'You Have To Go To Your Subject Matter'

My apologies first off, for not posting in over one months time. Some of you may remember that my wife Pam, was scheduled for a kidney transplant at the end of June. At the last minute it was postponed by doctors at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston MA. It was a matter of their remission policy and proper procedures regarding transplants for patients with an incurable disease. Basically, we never should have gotten to within three weeks to find out this information. Pam is now working on staying in remission for another couple years at which time they will perform the surgery for her. Maybe I'll go into this in more detail in a future post, but for now let's just say that it threw us off track. We are also working on putting our house on the market, because we need to downsize and the work involved to get your house ready to sell takes up a big chunk of painting time to say the least.

Our goal is to have a smaller living space with less upkeep and a larger studio space in which we can thrive. This makes the most sense to us. We are really looking forward to it. Once you finally say goodbye to a house in your mind and 'let go', you begin the move towards a new future and that's just what we need.

George R. Carpenter  1928-2006  Painting in Jeffersonville Vermont

I titled this post 'You have To Go To Your Subject Matter' because I've been thinking about this lately and wanted to share the ideas and thoughts behind it. Years ago I met a painter in Ogunquit Maine, George Carpenter, who became a good friend and mentor. He shared many of his ideas with me. George died a few years back while painting at his easel. He had a work ethic that was quite the goal to work towards. Simply put, he was always working. When I heard the news of his passing, I was deeply saddened by the thought of losing a good friend but I found myself nodding in a kind of approval with the news that he died while at work on a painting just outside the front door of his gallery in Perkins Cove.

George would share ideas about painting along with his thoughts about what it meant to be a painter and how to go about properly being one. If he was in the mood to share, he was very generous. If he was not in the mood to share, you best be quiet and let him work. If George wanted to share his ideas with you, you were also going to hear them whether you wanted to or not. Sometimes I would find myself questioning his thinking, but nine times out of ten, I'd later come to realize that he had stated it right.

Early on, George would invite me on painting trips with him to some part of Northern Maine or Vermont with the understanding that he would share his thoughts but I was going to do all the driving. This was a fine idea by me. This kind of relationship lasted up until his passing.

'You Have To Go To Your Subject Matter', he would always say. 'It's not going to come to you'. While it's true that there are things to paint in our own back yard, he believed that painting trips to special places to find the best subject matter were both practical advice and a necessary fact for the outdoor painter. The truth of the matter is, for instance, if you desire to paint working boats and working harbors, you need to go where it's still being done. I can drive for a little over an hour from my rural home in the country and be in places where there are boats. I can paint in these places and get good paintings, but I can drive 5 hours into Maine and find things that make me absolutely drool. If I am that excited about a subject, than I have more opportunities to make my share of winning paintings. From the 'sale' side of making a living as a painter, the more excited I am about my subject, the better the chances that I will find an audience who feels my excitement for it too.

I always find that upon returning from a trip, I get more excited about painting the subject matter in my own area. It's like seeing it for the first time again after being away from it. I'm sure you will agree with me that, as painters, this should be our daily goal with whatever it is we are painting.

Pam and I just got back from teaching our annual five day workshop on Monhegan Island. This is one of those special places. We've been going there for more than 15 years and this was our 12th annual plein air workshop. Now let's face it, Monhegan has been a place of inspiration for artists, writers, poets and other creative individuals for more than one hundred years. Every nook and cranny of this beloved place has been painted time and time again by somebody, yet this tiny island keeps us coming back for more. The moment I step onto the Monhegan Dock after making the 12 mile jaunt on the ferry from from Port Clyde, I feel my stress level drop to just about non existent. I look at everything as if I've never seen it before and I get excited to be there! It's the kind of place that makes you feel like you've just arrived home. We've spent weeks on Monhegan with our six kids when they were younger and I've found just as much pleasure from hiking and  taking in the beauty and magic of it all as I do from painting it. The December 1995 edition of American Artists 'Workshop' Magazine has a 17 page spread about our Monhegan workshop. All the photos from that article were taken by our dear friend Roger Cole.

