Creative Artists: Thomas Dewing

 
The turn of the 20th century was a vibrant and changing time for art. There was the full acceptance of Impressionism, the dominating realists and portrait work of Sargent and other like artists, and the birthing of modern art. It was my naive conclusion that all of the highly "creative" painting that would be done at this time would be from the artists blazing the way toward modernism, but through more study, I have found several that were both creative and yet still distinguished representational artists. I did find one artist in particular that jumped right out at me, he was both beyond his time, and still grounded in realism.

Thomas Dewing (1851- 1938) was an American artist born near Boston, trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, and eventually settled in New York City. Dewing is classified as a Tonalist (the most famous Tonalsits being George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, and John H. Twatchtman), and is one of the first painters to apply this predominantly landscape painting approach of tonalism to figure painting. This use of a tonal color palette, his foundation of classical realism and the addition of more impressionistic brush work created extremely unique and mood filled paintings.

In addition to this fairly new style, Dewing also had a unique compositional style that set female figures in full-body poses with plenty of open air, almost like a present day graphic designers use of white space. This slight twist on composition really made me gravitate to these paintings.

There are some designers today that use white space to add breathing room and simplification, while keeping the elements and layout in perfect balance, and then there are bad designers that when given the same elements will produce a barren, unpleasing design because they have poorly placed those elements. I think Dewing must have been a great designer, making him a well rounded artist that combined color harmony, technique, and highly developed skill to create masterful paintings that were unique for their time, and even today.

 

Creative Artists: Geoffrey Johnson

In an attempt to be more creative with my painting, I am doing a fair amount of research and web browsing to discover something that will spark new ideas and concepts. Over the next few months I will be exploring and experimenting with new concepts as well as keep up my normal painting schedule. I will post the things I find interesting along the way.

When first stumbling on this concept of creative representationalism, one artist in particular came immediately to mind. Geoffrey Johnson, born in 1965, is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy, the first and oldest art school in the US, and has been selling out his shows for years now.

Born in North Carolina and now I believe living in Georgia, Geoffery has an extremely compelling style that fuses still urban landscapes with the movement of figures and crowds. He began his career by painting landscapes much like the one below and eventually began incorporating figures which were soon coupled with monochromatic urban scenes, creating a style and concept that is all his own. Geoffrey's work does border the fine line between aesthetic and representational art, but I doubt there is a collector or gallery that wouldn't love to have one of his works in their collection.

Check out more of Geoffrey's work through his galleries: Principal Gallery,  Shain Gallery, & Hubert Gallery


More thoughts on creative art:
I believe the art community, and myself, should limit ourselves to a strict criteria when it comes to creativity. It's easy to see that modern art has opened the doors to just about any material and technique. While this might make it easy to develop something unique, it might not be creative. Anyone can strap some neon lights and paint on a canvas, or drip paint from a pendulum suspended over a canvas, but that doesn't say anything about our past as painters,  our skill and technique, or the exact feeling and message that we are trying to convey (unless it's chaos). If we limit ourselves to classical techniques and materials, we can insure that our work will stand upon the shoulders of the old masters, as well as the test of time.

Brad Kunkle's work (as described in the post below) uses gold leaf, a technique that was used in the Egyptian pyramids and ancient Rome. The use of gold and oil paint together has been used for centuries, and Brad isn't the only contemporary artist doing it, but he was able to add his own creativity and a high level of skill to create something entirely new.

Graphic designers and agencies do this every day, and in some cases the best advertisements take a unique spin on something common or classical (I saw the below Billboard for McDonalds in my town the other day . . . It's a good example). Imagine if the marketing world took hold of the concepts of modern art, we would probably see car salesmen trying to sell cosmetics by screaming at women and slapping colorful starbursts all over. But yet we see in every makeup ad the idea of "natural" beauty and clean, soft light, as if every model is a Greek goddess (and you too is you buy the stuff).

This narrowing down of materials and techniques (which is still very broad) will produce a potential for higher creativity than would otherwise be possible, and could also gauge what is "acceptable" representational creative art. From an investment point of view, collectors are concerned with the whole gamut of art history and how an artists work fits into it. We have all seen artists fade in and out of popularity, catching the latest trend or it's resurgence. If an artists work could be in sync with the foundations of classical art, while still bringing the current world and his personal thoughts into it, then he has a much better shot of becoming a "new master".

As in my past post, I don't think a painting needs to be more than paint on canvas or board, the use of other materials like gold, silver or who knows what else may be a rough road to travel. As we have seen by Geoffrey Johnson and countless other artists, creativity and sound technique is all you need to create something worth while.

Where is the Creative Art?

 Gustave Klimt

A couple weeks back, I saw posted on Facebook that it was Gustav Klimt's birthday (July 14, 1862) and it immediately made me think of the countless times that I have recently heard the comparison of contemporary artist Brad Kunkle's work to Klimts. Being very familiar with Kunkles work, I decided to learn more about Klimt to make a comparison for myself.

