Letting Go

 Here comes a long post:

 As I have been preparing for an exhibition at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine, there's been a lot of scurrying around finishing paintings and frames. I've been working long hours lately, in part thanks to Hancock County and jury duty, but also, I must admit, because there's nothing like a deadline to get me in a panic. One of the more frustrating moments came at 10:00PM the other night when the motor on my HVLP spray system for painting frames started spewing smoke. It has done great service for the past 8+ years so I can't really complain. The timing could have been better, but I guess it had to go sometime.  So, I'm now the proud owner of a 20 gallon compressor and a super swwwanky spray gun. I feel as if I've graduated to a new level of tool ownership. (So anyone who needs their car tires topped up in 2 seconds just come on over.)

...and on to Letting Go: 

I am often asked where I come up with the idea for a painting, or what a painting is about. Here is a good illustration of how a painting can change dramatically from one moment to the next and how it's really just a record of my thought processes during the many hours that I spend at the easel with the painting.

I began a painting a few weeks ago whose central element was a figure contemplatively sitting in the corner of our much painted couch. (The sketch can be seen here, above.) As I was looking at the old photos from the session with the model, I noticed that our departed dog, Ceilidh, was also on the couch. Ceilidh was also known as "the insinuator" for his inimitable ability to squeeze himself up against or in between us as we sat on the couch...and he insinuated himself once more.  The painting was well underway, with the figure almost finished, when the Ceilidh part of the painting began to take over.  I then had a moment when I missed him terribly and realized that this painting was becoming more about Ceilidh and less about a contemplative figure. So I taped a piece of paper over the figure and used pastels to quickly draw in the empty couch and a few objects.  Letting go of the almost finished figure was a very difficult decision. My friend, the writer Jo Curry, once advised that in order to make dispassionate decisions about the quality of a piece, one must "murder your darlings" (or something to that effect); essentially saying that the passages that are most precious must be scrutinized with the same critical eye as the rest of the piece. 

I replaced the figure with coffee can phones; and I think the painting is much the better for it. The painting now touches on my deep sadness at the loss of Ceilidh. The coffee can phone comes from lyrics from the beautiful Crooked Still song "You Were Gone". I've been mulling over the song's imagery for a while; the despair of trying to connect using a can to hear more clearly really struck me. 

       Here are two images of the piece--the first taken just after I started to rub out the figure, and the second of the completed piece. (One may also note how the snowflakes on the ground are in different positions. In the early stages, they are indicated with chalk--a common practice of mine as I consider still life elements in a painting such as this.)

"Eleventh Winter", (in progress)

"Eleventh Winter", oil on linen mounted on panel, 17 x 25.5 inches

Out the Door

 Shoulder Season, 18 x 26 inches

Here's a small group of paintings that is heading out the door today to go to Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth, Maine. Along with "Vacationland" and "Frequency", they are my contribution to a group exhibition that also features work by Doug Martenson, David Vickery, Alison Rector and Simon Parkes. The solo artists for this round are Tom Curry and Colin Page. All in all it should be a very strong show of Maine painting. I look forward to catching up with everybody at the opening reception on Wednesday.

Figure Study, 14 x 11 inches

Study of SB for "Vacationland", 15.5 x 17 inches

Field (Hancock, Maine), 9 x 12 inches

Pansies, 6.5 x 7 inches

Finishing up a painting, especially a big one, sometimes drags on for quite a while. Add to my usual difficulty putting a piece to rest, a stint at jury duty and all the business of summer in Maine and....well, you get the idea. I'm just now finishing the piece for which I did that the greenish study of my son from my last post. I did stick to a very limited palette, though I did not paint over a greenish tinted ground color. (Though I do have another painting on the docket that will hopefully explore the gray/greens more fully). There have been times with this limited palette that I've been about to scream; for example, there's no blue pigment, so the best I can do is mix violet with chrome green and bit of white. It's surprising how blue that mixture actually looks, but I've had to be very strict about not just squeezing out a bit of cobalt blue. If I were to open up the blue range of tones within this already tightly controled color arrangement, the whole painting would crash.

