Painting 8/28/09

This was my first Friday on my new 32 hour a week schedule.

I spent the morning working on making frames (a new thing for me). Ended in total frustration as my miter box doesn't seem to make perfect 45s. I am pulling out the power saw today. [I sold two paintings last week at a co-op I just joined (The Wooden Cow Gallery), so I am needing to get two more framed to bring over there tomorrow].

Worked on Rahda. I have mixed feelings. I think it is getting overworked. And my attempts to simplify have made it more complex. Some of the marks seem "trite", especially where I started going in with wavy "hair-like" marks. Although I am seeing more depth, particularly in the blue background. I may try more layerng (perhaps a glazing). It's very highly saturated.I would like some feedback before I continue, but I don't meet with my mentor until 9/11.

From Radha Inviting Rubens to her Pavillion

I also worked on the so-called 30-Day painting. I am not sure what is going on with the geometric forms yet. I'm just trying out some different techniques to see what happens. I can see how looking at Hannah's painting this week has creeped in with the circles and lines. I was working of an Indian miniature of a rearing elephant, which is where the circle "toenails" came from. I am not quite sure where this is going next.

From 30 Day Painting #1 (June/July 2009)

Rhada looks flat

I got home from work tonight, and the painting looks "flat". On my drive home I was really looking at the sky and how the blues are so much brighter (the hue is more blue) close to you. The blues fade into a pale cerulean or even a light grey as the horizon recedes away. Today I stumbled upon the website of a Mass College of Art MFA graduate, Hannah Bureau.

From Inspiration

This is an image of one of her paintings (Hannah Bureau, "Wild Lake With Black Rock Bound", oil on canvas, 12"x12).

She was talking in her thesis about some of the same kind of concerns I am having. She resolved some of them through starting to really see and really consider how colors were acting in her canvases. Cools receding behind warms. Brights jumping out in front of more subdued colors. I am thinking it would be beneficial to me to start to think about how landscape painters dealt with the near and far away. So much of my color is saturated. It all sits on the surface. How can I create space, and play with what is expected? How can I play with what is near and far? Do I really understand the ways that these effects are created on the canvas? I am considering signing up for a 2-day portraiture class with Leo Neufeld. I find that the non-representational work I do is intensely informed by the figurative, more "realistic" work that I do.

Here's a black and white painting I'm working on tonight:

Rahda and Rubens continued

Tonight I was going to get back to work on the critical theory paper, but I have been feeling so paralyzed with my painting -- I needed to get some paint moving. I've been over-thinking and I hate being in that state.

I went back to the Rahda Inviting Rubens to Her Pavillion painting. I am working on using larger brushes and "trying" to simplify my palette. I can't seem to help getting all kinds of colors going. I am also mixing in a lot of matte medium to get a more viscous texture to the paint. It worked pretty well tonight and I'm getting some blending and soft edges that I like. I think that the "problem" about finishing a painting in one sitting is really half material-related. It took me about an hour before the surface got malleable again. I think I'm done for the evening and I wonder how it will feel to go back to the dry surface tomorrow.

The painting moved closer towards the Rubens in composition and gesture. Last night I was looking over the images in "The Impact Of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): de Kooning, Pollock, Dubuffet, Bacon" (I hated to mail it back today to the AIB Library). I am sure that influenced me. I love looking at Soutine's thick, energetic overlay of brushstrokes and colors. I used to find Soutine's colors somewhat repellent. I am now loving the rich, vibrant reds and earth tones.

Here it is.

From Radha Inviting Rubens to her Pavillion

The other day, I tried working with and admix palette (Phthalo blue, napthol red, and cadmium yellow). Here's what I ended up with. Blech. I'll keep working on it and see what happens.

From Painting 8/17/09

The Miracle of Time

Unbelievable. I went to our HR person (I work for a small software company) to request a slight schedule change to accommodate pickups and dropoffs at my daughter's new kindergarten. I walked out of her office with a sane, humane 32-hour work week that allows me to get my daughter home and fed at a decent hour every day, and gives me every Friday completely off for studio work (that saves 80 minutes of driving on Fridays). And, I get a lunch break! I am crying happy!

Beauty and inspiration

From Sunset Aug 17 2009

From Sunset Aug 17 2009

Radha Inviting Rubens to Her Pavillion

This weekend I finally got a chunk of time to prep canvases and paint.

This weekend's painting builds on my idea about combining Rubens with Indian miniatures.

