Archives for July 2016

I have recently been exploring boundaries and have found some beautiful lines that are helping me to be a more thoughtful, loving artist. I’m mostly unloving toward myself, as the creator of my art; but I’m going to change that. I think that “unlove” of every sort will find its way to the canvas and spread “unbeauty” in a world that looks to artists for something higher. To help myself to grow in a positive way, I’m staking out better boundary lines between poetry and prose in my work, and art and life in my mind.

To introduce the idea of poetry and prose, I’ll share the thoughts of a writer, Ranier Maria Rilke, who wrote “Letters to a Young Poet”:
“In writing poetry, one is always aided and even carried away by the rhythm of exterior things; for the lyric cadence is that of nature: of the waters, the wind, the night. But to write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral; there one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help: on scaffoldings, alone with one’s consciousness.”
I think Rilke has drawn a beautiful, descriptive line between plein air/life study work (poetry), and the personal and important work that happens alone in the studio (prose). For us, plein air work and life study are very certainly inward-moving rhythms of exterior things; but as told in pigment instead of verse. We see and experience what is there; we learn from it and respond to it, organizing and recording the experience on the canvas. The beauty of alla prima “poetry” is that it conveys our actual experience to another person, so that they can share in—or even be shown how to see—what we have seen. It is a picture from our outside-in, not our inside-out. The more we engage in this activity, the more enabled we become to show the wonder of creation. Our lyric cadence in the field is just the same as the poets’.

Eventually, the stimulation and inspiration that we experience as faithful reporters of what we see will cause in us a longing to express something that can’t yet be seen, that can’t be copied down from exterior things; something that is born from within our soul. This place of creation in an artist is not related to sales or art events or other artists. It’s deep. It is not conformed to the things of the outside world, but rather conforms those things to its own expression.

The whole painting may be carefully composed and drawn out before a single model is hired or reference photo found. Our “cathedral canvas” takes time, just as rhythmic prose takes time for the writer.
The reason I had to draw lines around these two is because they are two ways of working, and they result in two different products. I have been mean to myself in the past by expecting a quick cathedral. A more productive way to approach painting is to decide what your purpose is and then disallow everything that does not help fulfill that purpose. Do not be thinking of what award you’ll probably win or how much you might get for a piece while you are in your studio! That’s shallow and external and will keep you from going where you need to go, which is deep and internal. Do not expect some profound and epic masterpiece in a two hour on-the-spot painting either! You will draw your skills of observation away from the moment. In the field means in the moment. The only way to honestly and kindly explore these two types of painting is to draw and respect boundary lines and recognize when you are about to cross them.
Everything I ever learn in art turns out to be a good life-lesson for me. Lines and edges are very familiar territory to the visual artist, so one would think we’d be super good at lines and edges in life. I have found the reverse to be true with most of my artist friends, regardless of their age, gender, or level of accomplishment. What I see instead is a struggle to balance our life so that we are able to produce art. I think it’s akin to what Rilke said about prose: there is no one pre-structured way to live our life; everyone has to go deep into their own soul and spirit to learn where the boundary lines are for them.
As for myself, I normally have to use a sort of Phone-a-Friend Lifeline to find things out. Because I’m so close to it, I often can’t see the forest for the trees, which is exactly how I came to see the life-connection to this question of boundary lines in painting. I was up in the mountains, walking through the trees. I’d brought my painting gear and had some high expectations because this was new and beautiful territory. The first day I was there, I just explored. I had my camera but mostly I was just looking. I walked around this beautiful place for a long time; like maybe eight hours. I was pretty sure that where I was walking, no one had ever walked before, which gave me a funny thrill. There were new bird and critter sounds, an eagle and some hawks, wonderful marbled and weird-shaped rocks in the path and little flowers, bright leaves and puffy clouds.

I was alone as I walked, so I sang and skipped and even fell down a couple of times. I was smiling so hard all day that my cheeks hurt when I got back. But dang it! I hadn’t painted. When asked if I’d gotten anything that day, I reported that I had been scouting and had found some good prospects for the next day. But then the next day, a new and irresistible path lured me off course and there was another wonderful day of laughing out loud, climbing on and collecting rocks, getting my feet wet and figuring out which bird was singing this one song. But dang it! I hadn’t even gotten my gear unpacked. On day three, I got my gear out first thing, so I wouldn’t accidentally be wooed into fairyland again. I did not paint well. Two mediocre paintings and it was now the middle of the afternoon, so I snuck away to see if I could get to this one place that I’d seen from afar the day before.

