Back Out There, December Evenings by the river

Harold Speed wrote a book on drawing, and one on painting, both classics from the early 1900's. "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials" is, I think, a little less common to find then the drawing book, and was written in 1913 or so and begins with a sympathetic, but critical, chapter on "modern art". He welcomes the reinvigorating honesty of the new work (Cezanne, Picasso, etc) and their attempt to express emotion, but suggests that without craft, and a greater depth of intention-not just aesthetic- that the modern work will not be great.

His intent is to get the young artist out of the morass of the boring academic work of the 19th c, but through and beyond the modern work then happening. It all sounds so sensible, and would think that plenty of young artists were inspired at the time to try. I don't know that they were or were not successful, or if that matters, but clearly they were in the shadow of what snowballed through the 20 c.

And now, after almost exactly 100 years, it seems like there is sort of a returning to trying to learn what Harold Speed was trying to hand down. That there are a lot of artists trying the so called "classical" style, and forming so called "Ateliers", I suppose indicates the thirst for that sort of knowledge that comes from hard work and patience, like learning,I would guess, to play a classical piece of music.

I sometimes hope that I could get on that band wagon, maybe just on the end, as it feels like something I'd like to do, if I had the time and patience to do it. But really I don't, I prefer to figure out how to get paint on quickly and in a way that looks like it belongs there, and looks right the next day, and the day after. I can't even visualize a 12 hour drawing, all the measuring! Though when I look at the bad distortions in mine, that i did not see when drawing, I am always surprised, and know that some measuring would help.

But what really matters is, I think, the theme, what it's all about, in the altogether, and not just one piece or another, but the whole bunch of them from the very beginning to the very end. What is being said? I think i have some idea of this, for my own work, by the tail, and have all along, though I don't know what it is, if its any good, and I fear naming it for losing it. I somehow think that I would be able to say it, write it out, but I doubt very much I can say much more except note a few motifs that I return to again and again and wonder what the thread was.

There's a river, and a field, and a tree or two. There's a sky with light not quite even in it. Its later in the day, when the color is more mysterious, but I don't know that this is important, or just when I feel like getting out to paint. Sometimes there's the same things but in a figure, trying to get a bit of light, or a tone, and then, in each, there's trying to build the underlying structure of it all, the lines, the trace through, usually literally.

Today, in the cold again with gloves, I painted in the fields by the river. I am back there, off and on, when the sun starts heading down, and I think i make an inch or two of progress.It is such a struggle, between the sketch, and trying to build some depth in it, towards something that isn't a sketch, but isn't dead either. Something with drips in it, but something with light, that's what i really want to see happen.

Painting, December

Painting, December, is cold, though not impossible here in the valley. Not like Vermont I suppose. I bundle up, and take a blanket, and try to get back home to heat before it is totally dark. I actually like it, I like the light, and the cold, the crunching grass, and the sharpness of things. And the color, and shapes in winter- that's what it is really about. Three days in a row, with the sun just setting , I packed up gear and biked down to the river to see if I could capture something of the sun setting down among the black locusts and the grey yellow fields. Of course, it was cold, and I took Scotch whiskey, and it sort of ended up more like a shouting match and finger painting, but it felt to me like some sort of communication. Between what, I can't really say, between myself sitting there in the field, and the image of the field, and all that I had wrapped up in my mind about what that means, I suppose that's what was talking.

And so there are three swirly images, with dashes and daubs and scrapings, in an attempt to catch some of the mystery of the trees and bushes and grey blueness of the last light of the sky, two of which I show here, the third of which still sits out in the cold on our back porch, I can't even recall what it is.

My thinking is that somehow I can reach something through this sort of work, get to some sort of breakthrough where it is something that I feel like busts through being a tonalist, impressionist, derivative image, and is something about being alive now, not then, and not looking always back, but about what it means to be here now, on the river, in a field, with the sort of information that I have in my brain. A tough proposition, in a time where something like painting is like learning to ride a horse, not to useful in the real world.

These aren't about now, really. They are still about trying to catch up to now. "Now" isn't about some dusty old thing like painting, now is about the great world forces, the economy, the technology, the banality, the setting sun, or maybe the new day, I have no idea, I don't really feel a part of it. I suppose you'd have to be 20, or younger to know what it is. I see it, but I don't feel it. Which is the irony, that I want, sort of, to make these paintings pertinent, and not just a hobby, but some sort of voice, but I have no idea what to say, or what I want to say even. And so, it ends up about just making images, ploddding along, and maybe someday one clicks, or someone thinks, these mean something, and that would be success enough. Hasn't happened yet.

It isn't about prettiness, or capturing beauty, or sentiment, or nostalgia. Well, sort of all those I guess, but moreso, it is to me, I think, about darker forces, about what underlies all of the shades and shadows and dark lines, about the patterns, and the organization of vision, and the way light moves through it all. How can that be important? Maybe it isn't, but when I sit there, most of the time, though not all the time, if feels like what I was built to do, wired to do, however right or wrong the image turns out, I feel alive to it, more than anything else ever ever ever. The irony is always there, how there is never enough time, how I tire easily, how there are far more skillfull people than myself, how it seems pretty much like a lonesome road, and how I sort of like it that way, or at least start to come to accept that we are all on some sort of lonesome road.