I am totally taken with with the colors I am finding in the book I got on Indian miniatures. I love the graphic compositions and I'm looking at these to get inspiration for my "quiet" spaces. And I love the theatre of the Rubens. I'm looking at "The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus". I've also realized that the bible my mom had when I was growing up was illustrated with Rubens paintings. I swear that "The Lion Hunt" (1621) was in there--though it doesn't appear to be very biblical, just violent -- as I think was "The Raising of the Cross". So, my mom's bible probably had some role in the early development of my "taste".

I'm intrigued with the gesture of the arm and the hand of Rahda inviting Krishna into her tent and the gesture of the daughter being swept up by the horseman. The strong, poise, powerful gesture and the desperate, theatrical reaching into the empty air.

Yet I'm finding surprising compositional similarities. The wave of blue fabric in the left corner of the Rahda; the wave of the red cape and horses mane in the upper left of the Rubens. The reds and the blues.

I want to look at Artemisia Gentileschi. Not only as a comparison, but how the theme of rape (since it seems to appear quite frequently in Baroque painting) is portrayed, as well as the painting of powerful women (Judith). In this link is mentioned a book "Artemisia Gentileschi - The Image of The Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art," by Mary D. Garrard.

Added 8/18/09: In particular, I am re-reading the Crit Theory I articles by Mary Garrard, Linda Nochlin, and Griselda Pollock. (I should already have a first draft of the second paper, but I'm just getting started). I'm thinking about how gender and social context works in how the same themes are presented in a painting. For example, Gentileschi's painting of Susanna and the Elders as compared to Tintoretto's treatment of the same subject. In Tintoretto's painting, Susanna is painted in a way that allows the (male) viewer to indulge in voyeuristic pleasure. Susanna is vainly (perhaps coyly) consuming her own image as the Elders peek at her. In Gentileschi's painting, Susanna is cowering, vulnerable, defensive and you can read her discomfort and the Elders' power over her. I think this is what I am seeing in contrasting the hand gestures of the Rubens' female characters with the hand gesture of Rahda. The way the Rubens' female's hand limply lays on her attacker's arm... not a realistic portrayal, so what does it say about the attitudes of the painter and the viewers who would visually consume the work. As Linda Nochlin says in "The Imaginary Orient", the Near East "existed as...a fastasy space or screen onto which strong desires--erotic, sadistic, or both--could be projected with impunity." Why is the Indian miniature not so "loaded" for me? Also, after reading Garrard's "The MoMa's Hot Mamas", I'm wondering about how I relate to Abstract Expressionism as a woman painting in 2009. I have been influenced in particular by De Kooning's work and style and first explored abstraction and gesture through the figure... My thoughts on this are undeveloped at this point... How do women artists like Cecily Brown and Joan Snyder take abstract expressionism and other historical styles and somehow turn them on their heads (not sure I believe that yet, but I've read statements suggesting that they do).

From Radha Inviting Rubens to her Pavillion

David Seah - Getting into the Creative Box

A couple years ago while looking for GTD (Getting Things Done) resources, I ran across David Seah's website and blog.

Today I read a post of his about time and creative work. I have found, like he, that trying to break up creative work into hour-long time increments is harrowing at best. After reading this, it makes sense to find bigger blocks to do my studio work. I'm going to look back at this article if/when I look at readjusting my work scchedule -- if not to decrease my hours, then to simply shift things around to create better time blocks. Here's a link to the post, "Makers, Managers, and Getting into the Creative Box".

The empty canvas...

Aargh! The empty canvas. Tonight I built frames for two paintings to drop off at The Wooden Cow Gallery (I just got accepted as a consignor). After framing I thought about painting and felt resistance. I began reading Yve-Alain Bois's "Painting As Model".

From The empty canvas

From The empty canvas

First in-studio meeting with my mentor, Page Coleman

Last Friday Page came to my house (my studio).

The main thing she notice was that the paintings are screaming for more: more depth, more layering AND more simplifying. She suggested that I think about making marks look far away and closer (smaller to larger?). To think about warm and cool. Could I enhance the dimensional qualities of the brushstrokes (Brice Marden, Richard Hogan, Raymond Jonson). Even the dry brush (think how Lichtenstein actually painted the brushstroke).

She suggested that I might think about how some of the strokes occupy space and whether there could be casting of shadows. Is there a light source? Could you play with distorting the light source.

Color came up. She suggested using my color wheel. Trying out admix colors (maybe start with phthalo blue, red napthol, yellow cad medium -- I'm thinking about the Golden website exercises, which I haven't done yet). How about starting dark to light, using an admix black or gray as the underpainting? How about black and white?

I have got to force myself to keep going back in. Really push myself and not be afraid to mess things up. [She also suggested I relax a little; I've got a bit of performance anxiety (my words)].

