Jay Ryan paints.

Back from Vermont

8/1/2012

Re-entry to the real world and returning home after the two weeks at Bennington has been a bit harsh. On Sunday everything came out of the truck and was dropped in the kitchen. Before any chores were tackled, the still a bit tacky canvases and panels needed to be arranged...for drying and visibility in the house. Not only was there laundry to wash and fold, but all of the art materials to sort out and re-organize. Biggest realization: I used a lot of paint. So, based on the adjusted palette of colors and the plans for daily painting, I've inventoried colors and made a good-sized shopping list. And, on the coming-up-fast list: The Monday Night Drawing participants are having a September show at ArtWorks in New Bedford, so I'm also scrambling to get several small watercolors framed. It will be easy to do all these little tasks, soon, but I still have a few weeks of having to be in the office each day.
So, here it is Wednesday afternoon. The laundry is done. I painted Monday night. I painted a bit yesterday. And this morning two painter friends came to the Point to paint and I used watercolor all morning.
I still haven't taken the paint tube inventory, nor have I chosen the figure paintings to be framed, but I've had brushes in my hands each day since getting home. Now, if I can take care of those two chores tonight...

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Landscape Week at ANE

7/22/2012

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My first, and favorite painting from Week One.

Well, it's Wednesday and so far, my fellow artists and the surroundings here in Bennington have been very inspiring. It's been hot, but nothing like the heat and humidity I remember during last summer's stay. Crazy lightning last night, no thunder; this morning as muggy as southern Florida, but, hey - this isn't a weather commentary...

After arriving and settling in on Sunday, participants joined together at five to meet with their mentor and other artists in their groups; it seems there are about eighty-five of us gathered in the green hills of southwestern Vermont for Week One. Christopher Chippendale (www.christopherchippen-dale.com) is a Boston-based painter who will be shepherding eleven others and me through this week. Five of us painted together last summer, so it has been great to reconnect with them and already have a core group feeling of camaraderie; several others have been in courses with Christopher in the past, so there seems to be a nice energy early on. Our first session, after dinner Sunday night, included a pretty inspiring slide presentation that was filled with a number of my favorite artists and paintings as well as some works unfamiliar to me. Euan Uglow is a good "for instance" (http://paintingperceptions.com/figure-painting/euan-uglow). He isn't a landscape painter, but his figure work includes beautifully painted surfaces...a great new reference for me.

Monday morning, 8:15, several cars were stowed with everyone's gear to haul to the morning site. The goal for each day is an a.m. and afternoon painting. The sites on campus are beautiful as is the surrounding area. Everyone expects the hills and vistas of Vermont to be stunning, but the architecture, whether it's grand or simple or squalor, is magically lit by the sun in the mountains.
Jennings Hall is a mansion-like edifice that sits atop a long hill at the north end of the campus. I set myself up in the shade and focused on a geranium-topped, vine-covered cement post and the greenery surrounding it. For the life of me I can't use oils to paint foliage well (part of the reason I'm here), so there was Monday morning's goal. That's the painting you see at the top of this blog page (8 x 16, oil; as I edit this and add images, it is Sunday the 22nd. Please feel free to critique or provide feedback on any of the paintings.
Monday afternoon we moved downhill to an area where we could select views with lots of shade or sunlight, so I looked up the hill toward the Jennings Mansion (painting is at the end of the blog-not my favorite of the week, so not much to say).

Produced two paintings on Tuesday that I feel were pretty successful. In the morning we moved to the northern end of campus by faculty housing...after meandering the neighborhood, I focused on a short lane with beautiful shadows blanketing its surface, some dappled sunlight in there - and a sun-soaked car parked somewhat askew in the driveway of the home at the end of the lane. The light was hitting everything perfectly. So I set up the French easel, organized the palette, sketched quickly on the canvas and began to mix color. Laid in a few "color spots", (fortunately) before the light changed entirely. As I grappled with that, I watched a family exit the house carrying towels and a picnic basket; they then drove off in the car leaving a bit of a void in my motif. Shortly after their departure there arrived a different vehicle; it, too, came and went before dad returned in the original car. Figuring I better work quickly, I plopped some color in there to at least hold the space and, sure enough, off he drove. The painting will need a few studio touch-ups, but here it is:

My other favorite, 6 x 6 oil.

