Revisited

Spent a little time working in the new studio this weekend.  There's still some loose ends before I can formally move in and truly get to work.  I'm like a kid who can't sleep the night before the family leaves to go to Disneyland.

I'm working on one of the print pieces from last year's print show.  I'm bringing Remembered completely up to being a finished painting.  It's really a bit of a study.  I'm waiting to hear the word "Go" from the gallery on a 48 x 72" commissioned painting.  I'm going to go ahead and paint three canvases of three different bridges in Portland, Oregon and let the client choose and simply show the others.  In the past I've created three versions of the same composition, but in this case I don't want the works to be as closely related.

I figured that reworking Remembered into a full painting would be a good way to get into the groove.  The paintings will be in either a horizontal or vertical format.  It might be a case where all three are horizontal and my photo studies for all three bridges can lean that way.  I have painted the Steel Bridge three times counting Remembered.  Last summer when I was in Portland I took a panoramic shot of the bridge with a barge passing beneath.  I think this study will work really well at this scale horizontally and it's a orientation that I haven't tried yet.

I find the thought of painting a series of three works simultaneously in the same space really exciting. I can place one on the north wall and the other two on the west wall.  To think that without the new studio I'd have to use my patio to paint them one at a time.  It's just... wonderful!

The New Year

A New Year has begun.  No Escape is finally starting to gel and take direction.  It's been rather odd after a series of five or six works that were created in rapid succession easily to have two canvases that have felt a bit lost and directionless.  I've considered in the course of the last few weeks simply scratching these works and putting something else on the canvas, but somehow just muddled through switching back and forth from the contrary paintings.  Whether they end up being among my best works or not I have a feeling that they will lead to the next creative plateau.


The New Year will be bringing a new studio as well.  The plans have been submitted with the city and if all goes well construction will begin in early February.  I have a feeling that the much larger space will undoubtedly lead to a new and improved workflow.  I also feel that I will produce more work this year than ever before.  Of course I feel nervous about adapting to a new space.  I know in the past when I've changed studios that there's always been a strange period of the blahs due to the studio feeling too clean. Once I see a collection of droplets of paint on the floor I get on with it.

Inspiration

Essentially I took the day off today other than organizing photos and spending time looking through art books and finding new work of artists I admire on the web.  As an artist there are so many things that influence your work and among those are the work of other artists.  With this post I thought I would do a little show and tell.


Robert Birmelin is an artist that Jerry Schutte (my life drawing and life painting professor) back in art school shared with the class in slides and set my mind a lit. I love the movement within the works and how he captures the small details of urban living that seem to be overlooked or not consciously considered when your walking, riding or driving down the street, but if any of these details the sidewalk cracks, chipping paint, and the pan handler weren't there it would be noted that something wasn't right. It would feel like you stepped into the twilight zone.

                                  Giving and Taking by Robert Birmelin

                          City Crowd - Cop and ear by Robert Birmelin

Many times I have searched the web and only found a painting or two, but tonight I found that he now has a new website. 


http://robertbirmelin.com/index.html


Now if only I can manage to purchase a book of his works.  I'm still very much in love with books and haven't managed to conform to the idea of reading books  off a screen yet.  I need the physical, tangible, and tactile object in my hands with it's wonderful pages to flip through to be content.  


I've been searching out for the last three years the artists from Jerry's slide shows.  It's odd, but somehow the works shared weren't within assessable books at the time and only occasionally within art magazines.  Nonetheless, the works have stuck with me. A few more to add to this list are Alfred Leslie and Jenny Saville (who's book I purchased at SFMOCA on my trip last month)

                      The Telephone Call by Alfred Leslie

                      The Cocktail Party by Alfred Leslie

                      Fulcrum by Jenny Saville

It's nice to finally own art books of these artists or at least be able to find more visual samples of their work online.  I'm starting to wonder if figurative art is moving back into vogue due to the increased availability?  My interpretation is that figurative and realistic art haven't been seen as important since the development of the camera.  The irony is somehow the paint although an abstraction of reality can often times capture what a camera can't - the soul of the creator of the image.

