pencil drawing

Crystal Glass on an Elaborately Decorated Cloth, pencil on 8×10 sheet

Going through boxes full of things stowed away reveals bits of life forgotten. Sometimes the process is painful. One had remembered events a bit differently than they were. Or so the artifacts say. But nice surprises emerge too. Objects and pictures long unseen meet one’s gaze once again. I have retrieved some items whose whereabouts have been long wrapped in mystery. I hope to be more deliberate this time. Former occasions of putting things away took place in a great rush. I want to make definitive choices this time. I am setting the stage for newness. It’s time to let go of the past. I will keep some of the past, but the rest must go. Deciding what stays and what goes is my present task.

The many years old drawing above is similar to one I made just a month or so ago. It’s more intense than the recent drawing I made of a crystal pitcher, but the visual ideas are much the same. I don’t know what cloth the glass sits on. I don’t even know what glass this is. I cannot identify a glass that I own that this resembles. Perhaps in the on-going household sorting I will encounter the drawing’s subject matter. Here’s another of those drawings that could have been made by someone else. I don’t remember drawing it. I have no idea why I drew it in this way with such dense pencil tones. Finding the drawing is like discovering a different me who lives in a parallel universe. Perhaps I have subpersonalities who draw things without my knowing? More likely, life just has so many experiences in it that you just cannot remember big chunks of your own perceptions. Even a drawing comes back at you like a stranger.

distant impressions

Seashell and Blue Bottle, oil on paper

The seashells have always been an experimental vehicle for me. Sometimes when I wanted to try a new medium or some new approach, I would turn to the seashells for the motif. Often, I seemed to have sacrificed something of the shell’s recognizability for the sake of emphasizing some element that caught my notice: a color perhaps, or a linear feature. In those places where I painted yellow, the shell is yellowish, but not as much so as what I recorded. Blue lines are present as cool shadows but are not distinct as here. I turned my shell into a visual calligraphy. And the cloth has developed in the same way. It’s almost a rolling ocean of blue rather than a soft cloth lying on a table. The blue bottle doesn’t so much hold a column of empty air as it holds more of the color blue.

The painting becomes an expression of feelings about a moment of seeing, one recorded without my complete awareness. I thought I was recording faithfully what I saw. I was not aware of anything else. It’s only after the painting session has stopped that one really sees what the painting is. Sometimes painting is a strange transcription. The artist records a succession of moments of perception. Seeing it again, long after having painted it, adds another layer of strangeness to it. I wonder how it looks to an objective observer. Am I am objective observer now that so much time has lapsed?

bowl of fruit

Bowl of Fruit, oil on canvas

One of the paintings I encountered while reorganizing everything. I don’t know when I painted it — probably a few years ago. The painting is not so different from some drawings of fruit in bowls that I made last year. I guess I like bowls of fruit. I like the forms. Like a true great granddaughter of Paul Cezanne, I like to paint round thingies in a still life.

another seashell

Seashell on a table, oil on canvas panel

The seashell can be portrayed in ways that allude to its natural environment. Or it can appear as it might in a collection, as in a cabinet of curiosities. Or it can be a feature in a mythology. There’s lots of ways that seashells have figured in art. In this painting, the shell is clearly out of its environment. The horizontal and verticals behind it demonstrate that it’s inside a room. In this instance a bit of bookcase is visible as a blur behind it.

I focused my attention on some of the amazing surface color changes and textures. The shell is so complex. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to portray it completely as it is.

delightful illusions

Vase of Flowers in a Glass, oil on canvas

There’s something wonderful about paintings of glass. I am not sure what the fascination is, but it seems to affect both artists and spectators. Something about trying to convince the spectator that he is looking through a clear container when the whole of it is purely illusion. (The artist painting the picture is a spectator too.) All painting is illusion, of course. But paintings of glass seem to be doubly so.

vases of flowers

Study for a Still life of Flowers, oil on canvas sheet

One thing I discover as I go through old works is that I have been always making studies. I do many repetitions as I learn a subject. Some of the studies grow into independent works. The motif featured above appeared in several paintings. What makes this one a study is its being partial. In the various completed paintings, the whole vase and flowers are depicted and much more of the cloth. But I got interested in doing parts of motifs, and this particular motif really fascinated me, and I did many versions of it both as paintings and drawings.

My subject was heavily influenced by a certain Cezanne painting that belongs to the National Gallery of Art, of which I have made copies (through the museum’s copyist program) and informally by drawing it whenever I happened to be visiting the museum. Some of the drawings I made were on the largish side. I stood there in front of the painting with a big notebook leaned against my arm. I was determined to understand Cezanne’s beautiful flowers and didn’t mind standing long periods.

Actual size copy of a portion of Cezanne’s Vase of Flowers in the National Gallery of Art, oil on canvas sheet.

