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May 15, 2013

I’m honored to have been selected to participate in the 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival

The first year I did Rye’s Painters on Location, I painted a lovely, long, low sailboat from a spot overlooking Mamaroneck Harbor. Living as I do in the Great Lakes basin, I’ve drawn and painted boats frequently enough. What I had overlooked was the tide, which confused me with constant angle changes.

My last painting for Rye’s Painters on Location. Mamaroneck Harbor, 18X24, oil on canvas.

Mercifully, the boat’s owner was among the bidders that night and I escaped with my pride intact. The last few years I painted in that event, I worked in the same harbor, but from floating docks. This was much easier from a drafting standpoint but tough on the legs after two days.

Penobscot view, February 2013. Not Castine proper but close enough. How much more beautiful this will be come summer!

Such are the vicissitudes of painting in a plein air event. You can think you understand the subject, but still be confused at the point when your brush hits the canvas.

Last February, I took my family on an odd little pilgrimage up Castine way, looking for the West Brooksville childhood home of one of my chums. It was unutterably beautiful in February; imagine how lovely it will be in July!

Off-roading in Holbrook Island Sanctuary State Park, in my little Prius. Take that, you 4-wheel-drive vehicles!

Every inch of the coast of Maine is simply beautiful. One would be hard-pressed to come up with a favorite stretch of rock-bound coastline. And even within particular regions, there are so many choices! What will I paint? My pal recommended Our Lady of Holy Hope on Perkins Street, or sunrise at the Tidal Pool, or the Main Square. Any other suggestions?

At any rate, come watch me paint in Castine on July 27, and be sure to say hi when you see me. Or take my Maine painting workshops in the Rockland area—once a month through the summer months (check herefor more info, or email me).

May 14, 2013

Paleo painting

Healthy and high in fiber: paleo painting! (By little ol’ me, of course.)

Frankly the paleo food movement seems a little arbitrary to me: vegetables and fruits are ducky; grains and legumes are not, even though all four exist both in the wild and in big agriculture. (I’d examine this more closely, but I’m afraid someone might actually attempt to explain it to me.)

My writer pal tells me that paleo cooking is huge right now, so in the interest of shameless self-promotion I’m founding a paleo painting movement. This is perhaps easier than paleo fashion (which might include anything prior to, say, 2006), or paleo cosmetics, which would require kohl (dangerous) and Spirits of Saturn (deadly).

So what would constitute paleo painting? Anything done on a cave wall would be fantastic but hard to transport, let alone duplicate on the inevitable umbrellas sold in museum gift shops. The earth pigments—ochre, sienna and umber—would be appropriate and useful, and they have the additional advantage of lightfastness. Ultramarine blue would be fine, too, as long as it was ground-up lapis lazuli and not a synthetic proximate.

Of course, we would have to dump the odorless mineral spirits (a petroleum product) and return to turpentine, which is a distillation of pine resin. And the only white we will have on our palette is lead white, since it’s been mined for thousands of years.

I decided to rehearse this today with the original paleo painting material: charcoal. It is harmless, cheap, and easy to find. However, I objected to peeling the decorative birches in my front yard to make paper, so used plain old newsprint.

I think I’m going back to modern pigments for field painting. If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

May 13, 2013

Ice Tsunamis? Seriously?

It is almost this cold in Rochester right now…

There has been a bitter wind blowing from the west for the last several days. It snow-squalled lightly in Western New York this weekend and it is flurrying in Saranac Laketoday. But at least we’re not experiencing ice tsunamislike those in Minnesota and Manitoba.

How does the plein airpainter facing a Little Ice Age (or floods, drought, hail, or locusts) prepare? I am a fan of the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph.

Another of my favorite things… the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph. It tells me everything I need to know.

Above I’ve posted a screenshot of this afternoon’s graph for my neck of the woods. The most pressing issue is that the temperature will rise and the wind will drop this week…not just for us outdoor painters, but also for the organizers of Rochester’s Lilac Festival. And it’s certainly useful to know that the rain is done for a while.

But I could get that information from the newspaper. What the graph gives me that I don’t find elsewhere is the Sky Coverage forecast. This evening and tomorrow evening, the cloud cover should diminish at dusk, giving us the potential for beautiful sunsets. I can set my schedule accordingly.

Of course, different parts of the graph will be more useful in different parts of the country. We’re seldom overheated up here in the far north, but if I were in Arizona, I’d care a great deal about the Heat Index.

