A Mentor

Burning House, Night, with Fireman, 2007
oil on linen
46 x 64 inches

                         
        Recently I was selected to be part of a show at the Prince Street Gallery in New York, and it was a strange confluence of events that got me there. Last year there was a retrospective of the work of Lois Dodd at the Portland Museum of Art. I missed the show but went in the fall, to see the city, the museum and a bit of Maine. In the museum was the painting above, in the same room with other Maine and New England artists, some of whom Dodd has had a close association with over the years. 

(Concurrently with the Prince Street show Dodd will be giving a talk. 

She is also showing through early March, at  The Alexandre Gallery.) 

      The "Mainers" as I think of them, are artists I knew of, growing up. I studied with Neil Welliver for a semester at U. of P. Unfortunately, at that time, Welliver, Katz, Porter, Barnet, the Mainers I knew about seemed to be outsiders to what was contemporary. Minimalist and conceptual work occupied most of my attention. I didn't know about Dodd at all. She was never featured in the magazines or shows I paid attention to. Last year, the burning house picture popped up on Facebook and I followed its lead.

Self Portrait in Green Window      1971       53 x 36

     This self portrait, at the Portland Museum, is a terrific painting; large enough to put you into a number of spaces all at once. It's totally recognizable and very puzzling at the same time. The paint is quite flat and matte but also transparent in areas it needs to be. As a painter, I particularly appreciate the subtlety of the interior color changes, juxtaposed to the brightness of the outdoor light on the building. Bold move. Also, I love how the composition sits on the rectangle. It's a perfect match to the distortion of her reflection. Her other paintings of windows and frames have similar unsettling qualities that let you in, and hide at the same time. 

After Rain   1972   24 x 18

View through Elliot's Shack Looking South  1971  53 x 36

    The burning house image at the top of the blog was one of the first paintings I saw of Lois Dodd's. It comes across as both idiosyncratic and very honest. The View, above, is another that rang a bell. I knew there was something in my own image file that matched this experience. Below is a photo I doctored a number of years ago and thought about painting, but never did. The green in my photo is unchanged from the original shot. It's a New England spring green that you see in many of Dodd's works as well other Maine plein air painters. My photo is a window cropped from a garden shack in western Mass.

     

     When match ups occur like this you believe they are omens or messages from your muse. So when I ran into the call for submissions for the show, curated by Lois Dodd, I answered.

    Most artists, myself included, spend a lot of time in uncertainty about how they paint, what they paint and eventually if it leaves the studio, how it will be received and perceived. Thankfully, though those concerns are still there for me, they are not as primary. I am focused on feeding my idiosyncratic muse. I am grateful, as an as adult, to find mentorship in the example of a strong, honest soul with a very keen eye.

 

Thank you Lois Dodd, I look forward to meeting you.

 

                          

 

 

Free Range: Observations at the Audubon Exhibit

  Last week I was in New York City and did the mad dash to many galleries in two days to see as many things as I could. The Audubon exhibit was not necessarily on the top of my list but without a doubt, I came away with the most inspiration for my work.

 

          When I was teaching high school I always did a unit on Nature drawing and featured Audubon. His personal story is so engaging and the compositions are so dynamic I knew the kids would be impressed. Because I am now doing a variation on nature studies myself, I wanted to see the actual paintings instead of the reproductions I have experienced over the years. The New York Historical Society has put on a wonderful exhibit featuring; his original work, an example of the elephant folio,  early drawings and paintings showing his development, and personal letters to his long suffering wife, Lucy. If you do not know Audubon's biography I highly recommend reading the saga of this flamboyant and massively talented man. The paintings took my breath away. He is an absolute master of his media and there is no way to see that except from close observation. 

(The exhibit provides magnifying glasses as well as audio sets!)

       On the labels are listed: "pastel, chalk, graphite, ink, watercolor and gouache, with selective glazing techniques." He manages to combine these elements seamlessly and with great panache. Each area of the painting requires a different set of techniques to get a full sense of texture and the innate quality of what is represented. Most artists know how long it takes to get a feeling of mastery over one media. To have such skill is stunning.

