Two Figs

Two Figs oil on board 4" x 6" June 2009

We have a fig tree in our back yard and get 2 1/2 crops a year - the last crop usually gets caught in the fall freeze. These are black Mission figs.

Onion

Onion oil on board 4" x 6" May 2009

This is the first of many small paintings I'll be posting. There are ambitious artists practicing daily painting, generally working on a small scale so that they can do something quickly. Inspired by this I prepared a few dozen boards, but knew I'd never be able to do a painting daily.

I enjoyed doing this particular work; I thought the color was nice and it was a challenge to try to recreate the feeling of the thin, crispy paper skin.

Schorr, Close and Plein Air

Today I thought I would write about three recent art shows that we’ve seen. About a month ago we saw the Todd Schorr show at the San Jose Museum of Art. I’d seen his work for years in Juxtapoz magazine but seeing them in person was much more impressive. His technical skills are amazing and the paintings so complex that it is entertaining but difficult to catch everything that’s going on in them. And the size of some of the paintings is astounding. I can’t imagine anyone completing these works but I’m glad he can. If you get a chance to see the show elsewhere you really should. It’s a spectacle and bravura performance. The nearest I’ve done to this type of work, subject-wise, is when in high school I hand painted three or four sweatshirts with scenes of monsters driving cars because high school classmates wanted imitations of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s artwork. Roth is one of Schorr’s influences.

Following Schorr at the San Jose Museum of Art is a Chuck Close print show. I’ve admired his large portraits ever since I became aware of them in the 70’s and have seen shows of his paintings before. The print show includes a few of his paintings, which are the starting point of the prints, which serve to provide multiples of the same subjects. Close does not produce the prints himself but hires technicians and printmakers to do them. Some were done with traditional methods like Japanese woodcuts, linocuts and etchings, but there are also some unusual multiples such paper pulp and flock. Like his paintings, the prints are generally very large. Since I’ve lately been preparing to do some printmaking again, it was particularly enlightening for me to see the reduction linocuts. This was another excellent show.

Then we saw American Legacy: Our National Parks, a plein-air painting show, at the Haggin Museum in Stockton. First off, I have to mention that the phrase plein-air has become almost an annoying cliché for me, rating right up there with other art phrases that became annoying, like genuine oil painting or oil paint on canvas. I’m not referring to those phrases as a description of the media but as a “special” type of work. This is just what artist’s do, or some artists anyway, and I don’t think there’s anything magical about it. OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll talk about the show. As you can tell from the title of the show the artists painted in national parks. Some of the work was excellent, most of it was very good, but there are a few weak works. Painting rocks, such as mountain peaks and the Grand Canyon is not as easy as would seem and if they’re not done convincingly just end up looking soft, like giant loaves of bread. Not all the national parks are visually spectacular and it was nice to see work from some of the smaller and subtler parks. Actually, about half the work in the show is not plein-air, but studio work based on field (plein-air) sketches. It was a good show to see.

Rose

Today I'm including yet another figure painting that has been around for a while but I've only recently felt it was at a finished state.

Rose oil on canvas 40" x 30" July 2009

Detail of Rose

This work was included in the Alumni Show that just ended at the University of South Dakota. I think I started this painting around 2003 or 2004. The figure was pretty well done in one session, and the background was also done quite quickly. But I never felt sure about it being complete. This year, as I looked at it again, I refined the hands, feet and hair a bit more. I also reworked the blouse, removing some yellow highlights that I had on the shoulders.

Reading

Reading oil on canvas 18" x 24"

I painted this as a birthday gift for my wife Kathy. Usually as an anniversary or birthday gift she'll receive a painting that is an experiment or one-off from me, so she kind of acts as a trial balloon audience for me. In this case, however, she had a specific request which is the painting you see here. Some of the paintings Kathy has received in the past:

33 acrylic on canvas 24" x 30" 2005

34 acrylic on canvas 16" x 20" 2006

Don Pedro Oak acrylic on canvas 16" x 20" 2007

Bloody Mountain acrylic on canvas 16" x 20" 2007

Bob and Kathy oil on canvas 18" x 24" 2008

You'll notice the range of content, styles and technique. The two non-objective paintings, 33 and 34, are an integral part of a larger group of non-objective paintings. Besides representational work, I love doing abstract and non-objective art. I don't plan on including much of that here and instead may do a separate blog to discuss that work.

The other works, as I mentioned, are trials at styles or techniques that I've been thinking about. Sometimes I decide once is enough. This may be the case with the techniques involved in the two landscapes, which became fairly tedious for me.

Ms R

Detail of Ms R

Ms R oil on canvas 48" x 24"

I have several unfinished figure paintings that I've been trying to bring to completion. In most of these the figure is fairly finished while the background is roughed in. The reason for this is that while I had the model present I wanted to make the most of the opportunity. Ms R is one of these. I started it in 2006 completing the figure in one or two sessions and actually got the remainder of the painting in a quite complete state. But as it hung on the wall I never felt as though it was finished. Only recently after a few final tweeks have I felt ready to leave it alone.

This painting, as some people might guess from the title, was inspired by Sargent's Madame X. But at 48" x 24", it is only half the size of the Sargent painting.

Introduction

As I mentioned in my profile, I've been doing art as long as I can remember. One of my early memories from about the age of 5 or 6 is giving a drawing lesson to a few friends of mine. Early on I determined to be an artist and everytime I saw a movie with an artist I wanted to be that person. This seemed especially exotic if the artist had a garrett in Paris. Unfortunately I grew up in a desert art-wise. None of the primary or secondary schools I went to offered any kind of dedicated art instruction and my view of the larger art world was filtered through the narrow vision of two inch wide reproductions in encyclopedias. However, my parents did encourage me in doing art and I got to use a spare bedroom as a studio.

My first year at the University of South Dakota happened to coincide with a notable experiment in art education when Francis Coehlo and an entourage of instructors, including Clayton Bailey and John Torreano, came to campus and instituted a challenge grade system. It was an exciting year, but the art department was just too radical for a conservative state and shamefully, Coehlo and crew were encouraged to move on. My regret is that I wasn't able to take more advantage of it than I did. But the experiment did seem to awake the sleepy art department out of doldrums and improved the quality of education .

But enough about my early years, maybe more on this later. For this blog I won't be doing daily paintings but will post as often as I can.