Page asked me why I am painting. Could I see myself doing something else? This is a complicated and loaded question for me. For some reason, and I haven't figured out the personal source, it's been ingrained in me that being a painter is not a legitimate occupation. Perhaps for other people, but not for me. My answer was that no, I cannot see myself doing anything else, except perhaps also writing. And teaching. I see myself as a painter who also teaches and writes.

So, from there we talked about my "job". And whether I could cut back my hours. She is concerned that in juggling so much and having so little time to actually paint, let alone read, research, and go look at art, that I am cutting myself short. That the two years will go by quickly, and I might not be positioned where I want to be to take the next step. She also expressed concern if I keep up this schedule that I might get sick and the whole thing will fall apart.

But, the money...for my daughter, for school, for travel, for supplies...

Dave said something on Sunday that I've been chewing on. He said that when he chose to be a chiropractor, he didn't say he'd try it out and if it didn't work, he'd be an electrician. That if you are a doctor, you're not a doctor because of your training. The core of who you are is oriented toward healing, diagnostics, everything that is a "doctor". You gain knowledge and training and skills in school -- but it's not the training that compels you.

Page and I are meeting again on Friday, Sept. 11. My goal is to have a minimum of 4 paintings to show her, including more work on both of the paintings are started last month. [oh, and no titanium white].

Residency Summary #1

Here is the summary for the first residency (just e-mailed off to my advisor today).

Jill Christian
Residency Summary - June 2009 - Group 1
Advisor: Laurel Sparks

The themes of this first residency are: increase my vocabulary, simplify, do a lot of painting. The main formal issues I need to work on for this semester are to vary my mark-making, refine my color, and explore spacial relationships. More open-ended questions were about my subject matter. As an abstract painter, what is it that I am trying to express and communicate? What is it that compels me to make this particular kind of painting? This semester my goal is to select a handful of the ideas for shaking up my current process and to explore color and mark-making. I approach my paintings intuitively, and I believe the discipline I impose will help me grow my understanding of the processes I use and that through working I will discover my subject matter.

My first group crit was with Michael Newman. He felt that the paintings are generic in that they show a “certain facility within already established limits.” This feedback was challenging for me to consider objectively and rattled me a bit. At the same time, it is important for me to separate myself from the work during the evaluation process (as separate from the painting of it). I believe this assessment is valid, and I need to think about what makes the work generic and how I might change this through interrogating my process and what interests me about my source materials.

Tony Apesos agreed in that my painting vocabulary feels “circumscribed” (I interpret this as meaning I’m using a limited, narrowly restricted mark-making vocabulary). He said that there is a way that I’m painting that reminds him a bit of Cecily Brown; maybe de Kooning. It’s not bad, but the important question is what do I do with that and where do I go next?

Mark-making
Tony thought that my paintings seem to be about an overlay of mark in “a kind of thicket of paint” and how that creates a sense of space. If the mark is the subject, I should explore varying my marks (1).

While I got positive feedback about my sense of color and the energy of my gesture, the feeling was that I should explore restraint. In other words, I should be more deliberate and selective, not only in mark-making but in color and composition. There is an all-over quality (and maybe a “horror vacui”*see note) that can be confusing and end up being a “knot of color” with no place for the eye to rest. The massed marks were most successful where thin and fat co-exist, with things escaping out of the edges.

Suggestions for pushing my mark-making included:

• Try oils (2).
• Push the size of the strokes. Get big house brushes, squeegees. Try really small brushes. Think about those two things next to each other.
• Vary the type of mark-making. There’s a lot of thick stuff going on. Try more subtle applications, through glazes and other methods.
• Spend a month on one canvas. See what happens to the energy of the piece. See what happens if you use panel and you don’t have the give.

Process
I start a painting by selecting a photograph or sketch and draw right on the canvas with paint, usually with the primary color I want, and then rough the composition in with bigger shapes. At the same time, I begin to build up brush strokes. I was asked if I’d thought of further abstracting the photos I use as source material. For example, overlay the photo with velum to obscure the image -- “dumb it down” to force me to start big rather than with lines.

I stop the painting when it’s the end of that session in the studio -- when some other commitment makes me stop, or I run out of energy. I struggle to maintain the same energy and perspective when I try to go back in on a different day. I was asked to consider setting specific time constraints for a painting, for example, give myself a half hour to do one painting. Another day carve out six hours and stay with the painting -- no matter what. Laurel said to look for an uncomfortable place to stop.

