Apology...

To those who follow my blog, I apologize for neglecting to post much. I love to write and express myself and expound about my opinions and beliefs.

Lately, I've been working intensely on wedding plans as my beautiful daughter prepares to begin a new life with her chosen love, Heath.

I've tried to maintain my art and regular life but all the intensity of this planning and the many roadblocks that keep being piled in front has had an adverse affect on me and my work; there is a reason for no new posts or new artwork.

After July 3rd, I will return to art full blast to art and hopefully writing. Please bear with me until then but please please feel free to read my past posts that are archived....and comment if you want.

I'll be checking every day.

Winter Sculpture Session

The sculpture below is my first representational female torso. In the past at college, I sculpted abstract forms but never realism. The figure was taken from a living model...a wonderful and experienced model. This class was a real learning experience and I can see that it is helping my life drawing greatly.

This piece is unfired clay at this point. I'll post the finished piece soon.

I wanted a more dynamic pose but did not have control of it since this was a class project. Often I take people literally and so when my instructor focused on accuracy, I feared to exaggerate....but then my instructor wants me to to exaggerate on the next piece. I feel a little bound up.



Gesture, gestures, gestures ... the key to life drawing.

A Page Turner

Modern Art & the Death of a Culture
by H. R. Rookmaaker

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891077995/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=AHNEEZ9CVAP3Q&v=glance

Walking through the front gallery of our local art center on the way to life drawing studios, a recent exhibit of contemporary art by local artists intrigued me for each stroll through left a different impression.

The first impression, I thought "this is really top flight work and well done. I'm so proud."

Second time through, my impression began to turn negative. I began to say, oh, that looks like this great artist of the past, or that great one. Where are the new images? This is not original. Creative yes; original no. I'd seen all this stuff before in one exhibit or another or from history. The art began to look dated to me. There is simply nothing new.

Third time through, I thought, this is really feeling empty and meaningless. These artists really seem to me to have nothing to say. Now, I am feeling very negative. My inner voice shouted, "Stop it! You can't do that. You have to LOVE this stuff. What is wrong with you?"

In my view, this art work is very well crafted. Crafted in that it was professionally produced and thought out. I've seen no art in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art any better constructed and that is saying something. It's professional.

However, I came to a truthful conclusion, the art here is simply projecting the pursuit of "ugly." Images of distorted figures ill-drawn to hide the inability to draw. You can be an artist but you don't have to draw. Well that is true. BUT, you have to have something to say.

The questions arose in me: "Is this real." "Is this truthful?" Contemporary masters, I've read have been searching for "the real." Most of the greats.

These movements in art of the 19th and 20th Century were no doubt a reaction to Impressionism, Romanticism, Classical and Religious art, and the "junk" produced in the ateliers and studios of the time but it still baffles me for to me it is praising the ugliest and darkest images of this realm of reality. It is certainly "real" and a lot of it is disgusting but is that for me? What is happening?

I have studied for literally years (with little success) in understanding though I have applied myself with great earnest. The "real" in life does have its balance. Reality is BOTH ugly and beautiful.

Representational art has always been a passion, especially in my idealist youth, for I have searched for beauty in living. For years, I thought maybe I was just not very smart to comprehend all this lofty arty stuff and could not grasp these deep deep concepts.

Bull crap. (An appropriate intellectual educated response.)

At last, I have found an author who puts this all in context and having lived through the sixties and seventies, being in a relationship with God Almighty, I see what has happened.

Culture has lost it's soul and is spirit-less. Art is reflecting that. Our culture is dying and some (and I say SOME) very good contemporary art is reflecting that death. The death of the pursuit of beauty. Rookmaaker has it right.

At last I have some understanding. How short changed I have been in my art education. No wonder the philosophy of art intrigued me but confounded me at the same time.

John Ruskin, the great art critic, made a very profound statement that has never left me in my journey to art knowledge. He wrote, "All art is praise." That is a very profound statement. I almost want to write the word "Selah" (meaning pause and meditate on this.) Ruskin was a very devout Christian and intellectual and he sung the praises of the great landscape and seascape master, J. M. Turner. If you look at Turner's greatest works (late) you see great abstract powerful shapes especially in his seascapes. He was painting for his time declaring the power and majesty of God's creation, the beauty, and glory of it; he discovered abstraction as a way to tell that to us pounding his images into the surface of his paint. This was his expressive voice. He made his sun blinding with brilliance by applying his intellect, and so his suns glow brightly.

Then the wheels came off. Man turned from God when he proclaimed that "God was dead" and so it is reflected in society's art.

This book by Rookmaaker has truly inspired me to produce art for my age and with a spiritual voice of my age. I have no desire to create "realism" as a camera would, and I want to give voice to my ideas that the viewer can relate to. I am in pursuit of the "real" beauty of our time; the praise of our age. For God is indeed not dead. I want to voice the "real" ugly of our time but from the standards of a spiritual person. I desire to experience true inspiration...a noble pursuit.

There is an honest voice and an independent voice developing in me. Yes, I am finding my artistic voice.

Workshop Study

Oil Painting in progress....this is an update on the work that is in progress from the Wimmer workshop. It's coming along.

Meet Mike

Slideshow http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii3/padurrett/?action=view&current=7782b4dc.pbw

Meet Oklahoman, Mike Wimmer...what a talented and successful artist!
It was a productive and informative two day portrait workshop. For the first time in a workshop, I actually got my painting blocked in with the underpainting. Using a very limited palette, the ground work was laid.