  Brad Reuben Kunkle

Both artists use gold leaf and oil paint together on canvas, and both focus primarily on the female figure/portrait (which is probably the most common and popular subject matter). So, past this use of gold, I really didn't see much unique similarities that would justify the hype.

The more I looked through the various paintings, the more one major thought came rushing to my mind. Whether you like their works, or think they are similar, I think the greatest point is that they both are doing more than just painting reality, they have gone a step further and added creativity. Design, simplicity, materials, composition, abstraction . . . these are all elements within their work, and also considerations and judgments that they planned for well before starting to paint.

 Gustave Klimt

I am a firm believer that a painting (or "art") needs to be nothing more than a glimpse of the beauty in our world. Whether an exact representation of the subject or the artists judgment on what elements are specifically important. Both of these general approaches encompass the majority of paintings in the "non-modern" art world and I'm happy to spend hours looking and creating them. But I now see that although the majority of these types of artistic works are filled with great brushwork and exquisite renderings, they may lack the creativity or maybe even better said, the potential for creativity that limits them from being ageless masterpieces.

   Brad Reuben Kunkle

This creative touch that is so apparent in Kunkle's work (and so non-existent in most of today's popular representational masters) has really got me thinking, and a bit convicted, that I could go further with my art and pay more attention on the design and concept of a piece. I bet that if artists took the time to be more creative, we would see greater individuality and perhaps a monumental new era that could stand up to the 19th century masters or in some respects the Modern Art age that predominated the 20th century and today.

 Gustave Klimt

The shift to be more creative in the late 19th century (that Klimt was clearly a part of) was taken to the extreme and spawned Modern art. Losing almost all technique and natural beauty, modern art became only creativity and the striving need for something unique and shocking. Maybe this time around, with the right combination of technique and creativity, and maybe with the help of artist like Brad Kunkle, we can actually get it right.

 Gustave Klimt

  Brad Reuben Kunkle

Note: In the late 19th century, Klimt was highly rejected for his paintings. The main cause of this was for his erotic and overtly nude pieces. I am personally discouraged by this strange association with nudity and sexuality to highly creative art. I feel that these additions pushed art toward the shocking and obscene that modernism was hungry for. This ever growing rise of nudity in both modern, and in some cases, classical art is desensitizing our culture and instead of conveying a new and undiscovered beauty, it is stripping beauty away from intimacy and personal relationships and slapping it onto canvases to be shared with the world. This is strictly my own opinion, but for fear of adding to the noise and problem, I err on the side of caution and stay away from it in my subject matter.

Schmid on patience

I have been working on a very large painting for just about 3 months now. I am determined to get it just right, and I'm going insane, painting and re-painting one section of the face in particular for the last month and a half. I only spend about 8 hours a week on it and I'm working at a crawling pace to make sure I'm doing it right. Before this crawling pace, I had re-painted the head about 20 times, expecting that each time I scrapped it down and re-painted it, the right strokes would just flow out as easily as other parts of the painting.


It for some reason made me think of Richard Schmid and his writing about patience. He touches on it lightly in his book Alla Prima, but when grazing through the book, I couldn't find what I was looking for.

After some searching, I found it in a word document I made a few years ago compiling Richard's old "Notes from the Hayloft" that he used to write on an older version of his website.

. . . some measure of perseverance and tenacity is necessary at various (and often unpredictable) times throughout a painting. Sometimes things go smoothly and I can simply enjoy what I am doing. Other times I slam into a problem and the only way out is to slow down to a crawl, concentrate until my teeth hurt, and bring every faculty I have to bear on getting exactly what I want, no matter how long it takes. It's more than simple endurance. It's real mental effort and the inspiration fairy has yet to appear at such times waving her magic wand of easy solutions. I alone must solve my problem. I have to clear my mind of everything else, think hard, analyze, explore my options, plan a strategy for the immediate situation, and then do whatever it takes. Sometimes it means scraping off what I have done and starting over again and again.

It looks like I should finish the painting sometime in the next week or two and I'll be so happy when it's done. For the rest of the spring, I will be doing some smaller paintings and some plein air . . . which I can't wait for.

If your interested in Schmid's old "Notes from the Hayloft" check out the wayback machine and click through the old versions of his site: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://richardschmid.com

Making Oil Paint

I mainly use Gamblin and Winsor & Newton oil paints (I also use some Rembrandt, but the quality is noticeably different). I recently saw a Discovery channel special on the making of Gamblin paints, and it got me wondering if Winsor & Newton manufactures paint the exact same way. Luckily, I found on YouTube an episode of "How it's Made" (another Discovery channel show) featuring the Winsor & Newton process. After watching both, it is clear that although the process of making paint is the same, it seems that Winsor & Newton focuses much more on exactness, quality control, and lab testing. This is probably tied closely with the fact that Winsor & Newton is a much larger company and has a reputation as the "best" oil paint to keep up. From a personal, hands-on point of view, I like each brand for their own qualities. Gamblin has a generally fantastic consistency and transparency, but Winsor & Newton's colors seem purer while the consistency is a little thicker with less transparent in some cases (which may be tied to the actual pigment, not the manufacturing process).