 One gallery has examples of his early work, when he was learning his technique and getting to know the birds themselves, albeit in a sad way. The gallery also showed a mock up of his set up so Audubon could pose his specimens in exciting compositions. On a gridded board, Audubon pinned his specimen and then sequentially add the bird in different positions to his overall composition. Hopefully he was able to use just one but unfortunatly we know vast numbers of birds and animals were sacrificed to the early naturalists.        

                               

 

 One of the surprising things I saw was his inclusion of birds that were cut out, and then glued to his work. Nice to know he could not do it all in one go or changed his mind about placement.

 

Here are some other examples of his mastery. 

 

 

    The wing feathers are gracefully and precisely done in ink, on top of the darker surface which appears to be charcoal or pastel; a beautiful soft/hard contrast. And look at those gorgeous necks!

 

 

 

 

The pink fungus on the bark is as beautifully rendered as these birds. 

He shows us every angle with the blush of the under feathers as a perfect compliment.

 

     

The delicate graphite lines of the spider web are just right and that bird seems delighted to be about to enjoy a tasty bite. ( I highly recommend zooming to get a better look at the birds face)

Whether small or large, Audubon seems to give each bird its own personality and unique presence.

This is a detail from one of the most impressive of Audubon's compositions. ( All these birds are painted life size! ) The beauty and tragedy of nature in great emphatic and empathic detail.

And this was one of my favorites. The expression on the owls face and the softness of his beautiful feathers makes us wonder at the mystery of the world and the ability of the artist to express it in ways that are so incredibly moving.

You can see any of the resulting print images from these paintings from a number of web sites. 

This one provides interactive abilities. 

But I urge you, the prints and the paintings are very different. If you are in the New York City area, GO to see the original paintings. They are magnificent and humbling, all at the same time.

Thanks for reading. 

WORD

Dear Reader,

           If you have clicked on this blog, perhaps it's in response to my promotion for the show at Kingston Gallery. If you go there you"ll find my display of word collages in the back gallery. It's a good location because it doesn't get crowded and if you are so inclined, you can spend time reading.

         The card above is an early example of what I started as a daily practice in January. You can click on these and get a larger, better view to make the connections. I am now in the seventh month of making these diptychs. Over two hundred of them! I pick a picture, Google the word and the other words surrounding the image and look for ideas. Voila!... Google does most of the work, but I do the selecting, altering, coloring and pasting. I have been putting them up on Facebook too. You can see more on my timeline if you friend me at http://www.facebook.com/susan.richardshallstein.

          It's been a fun and informative effort. The results morph according to the day, the news, my mood and an evolving aesthetic. Not to go too deep, but it is also revealing and helpful in my other work. Free association is a great tool for creativity and self examination. If I were still teaching I would do this with my kids. I know I would get a lot of interesting results.

       The work falls into different categories, so I'll just do a quick overview for you. Eventually these collages will be made into a book and you will get a notice about that too!

Serendipity

Visual Rhyming

Artists / personal concerns

Current events

Touch of the Surreal

Because I like it

Thanks for checking in!

Sifting

Topaz from Brazil #97975

    

   It's been almost a year from my last bit of blogging and lots of events, large and small have occurred. Professionally, in January I started a new series of paintings based on rocks and minerals that I am exhibiting in July.  Images of them are up on my website under the heading Conversation. You can read my statement about the show there as well. Here, I thought I would do the back story and share a few other thoughts that I have had as I have begun to research and find new ways to paint, using these specimens.

      

      Back in the early 90's I took a field trip with my sons' class to Harvard's Natural History Museum. There, I was particularly struck by the rocks and minerals section. I took some photos, thought about trying them in paint and then forgot about it. I came across my pictures earlier this year and decided to follow through. I just recently made my third trip to Harvard to "collect". I also stopped into the Natural History Museum in New York and frankly, if this continues, I will have enough material for an eon worth of work. 

