I managed to remember to photograph the first painting twice — once as it emerged from the garage session, and then again after I had been through the critique and had tweaked it in the studio. I didn’t do a lot to this  painting in my second go-round, but when I finished I was concerned about the loss of some of the “naive” quality of the red building. Here are images of the two versions:

Library Parking Garage, View South (first draft) 12 x 16, oil on board

Library Parking Garage, South View (draft 2), etc.

The differences between the two are slight, but the concern expressed by one member of the crit group was about the wonky perspective on the red building. I later mucked about with that building (as well as darkening the edge of the roofline the takes up much of the bottom of the painting  and which will get more work). I’m not sure the red building, as it now stands, is what I want. Another person suggested perhaps making all the buildings more wonky, which I didn’t have time for, but would still consider.

This series of decisions (as well as a rather funny comment by a fellow critiquer)  is what made my ears perk up when I read the Schiller quote. Is the first wonky take more “naive” in Schiller’s sense, than the second, somewhat less wonky, version? The comment from my fellow painter (who actually defended the wonky perspective) was something like “I’d like to be behind your eyes, seeing what you see when you drive down the street.”

The second painting references the Morandi/edge discussion and is a continuation of my visual wandering around the constructs of edges. I don’t have a photograph of the original post-garage painting, but the photo below is of the painting after I worked it a bit prior to the critique session. My hasty working was to try to eliminate the edge that runs down the slab of building in the center of the painting. My intent was to push that building out of the way of the steeple and crane, both of which were central to what I was seeing.

The Library Parking Garage, West view (draft 1) 12 x 16, oil on board

After the critique, I modified the edge treatment of the slab, as well as pushing back, through losing the edges, the church roof and the foreground building edging. I also added shadows and changed hues a bit — the result is shown in the image below.

The Library Parking Garage, West view (draft 2)

This last version, below, now sits in my studio, awaiting further revelations; I have made the slab more colorful and attempted to mirror somewhat the big block of sky on the other side. I also modified some of the color in the bottom righthand building.

The Library Parking Garage, West view (draft 4)

So to recap: In the first version, which is close to what the original looked like,  I tried losing the edge of the big building on the right. Then I went to the critique meeting, where the lost edges were seen as too lost but also some of the other edges as too defined; so I added the lighter strip down the side of the big frontal slab and muckled about with the edges of the other buildings. Further emendations included changing some of the color, sharpening the steeple and church elements, and attempts at making the slab wall on the right echo something of the sky on the left.

I’m still debating about reinforcing that edge and wondering what it is that losing or finding or almost finding an edge means to the painting as a whole. What I was thinking of while I was painting was the sharpness of the steeple and the crane and the losing any impact of the slab, in spite of its size on the canvas (and in my view). That’s what happens in cities — people no longer see the altered, mangled buildings that sometimes inject themselves into photographs. But why did Morandi lose his edges as he does — is it the sense of oneness of all things, the lack of object individuality that he’s concentrating on? And then he delineates a very strong contour line on the opposite side of his lost edge, so he not only finds the other edges but thrusts it at us. Somewhat like that crane thrusts itself…..

OK, I’m through meandering. Please comment willy-nilly as you will. And I’m interested in why one loses or finds or sharpens or softens edges — not as a matter of aesthetics or realism, if you will, but as a matter of intent and philosophy.

The Jolly Roger Bar, 12th and Madison. Oil on board, 12 x 16″

As you know, I’ve been painting around Portland, here and there, returning often to sites to note what else is there, what I may have missed, what more is available for turning into paint.

These paintings have a certain “feel” to them — a style that fits with the record of my visits. I work on-site and then tweak and fiddle in the studio. I also find myself making larger, stranger, studio-begot contributions to the sets of pieces.

I have already exposed the Fremont Bridge grouping to A&P; here’s another set of depictions of an entirely different place in Portland.

