10 Years In
As this is recorded, the ten year anniversary of my decision to learn to paint with oils is approaching. I believe that waymarkers, signposts, and standing stones are important in a person’s life, so I thought I’d create a different kind of artifact to mark the days, to capture reflections, celebrate, give thanks, and begin another chapter.
With that, here I offer a handful of lessons that I have learned. There are more, but these stick out for one reason or another, and usually link to something I learned about living, whether I mention so or not. Other lessons learned are of a technical nature that anyone can get from practice or teaching or YouTube or a good workshop. As far as I am concerned, painting isn’t about painting. It’s about learning to live, about bringing the Innerman up to the surface of the skin so as to speak with one voice. Therefore, lessons on color mixing and other technicalities matter less to me. As you will read, others are just opinions.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED:
Let’s get this out of the way:
Style is not something to be pursued. The work, the process, is the reward. The combination of materials - long, soft bristles on oil primed linen, hog hair on acrylic primed canvas, medium or not - these things combine with situational intent (see no. 3) to create what is referred to as style. Thoughts on style are a vain distraction. Pursue purpose (no. 1) and let all else fall away. Forget that there is such a thing called “style” and you'll be one step freer.
10 - Rules are dangerous for beginning painters.
“Don’t have a downward sloping line going off of the sides of your work.” “Don’t place the subject in the center.” “Place the most contrast in your subject.” Sayings like these thrown out at workshops and repeated without context stay with learners for a very long time. Remember the 4th grade teacher that smarted off to you? Yes, you do. We hold on to basic sayings that we easily digested. As life goes on, nothing challenges these ideas, and before you know it we are 50 years old and saying the same things, believing the same things as we did in 4th grade.
I wish I had never heard of the rule of thirds. It guided my image making in photography for a long time. Too long. Left to my own devices, I would have eventually come to understand the premise of the rule naturally, but I artificially forced my images to conform and likely missed some interesting arrangements and effects. Rules and guidelines are appropriate, but not at the beginning. A teacher should allow learners to make bad decision after bad decision (with leading questions) and learners should stay in contact with great works until the premise dawns within them. To begin with the rule is to falsely remove impediments. The learner believes that they are on a sturdy bridge when they only step across scaffolding. Once they glimpse mastery, vertigo sets in.
We want to make good pictures as fast as we can. The problem is that we begin by trying to make someone else’s pictures. There is one Richard Schmid. 60 plus years of painting goes into every choice he makes. There is one Dawn Whitelaw. There is one George Inness. There is one Bouguereau. One Wyeth (sort of). But look at Mark Boedges and Daniel Keys. From Whitelaw, look at Michael Shane Neal, Lori Putnam, Pam Padgett, and Jason Saunders. Inness has fingerprints everywhere. Bouguereau helped raise up Robert Henri and Cecilia Beaux among others. T. Allen Lawson grew (at least in part) from Andrew Wyeth.
Who can imagine any of these artists coming from a rulebook? Their works demonstrate that it is the artist, the creator, who defines what should be used when and how to apply constructs - the artist, does this, not the rules. Rules can be wielded just like knives and brushes and mediums, but only in the hands of the competent. When a learner reflects, they should not recite rules, but songs - songs of their own composition.
None of this goes against making master copies (see number 3), as that is not a task for new learners (in my opinion). As one develops their skills - color mixing and color choice, paint application (long, soft bristles or hoghair, knives, glazes, etc.), they can develop their work. At that time and not before will a master copy be appropriate. Not that an attempt is bad, just that we are likely to be disappointed with the result. All of this is just another way of saying that we are not always ready to absorb good information when it is presented to us. It’s like great paintings leave bread crumbs along a path. Looking at them, we are filled with awe and possibility. We reach for them in our minds and try to do what they have done. We start walking and fall down. We get back up, take a couple of steps only to fall again. But while we are down, we find the crumbs and filled with positivity we push ourselves up again and take more steps. Perhaps every so often we find a crumb without falling and bend to take it, but my personal travelling companion has been Failure. I feel he sometimes pushes me down, that he is a bit rough, but he’s a good teacher.
9 - Inactivity can be purposeful
I know that purpose-driven painting every day (unlike bad practice) is the fastest way to improve as a painter. Focused practice is the shortcut everyone wants. Bad practice will have you in a rut for years. Even so, stepping away from painting every so often helps me to get clear on my purpose, helps to get quiet inside (see number 7). During these times that may last two weeks or two months, I am doing other things that feed me. I may look through seed catalogs and plan a garden, read about writing, about story making, characters, and plot, design a couple of t-shirts, or I may watch a program or two that I have recorded (The Curse of Oak Island). Walks outside are common during these breaks.