In a few weeks, I am going to make a trip 'down east' to Stonington Maine to paint the harbor and the boats. For me, this is another magical place. It's that kind of place that makes me drool just thinking about. My last trip here was with Pam and some good friends. Chuck Waldman and his wife Janet came east and this was their first introduction to Maine! Gray Park came too. Our good friend and 'health food chef extraordinaire', Ken Wojcik came and did all the cooking for us so that we could spend every moment painting. If we weren't painting or eating the really good meals we were provided, we were hauling out the guitar and banjo and having some fun playing. Ken is also a good photographer and he spent some time with his camera too.

I'm going to be solo on this particular trip because I feel a great need to isolate myself and get work done. I'm bringing nothing but 11x14's with me. Lot's of them. I will  go to bed early each night and wake up before the sunrise. I will paint in the early morning and then take a needed nap at some point around mid-day. Then I will paint again until dark. I'll bring my Gloucester Easel and my 16x20 paint box. This is exactly how it would be on painting trips back in the day with George.

Here is a painting by George Carpenter that is part of my collection. This is a view from off the highway on the way to Jeffersonville Vermont. This was painted from memory.

George pointed out this spot as we drove down the highway . He said he was going to paint it from memory and  that it would be a 'real ball buster of a painting.'

The Hills Are Alive

Two weekends ago, Pam and I went up to Williamstown MA to be a part of the 10 year anniversary celebration of The Harrison Gallery. I'm happy to have the honor of being the first artist that brought work into the gallery when they first opened their doors a decade ago. Jo Ellen Harrison and the entire staff have always been 100 percent in the game since day one.

Along with a couple other artists, I was asked to paint around Spring Street for the anniversary day which I gladly did. It turned out to be a scorcher of a sunny day with the temps hovering around 90 and I looked for a shady spot to set up shop. I've always been  attracted to the Congregational Church on Route 2, just off of Spring Street on the Williams College Campus.  The view of the church along with the Taconic Ridgeway in the background is stunning.

The 16"x20" painting became a battleground right from the opening bell. I scraped it and wiped it down to absolutely nothing after about one hour into it. It just wasn't working. In fact, it was just downright hideous. Pam was a good sport by nodding with approval when I started to scrape it. I think she said something to the affect of 'I was going to suggest that.'

The second attempt was going better or so I thought. I had people coming by admiring my painting but the light was changing, the day was warming up even more than I thought and something was just not feeling right. Pam walked down the street and brought us back a couple of gyros from Pappa Charlies along with huge bottles of ice cold water. We sat on a bench about twenty yards from my painting and I looked over at it from time to time. At this point it was not much more than a block-in. It's hard to take the time to eat when you are in the middle of making something happen, but I get low blood sugar if I don't eat or wait to long to eat, so I always make sure that I do. When your crashing from low blood sugar, painting feels about as foreign as a french film with no subtitles.

After lunch, I went at it again, but clearly there were changes that had to happen and some decisions to make that should have been thought about by now. I was clearly not in my normal painting rhythm and Pam was kind enough to agree with me on this.

Scrape here, wipe this, make this part of the dark pattern etc. My usual laid-back self was now rapidly turning into something else and I had to walk away from the painting for a little while. When I came back, I fixed some obvious things, brought the painting into a stage beyond a block-in and then called it an afternoon. There was an opening reception at the gallery in the evening that Pam and I needed to get ready for and I clearly needed a shower and wanted a short nap!

The reception was fantastic and extremely well attended. It was fun to see a show that had a few pieces of work from each artist that was represented by the gallery and it is always a pleasure to talk with collectors and other artists. It was a festive event with some great live music and some delicious goodies to eat, including an exceptional home-made chocolate cake!

After the opening, Pam and I went to eat at Coyote Flaco. We both felt like having great Mexican food and a big margarita. We ended up with a half pitcher. There was a musician who was going around to tables and playing flamenco guitar. He was exceptional and very funny. He asked me if I played and he let me play his beautiful flamenco guitar. It was made in 1960 in Barcelona Spain! It was a little bit of heaven to hold and to play. It was extremely light. I don't play Flamenco guitar but I finger picked some classical stuff that I sorta knew and it was fun. I got an applause from the diners in the restaurant. (The happy, 'marguarita-drinking' diners in the restaurant!) I have to admit, I had more fun with three minutes of playing that guitar, then I did painting for the entire day. Sometimes it is just how it goes. C'est la vie.


