Studio Snapshot: The Common House Cat

In the above photo, Eris admires her newly-finished portrait. . . though she is rarely allowed to venture outside, wildness will always lurk in her eyes, and every flash of movement around her is a cause for excited frenzy.

0

Emerging Red

The process of painting Emerging Red [above] included many thoughts about potential, city planning, how reliance upon automobiles and consumerism have impacted the American landscape, and what catches and directs the eye in a scene. The place which inspired it [below] is not particularly striking; in real life, the tree itself, though magnificent, is treated as a "decoration" for a parking lot. As most of us no longer live particularly close to nature, the little bits of nature that we see used as ornamentation are refreshing but not often deemed central to one's experience of a street or town. In painting the little red tree, I wanted to allow its full splendor to manifest itself, and I wanted to give it a setting in which wilderness and the work of man seem to find a comfortable balance. I left the beginnings of this painting behind to spend Thanksgiving in the mountains of Georgia, wandering through the woods and across river beds. . . upon returning, I was all the more eager to create a bold splash of life on the canvas.
 

0

December Interviews

This month's interviews have been posted!

On the Huntsville Art Blog, radio host, performer, visual artist, (and interviewer of many local artists) Beth Norwood answers questions about what she enjoys most about art and talking to other artists, the importance of art, the Huntsville art scene, and much more!

On the Ascribing Artists Blog, we hear from Sojourn Creative Team Leader Candace Stough about how a church plant that meets at the Olde Towne Brewing Company developed its own artistic group and what most inspires her and the rest of the team.

0

Sherbrooke Street from the 17th Floor

After much dabbing of paint [above], Sherbrooke Street from the 17th Floor [below] is complete! As the work progressed, I continued to keep most of my strokes short and vertical. A city viewed from above can be hectic, dazzling, abstract, surreal. . . and snow, wind, and other extreme atmospheric conditions can transform an otherwise familiar landscape into a particularly thought-provoking spectacle; careful brushwork was required to suggest the proper ambiance.

0

In the Works: Painting Montreal

With the coming of Winter, I have been thinking quite a bit about my move to Montreal in the winter of 2008 and how the fact that I did not have much time for painting in 2009 meant that very few of my works depict the scenery that I often sketched and photographed there [above, houses along Carré St-Louis]. Now, a year since my return to Huntsville, I am drawing inspiration from the very first sketch I did in Montreal. The finished painting is to be a view from the 17th floor of a hotel I was staying in on Sherbrooke Street whilst apartment hunting (finding the skyscrapers downtown interesting but far too harsh in terms of aesthetics, I first moved to the French Quarter). I am rather drawn to views from windows because I am far too used to seeing stores, offices, homes, and other structures that seem to have been designed to obscure or obliterate the outdoors. An open window is often a cheerful call to go outside and explore.
I began my Sherbrooke Street painting with some light pencil guidelines and an uneven wash of thin, blue paint [above]. This seemed like an appropriate backdrop for a snowy, gray, blustery day in the city.
Currently, I am in the process of building up layers of paint [above, a small detail from the unfinished painting], deliberately keeping most of my strokes vertical so as to create the illusion of rising and falling-- the height of the buildings reaching to meet the falling snow.

0

Huntsville Art Blog Feature: Walt Schumacher

To read my recent interview with photographer and Huntsville Art League director Walt Schumacher, please visit this link. He has many encouraging and interesting things to say about how he became part of the art world, his responsibilities at HAL, and the Huntsville art scene!

0

Huntsville Art League Christmas Boutique

The Huntsville Art League Gallery was bustling with activity this morning when I dropped off my painting of Coxcombs [above] for the Christmas Boutique. The event will feature paintings and other items suitable for gift-giving, and will run until the end of December. Piece by piece, the remaining paintings from the Unique Views of Huntsville Retrospective and other HAL exhibits are being picked up and new art begins to flow into the gallery. . .

