Hypothetical Land

I think I’m getting back on the blogging bandwagon.  I’ve taken a solid 10 months off which is the same amount of time that I’ve been working at the new art center in Hanover.  The building didn’t actually open until last January, but in November plans started up.  Leading up to all of this, I showed up a couple times with detailed lists of things that I wanted to happen there and the answer to all of my lists was always “yes!” Now here we are leading into our NINTH gallery opening of the year and I could not be more excited about it.

This month the artists who will be showing are three painters dear to my heart.  Zheyu Zhou, Luke LeWand and Vanessa Varjian were all peers of mine in the MassArt painting department.  Each of them has a unique view of what it is to be making contemporary landscape paintings.  I could get lost in any of their paintings.  I went up to Zheyu’s studio in Quincy yesterday to pick up her pieces and you seriously could have gotten lost in one of those things!! The largest painting was not able to come with me because it was 6x8 feet.  Now I know Zheyu’s work is typically large, so I borrowed one of those big utility vans from Jeff’s family but ya, painting was still too big. 

Zheyu begins her pieces by carefully tie-dying the canvas she will later use to stretch, to begin the layout of the image she is heading towards.  After this is complete, Zheyu stretches her canvas around the stretcher bars to create her big squared off surface which then has to be primed with a clear primer or rabbit skin glue in preparation for the oil paint which is to come next.  Once Zheyu gets going with her oils and brushes, she focuses in on using a minimal amount of paint to create a solid blend of where the dye ends and the oil begins.  The process is meditative for her as she clears her mind and becomes one with this slow and careful process.

Zheyu is a truly gifted artist who began her artistic training while living in China.  It sounds as though her formative years of arts training were much more rigorous, as far as perfecting craftsmanship, than I have experienced here in the States.  This training started Zheyu on the way to an incredibly high level of proficiency; she could sit down and draw or paint anything she sees perfectly, but she chooses to create more ethereal works.  These paintings dance on the line of the conscience and unconscious, a beautiful place to be. 

Zheyu Zhou
Looking Homeward, 2011
Oil on Canvas
23"x28"

Zheyu Zhou
Meditation I, 2012
Oil on Canvas
45"x73"

I am so incredibly excited to see Luke and Vanessa's paintings tonight.  They haven't dropped them off yet so I'm not sure that the pieces I'm showing here will be in the gallery or not, but here are a couple of my favorites that I've pulled from their websites.

Luke paints in a way that just screams about his consistent studio practice.  You don't make gloppy, high chroma, gestural paintings like these if you're sitting down to paint once a month.  Luke is on a friggin roll and I love every second of it. There is so much to see here, I want to eat these paintings for breakfast.  Look at the consistency of the paint going from the top to bottom of the right side of "Runaway" and you'll see what I mean.  A thin background of medium yellow under thick, overlapping strokes of muddy green to a slightly thin thwap of blue, back to the yellow before hitting a patch of detailed green, possibly suggesting a plane, then you've got part of a pink figure hanging out on the edge and some fluid, ink wash consistency of green that circles your eyes around the bottom and back up the other side of the painting.  And that is just looking at one side of the painting, holy crap I can't handle it.  I want to jump into these paintings and swim away for one thousand days.

Luke LeWand
Runaway, 2013
Oil and Acrylic on Panel
14"x10"

Luke LeWand
Hills and Homes
Acrylic on Panel
10"x14"

Vanessa Varjian is looking around, picking up all of the interesting patches of light that she sees and putting them into a bottle for us to use as a nightlight.  These are solid, heavy pieces, that transversely are bringing up vague feeling memories.  I UNDERSTAND "November Sun Comfort," I have lived in that world and it has made me feel good.  Along with this Autumn painting below, Vanessa also has a bunch of paintings she did of the snowy landscape.  These are paintings I need to surround myself with in the cold months.  They remind me that there is light, beautiful beautiful light, even during our arid and dying days.

Another thing I'm in love with in these paintings are the dynamic shapes.  In "November Sun Comfort," look in the top right where the yellow horizon line bleeds into the gray sky.  It picks up in a couple spots and then kind of dances around in the outline of some organic and lumpy rectangle.  I don't know what is going on with that shape other than compositionally pulling what is happening below and above the horizon line together, a staple to further create the feeling of solidity in this dreamscape of a land.

Vanessa Varjian
November Sun Comfort, 2012
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas
60"x72"

Vanessa Varjian
Garden Beds: Long After the Storm, 2013
Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper
9"x12"

Opening is this Friday from 6-8 at Laura's Center for the Arts in Hanover.  You can follow this link for more details.  If you miss the opening but want to come and check out the work anyway, it will be on display until the week of October 21st, just let me know when you want to stop in and I'll be sure to be there to give you a tour of the space.

Also, here are links to the artists' websites in case you want to see more of their work:

Zheyu Zhou

Luke LeWand

Vanessa Varjian

Sandpaper Factory

I've been back in the Sandpaper Factory for a month now thanks to Scott Ketcham's artistically generous spirit.  This is the third Summer he has given me rein over the space while he is away at the Vermont Studio Center (I MUST go there someday).

