Would this be a better painting if I put a burning phone booth in it?

How many times have we all asked ourselves, would this be a better painting if I put a burning phone booth in it? Well in this case, yeah!

The painting above is an example of the work of the forgotten Dutch painter of the 17th century, Dirk Van Assaerts. I have written a number of times about this tyros depressing oeuvre and if you would like to see those posts, click on "The encyclopedia of dumb design ideas" over there in my sidebar. Dirk Van Assaerts is sometimes referred to as the Nevelson master because his work was discovered behind a Louise Nevelson sculpture which was moved for cleaning. Scholars and curators agree there may be many more scattered about behind the other Nevelsons around our nation, but generally feel that the artistic merit of the paintings pales beside the inconvenience of moving one of her assemblages. They do agree the that the artist's oaken panels make excellent shims.

Dirk received a subpoena to submit a painting to the prestigious annual exhibition at the local Organs of Compulsion treadmill. The competition was spirited for a place on their mildewed walls.  He had a painting in his studio that had lain long unsold, called "The old mill on a dreary afternoon". Below is a photoshopped recreation of what this daub must have looked like. 

 The painting had a number of problems. Mostly it was static. The two interesting areas, the tree and the windmill balanced one another too much.

The two elements here are both about of equal strength in pulling the attention of the viewer. 

 Incidentally, objects in a painting can be balanced not only across the picture plane. but into it as well, a foreground object can be balanced by another object far into the painting.  To illustrate this I would have you recall all those diagrams and the filmstrips of Dirks's era that show the two little boys on a seesaw, they show a side view of the foppish boys, but imagine if the shot was made looking over one of the boys shoulder at the now distant other boy.That is balance into space.

 The addition of a third object turns the painting into what is sometimes called a three spot composition. Below is a remarkably lucid illustration showing just that. 

The burning phone booth at 2 is dominant over the other two "spots". Generally it works better to design with an uneven but artistic balance of elements. The eternally burning phone booth dominates the picture for a number of reasons. It is close to the center of the design, it is brightly colored in a painting that is otherwise grave, and  is relieved by the gloomy sky behind it. The booth also breaks the  too dominant horizontal line across the painting.

There are times such as in religious art where a static or very formal design is wanted and putting something deliberately in the middle of a painting works. But generally in landscape painting it doesn't. However there is a little trick that Dirk knew that would allow almost that. Dirk set the phone booth up against that middle line. That often works pretty well. The booth kisses that center line, but all of it is to one side of the line. Below is an extraordinary diagram of that.  

 

Dirk had the good sense in this failed painting to at least keep the sky simple. If a painting has a lot going on in it, it is often a good idea to keep the sky simple. You gotta cut em a break somewhere.

Dirk's painting was well received by the conniving judges at the treadmill facility. But the guards in their rusting chain mail Nehru jackets complained that the wretched women and children "treaders" marched more slowly in front of the picture. The filthy treaders in their bronzen chains moaned "Wat betenkent het? Wat betekent het? What does it mean? What does it mean? Dirk, when pressed for an answer replied.

THE ILLUSION OF MEANING.....IS MEANING!

screw em!

The triumph of reason and your favorite Hollywood starlets supine

I will begin by announcing a show of Cape Ann art that will open this week in Gloucester, at the  North Shore Arts Association. There will be 125 examples of historic Cape Ann artists work. There are Hibbards and Gruppes and Harry Leith Ross, and a knockout Lester Stevens, a wonderful Harriet Randall Lewis, a Winslow Homer drawing, an Anthony Cirino, a Jane Peterson still life, a William Meyrowitz, and a Teresa Bernstein, and lots more. These paintings came from private collections and most are seldom seen outside their proud owners homes. If you are in the area this is something you should see.The parking lot of the art association provides one of the best views of  Gloucester harbor too.

I have been keeping a yellow legal pad handy so I can write down ideas for blog posts. I have filled a whole page so I think I will unload a few of those at you tonight. They will follow in the form of brief  one paragraph rants.

People who see me painting often come up to me and say "it must be nice to be so talented". I think they underestimate what it took to get here and imagine that had they been "lucky" like me they could do it too. I tell them
  " well, I am six foot four now, but I have been every height below that on my way here". 

I had to make some God awful crap along the way. The ability to paint is a learned skill, some learn faster than others, and few slower than me. I have known only a few natural painters and they seem able to intuitively master only one aspect of their craft. For me it has been about endurance. I pose as if I sprang like Athena, fully armored from the temple of Zeus, but what I really am is a plugger. If I had died at 30 I would be best remembered as the guy with all the hair. I have known some fine painters who weren't all that bright, but I have known none who were not incessant workers.

I had friends in high school who liked only the Beatles.They said they were the best rock and roll band. They probably were. But for these friends the fun ended there, they identified who they thought was best and looked no further. They missed Quicksilver, Spirit and Savoy Brown, Dr John and Ten Years after. The same thing happens in painting. OK, Sorolla is a fabulous painter, but there are a hundreds of other fine painters who can thrill the viewer as well. Have you seen Mancini or Shiskin? How about Rosa Bonhuer or Richard Parkes Bonington? I fell in love with Seago years ago when he was pretty much unknown in this country. I suggest you should seek out as many artist's work as you can, there are lots of voices out there. There are lots of artists to enjoy, not just two or three. Go look up Eugene Boudin, J. Enneking, and  Alfred Munnings. Do you know Anthony Thieme? How many early twentieth century Scottish etchers  can you name? I mean  other than

Muirhead Bone.

