Don't Judge Me

While it seems everyone else is obsessing about the new and the now, I've recently been obsessing about the old and the historical. OK, maybe not just recently. My work has always centered around my interest in the history of painting and its contemporary relevance. But I finally got up the courage to go beyond just looking at images of the Old Masters, and extend my experiments in process to include some of the academic techniques of painting that have secretly held my curiosity (I can hear the contemporary painters GASP-ing in horror!). But I just wanted to know: how do they get such refined surfaces? how do they paint all that delicate lace and those reams of diaphanous ruffles? Can I legitimately call myself a painter and not know how to do these things?! (I can hear all the painters yelling at me -- "yes! of course you can!") But for me, I just couldn't. I had to know -- and actually try to do it, even if not masterfully.

Since no one actually taught me how to use oil paint, I have basically taught myself an alla prima method that has given my work a loose brushy style. I like the effects I've been able to achieve so far, but lately I've been feeling limited in my technique. In my new paintings, I want the surface to be more ethereal, more delicate, but still strong and complex. So I secretly signed up for a mini-workshop to learn the basics of traditional oil painting. In particular, I wanted to learn more about the glazing techniques that create such soft and mysterious surfaces (and that are usually skipped over at art school, dismissed as too time-consuming and old-fashioned).

Here are the results of my preliminary efforts:

My preliminary copy of Ingres' portrait. I won't refine my painting any further. I get the point. But kinda cool, isn't it? Whenever I do something I didn't think I could do, it feels like magic.

I know this is generally considered very passé in the contemporary painting world, but can I admit how fun it was? The final glazing step (which I only got to on the face) was a revelation. I have such a naturally light touch to my hand that this technique seemed made for me -- soft tiny brushes, strokes as light as air, veils of glossy color. SO FUN! Not that my paintings are suddenly going to start looking like Ingres'. For me, this meticulous old process made me not only understand so much more about the techniques of some of my favorite Old Masters like Velasquez and Goya, but opened my eyes (and abilities - and/or perhaps just confidence?) to so many more possibilities in the application of paint in my own work. My new paintings are already in the works. Nothing like a quick blast from the past to help catapult me into the future.

I painted that!! A close-up look at the glazing effects in my copy of Ingres' portrait.

Learning to Paint

Yesterday I was invited into a fourth year painting class at OCAD University to critique the students' work.  At the end of the class, one of the students asked (and I paraphrase), "What's the best way to learn to paint?".  I remember so clearly how I felt at school, desperately wanting someone - anyone! - to just tell me how to paint.  There seemed to be so many talented painters, so many with much greater skill than I had, and I wanted that elusive, mythical manual I was sure existed somewhere that would give me the rules, the lessons, the definitive steps to becoming a great painter.  It took me four years of art college to finally realize that no one can teach you how to paint.

Admittedly, there are a few technical matters when it comes to materials, but remarkably few, and really, the only way to learn to paint is to PAINT.  Someone can teach you how THEY paint, but you'll never figure out how YOU paint, unless you, well, paint and paint and paint and paint.  So often a painter's work is interesting simply because of the way they apply the paint -- a unique way, that they figured out themselves.

The most helpful advice I have learned so far can be boiled down to a few points:

1.  Experiment with a full range of different media.  Some media just doesn't suit your hand, your vision, your natural pace.  You need to find a medium and process that suits you, and no one can figure that out for you. (Acrylic paint seemed to be most people's choice at my art school, and I fought with it for years, until I finally tried oil paint one day and became a better painter overnight.)

2.  Experiment with a range of applications.  A great way to start is to try to copy some of your favorites.  I read a great interview with Elizabeth Murray in her MOMA retrospective catalogue in which she describes how trying to copy a de Kooning painting taught her how to paint. 

