Ok.
So things have been a bit sketchy for a week or so. It’s time to get back into the studio and start working, as impossible as that seems.
I am really grateful to my friends for gathering around me this last few days. You’ve been wonderful.Â
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It’s easy to be distracted by the hurly burly of life in the river, dealing with currents and underwater rocks, the uncertainty of where the river’s taking you and all the unpleasant difficulties of change. I’ve left my home, and I’ll be building a new life now. So I’m trying to remain focused on the welfare of my children, and all I can do is let them know as often as possible that I love them and I’ll always be here for them.Â
I’m not often going to post about what’s going on behind the scenes, because I heartily dislike Jerry Springer’s ugly world, but the undercurrents of the river will affect my art-making practice and probably reveal themselves in what gets made in the studio.
I like to leave a bit of the blue on the edges of the figures, so the people emerge from the background. It’s good to use this again. I have always liked it, but not really had the opportunity to do much work of this kind for a little while. Perhaps the virtues will allow for a little stylization in the backgrounds too.
I took one of the panels home with me so that I can draw on it and really figure out the composition of the first of them. The other two didn’t have enough gesso on them, so I continued to prepare them while I was in the studio.
Red Rock.
Sometimes it’s not possible to focus on making work. Today was just one of those days, with a lot of bad personal voodoo going on, but I still feel as though it was productive and successful to some degree. My students worked hard and well, making tricky contour drawings of ribbons look good and working at their paintings to produce some very good quality pieces of portraiture. They’ve effectively learned the basics of old masters painting. I dare say that the students in both classes have done some of the best work I’ve seen coming out of the introductory classes I’ve taught. I’m having a zen moment as far as that goes!Â
I’m thinking about rivers as metaphors for journeys. I wonder where this will go. I need to get into the virtues – perhaps some water imagery will manifest in them.Â
I decided to make a brief post about painting the background of the Golden Bowl. It took quite a while, because there were a lot of fiddly bits that needed attention to soften the edges into each other. If you don’t soften the edges of a background they will “jump” and bring whatever that edge is to the front of the painting. It’s an illusion caused by the focus of our eyes – if you look a tree up close it’s crisp, high contrast and colourful, while that same tree at half a mile distance will look blurry, muted and grey. We can use this effect in painting by making the things we want to pop forward more defined, sharp-edged and rich in colour, while those things (like edges) that we want to drop back into the background are softened. A very handy trick.
In between preparing the canvases for the virtues I managed to get a layer of black onto the lower part of the painting, making a far darker composition which I like very much. The sky will get a layer of blue, which I’ll carry over into the figures and black layer for continuity, then rag it off so that the figures emerge from the dark background. There’s still work to do to get the figures right, there are areas which are not close to being done yet. I hope to get to them tomorrow. Getting closer by degrees…
I’m not thrilled with the way the guy at front right is popping off the canvas, so I’ll probably drop his legs back into the shadows a lot more than they are right now, and I think the shadows on the flesh and clothing of all the characters are far too light, so I expect to work at them too.
I want to warm up the flesh tones a bit, they all look a bit too pale and unhealthy. Bunch of vampires.
I’ve stretched canvas to three panels for the virtues, slapped on three coats of gesso to prime them (with the help of my son, who now thinks forest fires are terrific because he has no school today – is this how pyromaniacs are created?) and I should be ready to start painting them very soon. It feels great to be back into the studio work after this spotty period of studio time.Â
There seems to be a pattern of slightly scattered down-time after the opening of any show, followed by a renewal of intensity. So perhaps this is the beginning of the new period of intense work as I start worrying about the Glendale show. I do find having an exhibit deadline immensely helpful. I’d better get busy finding some gallery shows for 2009 – 2010. Don’t want to leave it too late, because curators book about a year or two ahead in their scheduling (you have to be very patient if you want a gallery exhibit).
I do have to get the Halloween Festival organized, so it might be pretty crazy for a couple of weeks – we have to get my exhibit down and install Sean Sobczak’s light sculptures into the gallery on the weekend of the 25th. (Don’t miss your last chance to see the Principle in it’s current incarnation!) I’m grokking the Alchemy conference in fullness now, and I think it goes into my story as one of the most significant events I’ve been to for spiritual and personal growth. I feel re-energized and full of enthusiasm that I am on the right path. Breathing the air in the Red Rocks canyon was transformative, to say the least.
Take me to the river…
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Ethan and I took the mighty hound up into the mountains behind the house to see what the fire had done to our landscape, with Ethan particularly concerned to visit the golden fish that bizarrely live in a concrete cattle pool a half mile up the trail. It’s a very different place today. We found it hard to find a way around to the pool,  blocked by broken branches and chain-sawed logs. Firefighters had to cut trees and clear areas of brush to create firebreaks, so the pale tracks and scrapings of the earth movers stand out strongly against the thin layer of fine black ash covering the land. The lower ten feet of the trees are charred black. while the tops appear dried out, but still green. Once in a while we saw birds and butterflies, who are probably feeling a bit lost right now.Â
Next year the land will be beautiful – the spring flowers are going to be glorious.Â
The big brush fire missed us, and is completely out around here, but continues to be blown South toward Malibu. We were lucky. We were evacuated this morning while helicopters buzzed overhead dumping their loads of water over the flames. The firefighters stopped the flames literally on the edge of the neighborhood, within feet of the houses beside the National Forest lands. My kids are safe at their Godmother’s house for the evening anyway, just in case of flare-ups restarting the fire. There’s still a strong wind blowing, so it’s best to be cautious.
I’ll head up to the ridge this evening or tomorrow to shoot pictures, because the mountains are so blackened and dramatic, and also because the fires sometimes reveal features in the landscape that are usually covered in brush. My hike into the mountains was completely burned up, so it will be a  very different place for a while. I’ll gather some ashes.
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Ryan helped me to replace the paintings in the gallery this morning, then return the truck. As we left I noticed a pair of students looking at the walls with very puzzled expressions, no doubt because the pictures had changed over the weekend. It was nice to have made them wonder what was going on…
I worked in the studio this afternoon to get the panels ready for the virtues images, stretching canvas over some oak plywood I picked up before going to Vegas, but it was very difficult to stay focused on what I was doing. Among other things there’s a big brush fire in the canyon a few miles from my house that closed the freeway, so I had a long journey home to bypass the flames. The Santa Anna winds are in full force, pushing the fire ahead of them. I’ll need to keep an eye on where it’s going to tonight. My eyes are itchy from the smoke.Â
I received a lovely letter this morning from an organization called “Focus on the Masters” which operates out of Ventura County, beside the Pacific Ocean just above Los Angeles County. Donna Granata is the founder of the organization, which exists to document the lives and works of “outstanding artists who have contributed to the cultural life of Ventura County”. I’m completely delighted! They’ll do a video interview with an audience watching, and an in depth documentation of what I do. Peachy!
Photo by Cameron Hurdus