0

Writing about Art from a New Angle

In March I began to cultivate the habit of writing about my own art. Last month, I was given a wonderful chance to expand the scope of my writing to the rest of my community by becoming a contributor for the Huntsville Art Blog, one of the best sources of information on artists and art events in the Tennessee Valley, as well as the faith-based Ascribing Artists Blog. I view this opportunity-- to interview local artists and arts community leaders, write essays, and help collect information on events-- as a great adventure and important responsibility; I very much look forward to regularly sharing links to the resulting posts on this blog.

My very first interview, which came out today on the Ascribing Artists Blog, features the words and work of my friend Jessica Oden. To read it, please visit http://ascribingartists.blogspot.com/2010/11/featured-artist-jessica-oden.html.

0

Painting with Words: Winter Traveler

Perhaps because of my love for Wagner's Tannhäuser, or perhaps because I have simply spent so much time traveling and observing the world myself, the imagery of wanderers and pilgrims, travelers, and spectators fascinates me. Airports and railway stations are full of people who are escaping, returning, leaving their familiar surroundings to accomplish something significant or to re-evaluate perspectives, families, soldiers (particularly in the past several years), friends and lovers parting or reuniting, businessmen and women. . . in fact, airports and railway stations are quite often the places that I have found most conducive to contemplating humanity and culture.

Winter Traveler [above] was inspired by a young woman whom I saw on a train while crossing Europe. She stood by a door, her backpack in hand, dressed in a bulky jacket, scarf, and boots, and with her back turned to me, she seemed like the universal anonymous traveler. With the train moving so quickly, the scene was rather hypnotic, the cold earth outside the windows became a blur, a scene worthy of Schubert's Winterreise. Of course, I did not wish to make this particular painting feel as isolated and dramatic as Schubert's song cycle, I simply wanted to depict the mystery of an unknown traveler heading out into a cold yet magically beautiful world of unexplored potential. I used quite a bit of red, yellow, and pink in the painting as a suggestion of good cheer, warmth, and humanity and I intentionally left it unclear as to what she is stepping out from (Her home? A train? Her workplace?) I would like the viewer to wonder about her story, to wonder about the nature of travels both physical and spiritual.

1

Keeping a Commission Fresh: View from a Garching Window

When my good friend Jamie Hoffman asked for a custom painting, I immediately began to think of how I could incorporate some of her favorite elements from my other paintings and the color scheme from her home into something original and interesting. She mentioned how much she loved The Niña and Pinta at the Docks, but talked about Showers Over University Drive as well, a rather different work indeed. My painting of Columbus' ships is quite clean and delineated, whereas I purposely made my depiction of University Drive wild and even a little sloppy. One painting makes me think of travel and the meeting of the Old and New Worlds, the other is about urban planning and how it can have an impact on community life. As I was contemplating the paintings, I remembered that there was a scribble in my sketchbook that I had done while staying at a friend's apartment in Garching, and from there my composition continued to take shape. [The edge of the canvas, below, painted to go well with the greens in Jamie's house.]
Garching is not a tourist destination; it is simply a fairly pleasant suburb of Munich. It does not sprawl uncontrollably and it is pedestrian-friendly. I could awake on a cool morning to the sound of birds singing and shopkeepers greeting each other on the street before opening time. The bakery was right around the corner. Germany's famously excellent public transportation system is not an afterthought in this small town, in fact, the subway station is bright, admirably clean, and decorated artistically with vivid panels of color. While I was there, a local art group had even placed some of their work behind glass panels in the station. Being able to paint what was, in my mind, the antithesis of University Drive gave me an opportunity to use the common compositional elements that a street scene provides to create new contrasts-- to clean up some of the mess, to brighten the scene, to make it more comfortable, to give it a sense of adventure. I am happy to present this painting, filled with friendship, travel, good memories, and warm wishes, to Jamie and her family and hope that they will enjoy having it in their home and much as I enjoyed painting it!