I try to be a picture maker.What you observe before you when painting is not a picture. It is nature. If you want a picture on your canvas you have to put it there. I try to make things for people to hang in their homes and enjoy, stuff to be lived with that will unfurl gradually as they observe it. Pictures are not a matter of factual transcription of nature, random and chaotic. They are designed and have emotional content. Those things are installed, not observed. That's why having your own voice is so important. Technique is grammar, picture making is about content.

• Don't forget to put in the art!

Having your own voice, that's important. There seems to be a lack of interest in originality lately. I see artists lauded as important and new masters, whose work is simply an imitation of another more famous painter. Often they win major prizes and are written of glowingly in magazines. They look just like Richard Schmid or Scott Christensen so they have got to be good! A painters art should look as if only they could have made it. The worst thing that can be said about a painter is that he paints just like so and so. Don't play in a cover band, write your own stuff if you want to do anything really worthwhile. To be near Vermeer, is to be mere veneer. Try getting a couple of different heroes, that helps. They oughta be dead too.


Poeples art expectations. When I had a gallery of my own in Rockport ( and I might again, I will let you know) Once a guy walked in and asked if I had that picture of the old tyme sailor guy with the bell.

He wanted a zillion dollar painting and assumed that since I had an art gallery I would have it in stock. Sadly I didn't. There is only one of those. I reflected on that a long time and what I figured out told me a lot about how my customers thought. He had seen a painting he really liked and every time he walked into an art gallery he looked to see if it was there. That it was a one of a kind object never crossed his mid. He thought that every artist made a unit like that. "Nope! he doesn't make that one!" He thought it was like shoes, every shoe company makes a penny loafer, it's a unit, not an original. There was no way he would ever buy anything other than the Homer. He probably ended up with some Chi-Com ripoff of the painting. Many of my visitors could never be sold a painting because they had seen one painting that they  liked and forever would walk into galleries looking for it. Nothing I had would do. He wanted that Homer! That it was my job to make my own paintings never crossed his mind. He only liked the Beatles.

There are challenges to being a pro that many artists never imagine. I routinely see art made to compete in competitions. The artists is out to get a knockout punch. They want to make the largest damndest thing they can make. That might be the way to win prizes, but it s not (at least usually) the way to make a living in the field. In order to make a living you need to be able to produce a steady stream of salable paintings. Over a career that might mean hundreds of them. You have to be reliable and consistent. The idea is to be valued not discovered, at least in the art world I inhabit. I have seen lots of flash in the pan , this years hero artists appear like a shooting star only to disappear in the blinding light of the next greatest thing. It is usually a marathon and not a sprint.. The key might be style. Each painting must be informed by the artists unique personality more than the subject. People seem to want pictures more than manifestos. Hans Christian Anderson wrote a story called "The most incredible thing" that seems to address this idea here is a link to that.

OK that's enough for tonight! Thanks for tuning in!

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I have a workshop coming up this weekend in Connecticut that is sorely undersubscribed. The weather report looks great and I intend to make it a near shattering experience for those who dare come near. It will be in Kent, Connecticut on August 23 through the 25th. and is sponsored by the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury. Kent was one of those old impressionist art colonies from the late 19th to early 20th century. This is the southern end of the Berkshires. I teach about ten hours a day or more. We paint together and eat together all day and into the evening. You will do nothing but paint and sleep. 

Here is the link to sign up

Mediums and historic wisdom from rock and roll

Black Moumtain  Stapleton Kearns 24 by30, 2006?

I threw a few fall images of my own into this post.

Here is an ask Stape question, I received recently. I suppose I am repeating myself , but many readers have not read the archives and for them this is a magazine rather than a book. The blog is searchable via the little box up  in the left had corner of the page. But with over a thousand posts the archives are so vast that even I don't really know where things are back there. It was intended to be an exposition of everything I had learned in my time in the painting world, or my corner of it, New England traditional painting.

Arthur D Shroudpak, of Minot, North Dakota asks;

So what should I use for a medium when I’m painting outdoors ?

and

Is there a preferred brand of paint ?

Stape ........

I think you will want to use one of two mediums, either an alkyd like Liquin, or a varnish, turpentine and oil mixture often called VTO.

The ideal medium is probably no medium. Many of the painters of old New England had only a small cap of oil on their palette. To make many kinds of paint strokes though, it is nice to have the paint thinner, slipperier and more mobile.That is usually why a painter uses a medium. Varnish and oil mediums were pretty much standard practice for many years and artists often use them today for that reason. Their long and common use justifies confidence in their  permanence. When I was a kid we all mixed our Grumbacher paint. or Permanent  Pigments with Taubes Copal medium, which is an oil medium although made with the now scarce copal varnish. If you buy a bottle of copal medium today the small print on it's label will tell you that it contains not copal but alkyd.

  VTO medium is 1 part damar varnish, 1 part linseed or stand oil, and 4 or more parts turpentine ( not mineral spirits!). It has a little more glow than  an alkyd medium and  but it is slower drying. .It is easy to make yourself and Utrecht or Jerrys Artrarama can sell you big bottles of the damar varnish and stand oil very inexpensively. Get a plastic funnel and a big glass jar with a screw top like mayonnaise comes in and make a years worth of medium in about five minutes. This is a good medium for cheap Yankees too. Buy it retail in those little bottles and it will be more  expensive than The Glenlivet.

Or you might choose an alkyd medium, these are very common and promote quick drying and reduce "sinking in" problems.  Liquin is one brand name and Galkyd is another.Alkyd is an oil, often soybean, that has been modified with acid and alcohol. It dries insoluble, at least in artists thinners, resilient and a little rubbery.It makes a very tough paint film BUT it looks slightly different and I think not quite as "rich" as a traditional medium. Alkyds usually add a satin finish that has less glow than a VTO mixture.Some formulations are shinier than others but none have that deep luster of an oil medium.