I learned early in life how much walking resets my life pace. It just seems like the speed we ought to be traveling. Perhaps that’s because my mind works slowly, but I don’t care. I like walking. I like hearing the sounds underfoot, seeing the animals, finding fossils and picking up limbs to use as walking sticks, imagining who was here before and knowing that wind through the trees sounded the same to them, that sunlight in the shallow water of the pond’s edge looked the same then, and that the creek ran along a similar course. I see the exposed limestone, hollowed out in places, and wonder how much of it they saw, if it was rougher then, if their children played in the small caves. I wonder if the earlier people crouched on the creek bank as I have, wondering about the past and future, going quiet in the hopes that the water’s babble would become an understandable language, telling stories of the past, what others have done. I wonder if they placed their hands in the water to see if by that act, they could touch the hands of others who have been through, and in so doing, form a woven bond of gratitude from one age, one people, to another.
These are the places my mind goes when I am wandering around away from painting and my full-time job (and a half). As I have said, painting each day with purpose is the way to get better at painting, but I also want to get better at life, and there are more important things in life than painting. Walking away for a time helps me to remember that life is short, but I am so glad to be here.
How is this different from procrastination? Procrastination is delaying something we do not want to do. These breaks from painting feel like I’m refilling myself. You may be different, but stepping away helps me to remember what my purpose is or was, whatever the case may be. It is a kind of solemn preparation for something I want to do and do well. I am not avoiding the path before me, I am looking around to find it again.
8 - Internet-based inspiration can lead to inactivity
I love to look at paintings. I live an hour or more from Franklin, Tennessee - the nearest location for seeing art at all, and the same distance away as Nashville. Instagram, Pinterest, Google - these are my galleries. I could spend hours at Leiper’s Creek Gallery, but feel that I should hurry through because I don’t want the owner to feel weird at a lengthy visit.
The color may be off, the detail may be lacking, the scale is hard to imagine, but my phone or laptop is the best I can consistently do. If I want to see works of art from certain people, I must use the internet. So I start looking. I tap the Instagram icon, see what they want me to see first, and begin scrolling. Twenty minutes later, I have a headache from a bent neck. I “take a break” by opening Facebook to see just how few people react to my posts and quickly change back to Instagram, but not before checking my email’s spam folder. I imagine that I’m looking for great artwork or a good effort to support by tapping on a heart, but all too often I judge the image and scroll by, barely noticing what someone else has poured energy into.
Time passes and I have no inspiration, no instruction, and no heart to continue. I put my phone down and wonder why I can’t be better. In my situation, there is no one to turn to, no one to drive to, knock on their door and commiserate with*. Unless a chore or meal pulls me up, I begin to drift away to the place where a sad, gentle negativity lures me into the waters. If I’m not attentive, not watchful, before I know it two weeks have past in a hazy stupor. The danger isn’t just in delayed progress on painting, procrastination with looming deadlines and generally falling behind everything, but in the subtle way this stupor turns my eye onto myself, increasing my self-centeredness and the accompanying thoughts of vain insignificance.
There are positives to social media. I have experienced genuine exchanges of gratitude. There are real people on the other side of the screen. Considering my rural disposition and for the cost of internet access, I can see inside the studios of great painters and ask a question or two. That’s amazing.
With that said, here are the reasons I browse Pinterest and Instagram:
I want to see great painting - to be surrounded by it.
I want guidance on how to improve - participating in it. I just looked through my own library of books. I want fresh material. I can’t get to Franklin galleries in time.
I secretly want to see some similarities between my paintings and the work of artists that are admired by others. By liking and commenting, I’m (sometimes) hoping someone interesting will notice me (that feels as bad to type as it does to read, but hey, transparency).
I want to create a record of the struggle so that the next rural person desiring more may stumble upon my ancient feed and see a kindred spirit and be grateful that I put out the good, the bad, and the honest and not just “greatest hits”.
Can you see the problem with these reasons? My desire is for good, but I quickly lose my time, my most valuable resource, and I negatively compare myself to others.
