Darkness and light

In recent days I have been occupied with thoughts of  life and loss in the lives of others as well as in my own.  But especially in those of others, those affected by the pain accompanying sudden loss of life, sudden challenges to feelings of security and safety we all want to embrace us and embrace at all times; the disconnected continuum of love, support and nurture, which is offered most naturally, where does it go?  How do we respond to these losses which we all share?
I felt what I can only describe as a profound empathy for parents and grandparents.  The loss of a child being without comparison, in my mind.  The surviving siblings and the classmates of the tiny lives taken left with only a vacuum to contemplate and the limited ability to comprehend. Their paths to maturity have taken a jolted  redirection.  To contemplate it is one thing, to support these losses will be a continuing challenge and responsibility to individuals as well as community.
Hopefully, the attention to this horror won't fade but will become embedded.  Not just the safety aspects will be appropriately considered and modified but a healthy, long term effort will evolve to care for all who were harmed.
I feel fairly confident that individuals will accept the challenges and responsibilities; I am not so confident that  the nation will match the care and concern of individual citizens.  I hope that isn't the case.
It only takes light though, it seems.  Hopefully it will reach each of us and we'll be surprised and pleased by the experience.

Work on paper

18" x 24"

I'll post some oils from November soon.  Saved too many drawings!

More from "Productive November"!

The top drawing (charcoal and pastel) seems to me energetic and simultaneously still.  I'm captured by the ambiguity and feel satisfied that I have recorded myself in a moment I wasn't fully aware of at the time I did the picture.  Not to sound like a tired beer commercial but it actually doesn't get better than that.  Reminded of what I didn't even notice!  Or didn't dare consider?  A little like living on the edge.  That explains the energy part.
The oil portrait might have something going for it, I'm not sure.  This is how it looked about two weeks ago; I've made revisions since.  Although it isn't as loose as I might like, I've obviously taken license with color and line to fracture some of the reality....the structural, material reality...in an effort to plumb myself in the dynamic and capture something ephemeral. In my mind more important, more significant, more elusive, more satisfying than a life-like rendering.  More satisfying?  Well, maybe my satisfaction is in trying to obtain the short-lived experience and making it last.......which isn't all that different than what the representational realist has in mind but I want to remember how I felt, my emotion, my awareness.  That seems much more "active" if you will.

Two Recent Pieces

Something new/something revised

Charcoal and pastel
on paper

Oil on canvas

So, the image on top is a very recent drawing; below is the final version of all the versions that I'll layer upon this canvas.  If I do the pose again it'll be on a new support!

New

Oil on canvas

Pastel on paper

Oil on canvas
18" x 18"

Here are two new ones and a better photograph of a work I posted here earlier.
I think I'd describe all of these as expressive pieces, i.e. in a style inspired by the various schools of expressionism.  I really want to expand, experiment with, study and create in this style of image making....so much to do and so much opportunity to grow!

Productive November

Well, this month of November has been a very productive month on so many levels.  Just got a new job (working for an accounting firm), had a wonderful family Thanksgiving celebration and have made lots of art, lots of pictures and drawings.  Not going to rank anything, just pleased all around.

Oil on canvas
18" x 24"
Near Davenport Farm

Pastel on paper
18" x 24"

My limited posting here in the month of November (also had a birthday!) just means I've had myself involved in multiple activities and my neglect in posting shouldn't suggest that I haven't been busy in the studio......so, I'll present anyone who stumbles upon these pages or has remained curious about them with some new images and perhaps a comment or two now and then.

I have lots to show for the next several weeks.

Charcoal/pastel

Charcoal and pastel
on paper

A feeling too rare; incentives

18" x 24"
charcoal/pastel/bee paper

These two images have, both of them, enlivened my picture making practice and I hope set me firmly on a path more consistent with my seemingly waxing and waning desire to make expressive pieces in the tradition of the modernist, expressionist painters I so admire.  The portrait/figure above was a short exercise recently undertaken and one I am entirely pleased with.  The photo I've posted isn't too bad, save for the visible clip; can't say that about the oil.  Sorry!

Oil on canvas
18" x 18"

The landscape is a representation of a beautiful view on property where we lived  for about ten years in Duxbury, Massachusetts beginning in about 1996.  I recently found a photo I'd taken sometime ago and was inspired to use the scene as the foundation for the piece.  I've started several others with reference to that property and some from recent photos of the area where I now live.