• Set up arbitrary rules to break habits and expand vocabulary. Use a timer.
• Start opposite my convention.
• Experiment with proportions, distortion, asymmetry.
• Journal. Track my states of mind and emotions as I am painting
• Spend a month on a single piece. See how that varies the energy over time.

Color
As with my mark-making, I need to be more definitive in my color choices. Using only my intuitive sense of color inhibits the development of a larger color vocabulary. The paintings with a narrower color range read better, and the group felt that I would benefit from using more grays and mixing more. Heather thought that the colors are all very “high” and sweet. It was suggested that the high color might be the result of working in acrylics and not using wet on wet techniques(3). I also got feedback that the palette was borderline “pretty” and that there are too many jewel tones competing. I need to pay attention to variation within a color and the overall tone of the color range. A lot of color washes out to peach, and I should look at how colors can be used to create illusion and depth, since a lot of my paintings read as flat. Jan asked me to think about what compels my palette.

Color recommendations included:
• The paintings are chalky (through the use of white). Try transparency/glazing instead of using white to mix lighter colors. Create translucency.
• Look at the Golden website color mixing section. Do color exercises (e.g., paint with a “dead palette”: Venetian red, yellow, ochre, black, white). Use some "school" ideas such as the use of complementary colors to achieve push/pull. Look at how Hans Hoffman does this.
• Fully research and work with value relationships of one color.
• Make my own “Pantone forecasts” to develop my color sensibility. Pick colors I see off the street, etc.
• Look at art just for the color palette.

Format
It was suggested that I reconsider my use of standard size formats. I seem to be hitting the edge of the canvas and the paintings feel like they want to go beyond the borders of the canvas. I was told that it feels like my full body is involved. When I paint, the physical energy of my body to energizes the brush on the canvas, and I like to move while I paint, which I would like to maintain. Body position might be an issue and it was suggested that I change things so that I have to change my body position.

Recommendations included:
• Work larger.
• Open up the format. Work in three formats and do 3-4 paintings in each: just off square horizontal, vertical, and square.
• RJ suggested that when choosing size, I first consider the context of my subject, rather than get a bunch of 40x40s and start painting. The size is a huge way of how we experience the painting.
• Put the canvas on the floor see if it changes my engagement with the work.

Composition / Space
In the context of my mark-making and color, I received a lot of feedback about how space is or is not created in my paintings. There was an overall sense that my paintings sit on the surface and need more depth. A number of people wanted there to be more locations for the viewer to enter and they were most engaged where there is contrast, figure-ground, and spacial relations. The mark-heavy paintings seemed to hold the viewer on the surface.

I feel that the suggestions about mark, color, and format will help me work with this. I feel the biggest impact will come from me following the suggestion to spend more time returning to the same canvas -- going back, simplifying, and making decisions. My studio practice this semester will include longer sessions and multiple sessions. I want to explore how I feel about spacial issues: am I working figure-ground? Am I working with attmosphere? What is form and what is gesture? Do gestures become form?

Observations and recommendations included:

• Imagine the surface as a stage with different ways to enter. How do I want the viewer to experience coming in out and around? Colors and lines can be characters and have a presence. Think about the way a color shape sits in relationship to other characters.
• Make bolder decisions (see Philip Guston, Cecily Brown).
• Use a viewfinder to look at compositions as I am working.
• Play with the ambiguity of what is closer and further away in the picture plane.

Content / Decision making
Tony asked me “What are these paintings about for you?” He said that if I am making a mark, I am making decisions. That content helps you decide which marks to make and how to make them. Also, you can’t know if you’re done with a painting without some kind of criteria in mind. In the critique, my group talked about how the criteria for what you do usually comes from content, or something that you are trying to express – the thing that is giving you the push to make the painting, even if it not visible(4).Similarly, a lot of discussion in the Critical Theory One seminar was about an artist needing a bigger reason to paint than mere self-expression.

In my artist statement I say that I am expressing emotion and energy that I see and feel in response to something I am looking at. It might be something in the landscape or my environment, a figure, or a photograph. When I spoke to Melissa Kulig, she summarized my process saying, “So you’re referencing something and you’re wildly abstracting it and you’re trying to express your interpretation of the thing -- something different than the original -- that being…?” The answer to the question, “what is it that is different from the original” is what I need to explore this and future semesters by thinking more concisely about what it is that I am trying to express. One suggestion was for me to document and journal about my process, and I believe this will help me be more self-aware and clarify what about painting is important to me.

