A NEW SHOW IN SPITE OF THE PANDEMIC

That is the title of my new show at Northeast Kingdom Artisans’ Guild - Back Room Gallery in Saint Johnsbury Vermont. It is an interactive show, in which the viewers are invited to write their thoughts on what the people in the paintings may have been thinking. Small booklets and pens are provided for this. I thought of this long before there was any pandemic. So now, the show will go on in spite of the virus. But there is no opening party.  Too bad.  Visitors to the gallery are asked to wear masks and hand sanitizer is provided for use before and after handling the booklets.  But because people may be afraid to handle them, I worry that people won’t write in the booklets.

SURPRISED AND WORRIED - What is is that she sees? Your guess is as good as mine.

When I began painting, I worked my way through a lot of subject material, but was quickly drawn to people. I love to paint people, whether from a live model, from a photo reference or from my imagination. I will take images for many different sources and mix them up in one painting. With a particular interest in human emotion, I spend a lot of time making pictures of these people and wondering who they are and what they are thinking. I always make up my own stories about them, that may be far afield from who they really are.. But once, I start to paint them, they enter my reality and I can turn them into whoever I want them to be.

MINERVA - She was the Roman goddess of Wisdom and War and a lot of other things. She is happy about the wisdom, but would like to drop the war part.

I wonder what others see when they look at my paintings. What of their own realities do the viewers bring to the painting?  So after looking at these pictures and getting to know the people in them, I hope you let me know what you think they were thinking.

The show runs from June 19th - August 1st, 2020 

Wednesdays through Saturdays  -  11:AM until 4:00 PM

Back Room Gallery

Northeast Kingdom Artisans Guild

430 Railroad St, St. Johnsbury VT 05819

802 748 0158

THE HISTORY OF A PAINTING - "SUBWAY CAR"

In 2017, I went down to New York to one of my favorite places to be - The Art Students’ League of NY. I had enrolled in another class with my favorite teacher, Max Ginsburg. It was to be a week long class with an ambitious agenda. It was about composing a painting from different references. We were to paint models from life, in the studio, but place them in a space based on a photo that we would take somewhere else. I chose to take my photo in a subway car on the F train.

First, the models sat down, and I took this photo of them. There was trouble right from the start. Two of the models, Richard and Pauli, were great, but Teresa, the one on the far end was not happy. I don’t think she liked the job of professional model and she definitely didn’t like the chair she was sitting in.

But I went ahead and painted these two sketches of them on small canvases. The first, is the three of them, just sitting in a row and in the second, I have placed them on the seat of an imaginary subway car. I had not yet gone into the subway to take the photo. I was just thinking about what I wanted it to look like.

MAN IN A SUBWAY CAR

So, I took a lot of pictures in subway cars and decided to use this one. I mean, who could resist this guy in his hard hat? But, I did resist painting him for this project. For now, I just wanted to use the car itself as a photo reference. (The guy in the hard hat eventually did make his way into a different painting.)

With my photo of the subway car and the live models in front of me, I started in to paint on my larger (24”x20”) canvas. This was the next day. Teresa, who had been so unhappy about her chair had brought in a couple of pillows to sit on. You will notice in this early version of the painting that she is suddenly sitting up much higher than she had been the day before. But she did less complaining, so I and the rest of the class (most of whom had placed these figures on a park bench) painted on.

I was not at all happy with Teresa’s new position. I sought the opinion of Max, the instructor. He didn’t seem to think that there was any problem, but I could not get over the feeling that she just didn’t look as if she were sitting on the same surface as the other two people. She wasn’t, because of the pillows.

The class went on for the rest of the week and I brought the painting closer to completion. There were a lot of annoying straight lines to deal with. And, I still wasn’t happy with Teresa’s position. I asked for opinions from a lot of other people. Most thought she was ok - just extra tall or something - who would notice? But, sometimes, you just have to ask yourself, “Is it easier to live with a problem or is it easier to fix it?” For me it was easier to fix it.

work still in progress

So here, in this photo, the workshop over, I am back at home. You may notice that the painting is no longer on the Art Students’ League easel, but is on my easel in my studio. And Teresa has been moved down. I just had to do it, so I did. I changed some other things about the subway car and I fussed around over the details. Some people are able to make a painting very quickly, and sometimes I do too. But this time, I kept on changing and rearranging for weeks. Differences in darkness in the painting are do to bad photography. This painting has been in a couple of shows. It is now at River Arts Gallery in Morrisville, VT. It was a useful exercise in composition and dealing with problems.

To see the final edition, scroll back to the top of this post.

MY FIRST DAY OF PAINTING

Almost two decades ago, I finally made up my mind to take the plunge and do what I had always wanted to do, which was, START OIL PAINTING. I had always been an artist; a ceramicist; a carver of wood; an installer of installations. But in the back of my mind, I thought that “real” art was oil painting. Of course I realize that this was never true. There are many varied forms of art making that are as old as humanity. But oil painting and the smell of turpentine are what said “art” to me, so I committed $100 and signed up for a painting class I Barre, VT.

During the week preceding that class, I went to visit my son, Abe, and his girl friend (now wife of 13 years) in Brooklyn. We had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect. We saw all of the museums, picnicked in the part, and rode bicycles to Coney Island, where I ate the first and last corn dog of my life.

On the last day of my visit, I left Brooklyn in the morning to be in time to attend the painting class that evening. Abe advised me to leave the city, not by the Tri-Borough Bridge as was my plan, but to go over the Brooklyn Bridge and up the FDR, because he thought it would be quicker and easier. But as I pulled out of President Street at 8:45, I decided to not cross the Brooklyn Bridge and stick to my familiar route.