Many, many times I have put away my phone after browsing for who knows how long only to press down a rising despondency. I don’t measure up. Why do I try? 42 likes? That’s it? That detail I posted was good, I thought. Casey Baugh. T.J. Cunningham. Daniel Keys. Eric Merrell. Babich. Schmid. Hanson. I stand away, hands in pockets, watching the carousel, bright in the night, make its glowing circle.
I take the dog out. I try to forget - or remember. I don’t know which. I got what I wanted - to see great painting, so why do I feel this way? I saw instructional bits, timelapses, close-ups, and great finished products. Galleries. Museum shows. Sales announcements. Award announcements. Careers. All quietly devastating. I flash forward to my retail job, folding clothes that customers left disheveled, upsetting my employer by forgetting to record some detail of an order, and smiling all day at whoever comes through the door no matter how I feel, trained by dangling jingle bells.
I don’t paint that day. Or the next. Or the next. “After all, it is Tuesday an The Curse of Oak Island comes on.” Truthfully, I’m not too busy - I’m hurt. Unrealistic expectations coupled with desire to be really good act like a wet blanket on my heart.
So how to fight this?
This is really important. There is a line between diving and falling - between inspiration leading to activity and inspiration leading to suffocation. When we are standing ready to jump, we will either hear fear or energized calm. If we have listened to fear, we hear, “Don’t fall!” If we have within us that which has proven itself trustworthy, we may hear, “Dive.” This voice fills us with the confidence to jump full of wonder and expectation - the expectation of accomplishment. The difference is how clearly you can hear your Innerman. The difference is a choice to be persistent in the removal of all the things in life that distract us from who we really are - and add little else. The difference is whether or not you have prepared for drought and hardship. No one shows up to a marathon to win it without having prepared. Fall or Dive.
The more you choose to stop the noise and spend time within yourself, the better you will know your purpose. Knowing and being clear on purpose is the water in the desert, the friend that jogs alongside you cheering, the one be beside you when you’re sick. Your Innerman will tell the truth. We don’t always want truth, but having someone in your life you know will always, always be truthful is a treasure. We all have one we are born with.
It is difficult to be sharpened, reshaped, but the stakes are high. Who can withstand 999 defeats to win on the 1000th try? Who gets pressed into the mud month after month only to push up from it again and again? Who gets punched round after round, knocked down, only to win in the end? The one who has become clear on purpose.
Goals require plans.
Plans require steps.
Steps require decisions.
(Emily P. Freeman’s “The Next Right Thing” might be handy here)
If - through all the rain, fog, mud, disappointment, discouragement - we seek the voice and keep our eyes fixed on the goal, we simply need to make the next small decision to move on. Sometimes that means taking a deep breath, pushing up from mud, turning off the phone, or simply taking a walk. Our existence is transcendent, so we do not sink without reason. Make the choice to attack distractions like they killed your dog because your peace and life, your response mechanism - everything - depends first on your relationship with yourself. The Outerman and the Innerman need to speak with one voice. Some dredging is required, some habits need to be broken, but dealing with slumps is just practice for life itself. That, and not our lives only, but others around us. Have you ever wanted to help someone but felt that you had nothing to say? Do battle with distractions and lift up your Innerman and everyone you meet is kin. You will always be able to relate somehow. In helping others we help ourselves.
7- The only voice inside your head that matters is the one you hear when you are quiet inside.
It’s so noisy. All I’ve had to do is write a few paragraphs about how noisy it is and how it alters our paths. It has taken me about 2 months. That’s how noise can pull us away from our direction of travel. For some, it may be raising children or a 50 hour work week. It may be the series we want to binge watch. It could even be learning about learning or seeking inspiration (see #8).
If you choose to watch the network news you are doomed. “ALERT!” “BREAKING NEWS!” Local news is just as hungry for your eyes. Someone wants us to constantly consume their content, so they make a spectacle out of our nation and our lives.
The combination of 24 hour news and social media is the most powerful distraction in human history - beside inequality and the nighttime sky.
We stay up late, sleep until we absolutely MUST get up, and our feet hit the ground and head to the kitchen or shower before we’ve thought two seconds about our lives, our humanity, our time. The phone screen lights up, t.v. comes on. We enter our automobiles in a rush. The radio squeezes out our space on the way to work and once we arrive, things to do and things to avoid fill our minds all day. After work we repeat the steps in reverse: from work to car, more radio, another podcast, more t.v. more internet, less identity. In diving into what the world offers, we lose ourselves. Between commercials we’ve become a people without personhood. We are told what is good, what to be outraged at and that if we are not outraged we are not paying attention. Pressed to present a sharable and inspiring social media personality, we become a bit more dishonest in ways that we are completely oblivious to. I haven’t even mentioned the pressure parents feel to be good examples to their children and all the internal dialogue that goes along with that. Echos from parents or teachers form a vaporous net that entangles any progress as we strive to climb or to grow into ourselves. A pinched expression or cold word stays with us seemingly forever. SO. MANY. VOICES.
