That was easy!

Work in Progress – Blackstone River oil on canvas 40×60

It’s been a year now, since I started painting seriously, since I took this studio, and started this blog. I feel like the further along I go on this journey, the further away the prize is. I don’t even know what the prize is anymore, except this daily practice of putting paint on canvas. I’m working on this painting right now of a shallow passage of the Blackstone River as it flows around and over a grouping of rocks. I’ve made a few attempts at this, on paper and canvas. I love the way the water rushes by the rocks above the water, while the ones underwater, just as substantial, peek out and then disappear, leaving you to wonder what you just saw.

As an artist, I feel like an outlier. I deal in illusion; I apply paint to a two-dimensional surface and create the appearance of something that exists in three dimensions. In that sense, I’m not much different in intent from the painters in the caves at Lascaux, to the extent that we can know the intentions of Paleolithic artists. But at the very core of what they did is a symbolic representation of the world they lived in. And that, in the most reductivist view, is what I do. I’m happy to take my place along that continuum, but I am also a creature of my time. So I can’t escape thinking about the characteristics of the materials I’m using, the formal relationships created within the rectangle of a canvas, the idiom of shape and color and space and line, and all the artists that have come before me, and what I’ve learned from them.  And also, what it means to be working this way in the 21^st century.

I know that, for the most part, artists working now have abandoned this essential form of illusion-creation; it can be seen as trite, shallow, too dependent on parlor tricks that are exploited by the minimally talented without any original ideas. And artists are aware that all but a small subset of the viewing public actually prefers these illusions over more difficult art that addresses serious issues, like gender and identity and war and mental illness and environmental disasters…or art that depends on self-referential systems, or actions that cause the viewer to behave in a certain way, or art that is the culmination of the systematic rejection of hundreds of years of illusion-creation and consumption. Or whatever. The fact is, I deeply appreciate and like a lot of that art.

Still, I’m stuck with the art that I do. I’m skeptical of anyone who says they got an idea for a painting and then they made it. You can only make the art that you make, not the art that you set out to make. I truly appreciate that people like what I do. I just hope I don’t begin to pander.

I’m very interested in the appearance of things in the real world, how they shift in different light and change over time. How our perception of space and time are affected by what we see and understand. How we rarely see what we think we see. How what we saw a moment ago is gone, how what we’ll se in another moment may be completely changed. I’m trying to pay attention to these things, and make paintings in the process. It’s tough to do that day after day, to make serious art that doesn’t depend on tricks and short cuts. I get discouraged sometimes. This is where I am now – plugging away at these paintings. My subject matter – water, usually, — competes with the formal and the abstract. I try to maintain a fine balance of attention to both and neither at the same time. It’s a Zen exercise, I guess. I can only succeed at it for a short time every day, and then it falls apart.

After a year of this, and a few months of not taking my blog as seriously as I did in the first months, I’m realizing how important it is that I do both, paint and write. I’m rethinking the blog, considering what year two will look like. I just know that when I started this journey a year ago, I didn’t know if I could keep it up – the daily practice, the slog through uninspired days and weeks, the work of it. What I’ve learned is that I will never be on solid ground, and I don’t know if any artist is. But I keep coming to the studio, laying out the paint on the palette, putting on the music, and getting down to work. And that’s it. That’s all there is, really.

