Abstract Art

Talking about Art: Video Clip

Here's a video clip I just recorded where I discuss my approach to painting.

Monkdogz Urban Art Report

This past Saturday I was in New York for the opening of a group exhibit at Monkdogz Urban Art.  We had the worst weather--rainy, windy and cold, but still about 250 people showed up for the reception.  I was very pleased with the gallery, the art, and the hanging of the show.  My three large paintings were well-lighted and situated right at the entrance to the gallery.  I couldn't have asked for a better spot.

Our hosts, Bob Hogge and Marina Hadley were terrific--both high-energy people who did a great job in the selection and placement of the art.  Good champagne and fresh strawberries kept all the guests happy.  I had friends come in from Jersey who I hadn't seen in a zillion years. 

The show is up for another three weeks.  For more info about the exhibition, the artists, and lots more, check out the Monkdogz Urban Art website. 

Selecting Paintings for an Exhibition

It’s always a challenge to choose paintings for an exhibition, because you want to select art that will work in the gallery space and also work well together.  I found it particularly difficult recently when I had to pick three paintings for a group show at Monkdogz Urban Art in New York City.  I wanted the paintings to be as large as possible, and I wanted them to be from my latest work. 

Bob Hogge, director of the gallery, said that 48” x 48” should be the largest size I use because of the necessity to get all eight artists’ work hung.  He also said he preferred that I don’t send my black-and-white paintings, since most of my work is in bright colors.  These restrictions were fine, except that I’d just finished a number of 60” x 60” paintings, and a number of black-and-white paintings.  These were some of my favorites from my most recent work.

I could have chosen three smaller paintings, as then I’d have a number to choose from that would work well together.  But I wanted to send the largest ones I could, so that limited my choices.  Most of the 48” x 48” paintings I’d had in stock had been sold.  But I did have some brand-new paintings that I liked. 

After assembling a group of five possible paintings, Adrian weighed in with his opinion, and then I got another opinion from Stan Bowman, an artist friend of mine.  Stan pretty much agreed with me on the three that worked best together, so I made my final choice:

Fault Line, 48" x 48"

Green Box, 44" x 44"

Life Story, 44" x 44"

Seeing through the Eyes of an Artist

One of the blessings of being a visual artist is the intensity with which the world appears to me.  This has nothing to do with 20/20 vision, but with the attention artists pay to our surroundings.  We may not notice the scent of new-mown grass or the song of nearby birds, but the play of light and dark on the landscape at dusk will fascinate us.

One of my favorite sights—probably because it is so different from the typical northeastern landscape I see on a regular basis--is the California desert, with endless sand-colored dunes undulating in the sunlight as far as the eye can see.  I love the strangeness of these badlands, the sense of isolation and abandonment they give me, as if I were alone on the planet.

When I fly, I always take the window seat. Sure, clouds were exciting the first time I saw them from an airplane, but what still excites me is the view of the earth, with its varying hues and shapes.  Looking down at the squares of cultivated land in brown, tan, pale green, maybe with a river winding through or a lake interrupting the flow, is like staring at an abstract painting.

Since I am an abstract painter, I am continually turning the natural world around me into abstract compositions.  On walks near my house, I follow the patterns of shadows on the ground, or the sun’s reflection in puddles.  I look up at the web of branches overhead forming an intricate pattern of criss-crossing lines.  I study the texture of bark on the trees.  Any of it might form the basis for an abstract design.

Representational artists, on the other hand, might look at the landscape around them with a photographer’s eye, selecting the best shots and “framing” them.  Finding interesting subject matter is the first step in their work, and many artists travel all over the world with their cameras and sketch books to stimulate their art.  Others paint “plein air” directly on their canvases, translating what their eye sees directly into the forms they paint. 

Seeing like a photographer is always fun, even if you’re just sitting in a waiting room with nothing else to do.  I like to compose unlikely shots of corners or doorways, squinting to clarify the major lines of my composition.  A portrait painter might find the faces of those waiting more intriguing, composing a portrait of sadness, pain, or impatience.

You can teach yourself to see more in the world around you just by paying closer attention.  Instead of burying yourself in a book or staring at a computer screen when you travel, relax and let your eyes wander slowly over the scene around you.  Study the faces you see on buses and trains, in airports, passing you on the street.  Or make a study of clothing—its textures, colors, style. 

The most exciting times to see nature, even scenes you see every day, is when the light changes.  In early morning, at dusk, or when the weather causes changes in the lighting, ordinary images stand out in starker, more surprising contrasts.  The first blanket of snow changes everything you see around you.  A sunny morning after an ice-storm brings you into a metallic-like alien landscape.  The arrival of Spring presents you with colors you only get to see at this time of year—the startling yellow-green shades of new growth that soon turn the more common darker greens. 

Artists are blessed with a natural interest in the visual world, but others can cultivate this sense by paying attention to their surroundings.  Take off the headphones, put down your book, and see.  You will be amazed at the joy you can experience by just looking. 

Opposition as a Painting Strategy

As I struggled with my latest painting, it dawned on me that one of the driving forces behind my art is opposition.  I am opposing accident to purpose, chaos to order, precision to casualness.  Three strong images oppose each other in this current painting:  a large square, a large circle, and a large X.  They each fight for dominance in the picture plane. 

But in addition, the precision of a perfectly drawn circle, X or square are opposed by the casual freehand result, which is off kilter in each case.  One of the challenges for me was to make it clear that these imprecise figures were not the result of incompetence, but intention.  This is a bit tricky because I did draw them freehand and that’s why they didn’t result in geometric precision. In order to make the “off-kilter” nature of these forms work, “off-kilteredness” had to be an integral part of the entire painting surface. 

Thus, a lot of the work on this painting consisted of the back-and-forth of making the three primary shapes dominant, and then over-painting or canceling out that dominance.  I added seemingly random or rather, more carefree lines which intercepted my primary shapes to play their own game across the canvas.  I worked quickly to create a casualness replete with drips and other evidence of accident. 

Sometimes I’m jealous of the rich surfaces on other artists’ canvasses which proclaim the intentional motivation of every pixel of paint.  Once in a while I might end up with a canvas like that, but it’s much more likely in my work that if you look closely, you’ll see the sloppy history of previous layers protesting any grand design.  If I’d wanted to, of course I could paint over this evidence.  But for me the challenge is always how much of it I can leave and still make the painting work. 

Sometimes I deliberately highlight the sloppy background by outlining it, thus bringing it to the foreground.  I call this “foregrounding indeterminism,” a fancy name for making the accident, or spill, or barely visible background shape suddenly pop up to demand attention.  I like to find a way to bring the casual into the sphere of the deliberate, to see what I can discover in these random marks to give them new life in the surface structure of the painting. 

When I paint, I’m not thinking about the above at all, I’m just dealing with the particular problem I see in front of me.  How am I going to make this damn painting work?  It’s only upon reflection, after the fact, that I can interpret what I must have been doing.