IOOF Building, SE Alder and 6th St, oil on board, 12 x 16″

At this corner, SE Alder and 6th Street, humans were a large part of the scene. In fact, although the casual observer might not recognize it, it quickly became obvious to me that this is a neighborhood, with people who watch out for the street, some of them renters in nearby apartments, many of them regulars who use the area to hang out, to see what the day will bring, smoke a bit of pot, check in with street friends, have a swig or two from a communal bottle.

The Melody Ballroom, SE Alder and 6th St, oil on board, 12 x 16″

The US Bank Parking Lot, SE Alder and 6th St, oil on board 12 x 16″

As I painted, I got stories of all sorts from the neighbors, ranging from the tale of the fire that caused the apartment house windows to be so ill asorted (US Bank) to the charming Hispanic panhandler who never saw “in the U  S of A a painter on the streets” (Melody Ballroom). The congregation of the Rivers of Life Church peered at the dabblings on the board when I was painting the Eastside Funeral Directors’ Building, while someone who had been rocking at the Melody the night before was asleep out of sight in the corner of the IOOF building. The erstwhile Eastside Funeral Directors’ Building turned Volunteers of America Center once housed a senior day care, but now appears to be a school or halfway house for “troubled” youths, youths whose curiosity about plein air painters was vast and somewhat distracting.

The Eastside Funeral Directors’ Building (now Volunteers of America) SE Alder and 6th, oil on board, 12 x 16

SE 6th Avenue is between two main boulevards in southeast Portland, and large numbers of vehicles, whose inhabitants see nothing in the neighborhood except obstacles to drive around,  use the street as a way to avoid traffic jams on 7th Avenue or Morrison St.

The images above are plein air paintings, oil on board, all 12 x 16″, done at the corner of SE Alder and 6th in Portland Oregon. Below is the studio SE 6th and Alder — the way it evolved in my consciousness:

The Corner of SE 6th and Alder, Portland, Oregon. Oil on canvas, 30 x 30″

The SE 6th and Alder paintings are the result of approximately 14 hours of sitting at the site, watching people and vehicles, interacting with passersby, seeing the sun sliding across the façades of the buildings, and painting these things as they presented themselves on site. Later, in the studio,  SE 6th and Alder  becomes a place where cars are toylike, but the buildings impose themselves almost as human – elegant, funky, and imposing.

In short, these paintings represent experiences that I had in my encounters with this particular environment, on these particular days, in the late summer of 2008. They also represent something of what I am trying to achieve in my painting.

It’s easier to say what I don’t want to do than what I want to do. I don’t want to do beautiful (or at least not “merely” beautiful); I don’t want to faithfully record what I see, in the manner of a camera’s eye. I don’t want to focus on edges or color or shapes or the feel of the oil paint, although I obviously deal with these basics of painting all the time — and I enjoy thinking about them. But they aren’t my focus.

Bloomtime, 12 x 16″, oil on board

What I am striving for is to capture something of my sense of the place, a sense which is limited by my own ability to see and record what I see, to feel and record what I feel, and also limited by what is in front of me, by the environment itself. It’s something of a surreal set of overlapping circles — the objects in front of me, my sense of those objects, the interaction between myself and the changes that happen during my stay on the site — what I want, in short, is to capture a sense of this time, this place, through the limited yet hopefully interesting eyes of this particular human creature, myself. It can’t be done with monocular perspective nor realistic rendering; my eyes don’t see as the camera sees; my senses capture far more and far less and my vision encompasses peculiar bits of the scene, leaving other bits for some other visionary. My encounters add transitory information that has to work itself, however wonkily, into the paintings.

The Fremont Bridge as It Addresses the Land, Oil on canvas, 18 x 36″

The book is Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting by Richard Schmid ($50 USD in soft cover from him; more from Amazon and more in hard cover).

