Blog Archives
Q: What’s on the easel today?
A: I continue working on “Gatecrasher,” 58” x 38,” soft pastel on sandpaper.
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Pearls from artists* # 679
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
PC: In your painting, you’ve always kept this speed of movement. One senses that you work something out slowly, deep down, that it’s hard work, but there’s always something fresh about its expression
HM: That’s because I revise my notion several times over. People often add or superimpose completing things without changing their plan, whereas I rework my plan every time. I always start again, working from the previous state. I try to work in a contemplative state, which is very difficult: contemplation is inaction and I act in contemplation.
In all the studies I’ve made from my own ideas, there’s never been a faux pas because I’ve always unconsciously had a feeling for the goal; I’ve made my way toward it the way one heads north, following the compass. What I’ve done, I’ve done by instinct, always with my sights on a goal I still hope to reach today. I’ve completed my apprenticeship now. All I ask is four or five years to realize the goal.
PC: Delacroix said that too. Great artists never look back.
HM: Delacroix also said – ten years after he’d left the place – “I’m just beginning to see Morocco.” He needed the perspective. Rodin said to an artist, “You need to stand back a long way for sculpture.” To which the student replied, “Master, my studio is only ten meters wide.”
Chatting With Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview, Henri Matisse with Pierre Courthion, edited by Serge Guilbaut
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Q: How do you decide when a pastel painting is finished?
“Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38” in progress
A: During the months that it takes to create a pastel painting, I search for arresting colors that work well together. The goal is to make a painting that I have never seen before and that leads the viewer’s eyes around in interesting ways. To do this I build up and blend together as many as 25 to 30 layers of pigment. I am able to complete some areas, like the background, fairly easily – maybe with just six or seven layers of black Rembrandt pastel. The more realistic parts of a pastel painting take many more applications. In general, details always take plenty of time to refine and perfect.
No matter how many pastel layers I apply, however, I never use fixatives. It is difficult to see this in reproductions of my work, but some of the finished surfaces achieve a texture akin to velvet. My technique involves blending each layer with my fingers, pushing the pastel deep into the tooth of the sandpaper, and mixing new colors directly on the paper. Fortunately, the sandpaper holds plenty of pigment so I am able to include lots of details.
Before I pronounce a pastel painting finished, I let it sit against a wall in my studio for a few days so I can look at it later with fresh eyes. I consider a piece done when it is as good as I can make it, when adding or subtracting something would diminish what is there. Always, I try to push myself and my materials to their limits, using them in new and unexpected ways.
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
Work in progress
A. I’m working on “Herald,” 26” x 20,” soft pastel on sandpaper.
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Pearls from artists* # 667
“Magisterial,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 58” x 38”, in progress
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
This is the eternal origin of art – that a human being confronts a form that wants to be one a work of art through him. Not a figment of his soul, but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being […] and the work is imperious: if I do not serve it properly, it breaks, or it breaks me. The form that confronts me I cannot experience nor describe: I can only actualize it. And yet I see it, radiant in the splendor of the confrontation, far more clearly than all the clarity of the experienced world.
Martin Buber quoted in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice by Kate Kretz
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Pearls from artists* # 666
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done. Most of it is not fairy dust in the least.
But sometimes it is fairy dust. Sometimes when I’m in the midst of writing, I feel like I am suddenly walking on one of those moving sidewalks that you find in a big airport terminal; I still have a long slog to my gate. And my luggage is still heavy, but I can feel myself being gently propelled by some exterior force. Something is carrying me along – something powerful and generous – and that something is decidedly not me.
You may know this feeling. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve made something wonderful, or done something wonderful, and when you look back at it later, all you can say is: “I don’t even know where that came from.”
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
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Pearls from artists* # 665
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
We are wordlessly persuaded and taught outright to hide so much of what we have unearthed in our lives. But artists throughout the centuries have described the power of using anguish as a catalyst to fuel their creativity. In Greek epic poetry, ‘Kleos’ refers to immortal renown. Unlike present-day fame, this term referred exclusively to heroes who had surmounted a great obstacle or persevered through tremendous difficulties. There is a certain authority that comes from those who have endured hardship. They have earned the depth of their work.
Darkness contains a great deal of energy. We can use it for destruction or creativity. Only those who tolerate it are able to illuminate the shadowy corners, revealing the nefariousness that hopes to stay hidden. We cannot change our past, or any hell that we have been through. But art provides the means to exorcise the pain that has taken up residence in our body and fashion it into a form outside ourselves, in an infinitely affirmative gesture. The darkness we have passed through was not endured in vain if we mold it into a vision that lights the way out… for us, and for all the other souls who undoubtedly need it.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Showman,” almost finished!
A: I’m putting finishing touches on “Showman,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20”.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 661
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Curiosity and wonder are essential to the art life. Curiosity drives us to look beneath the rocks that others pass by. Wonder helps us recognize the infinite potential of what we find there, so we might spin it into something remarkable. The concepts and visuals that attract me will likely not grab you, but therein lies the beauty. Your job is to keep excavating the things that intrigue you, feeding your head with new ideas. The objective is to build a singular mental stockpile of elements that make up your visual voice. Your brain then makes connections that others would never make because they have assembled a vastly different stockpile of ideas, images, experiences, concepts, beliefs, and concerns.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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