This year, I’ve been watching the weather in two places: Rochester, NY and Rockland, ME. Maine tends to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than we are here inland. Makes for good painting, so if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

May 12, 2013

That finely-tuned, whole-body drawing machine

Bella and Jake practice standing in counterpose.

Yesterday, I stepped up to Jake’s easel to demonstrate stealth gesture drawing. Our subject was Bella, who was deeply absorbed in drawing tiny redbud blossoms. Bella, who is athletic and graceful, was standing like a column in front of her easel, a perfect plumb-line from her head to her pressed-together high-tops. “How do you even do that?” I asked her. “I would fall over.”

What is perfect for gymnastics or dancing may not be perfect for drawing. Nobody would ever accuse me of perfect posture. Nevertheless, I work standing at an easel for hours at a time.

I pondered my own stance while drawing. My non-dominant (right) leg was bearing my weight. My left foot was turned so the outside of my toe-box was touching the ground. This provided a pivot point to control my position, allowing my spine to move in concert with my drawing arm. Not that I stand like this all the time, or that any two successful artists do it the same way, but a good drawing stance is dynamic.

The Peplos Kore, c 530 BC, was clearly drawing (ahem). She’s also standing in counterpose (contrapposto). Although she’s using her left hand, her weight is on her left leg. (Acropolis Museum, Athens)

“Bella,” I said, “try standing on one foot and see if it changes your drawing style.” The difference was significant. Her mark-making was immediately lighter and more controlled.

Jake didn’t just stand around in counterpose… he also drew this house.

We all know that painting while seated yields different results from painting while standing. (The former gives better control; the latter yields freer expression.) So it stands to reason that standing differently gives different results as well. The human body is a wonderful, finely-tuned machine. Change one parameter, and everything else adjusts to fit.

(On that note, did you know there is not one but many arches to the foot, and they act as springs? Awesome design, that!)

We have a good time in the studio, on the street, and in the park. And if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

May 10, 2013

The rest of the story

I found this while cleaning my room today, and somehow it seemed appropriate. I’m really big on making my students do self-portraits; maybe it caused Matt to become unhinged.

As I mentioned earlier this week, Matt Menzies used to prattle on about my falling over a cliff at High Tor. For some reason, he committed it to writing this week. It’s so uncommon to read about one’s own death in advance, I felt I should share it with you. (But I take umbrage with his characterization of my beautiful blue Prius. It’s kind of otherworldly and angelic, that car.)

They were enigmatic times for the odd trio… Carol had all but shed her worldly ties, and confined herself to her studio exclusively. The only contact with the outside world she could stand was the occasional visits from her long-time friends, the in and out of her sharp-minded daughters, and of course, the company of Marilyn and me. Marilyn and Carol had worked together a long time, it seemed, and as the youngest and most inexperienced of the trio I feel I have an unbiased view. Some days the debates raged louder than all the pigments in the studio, and on others silence prevailed. It was Marilyn who could keep it the longest. She cultivated a contagious Zen, painting blissful blues and warm greens. Every image purred as a fuzzy cat beneath her hand: she was as a master could be, although she painted within a calm, simple joy, and not in a pursuit of some masterpiece.

But I digress: it was Carol who burned the midnight oil, studying and meditating on the nature of pigment, the subtle neutralizations, and the high chroma incidence. She possessed a perception unlike any other. I took to trying to see like she did. I would study her palette and duplicate it the best I could. When I asked for help, she would wander over to my painting, sometimes commenting on what was good or bad. With a palette knife in one hand and brush in the other, she would push me aside and scrape away my strokes, replacing them with her own without hesitation, as if to show me ‘the way it is to be done.’ I blended into her process well enough, like a lab tech working on a grand experiment.

It was on such a day, at the end of an especially long and tiring season, that we took one of our outdoor plein air trips. Carol was fanatical in her search for the right angle, the right light. We loaded up the Prius (an awful dull light blue vehicle with the oddest angles) and we cruised down to the Southern Tier. The grey highway cut through and around the rolling green hills, and the deeper we went the higher the mountains rose. The day had blossomed into a drizzling overcast, but, we had come this far, and Carol’s foot continued to urge the car onward; Marilyn and I literally went along for the ride. As the Prius hauled up the mountain, I opened the window to breath in what I expected to be moist forest air, but as I leaned out I could feel nothing. The stillness was uncanny, and the raindrops barely tapped my face before evaporating back into the atmosphere. At times the sun seemed to work up the courage to break through, but then faded back into the cloudscape. Blue greens and grey blues permeated the landscape.