0

Studies and Sketches, or How Artists Practice

Most of the things I scribble in my sketchbook are there for the explicit purpose of plotting out larger or more "finished" works, but as of late I have had little thought of further developing anything beyond my eyes, the sweep of my hand, and the relationship between my work and my spirit. This is not to say that I have not thought of making new "finished" paintings at all, in fact, I have been contemplating very intricate ideas that I would like to put on canvas. However, I have not hurriedly leapt into polishing those ideas; instead, I am spending most of my time out in the woods or around town drawing in my sketchbook, or using acrylics to make quick, loose paintings, such as Study of a Girl in Nature and Study of a Lifeboat [above], perhaps refining or developing certain habits, helping my hands and eyes memorize a shape, making the rendering of a certain texture or form smoother, effortless. The studies will not be held to any standard of perfection, completion, or beauty (quite unlike my other work), and they will not all be in one particular style, but they will provide educational challenges that could potentially lead to new insights.

For the next week (or perhaps even a month if I find that I would like to practice more than I previously anticipated), I plan to sketch, mix colors, and hone my skills purely for the sake of research and study. The long walks, freedom, and vibrant observations that go along with this plan have already proven pleasant, but more than that, I expect that the rewards of intelligent practice will prove extremely valuable to me as I continue my artistic work.

0

Columbus in Alabama

I had the pleasure of seeing replicas of the Niña and Pinta at Ditto Landing last week, and considering how interested I am in history, civilization, and dream-like juxtapositions of the Old World and New, the full-size ships, entirely black with pine tar, manned by crews of adventurous volunteers, and resting at the edge of Huntsville, were surreal and fascinating, perfect subjects for one of my abstractions [above, The Niña and Pinta at the Docks].The colors of the marina are grayed greens, blues, lilacs, yellows from the occasional wildflowers speckling the grass, and now that the air is cooler, patches of yellow, orange, and deep red from the Fall foliage. I mixed my paints in strategic groupings [above] before beginning my work so as to properly capture the variety of colors at the marina without upsetting the overall harmony of the piece; I wanted everything in the painting, whether completely wild or completely man-made and however disconnected, to become comfortably connected.
In the design of this piece [above], two things were very important to me; that is, first, to depict the ships clearly enough that they suggested historic vessels without going into any kind of photographic detail. I wanted a bit more subtlety, I wanted the ships to be dynamic, dignified, mysterious, and I wanted it to be unclear as to which era the scene belonged. Second, I wanted to pay homage and create a connection to an earlier work, painted after a day spent at Ditto Landing three years ago. I did this by echoing some of the lines of the highway bridge in the previous painting, far off in the background, as if the painting itself were a sort of timeline of past, present, and tentative future sojourns.

0

Unique Views of Huntsville Retrospective

During the entire month of October, many of the works displayed at the Huntsville Museum of Art as part of the Unique Views of Huntsville show will be on exhibit at the HAL Gallery, including my painting of Big Spring Park. Be sure to take this chance have a look (or perhaps another look) at the excellent paintings from this year's show!

0

From Urban Sprawl to Art

University Drive is a messy strip; no depiction of its myriad signs, lights, hotels, plazas, fast-food restaurants, heavy traffic, and warehouse-like box stores (obscuring what would otherwise be beautiful views of rolling hills, trees, and a quarry) could be completely tranquil. Like many places across America, it is a decentralized, impersonal, arid, automobile-centric stretch. When it came time to make a painting of this major thoroughfare through Huntsville [above], the calm-seeking nature-lover in me wanted both to represent the disjointed feel of this sort of land use, but also "fix" it through art, blending the random lines and monotonous boxes into a more organic landscape, concealing them by viewing them from a distance, through a tree.