Have you ever turned off the television in an otherwise quiet house and then just sat there? If you haven’t, you should. Something special happens. It’s like you come to your senses! Your mind, able to breathe again, expands like lungs taking a deep breath, like a fist unclenching, like a thirsty person finding water. Clarity returns. Reflection. While this glorious feeling blooms, and old friend knocks at the door. You rise and open up to see yourself, remembering that you are a person with life and time, not just an image formed on a puddle’s surface or a digital presence. You are reminded of just how precious your life is.
This is when you begin again, when you can hear the voice inside. It wants to speak, but it speaks softly so we must listen for it. To make that possible, unnecessary noise must go. Today. Now.
Getting to where we can hear again is hard to do. Well, it is as hard as we make it. It is also worth all the effort (quitting television, radio on the commute, and media focus sounds easy, doesn’t it?). It is, after all, the only way to be ourselves and not who others want or wanted us to be. It is a first step to freedom Grassy and wild, but good.
7a - It is not easy to follow that voice.
Darrell Scott and Tim O'Brien have a song called "More Love" where they sing,
"We're afraid to be idle, so we fill up the days. We run on the treadmill, keep wasting away until there's no time for talking about trouble in mind and the doors are all closed between your heart and mine."
It seems like we will do anything to avoid being real with ourselves, so beginning to converse with our Innerman is scary, difficult work.
At first, its voice may be mistaken as your own, but the truth is that we are so closely connected that is seems like there is a single voice. An alien witnessing an embrace may be surprised to see that they are seeing two creatures, not one. So it is with us. At first what we hear is ourselves going through task lists or replaying conversations with only faint, occasional sounds of another one speaking, like a light dimming a cracked doorway when someone passes. As we continue down the grassy path, pursuing this other, this inner quiet, it becomes clearer that we, in solitude, are not alone. Another journey has unknowingly begun.
Like the one who suddenly realizes that they are not alone in the forest, a startling uncertainty may take hold. Who is this Other we sense behind trees? How long have they been there? Are they dangerous? Indeed, if we love our old habits and thoughts, they are dangerous. You have started changing into another, stronger version of yourself. The one that can be alone with their own thoughts for a while without reaching for distractions will notice a kind of violence creep in - a violence toward the flabby, lazy, dull parts of their being.
When all goes quiet we hear our deep self. Petty concerns show themselves as small and childish. We remember who we are, when we were happiest, the places we genuinely love, and are encouraged to be more and more open, more and more honest. We recall exchanges, glances, porch swings, our old neighborhood, friends not called in a long while, and those times we did not know were our best times.
At first the urge is to stop this slowly rising flood. It is uncomfortable to confront how much we have drifted from our best self and our Innerman. We are shown just how much we’ve over complicated things because we have listened to voice after voice and tuned out the one who was there all along, listening to us, watching us, feeling what we feel, rejoicing in our successes but unwilling to participate in our misguided pursuits.
This slow flood of realizations must be faced head on. No avoidance tactics. To know yourself is to wipe off the mirror and see the One you've neglected for so long. Your Innerman waits for your head to clear, for you to return, even after you've left time and time again. Listen for it. The barnacles must be cleaned away. Your Innerman is trying to speak. Listen.
6 - painting outside is hard. Really hard.
Painting well outside means different things depending on your goal.
(A tree sketch doesn't need a barn, a field, a crow....just one good tree.) Know WHY you are painting. Why did you stop here? Why select this section of the land? Am I just choosing a barn because I know other people will like it?
Don’t make it harder than it is. Choose to paint the big idea and leave the rest out. The big idea is usually simple: light on barn, shadows on barn, subtleties in fog, shining creek, epic proportions, etc…
Simple does not mean easy. The journey towards simplicity is beset with steep climbs, bruises, and little puzzles that must be dealt with as we walk. It’s simple to say I must get groceries. Across town. After school. With little money and a cart full of kids. Be clear on why you are taking time to paint. Have a project coming up? Want to practice color mixing? Experimenting with squeegees? Great! Say it out loud. Declare your purpose.