Recently I have been using the VTO  rather than my usual alkyd medium. I am trying to use a lot less medium too.

There is no preferred brand of paint.

IT'S NOT IN THE PAINT!

 I use a lot of RGH (link in my sidebar) but I buy many of colors in quarts and tube them myself. All of the professional brands are fine, such as Winsor Newton, Rembrandt, etc. Every paint maker also produces a lower priced "student" brand. Those are absolutely unacceptable. If you want to know which colors I use , that's behind us about a thousand posts somewhere. Search "materials for a workshop".

Owls Head Light, Stapleton Kearns, 30 by 40 about 10 years ago.

I have a friend who is a rock and roll guitar hero, Kim Simmonds, founder of the band Savoy Brown. I enjoy talking to him, our "jobs"  have a surprising amount in common, and the discipline of daily practice and creation are very similar for each of us. Kim paints too, I don't think I actually know anyone who doesn't. Kim has a lot of stories, he started his band in London in the sixties. I want to share with you something he told me recently that I think has a lesson in it for painters.

Kim was at the home of John Lee Hooker .many years ago. Evidently John Lee Hooker's California home was a crossroads for musicians and lots of them visited and played together there. Someone asked Mr. Hooker "what do you think of so-and-so? ", another hotshot guitarist? And John Lee Hooker answered;

 "I LOVE him! LOVE him! I'm a big fan of his, and he's a big fan of mine!"

This was a standard response for him evidently. It is positive,witty and self promoting all at once. I am adapting this reply for my own use. I am frequently asked what "I think of another painter". I try  to always give a positive and nurturing reply . When I was young I used to blurt out exactly what I felt that artists shortcomings were, it's easy, everybody has em! It made me look small, and it served an insult to a stranger who might someday repay the favor. It usually disappointed my listener and it might have taken the bread from the mouth of a brother artist.

When you are out in the field with your painting buddies, say whatever you like. But in a professional setting, I think it is better to promote any artist who is mentioned to you. People will judge you on your work and form their own opinion of you. Dismissing another artists work won't make your listener like you and usually does the opposite. I believe this to be professional behavior. Knocking another artist (well except for Alex Katz, who is sure to survive it ) should be avoided

 When you are dealing with the public, that is a business setting and not a personal one. By "with the public" means when you are painting out in the field and someone approaches you, or when you are doing a demo or at an art gallery or event. A plein air paintout would qualify.You are there to get paid, not to feed your self esteem, educate the public or take the other guy down a notch. People want to like an artist they do business with, and if they feel you are jealous or negative they might not. I have a hard enough time getting people to like me anyway, being abrasive and all.

What goes around comes round seems a hackneyed phrase but it is appropriate here. In the long run, you will receive about the treatment from your brother artists that you dish out yourself. Sometimes people will hear that you had a good word for them or  promoted them heartily, they never forget that.

When next you are asked what you think of another artist, if you know their work at all, I suggest you answer:

WHAT A GREAT PAINTER!  I LOVE HIS (OR HER) WORK. I'M A BIG FAN OF HIS AND HE'S A BIG FAN OF MINE!

Stapleton Kearns 218 by 24 2010

Chromium thingy?


Here is another picture of last weeks chromium colored device . Someone guessed it as a paper towel holder. But it is a 2.50 cent toilet paper holder from Walwart that is supposed to hook onto the tank and beari an extra roll. That's a little to nakedly utilitarian for my bath, but it is a handy and cheap way to hang paper towels within easy reach of your easel.

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Leaf Season workshop

September 23-24-25

The Fall workshop filled weeks ago now and I have received a bunch of e-mail  from people who would like to have come. So I am scheduling another fall session. .. I have scheduled this workshop midweek rather than across a weekend to secure room availability. Inns are busiest in the leaf season in New England . Peak fall is a beautiful time of year here. Notice those mountains behind the inn in the picture below. I can't wait, it's going to be so cool!

This is the Sunset Hill House in Franconia, New Hampshire. I have been teaching workshops there for  years and it is the ideal location.  Because I have taught so many workshops there the inn keepers have learned what painters at a workshop need and they are now practiced at hosting my workshops and making sure we have what we need to operate without any distractions or responsibilities other than painting.There is a broad rear porch that overlooks the mountains so we can still paint outside no matter what the weather does. The lower level of the inn  is ours to store our paints and canvas so we don't have to haul it all to our rooms and it makes a good place to teach too. The view of the mountains is spectacular and in the fall it will be even better. The inn takes good care of us. We have our own private dining room too. They handle  our meals and even bring us lunch so  we can work all day uninterrupted. The inn is one of those big old historic affairs from the 19th century and is homey and informal. Most of the rooms have gas fireplaces, and it is cool in the evenings up in the mountains in the fall, so that is nice after a day outside. It is necessary to stay in the inn to take the workshop.

I love teaching workshops. Everyone is always excited to be there and hang out with the other artists. It is like a three day party. We go from breakfast until bedtime. This is a total immersion program and I run the class about 12 hours a  day. I do an evening lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.

. We don't need to leave the grounds of the inn  to find great subject matter so their is no problem with hauling easels around or caravanning cars to daily locations. We just walk out the back door and the whole Presidential range is spread out before us.

The schedule includes;

• a demo every morning, on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.
• In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel doing individual instruction and try to diagnose each students particular barriers to better painting.
•  after the demo each day I run  a series of exercises  teaching root skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that is what you need to know to establish light in a painting) I will also teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.
• I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of American painting did with the same landscape we will be painting during the day.  In the 19th century all of the great Hudson River painters made a point of being there too, just a few miles up the road from the inn. The other lecture is unpacking out  the design ideas in the works of great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard, two favorite painters of mine.
•  I will work you like a borrowed mule.