As in View of Five Points I and The Wanderer, I created a multi-layered and textured image, but rather than expressing complexity or history, the variety of brushstrokes, semi-transparent build up of colors, and knifework only suggest disarray. The title, Showers over University Drive, adds another layer-- rain. Rain can often smooth over a harsh landscape, almost reclaiming it into nature, and University Drive in the rain is a kaleidoscope of colors melting into each other over glass, glimmering puddles, and the endless spray from car tires. . .

0

The Landscape of Expression

The beginning of Fall is an excellent time for deep thought; 2010 will be over within a week and three months, the summer heat and wild foliage are finally relenting, and so I, too, withdraw a bit and allow my daydreams to lead me, philosophize even more than usual about education and society, become more conscious of what it means to live life fully. Yet what is interesting about these meandering ruminations is that they lead me to spend more time at the easel, not less; in fact, the more time I spend daydreaming and thinking grand things and relishing the notion of free will and self-reliance, the more new ideas come to mind, and new ideas mean new work [above]. That having been said, I have recently completed two new paintings, one on unstretched canvas and one on stretched.
Around Huntsville, many people refer to the public library as "Fort Book" because of its unusual architecture. The first of my two most recent paintings, View from "Fort Book" [above] is not only an abstraction of the actual view from the library, a strangely desolate view given that it so close to downtown, but a fanciful play on the idea of surveying the region from a fortress.
While the second new painting, Near the Corner of Holmes and Jordan [above], was meant to be considered one of a series with Huntsville Through the Dirty Glass, as I worked on it and completed it, I could not help but note that it seemed a sort of spiritual successor to 417 Greenacres Drive as well. Of course, the proximity of Greenacres Drive to Holmes Avenue and Jordan Lane, areas of Huntsville that are probably seldom depicted in fine art, explains the relationship to some extent, but the living vibracy of the design and colors also strikes me as related. View from "Fort Book" is a painting of cool, though not unpleasant, isolation and watchful stillness, Near the Corner of Holmes and Jordan seems more about movement, growth, deterioration, dreams, and cycles, a very fitting work for a contemplative soul at the turn of seasons. . .

0

Another Year of Unique Views

Whenever summer begins to turn to fall, I look forward to participating in the Art League's Unique Views of Huntsville Show. It has been an honor to see my paintings hang alongside works by some of Huntsville's most skilled and experienced artists for three years in a row now and I am continually interested to see how others interpret this city in art. This year's show opened today in the upstairs great room of the Huntsville Museum of Art [above and below] and will be up until the 19th of September. Admission is free to the public.

0

You Are Here: Questions I Ask Myself

I enjoy setting goals for myself, small goals, something to finish by the end of the day, something to work on throughout the week, very general adventures or projects to pursue during the year. As stray breezes begin to hint at fall, I take time to think about how these seemingly trifling yet strategic goals build upon one another.

Last year, when I left Montreal and McGill University, my artistic goals were fairly straight-forward; to continue to exhibit works whenever possible, to begin writing a bit more about each painting and why I paint, to never stop seeking beauty and truth, and to continue to do something artistic each day, preferably in the context of my previous work (but without repeating myself). Though I was able to complete paintings such as Depth Puzzle [above, 2009] while in Canada, graduate school did not allow me very much time to pursue art as anything more than a hobby, and that was too out of tune with the direction my thoughts and actions had been following for the past years to be acceptable. I had to re-arrange my schedule and re-arrange some of my goals so that my art could continue to flourish.

Most serious artists probably find themselves asking painfully self-conscious questions: How do I promote my work? Is it irresponsible of me to spend so much time making art? Do others enjoy my work? It is important for an artist, having answered these questions to his satisfaction (if they were not self-explanatory or even trite to him in the first place), to move on to a more enlightened set of questions: Does my work contribute something worthwhile to my community? Does it take into consideration historical context? Am I doing everything that I could possibly be doing at this point to create meaningful work and integrate that meaningful work into a meaningful life?

