Artistic Faults

The thing is, I have enough trouble getting myself to start painting as it is. Part of that is fear; it terrifies me to see how badly a painting goes at its adolescent stage. But even more—far more—debilitating to my painting career than that is the conviction that painting is absurd.

Which it is. We are surrounded by pictures. We have absolutely no need for more. I say every home should have live art on its walls, but what it does not need is a collection of pretty, pat scenes that could just as easily come from photographs.

And now, not even an Impressionist can claim to be superior to the camera. There are programs out there that can turn a photograph into anything. Long ago I turned one of my own photos into a “copy” of one of my own paintings—or what could have been one of my paintings, but is not.

If there were no such thing as color photography, no Photoshop, no poster-size or wall-size prints, then it might make sense to dab colored goo onto a flat surface and hope that it would last forever. That is where things stood at the beginning of Impressionism, and critics and viewers laughed at the crude application of paint, because there was a need for pretty, perfectly pat pictures and these Impressionists were not filling it!

There was photography, but not color photography, so color began to be emphasized in a way it had never been before. Chevreul had published color swatches made up of patterns of parallel colored yarns, illustrating how alternating lines of analogous hues made for a brilliant effect. I only just this year learned about M. Chevreul’s work after ordering a copy of his book of 1860, and suddenly the brushstrokes of Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Cézanne, Cassatt and numerous others made complete sense. With all my art history courses, all the books I had read, why was it necessary for me to discover for myself why fin de siècle artists used long parallel brushstrokes of alternating colors?

At the dawn of the twentieth century an artist could do something with color which no photograph could do. But when color photography became available, and in the dark room colors could even be enhanced, the practice of painting “modulations” faded away, as the Fauves painted wildly distorted figures in unnatural colors. Almost the entirety of twentieth century art stands in reaction to photography, one way or another. The more “photographic” painters, such as Norman Rockwell, were relegated to the status of mere illustrators. Abstract art (later to be called non-representational art), happenings, installations, all stood against a backdrop of photography. And photography was everywhere: snapshots, magazines, movies, billboards.

So where does all this lead us?

I don’t find perfect art very interesting. Photorealism—and I see more and more of it these days—cannot hold my interest beyond a brief admiration that someone could and would take the time to do that. And non-representational images are everywhere, man-made and in nature. I enjoy looking at a pretty pattern as much as the next person, but it takes more than that to turn me on. By the same token, I enjoy a colorful sunset or towering clouds, but am not inspired by them to make a painting—or even a photograph any more. They are for observing and remembering.

Even other works of art that follow the rules of their given style, whatever style that may be, soon cease to intrigue me. It’s because perfect art exists, everywhere, in plenitude, and can be simulated by computer anyway. I may enjoy looking at it for a while, but I do lose interest, and I certainly do not want to make yet another example of it.

Cézanne’s work exemplifies art that remains intriguing. Art historians teach that Cézanne reacted against the Impressionists and their breakdown of solid form. Since they were painting with light, he chose to represent solid form not with light and shade, but with features of the colors themselves. Surfaces that faced the viewer, and were nearby, were to be painted in warm tones. Where the form turned away from the viewer, its color cooled, even to blue. (Personally, I am sick to death of the notion that warm colors come forward and cool colors recede. I am fed up with the oversimplification of colors into the two groups warm and cool, and fervently wish we could learn to categorize color more accurately and meaningfully—but that’s another topic.)

After all that careful and subtle work toward using color to create the illusion of solid form, Cézanne slams our perception back into two dimensions by rendering a wine bottle asymmetrically, and by mismatching the back edge of a table top as seen on opposite sides of the painting.

Why did he do that? Well, whatever the reason, it was not by accident—these were not mistakes—though critics of the day might have thought so. Cézanne’s paintings are fraught with contradictions and tensions, and while he may have been unable to paint like an old master, still he was skillful enough to avoid those “mistakes.”  His reasons were formal; he made a deliberate choice of just how high to make this side of the table top, or just how low to make that shoulder of the wine bottle. He may or may not have been able to explain in words, but he knew what he wanted and executed his intentions.

You could look for hours and days and years, and still find something to wonder at.

Now to my work, Three Little Birds, and three of its “faults.”

As it recedes, the wire which reflects the sun does not thin “enough.” I did make a conscious decision to render this wire thinner in the distance, but only as much as this. Are you not convinced by the rest of the painting that I have the skill to render it in proper perspective? So why did I not?

It is not plausible that three wires would reduce to one at that distant pole. Well, they did, but here I must confess to thoughtlessly copying what I saw without prior thought. Still, for me, this thickness and triple wire save this painting.

The dark wires crossing the scene have no definite end. True. What would happen to this painting if they did? I don’t like to think about it. Or should I say the viewer might like to think about it?

Many of my paintings have such “faults.” Most of the time, quite honestly, these faults show up and I keep them because I like what they do for the work. “Faults” that do not work toward my visual ends, of course, I correct. But I am not painting pretty scenes. I aspire to more than impressionism. I prefer these “faults” to their alternatives. I am wondering this morning if perhaps my paintings that I do not like so much are the ones with no contradictions or implausibilities.

But especially interesting to me right now is that I had been entertaining the idea of magnifying such faults before the discussion that inspired this brief essay took place. I think, though, that I shall leave them subtle and troubling for the time being.

Be Strong!

There was a saying circulating in high school: “Small minds talk about things, average minds talk about people, great minds talk about ideas.” I was annoyed by that. First of all, it was a statement about people, and therefore the product of an average mind. Then what did that author know about great minds, or ideas for that matter?