Here is one of my photos, taken in bad lighting, with the example under glass, and next to it, my painting. The specimen is small, about 4 inches and my painting is about 7 inches on an 8 inch panel.

   
 I've chosen to paint my studies in oil on panels that are covered with a fine threaded linen. This allows for detail as well as drag on the brush. First though, using Photoshop, I isolate the specimen, sharpen and heighten the color and contrast, print it out and then paint from that image. As you can see here, there's a fair bit of difference between my model and the painting. A scientific renderer would object with how I have interpreted this one. I went to a botanical drawing workshop once and was admonished for taking liberties. But for me, the work is more about exploration than  duplication.

          

As I started accumulating finished studies they reminded me of the National Geographic illustrations I enjoyed so much, growing up. There is a bit of a retro feel to them and they seem to "bounce", even as I try to tone them down. It turns out there is a book published of a Century National Geographic Illustrations and here are some terrific examples;

This is by John Sibbick and the kind of thing we all remember seeing and loving as kids. When I went to the site where this was, there was a comment that the raptor needed feathers....no critique on the art....which couldn't possibly be more exciting.

 

 This is a fold out (click to enlarge..it's full of stuff) by Eric Hanson

Really, this is fabulous work. The examples above move toward the fantastic and then below, is another painterly graphic that illustrates a specific natural phenomena. 

In this case a peat bog in all its glory by John Dawson. 

It reminds me of John Ruskin and Beatrix Potters' work.

This somewhat surreal painting from 1950 is a blue bird of paradise by Walter Weber.

 (I love that pink sky with the brown trees.)

      You can access these illustrations as well as their vast photo collection at the National Geographic website. There are also time lapse videos of artists doing their work.

      My personal attraction to the rocks and minerals comes primarily from all the associations that arise.              

In these examples I jump right to the Futurist sculptors like Boccioni.

The Topaz specimen at the top of my blog seems to have a layer of ocean within it and mountain peaks on top. As I paint it, it will undoubtedly morph again, with more hidden qualities revealed.

I found this last illustration when I searched minerals / illustration. Seems like an auspicious and appropriate end....Thanks for reading!

Separating Sulfa Crystals by Thorton Oakley

      

Nests

Nest by artist Benjamin Verdonck on a sky scraper in Rotterdam

This summer has been highlighted by a Nature program which played itself out on our front porch. In June a robin took over my window box, built a nest and laid four beautiful eggs.

 
By mid June the eggs had hatched, and four baby birds were gulping down large and juicy bugs. 

Eventually they grew actual feathers, got too big for their home and pushed each other out of the nest. We witnessed four awkward, but successful launchings.

After they left, I got a new geranium plant to replace the dead pansies. Barely two days went by, a new robin arrived, and a new nest got started. Soon the nest looked finished but the mother had disappeared. I thought, “She's gone to find a quieter neighborhood, I'll take this nest to photograph and paint.” (an Audubon no-no, by the way). 

Later that same day I went back to water my plant, and there, in the dirt, was a bright blue egg. Shamed...I ran back...got the nest and put the egg inside. ( OK.. by Audubon, by the way). Later in the week there was a second egg. Soon the mother robin got used to me going in an out the front door, a midwife to her eggs. One day, one was missing, nothing on the porch or ground or anywhere near the nest. Two days later, while weeding in the driveway I discovered a half empty shell.

Forensics tells me it was probably a raccoon. Our garbage can had recently been rifled. Little prying fingers had managed to lift the lid despite bungee cords wrapped around all three handles, top and sides. Fortunately the remaining egg stayed safe and eventually hatched a pathetically runtish bird.

 

It struggled to raise its heavy head. Despite the lack of brothers and sisters to “egg” things along that bird too eventually fell out of the nest, found it had feet, and stumbled across the driveway into the woods. The mother Robin was chirping madly from the tree tops. 