That night, my husband asked how I’d done and I had to rat myself out. I had failed, three days in a row. (He’s my favorite lifeline—because he knows me so well, he can cut me to the quick with the right answer, delivered in just the right way.) He said, “No, seeing that as time wasted is looking at it all wrong. You are resting your mind, exercising your body, and allowing your soul to be filled up with beauty. Don’t punish yourself for that; it’ll negate the experience, and then it’s a failure.”
Artists have to allow themselves to be filled up so that they have something of substance to give. The days of joyous fellowshipping with this new place was the beginning of a conversation that would continue on canvas. I do see that it is much more respectful and real to step into a place and allow it reveal itself in stages, as you would in any new relationship. Robert Genn used to advocate sitting in a place for at least 30 minutes before even getting a pencil out, so you would know what to say about it. So clearly, for me, this place between art and life was in need of some better boundary lines. Life is to be lived well. Art is an expression of a well-lived life. If it gets muddled up and becomes my life, it will not be as rich or deep or lovely.
Heretofore, the boundary line between painting and living seemed obvious. You create art over here, and you do everything else over there. Seriously, “everything else” in my life has been pushed past that line into the “Waste of My Time” category. Not painting? Not doing your job! The line around my art life was small and heavily guarded, and the rest of my life was always a threat to its safety. But I’m now beginning to see that my painting life has to have a much bigger line around it. It has to have a reservoir to draw from and should include books and talks and silence. And no guilt. It’s a fine line, but we have to draw it. Otherwise, we will cut off the source of the quality in our work in order just to have the quantity; just the work.
Last year was my Year of Painting Fast. So far, this year is my year of finding the Power of Peace. I’m coming to see that there is a great energy in quietness, and that wonderful art can come from a restful, joyous place. Just like any good painting: there is activity and then there is a place for the eye to rest; a balance. But underneath the paint, there are fine lines of thoughtful structure, helping us to know when to turn and when stop.

At the end of Rilke’s book, there is an excerpt from a letter that I’ll close with:
“…the using of strength in a certain sense is always increase of strength also; for fundamentally we have to do only with a wide cycle: all strength that we give away comes over us again, experienced and altered. Thus it is in prayer. And what is there, truly done, that is not prayer?”
And another thing, with regard to the recreation idea. There are here, amid this realm of fields, spots of dark ploughed land. They are empty, and yet lie they here as though the bright culms round about them were there for their sakes, rows of fencing for their protection. I asked what was doing with these dark acres. They told me: c’est de la terre en repos. So lovely, you see, can rest be, and so it looks alongside work. Not disquieting, but so that one gathers a deep confidence and the feel of a big time…

Hemingway said, “Clarity is the indispensable characteristic of good prose,” and E.B. White gave the means to that end when he said, “I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.”
We understand editing in writing, but we sometimes treat every stroke we paint as precious. The fear of ruining a painting often leads artists to be timid and spend vast amounts of time polishing bad ideas. But growth can’t come without revisions, without taking risks, and without being willing to try even outrageously different ideas for a painting. There really is no other way to learn and improve.
I have found that in various stages of any painting, revision for clarity is essential. Sometimes I can easily see where a piece needs to go, and other times it’s not until I get trusted feedback that I see things in a new way. But if, for example, the tree I’m envisioning in the middle of the canvas doesn’t work, I don’t want to repaint half the piece to get it back to where it was. I have found several things very helpful to keep in mind as I work through revisions:
1- Paintings in-progress are NOT precious and often require a great deal of reworking. Repeat this in your mind often. The moment I get too attached to something before it’s finished is when I get careful and timid, which inevitably leads to stiff, cautious paintings.
2- Digital paintovers can solve a lot of problems very quickly. I would wager I’m not the only one who has stared at a painting for hours unsure of how to proceed, and the risk-less potential of digital paintovers saves a lot of time and stress. I can quickly try an idea digitally, and then get back to the easel and continue working much more confidently.
When I’m struggling to work out compositional ideas or clarifying adjustments, I take a quick photo of the painting with my phone, import it into photoshop, and then use a digital tablet and stylus to try out different ideas. Having painted a lot digitally, this works well for me, but Photoshop and a tablet/stylus can be expensive and some artists have found faster ways to work out revisions quickly. Artist Josh Clare uses an iphone app called ArtStudio delux ($5, but there’s a free basic version too). This allows him to take a picture with his phone and quickly paint right over it with his finger on the phone. This saves time and doesn’t require multiple machines. It also doesn’t feature the same fine movement and pressure-sensitive controls that Photoshop does, so it forces decisions to be worked through quickly and boldly.
Another thing I have learned about digital paintovers (or any painting study) is to keep them small: our minds compose well at a small scale. The pitfall of digital painting is that it’s a noodler’s paradise, and one can zoom in and in to paint every pixel/hair/leaf. The trouble with this is that A) One ends up painting details but not solving compositional and value problems, and B) when painting from the digital version later, too much fine detail will lead to an attempt to copy stroke for stroke what you did digitally, rather than taking a principled solution and applying it to a painting. So keep it small on the screen!