“Warm vs cool” is sometimes less useful than “saturated vs desaturated.”
Rules. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had not been raised in a rural area where I can see the landscape in all its changes for myself and give everything a name of my choosing. I grew up calling the sky colors at dusk “dusty pink” or “dusty yellow.” Creek rocks were “rusty.” I could see that the rocks farther down were the same rocks, but not as “rusty.” The grass at my face was green and tan, sure, but it “goes soft” as it goes away. I did not seek why. I did not ask science. I was there, they were there, and it was enough to just notice. Rules will tell the learner that things get lighter and more blue as they recede. Rules will say, “Closer things are warmer and farther things are cooler.” These things are true, but easily become a stumbling block.
However, if we think in terms of saturation (as opposed to color/temperature contrast), then the difficult practice of painting (inside or out) becomes simpler. The rusty rocks and the green/tan grass is just less of what it was. Less colorful, less distinct. I would have worked out the science, but I am so glad I did not begin with it.
Color exists in the middle.
If someone had just said this, I would’ve been a lot clearer a lot sooner, but again, my rural upbringing saves me. Noticing strong light on and wrapping around trees is the best example I can think of. The light striking the tree is brightness (not much color), then color, then shadow, then another, softer color. Saturated color does not occur in very bright or very dark situations. So, if you see something registering as strong color, it is neither made with much white or much dark (RELATIVE TO THE OTHER PARTS OF THE SCENE).
The middle can move (keying).
I don’t have much to add to this. See the spectrum as a sliding scale. If you want a lot of light feelings, move up the scale. Want strong, colorful lights, move down. I did not grow up with the word “gamut” but came to know it through Photoshop. It is helpful to understand.
Palette is often linked to style (see beginning), so I avoid copying any professional painter’s setup and stick with a basic set of colors, BUT I add in experimental colors just for kicks and to learn about the interactions they make. I am someone who is a bit annoyed at the attention that color gets, as I would rather the idea get center stage. With that said, I wondered why more people didn’t have earth colors when they spent all their time mixing earthy colors. I mean, heck, if it is a dirt road you are after.... A three-color palette will get you there for sure, but what’s the harm in adding an ochre? It all gets mixed together anyway.
I suppose I am reacting to the predominance of palette choice in my area, which does not normally include earth colors and favors cadmiums. All of this is made clearer if we know why we are painting (broad sense and specifically). “The ‘why’ will get you to the ‘how’…” (Dawn Whitelaw from the panel discussion at the 2019 OPA Eastern Regional).
5- Keep a couple of old paintings around to experiment with when you're in a rut or just bored. Do not be careful with them.
This is where all the things you want to try on a real painting (knife work, different brushes, glazing, etc.) happen without consequence. This is where the next you begins. This is where you see your hands apply paint in the ways that your inspirations applied paint. That failure of a sketch can teach you about glazing to change color temperature. The oversized disaster with an ill-conceived arrangement can be the place where you actually ORCHESTRATE a painting (see number 4). You can stand in front of these poor efforts as the director, not the directed, as the wind, not the leaf. Here is the place to say, “I want to see _____” and then just do it! Have you ever wanted to see a streak of tinted pthalo in a sky just to see what would happen? Here you go! Have at it! And now you have the beginnings of a nocturn that never would have been. You have the beginning of your next series of twilight/nighttime studies that you were too afraid to try because of one thing or another. Seeing a color, a texture, the interaction of layers, or an arrangement may be just the thing you needed AND you get to feel the freedom that Pollack, Rothko, Whistler, and many others no doubt experienced when a mission contacted the unknown.
Right now I have a 36x36 picture (among many others) that failed. It is not luminous, arranged, or well painted. I failed. I wanted to paint it because of a story that was rolling around in my heart. My story, however, will not be widely shared nor will it live with future lives because the painting simply isn’t good. I need to remove the Gamvar and attack it. I can do better now. If the story in my heart is worth anything, that work must be greatly altered. (And with that sentence, you can see how natural it is to see painting as a life-giving act. No matter what, there is someone who cares enough about us to ask us to change so that we can live. There is much to say about this, but I’ll constrain the comments here.)