This painting has been more of a narrative meander than I usually allow myself. The initial idea was based on the feeling that this winter had been endless.  I had envisioned one of my sons cutting out paper snowflakes and covering the floor and the model?/babysitter?/mother? with them.  Life intervened, and so one afternoon a few weeks ago I was busy making a wizard hat for my younger son, when I knew I just had to put him and the hat in the painting.  Corin can occasionally be a very inspired, obsessive organizer, so when I suggested that he bring some of his toys to sit with him while he posed, he brought all his stuffed animals and a huge pile of other things along. He arranged his animals (aka the Codys) such that they looked like a mini-audience for whatever was going on --which seemed about perfect to me.
The painting is just about done and the frame is in progress. I don't have a title yet, but here's a 98% finished view.....

36 x 48 inches, oil on linen

Color Choices

T.W. Dewing, "Summer", oil on canvas

I'm working on a project that, for many reasons, has me thinking about Ben Kamihira's paintings. His paintings are amazing in many, many ways, but I most admire them for their controlled use of color.
Each morning for the past few years I've had a constant group of pigments on my palette--usually the anchor is somewhere in the Burnt Umber neighborhood with a few chromatics nearby for good measure. The resulting paintings have a nice warm feel and there's plenty of range in the value scale to model forms, but a one-palette-fits-all approach has its obvious flaws. However, there are so many varieties and combinations of palettes that it ultimately feels quite arbitrary what one chooses. So, the other day, after looking at an old Kamihira print ad from many years ago, I opened a book about another one of my favorite artists, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and was tempted by the desire to paint on a much more green ground than I normally would. I quickly realized that now I'd have to reassess what colors would work with this particular panel. The first question becomes: does one use the green as a strong counterpoint to observed color, or to stay in close harmony with the green? I chose harmony for this go round. So here we go--four pigments, that's all: Terre Vert, Quinacridone Violet, Burnt Sienna and White.

Study of CBB as a Wizard, oil on panel

Two

My second post today--I'm playing catch up on a few items from the last few weeks.

First, I just want to let people know that I added a new "Available Work" section to my web page. It has the absolute freshest DGB paintings as well as a few older pieces that have not yet found homes. There had been some confusion as my "Recent Work" section is not quite as recent as I'd like, and almost all the pieces in that section have been sold.

Secondly, I had meant to post these two portraits that I completed a few weeks ago. They were wonderful, gracious sitters; a pleasure to paint.

Melt

The painting of the snowman and young woman is finished. It's currently being photographed and colorproofed by my friend Ken Woisard. Here's the final piece:

I chose not to add a third figure as it seemed to muddy the waters. Instead I added a bit of clutter to the porch and the red plastic sled filled with sticks in the foreground. The title (for now) of the piece is "Spring Snow". It has been a very long transition from Winter to Spring this year, so continuing to work on this series of winter themed paintings has seemed quite natural. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep it up once the weather turns to summer, though I do have at least one more that I'd like to paint before moving on.

Progress Report

Here are two progress photos of the snowman and young woman project. I just finished, framed, and shipped two portraits, so I'm back with this painting in earnest for the next week. It's moving along pretty quickly, so I anticipate having it finished soon. I started the painting with a light underpainting of burnt umber and white to establish the central figure. Now my palette has expanded, but not by much: ultramarine blue and napthol red are the only two additions. 

I am contemplating adding a second figure (third if you count the snowman) to the painting.  The left side of the porch is the most likely place to situate the figure. Right now the top contenders are either my son wrapped in a blanket and leaning against the post on the left, or my dog curled up on her bed. I did a painting several years ago that I have always loved of a wonderfully soulful hound snoozing on a porch. If I go for the dog as the additional element it will be fun to revisit the subject.