Two New Paintings
From two different directions
Hello friends. I come to you after a long absence with two new paintings. Both completed in the last 6 months and, somewhat unintentionally, excellent examples of my biggest problem with painting. Which isn’t to say I have some sort of beef with painting in general — painting is one of the few things keeping me healthy these days, especially amidst what seems to be the final erosion of both rational thinking and democracy — but, I digress. To be clear, I have no problem with painting, but I do have problems painting, as every artist does.
My particular pain point is the conceptual phase. Deciding what to paint and how to paint it has grown more challenging the older I get. Perhaps this is where the artist and craftsman differ, somewhere amongst the thinking and the doing. Or maybe as I get technically more proficient, I have more time to think about what I’m worse at. Deep dive on that another day.
Either way, these paintings represent two distinct directions I find myself drifting towards lately.
“Iodine” is based off of reference photos I took of my friend and frequent model, Jule, in her home in Los Angeles. Aside from minor adjustments to composition and color, my goal here was to capture what I thought was an already very interesting photo. Beyond transcribing things into paint, and trying to take advantage of the opportunities such interesting light and high contrast colors provide, the concept here is very simple and traditionally realist. I had plenty of technical goals, especially in regards to texture (something I am actively trying to improve upon) but otherwise, I am simply painting from photo reference. Gloriously straightforward.
Sometimes, this is all I want to do: take interesting and aesthetically pleasing photos, and try to make them into good paintings.
One frequent issue I have with this approach is that it is very dependent on photography. The sole purpose of which is to make good reference for paintings, and not necessarily good photos in and of themselves. This is harder than it sounds. To make matters more complicated, I don’t really care that much about the art of photography. And while I feel the need to take my own reference photos and “own” the entire process — I don’t particularly enjoy taking photos either. It’s an interesting and annoying problem. This is also why portraiture is so appealing to me; simple concepts and uncomplicated photography as reference for something [hopefully] greater.
When I might not have the right photo reference, or I'm lusting after the huge narrative paintings that always seem too ambitious, the other option is to abandon that simple realism and get a little weird. Generally, this means I will edit existing photos to death, until I have created something entirely new to use as a jump-off point. This sometimes feels like a more creative approach, and there is certainly more thought behind why I am painting what I’m painting, beyond simple aesthetics. Aesthetics are still most important, but If I’m going to try and paint something that isn’t in front of me, I need a reason for it.
Onto the second new one.
Lately, as I’m trying to find a concept or composition, I find myself leaning towards a particular style of painting: Japanese Ukiyo-e, a style of woodblock printing and painting popular in Japan in the 17-19th centuries. I love this style of painting, possibly as much as I love the European oil painters that got me into painting in the first place. In almost every way, ukiyo-e is unlike figurative oil painting.
I have been increasingly including little nods to ukiyo-e in my paintings over the last few years, but for this one, I set out with a clear attempt to mush the styles together more obviously. Because there is such a huge stylistic gap between a highly rendered oil painting and the brushwork of a watercolor or woodblock, I also found myself needing to loosen up a bit. That means a lot more texture and abstract elements, possibly to soften the clash of two disparate ideas. And while it takes much more planning than it should — to say looseness and flexibility do not come easy to me would be a sizable understatement — it is quite fun.
Most of my work falls somewhere in between these two approaches, and I’m always looking for one direction to pull me one way or another, if only to save me from tough decisions on the next one. It never seems to happen though, and maybe that is ok.
I do hope you enjoy these.
Twice in as many days, I run across this type of influence. I haven’t had a chance to read this yet, but thought it may be of interest to you as well.
Tacoma Art Museum exhibit connects the past to the present Meet the tattoo artist curated a year long exhibit at Tacoma Art Museum #k5evening
https://www.king5.com/mobile/article/entertainment/television/programs/evening/tacoma-art-museum-exhibit-echoes-floating-world/281-f228b915-ed66-4ddb-9943-fa51f09c7cfe
The grand journey of fitting into a self imposed box and then the discovery of breaking out of the box that we lovingly created. Push and pull. The teeter totter balancing act. Finding our way under the weight of choices we make. The beautiful path of the middle ground that suits our own unique need for relief of the precious first felt impression. Loose hand strokes to refined intentional detailing. Nothing more than a game of emergency. Love watching you find your way along. Thanks for sharing some insight to your own struggle in discovery.