As we pulled to the crest overlooking a soggy valley, Carol stopped the car, looked back as if to indicate she had selected her spot, and proceeded to unceremoniously kill the engine. We all sat in silence for a moment, none of us particularly eager to step out into the moistened landscape, but we set to work and made good time in setting up. The painting proceeded for some time in silence, the drizzle dampening all sound and conversation. And as the water rained upon us, the tears rolled down our canvases. I wondered why they wept. My own sadness did not set in until much later in the day when the light began to fade. I concluded my work and I spun around in search of my betters. Marilyn was but a far-off speck on a neighboring hill, lost in a cloud so grey that it twinkled blue, but Carol…

Carol had set up on an adjacent crest, and I recalled looking over an hour or so before and seeing her facing far off into the distance, no doubt juxtaposing some specific tree with another hill line etc. But she was nowhere to be found. Her easel stood as a still as a deer in the fading twilight, an old rag hanging from it, motionless in the heavy air. As I approached I called out to her, with no reply. I looked down and around, and realized what must have happened. As the master stepped back paces to look at her day’s labor, almost complete, she must have backed to the cliff edge, lost her balance, and fell to her doom!

Marilyn had heard my shouts. I quickly ran in an arc but could deduce no other explanation. Dropping to my knees, I approached the cliff edge. I could see nothing but leaves and darkness. Marilyn arrived behind me, and as I peered up at her I knew that she knew what I had just learned. But there was no surprised look in her eye, and no sorrowful tears; only a calm acceptance, and a wise gaze. The grey-blue cloud loomed behind her and her silhouette glowed brown and orange in the fading sunlight. For a moment I thought maybe she had known of this event long before I had come over to investigate, long before this day had even arrived.

Not a word was spoken. We set to work folding the easels, carefully storing the paintings and supplies in the trunk. The gnarled rooted tree on Carol’s painting glistened with a vivid power, coiling upon itself, as if roaring atop the hill, gazing forward upon a valley it could never walk through. We closed the hood, and turned around to face the hilly crests one last time. As Marilyn paused and gazed for a moment too long I beckoned for her to come. “What for?” she called back. “Carol had the keys.”

At that realization the road seemed so much longer, and my way home impossibly far and full of obstacle. I was about to sink to the grass in despair, when Marilyn let out a quiet chuckle, and as I flicked my gaze over to her in confusion it erupted into laughter, and my confusion, my fear of this unknown life, was wiped away, to be replaced by a warm smile, and we began the hike down the mountain taking with us a final lesson from the old master.

Painting in Maine is definitely more interesting than falling off High Tor. If you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.

May 9, 2013

Rolling out my Q&A column

These are a few of my favorite things…

My media advisor suggested I do an occasional Q&A column. Today I was texted this great question, so no time like the present:

MM writes: I have an opportunity to show in NYC in June. My big (5’X4’) paintings have been taken off their stretchers and rolled. I am planning on making some frames and mounting the paintings on PVA on Masonite board. I’m not sure how to varnish them. They’ve been dry for months, but appear duller than when first executed.

Dear MM: First off, I question your strategy of mounting the canvases on Masonite. It’s terrifically heavy, and you are working with large canvases. I recommend you re-stretch the canvases.

As you’re framing them immediately, you can get away with lighter stretchers than you would typically use, so long as the stretchers are firmly secured to the frame itself. (You can screw them together from the inside; just make sure you don’t trap the canvas or break through the outer wall of the frame.)

I would not varnish them until they are secure because they are already stiff from having been rolled.

Oil paints don’t really dry in the sense that, say, your laundry or your hair does. The solvent—turpentine or mineral spirits—evaporates in a matter of hours, but the oil and pigments react with oxygen over time to form a hard surface. This process is called oxidation, and while most of it happens soon after you lay down your brush, the process never really stops.

A varnishing orgy for one of my students.

What you are seeing as “dullness” is the result of that oxidation. It is efflorescence, sometimes called blooming. You can avoid this to some degree by strictly following the “fat over lean” methods of traditional oil painting, but all paintings benefit from judicious varnishing.

Because the process of oxidation is slow and ongoing, you should wait several months to varnish. The idea is to put on a removable layer so that conservators can keep the layers separate when the world finally recognizes your genius.