Schmid begins his chapter by saying “Think about edges the way you would think about kissing someone…. Think of edges as exquisite subtleties, as the means to transmit romance, as ways to make your dabs or paint whisper or shout and reach nuances beyond the range of color. Think of them as visual poetry… but especially think of edges as you would the agents of expression in music….pianissimo (very soft), andante (flowing), allegro vivace (fast and lively), maestoso (majestic), fortissimo con sforzando (whamo!).

He’s speaking of edges that create an illusion (emphasis is Schmid’s) of how we ordinarily see, and some of what he says is quite common knowledge — that atmosphere, particularly at a distance, softens and cools elements, and hence edges. And so forth.

But the two aids to seeing edges, he says, are “Squinting and Comparison — [the same] that I [Schmid] described in the … chapter on values. They are essential in working with edges and you must do them together.

So today I was out painting Alla Prima (or plein air, if you are a francophile, or in the rain if you are a realist), and I forgot entirely about edges. But the conditions were just right for comparisons. I thought I’d swing through today’s efforts (remember, I’m a studio fixer-upper of paintings, so these are wet drafts) and think about edges and comparisons — and if that isn’t enough, go on to look at one of Schmid’s examples.

It being October 31, the rains have started, and it was pouring when we left the house. We went down to the river, where Interstate 5 runs along and above it. We sat beneath the interstate to stay out of the rain. Each of these paintings were about an hour’s worth of work: the one above is Hawthorne Bridge, Rainy Day, 12 x 16″, oil on board.

Later that day, in honor of the Trick-or-Treaters, the sun came out.

I moved my easel out into the sun where it was warmer and brighter, and painted for another hour. This isn’t exactly the same scene (duh!) but it’s the same bridge and river and some of the same buildings.

Hawthorne Bridge after Rain, 12 x 16, oil on board

Obviously the rainy one features cool blues; the colors warm up considerably when the sun came out (as did the painter). But the edges changed too. In the earlier painting, the mist in the air blanked out the west hills, behind the city. I smudged them in at the last moment, but they are still without much interest. When the sun came out, the hills were still wet and a bit misty, but the fall colors were oozing through and the hills in the painting become far more alive.

The edges of the hills in the rain painting are faked; the form is just stuck there (I hadn’t had lunch yet). But in the second painting, the edges and the sky intertwine and it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other ends — which was as it was. Here are a couple of close-cropped details of each:

On th other hand, I think I got the edges of the bridge in the rain more “authentically” than the one in the sun, where again, it was at the end of the session.  I needed to make sure the bridge was there, so I slashed a line of paint that doesn’t catch the sun on the edges — I think a change of hue as well as value is required.

This is but a beginning in this venture of edges. I did think about the buildings and how their edges should be painted, but I haven’t sussed out yet quite the degree of sharpness in varying conditions and so I tend to just throw up a line that tells us all that that’s a building edge. But I’m aware of the challenge, so maybe I’ll get to the process in due time.

I will attempt to get at these edges before the paint dries — Schmid warns about the difficulties of mooshing edges after the oil is dry to the touch — but looking at the raw version is illuminating.

Here’s a Richard Schmid — not the one from the book, but something similar:

Schmid’s oils often resemble watercolors — not my style. But his ability to analyze the whys and wherefores of certain processes, and his sense of humor, are well worth feeling a bit inadequate in the face of his work.

And how are your edges doing these days? By the way, I started this post thinking about squinting and comparisons, but the comparisons I made here aren’t what Schmid is speaking of — he means comparing the values and edges at the real site, squinting to make out what the strongest ones are and where they disappear. He also warns against squinting at the canvas. He even has a whole page on the practice of squinting. “Lastly” he says, “it only works marginally when working with photographs. SQuinting at a photo is about the same as squinting at a painting. Everything gets fuzzy. Squinting for values in a photo is sometimes useful, but because of the limited data caught by the camera, the information you can obtain is minimal compared to squinting at the real thing.”

I wanted to show him Steve’s photos!