3.  Take risks.  Push a painting beyond where you think it can go, beyond what feels comfortable to you.  Instead of being scared you'll "ruin it", commit to resolving it at all costs.  The painting will take unexpected turns and leave you with something that you had no intention of creating at the beginning.  Even if it's just one moment of that process that is worth storing in your arsenal at the end (and I can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one thing that's a keeper), it will have been worthwhile.  And no teacher will have been able to figure out that thing for you.

My final words of encouragement to the student was to not be intimidated or discouraged by the more skillful painters in her class.  There are lots of skilled painters out there who have nothing interesting to say.  If you have something to say, I really believe the skill will come through the sheer desire to say it.

MFA: A Must For Artists?

Can you imagine any of your pre-1970 art heroes in an MFA program? Do MFAs really make better artists?

Here's an interesting look at whether MFAs fulfill their promise: MFA: Is It Necessary? - by Jane Chafin

Portraits of a Sensation

photograph, Amanda Clyne ©

I am not a storyteller. My curiosity in the world lies not in reconstructing a nebulous past or imagining a fantastical future, but in experiencing the pregnant intensity of a living moment. When I am drawn to something, whether a person, building, object or image, I place the world on pause to probe the source of my empathic fascination. I delve deeper into the experience, not by inventing accompanying narratives or researching encyclopedic details, but by envisioning ways to embody the moment and prolong the sensation. Art can fulfill this desire in me, either through the creation of my own work or through my experience of the work of others.

Growing up, I found that the art that spoke most profoundly to my sensibility was in the modern works of the 20th century, particularly those of abstraction. While I appreciated the skill and complexity of the great works of the old masters, their dramatic form of storytelling did not move me in the way that a de Kooning, Twombly or Agnes Martin work did. The more narrative I perceived, the less I felt engaged with it. I didn't even like reading. Stories just didn't do much for me.

So imagine my surprise when a few years ago my painting began to move away from abstraction and toward representation, of the human body no less! But my paintings are not at all about storytelling or even description. Is what I paint really representation? Is the use of the figure determinative of whether a work is representational?

I am beginning to find an answer in Daniel Smith’s erudite introduction to Deleuze’s book “Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation”. Without taking on the grand debate between Modernism and Postmodernism, I find myself drawn to Deleuze’s distinction between “figuration” and “the Figure”, as his concept of the Figure seems to offer a third category of imagery that seeks to challenge the conditions of representation while lying somewhere between representation and abstraction. Smith explains that for Deleuze, “figuration” is a form that is intended to represent a particular object to the viewer (ie. representational), whereas “the Figure” is a form intended to elicit a sensation from the viewer through more direct means, such as in the work of Francis Bacon. In my own work, the insidious melancholy and pathos I evoke is far from the violent rage in Bacon’s work, but I find I share with Bacon, as Smith writes, “the problem he shares with Cézanne: How to extract the Figure from its figurative, narrative, and illustrational links? How to “paint the sensation”…?”

For my last solo show, my exhibition “Illusive” was sub-titled “Portraits of an Image”, a kind of statement of purpose to clarify that I did not consider the paintings to be representational portraits of a woman. Perhaps I need to expand that idea, and conceive of my next paintings as not just portraits of an image, but as portraits of a sensation.

Conversation for Critique

I have been receiving a lot of feedback about my posting "A Pleasure to Meet You", and since my computer does not seem to be posting my reply comments, I thought a fresh blog posting in response might be appropriate.

I want to assure all who have responded that I was not referring to any particular person or any particular event. Really. That so many people think I was talking about them helps me make my point though. Over the last few months, outside of the studio environment (which I distinguish from studio visits, when critiques are an obviously essential part of a studio practice), I have found people are either silent in their response to work or have only criticism to offer. It makes me think of the experience of going out to a fancy party after buying a new dress or getting a new haircut - people can say they love the new look when they don't (not what I'm asking for), they can say nothing (where it is easy to assume they don't like it because the change is undeniable), or they can kindly say all the things that aren't working - the dress makes me look fat or uncomfortable, the haircut is old-fashioned or boring or makes my ears stick out or whatever. Except maybe it's a new look for me that I love, maybe they just need some time to get used to it - or maybe I already hate it and am embarrassed that I had to go to the party looking like a freak. Or maybe there actually is one or two things that are a surprising change that make me look better - or could make me look better if that one awful thing was not there. All I'm saying is, making value judgments that are truly constructive requires a conversation. Maybe you think Dolly Parton looks a little slutty, but unless you ask her, you don't realize that that's the look she's going for, that that's her idea of beautiful. Telling her she really shouldn't wear that because it makes her look slutty is not particularly helpful.