Take out a sketch that had potential but faltered. Choose an inspirational painting and add some of the things from that painting to yours. You are copying to learn. I was stuck with uninteresting trees, so I looked through lots of painted trees, found one I liked, and added it to my painting. The key here is that I knew what the problem and answer was. I just needed a little push.
When you don’t know what the problem is you cannot apply a solution. You can guess, you can abandon, you can start over, or you can experiment. Experimenting, in my opinion, is purposefully seeking an answer. It is not the same as stumbling upon a solution. If I want to know more about how a certain artist made a particular passage in a painting, I can ask them, watch them paint, stumble upon it, or try to do it (with paint). It may happen that I discover their methods while sketching outdoors and becoming impatient (for example), but an old painting is a great place to say, “Today I am seeking to make marks like Douglas Fryer.” If you actually happen to do it, it will not have been accidental. You sought something and, with effort, found it. “The Difference between a dream and a goal is a plan.” (https://medium.com/@andytraub_25867/11-things-to-know-if-youre-considering-using-michael-hyatt-s-full-focus-planner-system-57643fb10a9a)
4- If you are not doing homework, expect delays as you adjust to creating (not depicting).
Wow. This is important. If I have a vision, that vision probably includes bits of myself . In order to fully materialize the vision, I need to push away from what I SEE and step into what I FEEL - to combine them. NOT EASY.
In my case, I see the landscape as a window into a larger world. It is not easy to add uniquely personal emotional language (information) to the language of painting. Neither one is fully hashed out! How many of us really think through why certain color combinations are pleasing to us or not? How many really dive into discovering why we prefer modern interiors or “cozy” ones? I didn’t. I don’t want to be a psychologist, I just want to paint better. In order to do that, I need to move away from pure depiction and into creation. In order to do THAT, I need to know myself. Thus, more trouble begins.
One could get deep here, but I'll leave it at this: if I do not work out who I believe myself to be, I risk being an imitation of someone else. When we are alone with ourselves, we must be honest about what we really like. If I think people talk too much about Sargent, Sorolla, and Zorn, I need to admit that, even though they are worshipped today as the Painting Trinity. If I secretly fear that the resurgence of realism may stamp out respect for fuzzy, non-descriptive, emotional works, then I need to know that I may want to move away from the realism wave. That means I may have to swim upstream. I may have to go overlooked. I may never be rewarded. I may have to answer for money spent “unwisely”. All this, and I still must try. I still must enter shows, join critiques, and worse, speak up about what really moves me.
To try is to risk. If you don’t know why you’re here you won’t know what you’re doing.
3- If you are learning (doing homework), concentrate on one thing. (Related to no. 6)
Water ripples, distance, faces, hands, trees, etc.
In this case, copying is encouraged.
I returned from Plein Air South with the sky in my mind. Even though the first sketch I made when I arrived was of a green field, green foliage, and tree trunks, afterwards I sectioned off a panel and painted a single cloud. It was good. I had clarified some visuals, looked at how Josh Clare handled them, and set about painting. If I had not been thinking about what I was seeing when driving, walking, or studying, I would not have known where to start. With my mind tuned to big-picture relationships in nature and by focusing on one aspect of nature (clouds) I could eliminate distractions and do a good job.
Scott Christensen voraciously devours visual information (most painters do). Before and during a painting, he searches out solutions in books and online. He may love the way one artist handles trees and the way another artist handles rocks on a shore. Hours are spent looking at individual parts of nature so as to see how it has been handled before. The key is that he has a purpose and he drills down on specific problems. Other artists do the same thing. Personally, when I am stuck or in a period of waiting, I look to my books on Inness, Schmid, Klimt, Chase, and Roger Dale Brown. I think of Ansel Adams a lot. I have catalogs from T. Allen Lawson that I keep close. Every studio that I have visited has had many books. Having the resources nearby is a comfort and a necessity. Many have come before us, and every good painter leaves a way of applying paint or arranging elements or presenting subjects that compliments what has come before and informs what comes after. The key to identifying what can help us in the moment is knowing our purpose (see no. 1)
Then there’s the internet with all of its glory and muck (see no. 8). Pinterest can be helpful, but many works are wrongly attributed. Being able to save boards on specific elements (clouds) or artists is really nice when seeking direction, but it is a black hole to avoid if we do not have a compass. That compass is purpose (see no. 1). I had been thinking about skies before Plein Air South and before I noticed Josh Clare. How many skies did I watch change with no thought of painting them? How many times did I sit in twilight or noonday shade wondering at it all? All of that experience was inside of me before 2009. How many art books and web-based images had I browsed, how many show openings and professional demonstrations had I absorbed in the 8 or so years since 2009? At some point, I was ready to present in paint that which had been distilled through my life and through my exposure to painting. Everything that I had seen and felt, a lifetime, was distilled into a 6x6 sketch of a cloud.