The painting directly above is my favorite of the week; it's a tiny 6" x 6" oil at the McCullough Estate a couple miles away from campus in North Bennington. We returned there for the day on Thursday. Thursday's painting - ugh. I learned that I should never have tackled painting a greenhouse en plain air. There's a photo below of what I was looking at because at some point once I get back, I'll work on it as a studio painting.

Wednesday morning was a bit showery so we stayed close to home and our studios at Swan. It never rained, but rather than setting up the easel and oils, I decided to work in watercolor and attempt a few quick sketches. Completed three, chopped off the first one out of vanity - it was awful, but the other two and a few of my watercolor sketches from the evening life drawing sessions are below:

The Wednesday morning watercolors - thank you Heinz for returning to your chair after lunch!

A few of the 5 or more minute sketches from evening life drawing sessions

So, I mentioned the great Thursday greenhouse experiment; the painting was a disaster, but I learned several things. 1. I hate canvas boards, 2. Take a few reference photos when the light is where wanted it to be, and 3. Limit my colors and brushes.
Friday was another not so successful day as far as results, but the inherent learning is there. Again, a few lessons: 1. Even though the French easel's legs adjust for a couple of hours of painting on a hilly slope, 57 year-old legs do not, and 2. The glasslike reflective surface of early morning water on a lake is shattered by swimmers.
Enough written to help me remember the week. If you want to know any more, drop me a line. Tonight begins next week's workshop, "The Head Examined", with Catherine Kehoe. I've been looking forward to this since January, so hopefully I will produce several interesting and successful portraits.

Monday afternoon, view of Jennings Mansion

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blog...diary...diary...blog?

6/25/2012

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Will this blog turn into the diary or thought record I've been turning over in my head for the past several months? More and more, as I'm turning off my "school head", I'm pondering my minute to minute thinking - like, what's going through my head as I sit on the deck at Wilbur Point staring at "my world"? And, how do I keep that that thinking and the epiphanies within it fresh? How did (or will) my recent visit to the MFA, to see the Katz exhibit and search out some Chinese watercolors, change my artistic decisions? How will I begin to make sense of - and organize - all of my artistic thinking and planning, the paintings that have been coalescing in my head? I guess I'm beginning to think about such questions because I've never been able to give any significant time to letting really creative ideas like that enter my head. School is out but I've lived a life that has included at least 180 school days, more recently 220, of every year since September of 1960, my mind is more than a little excited.
After reading all kinds of artists' biographies in the past several years and marveling at the reconstruction of days and episodes in the lives of their subjects, I've always been fascinated by the smaller moments in artists' lives. Finally, in my own life, as I move from a career that's been a part of me for 36 years, I anticipate I'll be able to recognize a few of those smaller moments of my own and relish them.

Most mornings are beautiful at Wilbur Point. Whether I sit on the deck or at the kitchen table, whether it's sunny or pouring or snowing, the colors are extraordinary. Using the south wall of my house as an x axis, I have a 180 view of the point. Silvery gray cottages block the full expanse of water, but there are four distinct openings that allow me to keep track of subtleties at this large entrance to the Cape Cod Canal. What affects my view on any given day? Primarily tides and weather. Their effect on distances - some days Falmouth seems like it's close enough to swim to - are profound. How have I missed that before?

So, today I began preparing to write some serious thank-you notes. I'm not a fan of printed Hallmark cards - I mean, I do use them from time to time - so I've found a use for all of my old watercolor sketches. I've been chopping them up on the papercutter, signing or initialing them, then attaching them to card stock. After putting together about twenty-five cards I laid them out to see how they looked quality-wise. If there was an image that glared back at me, more than likely it was something that appeared weak design-wise, or (hopefully) because it was exceptionally good.

I'm happy with the results, but happier with the unexpected possibility for strong mixed media collages. The whole grid thing I mentioned a blog or two back again struck a chord. By cutting up small squares of abstract limbs and torsos and heads, then arranging them as 8" x 8" or 10" x 10" squares, I've salvaged the better aspects from quick sketches that may not have been completely perfect.