I do not like to ask myself too many questions when it comes to making art. In a sense, art is what results after I have already explored questions through experience or thought and so I have no need to cringe at every brushstroke with Kafkaesque paranoia and post-modern analysis; instead, I can serenely guide the combination of color, energy, and spirit that makes up a brushstroke across the canvas. To me, art will always be a thing to be done and experienced first and foremost. . . yet as I reach the final quarter of each year, I always return to that latter set of questions concerning community, context, and the art of life itself, and as I contemplate my answers, new small goals will gradually begin to arise for the next few months and my next new year of life as a painter.

0

Rocket City Inspirations

Walking over the uneven wooden slats of one of the upper floors of Railroad Antiques downtown, I began to think about how much I enjoy painting Huntsville-- the beautiful Southern trees, the odd angles of the buildings from the 1960's (the decade when this town most noticeably stepped away from cotton mills and into the Space Age), the cold, arching overpasses juxtaposed with magnificent greenery, stately, well-preserved historic buildings, rockets, faded houses and signs, high-tech modernity, country life, and Antebellum romanticism all rolled into one. I then returned home and began scribbling in my sketchbook. The first painting resulting from this particular sketching session is Huntsville Through the Dirty Glass [above], a work directly inspired by a third-floor view out the window of the highway leading into town.
Though I have already painted quite a few Huntsville scenes, two of which [Big Spring Park, above, and Lilies, below] will be displayed in the Museum of Art's upstairs exhibit hall from September 11-19 along with other interesting works in the Unique Views of Huntsville exhibit, I have no doubts that the Rocket City will continue to provide material for my artistic renderings as long as I call North Alabama home. . .

0

Textiles and Playing with Paint

I've always known that my interest in needlework and textiles had an influence on my paintings, but I did not really understand how until recently. As I begin to learn about knitting and crocheting increasingly intricate items [above picture], the connection occurs to me; color is not something people think of only in terms of vision, but something that we relate to touch and sound, something with associated textures, histories, cultural ties, deep emotional significances. Artists probably contemplate this more than most people, and working with vivid yarns and threads, materials I must spend lots of time touching, weaving, and winding, helps me strengthen my own sense of the 3-dimensionality (pun intended) of pure color. Of course, it also tests and sharpens my pattern-recognition skills on a regular basis.
I find myself creating a larger volume of paintings at specific times of the year, sometimes because I have fewer other obligations, other times because of my love for particular seasons and their colors, but even when I am only making one or two paintings per month, I am still working with myriad textiles from many different parts of the world (the mid-western United States, India, Germany, Italy, and Russia, to name a few). I like to carry needles and a ball of yarn or two around wherever I go, and simply glancing into my bag and seeing a soft pile of colorful material is oddly captivating. This will usually incite me to "play" with colors and textures when I return to the easel, as might a child. The resulting works, such as Fairytale Sketch [above] are very abstract and might not even be on a stretched canvas, but they are a dive into the subconscious and an experiment in combining colors, textures, and shapes for psychological effect. "Play time" also seems to inspire me to base paintings around deep purple, a color I otherwise tend to use sparingly in my work.

0

Currently Showing in Decatur, AL

A friend in Decatur stopped by Willis Gray Gallery recently and said that the paintings I dropped off several weeks ago, including Flight in Orange and White [above], were on the wall and looking beautiful. The gallery is at 211 2nd Avenue Southeast and features a large selection of interesting original artworks in every style and medium imaginable.