On balance

Watercolor on foam board

In Progress/oil abstraction

Oil on canvas
18" x 24"

I wish, sometimes, that I wasn't all over the place....in the sense that I have to move from this to something based more on what I'm looking at and vice versa.  I did this with abandon (weird comment since as I look at it it seems so tight!), with a bravado and flourish as if I were waving a conductor's baton.  At least that was so as I initiated it with thinned cobalt blue, pushing out foundation lines to build upon.  I'll show the finished piece soon.
So I'll close with the admonition (to myself!) that I should just be pleased with what it is and never mind what it isn't!!

The Arts Map: Connecting Artists and the Community

The Arts Map: Connecting Artists and the Community

Morrissey/Manchester/Sunday

Given the probable confluence of events over time, my time anyway, it is likely I won't see Morrissey perform in Manchester, ever but when I watch this I wish, wish I could have that experience.  I wouldn't say he informs or inspires my work but I embrace his barrier bending and breaking and I derive an energy and widened perspective from who I think he might be, what he does and those who would surround him.......almost makes him sound like a god!!

Oh, and here's a picture from a recent Sunday likely done while listening to, well, you guessed it!!

Newer drawing

18" x 24"
Charcoal and pastel on paper

Charcoal/pastel figure

18" x 24"

Officially fall

Near Conway, Massachusetts
Oil on canvas
24" x 36"

I've fussed with this picture for so long....well maybe eight or nine months...that I think I just have to stop.  While on a drive last October I stumbled upon some really pretty scenery in Conway, took lots of photos and did maybe a dozen oil and watercolor pieces, including this.  It is the largest and for that reason, perhaps, it has occupied my attention far more than any of the others.  Maybe it looks that way?  Has had too much attention?  Not really sure it's integrated and balanced well; some of the phrases maybe don't go with others.....the foreground is maybe in a different "language"?  An artist friend, whose opinion I value, offered early on in my work on this that it looked like three pictures!  I think I've reduced it to no more than two!

Ocean and shore

Watercolor and gouache on Canson artboard
16" x 20"

Lots of lifting on this.  One of the things I like about doing w/c especially on this support.

From that to this

Untitled
Oil on canvas
24" x 36"

Somehow what started out below evolved into the image above.  I'm still looking at the piece which means that it might evolve further but I'm tending to want to move on from it so maybe it is done!!

Recent Effort

Gouache on clayboard
c. 18" x 24"

"path to another's time"

36" x 48"
Oil on canvas

This is done......I say that knowing my pension for returning to pieces, so we'll see.  But I do actually think it is, for now, a finished item.  And I plan to enter it in a competition this week, a show at the South Shore Arts center in Cohasset which begins in November, I think.  Revealing that intention however is likely the kiss of death.  Seems each time I announce my next move vis a vis getting the work seen the judges decide otherwise.

Self-portrait as a child

Water color and pastel
on paper
18" x 24"

I did this fourteen or fifteen years ago, from a black and white photograph.  One of my very first efforts with water color painting....actually with painting!  Although I think it is interesting,  the ambiguity of it is something I sometimes find unsettling.  I think the boy looks much older than the five or so year old I was at the time the photo was taken.  When I made the picture I was frequently called to consider my childhood.

Mixed media/sketch

18" x 24"
Charcoal and water color
on paper

I've been cruising around gallery websites and reading about marketing strategy for would-be professional picture makers.  Don't know if I should feel discouraged or not; there's a certain "finish" lacking in a large portion of what I do and nothing seems to go in a straight line.....I guess that's what I see on the gallery sites: a polish or finish to the work displayed and lots of the same technique.  Anyway, I like doing what I'm doing and I learn from the work and I think I grow in the process of it all.

More ink

Ink on paper

Sketchbook/ink figure

Did this in 2011 sometime; just scanned it the other day.

Broken

3" x 5"
Ink on paper

Beach combing may be over soon; maybe can squeeze in one more trip.
At the moment I am feeling that my work needs to take a calculated course correction and that instead of playing I need to become, somehow, "serious" about it.....but maybe with luck that notion will pass!!  In a way I hope it will but I really do want to change a few things up.  Like use less random color.  We'll see.

Ink/gouache

Something I did earlier in the summer.

View From the Top

Ink on paper
3" x 5"

Broken Shell

Ink on paper

Did this last week along with several others I'll post sometime.

Quick charcoal portrait

Charcoal and pastel on paper
18" x 24"

Finis with report/Just pictures from here on out!

