Blog Archives
Q: What do you do when you are between paintings?
Work in progress
A: I would be at loose ends if I finished a pastel painting and didn’t have another one immediately available to work on. It’s one reason I always have two paintings in progress. Another is that when I get stuck on some technical problem, I can switch to the other painting. Works in progress tend to interact and play off of each other. As I am working on a second painting, solutions to problems I had on the first quickly become apparent.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Troublemaker” in progress
A: I’m working on a small 20″ x 26″ pastel painting called, “Troublemaker.” The reference photo is a favorite that I shot with Bryan’s old Nikon F1 in 2002, when I first began studying in earnest at the International Center of Photography. The painting is very similar to the photo because I think the photo is quite good.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am in the early stages – only 3 or 4 layers of pastel applied so far – on a large pastel painting with the working title, “He and She.” The figures are two favorites – a four-foot tall male and female couple, made of carved wood and silver and gold-leaf. I found them years ago at Galerie Eugenio in Mexico City.
These are the largest heads I have ever painted. As I work on this piece I remember one of my teachers saying, “Never paint a head larger than life-size.” Well, here’s to breaking rules.
For reference I am looking at a digital photograph shot with my Canon T3i. My usual practice is to make a c-print from a negative made with my Mamiya 6, but the photo clipped to my easel above is from a high resolution JPEG. Typically I set up a scene at home on a black cloth and photograph it, but my reference photo was taken in my studio without rearranging anything. In this painting I am breaking a few rules, while my creative process is perhaps evolving towards greater simplicity.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I am putting finishing touches on a small pastel painting called, “Spectral.” I worked on it before and after Halloween. Somewhat atypical for my pastel paintings, it clearly reflects the time of year that it was created.
Comments are welcome!
Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue working on a large pastel painting called “Motley.”
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 117
At work on a pastel painting
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Rote practice is not deep practice. Deep practice is slow, demanding, and uncomfortable. To practice deeply is to live deliberately in a space that is uncomfortable but with the encouraging sense that progress can happen. Deep practice is not rushed. Constant critical feedback is essential. Over time the effort alters neural pathways and increases skill.
Anne Bogart in What’s the Story: Essays about art, theater, and storytelling
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue to work on “Motley,” a large pastel-on-sandpaper painting that features two folk art pieces I found in Mexico City in March.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Why do people need art in their daily lives?
With Ida Bagus Anom, Mas, Bali; Photo: Donna Tang
A: That is for each person to decide, but as someone who devotes every waking moment to my work and to becoming a better artist, I cannot imagine my life without art.
I will tell you a little about what art has done for me. In my younger days boredom was a strong motivator. I left the active duty Navy out of boredom. I couldn’t bear not being intellectually challenged (most of my jobs consisted of paper-pushing), not using my flying skills (at 27 I was a licensed commercial pilot and Boeing-727 flight engineer), and not developing my artistic talents. In what surely must be a first, the Navy turned me into a hard-working and disciplined artist. And once I left the Navy there was no plan B. There was no time to waste. It was “full speed ahead.”
Art is a calling. You do not need to be told this if you are among those who are called. It’s all about “the work,” that all-consuming focus of an artist’s life. If a particular activity doesn’t seem likely to make me a better artist, I tend to avoid it. I work hard to nourish and protect my gifts. As artists we invent our own tasks, learn whatever we need in order to progress, and complete projects in our own time. It is life lived at its freest.
My art-making has led me to fascinating places: Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, France, England, Italy, Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, and more; and to in-depth studies of intriguing subjects: drawing, color, composition, art and art history, the art business, film and film history, photography, mythology, literature, music, jazz and jazz history, and archaeology, particularly that of ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, Maya, etc.). And this rich mixture continually grows! For anyone wanting to spend their time on earth learning and meeting new challenges, there is no better life!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 88
Teotihuacan
* 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 men like Ayers, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayers sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayers!”
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.
David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A: I continue to work on a pastel-on-sandpaper painting that I began some weeks ago. For now the working title is “Blinded,” which relates to the maroon and black shape on the main figure’s right eye. I haven’t yet figured out the deeper meaning of that shape.
Comments are welcome!
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