what I think about when I paint

Dear Skull Balanced on a Deck of Cards. 16×20, Watercolor.

I wish I made more of the deck of cards. We were all sitting on the front porch, painting, talking art, and enjoying the Catskill vista, but lunch was only moments away and the girls needed the table upon which our improvised  still life was set.

I find that staying fluid can be difficult and I work hard to understand what makes me feel cemented, rigid, and anxious. The chorus of self evaluating voices doesn’t help, nor does the tower of art books that I use to measure myself, nor does the loud ticking of my life clock. But here, concentrating on mixing and arranging color notes brings my purpose into a simplified focus and dulls the din of past and future.,

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Stephen Gardner, Chairman of Drink and Draw at 7B.

What a spectacle!! All the brilliant color bouncing from Steve’s portrait.  The color notes behind him are various items found in a bar, bottles, beer taps, and neon. It’s a rich environment and a great place to set up a studio for the afternoon.

Double click on the pic.

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How often do I feel the stress of the continuously changing, refreshing, updating, and broadcasting nature of the current culture we share and participate in.  Spending an evening studying this classic beauty (both woman and painting) by Sargent (of a friend Flora Priestly, as well as a possible “crush”), is grounding, and a needed supplement, reminding me of the vital currents that are missed in the need to keep up, stay on, hang on.

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Something different about this approach, this touch. Aida pointed it out, saying the marks look more “wild” than usual.

I agree. Even the composition is more wild, for me. This week I’m going to test it out as a painting.

Double click and take a closer look.

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I’ve been sitting on this painting for a little less than a year. It’s a full-size portrait of a friend and model. It was the first large scale portrait I had done and I haven’t been sure of what to make of it. Over the year I’ve had it up on various walls, under various types of light, as well as hidden away in the back of my studio and apt. I still don’t know how to feel about it. Yesterday I finished a second large scale portrait of Jun, which is helping to give me perspective on this one. I shot this painting leaning on a table in my home, its’ latest locale. I didn’t crop out the lantern top because it helps give a sense of scale and promotes the fact that the painting is an object. The reason I call it Madame X, I will keep to myself. So there it is.

Madame X, 2011, 40×50

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Head and shoulders can create such lovely compositions. The old dutch collars that Van Dyke and Hals painted are wonderful but so is this guys Izod collar.

What is it about portraiture that makes it so special?

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Jun, a musician here in New York, but in this painting a 19 century monarch?

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Jane posed twice for this painting. The first time she posed, the painting went completely out of control in the last hour. I lost the light footed focus that I had throughout most of the session. I scraped the painting down and asked her to come back the following week. It was hard to stay off the ledge while the days passed and  when she returned, I had to work really hard to put away all my tension and feelings of failure.

As I’m getting older I’m allowing the “false start” to be a comfortable part of the process, as well as clearing my mind of trash before I paint again.

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