The second day, I worked mainly on the face and had there been more time, I would have built up the values in layers. I was a little disappointed that Mike did not get to my easel to instruct me personally. It could be that the class was just to large to do that but it did seem that he spent most of his time on the other side of the room.

Anyhow, he is a charming man with a very pleasing way and great broad smile that is infectious. His ideas are clever and I can tell he is very intelligent.

The only thing is that I worry that he is using Liquin which the artists I know have had problems with. It peels sometimes and in lots of discussion on the Cennini Forum about plastics and how they break down with age, I fear Mike will one day have a whole lot of ruined paintings. That would be tragic.

Another thing I could not agree with him on is his fear of turpentine. Yet, mineral spirits has just as much toxicity. Expensive triple distilled turpentine is VERY expensive and does not have as strong an odor as hardware store cheap turpentine and every studio should have adequate ventilation ... period. Mike didn't seem to have a problem with fixative spray and that is far more dangerous to the lungs than turpentine's fumes. Everyone knows that turpentine is used drop by drop as an additive to oil paint that causes a chemical reaction whereby the paint will dry from the inside out not the other way round and thereby lessening the possibility of a skin to form. Turpentine is NOT used to clean brushes; mineral spirits is for that.

As Rob Howard, moderator on the Cennini Forum says, some artists have drunk the cool-aid on this matter from the environmental wackos and this fear is not based in reason.

In the studio an artist must....

• develop good, safe habits working in a well ventilated studio

• NEVER ever put brush handles in their mouths ... whether using turpentine or mineral spirits and especially when painting with cadmium paint colors
  

• always properly washes their hands before leaving the studio...always

• NEVER eat anything at the easel

• NEVER allow children in the studio
  

• always uses PAINTER'S SAFETY SOAP in the final hand wash which is designed to react to the toxic chemicals and release them from the pores of skin.

Painter's Safety Soap® along with the greatest brush cleaner ever made ... Ugly Dog® Brush Soap may be purchased at Studio Products, a professional boutique paint manufacturer. www.studioproducts.com. Ugly Dog...I would never be without it!

ALSO, I learned that to put a protective finish on a painting, you must use a special fine quality varnish and on top of that a thin coat of wax that may be polished to a absolutely gorgeous sheen which is museum quality. The wax may be removed as the painting ages and gets dirty ... back to the varnish and then a new coat of wax applied. THAT is how you do it.

Anyhow, this only shows how valuable my training was at the Cennini Boot camps, especially the Technical Boot Camp.

The other issue is just a preference. I was taught to paint the eyes last while Mike paints them first...just a preference and not as critical. I don't know whether it was just time for me to go to another plateau of learning or if it was Mike's simple presentation and method but I've improved and felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. It was just a great workshop and I am so proud that a native son has done so well as an artist.

One other thing. Mike is a Christian and it is evident in his the portraits of his children. He placed them in heroic fairy tales and Bible stories ... painting them throughout their childhood. How clever.

Mike Wimmer Portrait Workshop

The Portrait Workshop is coming up thank the Lord!!! I am praying that I will get something out of this two day event at the Cowboy Hall of Fame Museum. I'm still planning a portrait of my daughter in her wedding gown a challenge to my skill and creativity. Subject matter so trite, how can it be fresh and interesting and say something about the bride?

www.mikewimmer.com

I will blog about this and my continuing Life Drawing Class with Glen Thomas at City Arts studios.

Since September when my daughter got engaged and with the demanding Christmas and New Years activities, I've been unable to sketch or paint except for some Tuesday nights at the City Arts Life Drawing sessions.

It seems impossible.

I just can't get into anything serious with all of these distractions. Sometimes I think if earning a living as an artist would demand studio time and be beneficiary stress. Now I am in tax season and it falls on me to do all of the grunt work in Quicken and Excel files.

Sometimes I feel like running away to some far away place to work. Will I ever become productive and what is holding me back? Maybe it is the inferiority complex I have about my work. I'm pretty ordinary and "ordinary" has never inspired nor motivated me.

Seeing BIG Shapes...

It's happening. I am seeing big shapes finally and this is affecting my drawing. I cannot wait to begin painting again. Hopefully soon.

Family duties and distractions are killing me but the wisdom of taking classes is helping me. As I contemplate this, I have a sense of excitement that I am actually moving forward even in the midst of all these demands on my time.

Who will loose me from this "flesh."

Well it happened ... once again ... I shot off my big fat mouth ... and offended a fellow artist on this blog. (I didn't think anyone reads the darn thing...honestly...sometimes I just want to blow off steam by writing and griping and expressing my own frustrations. That, however, is no excuse.)

All I can say is I am sorry and ... I wish I could take back my comments. (I deleted the post.) I let my own frustration and short comings as an artist cloud my judgment. I really do not know this very nice artist at all and I feel really .... reeeally bad that I probably offended him.

Maybe he will return to this site and read this.

I admit ... I don't like to take criticism sometimes ... even though I say that is how we all learn. That day, I was tired of being always the student and felt insulted (although he didn't mean to insult me) I guess. He must have thought my work was unworthy or he wouldn't have criticized it.) Or maybe it was a control thing....that I didn't like.

Who will loose me from this flesh?

Should I email this very nice fellow and apologize? Or, should I just let it go? Any comments?

October Gesture & Slow Contours Drawings

One minutes gestures....


Contours, negative space within frame...


Slow, blind, contour drawing 20 minutes....drawing contours very slow without looking at paper.

The Fair Is Cramping My Art Progress

The Arts Center is closed down for the September due to the Oklahoma State Fair so .... I will be taking the month off from Life Drawing.