Category: General

Here in Hawai’i, we don’t get the sort of Autumn that mainland people enjoy.  There’s a bit of cooling, maybe a couple of degrees, and  some more wind and rain than otherwise.  If you look carefully certain trees change color, and our small herb garden does a bit better in the coolness.  That’s about it.

I’m thinking about reframing some pieces, and this Fall painting from my Central Park days came up as a candidate.  I hadn’t exactly forgotten it, but it’s more like an old friend that’s become part of the background and subsequently dwells in the inventory rack.

Autumn, Central Park 25 x 30″  oil on linen

As I pulled it out for a look, I remembered  things: that I’d  hand-primed the linen, (it’s thankfully in good shape). I remember trying hard to compose this huge visual effectively, and the movie production that began right in front of me half way through the painting’s progress, and  that nearly two decades have passed since I painted this.  It  honestly seems like almost yesterday, and it almost frightened me a bit to realize it.

I recall conversations I had with passers-by.  One guy was angry because I didn’t know the name of the building in the background. I smoked cigarettes then, and my fingers would get incredibly cold out here.  Dick Cavett came by and gave me a smile and his approval.  I regret that I had a bit of an attitude at times too,  hauling this painting repeatedly back and forth on the F and A trains from Brooklyn to catch the hour  of light I needed made me testy.  There were high ideals and  many influences in my head; Sargent, Dennis Bunker and Willard Metcalf topped the list, and the Big Effort was in trying to paint the whole visual before me as if in one glance, the ensemble effect. Painting in Central Park, early ’90’s.

As autumn is upon us once again, I pause to retract myself from the moment’s concerns and take a long look.  Has the journey from there to here been worthwhile?  Yes.

I’ve survived, and learned so much since then. I’m still enthusiastic about  the next painting, and I’m still willing to try to solve it’s problems.  The work, thankfully,  has interested buyers, making the next paintings possible.  I’ve finally learned to value human relationships over work,  and dimly but increasingly recognize this life as the prelude to a greater one, which gives me a different perspective on my concerns in the here-and-now.  Two big things: I’ll take none of this with me, and I have no idea how much time is left.  Painting and living in the present as best as possible seems to me to be a good twenty-year lesson.

Maybe these are just typical middle-age guy thoughts, maybe not.  I don’t know.  But each day brings me closer to the last touch on the canvas, that I do know.  And looking back, it had to go this way.  Artists really don’t have a choice about this.  Just read any of the biographies and you’ll see that they were miserable doing anything else.

You can’t get more basic than charcoal,  a nice sheet of paper,  and a good model.  I enjoy returning to charcoal for it’s simplicity and the range of effects directly achievable, from deep, velvet blacks to the finest of grey, whipline -like touches.

The opportunity to regularly work on portrait drawings and paintings has been a great balance for the landscape and outdoor work I do. I feel fortunate to have the mix.  Measuring with care, and the close examination of shapes and edges are facets of painting that often don’t get called in to service when confronting the moving target of the landscape outdoors.

Though it’s been a long time coming, I’ve taken the first steps towards rethinking my approach to painting in watercolor.

This is, for me, a big deal.  I’ve been working in the medium since I was a kid, and while I don’t pursue watercolor painting with the same industry as pastel and oil, it is part of my life and very appropriate for certain things I want to express.

The Problem

The symptom I’m responding to is an increasing restlessness, a desire to do something more stimulating and personal in the medium.  I like some of where I’ve been over the years, but I would like to see everything with newly overhauled eyes and  mind, if such a thing is possible.

Over time, I’ve arrived at a somewhat acceptable outcome for most of my watercolor works, which I seem to produce in a short spasm about twice a year, usually as a break from the bigger oil and pastel pieces.  Perhaps because of this lackadaisical effort, only about one in five paintings seems fit to leave the studio, and perhaps only one in those five do I consider among my best.  That’s one in twenty five. But what’s bugging me isn’t about  numbers.  It’s about something in my thinking and my process.

Last week,  I dedicated an entire afternoon to sitting alone with about five or six paintings from the last gaggle of wc’s I’ve done. For some reason each was a disappointment or even a failure.

Examining the group slowly,  I eventually realized a big part of the problem. My adoption and subsequent reliance upon the conventions of watercolor painting, (helpful standards that I had worked hard to learn over the years) were now getting in the way of my enjoyment of the work itself.  There were a lot of criteria I had ingested about what this sort of painting was about, and now it was getting hard to breathe.  It was time to lose some weight.

What to let go of?

I’ll go into that in my next post….