Or should I say ES LA VIDA!

Note: I'm happy to say that I did bring the painting home and fought with it in the studio for awhile. In the end, it did come together.
See the gallery newsletter and the painting here.

Speeding at 35!

I recently gave a private weekend workshop in Gloucester Massachusetts for a wonderful group of dedicated painters. The workshop was titled 'Speed Painting' and basically everyone gets just thirty five minutes to work on 8"x10" panels! 

On day one, students work from small still-life objects and complete four or five of these panels.  The first painting is of three objects and with each new painting, another object gets added to the original three. For the last painting of the day, they are painting six objects. The objects are painted actual size and students work in groups of three or four to each set-up. I bring along about 100 small objects of varying size, shape and color with me to the workshop and put them out on a table so that there will be plenty of choices for arranging the still life set-ups.

Here is the amazing thing that happens each and every time I teach this workshop. Everyone...and I do mean everyone improves throughout the day. The last painting with the most objects in it, turns out to be the best of the day. The pics that I include with this post will prove that point.

The idea of this workshop is to time each painting and as students work, I move around the room and help them think about how to work smarter. Obviously they have to paint much faster than what they feel comfortable with, but as they paint and repaint these objects, they begin to learn how to say more with less. There is no time to over think anything and so a more intuitive response is going to be generated. They have to draw the shapes quickly and block in the painting quickly. They have to think about how to say the most with each brushstroke.

I demo for the first painting with 3 random objects of large, medium and small sizes. It helps everyone understand the process and they see that it can be done in 35 minutes. I tell them that the first painting will look as though they are just trying to cover the canvas in a small amount of time but as the day progresses, their paintings will get better. And even though we add an object each time, they will be able to handle the timing of it. There is a ton of nervous energy at the beginning of the day with this workshop, but as we get going, everyone begins to rework that energy into something positive and you can actually feel that shift of energy in the room!

After each painting, we have a look at them as a group. Students put their just-completed painting next to their previous one and we compare. They get better each time.

I first learned speed painting when I was in art school. My teacher, Paul Lipp had us doing this. I was a pretty slow painter before speed painting and it helped me to think and work faster and smarter. It's not that I expect people to finish an 8x10 in 35 minutes during their normal painting time, but speed painting will help them work faster and to be more expressive with brushwork. There is nothing more deflating than going outdoors to paint plein air, only to have the sunlight and shadows change so much while you work that you have no idea what to do next. If you learn to paint faster and smarter, you will gain confidence outdoors and this won't be a problem.

The Rockport painter, Harry Ballinger once noted that at one point in his career, it would take him three hours to complete a painting and then one day he started to complete them in about two hours. He wondered what he had been doing during that extra hour. He figured that maybe he napped during it! And that's my point. We can get too comfortable and think and rethink our next move and that can actually hurt rather than help. Charles Movalli would always say, that a painter should work a little faster than what they feel is a comfortable speed. This keeps a fresh and spontaneous look.

On day two, we usually have the class work from the same general area outside and work on 8x10's with a 45 minute time limit. I've seen some amazing results from some of these quick speed paintings. I once had a group outside and the weather was changing and clouds were moving in. There was a highly dramatic moment that happened in the sky that lasted for about 3 minutes. Everybody got it! I was blown away and even slightly jealous that I didn't have my paints out to try and get that moment down too.

For this workshop, the participants wanted a slower pace for day two and we just painted outside for the day. I did a demo down on the beach first and then everyone painted on their own with help from myself and also from Pam. It was one of those spectacular 'almost summer' kind of days and everyone did really well. Two of the students had never painted outdoors before and they worked fast and efficiently out there and did really well! All of the participants for this workshop paint together once a week for the summer and I'm confident that they all learned some new skills and gained a new level of confidence to be more productive and proficient outdoors.