Enough for Day One, June 25. Now that school is out (and even though my days aren't done until late August) my plan is to add something here each day. It may just be a quote...it might be a litany, it could very well ramble, but it will focus on the making of, and thinking about, art.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle

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Daily painting...will I go seven straight days, (well nights actually)?

5/17/2012

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So far this has been a pretty busy painting week...from Sunday afternoon (screw the yard work, I say) to Monday Night Drawing in New Bedford to a week of no night meetings (there's a luxury). Daily painting, even if it's just for an hour or two is so foreign to me that I'm amazed at what it does for the quality of my work. Anyway, this week I've managed a bit of painting each day. Four days down, three to go...

So, Sunday afternoon I gridded off a good sized sheet on an Arches block into eight smaller rectangles. Took my little plastic visualizer thing and materials outdoors and managed to reduce four outside vistas into 'almost abstract' little landscapes and just focused on color and light. Early afternoon's not the best time of day for that, but I liked the results. When it got a bit too breezy on the Point I headed indoors and did the same with semi-still life/semi-interior landscape views of the living room and kitchen. The fact that both rooms are strewn with the the remnants of my day to day existence (oh, to find another cleaning lady...anyone nearby know of one?) and my ability to adjust the lighting made those pretty interesting as well. I'll keep the eight quick sketches around and maybe build one of them into something abstract on canvas. (In retirement...no oils until then.)

Monday Night Drawing at ArtWorks in New Bedford is a highpoint of each week. Monday's model was Dana who has lustrous tresses of long brown curls that cascade over her shoulders or pull up into beautiful shapes on the top of her head. After a full sheet of ten overlapping three-minute sketches - these were very successful, I usually mess up at least three of the quick ones - we moved on to longer poses. With Dana I always focus on portraiture -her face and shoulders and hair are always intriguing - and finally, after studying those features regularly for going on three years, I've gotten some reasonable likenesses. Not anywhere near spot on, but I'm feeling better about them.

Tuesday night's a good painting night because there's not a thing on television that interests me...now John Irving's new novel on the table is a different story, but I managed to stay away from that as well. Anyway, Tuesday night I dabbled at five different paintings, large full sheet attempts at what I hope is a successful series that clearly works as a related group of paintings. I'm anxious to get some feedback and critique on these, but they're too big to scan easily without some extensive photo-shopping them back together, so for now...they're only words to the rest of the world. There's a bit of self-portraiture in each of them in an abstract sort of way.
Painting One: Mary's Red Hoop is based on an old photograph of a childhood friendship. It's a watery gray-toned wash illustrating a memory of two kids set in a somewhat faded landscape that contrasts with a bright red hula hoop and green-gridded Beaver Cleaver lawns.
Painting Two: Drowning has been built from a life painting of a face down male nude seeming to float in shallow water. Again, washy blues and purples and skin tones with the face-down head in the foreground contrasting again against a gridded background.
Painting Three: Portrait of the Artist as an (Old) Painter is based on mirrored portrait works by Goya and Fairfield Porter. In it I sit painting, reflected in the bottom right corner of a tall standing mirror while the model stands at the mirror. The model grasps the mirror's top and is seen in life and reflected images. Again, I've used brightly colored gridded blocks in and around the figures.
Painting Four: Beach Cottage represents a long-admired oceanfront cottage near Ogunquit/Moody beaches in Maine. Again using watery gray tones and faded imagery, it (hopefully) evokes long ago memories of summer beach excursions with my family. The blue gridded blocks work their way into the sky and negative space of the watercolor paper.
And Painting Five: Double Self-Portrait represents further work on the painting shown on the "In Progress" page of the website. I've used the gridded blocks as a means of creating some of the background images - washy gray small details that make the entire work seem more complete. I've also added detail to the figures and facial features.
So, that's the week so far and it's only Wednesday night. Putting these thoughts down on paper seems to finalize and formalize some of the painting process for me (and it gives me something to do while I pay one-quarter attention to American Idol - I'm going with Phillip). Now, I can approach tomorrow night with fresh eyes and, hopefully, bring a couple of these works to full fruition.

