figurative art

Where I Am Now

Today was the first day I felt I could work in my studio in many weeks. I began this 16 x 20 inch oil sketch. It is a preliminary study for a larger 30 x 40 inch painting I will be making. The figure in the background and the snake in the foreground are taken from a drawing in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum. The dog is Sammie, of course, while the figures are models on the Croquis Cafe website. The composition’s subject is how I see things now. That is rather like hell. However, the presence of Sammie, whom I only added towards the end of the workday seems to indicate I am feeling less hopeless. A good sign.

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From the archives

I updated the paintings page of this website, confining the work to approximately the last seven years so these images had to go. They exhibit my more expressionistic style, and some are painted collages, juxtaposing images from my personal photographs as well as those found in special collections and archives.

oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, 2012
oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, November 27, 2012
oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches 2011
oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches 2011

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Daniel in the Lion’s Den

This painting was created in response to our perilous political times. We are indeed in the Lion’s Den and though I do believe in a higher force at work, only our common sense will save us. Though it is nice to think that faith alone can be a guiding light, we all see faith so differently, that in the political context it gives less comfort than perhaps it should.

Daniel, complete
Daniel, in process
Daniel, in process
Daniel, in process, detail of face

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No chains

I decided to exclude the chains. It is enough to depict two people bound together struggling to be free. Or is only one aching to be free? Difficult to tell from this image. So often people have their epiphanies after they destroy others. And the destruction may not be literal or obvious. It is enough to wear away at someone’s confidence or their self-worth. Often, one’s self-actualization is an excuse to think of oneself above others. I still like the abstract background these figures inhabit. I am reminded of the work of David Park. It has always been a goal of mine to depict figures in a landscape but to have the elements appear to be organically formed, that is, to grow from each other. Complicated, and difficult to achieve.

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Of Feet and Vulnerability

Every time you wear sandals instead of shoes you make yourself vulnerable; you do so if you go barefoot. Why do our bodies make us open to judgement, or worse, attack? Why do we allow ourselves to live inside skins that can be ridiculed, pummeled or desecrated? And after we have been humiliated why do we say “once more, please?” Good questions for which I don’t have the answers. Rather, I choose not to answer. This particular illustrated body is in danger because something has weakened him. His feet being exposed seems to be the least of his problems.

When I first learned about Caravaggio, one of my professors talked about why the artist painted a figure’s dirty feet. These dirty feet showed that the painter used every-day people to represent Jesus’s disciples. The gutter was brought into a work of art. Low meets High. The art of Caravaggio is for the masses and about the masses. Those feet demonstrated that Caravaggio came from a world that was decided on the streets. This is very different than the figures seen in Rubens: those lush, bathed and neatly quaffed figures more at home in the Courts of Kings and Queens.

This is where I am with the most recent painting. Perhaps I have overworked these feet already, and I am feeling a bit insecure about that.

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You Should Not Paint Like This!

No, no, no, do not paint small areas separately, almost completing them, or actually completing them, without first laying in larger areas of light and dark, or color. I was taught since I began courses in painting, that every portion of your painting surface should be colored. Never leave the bright white of canvas because color is relative; a color is seen differently depending on what color it is next to. So, I have departed from that rule here, and I did so with Portrait of Cat and other paintings as well. Why? Perhaps it is too much confidence, or arrogance. I have been painting for 40 years. I have grown to expect certain eventualities. I believe I can figure out what colors will do as I progress through a painting. All will come to fruition in the end because I have put in a great deal of time and effort learning and relearning as I have made my art over the decades. And it is gratifying to kiss some rules goodbye.

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The Quiet Suffering of Pontormo

My work on this new painting made me want to look through a book on Pontormo by Salvatore S. Nigro to examine figure compositions. I was struck by the conveyance of silence found throughout the works. The silence is in the formal compositions of the paintings themselves and in the time and attention it requires to examine them. In The Visitations we see the saints communicating through glances. Even in a painting that would logically contain noise conveyed through screams we see dignity in silence. In Eleven Thousand Martyrs only three figures have opened mouths and their heads and bodies are shown with care and delicacy; they symbolize suffering nobly endured. No screams these, only loud sighs emanate from their lips. The viewer sees these images of pain and we are forced to contemplate them in silence, as befits their locations in churches, monasteries and hospitals. No unnecessary or necessary sounds, only the subjects’ and the viewers’ thoughts ricocheting back and forth, one to another. I hope to achieve something of this, one of the many beautiful aspects of Pontormo’s works, in my new painting, which is coming along (detail below) With this terribly warm and humid weather, I will have to reserve my painting times to early mornings and evenings, so I have enough ventilation in my studio.

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