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Category: workshop

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Seven Days of the Group of Seven—AJ Casson (1898-1992)

I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape.
Housetops in the Ward, 1924, AJ Casson (he did versions in oil and watercolor)
 AJ Casson went to work at age 15 as an apprentice at a Hamilton, Ontario, lithographer. The value of that apprenticeship is apparent in his painting: he is a consistently brilliant designer.
Lake Qushog, 1925, AJ Casson
The first public exhibition of his work was at the Canadian National Exhibition, in 1917. As an engraver, he inevitably found himself in the Group of Seven’s orbit and was encouraged to sketch and paint. Through the 1920s, he painted in his spare time alone and with the others. He was formally included in the group when Frank Johnston left in 1921.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven Days of the Group of Seven—Frank Carmichael (1890-1945)

I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape.
Autumn Hillside, 1920, Frank Carmichael
The youngest of the original Group of Seven, Franklin Carmichael was born in 1890 in Orillia, north of Toronto. He moved to Toronto at age 20 and enrolled in the Ontario College of Art. In 1911, he started working as an apprentice at Grip, Ltd., a Toronto design firm that was home to many of Canada’s great visual artists. Carmichael was greatly influenced by Tom Thomson.
Autumn in Orillia, 1924, Frank Carmichael
The challenge of the northern woods is that it isn’t a set of discrete objects, but rather a complex tapestry. Atmospheric perspective, depth and modeling are less important than the color patterns and the drawing. Carmichael captures that shimmering quality of autumn in the woods perfectly.
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven Days of the Group of Seven—Edwin Holgate (1892-1977)

I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape.

Nude in a Landscape, 1930, Edwin Holgate
Edwin Holgate was primarily known as a portraitist and for his outdoor nudes. He was considered the “eighth member” of the Group of Seven. He was invited to join the group in 1930.

Fish Houses, Labrador, Edwin Holgate, wood engraving
Holgate integrated his figures in his landscapes by making no distinction between the human form and the other natural forms. The flesh of this nude is as immutable as the rocks behind her. This is true also of the monumental fisherman in his woodcut.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Seven Days of the Group of Seven—JEH MacDonald (1873-1932)

I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape.

The Tangled Garden, 1916, JEH MacDonald 
At the age of 14, JEH MacDonald moved with his family from England to Hamilton, Ontario. He studied commercial art in Toronto, where he was active in Toronto Art Student League. In November 1911, MacDonald exhibited sketches at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, which brought him to the attention of Lawren Harris. In January 1913, an exhibit in Buffalo of Scandinavian Impressionist paintings gave him a sense of how Impressionism could be suited to the wild northern landscape.
At first glance, The Tangled Garden appears to be a fairly conventional essay into impressionism, owing a lot to Van Gogh. But MacDonald’s background as a graphic designer is apparent in the closely managed composition, which leaves nothing to chance but still manages to appear utterly fresh.
The Supply Boat, 1915-16, JEH MacDonald  
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Artisan This

Artisan Tostitos? Seriously?

I’m thinking of a new advertising slogan: Artisan Art. In a world where one can buy Artisan Bread, Artisan Cheese, and mass-produced Artisan Tortilla Chips,the term “artisan” has been devalued. May as well jump right in.

During the Renaissance, the individuality of the artist was not of particular importance—he was celebrated for his competence at composition, drafting and rendering.(The outlier in this was Rembrandt, who did not in fact achieve his greatest fame until his rediscovery in the 19th century.) With the Industrial Revolution, the expressive aspects of art became more valued. This trend accelerated with the convulsive wars that engulfed the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Mechanized death is the ultimate dehumanizer; in response we sought the very personal in art.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the artist’s personal expression, his mark-making, and his subjective viewpoint were paramount. We have now swung back a little from that place, but until the world stops being a machine, the artist will never again hide behind a perfectly-realized technique.
 Tsujita LA Artisan Noodle. In the old days, we called this “cooking.”
That’s true in the fine arts, but is it true in craft? I think so. The proliferation of the term artisan reflects a general longing for hand-craft. My friend Jane Bartlettis both an artist (when she dyes fabrics) and an artisan (when she assembles those fabrics into wearable garments).
But the term is somehow cheapened when applied to routine competence. To draw a distinction between two bagel shops because one has “artisans” boiling their bagels and one has bakers boiling their bagels is just plain silly.