 The cost of the workshop is 300 dollars. Sign up here. I charge a 150 deposit up front when you register. In return for that I will hold your place in the class. I wont give away your place to anyone else, so I don't return deposits.

 Lodging reservations must be made with the inn who will provide a discounted room package deal to my students, it is absolutely required that you stay at the inn to take this workshop. Well, actually, if you must stay off "campus" call them and they will arrange a day rate for you which will cover your meals etc. Here is the Sunset Hill House web site

More thoughts on the challenges facing todays workshops participants

CAUTION; HARD TRUTHS AND UNPLEASANT CONCLUSIONS MAY BE IRRITATING FOR SOME SENSITIVE READERS! Please click this link to avoid

Oh! Here I am. Thank you to all of you who have commented on the blog. You have given me several subjects about which I may write. I had a visit from two readers from Utah, they even took me out to dinner. I enjoy meeting you all. Writing this blog is like speaking to a darkened theater where I can not see the audience or gauge their reaction to what I am saying. Workshops are the way I generally meet my readers.. The blog gets a lot of visitors, Sometimes as high as 30,000 a month, but fewer, lately, as I have been posting less often, but it is still a whole lot of people. How odd! considering that writing it is so solitary. More about the workshop problems;

Failure to appreciate the difficulty of painting well.  I always tell workshop students that learning to paint is no more difficult than learning to play the violin. They are always shocked to hear that. Some of them have decided to paint en plein air (as they call it) because they have supposed it would be easier. Again I am not talking about you, anyone you know or have ever met, I mean those bad people who are far away, those whose taxes should be raised. Painting is wicked hard. No one would ever bother with it except that it is so much fun and  perpetually interesting. I believe it takes about ten years working full time to become a competent painter. That doesn't mean you shouldn't paint if you have less time, it is fun and rewarding. But you wouldn't imagine you could learn to play the violin adequately in less time would you? Still many of my workshop students expect a hundred pounds of progress for ten pounds of application. I love em, but they need to be realistic about the effort it will take. Even the most brilliant teacher can't make that hurdle go away, that is just the way it is.

I HAVE HAD DOZENS OF STUDENTS TELL ME THAT THEY WERE GOING TO GO "PROFESSIONAL" WHO HADN'T THE SLIGHTEST IDEA OF THE QUALITY THAT WOULD BE REQUIRED TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN. 
 I THINK THEY WERE NOT WELL ENOUGH INFORMED ABOUT WHAT EXCELLENT WORK LOOKS LIKE, SO AS TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE FAULTS IN THEIR OWN PRODUCT. SOME OF THEM HAD THE FOLLOWING PROBLEMS THOUGH;

• Believing that quality in art is subjective No idea is more destructive to the progress of a painter than this. The comfort it provides the student comes at the expense of advancing ability. The hard truth that there are folks out there who truly paint a whole lot better than you do is daunting, and I am sorry that is scary, but it remains true none the less. When people tell me that art is all subjective and that there is no such thing as one persons art being "better" than another's, I always tell them "I play guitar as well as Hendrix, you might not like it as well, but after all it is so subjective". I  was a high school garage band member with zero talent, by the way. I know some people who play like gods ( you know who you are!). I am comfortable with that. Somebody has to be in the audience. The following are the problems with the subjectiveist model;

1. Why look to the greats in the art, like Rembrandt or Sargent if they are only superior to your own daubs in the opinion of  people who can be ignored or argued against? 
2. If all art is equally good, how could you make your own better? Improving your art would only make sense if you could add quality to it. How depressing it would be to look back on your art from a decade ago if it could not have been made better.Why would one work to better their craft if the only possibility was to make it different rather than better?
3. When I look in the mirror, sometimes I am handsome and other times I see a caviling dork. I see only what I think of myself, and not myself. The eye sees itself only by reflection,  Shakespeare said. If we argue that all of art is only subjective, then the only way it makes sense to think that our art is improving, would be if it is more what we would have it be. But then our ability to judge it will wax and wane like our opinion of ourselves. Before you say that you always have a great opinion of yourself, realize that would preclude self criticism altogether. That you yourself like your art is a slim recommendation for it in the larger world, and unlikely to convince those outside of your immediate circle of friends. 
4. It makes it difficult to  utilize the opinions or suggestions of teachers or "masters"  after all, they are not arguably better at painting than we are, only different. Who then are they to criticize our art? Our art is just as fine as anyone else's. 
5. I don't know any successful or skilled artists who believe this. There must be some who do, but I have met hundreds of painters and can't I think of one. I conclude it is an opinion not held by a significant number of fine artists. Surely it must be useful to emulate or follow the path of those who have had success in painting. There results are extensions of their opinions.
6. Why would art be singular among all the efforts of man and not have standards, measures or examples of quality? There is better and worse carpentry, whiskey and cancer treatment. If  there is no art better than another,why go to the museum? Wouldn't the greeting card rack at the drugstore be just fine? 

Well that should do .... I better throw in something less philosophical and more "useful" to counter my ranting and raving. How about this?

I like my paint to stay "open" all day. But after that I want it to dry. Paint that stays wet for days is a nuisance for me. If I wanted that, I could add poppy oil to my paint. I don't like acrylics because their rapid drying time makes it hard for me to manipulate it before it seizes. In order to speed my drying times I use an alkyd such as Liquin 
Or  I could add a fast drying paint to my palette. Different brands of paint and different colored pigments dry at different rates. There are two logical places I have found to do this. The first is the white. I can add an alkyd white like Griffin, or use a flake lead that dries quickly ( no lead for you amateurs please! leave that to those of us who will blithely risk poisoning for our art.)

