Pencil on Paper 24″ x 36″
This was an early drawing of mine when I began studying art in earnest. The exercises I gave myself was to do as much work in contour alone. But then I started doing some shading anyway. But I used the shading, as much as possible, to help pop the contour shapes.
evacandra writes:
Hi. I do agree with what you had said about art. Art is great method to express our feeling, right?? By the way, your drawing is beautiful.
First, evacandra, thank you for the compliment.
Second, I guess what I’m trying to say is that art — or the making of art — certainly involves our emotions. But I’d say there’s more to it than that. What I was trying to say in one of the posts below is that art — the act of drawing or painting or writing or composing or dancing or whatever — requires effort. It is the effort of technical skills and focus and energy and time — and that it is this effort that produces good work.
We get confused, sometimes, when we look at a great painting, or watch a terrific movie, great acting, or watch dancers doing fantastic work, because part of this effort — usually — is making the effort look effortless. But it is effort.
This commitment to the effort is what I was talking about below when I said art is what we honor, and how well we honor it.
It takes time to figure out how to write sentences well: time spent over the long haul of years working with words, and over the short haul of writing and re-writing a specific sentence. When i do the work of writing I am honoring the act of communication, which I consider one of the most astounding acts of human behavior.
When I paint — when I take the time to study how shape and light and texture meet and interact within the boundary of a composition — I am honoring the substance of the world.
This honoring is an act of effort: The effort of study of the medium or the form of the art (such as color theory or use of brushstrokes); The effort of actual practice of the activity (such as specific painting); The effort of the thumbnail or rough sketch; The effort of judging the work in progress; the effort of re-working the painting, and so on…
Vincent van Gogh is often considered the “patron saint” of “art as feeling” kind of guy. But it’s important to remember that van Gogh put an immense amount of effort into his study of painting as well as each painting. He studied color theory, his notebooks are filled with comments about how colors work with each other. He experimented and made notes and came to UNDERSTAND how painting worked.
As Robert Hughes wrote:
It was van Gogh’s madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.
Is there emotion in his work? I don’t know. I really don’t. In the same way I don’t know if there’s emotion in the work of Rembrandt or Velázquez or Cezanne.
And yet — I do see is love — love of the paint, love of the form, love of the subjects. I know the love is there because someone took the time to do the art and craft of painting well. So, in that regard, art is an expression of our feelings. But it is revealed through the craft and the discipline and the effort we bring to bear.
[If you want see examples of work by the painters I've referenced, make sure to check out Mark Harden's Artchive!]
I painted this while at a family gathering in Maine, at Sabbath Day Lake.
One great thing I’ve found is that when I pull out my art supplies my nieces and nephews immediately want to start drawing and painting, too. Everyone settles down — and the other grown up get a break for a while!
Dry Watercolor Paint on Cardstock 5″ x 3.5″
SOLD
Click on image for larger version
Art, for me, simply means being aware of what I honor and honoring it well.
We all honor many things. But I don’t think we’re always aware of what we’re honoring. And even when we do, we might not honor it that well — we might not really pay attention to it.
Drawing, painting, and writing stories are my attempt to pay attention to what I honor, to say, “This matters to me, and here’s how I’m giving thanks.”
So, am I really into fruit? Ha, ha…. no.
What I’m trying to honor — with anything I draw or paint — is the substance of life. Here we each are, born unexpectedly, in a world of color and form and mass. We are alive, given a chance to touch this world. I love that. That’s what it’s about to me: to remember to give thanks for having been born and having these years on this earth.
Some early feedback:
I just want to say that your writings are goddamned beautiful. And the drawings are wonderful, too.
Since I’m still just setting up shop, I want to say, “Thanks!” Those are some lovely words to get back!
Oil on Canvas Board 11″ x 14″
SOLD
Click on image for larger version
A friend of mine once said that painting is all about about the color of the light meeting the color of the surface.
I really never understood it before I stepped out my back door the other day. The sun was low here in Santa Monica, and it struck the walls of several buildings behind my building. Some of the walls were ochre brown, others were white. But the colors were alive in a way I’d never seen before because of the color of the late afternoon light, each of them new in a way that could never exist if the sunlight and the color of the paint were not meeting in that unique way at that unique moment.
I went for a walk, looking at the trees, the sky, the buildings up and down Ocean Park Blvd., all of them fresh in that moment.
It’s a lesson for me, I think. To stay alert to what something is at this moment. The color of a building is never the color of the building. It’s the color of the building meeting the color of the sunlight at that moment.
Dry Watercolor Paint on Cardstock 5″ x 3.5″
SOLD
Click on image for larger version
I’ve always had a certain sadness about life. Even as a kid I had a sense of how life was finite, that we make choices, we get our decades, and then it’s all over.
I am terribly in love with life. As I sit here, right now, angled rectangles of sunlight illuminate the blonde hardwood floor of the living room. The fuzzy shadows of the Venetian blinds cut across the patches of light, creating an unexpected strength and purpose.
I am amazed by this. I’m looking at light on the floor and I think it is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I might as well be tripping on acid, but I’m not. It’s always been this way for me. I get caught by light and color.
Conte Crayon on Grey Construction Paper 18″ x 24″
SOLD
I have trouble with reality.
I don’t mean I fantasize and blur reality with fantasy. I mean, I get lost in my head. I’m a writer by temperament. I imagine people and situations and daydream easily. Maybe it’s an Irish-thing. I don’t know.
I do know I often lose my keys, forget to lock car doors, and get sometimes get stuck for minutes at a time while standing at my door about to leave — because some thought or idea or image or notion for a story takes command of my thinking and seems more real than the door I’m standing beside.
I’ve always seen drawing and painting as a chance to focus on the world outside my head. To study the concrete world, to fall in love with it, is what drawing and painting is about.
Of course, drawing and painting is also about falling in love with drawing and painting — with line, with color, with form and composition. But drawing and painting teaches me to see the world. It teaches me the habit of seeing the world.
Oil on Canvas Board 11″ x 14″
SOLD
My father had a massive coronary when I was in high school. The only reason he lived was because he happened to be at the hospital at the time for another operation.
While they operated on him to save his life they had to cut the circulation of his leg to build up pressure in his body to keep his heart pumping. They had to do this for so long that he lost the leg from just above the knee.
I have no idea if watching my father in pain and often weak for so many years affected me one way or another. I really don’t know. I’ve given up trying to attribute our “motivations” to our past circumstances. As much as possible I try to understand that we are what we do — and that’s pretty much it. People in terrible circumstances go on to be amazing, successful, loving people — or not. And people raised in the laps of luxury are often amazing, successful, loving people — or not.
That said, I can’t help the feeling that I’ve never been able to quite settle down because of my passion to actually grab for some love of life while I’ve got the chance. And for me the biggest love of life is all things art — painting, drawing, writing, movies… all of it. I don’t know how to let it go. To be making is like nothing else in the world for me.
I joke to friends that it is my anchor and my drug. It’s the only time I feel safe. And the only time I let all the cares of the world fade from me. In other words, I forget about all the stuff that’s waiting around the corner for me when I’m working on making something.
I’m not saying it’s healthy. I’m saying it’s who I am.
