The Color of Spring 

Water Garden, Kentford Farm, Stonington CT.

 

Spring has finally come, and once again I am outdoors painting. It is so refreshing to experience a warm spring day, easel and paints in hand and setting up to create a painting of the lovely moment unfolding before me. The pastel greens and reds defuse the light into a soft glow that fills the landscape. There is so much color in the budding and blossoming trees and flowers at this time of year that I wish they would stay that way even in summer. But alas it can not be. But in all seriousness, each season has it's own special beauty and elements to be captured by the enthusiastic plein aire painter.

The Economic Woes

So many fellow artists I talk with are saying, "I sure hope the economy turns around. Nothing is selling (or just some small sales)". During periods like this I begin to reevaluate what things I should be painting. I start experimenting with subject matter, style and so on. Actually these times prove to be times of growth for me; becoming more mature as a painter.

The Water Bearers

I see opportunity to get at the heart of why I paint. Is it just to paint pretty pictures for the consuming public? Is the reason just to make a living? No on both accounts. Art and painting in my case, is a deeper calling. And I do mean calling. I believe there has to be an inner force at work that makes the artist who he or she is. Art can not be faked. Beauty in painting can not be derived from mere formula.

Sure technique and skill development are crucial to getting at and presenting what is inside the heart. And I am the first in line to stress the importance of developing one's skill level; mastering the craft. That is why these "down times" are useful. Working on the craft of painting in order to get at the soul of it, is necessary for my development.

So, I will be ready when things begin to turn around; when the customers return. And the customers will be treated to the best possible work I can produce.

What the Painter Sees

When I look out at a scene in nature that I am going to paint, I try to simplify and organize what's before me. I don't say, for example, what a lovely light house, trees and garden. I see shapes and the conditions of light effecting them. The question I ask is, how will I organize these shapes on the picture plane to get the greatest sense of what is playing out before me. One of the ways I have found to see and simplify, is to carry a view finder or just use the one on my camera. Seeing the scene before me through the view finder, focuses my vision to within the borders of simple rectangle.

In the painting above, "View From East Beach out to Watch Hill Light" the shapes are organized in such away as to lead the eye from one point to another. All though the wave is a dominate factor, it is not overly so and one can enjoy going passed it and on to the light house and the other shapes in the painting...Shapes lead to shapes.

Rodin and the Truth

Rodin (1.)
"Drawings are always more intelligent than photographic reproductions." This statement is the thesis of who I am as an artist. Drawing is the soul of the graphic arts. I am looking at the life of Rodin because he is a sculptor and I believe that sculptors have a greater sense of form then do painters. By nature they see the other side of the form and their drawings emphasize this. I their drawings for the most part, the rendering of value gives the sense that the form is to be turned to see the other side in the viewers mind.
"My childhood was quite arduous, comparable to that of a workers son." At the time of Rodin’s birth, Jean-Baptiste, his father, had worked his way up to the position of a police inspector. The family lived on 1,200 francs a year. That income placed them in some comfort above many of the laborers they lived among in a very poor neighborhood in the Paris of the 1840’s.
Rodin did not do well in his early schooling. "Modern writers have placed him, retroactively, among the great dyslexics..." He became interested in the realm of art. "When I was very young, as far back as I can remember, I made drawings. A grocer patronized by my mother used to wrap his prunes in paper bags made of pages torn from illustrated books, or even prints. I copied them; they were my first models."
"His hands had the vision". He had a myopia of the eyes. He was always "manipulating pieces of clay with his fingers like an inveterate smoker constantly rolling cigarettes."
He was sent away to boarding school to the old Gothic town of Beauvais where he developed a love for Gothic architecture. "The child with its imagination catches a glimpse of marvelous things-- it is that which the Gothic has accomplished, with its order and structure, in transmitting the magic of nature." The unfinished cathedral close by the school, unfinished because part of it collapsed in 1284, its 150-foot vaults having exceeded the limits, was an inspiration to him, "looking like a living giant."
The artists life must be the pursuit of truth. I know this sounds corny but the objective is non the less important. Seeing form and then transcribing it in such a way as to communicate the essence of the form to the viewer is the goal. Study of nature is critical. The world around us has the information for us to create knowledgeable. Seeing and understanding light, color, shape and line played out in nature is critical to achieving the goal of producing work truly beautiful. The word beautiful is not used here in the sense of "pretty" but in the greater sense of relationship, harmony and mood being communicated in a particular work of art.
An example is the sculptor Barye who was an early influence upon Rodin. He once wrote of Barye saying, "in a shop window, I noticed two greyhounds in bronze. They ran. They were here, they were there; not for an instant did they remain in one spot. I saw them running: they were signed Barye." Later he said of him, "He clung to nature like a god, and he thus dominated everything. He was beyond all and outside of all art influences, save nature and the antique. He was one of, if not the most, isolated artists that ever lived. Emphatically original ... He was himself and himself alone." As one can see Barye was single minded in his search to understand form and to be able to communicate what he had learned in his sculptures.
　
(1.) Quotes from "Rodin A Biography by Fredeic V. Grunfeld



The Shade



Celle qui fut la belle heaulmiere
c. 1880-85

Some thoughts on color

English artist Constable, "The Lock and Mill"

The beginning painter must understand that he or she will get nowhere fast without mastering the use of neutral color. Our world is made up neutral color. The Fauvists school of painting, at the beginning of the 20th century, used only straight, often just primary colors. Their movement only lasted a few years. Color is ment to be mixed and thus neutralized. Neutral color simply means a color's natural state has been modified, in most cases, by it's complementary (complete each other) color i.e. red is modified (neutralized) by green, blue by orange, yellow by violet etc. I also find that various violets are effective in neutralizing colors. Violet is everywhere. Skillful use of these blends make for good paintings.