I am always open to hearing people's responses and thoughts about my work. It's why I make the work. It's why I have this blog. The point I wanted to make was that as artists, we know that putting our work out there is a brave and personal thing, and encouraging words are just as needed as any well-intentioned criticism. And lately, they have been pretty hard to come by.

A Pleasure To Meet You

(It has been too long. The first posting of September only now! I will have to make up for it.)

During this extended period of blog silence, I have expanded my studio space, planned two new major art projects (not paintings - details to be revealed at a later date), thrown out the failed paintings of the summer, and sent two recent paintings out into the world (at the group exhibition "Dreamers & Screamers" at Board of Directors). In the midst of this mania, I have been reading Susan Stewart's "The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics" - which I have been dying to blog about for days.

But before I do that (more tomorrow), I wanted to put a few thoughts out there to my fellow artists about sharing our artwork with each other. The art world is full of weird and wonderful people, and I certainly embrace the subjective and critical responses to my work from anyone willing to share them with me (hence this blog!). But lately I have been struck by how quickly people are to give an artist a "critique" of his/her work while forgetting to provide any positive words of encouragement or appreciation. Some stick to the adage "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all", while some offer extended critical feedback without any prompting or request. But outside the classroom or formal (or even informal) critique environment, what is (or perhaps should be) the protocol among artists for responding to a peer's work? I know the word protocol implies a rigid politeness that would seem to defeat or detract from the dialogue that we want art to inspire. But is there not a distinction between debating the ideas raised by a work of art, and debating the merits of the work itself? I certainly agree that constructive criticism by our respected peers is an essential part of any artist's studio practice. But when considering the merits of an artwork (particularly with the artist), is it not just as important to consider what is working in the piece and not just what may not be? As artists, we all know the struggles in creating new work and the anxiety associated with the first public reveal. I am not advocating a falsified love-fest, but out of respect for the courage, passion and labor of our fellow artists (and frankly out of respect for art itself), is there not something to be said for giving an artist (and seeking in the work) some (truthful) affirmation of the artist's efforts? And if at first we don't see or experience the merits of a work, do we not owe it to the artist (and even to ourselves) to have a little patience, to stick with it a little longer. You don't have to fall in love with it, but maybe to just be open to the possibility, to be open to persuasion.

In Susan Stewart's essay "On the Art of the Future", Stewart draws an analogy between "the face-to-face encounter between persons and the face-to-face encounter with artworks." The following passage is worth quoting at length:

"Our meetings with artworks are embedded in the meanings and conventions we bring to encounters with other persons, and all nonmonumental art is a means of figuration in this sense. Yet, specifically, this meeting with an artwork that is in itself and for itself is analogous to that free ethical stance in which persons are encountered in themselves and for themselves - without prior determination of outcome or goal. When we consider an artwork as something meant, it is the intention and actions of individual persons that we seek to recover and come to understand in a project of implicit mutuality and heightened responsiveness or intensity." (The Open Studio, p. 18)

Stewart relies on the "paradigm for aesthetic experience" offered by Kant that asserts that "an encounter between persons and forms [is] in truth an encounter between persons - the maker and the receiver." (The Open Studio, p.19)

Perhaps this paradigm could soften the hearts of those who seek first to judge rather than understand, who revel in the chance to criticize rather than patiently find an opportunity for connection.