Then I saw a fire truck, and another fire truck, and a police car. Then I saw more fire trucks and an ambulance. Another fire truck, another ambulance.

Suddenly, the streets were full of emergency vehicles of every description. Every fire truck in the city must have been out. I kept driving, so by this time I had to turn on the radio again. I was just getting on to the Tappan Zee Bridge when I heard what had happened. I looked down the Hudson river and saw the smoke from the twin towers. I wanted to go back and see that Abe and Jolie were ok. But I also heard that the bridges were about to be closed and mine might be one of the last cars out of the city. I had no cell phone then. As I made my way north, I stopped at every opportunity to try to call Abe. But every phone had a line of fifty people in front of it. One of the stops was at a rest area that had a TV. There, I saw the towers fall. Finally, about half way to Vermont, I got to a phone. I called Abe, but got no answer. I called Abe’s father and learned that Abe and Jolie had somehow gotten out to New Jersey, which was a good thing, because the smoke was going right through their neighborhood.

I felt then, that there was nothing for me to do but proceed on to the painting class. I got there. Everyone was sort of numb and in shock. I was able to call Abe in NJ and be assured that they were all ok. The painting students and the teacher stood around for a while and decided that there was nothing to do but start painting. So we did. I painted a crumby little still life with green peppers and a flower pot.

So, that is my 9-11 story and the story of my first day of putting paint on canvas.

And, oh yeah, I am glad that I did not cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

Art goes on, in spite of it all.

Schlepping and Hanging

So the other day, I borrowed my brother’s piano moving truck to haul a bunch of big paintings 50 miles to the town of Morrisville, Vermont where they will grace the walls of the River Arts Gallery for the next couple of months. This is the pain in the butt part of art making, but at least I got a lot of help, unlike the part when I am actually doing the painting. You can see that the truck is pretty full. I think that there are over 30 paintings in there.

Here are some of the paintings already in place, but not straightened out yet. This picture makes it look a little less chaotic than it was. But really, it went pretty smoothly

Three excellent helper, Caroline, Marie and John are trying to make four subway paintings hang together in the same space and look good. They succeeded - hats off to them.

And my hero Sid with his ever ready measuring tape, that he never leaves home without, finds a way to squeeze two more paintings in under the exit sign. That painting on the left is of me and my three sisters somewhere on a beach in about 1952.

This little homage to cuteness is ready to be hung in the entrance hall of the gallery. I hope to lure the viewers in with some charm before they go up the stairs to the pictures of lonely people in subways and a world in peril. Which makes me wonder - what is the point of art? To sooth and please with pretty pictures or to shock and educate with blatant messaging? I want to do it all.

The show is at River Arts - 74 Pleasant St, Morrisville, VT. It runs from May 1 through July 9. There will be a reception on May 23 from 5 - 7 pm. The artist (me) will speak.

A. A. Milne, Hedda Hopper and Robert Frank. April 27, 2019

What have a turn of the twentieth century poet, a 1940’s gossip columnist and a Swiss/American photographer got to do with me? They took their turns as muses for me so that I could make one of my first social realist paintings.

They Passed With Noses In The Air - oil on canvas - 34”x30” - 2008 (maybe)

I wanted to illustrate the callous indifference many of people to the plight of others, but my source for the title of this painting is the “feel good” poem by A.A. Milne, “King John’s Christmas”. This has to be my favorite poem. It always has been since my father used to read from a book to us kids every night after dinner. It was mostly English literature with a lot of Mark Twain as well.

King John was not a good man —
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air —
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

There is a lot more to this poem. Look it up. King John’s Christmas by A.A. Milne.

So, being a painter without ready access to live models who can hold action poses, (no model can hold an action pose. they can only just sit there) I have long been trolling books, magazines, the internet and any other source for usable images. In this painting, the woman is Hedda Hopper, who was a hugely popular, right wing, conservative gossip columnist fro the forties - before my time, really. And the man appeared in “The Americans” - a book of photographs by Robert Frank, published in 1958. I like the work of Robert Frank a lot, but I don’t particularly like either of these characters, even though they were fun to paint.

I didn’t think of the title and then begin to search for images to collage into this painting. I found the photos and thought “these people need to be in a painting together, and I already know the title”. I think that this is a pretty good argument for the importance reading to your kids.

The photo of Hedda is by Alfred Eisenstadt. Thanks to him and to Robert Frank. I don’t know who the people on the reviewing platform are.

Adventures in a clay mine

April 26, 2019

Where I grew up on the edge of the suburbs south of Chicago, the developed town ended a couple of blocks from my house and there began a wonderland for kids. This is where, in my eight year old eyes, adventure began. An expanse of brushy wasteland stretched out, bisected by a freight train line. These were the days when kids could roam the neighborhood at will and I did. I would venture out across that field, crawl into a culvert underneath the railroad track to feel the thrill of the steam train rumbling overhead. Farther on was the forbidden zone - a clay mine attach to a brick factory. It was huge - huge enough to have its own railway with tram cars to haul the clay up. And the walls were steep - almost vertical on our side.But I remember finding a way, by myself to scramble down into that pit, gather a few chunks of the yellow clay and then claw my way up again, wondering all the time if this might be my last day on earth, or if my mother would find out. She must have known though, because I brought the clay home and made little objects out of it - pinch pots and little animals. There was no opportunity to fire them in a kiln. They dried in the sun and then dissolved in the rain.

These were my earliest forays into the wild and into art. The clay pits have been filled in. But I am still making art - first as a ceramicist, then as a sculptor and now, at last as a painter.

Here is a picture of the clay mine and one of the young artist. Ok, I painted the selfie recently, based on an old school photo