oil on basswood, 20 x 24 inches
Monet painted outdoors. A servant carried his paints and canvasses when he worked away from his house. At home, he diverted a stream to create his famous lily pond. A gardener kept its surface pristine, free of rotting leaves and insects.
Today, some painters work from photographs. Gerhard Richter painted from family photographs or obtained permission to paint from photographs in newspapers or journals. Peter Doig’s subjects, as FT.com puts it “ figures, buildings, landscapes – are stolen images (often carried around found for years on paper or in his head) knitted together into an imaginary world”.
Like other artists, I also prefer to paint from photos – recently, my own, while earlier, I made montages combining my own photos with images from the web. Enjoying hiking and photography, I now go out hunting for motifs that appeal to me.
Here is a scene from the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Brave people run down the 300 ft high dune, and, as you can infer from my painting, climbing back up is a different matter, especially over the hot sand at 1:30 pm in early August.
A few more excerpts from the ft.com article on Doig who works alone in contrast to many artists who employ legions of staff:
“Besides, I’d hate to have anyone else in my studio, because then I’d have to do something like … paint. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be a business. I like painting because you can go in and out of it; the simplicity, the directness, the dabbling quality”.
And, “Painters enjoy the rawness in historic painting, and the invention. That’s what you see in Goya, Velázquez, Picasso, Bacon, Matisse, Munch … even early Pop art. That’s what’s lacking in contemporary painting. It’s become very refined. I don’t think there are people taking risks.”
Finally, a comment that I am musing about,
“I’ve realised what I like in other artists’ paintings is when they’ve been left open and not shut down. I’m learning to do that. A painting is a living thing. It’s finished when it’s let go, when it’s out the door.”
Doig, born in Scotland, lived as a child in places with diverse climates such as Canada and Trinidad, went to art school in London and now lives again in Trinidad. His art education may explain why he first became popular in Europe with shows in Frankfurt, at the Tate and now in the London Michael Lerner gallery. In NYC, his pictures cannot yet be viewed in museums – the two owned by the MET are not on exhibition. But that may change as Doig has now acquired a studio in NYC in addition to his studios in London and Trinidad.
Your painting is very beautiful because you see down the sanddune to the water. We once went there with Leigh.
At an abstract level picture is about two intersecting planes, the dune-side and the lake surface/beach. Each of these develops across its surface. The perspective of the distant breaking waves gives a sense of dizzying height. The transparency of the water is expressed with the sand seen through the shallow water, and the change in color as the water gets deeper. Distance on the dune is expressed through a texture gradient and, more subtly, a color gradient (the foreground colors are more intense.) The line of vegetation is interesting because it blocks from view the place where the two planes would intersect. Of course, the dune surface is not really planar. The climbing figures give evidence of this, as, in the process of climbing, they are caught in a depression of the dune face as well. The picture has a fascinating balance between abstraction and realism.
Thanks, Francesca and Karl.
…balance between abstraction and realism…
That sounds good like a good direction for me. will think about it.
This is something that http://stephendurbin.com/ Steve Durbin addresses in his photographs as well.
The main thing working against depth in the painting is the lack of binocular disparity in a flat image surface. If you look at the painting with one eye covered, it seems to have much more depth.
Karl,
How interesting!
In the Beijing ‘MOMA’ in 2010, a dark room displayed paintings which, viewed through red/green glasses, showed 3D images. Is that the only way that in movies or paintings a 3D illusion can be established?
Binocular disparity is only one cue for depth. Motion, contrast, perspective, size of objects are other cues. I guess that’s why 3D movies are not such a big improvement over regular movies.
It is also possible to learn to cross you eyes and see depth by looking at pairs of pictures with slight differences between them, without the need of glasses. But don’t try to paint this way!
A matter of using the right code….
There’s a picture of me looking like I’m about to tumble down that vertiginous incline. The canted composition catches a basic quality of the place and your choice and employment of details is telling. I thing this is one of your best pieces.
Thanks, Jay,
It is vertiginous. The summer of 2011, the slope was even steeper and there was a sign warning people not to run down and telling them that they would have to pay for their rescue.
Several things came together to help me with painting. One, I learned new techniques from Karl during his visit to Michigan; two, after struggling with a different painting trying to express the steep slope by looking straight down, I rewarded myself using the easier diagonal approach; and three, I felt an affinity for the toiling character having thrown off my own burden at the end of the summer.
It occurs to me that the light is very uniform, almost flat in this picture. There are small shadows under the rocks and plants, but little more to indicate light. The people’s shadows, if they are there are hidden by the dune. This is an interesting stylistic choice. I wonder, do you have pictures where light itself is more part of the subject?
Karl,
Please take a lot at today’s post.
A painter in the open category that I like a great deal is Dana Shutz.
Birgit: I think this is one of your best pieces. Aside from a feeling that the water seems too blue, the whole thing works for me.
Jay,
Thinking that you probably don’t like the bright colors of what I thought were paintings by Pierre Bonnard, I googled them to make sure that I had the right artist. What I came up with was not nearly as colorful as the interiors of the paintings that I saw at the MET. I have to go back and check that they are indeed done by Bonnard.
I though it was a photo until I looked a little closer, very nice.