To really study the options and differences between these brands, I've ordered their hand-painted color charts (which I honestly didn't know existed). This way I can put the swatches side-by-side and make sure I'm choosing the right brand for the right color.

For the Winsor & Newton click here
And for Gamblin, go here and at the bottom you can send an email requesting one.

Classical Painting Atelier

I recently received Juliette Aristides new book, Classical Painting Atelier. Juliette taught with Jacob Collins at the National Academy in New York, and then became a founding member of the Water Street Studio. She currently runs her own atelier (ăt'l-yā'), Aristides Classical Atelier in Seattle, and has proven herself a driving force in the resurgence of the classical movement.

As best I can describe, this book is not a "how-to paint" book, but more of a how to learn how to paint. There are many short lessons throughout the book that walk you through some of the key projects you would encounter in an atelier (cast drawings, master copies, monochromatic painting . . .), but other than that, the book simply outlines principles and concepts that an artist should study. Improving your work through composition, value, color, and just hard work.


The Introduction and first section were my favorites, as it gave a history of the atelier and Juliette's personal opinions and feelings about education and the need to turn back to classical/representational art. The Composition chapter was the most detailed I have seen (although I can honestly say I haven't studied much more than the basics). She applies both mathematics and harmonies into how the masters composed their masterpieces. She also overlays these principles onto the paintings that used them. I am not a strong believer in some of these principles but I will definitely focus more on my compositions and always have it in mind while I create a new work.

Overall, a very valuable resource for my personal library. Juliette has also written a previous book, Classical Drawing Atelier, which I have now put on my book wish list.


For a more detailed review of the book, visit the Art Renewal Center

Richard Schmid: The Landscapes

"there is a fascination and tranquility brought about by nature . . . as close to happiness as anything I know of."

- Introduction of Richard Schmid Paints Landscapes, 1975

My wife was very good to me this Christmas and gave me the new landscape book by Richard Schmid. The book is a large, 11x14, coffee table style book with over 300 paintings and drawings.

If it hasn't been apparent yet, Richard is on the top of my "favorite artists" list. Not because he is popular or I'm trying to get on some band wagon, but because I am absolutely amazed at what he can do with paint and a brush. There are countless of his paintings that have so much reality (in some cases, beyond reality). There is so much space and depth -- a result of his exacting values and beautiful edge work. If you were to mention artists who have the best handle on color, Richard's name would come up. If you were to mention value, or drawing, or brushwork, again, his name would be one of the first mentioned. In all the areas that make a painting successful, he is a master of them. That is why I fill my shelves with his books and videos.



The Lanscapes is organized by location and season, starting in Chicago and then New York, New England, and International locations. It is light on text (I read through it in a couple hours - taking my time at each painting) but it's written very well and a pleasure to get some background behind many of his paintings. There are also several photos of him painting on location and progress photos of three or four landscapes.




If you don't have any books by Richard Schmid, get Alla Prima first, and then this one. There are hundreds of paintings that haven't really been seen before, making it an archive and history of one of our centuries great masters painting his favorite subject.

Fine Art on TV

I can honestly say, among with many other artists, that some of my first memories and desires for art came from watching it on TV. I didn't grow up in museums and galleries, or have lavish coffee table books showing the masters, my introduction to the arts came from Bob Ross and other "craft" painters on air Saturday mornings. Now, I'm in no means elevating Bob Ross's technique or saying that his landscapes are examples of exemplary art, but to a 10 year old, watching him carve out a mountain, or make glassy flat water was enough to get me excited about creating something myself. Those few sparks, along with other influences like my parents, grandparents, and school friends, are what most likely steered me toward this life I'm living.

I've always thought that art, and in particular, the making of art, is such an interesting thing, and completely different for each artist. Now a days I get my watching fix from the painting dvds of Scott Burdick, Jeremy Lipking, Burt Silverman, David Leffel, Casey Baugh, Richard Schmid, and others (My bookshelf is getting pretty full). But for those millions of average viewers and aspiring children that don't know about these "insider" videos (let alone finding the money to buy them), there still isn't much out there except for some old re-runs.

All of the above to simply say - "I think there should be more".

One glimmer of hope is a show titled "Star Portraits." This show originated from the BBC in Europe and is now airing on Bravo Canada (new and improved with a new host). Sadly I can't get this here in Connecticut, but thanks to YouTube and the rest of the internet, we can all get an episode or two. The show combines a Star personality with three portrait painters who battle it out for two weeks. In the end, the Star picks their favorite and gives some money to a charity. The viewer leaves inspired, enlightened, and very interested in next weeks show.

Here are a few links I found:

The old BBC Show: YouTube
Bravo Show: www.starportraits.ca
Trailer: YouTube