I've been getting tons of work done and am absolutely thrilled about it.  I am also currently thrilled about the opening I will be having in the space on July 21st.  My girl Zheyu will have some work up as well; she has been busy making gigantic things in there lately. Check that link I made through her name in that last sentence, her work is amazing.

 Lots of portraits have been happing.  Originally I started making them as practice for a piece I am doing for a friend, but I've been getting into them a lot more than I imagined.  I'm having a lot of fun working the oil pastels in with the paint and searching for a rhythmic balance back and forth between them.  This portrait above kinda looks like there is a swollen mouth situation going on, but I think I'm over it.  I suspect that my precision in portraiture will increase with more practice.  While I do care a lot about the growth of that precision, I am equally as invested in the compositional quality of each piece.  I want to add another sentence here figuring out that equation and what it means for my paintings, but this is all very new work for me and I am still working on those answers.

Been getting outside a bit too:

And what I feel to be an obligatory "Serious Painter" portrait.

I truly hope that if you are reading this you will be able to come to the exhibition.

"Summer 2012"

July 21, 2012

7p-9p, party to follow

83 East Water Street.

4th Floor

Rockland, MA

Practicing Studio Practice

Back in the studio.  Working there on a piece for a friend and from home on a piece for me.  Here are a few shots of the evidence to support that information:

organization.

prep.

(partial) mess.

happy hand

too bad it is probably letting tons of horrible chemicals into my boddy.

work in progress.

Oil on Paper

Well, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Here are a few of the images that I am currently working with in preparation to go up onto my website.  I've begun the color correction process to get the images identical to the paintings.  They are all just about perfect.  From there I will crop and square them to have a clean looking image.  

Earth Hole in Red, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Landscape with Grayscale, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Markers, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Primary and Gray, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

I always have to keep an eye on the clock while working in Photoshop because I could very easily get sucked in for the entire day and miss everything else I am supposed to do.

Website

I've spent the past couple of days working on a website and wow, do I have a lot of unedited images!  Every picture is warped and needs to be squared off because I am nothing of a photographer.  I have to admit though that I love the excuse to play around in photoshop for hours at a time.  The only color editing I ever do is to correct a shadow or something like that in order to make the images as close to the actual pieces as possible.
Hopefully the site will be up and running in the next month or so once I get all of the kinks worked out.
Here are a couple images I've excavated from the Spring of 2010 when I was doing all of my sketching digitally.

Fall

Here is some of my work from this Fall. 

Click on images to enlarge.

Honeymoon Drawing

Charcoal on Paper

26 x 32.5"

Honeymoon

Oil Paint and Oil Pastel on Canvas

42 x 56"

Earth Slope

Oil Paint and Oil Pastel on Canvas

36 x 48"

Landscape on Paper 1

Oil Paint, Oil Pastel and Charcoal on Paper

18 x 18.5"

Process Post

Here is a post I've been working on all week.  I've tried to take photos at each decision point.  Of course not EVERY decision point, but highlighting the important ones.

I still have to measure this one but the sketchbook resting to the left of the canvas is about 12" long for reference.

This one is close to being finished.  Next time in the studio I will be lightening up my darkest dark blue and adding some glazes to my gray mid-tones for added depth and texture.

And here is "Earth Hole with Hidden Shape" again.  I thought it was much closer than it actually was to being finished when I posted it last time.  In really good lighting it looked okay for me but out of that something was lost.  I decided that a minor shift in light can't be to blame for an entire painting failing and that it actually was kind of dirty looking, so I got back in there. 

(This last one is a little warped because of the angle I took the photo)

Heading into Fall

It’s been a while; I’ve moved out of one studio and into another, my position as the art teacher at a summer camp has clearly ended and new work is in progress!

Here is my fabulous new plant that I am very excited about.  I’ve had it for a week or two now and it grows these beautiful little orange flowers that look like goldfish.  I think it may need a transplant soon, what do you think?

Here are two paintings that I am currently working on.  I think they’ll be done soon.  I’m very excited for a couple new colors these two have each added to my palate. 

 Cobalt Teal  mixed with a bit of Cobalt Blue (plus a little Titanium White and Cadmium Yellow Dark mixed in places) is giving me some exciting new blues in the center of the second painting.  I am also happy to put my Dioxazine Violet to use with Yellow Ochre and Burt Sienna to get a new and rich fleshy tone which you can see underneath some glazing in the bottom right area of the first painting.

Recently I have been taking drawing a lot more seriously.  Here are three completed pieces and one work in progress (shown with source material).  All are approx 27x21” but really that is a big estimation, I never trust my mental measurements!

Here is a tiny sample of my sketches and source material used before and throughout a piece.

A few artists I am currently looking at:

Cristi Rinklin

Arthur Dove

Thomas Moran (Big Yellowstone painter)

Nancy Friese (A temporary faculty member at MassArt, I saw her artist talk a couple weeks ago and spoke with her afterwards, amazing work!!!)