Untitled
Charcoal and pastel
18" x 24"

I like this; I wouldn't post it if I didn't.  Someday soon I'm going to pick a bunch of stuff I don't care for and post it!!  I know the value to me could be different than what others might think.
Anyway, I've done lots over the past few months and am pushing ahead with things I've not shown.  Unemployment has the dividend of allowing more studio time.

Report: Page Eight

Charcoal and pastel on paper
18" x 24"

Report: Page Seven (Is this all you've done all summer?!)

Untitled
Watercolor/charcoal/gouache on paper
18" x 24"

Haven't been here for a few days.  Away at the beach gathering shell subjects and swimming, reading and doing some occasional sketchbook drawings.  The picture above was done maybe in June I think.  On a side note I've become (this will be of no interest to anyone I imagine-so the self assessment which follows must be proof positive of its accuracy) a Morrissey fan to the exclusion of just about all other music I listen to while working.  Who does that other than an obsessive, groupie sort of personality which I fear, at my "advanced age", I have become!!  Wish I had discovered him and The Smith's twenty-plus years ago!
On the subject of painting, particularly the piece above, I'm reminded to suggest to myself again and again:  "thing slowly, paint fast".

Report: Page Six

This is cheating a bit I think.  I posted the outside of the oyster shell a few days ago...the astute observer will now know that I cropped the image and I should have indicated "detail" in the first instance.  Artistic wise guy, huh?  And, this image is of an 18" x 24" piece....the "outside" of the shell show below cropped from and not actually on that size sheet.  I'll be much more careful in the future!!

Report: Page Five

Untitled
Oil on canvas
36" x 24"

This is something I'm still working on.  Started it about a month ago, maybe more recently and I plan to work on it today.

Report: Page Four

12" x  12"
Oil on canvas

Report: Page Three (Bored?)

Pastel and charcoal on paper
18" x 24"

Oyster shell retrieved from the beach.

Report: Page Two

Pastel and charcoal on paper
18" x 24"

Pastel and charcoal on paper
18" x 24"

Yesterday I took about 50 photographs of new work and a few pieces which still need some effort.  Enough of a supply that I'll be posting for the next two weeks!

Report: Page One

Untitled/Unfinished!
Oil on canvas
48" x 36"

Ok, so here it goes.  I'm feeling like I want to publish these, although at least the work above is, sad to say, a continuing work in progress. I'll search through my computer collection of images and see if I can locate some earlier versions of this.  It is, I feel, productive to look at the path a piece takes.  Doing this work without tracing the evolution almost denies the process.  Well, maybe that's a bit strong but picture making for me is a process containing (hopefully) a  gradual recognition of what's going on, sort of.  I search through planes of balance, symmetry, color and sometimes symbol. This is what this is right now!

Untitled/Unfinished
Oil on canvas
48" x 36"

 

Well, this one is in the same category as her partner...except that it has a lot less activity in terms of floating objects with rough similarity to flowers and leaves in addition to flowing ball bearings.  I think I know where I'm headed, visually speaking, with this.  Symbolically, well that's maybe a different story.  Just another Venus?  I see her that way but she's coiled, almost avoiding discovery, floating and not attached.........

Two "modernist" landscape inspired pictures are below.  The horizon with the hills challenged me and in a flourish last week I made changes I think resolve it.  Anyway, I'm going to hang it over the living room sofa!

The rising horizon looks almost a tropical setting but the inspiration was a trip to the hill town of Conway.  Actually finished it a few months ago; just got around to taking this photograph today!

 Untitled
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"

Untitled
Oil on canvas
24" x 36"




Lastly (for today/Page 2 tomorrow!) something I worked on for over a year before sorting it out. 

Untitled
Oil on board
16" x 20"

  

Summer Report

Gouache and watercolor on board

Gouache and watercolor on board

These two pieces are from work I did early in the spring of this year.  I actually don't have any photos of what I have spent my time on since then.....but I hope to remedy that in a few days!  I finished an oil figure, the oil landscape that was so problematic for such a long time and have continued with three (3) large figurative pieces and an abstracted (sort of) floral-stimulated "design", all with oil.  If I can get my act together this weekend I'll photograph them all as well as several to many charcoal/gouache/watercolor works on paper around which I seem to do the canvas work.  I'll reserve making an observation on the productive use of my time until I've posted again.  So until then, the Summer Report is incomplete.  Come back soon!!