Passage at Bear's Den

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."  

Ernest Hemingway

"I want to be connecting with the subconscious, if I can call it that, because there are not too many words to describe the real deep inner part of a human being ... I want to be at that place where everything is blotted out and where creativity happens ... and to get there I practice, you know I'm a prolific practicer, I still practice every day. You have to have the skills, then you want to not think when you're playing, that's when you let whatever deep level of creativity, spirituality, I mean, you know these words are so inadequate these days but you want to get to this place where they exist."

Sonny Rollins

The quote from Sonny Rollins (posted on FB by Victoria Webb, a marvelous painter down in Georgia) could have as easily come from Willem de Kooning or a generation later, Richard Diebenkorn. Hemingway in his quote, is writing about the same place but in his style has distilled his process down to a simple, graphic image.  The real question facing us all is how can we get to that magic, deep level of spirituality reliably and consistently? Sonny Rollins, a master musician, says practice - 
like the old joke, "new comer to NY City asks cabbie, 'How do I get to Carnegie Hall?' The cabbie answers, 'Practice, practice."   And it is true that the best way to creative sources lies in a regular, daily practice of one's expressive craft.   That daily practice however, is simply kicking the door open to possibilities. One must then enter in and find the state of mind required - and this is perhaps best discovered by attaching the painting process to one's original discovery of the poetry in the subject.
 The visual power that speaks to the subject can always be found in the form, the value structure, the space, the color -  it is up to the painter to decide how to use them in pursuit of the expressive effect.
 This is Hemingway's 'bleeding', for this is always a difficult thing, to penetrate the outward life and obliterate the world's distraction - but possibly the most noble and enhancing of all human endeavor - connecting all of us to a basic human desire; coming to grips with the essence of being alive!

Summer Trees - Robert Henri - expressive purpose

Summer Trees

  oil on panel  8" x 10"  

"The more simply you see, the more convincingly you will render." Robert Henri

  Perhaps the best advice to help one to see simply is to decide what the poetry or the visual trigger is in the work. Often for me, it can just be the gesture of a copse of trees, emerging from an overgrown meadow. Then as I locate the darkest values and the lightest, warmest values, I begin to build the space with slabs of paint. As the painting progresses it is no longer simply a rendering but a search for or a battle to maintain a connection with that visual poetry. Color choices, composition, paint handling, contrast are all decisions made much easier when guided by that initial visual/poetic choice. 
Form therefore follows, in the matter of painting, expressive intent. The humble subject is often the best path to truth and beauty - and a reminder of the joy of just being completely in the moment and at that place for a little while.

Bear's Den, July. Edgar Degas; Antonio Lopez Garcia

Bear's Den, July

  oil on linen  8" x 10"  

"It isn't how to paint, it is what to paint that matters."

Edgar Degas

"...painting is always a fiction... it reconstructs and interprets the world. Simply put, objectivity and subjectivity are not mutually exclusive."

Antonio Lopez Garcia

Both these painters are saying the same thing, each in his own way. The reasons for painting dictate the method and process - and the reasons for making a painting are triggered by the subject, the visual incident. Once embarked on the process the painting becomes an imaginative construct aimed at the painter's angle on the poetry embedded in that subject. While struggling to adhere to the elements necessary to capture the poetry, the painter interprets the subject. 
This little study of rock formations near where I live has in it a sense of abstraction built on how I saw the shadow and light and the massive forms of the rocks - yet clings (maybe desperately) to as much of the place and space as I could. The balance between the two (abstraction and actuality) set up a visual tension that gives painting life. Enjoy!

July Field, 2013 - quote by Paul Cezanne

July Field

  oil on panel  7" x 10"  

"A minute in the world's life passes! To paint it in it's reality and forget everything for that! To become that minute..."  Paul Cezanne  

The summer is ripening fast now - with 95 + degree days and high humidity it seems no one (including me) can keep up with the mowing, the vines and weeds especially seem to be in their glory. The trees throw black shadows and the fields provide some color other than the intense green that dominates earlier in the summer. From here on, things get better and better visually, if one can take the heat.

Road To Lincoln - near our home

Road To Lincoln

  oil on panel  8" x 10"  

This ground has been shaped by lives lived hard in this place, 

marked by patterns of fence lines devoured by vines

and openings filled with scrub second growth and brambles,

jade and red settings for the elder oaks to spread hope

to an indifferent sky, cold-blue and infinite. Gnarled, twisted 

as they reach to the sun, stoic and handsome as survivors, 

worn as time's witness.

It is here that I must take measure of my heart

and this place, with deliberate speed

and unmeasured memory, to bring home

my offerings without words, without explanation.

Unspoken messages marked out on cloth,

like some lost wanderer, leaving for any who might see,

a part of what he's found, unsure of any reply.

from the poem, "Witness", by Dean Taylor Drewyer

This is an excerpt from a poem of mine about making paintings on the land around my home in still somewhat rural northern Virginia. There was a large deserted farm not far from here out of which the builders had not yet started in carving home sites. I would drive my truck out into the farm to paint. This is where the poem came from -  this particular painting I just finished  is from a spot along the dirt road we live on - just a couple of hundred yards from my studio.  Someone once asked me why I spent so much time painting trees and overgrown fields at the edges of farms and towns - forgotten or neglected places. I suppose one reason is, people seldom bother me in those spots as I work.  Carefully considered, I think it is more because the gesture, the posture, the confusing structure of these trees and vines and saplings and weeds and grasses fascinate me. I suppose when I tire of them I will find something else, in the mean time I'll keep going. Enjoy!

