A Rose by any other name

Yesterday was the artist’s reception for my joint show with sculptor and glass artist James Tracey. It was a very successful show, we had a great turnout, and I had lots of fun conversations. I even sold a few paintings.

Hell is Empty and the Devils are All Here

The most commonly asked question or comment about the work was about the titles. In the past, I never really titled my abstract work. I’d name them things like “Abstract Number 3,” “Abstract with Green and Yellow, or sometimes “Untitled.” Is calling something “Untitled” actually giving it a title? In some circles the thinking is that abstract art should remain pure, with no context to it that gets between the viewer and the art. If you paint a mother and child in front of a window at twilight, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes the view is responding for the most part to the context, not the image as a purely visual experience. Titles can also influence the viewer’s perception of the work, get between the art and the viewer. Now I’m not saying that I subscribe to that school of thought. At least I don’t have a premium membership. I have the free budget plan.

When I started doing these latest paintings a couple of years ago, on a whim, I started giving them titles, and to be honest, I felt a little guilty about it. Like I was going against one of my beliefs about art, that representatives from the cult would come knocking on my door. That’s the kind of crap that comes to mind when you study this stuff in college. But then I started having some fun with it.

Folks asked how I come up with the titles. Various ways. Sometimes they just pop into my head when I’m working on them, like divine inspiration, not always having very much to do with the image itself. Other times there’s something that the image evokes, like a Rorschach test, and I base the name on that. In other cases, I’m stumped for a name. I spend too much time staring at the painting trying to pull some kind of an idea out of it. Sometimes I come up with a theme but can’t find the right words. Then I have a trick up my sleeve. Shakespeare. I look up Shakespeare quotes, sometimes using a keyword but often just scanning through lists until I have an “that works” moment.

I do have a concern that giving the work a title pushes the view into seeing the work a certain way, again getting between the viewer and the image. And although I’m not totally comfortable with that, people seem to have fun with it. I think the titles bring people into the work. When I watch people looking at art, I can tell the ones that just don’t get abstract. They just pass right by it, hardly giving it a look. If the title can make them stop for a second and try to figure out the reason for the title, I’ve pulled them into my schtick. Which is a good thing.

Let's Talk About Me

Before I go much further into my thoughts about art I’ll tell you a little about what I’m doing with my art practice these days and where I come from as an artist. Yesterday someone asked me what my art background was. I’m afraid I rattled on for way too long telling my circuitous career story. I won’t bore you with that now, although I might bore you with it in a later post. I’ll just say I was that kid who drew all the time, my parents encouraged it and kept me in art supplies because it kept me still and quiet. They didn’t call it ADHD then. I majored in art in college and went on to work in just about every art related job from animation to zookeeper (I managed a group of designers). I retired from that management job in 2009 and have done some freelance design work since then. In 20017 I decided to start painting again, something I hadn’t done since the 80s. I cleared out a corner of my basement and set up a tiny studio and started slinging paint.

Right my work has a split personality. One side of that split is my representational work. I’ve been doing landscapes, portraits and still lifes in what I think of as an impressionist style. I use acrylic paint, and lately I’ve been using Golden Open acrylics for this style. I like them because they dry more slowly than standard acrylic paint so they can be pushed around and blended for a longer period of time, which really helps creating soft edges and smooth transitions.

This is one of my most recent landscape paintings

I don’t consider these to be the primary focus of my work. I enjoy doing them, I like the challenge of representational art and I also believe that the discipline involved really helps develop my ability to see.

The other half of this split personality is my abstract work. I’ve been interested in abstract art since I was in college. Much of the work that I did in college and in the early 70s was abstract. Then as now, the process is improvisational, I start making marks, look at what I have and respond to it with more marks. My current process involves putting down a thick impasto layer using Golden Heavy Gel Medium mixed with color and sometimes a little pumice to create texture. I often press objects into the wet gel to create different textural effects. Then I start working in layers, sometimes using opaque paint and sometimes glazing. Lately I’ve been sanding the surface to bring up colors from previous layers. I repeat the process until I’m happy with what I see. Sometimes I repeat the process until I’ve ruined the painting. There’s always a risk involved, I think a big part of creativity is not being afraid to try something, even though you know there’s a possibility that it’s going to be one step too far and you’re never going to be able to make it as good as it was before you took the leap.

One of my abstract pieces

That’s a little bit about what I’m doing right now, in the future I’ll be talking about individual pieces, problems and solutions, and what’s at the front of my mind in terms of my practice. More to come.

I Don't Know Anything About Art, But...

Some time ago I set out to start writing about art. This creates a strange paradox for me. On the surface I should be well qualified to write about art. I've been creating art since I could hold a pencil, I majored in art in college, I have a pretty broad knowledge of art history, and most of my work life involved art in some form or another. However, somehow I feel like I know nothing about art. I haven't paid much attention to the fine art world for years, and I really struggle with understanding some of the avant garde trends of the last half century. Actually I couldn't even come up with an example of current avant garde art. I am clueless about aesthetics and haven't read a word of art criticism in probably half a century. I only darkened the door of the Walker a couple of times since they moved into the new building. I rarely go to galleries and I very rarely have a conversation about art. So that's where I'm coming from as I start this endeavor.

So here's the approach I'm thinking about. I will be spewing my thoughts about art in general. I'm also going to use this as a journal to record my thoughts about my art practice and feature some artists, contemporary and from the past, that I admire and that inspire me. And of course there will be a certain amount of shameless self promotion.