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. ~Paul Strand

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Thinking on paper...Rice paper

5/7/2012

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I guess I won't become a regular blogger until I become a regular painter and that won't happen until the reality of retirement sets in. Although...the time is getting much closer. The days are numbered between now and the end of the school year on June 18. The pace of my day-to-day activities will then ease considerably.

In July I'll return again to a Bennington summer art residency and work for a couple of weeks at landscape and portraiture along with nightly doses of watercolor figure painting. I anticipate that those experiences will launch me into my new daily life as a painter. The tease of painting all day, every day during recent school vacation weeks has shown me that I can easily lose myself in a morning and afternoon (and night) of painting, so I'm not concerned that I'll ever be bored. I also know that I have hundreds of paintings completed in my head, just waiting to make their way onto 140# cold pressed paper or canvases.

About five weeks ago I began a ten-week Chinese watercolor painting class in Newton with Ma Qingxiong at the Chinese Cultural Center. All of a sudden I've found myself on a vastly different cultural and artistic adventure using brushes and paper that respond very differently...rice paper and Chinese mop brushes are polar opposites from my WN Series 7s and D'Arches papers. My usual plein-air style, or painting directly from the model, is quite unlike the traditional methods of Chinese painting.

The class is pretty much taught in Chinese, although there is enough English spoken that I don't feel completely out of the loop. There are nine Chinese women, the instructor (his web page: www.maqingxiong.com is worth a good long look), and me. It's a friendly group that's welcomed me. And, the language barrier's not so much of a problem. Over the course of the night, Mr. Ma gathers his pupils for a series of demonstrations. One of this teacher's best techniques when he speaks in English is his use of metaphor, comparing painting and poetry, painting to music, and painting to literature. Those language-based comparisons, combined with concise visual demos, are aimed directly at my learning style.

Coupled with his instruction are clear and colorful photographs. On night one we gathered around Mr. Ma's table for our first set of directives. As he began his explanation, two of my classmates produced cameras and began taking snapshots of the teacher as he worked with his palettes (small white saucers), brushes and paper. After a few minutes, the quick demonstration painting was hung on the white board at the front of the class with four magnets. Another couple of photos were taken. This procedure accompanied each of the teacher's demonstrations that night. During the second demonstration, Irene, one of my classmates, whispered to me, "Be sure I have your e-mail address. I will send you the photos." A couple of days later I received the e-mail. There were three pages of a Word document, each page with five or six color images from the instruction, showing clearly from start to finish the entire evening's instruction. What a wonderful learning technique! (And here I am completing my thirty-sixth year as an educator never having thought of such a thing.)

What else have I learned? So far, plenty...but I think for now I'll incorporate that knowledge into future blogs when I know better how it's going to impact my day to day work. I don't think I'll change from western watercolor paper to rice paper, but I will, for sure, and have already, begun to use my brushes differently and even begun to use the mop brushes for quicker washes on the full-sized sheets I'm now using.

...and today's quote (which makes me feel very energized)...

There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.
- Henry Moore

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Mid-Winter Thinking

2/14/2012

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Wow. It's Valentine's Day. 2012 is flying by. I am spending more evenings in the studio, trying to avoid "couch syndrome", the act of falling onto the sofa immediately after arriving home from work. I'm looking forward to the winter break that starts after school on the 17th.

What am I working on? Well, it's finally dawned on me that by having several paintings going simultaneously, I can think about a painting's themes and elements and not push myself into quick and rash decision-making. Monday Night Drawing, or in my case, watercolor sketching, has had me unable to spend any more than 25 to 30 minutes on a painting. I've broken through that barrier by shifting to larger paper, acquiring better brushes--there's absolute magic (what snap and texture!) in Winsor Newton's Series 7 Kolinsky sable brushes--and redesigning the layout of my watercolor palettes.
So, that being said, I have three larger watercolor pieces on the worktable and easels where I can stare, ponder, reassess, add, shift, change or re-think the direction in which they're heading. One's directly related to the figure work that happens each Monday night; the other two are portraits--one from life; the other is based on a very old, small Polaroid photograph. By comparing and addressing three paintings simultaneously, I'm discovering that I can better see color contrasts, mood, composition strength, and better think about the principles of design. The elements of design...I'm okay with them, but by focusing on the principles I'm trying to create a sense of "unity" across paintings, rather than just within one. Does that make sense?
Piece number one, "Portrait of Mark" (or "The Bookman", as titled by the sitter), is an 18 x 24 full portrait that I've been at for a while. Begun a year or more ago, I reached a point where I had no idea about where to go with it. Today, I have a few ideas about its future. Piece number two is a male figure study on a full sized sheet of watercolor paper. It is based on a small Paul Cadmus sketch, but is diffused by its somewhat skewed, gridded background. Piece number three is somewhat allegorical, based on a nearly 60-year-old snapshot, but basically it's a 'partial family portrait' within a 'partial landscape'. MY hope is to have it read as sort of a murky memory that registers with all viewers. Portions of each painting can be seen on the "In progress" link.