I generally wipe down my paintings with Winsor & Newton’s Artists’ Picture Cleaner before applying a coat of varnish. However, you must watch carefully to be certain that your paint isn’t lifting while you’re cleaning. And I have a strong preference for matte varnish. The best of these are a combination of beeswax and varnish—use any reputable brand that you want. Apply a thin layer with a broad flat brush. Check it after it dries to make sure that the varnish isn’t “sinking,” and if it appears to have done so, apply another thin layer.

Never use your varnish as a medium, or vice versa. Varnishes are designed to be removed with solvent; this lead to problems like this. And just spend the money to buy a pre-made varnish. (If you doubt the wisdom of that, visit the Albright-Knox and see how badly some of those mid-century masterpieces have aged.)

Having said all that, I happily imagine that some conservator will write to tell me I’m doing it all wrong. Which is great; that is how I have learned everything I know.

Of course there’s still time to join us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.

May 8, 2013

Painting with Friends

Durand-Eastman in early Spring, 11X14, oil on canvasboard. I am not that keen on early Spring colors, which to me often look clichéd, and I didn’t like this when I painted it. I like it a lot more now. It’s brassy—just like me.

Marilyn Feinberg was raised in Irondequoit, so it is no surprise that she was drawn to Durand-Eastman Park. We painted there in every season, but this painting was done on a cold Spring day when we were still in down jackets and crocheted toques. Marilyn’s coat was orange and her hat purple, which is why (I think) a local news photographer spotted and photographed us. (I’ve been photographed painting innumerable times and never when well-dressed. Yes, that begs the question.)

Marilyn and I painted together forever: when we started, we could jog the trails at High Tor on our breaks, tolerate freezing our paints in a vineyard, or nearly be washed away on a bridge in a torrential downpour. By the time she and her husband retired to Florida, we were somewhat more sedate, and marginally more sensible.

Oakland Shores Motel and Cabins, Rockland, ME, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, painted while traveling with Kristin Zimmermann.

Another painting buddy of long standing is Kristin Zimmermann. She is definitely an urban animal. Occasionally I could cajole her to leave Manhattan, but she isn’t that keen on all that green. That’s fine; I ♥ New York too. I’m accustomed to using a car to move my painting kit around, and using the subway requires miniaturization. I learned a lot about efficient packing from Kristin, but she never could stop me from tripping over my own feet.

Lake Champlain from on top of a stupid cliff, 11X14, oil on canvasboard

Then there is my young painting buddy, Matthew Menzies, who is at Rhode Island School of Design now. He painted with me while in high school. Matt spun a tale one day in which I died by falling off a cliff at High Tor, after which he and Marilyn discovered that I had the car keys in my pocket.

Last summer, Matt and I met up in Burlington, VT to paint together. Far be it from us to set up someplace sensible: we found our best view from a narrow ridge, hoisting our kits 25 feet up an almost vertical incline. I am happy to report that I am still alive.

If you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.

May 7, 2013

How not to clean your studio

Never let them stash stuff in your studio…. unless there’s no other place for it, of course. Sadly the cello and the hats are probably safest here right now.

Joe the Painter stopped by last week looking for work. I like Joe, and I have a very old house with plaster walls which occasionally need to be taped and touched up. “But Joe,” I cautioned him. “I am finishing up a painting and I really need to concentrate.” Of course he promised me that there would be a minimum of disruption and of course he was wrong. (And I knew this going in; I wasn’t born yesterday.)

There is no room to serve as a staging area when one is painting in every room on the first and second floors, reworking a hardwood floor and building two window frames. So even though I hated to do it, I stashed stuff in my studio. End of any painting by me.

The painting stash. Everything needs to be away from the walls to patch. Everything. Sigh.

This is fine, because staging a project like this always ends up being more than a full-time job. There is stuff needed from the lumber yard, and problems squaring things up. New problems that weren’t in the quote appear as if by magic; tools are suddenly needed that weren’t expected. Having a woodshop of my own, I’m useful in these circumstances.

My brother asked me why I hire out this rather pricey work when I know how to do it myself. But without more hands than mine it would never get done. A week of this disruption is more than sufficient.

There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.

May 6, 2013

That fine line between art and erotica

Hermaphrodite, Mateo Bonarelli, 1652, Prado

“Son of Hermes and Aphrodite, Hermaphrodite was a singularly handsome youth. According to Ovid (Metamorphoses 4, 285 ff.) Salmacis, the nymph from a lake in Caria, was enthralled by his beauty and passionately embraced him while he was bathing. Their two bodies merged as one, with double gender.

