a multi-disciplinary dialog
What came to mind is ‘das Unvollendigte’, translated into English as ‘the Unfinished’. Below are three paintings that I worked on off and on since the spring.
The first one is a view from a Pierce Stocking Drive dune.
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12×16, oil on board.
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I feel as if I have been away forever. Life overtook my Art and Perception, although not completely my art and not completely all my perceptions.
So here’s an update.
After a long struggle with health and painting, I’ve finally revived and have been painting the landscapes of the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. The change of venue from the wild and awesome desert to the gentle scenery of the Valley was fairly traumatic and also the cause (I think; I hope) of some really bad paintings, now discarded. But I’ve kept a few and think I may be able to tolerate the pretty landscapes and conventional views to which I’ve been subjected. (I’m engaged with a group of plein air artists who always choose not to paint the snarky or sardonic.)
The paintings imaged below have been done since the end of June. The first four (through the Storm) were attempts to provide a sense of expansion outward rather than focusing into the painting. This outward away from the center is what I feel the desert does, and I thought painting sky and/or water might keep me in touch with that expansion of space so essential to desert painting.
Morning Fog in the Gorge, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009
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I occasionally worry that my tendency to analyze—some might call that an understatement—could be a negative influence on my work, causing me to lose spontaneity or fall into one rut or another. But I’ve now proven to my satisfaction that any effect is both unconscious and ineffective. Here’s how it happened.
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My day in Yellowstone last month was a long and varied one (see previous posts one, two, three). As I was leaving the park along the Madison river (almost the longest in the U.S.), I stopped occasionally to photograph the line of mountains on the opposite side of the valley.
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As I was doing this, I had in mind the images from the month before of the landscape by Tepee Creek (post here). I was hoping to catch some of the rhythm, perhaps even musicality, that I found in both places. I’ve nurtured such a poetic and mostly unrealized hope since I read about photographer Michael Smith’s epiphany with sonograms, like the one below of a hermit thrush. Smith was inspired by the beauty of such sonograms in creating some of his wide landscapes. (Though it’s worth pointing out that Smith’s wife, Paula Chamlee, in her own way, succeeded as well or better.)
I had painted the yellow canoe a few weeks ago when the tasks ahead of me looked challenging. I felt that picture gave me energy and courage to face a challenging time in Germany.
In Germany, I was fortunate to get Karl Zipser’s critique on my painting, not the real one but its reproduction on A&P. Karl liked its bottom aspect shown below.
(the sky is not quite as aggressively blue as shown here).
The boat in the top aspect of the painting, seen below, Karl said, expresses the problem of painting realistically from a photograph. The boat is too real compared to the sketchy background that is supposed to represent reeds with a dune. Karl also disliked the smiley impression on ‘my’ face.
A final lesson was not to make the picture too tall. A picture has to be viewable on a small laptop. Looking at the canoe painting, as I scrolled it up and down on a tiny monitor of an Acer laptop at an internet café, Karl did not immediately grasped about the cloud images. Namely, that on the top, a cloud throws a dark shadow on the dune which then is reflected as lighter dark shadow into the water and finally, the white cloud and blue sky directly reflecting into the bottom aspect of the picture.
Karl and I then decided that I could improve the picture by filling in the background in the top aspect thereby removing the boat and then painting the boat again, less photographically accurate.
What sounded like a good idea in Germany, no longer felt right when I came home and looked at the actual painting. Looking at the yellow boat makes me feel good, gives me strength! As an aside, what had seemed a challenging time ahead on April 24th turned out to be significantly more challenging both in Germany and here in Michigan. To accomplish all the tasks that have accumulated requires that I clone myself, three copies and the original should be enough.
My emotions tell me to keep the current yellow canoe for feeling good. For the moment, I will also keep the silly smiley face.
Currently, I plan to fix the background – the reeds and dune – rather than the canoe so that all three will begin to harmonize in the top aspect of the picture.
I already followed one piece of advice that Karl gave me. I painted the 3/4 inch cradle of the Ampersand board dark green, not in oil but with viridian acrylic. Karl said that a dark frame will help me to paint the entire spectrum from white to black.
Having documented Karl’s critique that I am interpreting creatively, I now will return to my day job.
Continuing my recent Yellowstone visit after leaving the geyser basin, I headed for for the Canyon area. In the past I’ve tended to focus on the magnificent falls there. This year, extra deep snow made access to the best locations difficult (not to mention forbidden, though that’s of lesser concern). I spent my time instead looking at the steeply sloping walls of the V-shaped canyon carved by the river.
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