Posted by June Underwood on March 6th, 2008
At the request (advice/direction) of my oil painting instructor, Jef Gunn, I have gone out on the streets of Portland to paint. Luckily the weather has been relatively decent, although cold if one is catching morning shadows. But the experience has put me in the midst of the community, and a grand experience it has been.
I am discovering that one of the most fulfilling aspects of painting is having the casual onlooker weigh in, discuss the weather, make silly comments or just say “hi.” I didn’t realize until the Basin experience how much having a bit of interaction with the community could mean to me. The Portland pleine aire work that I’ve been doing verifies that social contact enhances the pleasures for me of slapping color on board, smooshing substances around until they come to mean something, and personal ruminations about the view.
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Posted by June Underwood on January 18th, 2008
On a windy frigid Wednesday this week, Jer and I visited the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. The visit was frigid, fascinating, and raised some internal questions for me.
The Archie Bray is a ceramics workshop, foundation, and clay business, started by a brick manufacturer who was fascinated by art ceramics. According the website, the Archie Bray was founded “in 1951 by brickmaker Archie Bray, who intended it to be ‘a place to make available, for all who are seriously and sincerely interested in any of the branches of the ceramic arts, a fine place to work.’ Its primary mission is to provide an environment that stimulates creative work in ceramics.”
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Posted by June Underwood on January 4th, 2008
Here at the Montana Artists Refuge, I find myself limited to the materials and ideas at hand. In Portland, I have access to two physical locations of Powell’s books as well as various used book stores and the big national chains. I also am within easy travel distance of four large art supply stores. Delivery of online orders is fast and easy. In Basin Montana, none of the above are present. So I have to make do with what I have available to me. And what I have available is sometimes just eccentric enough to be more than merely useful.
Along with my Phaidon biography of Cezanne (by Mary Tompkins Lewis) and a Dover book of Durer’s Drawings, I brought a copy of Gregg Kreutz’s Problem Solving for Oil Painters. The book resides in my studio where I thumb through it when I need to rest my fingers and arm and eye from the physical act of painting.
I’m not recommending (and yet not not recommending) the book exactly; Kreutz is a bit too dogmatic for my tastes. Yet he does give me some things to push off from. more… »
Posted by June Underwood on September 14th, 2007
Underwood, Stinking Water Area, large and small oil on masonite, and a photograph, off the Stinking Water Acess Road.
“I took my easel and canvas and brushes to the top of the bluff, and painted two views from the same spot…. From this enchanting spot there was nothing to arrest the eye from ranging over [the Missouri's] waters for the distance of twenty or thirty miles.”
[Artist George Catlin, as quoted in William H. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), p. 247, found on the of the Smithsonian website.
As Karl said (here) one has to become acquainted with the landscape before one can paint it. And as George Catlin remarked about a different landscape “there was nothing to arrest the eye…for the distance of twenty or thirty miles.
Aside from artistic masochism, why do we paint landscapes?
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Posted by Sunil Gangadharan on September 13th, 2007
Recently, I embarked on a little mini project in a bid to better understand the vagaries of photography. I find photography a hard master and am still unable to photograph my paintings to the level of detail I want… This mini-project may just be regarded as another attempt at understating photography better. The premise was simple: Instead of turning the camera to outside subjects like “people, landscape, houses, family’, I decided to turn it inwards. I decided that I was going to photograph just objects in and around the confines of our home. What initially was envisaged as a dull chronicle of household items turned out to be quite an exciting one (at least for me).
Sunil Gangadharan, ‘Juxtaposition’, digital photograph
I took about 50 pictures in a space of about two hours. All of them shot inside. I have posted a majority of them to the flickr site here. To see as slideshow click here.
So, instead of asking some serious art question (which I frequently find myself thinking more and more), I decided to take it easy and play.
Posted by Steve Durbin on August 4th, 2007
Certain artists are unable to develop because they are disconnected from history. To me development is paramount. I think that development and humility go hand in hand.
-Sean Scully
Do we expect, rather, that successful development demands arrogant self-certainty? On reflection perhaps not, for arrogance implies that an artist knows dogmatically how to proceed, while humility involves productive acknowledgment of deep uncertainty.
-David Carrier, in Sean Scully
Posted by Doug Plummer on June 5th, 2007
Two recent blog entries, one by Paul Butzi (I’ve been riffing off him a lot lately) on photographing “Close To Home,” and Birgit’s “Dune Quest” have got me thinking about the notational aspects of artmaking. Namely, the daily investigation of ideas and how that relates to projects of “greater” importance.
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