Recalibrating

Two new paintings on paper

The pond in spring, oil on paper

To my current greatest fears–insolvency, and flesh-eating bacteria–I have to add another: fading away. Which it seems I have done, almost. It just felt for a while that I had nothing new to add to this tale, but of course that’s not really true. The positive spin on my long hiatus from posting is that I have so fully integrated my renewed identity as an artist that nothing seemed remarkable enough to write about. The truth, though, is that I simply lost the narrative thread for a little while; the trajectory from no painting to painting all the time became muddled in my mind with all the new but mundane things I found I had to do in order to continue to build this new life. Worry about the resolution of images. Ship stuff. Find places to show my work. Meet new people. File quarterly taxes. Test inkjet printers. Try different brands of paint. But by not writing about all this, some deeper connection to the process faded. Did the work suffer? I don’t know. I have been working, though. Thinking has filtered into the process in ways that haven’t been really helpful. For example, I had a meeting with a gallery that wants to show my work. The gallery owner, looking at my canvasses and my paintings on paper, said he wanted to show canvasses only. Different sizes, he suggested. Make sure you have some smaller ones and some larger ones. So, I am scheduled for a solo show at the Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford, MA in February 2013. I need to have 25-30 paintings ready by then. Canvasses of varying sizes. It was a bit overwhelming to think about producing that body of work by February, but I went back to the studio determined to keep at it, step it up, focus. And I immediately did a couple of new paintings. On paper. Which brought on a new anxiety that I would never be able to paint on canvas again, and my first solo show in many years would never come to pass because I wanted to paint on paper for a while. So I tried to force it, stretching canvasses, getting them ready to be painted, planning some images, trying them out with crayons. I have to trust I will find my way back to them, because for now, I’m enjoying the paper. I’m sure it’s serving some purpose. I just have to work through it.

Anyway, I found I missed writing. It definitely feeds the work by adding a deeper dimension to my own understanding of the process. So I intend to pick it up again, to keep the thread going. It’s been almost a year since I lost my job and started this life. It’s a life now, not an experiment, not a digression, but the main event. I may need to find some kind of job to keep this going, but that’s okay. It’s got a life of its own now.

I’d like to teach, if anyone knows how one goes about finding a part-time teaching job. Advice is welcome.

Summing up the month of March in one long sentence

Here’s where I am now: finishing up some smaller paintings, continuing to work on my six-panel tree painting on paper, hoping to start another tree painting as a follow up to the first one (completed, finally – terrible photo but here it is), getting samples of archival inkjet prints of some of my paintings (called, somewhat pretentiously, gicleé prints but they’re really just inkjet prints), realizing that I really need a better camera, feeling desperate to get more time in the studio, feeling pleased and gratified about a few recent sales of some of my water paintings, but also alarmed at my diminishing inventory, and trying not to panic about the healthcare deadline (we have health insurance until May 20…after that, who knows?). Whew. One long sentence to try to make up for the fact that I haven’t posted in the entire, eventful month of March. I won’t let that happen again.

A veil of obscurity

Veil, Work in Progress

I can’t always say that my art serves as a metaphor for my life, but I think it’s oddly appropriate right now. I’ve been working on this painting on and off for a couple of weeks while trying to escape the web of difficulties that seems to surround me and my family these days. But I’m starting to find my way clear; after a couple of challenging but focused weeks of work, my husband and I have managed to set up his new solo law practice in a small office overlooking the harbor in New Bedford, MA, where he now sits, working on attracting clients. While he does that, I can get back to the studio. And my blog. (If you know anyone in southeastern Massachusetts who needs a lawyer, I’ll give you his number. Family law, consumer law, what ever you’ve got.)

This painting, of a veil of vines obscuring the form of the tree, has been difficult to get to and difficult to move forward on when I could get to the studio. The challenge is not only to follow the tangle of vines to achieve some kind of visual order, but also to make a painting out of it. Yesterday I felt like I began to get there by paying more attention to the specific blue of the sky in the background. When I started to to see the effect of the dappled light on the branches, suddenly the space started to emerge. Looking harder, seeing more. In this case, I think it helped to be away from it for awhile, and get a fresh look.

I should be able to finish this soon. I have plans for the next painting in this series, which means, I guess, that I have some confidence in this direction and my ability to make something of it. I don’t always know why I choose to paint what I do, but I have to move forward with the faith that it will be revealed as I do it. So I forge ahead, sometimes blindly. It’s exhilarating, when it’s not maddening.