0

Wild Flowers

When a friend of mine saw Helicopter [below], a painting inspired by a helicopter landing on Redstone Arsenal glimpsed through swaying poppies as I sped along the highway, she suggested that I paint flowers more often (thanks Emily!) After a trip to the Madison Farmer's Market, I found an excellent opportunity for exploring this suggestion.
As I spent my morning picking out produce and milling about under a searing sun, I noticed a flower vendor selling bunches of celosia argentea cristata, informally known as coxcombs, for $2 each. The last time (and the first time) I saw this type of flower, curiously enough, was during my internship at Frankfurt an der Oder's public library in 2005. Whenever I gave presentations to groups from the local schools, the teachers usually thanked me with profuse bouquets and baskets of flowers which often incorporated deep red, magenta, or golden coxcombs. Seeing them again brought to mind all of the kindness and appreciation, beautiful travels, and interesting discussions I had, and somehow simply having these unusual, vibrant flowers on my table again, almost too untamed for their crystal vase, gave me a new way to reflect upon and share a little bit of my experience.
Coxcombs [above] is a small painting, completed rather loosely and quickly. The flowers themselves are unusual enough that I made them only partially abstract. It is a simple painting of a cheerful subject and a cheerful time.

0

New Work, New Thoughts

Partly because summer is a busy, miserably hot season in North Alabama, partly because I thought "taking it easy" for a little while might be beneficial, among other things, I had not completed any new paintings for almost a month until today. I deliberately took even more time than needed to complete the painting I now call "Nik in Italy" [below] and signed once as usual, then again in Latin [above]. However, now that it is finished, I have already begun working simultaneously on two new paintings.
An up-close inspection of this large portrait reveals that only the face is completely smooth and free of traces of my hand, the rest of the painting looks fairly figurative from a distance but still slightly abstract in much of its brushwork. I wanted to blend what I knew of Venetian paintings with something of my usual style, and have been musing to myself that the end result comes across as a bit of a "painting of a painting". Nik, the subject of the portrait and a subject very dear to me, is rather Italian in heritage, looks, (diet), and manner, yet was born and raised in the United States. To my mind, the work is both a statement about his own cultural ties, artistic sensibilities, and love of the Italian landscape, as well as a re-envisioning of his appearance, environment, and place in time-- a bit of imaginative fancy that nevertheless reveals a concrete truth about its subject.

In addition to renewing my interest in painting portraits, this painting has left me thinking even more about how I can continue to incorporate historically popular techniques into new and original work. . .

0

Painting Venetian Style

I have been thinking about the "Old Masters" quite a bit lately. Perhaps because I enjoy practicing my stylistic flexibility, or perhaps simply because I am fascinated by the history of artistic styles and techniques, I have embarked upon a large portrait-- some of you may recognize the eye in the "sneak peek" photo above-- in a somewhat improvised classical Venetian style. While I am not using a chalk and glue ground, I am using raw umber as a base, applied to the canvas with a knife, and working with runny paint, varnish, and plenty of linseed oil to create the proper finish, transparency, and luminosity. While I do not intend to directly copy the style of The Masters, I do wish to capture something of their aura, without irony or surreal post-modern twists at that.

Thinking that Caravaggio's work was considered by some to be the downfall of true art, that Velazquez repeatedly wiped his brush directly onto the canvas to get rid of excess paint and then painted over the mess, that El Greco did not build up layers of varnish the way his contemporaries would have preferred, as well as many other small semi-forgotten facts makes me imagine traveling to their studios, getting to know their different sets of tools, their personalities, their goals. Perhaps this is as close to communing with these men as one can ever get.

0

In the Works: The Wanderer

Taking The Wanderer from the textured canvas of the last post to the finished painting above required multiple layers of paint and a relaxed wrist. While the composition itself is quite structured, I wanted the brushstrokes themselves to seem loose and spontaneous, creating a kind of thought portrait. The idea for this painting arose from a recent drive around the UAH campus (which I realized I have been haunting in some form or another since 2003) during which I was enjoying the day, the trees, the turn of the roads, and thinking of my wanderings and musings, my strong leanings toward classical intellectualism, reason, and order-- traits which many consider to be somehow opposed to artistic expression, though I find far more artistic inspiration and even passion in reason than in undisciplined emotion. The Wanderer is a flight of fancy and an exploration of memory, a multi-layered and heavily textured image which, rather like nature, is both wildly organic and strictly methodical at the same time.
I used some of the white areas left on the canvas by wax as delineations for the figure and her fancy collar [above], just as rivers can influence the outlines of states and nations.
In other parts of the painting, the original wax drip image shows faintly through thin layers of watery paint [above] or creates inconsistencies in texture and small bubbles underneath the design [above and below].

