Category Archives: 2013
Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Broken,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
A: I’m putting finishing touches on a large pastel painting called, “Broken.”
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 67
Negombo, Sri Lanka
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
John Robin Baitz: I was just thinking that you still manage to write with some kind of miraculous hope.
Athol Fugard: You’ve got to. Implicit in the act of creation on the part of the artist is: I make it because I want to share it with you. At the end of my process you are waiting for me… Pascal says “Imagine a cell in darkness and the inmates are shackled together. Every morning at dawn, the door opens and the person at the end of the line is taken out and executed and the door is closed. Those left behind read their fate in the opening and closing of the door every day. it is a metaphor of the human condition.” That is Pascal.
Camus comes to that paragraph and says, “There is no question about it – that is an image of the human condition. What do we do during those 24 hours between the opening and closing of the door? Do we cry? Or do we tap the next person in the chain and say ‘What’s your name? I’m Athol Fugard. Who are you?'” And that’s how we create meaning. At the end of the process you are waiting. And that is the act of faith. That is the hope that every artist has.
Quoted by Anne Bogart in “and then you act: making art in an unpredictable world”
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you define success as an artist?
Self-portrait at an architect’s estate in Sri Lanka
A: This is another question that has many answers depending more or less on how things are progressing in the studio. I’d say that you are a successful artist if you are able to keep working and evolving, and are mostly living by your own rules, using your time as you see fit to become a better artist. This means navigating through all the ups and downs, the obstacles – and we know there are many – to art-making and finding joy and on-going discovery in your own particular creative process. The work is everything, as we always say, but hopefully, you have found an appreciative audience and do sell a piece of art now and then.
I know that I am more fortunate than many. Over time I’ve realized that money, i.e., sales, is one of the less important aspects of being an artist. The richness that being a professional artist brings to my life goes far beyond anything that can be acquired with cash!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 66
Barbara’s studio
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realization, or for itself? It seemed indulgent to add to the glut unless one offered illumination.
Often I’d sit and try to draw, but all the manic activity in the streets, coupled with the Vietnam War, made my efforts seem meaningless. I could not identify with political movements. In trying to join them I felt overwhelmed by yet another form of bureaucracy. I wondered if anything I did mattered.
Robert [Mapplethorpe] had little patience with these introspective bouts of mine. He never seemed to question his artistic drives, and by his example, I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged.
Patti Smith in Just Kids
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you select a photograph to use as reference material to make a pastel painting?
Photograph, left, and work in progress
A: Like everything else associated with my studio practice, my use of photographs from which to work has changed considerably. Beginning in the early 1990s all of the paintings in my first series, “Domestic Threats,” started out as elaborately staged, well-lit scenes that either my husband, Bryan, or I photographed with Bryan’s Toyo Omega 4 x 5 view camera using a wide-angle lens. Depending on where I was living at the time, I set up the scenes in one of three places: our house in Alexandria, VA, a six-floor walkup apartment on West 13th Street in New York, or my current Bank Street condominium. Then one of us shot two pieces of 4 x 5 film at different exposures and I’d usually select the more detailed one to be made into a 20″ x 24″ photo to use as a reference.
Just as the imagery in my paintings has simplified and emptied out over the years, my creative process has simplified, too. I often wonder if this is a natural progression that happens as an artist gets older. More recently I have been shooting photos independently of how exactly I will use them in my work. Only later do I decide which ones to make into paintings; sometimes it’s YEARS later. For example, the pastel painting that is on my easel now is based on a relatively old (2002) photograph that I have always liked, but only now felt ready to tackle in pastel.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 65
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
To create demands a certain undergoing: surrender to a subconscious process that can yield surprising results. And yet, despite the intuitive nature of the artistic process, it is of utmost importance to be aware of the reason you create. Be conscious about what you are attempting or tempting. Know why you are doing it. Understand what you expect in return.
The intentions that motivate an act are contained within the action itself. You will never escape this. Even though the “why” of any work can be disguised or hidden, it is always present in its essential DNA. The creation ultimately always betrays the intentions of the artist. James Joyce called this invisible motivation behind a work of art “the secret cause.” This cause secretly informs the process and then becomes integral to the outcome. This secret cause determines the distance that you will journey in the process and finally, the quality of what is wrought in the heat of the making.
Anne Bogart in and then, you act: making art in an unpredictable world
Q: How do you begin a photograph?
Untitled chromogenic print, 24″ x 24″, edition of 5
A: It always begins in my mind long before I actually start making it. By the time I take the photograph, I’ve already thought deeply about the possibilities, the formal arrangements, meanings, etc. so that setting up the objects, lighting them, and clicking the shutter feels like a reward after a long thought process. My fine art photographs are finished works in themselves. However, when I select one to use as reference for a pastel painting, a different but related process of working out my ideas and translating them into pastel occurs over the next several months spent in the studio. Of course, in that case the photo becomes only the starting point for an entirely new artwork.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 64
High Line, New York, NY
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
As soon as an artist has located the vital center of his activities, nothing will be more important than for him to remain within this center and never move further away from it (which is, of course, also the center of his nature, of his world) than the interior walls of his quietly and steadily expanding achievement. His place is not, never, not even for a moment, next to the beholder and critic (at least no longer in an environment where all that is visible becomes ambiguous and preliminary, an auxiliary construction and temporary scaffolding for something else). And one basically needs to be an acrobat to leap back safely and unharmed from this point of view into one’s inner center (the distances are too great and all the spots too destabilized to risk such an entirely inquisitive feat). Most artists today use up their strength in this back-and-forth, and in addition to wasting their energy they get terribly confused and lose a part of their essential innocence to the sin of having taken their work from the outside by surprise, to have tasted it, to have joined others in enjoying it!
Ulrich Baer, editor, The Wisdom of Rilke
Comments are welcome!
Q: Why do you create?
West 29th Street studio
A: There are many answers to that question and my responses vary according to how things are going in the studio. Just now these three are most compelling:
~ to create bold and vibrant pastel paintings and photographs that have never existed before
~ to continue to push my primary medium – soft pastel on sandpaper – as far as I can and to use it in more innovative ways
~ to create opportunities for artistic dialogue with people who understand and value the work to which I am devoting my life
The last has always been the toughest. I sometimes think of myself as Sisyphus because expanding the audience for my art is an ongoing uphill battle. Many artist friends tell me they feel the same way about building their audience. It’s one of the most difficult tasks that we have to do as artists.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 63
Untitled, chromogenic print, 24″ x 24,” edition of 5
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The artist’s job is to get in touch with the dark places of the soul and then shed light there. Sharing the process with others is the point. Within the context of our post-Cold War, post-9/11 climate, shedding light in newly fecund dark places is a valuable activity. The dark places of the soul that haunt our dreams are understandably matched by a tendency to shut out the issues with the busy work of the daylight hours. But without looking into those dark places, as Carl Jung suggested, we will lose touch with our essential humanity.
Anne Bogart, and then, you act: making art in an unpredictable world
Comments are welcome!
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