Let the days of being afraid to try new ideas be over. Be bold and willing to make revisions and explore a piece. Some paintings will go to the cutting room floor, but some will be the best you’ve ever done.

Written by Buddy Odom

Dear Mrs. Browning,
It has been some forty-plus years since high school graduation, and I think of you. What a love you had for Latin! Your petite and brittle frame would slowly shuffle past our desks as we recited our conjugations… bo, bis bit, bimus, bitis, bunt. I wonder how many biologists and doctors cut their teeth under your guidance!
But, sorry, I am not one of them. I didn’t make it to med school. Nor did I complete Botany 101, a field that fascinates me to this day. But one claim I can make – I married a woman who daily practices Tabula Rasa. As an artist, an oil painter in particular, Kathie begins with a blank canvas. A clean slate. A Tabula Rasa. No boundaries. No rules. Just a fresh start.

And why, Mrs. Browning, is a fresh start so frightening? How is it that a new beginning can seem so daunting? Not long ago, inspired by Kathie’s creative courage, I walked into the local art store to purchase a pencil and sketchbook of my own. I knew what a pencil was, but had to ask both where to find them and how to use them. I left with four. Four… like one was different than the other! Come to find out, they are. There are pencils for fine lines, smooth textures, shading, cross- hatching, sharp detailing, smudging and so on. (As if I was not frightened enough).

I still hold my breath when I watch my wife load a brush and lay a paint stroke with seemingly calculated ease. She explains that some of her art is painstaking and laborious while others seem to paint themselves. So, starting with a clean slate
and a truck full of courage Kathie jumps in.

It has taken several up-close and personal years with Kathie for me to discover that I want that. No, not to be an oil painter, but to be me… that way. Brave, risky and free! And so my Tabula Rasa begins. For two months now I have been practicing the discipline called sketching. It is absolutely terrifying, yet simultaneously, there is a strange exhilaration of possibilities. While my instincts are resistant to the idea of drawing a tree, something much deeper in my soul is awakened.

Sometimes fear and freedom seem like cousins. Thanks for the B minus.
Buddy Odom, Class of 1975

Three weeks ago, the award winners of the 25th Oil Painters of AmericaNational Juried Exhibition were announced. The best of the best had the honor of exhibiting in this important show, and only 10 percent of the 2000 entries juried were selected for the exhibit. Held at Southwest Gallery in Dallas, internationally renowned artist and OPA Master Signature member, Kevin MacPherson, selected the winning works. Many awards were given in a number of categories, but the real excitement was reserved for the top award winners in the Associate and Signature Member Division…top prize being thirty-thousand dollars. So that you can share in the excitement, this blog post will not only share the winning paintings with you but also comments from each of the winning artists. Each were contacted and asked the following question:

Please explain your motivation, what you wanted to communicate, and the creative process behind your winning painting?

“My motivation of the Spade Fish painting was the idea of describing light shining through water and the reflection of the fish at the top of the surface of the water. I wanted to communicate light, the translucent quality of light penetrating through the water. My creative process started when I took literally hundreds of pictures of fish at The Oklahoma Aquarium in my home town. I narrowed it down to this image and omitted other fish to help the composition. I painted this on panel with many, many layers of glazing to help communicate the transparencies of the water and the fish. This was one of my first paintings to experiment with glazing as I had never really used the technique before.”