I want to make a picture of dogs in a algae-covered pond. I could copy the photograph well enough, but I have seen (in my mind’s eye) a certain surface and tone. In connection with this, I need to (finally) learn about ripples and waves. To that end, I visited the creek on a nice January day to make a sketch. I never got around to the water, however, as night settles in the low places first. I’ve learned the importance of being simple, but I have the scars of being bad, so I practice. I have set myself to learning about ripples and waves. I have made a sketch. Good ideas, bad waves. I posted a question on Instagram about which artists to look at regarding this subject and I have looked over the responses. After I complete a work in progress (a submission for the OPA National show) I will take some time to browse Pinterest. In the meantime, I take walks with the dogs to the pond and creek to just be there and take it in, to remember that I am not intimidated, that all of this was made for us, to breathe in gratitude, and to breathe out prayer.
This is how I have learned to learn. I dive in, make sketches, step back, seek relevant imagery, breathe, let it go, and try again. It helps to know that anything painted well is interesting.
2 - Painting is not about depiction.
Long before I chose to dedicate myself to learning to paint with oil paint, I would occasionally see old paintings from place to place and I’d wonder how they did it. At a restaurant in the Opryland Hotel there are large paintings that, from the look of them, are from the late 17/early 1800’s that show a well-dressed person on a horse. I think I remember dogs as well. All I could think of was how to do that. How do I make dimensionality on a flat surface. Painting was mesmerizing.
I don’t know when it happened, but a sense began to grow within me that connected HOW something was painted with WHAT was painted. The smooth surface free of noticeable brush marks seemed to compliment the dignified scene presented. In another picture from another place, the heavy brushwork seemed to clearly say that there was bustling people all around and that life was happening. I began to look at the parts of the picture that were not the subject and see real importance in them. I saw layers. I love(d) layers. Layers reminded me of time and of the complexity of people, for in them I saw a kinship to my humanity. Some things covered over here, revealed over here. Some parts brushed here, applied with a knife there. Streaked here. Mottled here. Smooth here. Scrapped, scratched, unsaturated, and soft there. Sometimes within the lines, sometimes without.
While I was (am) dazed by the graceful rendition of humans in masterful brushwork and poetically painted light effects, I could stand in front of Rothko all day. Melting. Smoke. Gauze. For me, no real lines or boundaries of organic forms. What can you say is depicted? For me, the answer is humanity itself. Color relationships as human handprints in the earth, echoed in galaxies and campfires alike. Emotion. Prayer. Souls in physical frames. Then I see George Inness. What in the world? You can’t call that half painted thing on the left a house! Smeared, covered, added, and covered some more. Then wiped away! You can’t do that - if you are ONLY saying “building.” If, however, you are making a cohesive story or a larger statement (poem), you can do whatever the rules you are abiding by allow. So long as you remember that painting is a language (Thank you Gayle Levee*) that still needs enunciation.
1 - Painting is personal and purposeful.
If it isn't, it's just copying. We are not copies or copyists. Since I do not believe that we are cosmic burps, I believe that our lives have purpose. Our roads will eventually converge, but for our time here we must find our own way while seeking and contemplating standing stones we find.
I can’t make anyone contemplate their own days and time. I have. I do. It helps me see, think, and to hear. If you cannot relate to being confronted with YOU - your real thoughts, opinions, deep beliefs - or if you think we are cosmic incidentals, then you may relate least to this last part. I hope you have gotten something out of the rest. Finding a personal painting purpose is hard and took a life-shattering event where I lost everything, had my face pressed daily into the earth, and found it difficult to carry a single thought for more than 20 seconds. I do not recommend this way of finding purpose. Nevertheless, I was there, nearly as low as one could be, and saw a path. I made a choice to live and to step onto the way provided because I believe in Purpose. I can’t articulate yours, but here is mine.
Purpose - I mean to pull up the Innerman to the surface of the skin so as to become a whole person, to speak with one voice. To learn the shapes of the letters that I glimpse in life so as to learn to make words that one day become sentences that one day become a language that is decipherable to future people and worthy to use in conversation with the voice - to speak back in Beauty. I'm making a code that is meant to reveal, not conceal.