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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A change is as good as a rest

If one can make a pretty photo out of squirrel ectoplasm, one can make anything beautiful!
By the time I’m done doing my five miles and my exercises, I’m usually ready to go back to bed.
Yesterday, I did exactly that. I’m worn out.
In May, a large stack of empty frames clattered to the floor from an overhead shelf. As they fell straight down into an out-of-the-way corner and I was in my usual dither, I ignored them.
It’s been a pretty crazy summer, but I have an even crazier autumn ahead: two trips to Maine, a trip to Rye, and a daughter’s wedding, all happening in the next six weeks. And I have to get my winter supply of canvases in before the snow flies.
To that end, I decided I should use this glorious fall day to straighten my workshop. I picked up the pile of frames only to learn that they had crushed a squirrel to death. Months ago.
I confess: I’m a screamer. After Sandy Quang poked the remains with a stick, she was a screamer too. The IT department is at his day job. His sole contribution was a text that read, “So, meat’s  back on the menu!” It was left to poor Charles Wang to dispose of what was left of the corpse. He was remarkably calm about it, considering that both Sandy and I were pretty well off our respective nuts.
“What are we going to do about this mess on the floor,” I asked Sandy.
“Take a picture,” she responded (like the true artist she is). So I did.
I decided that spraying bleach everywhere would probably work about as well as burning my garage down. By the time I was done explaining to our mailman what the ruckus was about and running to the store for bleach, my energies were quite restored.  As soon as that bleach has burned its way through my floor, I’m ready to make a thousand canvases!

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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How blue is the sky?

Saussure’s Cyanometer. Should put any fears of Prussian Blue being fugitive to rest; he made this in the mid-18th century.
How blue is the sky? Landscape painters know that this varies depending on where one is standing, the season, the weather, and even the direction in which one is looking. Local conditions also apply; for example, here the sky directly to the north often fades to a softer blue from the water vapor that hangs over Lake Ontario.
Then there’s the question of altitude. With the advantage of modern travel, many of us have been to the Rockies. We know that the sky there can achieve an aching blueness that is nothing like what we see here in the east.
Baldy Mountain, Montana
“Why is the sky blue” was not actually answered until the end of the 19th century (which makes you wonder what earlier parents told their pesky children). The question of why that blueness varies in intensity was answered in the 18th century, and it was answered in part by that peculiar little device at the top of this page, the Saussure Cyanometer.
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799) was a Genevan aristocrat and physicist who grew up climbing and studying nature.  In 1760, he hiked the Chamonix valley in France, making extensive notes and sketches, and climbed the Brévent, which faces Mont Blanc, the highest point in western Europe. 
A sky in the Steam Valley in Pennsylvania has a very different color.
In the spirit of the times, he measured and recorded everything he could. He was an inveterate tinkerer, making new instruments, including a hygrometer, a magnetometer, an anemometer,  a diaphanometer (to measure the clearness of the atmosphere) and a eudiometer. He puttered with a heliothermometer—a  thermometer to measure the intensity of the sun’s rays—and purportedly built the world’s first solar oven.
Alpine legend held that if one climbed high enough, the sky turned black and one could see into the Void.  Saussure understood, however, that the blueness of the sky was an optical effect that was somehow related to the sky’s moisture content.  
Saussure dyed paper squares with Prussian Blue (which stains terrifically dark) in every shade he could manage between white and black. He assembled these into a numbered circle that could be held up to the zenith at a standard distance from the eye.
Descent from Mont-Blanc in 1787 by H.B. de Saussure, Christian von Mechel, copper engraving, colored.

Saussure made an unsuccessful attempt on Mont Blanc in 1785. After two Chamonix men attained the summit in 1786, Saussure himself made the third ascent of the mountain in 1787. With a servant and 18 guides to lug his equipment, he reached the summit in 3 days. Saussure measured everything he could. The sky was the deepest shade he ever recorded, at 39 degrees blue (out of a rather confusing 52° circle).
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Wrestling with God, Part 2

