unexpected and unnerving ways. But in part, it’s simply because I don’t know what I did, although I am fairly certain I did not manage to un-orient, and my feeble attempts merely feel like they may be so feeble as to look feeble-minded.
Well, you see where I am. I began last February and March, 2009, living with the desert and Beatty, Nevada, painting small masonite panels, getting to know the territory and its inhabitants. This November sojourn, however, was more limited and almost entirely devoted to the Amargosa, which became more and more fascinating as I spent 6-8 hours a day, alone with the scene, for the full month of November.
So here are photos of the seven panels, plus the full panorama. These were taken as the panels were still on the wall of the Red Barn, under under limited lighting conditions. The exception is the full panorama, which was lit andphotographed by professional photographer, David Lancaster.
I am showing these in part to bolster my own sense of dignity and/or bravado.
Unoriented Amargosa (panel 1, east), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009
Gerhard Richter, 1985, 57.4 cm x 86.4 cm, Oil on paper
The Henri Art Magazine (written, I think, by several authors) has a fascinating continuation of a discussion of color, “Color: Simulation,” published on Wednesday Nov. 4, 2009.
The author discusses how the perception of color has changed with technology, the technology that presents any color you want: directly out of the can (reducing the need to use traditional techniques to create luminescence or brilliance by direct observation and experience); and then, further “enhancing” and changing color as we know it, technology can produce a pure physics of color through light technologies (as seen on the computer screen.) This, he insists, has produced color as desire, as consumer directed, and loses color as personal and emotive.
I can’t do justice to the writer’s observations; you’ll need to read them yourself. And I’m not sure the polemic need be as strong as it is.
But I was reminded of Steve’s black and white photography, (also here, on A&P) and along with thinking that Steve’s work clearly transcends point-and-shoot photography of the digitized masses, I suddenly understood how the black and white refuses the seduction of the digitized web versions of color.
oil on a maple, 12 x 12 inches
A meditating duck in the Banter Lake outside Liselotte’s cabin in Wilhelmshaven.
The color that I chose for painting water in Northern Germany differs from my usual Lake Michigan color mix. Today, it consists of Ultramarine Blue, Dioxane violet, Titanium White and Zinc White.
I paint water, June paints the desert. Do you also have a proclivity for a particular motif or theme?