I believe the painting above was made in front of the actual painting. If so, there’s a stamp on the back. But I forgot to check when I took the photo. It appears to be actual size, and I cannot think of why I would have made an actual size portion of the painting unless it was to study the forms of the real deal. The museum forbids same size copies, so if you want to paint the forms their true size in paint, you have to settle for a partial view. So much of Cezanne’s painting reads as abstraction when you’re up close looking at details that it seemed like a fun thing to explore the shapes as shapes.

My version is like a drawing in paint. Cezanne’s canvas, on the contrary, has all manner of heavily worked paint and contours that have so piled up as to form ridges. His painting is also very dark, probably in part because of his heavy paint application. I did not imitate Cezanne’s manner when I made my versions of an iconic vase of flowers. I took the general idea from him of the big vase in the center of the canvas with cloth piled up around it, and for the rest I followed my own perceptions. Like Cezanne, though, I also used artificial flowers. He probably used paper flowers. Mine were cloth and I got most of them at Michaels.

seashells

Seashell, oil on paper

I knew I had made lots of drawings and paintings of seashells, but I had forgotten how many of them there are. Some like the painting above are little drawings in paint. I have no recollection of making this picture, but it’s fun to see it now. It has a bunch of siblings that I had forgotten about too. Sometime it would be nice to assemble all the seashells together.

I love the shells themselves. I think they are some of the most beautiful objects on earth, and they were fabricated by the most curious looking creatures. One of the enjoyments of portraying them is putting them into different settings, surrounding them with all sorts of colors.

NOAA photo in which one of the animal artisans peeks out from his lovely home.

To find out more about the amazing ocean artists, click HERE.

through thick and thin

Still life with Marmelade jar, blue and white bowl and bottles; oil on panel

Reencountering old paintings as I reorganize all the household stuff, I am seeing the range of things I have tried at one time or another. The painting above looks entirely different from the kind of painting that I have been doing lately. For one thing, it’s all painted very thinly. The smooth panel surface accounts for some of the thinness. I will be painting over most of these pictures to finish them, and I’m not sure how that will go. That too will be a new experience. Painting on this one, will involve engaging with the smooth surface and preserving that structure while adding more depth or solidity to the image. It becomes an ambition to deepen the illusion of the things on the table.

I get ideas about how I might proceed as I look at these pictures. These notes at the blog can jog my memory in the coming season since for now I must return to my chores. I have a bit of time to paint in the evenings after each day’s task, and those sessions are particularly relaxing. I found a way to streamline my gear so that I can just sit down and paint. The paintings I work on while I do the reorg are also small paintings. In fact I have begun working on one of the paintings that I found in storage.

confusion

Still life of Flowers, oil on panel

Among the small paintings I found while doing my household reorganization is the still life of flowers. The vase of flowers sits on a table decorated with a cloth that also has flowers in it. The crystal pitcher that I recently drew appears on the right of the dark blue vase, and behind the crystal pitcher one can see the orange top of an oriental vase behind the spray of yellow flowers. Between vase and pitcher, a bit of seashell appears in the spaces between things. I know it’s a seashell because of the size and color, but I don’t think it’s at all evident in the painting. I introduced almost as much confusion into the scene as did my hero Pierre Bonnard, though I painted my confusion in a different sort of style than he did.

I might touch up the painting a bit when I have finished the biggest chores of my reorganization. Not sure yet.

anticipation

Still life with Ceramic Bird, Blue Pitcher, Blue Bottle Whale Whistle and Grand Marnier, oil on panel

In the midst of reorganizing everything, I am finding older still lifes some which I think I can rework and/or refine. It’s such a grand discovery. Some of the pictures I had forgotten I even painted. They arrive back in my life at a perfect time because they are versions of something I’m setting out to do again with renewed enthusiasm. Even as I am thinking about ways of going forward with paintings from imagination, I find a bunch of paintings that are perfect for doing exactly that task. They are well along, but they have rough edges. I want to preserve a certain directness and even quirkiness that appears in some of these paintings, but I want to fill the voids — to correct the parts that lack a fullness of idea.

As is often the case of such changes in circumstance, I am finding the pictures while reorganizing so I cannot immediately launch into making additions to them. I have to continue my chores. But I will hold these thoughts about the pictures in my mind and remind myself how much I want this opportunity. It’s a time of anticipation even as spring is showing her first signs of arriving. I am impatient for the fullness of spring too. But Mother Nature alternates her hints of spring with bits of continued winter. We’re in a state of transition — and not only the people but the animals too. Outside my window a flock of grackles descends onto the bird feeder and they look impatient too. They’re all a flutter — along with their neighbors the red-winged blackbirds and the common wrens and sparrows. It’s a rushing of wings outside. Sometimes alighting and then suddenly taking off again, unsure and tumultuous.

Only the ceramic bird in the still life evinces calm.