Venus as Garbo

Sunday morning, 10am. All the paintings are framed and packaged... except for one, Venus as Garbo, the climactic painting of the upcoming exhibit. For over a year I have stressed over the presentation of this painting.

It is difficult for me, when I am working on a painting, to analyze the composition pretending not to see six inches around the edges. This is the challenge that presents itself when I am painting on an unstretched canvas. This has been the dilemma with Venus as Garbo. To present it without losing the perimeter would mean to turn it into a wall-hanging or a canvas stretched like the skin of an animal to a framework outside of itself. I came to the painful decision that I had to forfeit the outside six inches of the painting and stretch it.

Good news... the decision was made. Bad news.... stretchers do not come in the sizes I need. Fine. I'll make my own stretchers out of some frame molding that I will never use for frames. I'll skip the next several good news/bad news events that led to this morning's struggle to make the wrong materials do the right thing.

I was in a wonderful state of mind having spent all of yesterday with Alexis at the Dodge Poetry Festival. Tom had ripped the extensions of the fill-in molding that I had glued to the frame molding the day before. I met Tom at the shop and he set me up to use the belt sander to even the edging of the homemade stretcher strips. He then left to work with Alexis grouting the newly laid tiles at home.

The sanding went well as did the re-cutting of the strips on the chop saw. Then came the assembly. It was impossible for me to make accurate diagonal measurements of the stretcher frame. I did the best I could, squaring each side and adding cross pieces for internal support. All this was done against the rounded edges of the round-edged frame molding that I cut inverted so as to leave the outside squared. The final result, at that point, was that one side was 3/8 inch longer than the other in spite of the fact that they started off equal lengths. I decided to glue the corners for added inflexibility and poured a cup of coffee with which to regain my balance while the glue dried. Hah!

With perfect timing, Tom and Alexis arrived back at the studio having completed their task of grouting. Neither one of them had found it to be a pleasant job. With Alexis as another body and another set of arms, we re-measured the frame and discovered that the diagonal dimensions were off by over half an inch. Not good. Unscrew everything and start again........

How wonderful it would be to leave the framing and stretching of artwork to professionals. I really don't know how artists afford to do solo exhibits (50 - 70 works) if they don't do the framing themselves.

With Alexis as moral support and an uncomplaining helper, Venus as Garbo was stretched over the re-adjusted framework of make-shift framing molding. We sandwiched it between protective layers of corrugated cardboard and added her to the pile of paintings ready to be loaded into the car on Thursday morning.

Preparing for this exhibit has been a marvelous journey. The left side of my brain and the right side of my brain worked as partners, each getting out of the other's way at the right time and stepping in again only when needed. I didn't think such a collaboration was possible.

Such a revalation leads me, of course, to taking on even greater challenges. What fun!

Painting Out the Road

How refreshing.

As the painting developed, the road became less significant. During the final stages, nothing about the road worked anymore, the shape, the value, the color.... , it had served its purpose of being the seed and it was time for the road to vanish and vanish it did.

Clinging to elements in a painting that no longer work can be disastrous to the final outcome of a painting. Flexibility, willingness to allow the painting itself to begin dictating the resolution of composition, of color, of character and personality is an essential part of the creative process. Knowing exactly what the outcome should be and making sure that it turns out that way negates any chance of creativity being part of the process.

In order for a canvas to develop a personality, a direction of its own, a painter must start somewhere, plant the seed, do all she can to nurture the seed and then let go of the controls when she sees that something other than a duck has hatched out of the egg! For those of you who missed out on the joy of sitting on your mother's lap and listening to her read to you, I'm making reference to The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen.

On The Road #1

On The Road #1 was the first of the series Between Here and There. This painting has undergone more drastic changes than any other painting in the series.

The first glaze, a light value glaze of cool blue convinced me that I would, in spite of my doubts, enjoy the technique of glazing. I thought the composition was strong and I looked forward to the dramatic impact of the final painting. The second glaze, the glaze applied over the trees and over both the sky and the road, also went well. Without hesitation, except for the week of drying time between glazes, I applied the third glaze, a darker blue of the sky and a variety of greens on the trees. I did not plan for my emotions, so terribly susceptible to the moods of those around me and to the pressures of daily life, to take control of the painting. Without realizing it I changed a perfectly calm and evocative mood into one of frenzy and discord. The clouds shot diagonally across the narrow canvas in a state of frenzy.

At the next sitting, I painted out the lower clouds believing I could taming the energy of the upper clouds to my advantage. I was wrong. During the next sitting I painted the clouds out completely and pruned the tree on the right significantly. The following session involved further pruning of the trees on the left and total removal of the tree on the right. I was getting into a more Zen state. In addition, time had passed since I had started the series of Sky,Road and Trees. I'd grown quite weary of the subject and needed to do something drastic just for the fun of it.

During the past few days I've been reflecting on the direction of my painting. How does representational work really fit into my life, or does it at all? In the September 2nd Twice-Weekly Letter by Robert Genn wrote about refocusing on what one's passions were as a child. With that in mind I went back into the painting with a lighter touch, adding happier colors into the sky and allowing the trees to be more playful. At this point, the road seems to have very little to do with the painting. I will deal with that at the next sitting.

Perspective

The ruins of Torre Salvana, Castle Santa Coloma de Cervello inspired the composition of the painting. My intention is simplicity, a few open passageways that lead the eye to the other side of thick walls. The dominant element is shape, mostly high key (light) rectangular shapes accented with triangular, low-key (dark) shadow shapes. The color is meant to be playful and not distracting.

Simple? No. Any painting that is not totally abstract tests my drawing skills. In this case, it is the ability to manipulate perspective. The ruins of the 12th century castle that sits high on a hill above the small village of Colonia, Spain is an M. C. Escher dream, or a C. R. Carter nightmare depending on my ability to control my love of mathematical puzzling.

I thank James Paterno, my eighth grade algebra teacher for fueling my passion for the manipulation of figures and shapes. With little more than a devilish smile he jumped from complex equations to drawing a “sniffer” using only geometric shapes.

My dad, trained as an electrical engineer, I can thank for my dedication to perspective. Before he could even think about liking one of my paintings, he would point out any aspect of the drawing that was not in proper perspective and comment on the lines that were not perfectly straight. Good old Dad. It was only three years ago that he opened his heart to my abstract work. In spite of his criticism he always offered to loan me his ruler. He encouraged me to face the challenge of drawing and painting and to learn the necessary skills to draw buildings and objects “properly”. Now it is my turn to challenge him. At the age of eighty-five he is beginning to see the beauty in crooked lines.

For me, the world around me formed a mosaic of abstract forms, lines that danced, unrestricted across fields, city streets and through forests. Shapes expanded and contracted like sheets billowing on a windy day, held back from flight by only a couple of wooden clothespins. I’ve always had a strong sense of line, shape and value, balancing them precariously on my page so as not to lose the sense of rhythm and motion that I love, or to diminish the space created on my page, a space so vast I get lost in it. Though I prefer painting abstractly, I return to representational painting to exercise my power of observation.

The painting of Torre Salvana will only appear simple if the outlying walls are drawn correctly. The central archway presented an optical illusion that has caused me to redraw the structure each time I have added another layer of glaze. I thought I had solved all of the perspective in the original charcoal sketch. How wrong I was!

The painting is finally taking shape and the walls are opening up allowing that ambiguous space I love so dearly to fill the gaps between stone and brick while still giving an illusion of a flat shapes upon a flat surface.