The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, no stranger to sin himself.
Yesterday, Sandy Quang wrote about wrestling with God and Oswald Chambers’ realization that his calling was not to art school, but to the ministry. Last night I got this note from a friend who is a Texan, a convert to Judaism, and who has sort of fallen away from her spiritual practice.  
I was staying with my friend Lester, in his guest room on the lake, while another Bubba put a new steering column in my truck for me. All day on Saturday [Yom Kippur], I was feeling guilty about not fasting, not attending service, not hearing a shofar this year… yada, yada, yada.
Lester proceeded to get totally shit-faced drunk and act like an ass on Saturday night. I had no truck, because it was at Mechanic Bubba’s.
We had to go to Walmart so I could get cash to pay Mechanic Bubba the next morning. I drove Lester‘s car because he couldn’t drive anywhere without risking arrest. (I’d been drinking tonic water.)
While I was in Walmart, a big thunderstorm rolled in. When I ran out to the car, I was drenched in 30 seconds flat. When I started to drive back to Lester’s house, I realized the defroster wasn’t working, so we had to use a towel to wipe the windshield down every 30 seconds. I could only see four feet in front of me on the highway. Someone honked at me, and I was unsure if the headlights were even on, so I asked Lester to take a look.
I should have driven off and left him standing there.
When he got back in he started cussing at me that I had lights. Was I happy that he was soaking wet? When we got back onto the highway, he really started yelling. I could, literally, see nothing in front of me; the rain was coming so hard.
I said, “Lester, you’d better stop yelling at me.” He wouldn’t stop, and I was getting mad.
Mad.
I said, “Keep talking, bud, keep talking.”
So he did. “I was a g*d d%^$*#d Air Force Navigator for twenty effin’ years! You don’t HAVE to see anything because I know where I’m going.”
I saw a bright light. I swerved to the side of the road, reached in the back seat for my purse and told him “Good luck getting home without getting arrested, because this is where I get out.”
It was 10 PM. I could see what looked like a little honkytonk, with light streaming out of the doorway and music playing.
Lester leaned over and yelled, “That big black guy down there is probably going to attack you!”
I stood in the middle of the road in the darkness, looked at drunken Lester, then looked back down the hill to the source of the light and the music. The big guy in the doorway was wearing a tallit and blowing a shofar.
And there, in the driving thunderstorm, I laughed at Lester and pointed down the hill. “I’ll be safer down there with him than up here with you!”
I sat outside that little multiracial church for over an hour waiting for a ride from my mechanic. I didn’t go in, but they were very nice and lent me a cell phone to make my call. The rest of the time I just sat outside the open door, under the eaves of the old honkytonk. The sign was even still up: “The Double Ringer.”
They had taken over the building but hadn’t even taken the honkytonk sign down yet.
I had a great time, and reveled in the irony that I got to hear the shofar and preaching, and yelling, and speaking in tongues, and laying of hands, and healing, and preaching on fornication (which I was quite proud not to have had to ask forgiveness for).
Conversion on the Way to Damascus, 1600-1601, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In addition to being the best-painted horse’s derriere in art history, it graphically illustrates that it’s never a good idea to turn your back on the Living God.
Hearing prayers for Israel and the Jewish people, in English and Spanish, was pretty dang cool, although I have to admit at one point, I was looking up at G-d, saying, “Why me?” But the shofar answered that, and I laughed. And I hope G-d laughs. Anyway, I’m pretty darn sure He must.
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Wrestling with God

The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel),Paul Gauguin, 1888, Scottish National Gallery.


I asked my trusty assistant, Sandy Quang, to fill in for me today:

I recently watched a documentary about Oswald Chambers. Chambers was essentially Jacob from Genesis 32-22-32. Chambers had experienced failure in his career as an artist, and one night he went alone to pray in a cave. Like Jacob, Chambers wrestled with God. The moment they went to pray and wrestle with God was the moment of their transition. Following the path of God and following their desire’s yielded different results. Following their own desires had left them cornered, but prayer allowed them to have a change of heart.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Gustave Doré, 1855, wood engraving.
As an art historian, I often see images of Jacob wrestling with an angel and not a man. The first painting that comes to mind is Paul Gauguin’s vibrant “Vision after the Sermon”, and the second is a solemn engraving by Gustave Doré entitled “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel”. Gauguin’s painting is brightly colored, depicted as a spectacle. Breton village women are gathered watching the struggle. As for Doré  the story is depicted as a personal struggle on a cliff, heightening the sense of danger that comes with the struggle. Doré seems to be closer to the truth in his depiction: the quietness of the surrounding in which one ought to wrestle with God. Despite the different portrayal of the subjects, the story of struggle and change rings true. For Jacob, his wrestle with God resulted in a new name, Israel. For Chambers, his wrestle with God resulted in a new career path.
(Sandy Quang)

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Art of Silliness

A tinfoil base lends stability to a hat, and stops those pesky aliens from annoying you.
My daughter threw a bridal shower today. Part of the entertainment was making hats in the style of the Royal Wedding. The hats were so darn good; Philip Treacy has nothing on them. But I also realized that no matter how brilliant one’s design, one will never win against a cute little girl, especially if she has mad millinery skills.

Two workers in the creative fields: the one on the left is a writer; the one on the right is a jeweler. They sailed through hat-making.

A fine Victorian bonnet with a sprig of Queen Anne’s Lace for contrast.

But the quality of the work was nothing compared to how much fun this project was. Everyone loves making stuff.

Never compete with a beautiful little girl, especially a creative one.

Sometimes people really surprise you. I never thought Marie would be so avant-garde.

This was a great way to get rid of stuff I’d stashed in my cabinets, including yards and yards of white tulle.

Two ladies and their milliners. Robin and Lily used their friends as hat stands. Neither hat stand complained about the staples.

It is, however, patently obvious that no matter how brilliant one’s design, one will never win against a cute little girl, especially if she has mad millinery skills. Little Sophia scored the prize.
A contingent of young milliners.
Back to painting, tomorrow.
Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!