Pathway Back - The 6 am Walking Club

Pathway Back

  oil on panel  7" x 10"  

Let me seize the air

pulsing down these hills,

kissed by a moment's cold frolic,

without thought of the strangling calendar.

Let my feet step freely into the swirl

the yellow tall tangle grasses,

my head up among intemperate clouds,

at one with my precious delirium.

There are no dances so

sweet as these hours of mine,

poured out on the land,

standing at the edge of mystery,

boldly greeting my imperfection,

held out as an offering.

I am never far from these fields,

buried as they are in my deep,

their wind sounds find me

encased in my dreams, lost

in the deepest nights' shadows,

slant light running loose in my sleeping eyes.

A poem about making paintings from a collection of my writing, from several years back.

Each day as I go to paint, these lines sometimes come to mind - as they did when we were at la Madelene, as I went out in the mornings. True, the 6 am walking club never quite came together but being out at that hour allowed me some magical times, completely alone and able to capture a small bit of that time, that place, and that feeling.

Into The Orchard, Sally's Panel

Into The Orchard

  oil on panel  12" x 16"  

"Painting is an art in which one suddenly recognizes 
what one has never seen before."

Richard Diebenkorn

What the artist is referring to is the nature of the process of painting - how it requires planning and an understanding of composition, technique, and materials beforehand - and then thrives in an attitude of exploration and discovery during execution. 
This work was painted in the cherry orchard behind la Madelene - on a panel brought to me by Sally Balick on the third day, a true and welcome kindness. Sally is a terrific painter who was helping Ruth and Julian with the week full of painters at la Madelene and out of the blue she asked if I would like a larger surface to work with - voila! An example of the wondrous people and experience at that place - everyone together and supportive. 

Toward The Cherry Orchard, Edgar Degas, Henry Moore

Toward The Cherry Orchard

  oil on panel  7" x 10"  

"...they are annoying, these young people. They want us to believe that we are old - that we are ill, have white hair, no longer able to pay court to a woman. What of it? There is more to life than that! We have the will to work - we are not old."

  Edgar Degas  

"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is - it must be something you cannot possibly do!"

  Henry Moore  

Both of these quotes are from the time when each of these distinguished artists were old and near the end of their days. But there is a message here for each of us, no matter what our age. It is our work that gives us something that might be called 'absorbedness' - that wonderful state of mind when all the world, except the focus of our working attention, goes away. That work also contains those days when nothing seems right, when the visual problem dogs one's steps and all attempts seem wrongheaded. Those days are as valuable as the good ones, for they teach us what we don't want the work to be and gives a reason to keep at it - and it is so important to mine those bad days for ideas to go forward 
and not allow them to be a roadblock. Sometimes I think that all talent really is, is the ability to see possibilities in perceived disaster.

So, what in the world did Henry Moore, the greatest sculptor of the middle 20th century, mean  by "It must be something you cannot possibly do"?  Perhaps it was to be the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo or, more likely, simply to pursue that evasive visual image that he always had in mind - changing as his life's work progressed and always just a little out of reach.  That is where I try to be - always in pursuit of the image I have in mind, just a little out of reach. Frustrating? Sometimes - but a true source of happiness. Maybe in each painting I can get just a little closer.

Looking Back From The Orchard, Richard Diebenkorn

Looking Back From The Orchard

  oil on panel  12" x 18"  

"I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted 

if I had thought of it beforehand."      Richard Diebenkorn

The wondrous thing about making paintings is discovering anew the place one chooses to paint, even though one has walked through that place many times previously. Someone once sked me if I made paintings in order to leave something of myself behind - my work as a kind of tombstone or memorial. I don't believe so. I make paintings because every one is a kind of rebirth into a new world, in places rediscovered. 

Last Morning At La Madelene, Walt Whitman

Last Morning at la Madelene

  oil on panel  

"I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, 

and accrue what I hear into myself,

and let sounds contribute toward me."

Walt Whitman

If one substitutes the word look for listen, see for hear, and sight for sounds, this quote from Whitman becomes a wonderful piece of advice for the painter. To be clear eyed and disciplined in truly seeing the world, the painter begins to be able to extract (and accrue) form from chaos, understanding from unknown. Spaces, shapes, patterns, similarities and differences begin to become evident and 'contribute toward' the painter. Of course, this has to happen anew each time one begins a new work - but take a page from Whitman - 'do nothing for a long time but look' - the poetry of the visual moment will more easily and readily be found.

  Afternoon Sky, Looking West From La Madelene

  oil on panel   6" x 10"  

"It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more".        Edouard Manet

This view was right out of the door of my room and over to the left, looking at the hill that stood, looming over the cherry orchard. I allowed the burnt sienna tone on the panel to leak through in the sky, creating or emphasising the warmer tones of the clouds. 

Iris at la Madelene

  oil on panel  

    “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” Edgar Degas

One could not possibly paint iris or any complicated subject well without being willing to abandon any pre-conceived notion of what and iris should look like. This is the knowledge Degas insists a painter of 'good things', or what we might call visually compelling work, must lose. Granted, as one decides on a subject for a painting on a May morning, one will consider the location and the light - and the iris blooming may well be an inspiration. But when the painting begins, the painter must abandon what is known about trees or flowers or buildings and react to the shape, the form, the space, the color, and the value - while keeping the strategy for the poetry of the place alive. The painter allows the painting to dictate process and technique and each painting requires different things - thus creating the setting in which 'the painter no longer knows what he is doing' and simply follows the process. Then the good things happen.