Scales and Modes

My goal is to encompass through painting, all that I wish to say and experience. I know that sounds far fetched, but I do believe that it is entirely possible. There has to be a way that all parts of you can seep into the painting under the guise of form.

Exercising color paths, just as a musician will play scales and modes until, they begin to slip into the expression in form, without even knowing when they broke from simply doing the scale. This one way that I start.

I will occasionally walk around in the early evening with sketchbook and jot down fleeting impressions and guesses of what I think I see. This exercise can grow into sketches, which looked at a later date reveal unrelated hints to activate my imagination. While painting, these "drawings" are really more like a series of keys that help to unlock a larger whole.

This inspiration can come from just about anywhere. A movie, a walk, or the way the sunlight bounces of a porcelain dish. Closing my eyes, I will see even more. The trick is to be able to focus, and say something clear, without being literate.

Artifact

The painting itself is really an artifact of a visual language that arranges and rearranges. When the composition is complete it stays as such until it physically begins to deteriorate.

Just as a song is written, the painter must begin with that glimpse, something you thought you heard (saw). Something heard next to something different. Something seen-(imagined) touching down the composition to start.

A.P. Ryder

Charles Dekay on A.P. Ryder

"His pictures glow with an inner radiance like some minerals, or like the ocean under certain states of cloud, mist, wind. Some have the depth, richness and luster of enamels of the great period. He is particularly moved by the lapis lazuli of a clear night sky and love to introduce it with or without the moon. The yellow phase of the moon when she is near the horizon, and also occasionally when she is on the zenith- in Indian summer, or when fine smoke or dust is distributed through the air, find him always responsive to the mystery and poetic charms of twilight and deeper night touch him as they do poets. Ryder attempts to reproduce their actuality in colors."

I love the way Ryder clarifies the focus of his pictures. Even though there were others like him, he seems to pop up out of nowhere with no interest in any present art movement. He is clearly anchored in the tradition of great artists of the past, yet is in the present 19th century world.

I like this idea of inner light, glow and such. I think that is where painting is truly independent of any of the literate arts. The arrangements of colors-transparent, deep, opaque, thin washes- free dispersion of pigment in a variety of viscosities of vehicle.

Composing

Painters are very much composers, if you put it into musical terms. The painter doesn't just play someone else's music He always is composing, while playing.

The thing that I do not understand is why a 21st century composer would never consider not having had played and studied music prior to the 21st century, let alone the 20th. In the case of contemporary painters, most have done a master study here and there, I fail to see many developing a full understand of the language as the musician does. The ones that study techniques from the past usually never make the transition to make it there own. This is where the difference between musician and composer comes into play. The musician has to be able to play from all periods and enjoys this. The composer like the artist, is expected to have a full understanding of and is always a contemporary artist.

When I think of someone like Gershwin sitting down at the piano, I am reasonably sure that had the ability to experiment with the full understanding of harmony, melody, texture and rhythm. When I here recordings of him playing variations on his own works, I have no doubt that he has complete control over the music as well as the expression of his innermost feelings.

Studying color harmony and paint/pigment handling along with reading literature and science, helps for the better the appreciation of the medium.

20th Century / Dark Tones

With all the development in the past century in painting, I don't see how someone in this day can paint without incorporating or exploring fully this past era.

There is a deep hidden connection in the dark tones of color. They speak to each other in ways that are beyond our comprehension.

Celestial Compensation

"Painting-- presents him, and provides him in revelation of its treasures a celestial compensation of both artist and viewer."

Eugene Delacroix

Form and Color

The relationship between color and form is something that evades me. At dusk, I look at the local colors and see how they can kind of run into each other. Each thing is made up of its own material with its own molecular structure. The way the light interacts with this structure and reflects is how our perception is of it. Our perception also compensates for the change in light so we don't become confused when light changes.

As a painter, the representation of something should be at the discretion of the artist, and utilized to the most effective means to say what must be said.