0

Of Textured Canvases and Molten Wax

Artists have probably experimented with controlled drips of paint or wax since before the time of Jackson Pollock, and while I tend to shy away from "trendy" techniques and anything that might be construed as "conceptual art", if I want to develop a textured background for a new painting (or if a controlled drip seems relevant), I might try something different from my usual methods and materials. In this particular case, I melted wax recycled from used-up candles and carefully dripped the liquid onto the canvas. Some of the wax was from old presents, or from friends' candles, making the process oddly nostalgic. After the wax dried, I used acrylic to paint the entire canvas. Next, I started to scrape the wax from the canvas with a knife. . . whatever bits of wax were affixed well enough to resist the scraping were allowed to remain, leaving a yellow-and-white motif with a few bumps here and there [above photo]. The way I intend to finish this canvas will make it almost unrecognizable to the viewer, but this carefully-constructed backdrop will give the final painting a suitable texture and subtle depth. Making the pile of scraped wax look like an artistic design [below] also proved an interesting photographic experiment.

0

En Plein Air: An Evening on the Square

Despite threats of stormy weather, Thursday evening turned out to be wonderfully mild, a fine summer evening to set up a display on the vibrant grass and watch others watch art as the skies shifted lazily from cerulean to bright orange and rose.

0

Downtown Huntsville's Sidewalk Arts Stroll

On the 17th of this month I will be participating in my first art festival. While I am often reluctant to stand outside all day in Alabama's summer heat (and risk warping my canvases in Alabama's summer humidity at that), this year's Sidewalk Arts Stroll events are being held in the cool of the evening, so I have little reason to avoid the opportunity to interact with other artists and art-lovers in attendance. There are many preparations involved in displaying work at a festival, and I have already had special prints (72 in all, which I have signed and labeled) and a handout with extra information printed for the event [above photo]. I look forward to an interesting new experience and a pleasant evening!

[For more information on Huntsville's Sidewalk Arts Stroll, visit this link.]

0

Two Recent Works: View of Five Points II and Big Spring Park

I have been working steadily these days on both art-related projects and in general, and therefore have two new paintings to mention in this entry (as well as a painting in the works currently on the easel, of course).
Big Spring Park [above] is now complete! I wanted this painting to stay cool and peaceful yet glow a bit, so I worked on lights and darks rather than stark color contrasts, and experimented with different consistences of paint in thin, smooth layers for texture.
View of Five Points I was a colorful rendering of the most recent reinvention of a pleasant older neighborhood; View of Five Points II [above] gives a nod to the construction and early history of the neighborhood. The palette is simple and the faint reddish-brown first layer is exposed to mimic red mud stains and the sepia tint of old photographs.

0

Art in the City

Young people with artistic goals who grow up in small towns often simmer in dreams of moving to Manhattan or other such celebrated locations and spend much time complaining about the lack of opportunities places such as Huntsville, AL seem to offer. Some will be able to relocate and live out their dreams, others will find themselves doing very different things than they ever expected, others will continue to complain without relief, and others still will find ways to live up to their potential while enjoying and improving their surroundings regardless. Many will concern themselves with becoming big fish in a big pond-- in the first layer of my newest painting [above], taken from last week's Big Spring Park sketch, the koi have plenty of room to be happy and productive (in their own fishy way) even in a smaller and more literal pond.

