Interior of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain

Image #1: Charcoal drawing on canvas.
Image #2: Underpainting
Image #3: First layer of glaze in the bottom, right corner.
Image #4: First layer of glaze completed.

Two days after the show at Monsoon comes down, the show in Pennington opens. The October sunshine is calling to me and I must resist the temptations to pack my paints and head to the woods. The architectural paintings along with four more of the road series must be completed and at least dry to the touch to hang by November 1st. Painting the amazing tree-like columns of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is as close as I'll get to painting in the woods this week.
Though my palette is the same that I used for the Road Series, the mixes are more neutral in this first glaze of paint over the underpainting. I enjoyed a break from the greens of the landscapes. Not much of a break, considering I worked on landscapes yesterday and will work on at least one tomorrow if all goes well with the next layer of glazing on the remaining two architectural paintings.

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.

Cooped up too long or .... working from photographs

I've reached my limit. I've grown weary of working from photographs. There is so much more color in the three-dimensional world lit by the light of the sun, and even the illumination from a light bulb. Photographs are so dreary compared with the richness of reflected light rays.

Bricks and mortar are a delightful change from sky, trees and road. The only green I am mixing is a grayed-green for the mortar. I find that working over the umber/white underpainting is not nearly as entertaining as working over a complementary underpainting. For the third architectural piece in the exhibit, the interior of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I have painted the underpainting in yellow-oranges and violet-blues. I'm not sure it will be completed in time to be hung, but I'm not going to rush it. The underpainting is a bit thicker and will need a longer period of time to dry thoroughly before glazing.

There is no fast track to the point of exhaustion when working on a series of paintings such as the Road Series "Between Here and There". It is only at the point of exhaustion, the point where I find myself painting by rote, not exploring and solving problems, that I break through the barrier of painting the way I think it should be painted and enter the marvelous world of new habits, fresher color and unique vision. The new habits and the fresh approach will be carried to the next series of paintings "The Clothesline".

During the war in Vietnam, comedian Dick Gregory gave up eating solid food. The war lasted far longer than expected and Gregory lost an enormous amount of weight and became extremely fit. When the war finally came to an end, he vowed that the next time he protested by way of his dietary habits he would camp out next to a fruit and vegetable stand and eat constantly for the duration of the protest. For my next series, "The Clothesline" I vow to paint outdoors each and every day and to use sketches and color studies rather than photographs! I have never liked working from photographs and painting from them over the past several months has not altered my attitude.

Painting from life does not necessarily mean that painting out of habit doesn't happen. Naturally, it does. The difference is that the light is constantly changing, shadows moving, leaves rustling and branches swaying. Nothing is truly fixed. The way I mix my colors may become rote if I'm not careful, but there is a tendency to be more inventive. The colors that I see before me will always be like a fresh turn of a kaleidoscope, never quite the same, in the same combinations, as I've seen before.

Image: Cellar ceiling of the Palau Guell in Barcelona, Spain. Designed by Gaudi
Link to other architectural paintings from this series