Lucas paint (available form Jerrys) has a fast drying time. Since, after white, the color I use the most is ultramarine, I will often add the Lucas ultramarine to my palette. Since ultramarine gets into many parts of my canvas it is will pull along the other pigments with it as it dries. And it is cheap..

If only I knew

Frederick Mulhaupt 1871-1938, lived in and painted Gloucester, Massachusetts.

There are now over a thousand posts in this blog. When one writes a book, it is a reasonable assumption as you write page 342 that the reader has previously read page 40. But in a blog people just parachute in anywhere they damn well please. I get a lot of e-mail queries that I have answered before or written about a year or years ago (have I really been doing this for years?) it was to be a one year project, you know. Keep those questions coming, it's not a problem, I ignore some of them anyway, or snap off a quick return to  the interrogator alone. I get some questions that really help me to know what to write about and inform me when I have been aphotic when I want so to be limpid. Here is an example of a question like that resulting from my last post on premixing the color of your light.

Dear,  Mr. Stape

Does this premixed light color have white in it, or is it a color or mixture of colors without white?

Deb Pilatory

Yes of course it does. I should have said that. The premixed color should be mostly white in fact, The premixed color should be high key, like the light itself, real high key.

The blog started out with me explaining the most basic information about painting and studio knowledge. I progressed through ever more complex subjects like design, color, tree anatomy, the art business, framing, American painting, a woman giving birth to rabbits in Elizabethan England and the curious narrative of Dirk Van Assaerts. There is a whole lot back there and some of it is useful. If you have the time,  I urge you to explore the blog backwards, that is,  starting from its beginning and working forward. It should take you about six to eight weeks. There is no index. Even I have no idea what all is in those archives.

Antonio Cirino 1889-1983 Rockport, Massachusetts artist

Tonight's subject is  "If only I knew" For me painting is about half observation, and about half problem solving. I am always looking at my art (and yours) and asking "whats wrong with this thing, why isn't it working and how could it be made to? " 


THERE IS ALWAYS AN ANSWER TO EVERY PAINTING PROBLEM, EVEN THOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW IT.


I might not know that answer, but there is one. If Willard Metcalf, Rembrandt, or John Sargent were to sit in front of my canvas they could rapidly fix its' problems. So if I knew what they would have done, I might know at least one answer to the problem. Often there ARE several. Sometimes the answer can be found through  careful observation and analysis, but just as often the answer lies in invention, design, obfuscation or rearrangement of the elements of the view.

For me a painting is finished when I have solved all of its' problems. In old movies physicists worked on multiple blackboards stretched about the walls of a classroom, writing endless equations and mathematical claptrap until they reached that last blackboard and did finally solve the equation. This is the process that lead to the discovery of flubber .

When I don't know the answer to a problem in a painting I begin plugging in solutions, what if I soften it all up or subordinate this passage to that one? I try a change, and if it doesn't help I take it out with the side of my knife and try something else. I have stood in front of a painting (particularly seascapes) and tried solution after solution for WEEKS. There are thousands of decisions in a single painting.

A painting has to be pretty much all "right". The viewer won't tolerate much unconvincing drawing or unpleasant design flaws, nor will he waste much time on a painting that is merely accurate or ordinary. Folks are easily bored, at least the ones who spend real money on art. The more expensive the art gets the smarter the customers seem to become in the traditional painting world. Oddly, the opposite is true in the modern art world.

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 If you would like to know about the upcoming July workshop in New Hampshire please
click Here. I have included the cost of the workshop and information on the location in the White Mountains. I can teach you a whole lot, and probably save you years of screwing around. Why torture yourself ? Don't get left behind! You are worth it! Everyone's doing it. Act now.

The workshop takes place at a historic, wooden 19th century Inn in the White mountains with a view that is astounding, and all we have to do is paint. I park my car and forget it for the whole time I am there. I knock myself out from breakfast till bedtime to make sure that the workshop is as intense and useful as I can possibly make it.

Landscape painting is a lie, well told!

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com


 I received this comment on the last post:

 This is interesting and a bit confusing to me...if you 'key' your painting, don't you risk losing that lovely, oh so lovely atmospheric sense, the 'lightness' of nature that is almost like 'dew' to behold? I understand it all depends on what the light effect is of the particular scene you are viewing, but still, the phrase 'key your painting' troubles me and makes me think that it is similar to making NATURE conform to something she is not....of course, I am talking from a stand point of almost zero experience....and how does this translate to indoor/ still life painting? Personally, I love the Boston Painters, whose work, while it definitely utilizes dark darks and flat shadows, always feels 'light' and that the light effect 'was just that'.

Exactly! I want to make nature conform to something it is not. I wish to make art. Nature is one thing. Art is another. Arts a lie! The root of the word is artifice. Here's the definition of that. "Clever or cunning devices or expedients, esp. as used to trick or deceive others: "artifice and outright fakery. You cannot "observe design, color or emotion into a landscape painting. All of these things are installed by the artist. Look at the wonderful Seago above, would you mistake it for a window? Is it truthful?

It is possible to set up a still life in the studio and carefully transfer its appearance onto a canvas, at least if you have controlled lighting. But landscape is a different game. For a number of reasons.

•  Outside, nature is always changing. Every time you look up it is slightly different. There is no "thing" to copy exactly. You cannot set up outside and copy your way to a great landscape painting.

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

• The landscape is a warehouse of more props and details than you could ever want. It is essential to select the important, and reject the unnecessary clutter. It is impossible to paint every leaf in a forest and still get every blade of grass at your feet and maintain any semblance of unity or grace.

