The Latest

Green Chile on a Chinese Teacup
Oil on linen on panel
8x10

Today's efforts. The small "holes" in the teacup (really just thin areas of the ceramic) were a lot of fun.

Rant on a Pet Peeve

One thing that consistently annoys me is the design of paint tube caps. Most manufacturers -- even the best ones -- deliver their tubes with caps that have hard edges and digging little channels. The effect is like running your fingers over a rasping file. I use a fairly large palette, so after setting the 40th color out, the insides of my thumb and forefinger really hurt. If I do it often enough in a week, they are so irritated that it looks like I have a skin condition.

I recently tried a tube of Daler Rowney paint for the first time. Setting it out was heaven, since they've obviously thought about this. Smooth, gentle, rounded edges... twisted off like butter... soooo nice.

Paint manufacturers, take note! Do your human factors research and give us a more usable product.

One of life's little curiosities

How is it that each and every one of Bach's French Suites starts off with an Allemende, which is a dance in the German Style?

Minimal Holbein

Lately I've been spending a little time looking at Old Master drawings. I've been especially impressed to see some of Hans Holbein the Younger's sketches. This isn't unexpected, since his oils typically send me into fits of ecstasy. I have been a little surprised though, at the very minimal approach he often takes to modelling forms. Rather than fully working out the dimensionality of the head, like many other artists do, he simply applies the lightest possible wash of charcoal to make the barest suggestions of a few forms, and allows the viewer to imagine the rest. But they are _exactly_ the right suggestions, and it succeeds brilliantly. Of course, this approach makes sense because they were presumably quick sketches from life, but they I find they stand very well on their own. The particular drawing I was looking at this morning was one of the preparatory sketches for the portrait of Jakob Meyer. I can't seem to find this particular one online (he made several sketches), but his sketch of Sir Thomas More is similarly economical; Although he creates a very strong outline of the head, see how little information he actually provides within the face itself, for instance the forms of his right cheek and jaw.

Cotopaxi

Frederick Church
Cotopaxi
1862
Oil on Canvas
48 x 85 in

For no reason other than it's one of _the_ great landscape paintings. Growing up near Detroit had its pros and cons, but one of the big pros was that this painting is in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and I spent many, many hours in front of it.

Brain Bath

I've heard a number of times that many people who are serious about classical music go through a phase where they only want to listen to Bach. I believe I'm entering that phase. The lucidity, inventiveness, and deep humanity of his music all add up to a mentally clarifying, even spiritual, experience. I just plain feel better when I listen to Bach. Today, my copy of the Brilliant Classics Bach Edition arrived. This is the complete collection of all his works (leaving aside attribution controversies), and runs to 160 CDs... yes, 160. I can't wait to go home and start overflowing my iPod... in particular, I'm eager to delve into the Cantatas, which form an enormous part of his output, and which I barely know.

Chris Howard and I were talking at lunch today about we listen to while working - me painting, him writing. This has actually risen in conversation before, and I've been intrigued that he said the background music while writing can almost become like the soundtrack to the action he's working on... and that it can in no way be distracting or at odds with what he's writing.

While there's no direct analogy with a soundtrack in painting, I am pretty careful about what I listen to while working. I actually have broad tastes in music, and if I'm just doing chores in my studio, anything can be playing. But if I'm painting, it pretty much exclusively has to be classical music. I don't doubt that you can make a good painting while listening to System of a Down or Aretha Franklin, but I'd rather listen to that while driving. Painting to me is essentially a meditative, contemplative act, and I personally find that serious, elevating music puts me in the zone. On a certain level, what goes into the process of making the painting influences the final result. Another consideration is just plain length. Movements of classical pieces tend to be longer than the 3 to 5 minute length of the average pop/rock song... sometimes by a significant multiple. Having a much lengthier musical thought just tends to more successfully foster concentration than if everything changes every 3 minutes.

Interestingly enough, the fact that it's classical music does not stop my studio neighbors from occassionally complaining about the volume :)

On the Auction Block

Wires No. 2
Oil on panel
5" x 3"
February, 2006


Now available. Click here to bid.

Red Dot... or Not..

Although I keep a box of red dots in my studio, I almost never use them. When I make a sale, I just wrap the painting, the happy new owner leaves with it under their arm, and I put another piece up in its place. It's clean, it saves the hassle (for both sides) of requiring the purchaser to come back at a later date to pick up their work, and I have this small paranoia about buyer's remorse lurking in the back of my head. I did see the woman exhibiting next to me this weekend being forced to remove a red dot from one of her works... not an enviable position. Fortunately, she sold a lot of other paintings. Replacing sold works also maximizes use of valuable display space with available pieces.