Keep calm, and carry on

Tangle (work in progress)

I have a shameful ignorance of the flora of New England, even though I spend a lot of time looking at it. I’ve been fascinated by the thick, unruly Oriental Bittersweet vines that seem to overwhelm the trees, particularly along the highway, and especially in the winter when the branches are exposed, stark and menacing. I didn’t realize, until I started looking at more of it, how destructive this invasive species is. The impenetrable woven fabric of vines, so visually rich to me, block the sun and strangle the trees, and discourage new growth on the forest floor. I’ve been wanting to paint it for a long time, and I’ve finally begun my first painting this week. The process of painting it feels like an “untangling”, and a logical follow up to the focus-intensive work I’ve been doing with water and rocks. It’s very demanding of my attention.
It’s been such a crazy, draining couple of weeks for me since Chris lost his job, that I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. But somehow, I find the process is restoring my optimism. It’s very much like meditation, painting like this. I’m not thinking about anything, really, just letting my mind follow the tangles wherever they go, losing and finding the threads, catching the bits of light, somehow making a painting. It’s so much better than worrying.

Will this change everything?

This isn’t about art, not directly. This is about the times. My husband lost his job this week, after 26 years of managing a law office dedicated to helping the poor with their myriad legal issues: eviction, foreclosure, domestic violence, child custody. These are the disasters he’s spent his legal career fending off for his clients. It wasn’t always satisfying; the clients could be irrational, uncooperative, demanding, ungrateful. The judges might be indifferent, or capricious. The opposing lawyers could be unreasonable. But all that’s true of any legal practice. It certainly didn’t pay well; that’s where it differed from most legal practices. But he was committed to the principle that everyone deserved access to the courts, even the sometimes irrational and uncooperative poor. Because when he won cases, he saved families. And, as hokey as it may sound, he preserved a little piece of what we value in our democracy: that in America, all should have equal treatment under the law. Without representation, though, there’s no equal treatment in front of a judge. That’s just the way it is. Everyone needs a lawyer.
There were times over the years when I got tired of the problems of the poor. I thought about the vacation house we could have if he were a lawyer for the rich. But, as a working class kid from Beacon, New York, who improbably found himself at the University of Pennsylvania studying history, he decided this was what he wanted to do. He went off to law school in Washington, D.C. still committed to that idea, and started his career at Neighborhood Legal Services in the bleakest of Southeast D.C. neighborhoods. We came back to New England so he could manage the New Bedford, MA Legal Services office, and he stayed there for 26 years, reluctantly giving up some of his management responsibilities after he had a stroke in 2009. He expected to retire from this job – but not this year. Definitely not this week. His program fell victim to decreases in funding and mismanagement by the board. They suddenly had to cut a million dollars from the payroll. All the highest paid staff (except, of course, for the Executive Director who engineered the mess, but that’s another story) got pink slips. He has until the end of February to transfer his cases, pack up the knick-knacks on the bookshelf, and be gone.

But we still have a mortgage to pay. Teenagers to support. Medications to buy. A studio to pay for. Yes, a studio to pay for. Because no matter what happens, I intend to keep making art. There’s no going back now. But things will most likely change in the short term.

I could go on a political rant right now, about how America’s unwillingness to embrace the notion of universal healthcare actually impedes freedom, innovation, and entrepreneurial ventures, but I’ll just say that health insurance will cost us about $24,000 a year (yes, I’ve gotten quotes) if one of us doesn’t get it from an employer soon. So we can’t have Chris starting a solo practice while I build my art career. One of us will need to work for benefits. I sincerely believe that as a family, and as individuals, we’d both do better in the long term if we could take the risk of building a law practice, and an art practice, to serve our needs for the rest of our working lives. But we can’t. So we’ll see how that plays out. Wish me luck.
Every day, I’m still working. The habit is ingrained now, and I’m still present in the moment when I’m in the studio. I’m so grateful for the time I have to paint, and the opportunity to come as far as I have. And I’m not done. Today I’m getting my Rocky Shore painting ready to ship to Georgia, and I’m finishing up some small paintings. Art goes on.