I do not claim to have a great mind. It is a little nasty of me to be bored by most conversations, but I cannot help it. Once I have figured out how the brake pads fit into the calipers on my truck, I don’t care to discuss how other pads fit into other calipers, unless there is something revolutionary or ingenious about them. Sports talk, celebrity talk—I've just never been able to get into it. I feel a little inadequate on the fringes of such conversations, but there is absolutely nothing there for me.

Like everybody else, I want to join in the human celebration. But the stuff I find fascinating  does not interest that many people. In fact, some take on an attitude of superiority, and derogate cerebral activity and those who engage in it. But I have no shortage of very dear friends and a darling family, so I truly have no complaints about all that.

It’s just that I want to share some of these odd thoughts that float around in my head all the time. And so I started this blog. What a great device! I’m having a ball and can barely stay away from the computer.

And then I find myself allowing myself to get into more and more esoteric material (actually I've only just begun), and I realize that the ratio of blog readers who are interested in this stuff is likely the same as the ratio of people on the street who are interested. And then I find myself thinking this stupid thing: maybe I should write about more popular stuff so more people would be willing to read it. Maybe my own friends are tired of it already.

Now that, dear lonely reader, is exactly my dilemma and my downfall. I have done this to myself many times, with writing, with painting, with socializing. It is so easy for others to say, “Don’t worry about what other people think! Just do your own thing.”

I am quite positive that the people who say that do not find their minds awash in metaphysical ponderings over quantum mechanics in the brain. Perhaps they imagine I am debating over painting a tree or a car, when I am devising color relationships so subtle that critics think I have no color sense at all. It’s easy to tell me to wander off alone, but I am not that strong.

Still not complaining, not really.

Now I am going to complain. Those criticisms stop me cold. Please do not misunderstand. My complaint is not with the critics, it’s with me!

I wrote a book, a memoir, about the many canoe trips I have taken with my family. The book is finished but for two or three cosmetic amendments that would take me one afternoon.

Several people have read it and claimed to enjoy it. Some have offered suggestions and I have implemented a few of those and ignored others. But then there came a criticism with a rather unkind delivery, by a person who had slapped a template over the book. My memoir did not fit with this person’s dogma about what a book should be. Clearly my critic had made no effort to understand what my book was about—and didn't care. That person was as right as a teacher.

What did I do? I did not touch my manuscript again. I read three manuals about writing that troublesome material, and even though the guides said that there are different types of story, and that the book I had written fit one of the forms just fine, still I let my work lie. It remains untouched; even though I know I could easily finish it and send it off to Kindle.

The concepts I have been presenting in this blog are right close to the center of everything worthwhile that I do. Those ideas drive my painting, my memoirs (I've got four in various degrees of completion), my favorite activity (canoeing), and, most of all, my friendships with and love for other people.

I have to stay strong and keep on. I cannot take the advice of some of my friends and say “who cares what people say or like?” That attitude is just not in me, whether it “should” be or not. Instead I will say, “I hope there are many others who, like me, enjoy thinking about this stuff!”

I hope there are many others who, like me, enjoy thinking about this stuff!

The Yellow Painter

A canoe is tethered to a dock with a yellow cord, called a painter. It is a light cord; it doesn’t take much to hold a canoe captive. A gentle breeze quickens the water, and the boat pulls gently at the painter, holding it taut.

Isn’t it like that for each of us? The ties that bind us to our moorings are mere strings and, for most of our lives, the tug to freedom is really quite gentle. And do we want that freedom? What happens to this canoe without the painter? What happens to me if I slip away? What happens to you? Do we truly want to be adrift, even though we tug?

The title of this work is a bit of a pun, and my intention was that the two definitions of the word “painter” each be meaningful. How does a painter hold two worlds together?

The composition of this image is strongly diagonal. Only the water has any semblance of horizontality. The boat is actively angled, but so is the dock—and so is the painter.

The side of the boat is a large mass of fairly bright red, and if we are sensitive to color, we are drawn to notice that the blue, out-of-date sticker (this was painted in 2013) is of a similar intensity. As is the painter. These three colors constitute the primary triad. Now we notice the muted colors of the world in which the canoe rests. Perhaps as we muse we match up the muted blues and greens, and then go for the grays. Next, if we are really into color, we compare the relationship of the triad of primary hues with the bundle of muted colors and the grays.

Or you might follow lines, or the masses. I leave further musings to you, though this image is a very poor substitute for the original.

This is why I believe that paintings belong on walls where people live and work, in houses and offices. I detest mausoleums—I mean museums—and attend them only out of necessity. Galleries make good orphanages for art—and you should know that the artist really does feel like she is abandoning her work—because a gallery provides a place where you can meet a painting that has a future for you, and then take it home and live with it.

A painting does worlds more than decorate your house, just as does your spouse. A painting offers one side of a conversation, and you keep up your end through reverie and contemplation. What you notice about a painting, if it works for you, was probably thought about and put there deliberately by the artist. You might be very surprised to know the care we artists take in the creation of a work of art. The intention is that your conversation with the painting will occupy you for hours and years—that is what makes a painting good, not so much that it “looks like a photograph” or is pretty or is any better than you could do.

There is no right set of things to notice about a painting, or to think about, or to muse upon. The only no-no, in my opinion, is to make up a back-story and impute it to the artist. If you had a teacher who led you to that practice, well, education is in a sorry state, isn’t it? The true back-story to this image is that my daughter Julia and I spent a week paddling the Everglades. Every evening we tied up to a wooden, roofed platform called a chickee. On the afternoon when this painting was conceived I sat and watched the canoe play at its tether, and watched the shapes and colors and began thinking about a new painting.