On the other hand, unless you're paying close attention to what's up on the walls, it can look like you're not selling anything. As it happens, I did well this weekend, but I always had a full display of pieces, and no red dots. I got a few well-meant but unnecessary words of encouragement from other exhibitors ("there's always next year"). That's ok -- I can just smile and thank them.

I'm a little more concerned about it from the collector's side. Obviously, if a piece of art speaks to them, they'll buy it no matter what. But, human nature being what it is, there is a component of the process where people want things that others value as well. Success sells. If a potential collector looks at a display where it appears that nobody else is interested, is that the best message to be sending?

I don't have an answer. One of the pieces that sold yesterday was a painting I brought out of the box to fill an empty space. It was just *the* piece that spoke to the people who bought it, and if there was a red-dotted-painting there, I wouldn't have made that sale. I'm afraid this will have to remain one of those frustrating unknowables about the business...

Unqualified Success

As a followup to the weekend arts festival I participated in: I can't say enough how pleased I was by it. Melrose is a perfectly respectable and highly liveable city (it was on our list of 6 towns when we were househunting last year), but it would not have been first in my mind if I thought about communities in the Boston area with a happening arts scene. However, given a core of dedicated volunteers, the personal involvement and support of the mayor, and TONS of community interest, this smallish suburb was able to mount a weekend event that seriously rivaled and in some ways surpassed the much larger and better-known art walk/open studio events I participate in in downtown Boston.

I'm just blown away that Melrose held an arts festival and probably more than a thousand people came. The crowd had a lot of people with good eyes and obvious sophistication, and there was real buying happening -- almost all the artists sold, and some did very well indeed.

This just really drives home the point that there's a lot going on outside the "Art Epicenters", and that people are very, very eager to have great cultural events right inside their communities. I can't wait until next year.

Melrose Arts Festival

I'm participating in an arts festival in Melrose, Massachusetts this weekend, and I must say I'm really impressed by the organization and the turnout. Last night there was an opening reception at City Hall with a benefit auction that was incredibly well attended, and the crowds for the festival itself have really surprised me. I would have to say it's on the order of 600 or 700 today alone, and it runs tomorrow as well. Serious, interested people, and buyers as well. It is certainly exceeding all my expectations, and really demonstrates that interest in the arts is strong. Bring a good group of artists together in one easily accessible place, and people will definitely come.

And... I got my first request for an autograph, from a 7 or 8 year old girl. When I was that age, I was totally immersed in playing violin. One evening we went to a concert given by a local amateur violinist, and afterwards I approached him for his autograph, as 7-year-olds will do. He was, sadly, not gracious about it, which upset me, though I made sure not to let it show. So today, it seemed like a chance to right a wrong on a very small scale, and I was happy to give Mackenzie the biggest, most flourish-filled autograph I could fit on the back of one of my postcards.

Turner masterpiece sells for $35.8 million

It would be intriguing to know much (in contemporary equivalent currency) Turner got from the initial sale of this painting.

Rockwell Forgery

Interesting article from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/06/rockwell.ap/index.html

I've always had more than a healthy dose of respect for Rockwell, and I'm glad to see he's undergoing a re-evaluation. Not only is he possessed of a dazzling technically virtuosity, but the world he inhabits is genuinely warm and sincere, if, yes, sometimes a little kitschy. But so what?

Although he's always called an illustrator (more often than not as an all-purpose term of dismissal), why not view him as inheriting the tradition of genre painting? Put them side by side, and who wouldn't look at Rockwell's work and see echoes of great, great painters like Chardin, Terborch, or Jan Steen?

Rockwell, The Homecoming Marine

Jan Steen, The Feast of St. Nicholas

Gerard Terborch, The Glass of Lemonade

Chardin, The Soap Bubble

Need I say more?

Frantic.

I realized this morning that I'm participating in 6 shows over the next 9 weeks. This is of course a good problem to have, but it is making my life a little hectic at the moment.

In the near future: I have my usual First Friday opening tomorrow, and then over the weekend I'm in participating in an arts festival in Melrose, MA.

I was up last night until nearly 1:30 framing, etc., and tonight promises to be a long night too.