Edge of the Pond, 12x12, oil on canvas

Goosewing Shore, 15 panels each 8x8

New studio, old worries

The new studio

The last few weeks have not been as quiet as my blog has been. My inability to post is just an artifact of the explosion of activity that’s gone on, much of it heat without light, though. I have been working. It just hasn’t been as immediately fruitful as a lot of my time has been so far.
Some positive things to report, however: I moved into a new studio. It’s just the space next door to the old studio, but it’s superior in so many ways: more open space, more usable wall space, better light, more privacy, and, thanks to some insulating the previous tenant did and the door that actually closes, the heat from my space heater actually stays in the room. I was euphoric to have the first studio, but after six months of working there its inadequacies became more and more irritating, so I was excited when this one opened up.
I have also started, somewhat tentatively, a new series of drawings and paintings of the tangles of branches in the winter landscape. I’m thinking of them, collectively, as “tangles”, but what interests me is the amount of observation and focus that I have to invest just to “untangle” them visually. It’s as though they form a metaphorical barrier to understanding and experiencing the landscape, but once you can get through the chaos you see the structure and interdependence of the forms in nature. It’s slow going. Here is the first drawing, very rudimentary, but the start of where I’d like to go with this.

Tangle #1

Drawing this was very much like the experience of painting every single rock in my Jamestown Rocky Shore painting, a challenge of persistence and focus. I entered the Jamestown painting in a national juried exhibit at the LaGrange Art Museum in LaGrange, GA, and it was accepted. So now my challenge is to figure out how to ship this thing to Georgia without breaking the bank. I’m learning every day how complex and consuming this business of becoming a full time artist can be. I’m not complaining, but I wish the learning curve wasn’t as steep as it is. I’m working on connecting with other artists now so I can give and receive the hard-won wisdom that we all acquire separately. The isolation of the studio is only half the work. And the other half of the work requires just as much focus and determination as painting every one of those rocks. This is the part that comes much less naturally to me.

Exhibit information: This painting will be part of the LaGrange National Biennial XXVII between Feb 10 -April 26.

My first exhibit in many years. Hopefully just the beginning.

New year, new challenges

I’m sliding into a bit of a slump, and I’m not sure how to get out of it. I think it has something to do with switching gears after (mostly) completing my Kickstarter project, a series of paintings that were all about water, and all the same scale (48″ x 48″). I say “mostly” finished, because I have something like 25 smaller, related paintings to finish for my Kickstarter backers. I’m approaching them as a single image, gridded out to smaller individual canvasses, based on some of the prep work I did for the Little Compton paintings. I went into this week really eager to start working on them, but I’ve had three frustrating, fruitless days. Today I packed it in early, heading home around 3 in the afternoon, thinking I should do some reading, looking at art, cooking…anything but painting.
I started reading a book, recommended by another artist, Pamela Slaton , called The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love. I thought I needed to have a plan. Auspiciously, the book, written by an artist named Jackie Battenfield, opens with a chapter about how important it is for an artist to have a career plan, and instructions on how to develop one. I found that promising…until I fell asleep. I look forward to reading the rest of it, though, because I am really interested in figuring out how to make a living from all this. But in the process of developing a plan, I feared that for the last few days I’ve been unable to move ahead with the first and most important step: create art. And when that happens, as it inevitably does periodically, I need to step back and not allow the temporary difficulty to suck me into a spiral of defeat and despair. It’s just a slump. Get over it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about scale, and how it affects the experience of the viewer. My 48 x 48″ paintings are exactly the right size to fill a viewer’s field of vision and allow a visceral response. I’m having a hard time translating that to a much smaller scale. I feel like I’m making a picture of a painting, rather than a painting. I need to find a way to make the small paintings significant in themselves, to imbue them with their own presence. I don’t feel that the smaller paintings should be less because they’re smaller. In some ways, it feels like I’m starting over again, like I did six months ago. But the stakes are greater now, somehow.
I’ll get back to it tomorrow, I hope. At the end of the week, I’ll be moving my studio to the space next door, currently being vacated by Matt who’s going to Iowa for a teaching job. The space is the same size as mine, but without a wall breaking it into two parts, and most importantly, it has a door. So I can close it, turn on the space heater, and be warm. That should help.