The beginning of a new series

The beginning of a new series of works begins.  Combination of remembering a dream and thinking about how I feel sometimes has set this new series into motion.  In my dream I was painting a bunch of canvases that depicted the buildings cut in half, but still standing and people in the foreground split as well, in movement or as ghostly apparitions. The name that came to mind was "Schism" denoting the fractured state of the buildings and in some ways the fractured state of how my country has become.


Tonight I watched a Nova documentary on dreams on Netflix.  It's interesting how some of the mystery of dreams is finally being revealed, but how much we still don't know about them. I do know that I'm often painting in my dreams, which usually leads to the creation of new work.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm always doing art.  Even when I'm dead asleep.


This painting has a great many challenges though.  To begin with I had no photos in the perspective I wanted and the facade I wanted was actually a combination of the side and front of a particular building in San Francisco.  My solution is simple I will draw the building out referencing the photos.  Looking through my photos I realize I will be doing this often.  There are many instances where my photos are ready to go, but most of the time they'll need work to become a work of art.  Next up will be finding the figures to work with that I want.

Snap is almost there

Snap is almost there.  Right now I'm entering into the scary part of the piece.  I can easily overwork it at any moment.  I'm almost to the point that I may choose not to address the weird fold of the bag and just leave it as it is rather than try to fix it and go to far.  Thankfully, I'm heading to my sister's for our holiday get together and will have the space of going away and coming back with fresh eyes.

More Linear Thinking

The work on Linear Thinking continues.  I am very close to being done.  I'm simply waiting until the varnish layer dries and I can ink in some detail.  There is a bit of a debate in my mind of how detailed I want to get with the figures.  Frankly, it's feeling just about done.  I think the focus on this piece is actually the fractured and tortured street in the foreground.  The white crosswalk line is the story.  I like the fact that what is commonly the subject matter of a painting - people, buildings, and cars are playing a supporting role.  It's almost as like going to a concert to see the opening band and leaving midway through the main act's performance.


I'm focusing in on new ways to fuse the collaged elements into these next works.  I also have a renewed interest in texture along with a greater hierarchy of brush stroke. It's truly amazing what a brushstroke from a 1" brush can do that fifty brushstrokes of a #1 flat can seem to convey.


Tomorrow I plan to finish Snap and resolve the issue of the bag.  I opted for being well rested rather than working on the piece when tired from a crazy day at work. It occurred to me recently that as amazing as it would be to not have a day job and simply spend my days painting. However my day job is a blessing in disguise in a strange since.  When painting over the Thanksgiving Holiday in my Uncle's work shed where I received very few interruptions and my body's needs dicated my breaks rather than my minds provocative.  I found myself thinking too deeply to the point where my positive thoughts turned to negative ones.  This seems really odd in some ways.

Linear Thinking

Started a new painting last night.  I'm bouncing back and forth from calling it Linear Thinking or Convergence.  Convergence was the title of the sketch, but Linear Thinking is a bit tongue and cheek critique of society and how ill fitted I am within it due to my way of approaching life.  In many ways it's a failed photograph, but somehow it's really a happy accident because the crosswalk and the distressed street are so interesting.  As a canvas the composition feels very abstract and lends itself well to a very sculptural paint application.  Again this is based on another photo from San Francisco.  China town to be exact.  I really was able to get the kind of photographs I've been hungry for.  I think a lot of it is now that I've been putting myself out there to take street photos and having come back home countless times wishing I'd done this or that.  I now can go out there and actually get the photos I need.  It's not a natural skill it's one that has to be learned.  Street photography really is a matter of really learning how to capture split moments.


I have plenty left to learn, but I still managed to get a huge cash of photos for painting fodder.  Time to start planning the next photo tour.