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The new eyeglasses and Picasso...there's really no connection.

12/9/2011

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I've been wearing the new glasses for nearly three weeks now. Progressive lenses...hmmm. Supposedly looking straight ahead into the distance outdoors, or down at a paper on my desk or somewhere in the middle for the computer screen on my desk is what these things are designed for. Yep...I get that and everything IS indeed clearer and less of a blur. The world is safer as I drive from Point A to Point B. The morning on-line newspapers make far more sense now, but man...it seems to have impacted my successes with painting from the model.
It used to be so easy to peer over the top of my cheap drugstore cheaters at the figure across the room, then look down at the watercolor block and record what I'd seen. It's just as easy to see, but the images that appear...I don't know. I hadn't been too happy with them.
Monday night's session was maybe, just perhaps, a turning point. If only after a day of school I had the energy left to spend a few hours in the studio. Soon...soon.

My quotation for today from Picasso:

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone".

So, thinking in those terms...maybe I can get myself on the stick more regularly. It certainly speaks to the amount of work that Picasso created in his lifetime.

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Painting Tonight?

11/29/2011

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Tuesday, after the Monday after a long holiday weekend...fortunately I woke up with at least twice as much energy as I had yesterday.
Last night: Monday Night Drawing...it wasn't just me dragging, everyone seemed sapped of energy. The whole day had felt that way. So much for that painting a week resolution, or so I thought.
After a productive workday today, I feel good about heading into the studio, wetting the brushes with water and color and getting to work. Over the weekend I was able to clear off the work tables, organize materials, rid myself of a load of junk and have myself ready to go.
Among all that stuff that was contributing to my case of painter's block, are several unfinished pieces that shouldn't require too much more than "tweaking" to have them complete.
So tonight's mission, should I choose to accept it, is to make some headway (pun intentional there, folks) with the couple of watercolor portraits asleep on the easel or the more than several landscapes that right now just litter my landscape.
The epiphany last night was what energy quinacidrone gold brings to the surface of a watercolor portrait. So, I move forward with my brushes...who knows, maybe I might even take a few photos and post the jpgs. before calling it a night!
Oh, and today's pearl of wisdom, snipped from the Boston Globe years ago and yellowed among the scraps and litter on the worktable:

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes".
- Marcel Proust

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First Post!

11/24/2011

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Happy Thanksgiving world!
I guess that this is a good day to begin because I'm very grateful for the ability to think and create in a way that brings me great satisfaction. I hope that I can overcome my daily issues with procrastination to keep things up to date here on-line, as well as commit to completing at least one 'finished' painting each week...not the watercolor figure sketches from the Monday Night Drawing (MND) Group, but real paintings.
Saying that out loud in a blog will hopefully force me into submission and keep me at the easel.
As I procrastinated in actually beginning to write here, I came across these two terrific quotations on line (thanks to Nancy McCarthy and her website):

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through".
— Ira Glass, NPR "This American Life"

"When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out." - Philip Guston

Off to Thanksgiving dinner...

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Back from Vermont

Landscape Week at ANE

blog...diary...diary...blog?

Daily painting...will I go seven straight days, (well nights actually)?

Thinking on paper...Rice paper

Mid-Winter Thinking

The new eyeglasses and Picasso...there's really no connection.

Painting Tonight?

First Post!

My random ramblings...

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