Both she and my psychic abilities tell me all five birds are doing well. 

What's fun about these events is how things keep showing up in your life. When I was teaching one of my more popular lessons was to make a nest. Students had to identify their surroundings, their persona as a bird and make an assemblage/nest. I got some great results and had a lot of fun myself researching the art and craft of bird nests. Constructing a nest is no small task as you can see by the pictures below. Interspersed with bird factoids are also pictures of artists' creations I discovered on the web. 

Award winning tight weave

Large nest by Nils Udo

Large Nest by the Hammerskop

Large Nest by artist by Anne Hoch , Honey Space NYC

 
Dutch design studio BureaudeBank created a nest of 300 individual silver twigs that hold together much the same way twigs of a real nest do. Designed for a client needing 300 business gifts, each twig symbolizes an important business relationship: if any twig is removed, the nest will fall apart. 

--> a Minimalist

Bird nest by two Zebra Finches presented as art by Bjorn Braun
(Appropriation perhaps?)

MONO-HA

Lee Ufan Dialogue oil on canvas

I recently found out about the artists of MONO-HA, which translated from the Japanese means the “school of things.” Lee Ufan is having his first American exhibit at the Guggenheim and there was a charming article in the New York Times describing his process of choosing rocks for his pieces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/arts/design/lee-ufan-squeezes-essence-from-a-stone.html

He paints as well, as per example above. Basically, as translated from Toshiaki Minemura's catalogue essay from a previous exhibit, MONO–HA consists of “artistic language from things as they stand, bare and undisguised, letting them appear on the stage of artistic expression, no longer as mere materials, but allowing them the leading part”. This is a fancy way of saying, it is what it is. To be the work of MONO-HA, the piece should only reference itself; no ideology, no metaphor, no politics and no emotive content beyond the viewers response.
I was intrigued; researched and here are a few examples, I responded to.

Phase Mother Earth by Noburu Sekine
The earth is taken from the hole, packed and shaped accordingly.

Koji Enokura's cement wall between two trees

Sumi by Kastsuhiko Narita

Mono-Ha started in the late 60's and some commentators say the Italian movement arte povera was an influence. But like all schools of art (or things).. the inspiration came from many sources, not the least, Zen philosophy. Because of its historical basis, coming from an era when many artists were rejecting industry and “objecthood”, MONO-HA work looked radical ... as did the Earth room by Walter de Maria, made in 1977.

http://www.diacenter.org/sites/main/earthroom.

I visited the Earth room several years ago and found it still very effective. The smell, confined in what is a relatively small space, really charges the piece as does the color and textural richness of the soil. My response was to want to jump in. The plexigalss barrier makes it feel like a pool. Walter de Maria is considered to be an Earth Artist but the intention of this piece is very closely aligned with the efforts of MONO-HA. Not surprisingly as I looked more closely at the work of each Japanese practitioner, their personal style comes through. Granted, the material and its relationships to the space and the other elements presented, are primary. But the propensities to certain shapes, colors and modes of presentation run consistent within each artist's work. Their self comes through their choices, quietly perhaps.. but none the less, very firmly present, like the piece of iron placed behind the rock in Ufan's work below.

Lee Ufan Relatum

This quote, which was included in one of the commentaries sums it up:

“In order to designate reality, Buddhism says sunya, the void; but better still: tathata, as Alan Watts has it, the fact of being this, of being thus, of being so; tat means that in Sanskrit and suggests the gesture of the child pointing his finger at something and saying: that, there it is, lo! but says nothing else…”
Page 5, Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes.

That being so. My photo of the robin's eggs, shared on facebook and sent out to friends, elicited a number of remarks as did the LO! coming from myself. What creates that blue? What an incredible miracle of color! My research on that score came up empty. There is no credible explanation. So, besides letting you know that the eggs hatched and all four birds, left awkwardly but successfully, I present you my MONO-HA.:

LO!

Susan Richards 2011