“This sculpture, commissioned by Velasquez in Italy for the decoration of Madrid’s Alcázar Palace, is a copy of the classic marble from the Borghese Collection in Rome, now in the Louvre Museum. The high technical quality of this piece makes it a masterwork that surpasses the original.” (From the Prado website)

I watched thisnews story about a kerfuffle about nude photographs in a gallery window in Belfast, ME last week. The culture snob in me would have liked to believe that it was a small-town issue, except that a proposal for a show of my nudes was summarily rejected at the same time by a local college gallery because they have a no-nudity policy.

Despite what the photographer says on the video, there is no clear line between art and pornography, because there have always been painters whose primary goal was to titillate, and because sexuality is part of our humanity. It cannot be simply excised from the model or the process.

Consider the dancing girls in this fragment from ancient Thebes (c. 1350 BC). One presumes that the serving girls and dancers are naked for Nabamun’s amusement in the afterlife, but it is not overtly sexual.

A feast for Nebamun, the top half of a scene from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, Thebes, Egypt, Late 18th Dynasty, around 1350 BC, The British Museum

Compare that to the Ephebe of Marathon, which is a sculpture of a boy (perhaps the god Hermes). The school of Praxiteles was interested in presenting a new view of the gods: more accessible, naturalistic, humanistic. These sculptors were perhaps even more interested in the aesthetic issues of contrapposto, which basically means putting the model’s weight on one foot. (This is a convention we use to this day.) I can’t even figure out how to frame the question of whether the Ephebe was intended to be erotic; their social, religious, and cultural milieu didn’t make the same distinctions we do.

Ephebe of Marathon, School of Praxiteles, c. 325-300 BCE, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Then there’s Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (which in addition to being an exquisite drawing, has to be one of the most enduring bits of graphic design in the history of art). Here, I think the intention is quite clear: Da Vinci is attempting to write a canon of measurement for the human body.

Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1490, Gallerie dell’Accademia

May 3, 2013

The truth is, I have no friggin’ idea what I’m doing.

Spring in Glen Park, 10X12, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.

I once watched Lee Haber finish a lovely painting at Rye Painters on Location in less time than it took me to fall over my easel. I really admire plein air painters who never seem to “flail around” (as my pal Brad Marshall once memorably called it). I imagine they have a protocol by which they approach their painting; it allows them to work fast and focus on what they’re seeing rather than the mess they’re making.

I have a protocol too, but it’s unfortunately dynamic. I’m a restless soul; if I master an idea, I need to move on to the next idea. It’s why I never end up with highly-finished paintings; when the conclusion is obvious, I move on. That means on some level I’m constantly flailing. (This is not a trait I admire in myself, by the way; I think it would be nice to just luxuriate in the paint once in a while.)

My masterpiece: that’s my 20-year-old daughter, studying for her physics final.

This is not to say that nothing stays the same: in oil painting there are some fairly inviolable rules that only a masochist or a neophyte would break. But there many things that you can mash up, and it seems like I’m constantly running through my bag of tricks to find some exciting way of fleshing out a thorny passage. Sometimes it works and sometimes it makes a terrific mess.

Two parrots stopped to watch me paint. “I love that,”
said the one on the left. It’s because of the green, I think.

This only matters when I have an audience, since in the privacy of my own studio I dump all my sketches in a towering heap and ignore them. Generally when I paint in public, I am very conscious of the people around me, and I end up spending lots of my time talking with them. This is one of my Favorite Things, but I also unconsciously tend to paint “prettier” when painting for an audience.

Today I visited lovely Glen Park in Williamsville. Since it is a busy suburban park, I even combed my hair in expectation of chance encounters with strangers. But those crazy Buffalonians were excessively respectful of my privacy.

My fantastic paint box, and my fantastic ball cap hair.

Good thing, because I was rapidly down another rabbit hole—my favorite place to be, of course. I never know if a field painting is “good” when I’m working on it, or even immediately after finishing it. (And I think most other painters don’t know either; they just know if the painting they’ve done matches their idea of how they’ve painted so far.) I simply see a series of problems to be solved. In this case, there was a triad of trees whose branches paired with the little creek to enfold the bridge into an ellipse. Had I had a little more time, I would have worked more carefully on the structure of lights and darks in the unfurling leaves. But who ever has enough time?

There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.