0

Talking About One's Own Work and the Fear of Internet Vanity

Many years ago, my mother (who graduated from a French school, speaks four languages, and did the above painting, though she would hesitate to call herself an intellectual or an artist) explained to me that the true intellectuals she had met in her lifetime, teachers and authors and artists, not mere "academics" but "great minds", did not feel obliged to show off to others that they read books or had remarkable talents, did not feel obliged to manipulate others into liking them or thinking them definitively intelligent or well-read. As she put it, only miserable people would act so vain as to become pedantic bigots-- they purport to offer something "higher" to society, but simply combine the worst aspects of narcissism with a few books they have read by, say, a trendy philosopher like Foucault. A true talent, a true thinker, a true artist, would quietly and contentedly go about his work, then find polite, inspiring, and appropriate ways to share it, not pompously hold his supposed knowledge and opinions against everyone else.

This having been taken to heart, I am often puzzled by the notion of social networking sites and personal websites (which on one hand can serve as useful tools/conversation starters and on the other hand can be the epitome of self-obsessed vanity and socially-awkward solicitation). I find myself wondering how to balance the knowledge that I can share my art and career with others particularly efficiently on the internet and my belief in modest behavior, which suggests that I should let my work and other people do the talking. Yet many others are perpetually "busy" with their "hectic lives" and might not notice something relevant to them in the midst of the chaos-- with so many advertisements and media figures trying to tell whole societies what to look at or care about, it is hard to say whether anyone would notice a local artist or craftsman, a great teacher, a fine writer, or a brilliant musician if such people never spoke up and said "The priorities of this society are being manipulated and seem to be out of line." While I suppose that this internet and youthful culture of bragging are now such a part of North American (and no doubt global) life that I should not be surprised, I remain reserved and skeptical.

In time, I would like to write extensively about the philosophy of art in general, and I find writing about my own paintings, though a bit labyrinthine at times, to be a good way to work toward that goal. Yet at this point, I still find myself continually posing questions about how relevant my posts are to readers and how to make them more worthwhile to myself and others. I like to think that writing and learning are connected-- but putting good writing skills to non-optimal use is merely another way of falling prey to "Internet Vanity".

2

Of Scribbles and Paintings

I spent part of this afternoon sketching in Huntsville's Big Spring Park. My sketchbook is filled with scribbles completed in only a few seconds, drawings that nobody would think to frame-- they are simply references for painting. The above image is a typical scribble. I was interested in direction, angles, and general layout. The scene of a small, koi-filled pond surrounded by rocks, a building hovering above, is a very nice starting point for a view of man and nature, the peace of the trees and water winding through a downtown area. The older parts of Huntsville are rather lush and green in summer, and this greenery captivates me, seems to me to be a particularly good environment for reading, learning, creating art, and writing. I will never quite understand why many art studios (including those in UAHuntsville's newly restored Wilson Hall) and classrooms across North America have no windows-- I suppose it is so that the students will pay more attention to their teachers, but I would think it would only promote an emotional connection between learning and imprisonment. Call me Whitmanesque, but I would much prefer to be outside under the trees.
The Fountain [above] is to me somewhat mystical-- the view, of course, is that which I see from my balcony every day. As birds bathe in the basins and the dappled shade of old crepe myrtles shifts across the courtyard, I feel particularly aware of life, of the refreshing properties of water, of its spiritual symbolism throughout the ages. A mysterious peek through the branches seemed particularly suitable for this depiction-- it calls to mind Expressionistic images of parks, the search for the Fountain of Youth, fine fountains in classical gardens. . . and yet it was not painted in a "classical garden". It was painted in the courtyard of an apartment complex in Huntsville, AL where the rent is easily accessible even to a career artist/music teacher. It is not necessarily money which makes (or keeps) life beautiful-- it is creativity and diligence.
Realization [above] may be a different type of work due to its purely non-figurative content, yet it was also completed this month. It is a depiction of struggle and triumph in the material world and in the human spirit, the sort of chaos-into-order image I like to paint to loosen my brushstrokes and explore my subconscious mind.

0