• You can paint exactly what is before you as carefully as you can, but I will eat  your lunch, EVERY TIME. Paintings carefully copied from nature before you are usually ordinary. Usually fine landscapes bring a treatment or a "take" on  the landscape that is individual to the artist. Their paintings look as if they could only have been made by that artist. Their paintings are personal, expressive and individual. Edgar Payne doesn't look like Corot or Constable, nature may be constant, but each of these different artists have made paintings that are distilled from the experience of nature rather than a precision reproduction of the actual scene in front of them.
•  
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© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

• The range of values outside exceeds our pigments range. The value of a painted sky is often too dark even if you use pure white. It is necessary sometimes to approximate the look of nature. A blue sky might be higher key than you can paint and still have any blue pigment in your note for instance. But most importantly, the 'look' of nature is secondary to the "look" of the painting. If the painting doesn't move the viewer, you can't assure them that it looks just like nature. Art is one thing, nature is another.
• There is a historic "language" of landscape painting, and it is inventive. The greats have rearranged and riffed on nature to make their paintings. Landscape painting allows for lots of re arrangement and artifice. it is that quality that for me is what makes landscape so appealing. If you play it straight you will usually end up with matter of fact paintings. It is not what it is a picture of, but "how" it is a picture of, that is important in the landscape.
• No one would mistake a Corot or an Inness for a window. They are created illusions based on nature but arranged and presented in a manner unique to their particular creator. Landscape painting is best when it approaches poetry and weakest when it is an accountant's laundry list of the objects that happened to be in front of the artist.
•  
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  © The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com
•  
• Imagine an historical account of the battle of Gettysburg. A 100,000 page description including how every single soldier put on their shoes and explaining their genealogy and sartorial preferences with a complete accounting of their high school grades, and body mass index thrown in for good measure, would not be more informative than a description that seizes on the salient points of the battle and tells the story of a few men's experiences that typify the experiences of a great number of the participants. Selection and simplification are the bifurcated roots of design.
• There is a big difference between a believable or a beautiful landscape, and a truthful one. A great landscape painting is more than truthful. A map is truthful, a painting is a construct, an artificial creation that recalls nature rather than records it faithfully. Art is a lie! well told, that says more than the truth.
• I love the Boston school too, my roots are there. But, the Boston school painters were largely studio painters. They painted figures and interiors and still lives. Except for Bunker, ( oh yeah, and Enneking!) I can think of few who really concentrated on the landscape. This is true of the current generation as well. Landscape painting is a peculiar and different discipline than studio figure painting. The New York and Old Lyme painters, like Hassam, Metcalf and others were more serious about the landscape. For most of the Boston school landscape was a sideline or the background for figures. Aldro Hibbard was a student of Tarbell and the other Boston School painters of the previous generation to his own, he was a landscape painter, was he still Boston school? Maybe, maybe not.....Kaula, a lesser known Boston painter did a lot of landscapes, Benson did a few, but he would be forgotten today if his pure landscape was all that he had produced. There is (in my opinion) not a particularly strong landscape tradition within the Boston school and most of it's great practitioners were figure painters and not landscapists. I bet I made a lot of enemies tonight.

Two questions answered followed by some unattractive snarling

Franz Bishoff (1864-1929)

I received this question the other day;

"What is retouching varnish for? What happens if you just paint over what ever it is that you wanted to fix or change? Is it to make the surface slippery to blend things in better?"
...................................Floozette Snorkle

Dearest Floozette:

Oil paintings lose their shine and appear dulled as the oil on their surface sinks into the layers below them or dries.The matte surface this causes returns less light to the viewers eye and makes the painting appear less brilliant. Retouch varnish restores the surface sheen making the picture look the same as when you painted it. Retouch varnish is fine to paint over and that is commonly done. Often artists start their work day by spraying a little retouch varnish on a painting in order to more accurately assess the colors that they must match or complement.

Retouch varnish should "flash" dry and is not intended to impart a particular sort of handling besides its making the surface a little glossier. Easy on the retouch too. It is best to use it sparingly. I have always been suspicious of too many alternating layers of paint and varnish.

Retouch varnish is also used when a painting must be exhibited and look its best, but is not old enough to receive a final varnishing.

=======================================================

"I want to paint more freely, more expressively, more deliberately all from the get-go. I've tried small still life paintings not allowing myself to move the paint but only repainting what I want to change. This works okay. However, when I want to do a full size painting, whether still life, portrait or landscape, and I slip into the "mode" the pushing and glazing returns.

My question is - can you give me a suggestion for changing my bad habits? This is very important to me and I'm really frustrated with my disappointing efforts to change. "
........................Ms. Mia Fecula-Spooner

Ms. Fecula-Spooner ;

Painters generally develop the ability to paint loosely after learning to paint "tight" so you are on the right track. I suggest you do the following.

• Use big brushes only, no niggling with small ones
• Make broad simplified marks, not lots of little ones
• Limit the time you have to work on a piece, try to get it right in one go, if you can. This doesn't mean wild and inaccurate, but deliberate and simple.Good drawing skills are essential to doing this. Loose doesn't conceal weak draftsmanship. Don't think you can choose to be loose to avoid learning to draw.
  
• Try to see things simply and express them simply, ignore detail and the inessential, try to keep your masses big rather than cutting them up with unimportant interruptions.
  
• Study painters who did this well, there are many from Velaquez to Sargent to Seago, or someone else that you find intriguing..
  
• Don't work from photographs. They are full of bristling detail and will lead you to destruction.
  
• Squinting will help you see things more simply
• Remember, as Richard Schmid famously said " Loose is how a painting looks, not how it was made".
  
• Try putting butter in your shoes
  

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Now for the hard truth feature of tonight s blog:
I had someone tell me on Facebook that it was too bad I didn't like older painters. I like em fine, and well enough not to jive em about what their chances are of achieving mastery and competing with those who have done nothing else all their lives. Now I am going to upset the plumbers and craftspeople.Here is the traditional "take" on the difference between art and craft. It is, like so many traditional ideas from our culture, politically incorrect and perceived as unkind or offensive. But I believe it to be true.