I can't imagine a writer getting bogged down in the description to the point where it no longer says what his intentions are. He describes enough to touch off the imagination provided by the knowledge of the reader. The painter must also use this play on visual language to get exactly what he wants. This takes a lot of practice and the study of color and the properties of paint. Handling paint is not talked about by artists too much, but this is what there primarily doing all the time. There are so many ways to apply paint. I love having full control over how thick, thin, transparent or opaque the application. Knowing whether to fling and splash the paint on without touching the canvas, or scooching a grainy wash in with my finger.

Pantheism / Fear

Painting is the secret worship of God

The mark that seems like it's going to ruin it always pushes it to a better place. It's the fear that needs to be overcome.

Past and Present

" You must avail yourself of the means which you are familiar to the time in which you live. That technique from another era that you employ to speak to men of your time will always be an artificial one, and the people who come after you, comparing this borrowed manner with the works of the era in which that manner was the only one known and understood, and therefor executed in a superior way, will condemn you to inferiority."

Eugene Delacroix 1857

Painting- the Verb

To write about painting without discussing the spiritual would be absurd.

For me, most of the drive that creates toward intuition is both the harmonizing factor and the focus.

Painting is more of a verb than a noun, more like playing or composing for a musician. The painter both paints (plays) and composes at the same time. This always comes from the love of painting (tools, color, history, materials). It is not the illustration of an idea executed as some kind of joke with the most minimal dependancy on the medium.

The painter must be literate, and use it as a tool for gaining insight to his own intellectual endeavor. Painting should not be the illustration of an idea born of the intellectual endeavor.

Dim Light

The painting should be able to show in all of its glory - the strength of light and shade to be appreciated even in dim light. Our optical sensors will only detect values and slight tones. But it still should be what it is.

Stumbling on Truth

Stumbling on the truth. That is what painting can lead to be as you are responding to what you love. The truth has a deep beauty that just kind of happens. This is also the way painting becomes an intellectual endeavor. Sometimes it's fun to just sit in your armchair and decipher what you did.

Writing daily notes about painting is the best way to be interpreted because it will be filled with repetitions and contradictions.

Mysterious Force

"In contrast to common opinion, I would say that color has a force more mysterious and even more powerful; it acts, so too speak, without being aware of it"

Eugene Delacroix

I find the above statement to be one of the most important, but subtle aspects of painting. I have studies color theory deeply, including Munsell's color paths. All of this is very important, but the most important thing that I have learned, is that color is associative. You cannot imagine the effect until you actually put the color next to the other and see. The set of relationships is always different, so my minds eye can sort of see vague ideas of color, but nothing is really seen until it's down.
I like the term speak when referring to color, because it is a language. A language that must be developed by the artist for his own self.

I would like to read more of what Delacroix has to say about color. His descriptions show the infinite complexity that can bring about form and light. But I am interested in content as well. When someone looks at the painting and responds, but cannot explain why.

The biggest challenge has been to focus the painting while retaining the cohesive whole.
The figure in my painting is not necessarily depicted. The relationship between the setting or place, and what is going on in that place is the most important to me.
There has to be the human drama. I don't think that it is necessary for the figure to be stuck in there literally.
Somehow Rothko was able to have the marriage of content and form. There is the human drama without the figure.
Somehow, I want to show the human drama at a closer range than the landscape setting, like Titian, but without the literal depiction.

Nature

The content of a painting is a mysterious activity. It must settle in slowly to the viewer.

Man does not have control over nature anymore than he has control over another person's thoughts. Nature is far more encompassing than we can conceive. In painting, this must be respected.

I love it when the painting begins to speak in its own language, something far deeper than your own literal thoughts or desires.

Of course you have to start those desires and thoughts. There is no way to fake getting to that point.

Content

For a while, each painting is just about sensual delight in paint and material. Then all of a sudden, instead of vague suggestions of images in paint, you start to get the deep slow entrance of content. Content reveals itself in ways that surprise the artist. This the main reason to continue.

Structure

The further I paint, the more complicated the structure gets. The closer I look at nature, the more complicated it is. That said, the hard thing to do is to have a focused, concrete image while honoring the complexities of nature.

Form is now becoming something that is slowly chiseled out of light. Illuminated by relationships of colors next to one another.