“My motivation for this painting, as many others, came from travel. I was in a small beach town in Morocco, called Essaouira. Everything there is made by hand: boats of all sizes are even built by hand. Gates, ropes. The town is the least brand-driven place I’ve ever been. I wanted to show the natural beauty of the way those fishermen live. I also have a deep respect for the laborer, anywhere in the world. In this particular image I didn’t want to over-compose formally, because life there is rather unplanned and spontaneous. So I wanted the composition to be very natural feeling in composition. As far as process, I don’t do a lot of underdrawing. I started with the head of one of the walkers, and then built composition around his character. I like to paint accumulating different layers. When I start I place a thin layer of retouch varnish on oil primed canvas, and paint rather spontaneously in layers right away. Sometimes I scrape off. I like the moments when, spending lots of time in nature, you see the most unusual colors. Sometimes my wife and I comment about a landscape or a sky, “If you painted exactly that color, nobody would believe you!”

“I hope that my paintings are more like poems than textbooks and if I can inject a little mysterious magic in them, that’s even better. My painting ideas come in different ways. On this one, I had the title first. I cross the Brazos River at the same spot the historic Chisholm Trail did every time I go to see my mother. I often think about painting ideas as I drive and the distant clouds over the river suggested Thunder on the Brazos. The remaining elements of my painting simply came to me a couple weeks later when I saw the dramatic clouds driving between Dallas and Abilene, Texas last fall. The incredible strength of the clouds and distant rainstorm called for an equally strong image in the foreground. I felt action would be good, so I created the girl moving through space. My young neighbor posed for me; it helps that she takes ballet lessons since I asked her to run and gracefully jump over and over to find a pose that I liked. I intended for her to be the modern girl that she is (with leggings and combat boots) but presented her in a classic/vintage way. The strong silhouette of a solitary figure jumping and running through the landscape intent on important business of her own was what I wanted. But then I didn’t want her to be too alone so I added the herons as companions. We watch them fly over our house on their way to the lake all the time and I have always wanted to use them in a painting. I do not know what she and the herons were doing or where they were going, I just know that they were there. This quote by Georges Braque comes to mind: “There are certain mysteries, certain secrets in my own work, which even I don’t understand, nor do I try to do so.”
The cloudy sky on that Texas day was a deep warm phthalo blue. I added yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, Transparent oxide brown and white. The limited palette gave it a harmonious feeling. I also love the vintage look of some of the filters on my iPhone camera. My color choice was partly influenced by the bluish look of the “process” choice.”

“Whenever I am in a town where draft horses are being used to haul one thing or another ( usually tourists) I am easily pulled along in the wake of the carriages. I follow, I mill around on corners waiting for them to approach and much to the annoyance of the drivers, I stand in the middle of the street in the direct path of the buggies moving aside just before I can look up the nostrils of these equine giants. It’s not that I am in love with the idea of how these horses spend hour after hour engaged in the daily grind of pulling visitors through the same route. If anything, I like to I imagine them in pastures far from pavement and stoplights. Yet, when I see the way the sun drapes across their broad curves and hear the beat of those massive hooves I am simply captivated. The geometry of the harnesses, the shine of the hames, the jingle of the chains, the creak of carriage, the smell and sheen of the leather; all of these elements can be distilled into something that is both complex and palpable. This painting, like all of my work, began with a great deal of focus on the design. The windows and shutters felt like the proper anchor for the multitude of curvilinear shapes that dominated the subject. Often in my work, I am attracted to juxtaposing basic geometric forms with shapes that that are gently curved. Draft horses lend themselves so beautifully to this kind composition. I also tend to enjoy interweaving a sense of movement into something that may feel quite still. This is one of the ideas that I focused upon throughout the painting process_ “What will move in this space -what will remain very quiet and how will these 2 opposites work together?”
And the most important question was, “What is the emotional core of this piece?”
I don’t believe paintings need big stories behind them. I generally think in terms of mood because that is the visceral response that comes from relating to the world. The mood is where the story originates. So for me the emotional core of the painting was to be found by bringing the focus to the eye of the horse. So often, the eyes of these animals are hidden behind blinders. I think, had the eye been covered the tone of the piece would be altered. So the eye, the closed eye, even though it could be obscured by all complexities of the harness seemed very powerful. Tired, beautiful, steadfast and halfway home…that’s what I saw on a late afternoon in Charleston.”
Thanks Derek, Daub, Nancy, and Elizabeth for your beautiful paintings and your contribution to the world of art. Congratulations to each of you.