I am the most fortunate person I know. I've never earned anything. Everything I have has been given to me. I have had an easier life that almost everyone else I know, and even more so when compared to the world, and that has given me a distinct advantage over other people learning to paint. You see, all of my advantages - loving, sacrificial parents, a loving, sacrificial wife, caring in-laws, abundant amounts of all I have ever needed, education, three brothers that know how to do everything that have carried my weight, aunts, uncles, and cousins that are near - all of it - every advantage - has distilled down into a few really clear ideas about life. One of those ideas is that life is meaningful and purposeful.
On the surface it may seem like an odd thing to so strongly influence a learning painter, but in my experience it has been the most important part of becoming myself. So much of what I see on being a good painter centers around watching other people who are better than us paint. Fine. But I don't want to paint only to be a good painter that looks like someone else - who is likely themselves trying to improve and move past where they are! So I asked myself very early on, during tragedy and sinking heartbreak, “what am I doing this for?” Sometimes I was yelling at myself in disgust, sometimes I was looking at myself in a mirror of sorts, sometimes it didn’t sound like my voice asking. Why did I keep going when I knew not one single artist? Why spend money that I didn’t have on supplies that I didn’t know how to use? Why stand in a field time after time making a sketch when I’m not seeing improvement? Why travel two hours round-trip to Nashville to embarrass myself in a painting group? Why set out with painting equipment knowing that all I’m really going to do is drive around and never set it up? Why persist through tragedy and tears, knotted up insides and eye rolling? WHY?
There seems to be a voice that cups my attention, that holds my face like a parent holds a child’s, that looks deeply into me somehow and speaks a language that I cannot. It is trying to communicate and I am trying to listen, but a mysterious veil curdles the language that we may otherwise use to converse. I’m sure it is the same voice that commands hikers, campers, gardeners, and window wishers. It is reaching for me and I want to reach back. It is trying to tell me something about life and love and peace and loss and past and future, but all I hear is rustling leaves at night. All I see is waving grasses. Something moves, and I want to follow. Why pictures and not music or something else? That part is mystery.
In my language I say that clouds or leaves on a pond move slowly. Nature is saying this is life’s proper pace. In my language I say how bending branches dipping into the creek or the sky held in a puddle create a longing, nature says they are invitations. We are two that love one another, so we offer each other subtleties, but at day’s end we want to be clear, so we grandly, concretely display our affections so as to leave no doubt. I speak in sketches, she speaks in skies. I whisper in values, she softly rustles the grasses. I smile in shapes, she giggles in creeks.
As a boy I would leave the house, screen door slapping behind, cross the road, and head toward the creek to watch the earth change. It is magical to witness light melt into purples. To see the starry sky mimicked by a once green and tan field as lightning bugs begin to show. New sounds are heard at twilight. Birds float and swoop with gladness and everything becomes easier to see for a time. All the world waits for this time where squinting is not required and color is full of itself. I believe that it is the time when God walked in the Garden, and we still feel his presence in the mysterious anticipation of night.
Witnessing night fall on my home is more comforting than the drape of any blanket. There is nothing like walking home and being surprised by a darting rabbit or the huff of an inconvenienced deer. There is clarity at twilight that no work of art can offer. There is a healing gravity at the intersection of that time and that space and those sounds that works to stitch my fractured mind together again and offer my depleted heart a full glass of water. Twilight is resting hope, a sliver of the eternal stream.
Nature’s voice is like a scattered and fuzzy transmission with enough coming through to draw us out time and time again. Wind through grasses, water between rocks, dark woods beyond the treeline, rivulets in a flooded field, the onset of autumn, spring’s broken ground - all these have me bent at a table as it were, with headphones pressed to my ears listening, listening. Painting is a way of taking notes on the bits of the transmission that I am picking up.
In the end, I know that I am writing what others have no doubt written better and more of, but I must still take these sketchy notes - for myself and somehow for the world as well. I come from a place where art is something for children - a colorful alphabet block that isn’t useful for building. Little do they know that what I make is Life and, through the sacrifice of common distractions, I make time. There is no one who can make life or time, but somehow painting does that. Perhaps it will be shown one day that the people were right in saying that art is for children, but I won’t be around to hear them. I’ll be in a field with the broom sage and lightning bugs, bathing in purple, a child waiting for his Father, the Coming One.