In Hollywood classic movies, the magic of night scenes are done with a fake built set. This is the only way to illuminate the sensation one feels at night.
I am interested in the twilight hour or night. I think this is because color is no longer the local description. Form becomes a dance through illumination.

Universal / Tragedy

In Rothko's essay on the plastics in Art, has an interesting view of God and painting. He sees all painting as small variants pointing to a universal God, with inexhaustible variables. He stresses that painting has always been the attainment towards some universal, rather than some imitation of nature. I think that there has to be a direct link to the universal in every painting.

Aristotle says that tragedy has to be about someone great with a major flaw of there own. This can give the catharsis needed for the reader to feel that purification.
Every painting needs to have that human element. I like to use the word tragic, but human drama will also fit.

I don't like to think of my paintings as landscapes. I would rather think of them as scenes where the human element takes place. The difficulty is having it all come together at the same time. The figure and its setting need to come arrive at the same time.

It would be wrong to deny the influence of cinema on my paintings. The element of time in cinema can be translated to painting. The viewer has to learn how to read the painting.
Everyone has the language of categorizing representations and sorting them out in terms of understanding what the are seeing.
I hope painting to be the direct index to what's being said. Pointing to what you want to say like an arrow or a finger. Poets do this through figuration of words and phrases, arranging in a sensuous way to lure the reader to understand by turning the literal meaning to a glimpse with shear delight.

Instinct

With painting, there is always a chance that no matter what you do, it just may work in a way that you would never expect.

If you trust your instinct, you will most likely be right.

If you doubt yourself for one second, you will surely be wrong.

Belief

Painting is a system of belief.
Sountine's "Landscape at Ceret" at the Baltimore museum of Art, has fascinated me because, it seems to have a logic of its own.

When the painting begins to operate in this way, I am amazed. Like meditation, I really don't know how it got to that state, nor could I ever reproduce it.

Chance

Painting is my own personal outlet, where things have the chance to come out exactly the way that I want.
Painting has to be a full surrender to God.

Space / Form / Light

If you have truly found your form, the whole world of everything should be opened up to you. Anything that crosses your mind can be incorporated, Anything. Creating the world of light is the central role for the painter.
Just looking at the natural world and its colors, shows me the harmonic relationships of these things. Almost everything I see in nature is modulated.
If you can see how to modulate on the pallet, this will bring the scale to the front.

I like the idea of achieving space in ways that don't make any sense at all. Think of setting up a relation of harmonic grays and then just float a saturated color that just hovers over there in space.

I love it when space just presents itself. The smallest inflection could change the whole thing.

Content

Content reveals itself in strange ways. Ways which I would not have predicted. If you focus on the light, this alone will create the world, not the image. I'm interested in the whole world.

When I look at a Poussin painting, I do not see an image. When I look at a Rubens painting, I do not see an image. I see a painting. Poussin digs deep into antiquity, distills those classical forms and fits them permanently into his contemporary world of his classic love. The trees are just as important structure as the figures. The story told has been repeated many times, but he wants to see them fit together where all the pieces flow in this world of his own.

As a song need to be like a spell, so does a painting, A painting needs to create a world in its own way.

Sensation

I am fascinated by what tiny inflection will make the whole picture unify.
I start always with a sensation. It is impossible to conceive in my mind what will work. My mind must be clear of concepts and ideas. I must trust my instincts however ridiculous it might seem. As I paint, my mind becomes more clear. Clear to the point of meditation. This meditation allows me to confident about every move I make. At this point, there is no such thing as a mistake.

Harmony is an associative process that can only be seen and done, All these things just kind of happen by themselves. I trust that the content, the real content, (not subject matter) is somehow in there. At this point you just got kicked out.

I love the way Ryder will write a poem to accompany his paintings. I wonder which came first?

Prism

I like to think of painting as squeezing out prismatic elements that create light amongst each other to describe in a way that cannot otherwise be described.

Paradise

It's amazing how Dante can describe paradise without cheapening the overwhelming effect of eternity. What promoted him to write this book. I think his beautiful description of heaven could only be done had he some kind of religious of higher consciousness experience.