Suggestions for exploration were:

• Explore my “oddness” as opposed to my generic/gestural style.
• Reproduce paintings. Study paintings. Put my work in dialog with the history of painting. For example, notice how Titian uses a particular color. Set up tasks.
• Try to render an illusionistic still life and then obstruct it. Go into it, over it, and through it.
• Think what it would be like to look from the inside of something out instead of outside in.
• Nourish my interests outside of painting. Feed the soul, do outside reading, and let it seep in and percolate. Readi about nature, Emerson, Thoreau, Transcendentalists.
• Discover my “taste” and where my taste comes from. Identify artists who I like. Identify artists who I don’t like and figure out what gets under my skin.
• Do a lot more painting. Develop a daily practice.

Summary
This semester I am going to focus on what I am putting in to my paintings – the marks, the color, the tools, and the process. I believe that discovering what my paintings are about will come through exploring my process, pushing my use of formal painting elements, journaling, and paying attention to what interests me. As part of that discovery, it was suggested that I explore the “lineage” of the artists that I look at and research this semester.

Note: horror vacui. The fear of empty spaces (cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork with detail (see wikipedia).

Artists to research
• Amy Sillman (esp. First Person Singular. Look at range of marks and space.
• Josh Smith (look at for collage, lush lines)
• Charline von Heyl
• Jacqueline Humphries
• Mary Heilmann (for nuance)
• Elizabeth Neel
• Albert Oehlen
• Cecily Brown
• Philip Guston
• Rodin (figurative watercolors)
• Turner (Slave Ship)
• Francis Bacon
• Marlene Dumas (painting of her daughter)
• Barbara Takenaga (for her use of movement, depth using a limited vocabulary)
• Elinor Carucci’s portrait of Cecily Brown (art andcommerce.com)
• Late Picasso (John Richardson’s Picasso biography, 17th c. portraiture, Catalog for Picasso: Mosqueteros show at Gagosian)
• Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, late de Kooning
• Brice Marden
• Terry Winters

Reading list
David Batchelor, Chromophobia
Briony Fer, On Abstract Art
Gary Garrels Oranges and Sardines
Yve-Alain Bois, Painting as Model
Vicky Perry, Abstract Painting Concepts and Techniques (for vocabulary)
Barry Schwabsky, Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting
Raphael Rubenstein, Provisional Painting. Art in America, May 2009
“Parkett” (www.parkettart.com)

Other recommended reading
Klaus Kertess (curated the Whitney Biennial)
Maurice Tuchmann, et al. The Impact of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): de Kooning, Pollock, Dubuffet, Bacon
Margaret Livin, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing
John Hyman, The Objective Eye
Karsten Harries, Meaning of Modern Art (SPEP)
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing
Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1960-1993
Barry Schwabsky, Alison Gingeras, The Triumph of Painting, The Saatchi Gallery
Merlo Ponti, Phenomenology of Perceptions
Frank Stella, Working Space
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters” (1952 essay, out of print)
Maurice Tuchmann, et al. The Impact of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): De Kooning, Pollock, Dubuffet, Bacon
Hans Hoffman (Small book, on moving in and out of space. Search for the Real?)

Footnotes
(1) In the small group critique on June 21, we discussed mark-making. Tony Apesos asked, “what happens when mark contradicts meaning?” He went on, saying that we like pictures; more than real things, in a different way. The way the objectness of a painting separates us from imageness of the picture—the flicker between image and object. It’s there and not there at the same time. Mark making both shows us the thing we are looking at – it describes the form – and at the same time pushes us away and establishes the materiality of the painting. There’s a tension of creating the image within the structure that’s containing it. Tony talked about how 16th century Venetian painting does both: there’s richness of paint and richness of imagery. They were experimenting with paint for the first time. And, Tintoreto and the others were training their audience how to appreciate this new type of painting.

(2) Tony Apesos thought I would like the mark-making possibilities of oil. When acrylic dries through evaporation, the mark relaxes and actually loses volume. Oil expands as it dries and absorbs oxygen. He thought that would be a difference I might like. Impastos will stay crisper. But it would require some changes in strategy like working more paintings at once because I won’t be able to pile up paint. I’d need to wait in order to do wet over dry. But, it would allow me to do something I’m not doing, which is wet on wet. If I stick with acrylic, look at Golden retarders; open acrylics.

(3) A number of people (RJ, Heather, Brenda, Tony) suggested trying oils. (Laurel says maybe not). The idea was that oil would allow me to mix on the canvas. It would slow down my decisions.

(4) Tony said that it’s important to distinguish what you are trying to express from what gets communicated. They are not the same thing. What we express is not necessarily what the viewer sees. As artists the only thing we can really care about is expressing. The viewer cares about communication. If as an artist you start caring about communication, that is when you start doing propaganda or kitsch.