A plumber is not an artist even if he may do exemplary work. An art object exists only to be beautiful. It is not useful. A craftsman makes useful things, and although they may be may be wonderfully made, they are not art. This is not being judgmental, it is simply what the words mean. There are two words "art" and "craft", each word signifies something different, that is why there are two words and not one.

Joe Bagadonuts thinks that if something is very well done, it is art, he means it as a compliment, but he is mistaken. A painting may be very poorly done, but it is still art, conversely a sink may be very splendidly plumbed, but that doesn't make it art. Sorry Joe, but your high school art teacher lied to you, he should have been teaching drivers training instead or been a guidance counselor (like the one who told me I wasn't college material). He lied to you about other things too, he meant well, maybe, and he wanted to be nice, so he let you down.

Art exists only to be aesthetic, its only use is the pleasure or feeling it gives to its viewer.
Craft items have a use or purpose.

This means if I put a quilt on the bed, it is a craft object.
If I hang it on the wall it is an art object.

I suppose I will have to post another baby animal tomorrow.

Some comments responded to and a mentor's advice

I am writing this from a motel room in Helena, Montana. I am here because I am a guest artist this year in the Western Rendezvous of Art. The painting above is my piece in the show. I had a dreadful flight here, That went on for two days but I arrived last night so tired I was staggering. Now my days and nights are reversed it is after midnight and I just woke up. I love to travel and do it a lot, but sometimes it is disorienting. Hotel rooms are a great place to write blog posts, I have no distractions and no studio in which to work. As you all know, if I am awake I am working.

I think I will tackle a couple of the questions from recent comments, comments are often the impetus for good blog posts. I was asked several times about my formula for Pornstar Pink. I use
quinacridone red and pyrrole orange and flake white. Willamsburg's Persian Rose is very close but theirs is made with quinacridone violet and zinc white, I think. My Pornstar Pink is a little more electric pink, but if you want to try this color that is what you should buy.

I also received this comment;
Thanks Stape, but must staunchly disagree with you on your art and do nothing else philosophy. I have been a health practitioner for 30 years--get balanced man!!, exercise, eat well, relax, etc. I was a workaholic, going into an early grave. Terrible cholesterol, prediabetic, etc. and I quit, began eating well and exercising and taking time off. Hope this view gets across that you don't have to kill yourself to be a successful artist. Paint 5 hours a day, do yoga, meditate, take a vacation, have a balanced life and be successful artist too. Sorry, just my point of view.
................Pastor Defenses

Dear Pastor:
Does it seem a little ludicrous to you as a health care professional to advise a successful artist on how to be one? For many, even most people that is sound advice. But there is a level of performance and ability that cannot be achieved with that level of commitment. It all depends on what you want from your art. This is incidentally true of most of life's endeavors not just painting.If you want your art to be something that you do for a fuller life or are gainfully employed elsewhere that sounds like a good plan. BUT if you want to play in the major leagues, five hours a day won't take you there. The players at that level work incessantly and you won't operate at that level working part time. If you are in your twenties and have no children and no mortgage as I did, it is possible to concentrate on getting your "chops" together. Real application at this age when learning is easier and distractions are fewer will build a foundation that allows you to concentrate more on what you are trying to say later, rather than the mechanics of saying it.

Retired people who take up painting never catch up with those who have spent a lifetime honing their craft. I know that sounds hard but I believe it to be true and not heard very often in the popular art press. If you take up painting late in life and work at it only part time you may become a strong amateur painter, but you will not become a real case hardened pro. You might even put together a successful art business, but there is a level of ability that is closed to you. If you think about it I am sure you can summon up a list of the names of those who play in the upper brackets.

I am thinking about hiring someone to do yoga for me. My body is only a shopping cart I push my mind around in. I did drop 45 pounds since May though.
.....................Stape

I was advising a friend recently, as I mentor a few people. I recommended that they pick a favorite painter, for them it was Willard Metcalf, but it could have been almost any painter who was first rate and then learn to work in that artist's style. This is a step beyond copying a painting by that artist (which is a good learning tool also) because it makes you really understand how an artist thought. I suggested that they go to a location and try to make a Willard Metcalf out of it. My intention was not they they become an imitator of Metcalf but that they thoroughly examine one way, a good way, of doing things. That gives them a sort of baseline. When confronted with a painting problem they will know at least one approach to solving it.

A thought about juries for exhibitions

Old print of trial by water


Several of the commenters on the last blog were very confused by the oblique stacking design stem I brought up in the last few posts. In order to explain that better, I have to make an illustration. Doing the blog is a time eater that I have to manage. I have done lots of illustrations already, but they are time consuming. The best posts I have done often had illustrations and they are worth the time, but they take about an entire day or more to generate. For someone posting every day, that quickly becomes unmanageable, I have to have them in the works for days as an addendum to my regular blog creation. Here I am doing that again. Someday there will be a pamphlet, and the illustrations will be useful then.

So as an aside I think I will talk about juries at exhibitions. I attended the Annual Metting of the Rockport Art Association the other night and much of the talk after the meeeting was about the juries. It often is. Virtually everyone rejected by a previous jury has a plan for re-doing the juries, a constituency of the rejected, calling for no juries, or juries from outside the organization. Maybe college professors, or newspaper critics or museum curators, REAL EXPERTS.

I have sat on dozens of juries, assembled more than a few and been the president of an art association where it was part of my duties to sit in on, and oversee, the juries to ensure that it was "straight". I have been an "out side juror many times. I have had a very good look at the system.