Recalculating

Salt Pond, Goosewing, Work in Progress

I love my new life. I want to keep it going. One night last week I walked through Copley Place in Boston on my way to meet some friends, and realized how completely I’ve been enclosed in my work bubble and how out of touch I am now. People were Christmas shopping! They had Louis Vuitton shopping bags full of stuff! My first thought was, “Well, these people have jobs, I guess.” My second thought was that I really wanted no part of this getting and spending. The fact is, I can’t afford to shop. I was never much of a shopper anyway, but now, the less money I spend the better I feel. It feels like a real accomplishment to find a way to squeeze more out of less. Every time I pass up some shiny trinket (especially things I would have bought previously without a second thought, like these boots , for example), I’ve bought myself a little more time to spend in the studio. Probably sometime soon I’ll have to give some serious thought to bringing in some income, and hopefully there’s a way to make this art practice pay, but for now I’m just happy to be doing it. My family, fortunately, is on board with reduced consumption, a smaller Christmas, no dinners out (although we’ll have our Christmas Eve dinner at the Indian restaurant; it wouldn’t be right not to), and although I have had more than a couple of early morning anxiety attacks about the heating bill, the anxiety is manageable, balanced by the immense satisfaction I get from finally building a body of work that’s mine.

This is something I’ve wanted to paint a long time: a wall of golden reeds that edges the salt pond behind Goosewing Beach in Little Compton, RI. This is the third painting I’ve done in Little Compton, and as the season advances to winter and the colors deepen, the structure of the space is reduced to a skeleton, and it becomes more visually interesting to me. I hope to finish this (there are actually two separate panels here, each 48″ x 40″, so the entire painting is 96″ x 40″) by the end of the week, take a short Christmas break, and begin planning for the coming year. I’ve been at this for six months now. I’ve completely recalculated the direction of my life in that time. I look forward to what’s ahead. And yes, I really look forward to finding a way to buy these boots someday.

Still haven’t found what I’m looking for

Goosewing Beach, Little Compton 48x48

As I’m making my way through the six paintings about water, I can see some evolution in my style, my approach to the painting, and the results. I’m getting more confident, looser with the brush handling, more willing to take chances and push the color. Still, I worry. What is my work supposed to be? What’s in its DNA that will eventually be manifested somehow? Can I force that to happen by sheer will or perseverance?
I used to worry about making it new, making it different, making it surprising and fresh and astonishing. I really did. I think that was one of the things that paralyzed me years ago, the implicit pressure to produce art that no one had ever seen before, that broke new ground, that shocked or offended or poked fun or demanded your full attention. I looked at a great deal of art like that, and some of it I liked a lot. Some of it I didn’t; there seemed to be a lot of art that required the audience to follow an intricate path through the artist’s semiotic language and history and interior life and obsessions and knowledge – that can be wonderful, if the destination is worth my trouble, and there is, indeed, a path. Too often that’s not the case. I don’t like to disparage other artists’ work, because I know how difficult it is to work every day to create something with substance and meaning and heft. But some art is just bewildering or dull. Difficult art can be wonderful, even deliberately opaque and hermetic art, if there’s a reason for it. I admit, I can’t always tell, but that’s sometimes just because I don’t want to give it the time.
I can do MFA-speak when I have to. Whenever we’re all together in New York I take my kids to the Dia Beacon, in the little Hudson Valley town where my husband grew up and my mother-in-law still lives, and try to explain Robert Ryman and Sol Lewitt and Donald Judd, all of whom I love, to the teenagers, who really want to understand. But I have my guilty pleasures. I love paint. Dripping, messy, exuberant paint. And I love the illusion of natural space created by the messy dripping paint. I know, it’s been done since the Renaissance. But I think that places me on a noble continuum, and I can live with that.
I don’t know where this is going, finally. I find that frustrating and exciting at the same time. Evolution is slow. I just have to accept that, and keep going, confident that I’ll get where I’m going, wherever that is. I don’t care anymore about making it new or astonishing. I just care about making it authentic, which is harder, in some ways.