The other evening I was talking to a woman (or was it two? they were small) who told me that she (they?) thought an outside jury of experts from the REAL (official) art world should come in to separate the quick from the dead. Maybe an art critic from a newspaper. I disagreed gently , being 32 feet tall and weighing over 1,600 pounds. "No ", I said, waving a finger the size of a kids baseball bat at her, and beginning to puff up to a gargantuan size. I began flapping my arms and hunching over, as I hissed through clenched obsidian teeth the size of tombstones .
, I sez:

"This is a juried association of hopefully qualified members. They have been vetted by jury and allowed by the strength of their art to become an artist member. There are art associations that are open to all comers or have thousands of members that often operate on that system. But I think it is tyranny! ( As I said this I spit streams of red hot nails and brads out of my ears) I think that the member ship should govern itself, selecting that jury is part of governance. It is the aesthetic "conscience" of the members. The elected jury stands at the gate and says "This shall not fly! below certain levels of quality we will not go!"

Often there is only so much wall space and many paintings clamoring for that limited space. Some triage has to be done, they all can't hang. They must be sorted, graded. We may disagree on what quality in art is or "goodness" whatever, but it is the best way to put together an exhibition. Pick the "best paintings" and hang them, return the weaker ones to their creators who will now join the other exhibited, in planning the the installation of people who they believe WILL favor their own art.

The membership has a body of vetted artists from which to select a jury, they know those artists and will generally appoint those they think most qualified either by reputation, ability or judgement. They know the nominees and are generally aware of their attributes. Over the course of years they have probably rotated through juries and sat next to them at judgement time.

The members have the right to decide for themselves who will jury them. Bringing in an unknown stranger, usually one who doesn't even paint, to manage this for you, is likng inviting the guy down the street to mange your personal life. For an art association, what gets shown in the exhibitions is important. Exhibiting the art of its members is it's primary mission. A membership needs to summon from its own numbers artist who can represent them on that jury. Like a democracy, not everyone gets to vote in the senate, but you certainly want to a say in choosing who does and have a number of nominees from which to choose rejecting some and approving others.

The membership needs to decide for itself what it wants on its walls their decisions may be erratic, but they will be their own arrived at in the fairest most democratic way. Self governance and not governance by unknown experts from the worlds of journalism, philosophy or writing but practitioners of the craft. Very few are great judges of crafts they themselves do not practice.

An outside jury is usually imposed from above, by the board, or the director. Generally when a membership is informed of the outside juror it is as a yes- no vote (like in 3rd world dictatorships) or the next juror is simply announced to them ( like in the time of Dirk Van Assaerts) by a newsletter from the staff or the board or the exhibition committee or who knows who. Often it is convenient that a member knows so and so at the college and that seemed as an easy way for the board to deal with the jury problem. Everybody is always upset about it (remember jurying automatically produces a noisy tribe of the disgruntled carrying torches and at the gates).

A CONSTITUENCY OF THE MEDIOCRE!

There are definitely mistakes and preferences in jurying, it is an imperfect system. Sometimes an artist is rejected and you wonder why? "Looked good to me, well established artist too". But the greatest number of the rejected, were rejected for very good reason and almost any jury would have eliminated them. There is a wide range of quality in the paintings presented to a jury, with usually about half being very amateurish indeed. Its like the first shows of a season of American Idol, mostly train wrecks that make you ask "what made them think they could do this?" interspersed with the very occasional diamond".

Thats enough for today, more tomorrow.

A worn out brush

I wrote last about the importance of clean, sharp brushes. Someday when I am rich and famous I will just throw my brushes away, with my rags, every evening. I would buy my brushes by the gross, in three different sizes.

The brush ( a #4 flat) pictured above is ruined, worn out ( not good anymore). The pro's are rolling their eyes reading this, for they maintain a collection of fine tools. But a lot of people read this blog and most of them are in the earlier stages of their march to artistic greatness.

Now your brushes may wear more evenly than this abraded specimen but the wear happens the same way on a finer scale. The hairs have broken or been worn off in gradated lengths back to the ferrule ( the shiny part). Why its almost like a Mesopotamian ziggurat, or a layered haircut from the David Cassidy period! The same sort of unattractive wear and fragmented deterioration you would expect to find in a broom.

It makes a stroke or line with a chopped up edge, or drag marks at its side. Next to a sharp brush stroke it looks raggedy assed. Rather than acting as a flexible blade, different units of the brush operate in splayed and stiff independent scales or groups. Like a burr that sticks to your woolen sweater in the autumn ( under fading light at fields edge on a hillside in Northern Vermont, with big maples and a 19th century barn and the whole landscape woven into a tapestry of ochers, grays and violet. There's thistles there and sumac) Or imagine an anesthetized porcupine or large hedge hog, gently, kindly, but firmly, attached at its stomach area to a mop handle.

This is a worn brush, an evil thing, but there is something darker still. There are among us men and women (well, I think there are men) who carry with them a collection of brushes in which the paint has been allowed to dry. These brushes are a solid mass from ferrule to tip. They are like a tongue depressor or small pry bar. Obviously these people have to know that the brushes in this condition could never be used, Certainly there is no way they are going to resuscitate one out on location and work with it. But they still carry them, sometimes a dozen or more. They have brushes that once were an inch and a half long worn down to half an inch and totally rigid all the way to its heel. You could hammer one into a phone pole. But they have em, why?

They are not really being honest with themselves, they are engaged in "magical thinking". Or at best a low level simmering resentment, and yes, regret over the lost value of once useful brushes bought at high retail in some big box craft store. I'm not sorry for them, I just can't be.I don't have the time, I have my painting and my commitments. I don't really think about them that much.