Underpinnings

Underpainting for Jour de Noel, Strasbourg 

I am preparing for another Experimenting with Watercolor & Pastel class as well as a Show and Tell gathering of Stoner Creek Arts. And there is a project I've had on my mind since our trip to France, where we spent Christmas. It rained almost every day we were in France, but on Christmas Day in the afternoon, the sun shone. It was the lemon-y cool winter sun of Northern Europe. Very beautiful. David and Mary and I were walking around Strasbourg, where we spent a week, and I wanted to return to my favorite tree in that city. By the time we reached Petite France, the sun was beginning its downward slide and the cool golden sky back lit the massive limbs. It was a sight! I knew I wanted to make a painting of this luminescent scene.

       That is what I am working on.  To start a painting using watercolor and pastel, I begin with an underpainting.  The underpainting provides a rich and deep base for the pastel.  I add layers to the watercolor, letting the layers dry in-between so I can see how much darker and richer I need to go. From experience, I know what I am going to want to riff off of the pastel. So the painting above is not even half-way finished.  My goal is to leave the painting open for maximum flexibility.  Yet, at every stage, I want the ultimate feeling of the scene to shine forth (here it is the illuminated sky with the back lit and utterly substantial tree.)

      Would you like to try this yourself? I will be teaching Experimenting with Watercolor & Pastel at the Lexington Art Academy. A 4-session class will be held on Thursdays, 7 - 9 pm from February 2 - February 23, 2012. For more information and registration, please go to: lexingtonartacademy.com.
I will post an update of the painting when it is complete.

Start

The Place to Start Art

In my dining room recently, a Think Tank gathered to consider the mission of the Lexington Art Academy. Cindy is the founder of the art school (please see A Certain Gift, June 9, 2011) and so she was the ultimate expert present. Mary-Louise brought her splendid gift for extracting the essence of an organization and through a wondrous alchemy produced the golden nugget. The question was: what are the goals of the Lexington Art Academy and how does the school fit in with the art scene in Central Kentucky. After some discussion, Cindy stated simply that she views the school as a place to start art. There it was: the essential calling of LAA.

        This rang true for me. Thinking back on classes I have taught so far, a common theme I hear from students is that they are surprised that they were able to successfully create a painting in a medium that they had not tried before. You have to start somewhere! For me, it is very rewarding to help someone feel confident enough to go for it; or in some cases, it is more of a matter that the painter feel free enough to head in their preferred direction. But this is not confined to artistic beginners.  I preach to my students that essentially, every artist is a beginner every time they start a new project. When I paint a tree, I don't think: "I know how to paint a tree."  I am seeing the tree for the first time--or at least that is my goal. I want to see the world afresh and paint from that perspective.  At the academy, there are classes for absolute beginners, but also classes geared for artists of more advanced skill.

       The goal of the Lexington Art Academy is to be a comfortable place to try something new; to start art.  Thanks to Mary-Louise, we got to the heart of the matter. And thanks to Cindy for coming up with the idea and creating the place. Visit lexingtonartacademy.com and jump right in!

Color/Couleur



Bright accent fruit at the Luxembourg Garden,Paris

 In a few weeks, I'll be leading a class on Identifying your Palette and so color has been on my mind.  There was a bit of serendipitous luck on our recent trip to Europe, because color and thinking about color were everywhere. We went to Nancy, where Art Nouveau has roots. Coming up later this month, that city will host a week-long, multi-disciplinary symposium on color with both scientific and artistic approaches represented. Bookstores featured books on color theory and symbolism. Color seems to be on the European mind these days.







        But the biggest break came when we visited the Kunstmuseum Basel.  On display was an exhibit of Josef Albers, whose career was focused on the interaction of color (he wrote the book!) The art museum in Basel is extraordinary, with a great collection of works by Klee, Chagall, Picasso and earlier artists such as Holbein. Reflecting on our visit to the museum, it occurred to me that color was the major lesson. Each artist had a palette--and here I'm remembering that Mondrian was on display as well. Are you thinking primary colors right now? Chagall favored jewel-toned colors (there were a few green faces.) Picasso had his blue period. Klee struggled with color early on, yet now it is perhaps his use of color that attracts us to his work. Josef Albers studied at the Weimar Bauhaus, where Klee taught. He later headed up stained-glass workshop. After the Bauhaus closed, Albers came to the United States to work at the newly founded Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. Most of the work on display is part of his Homages to the Square, a project that carried Albers from 1950 to his death in l976.  Essentially, Albers is playing with color. There is nothing particularly scientific about it.  In fact, the colors he chose seem very subjective to me and a lot of fun. It made me itchy to paint, as did the whole collection at Basel.

 My reflection on the work at the museum confirmed my original idea about guiding people to consciously explore their color preferences.  I do not believe we should simply adopt someone or anyone else's palette, mainly because we can not help but see subjectively. Even if we learn another's palette, we will by necessity apply it according to our vision.  Are you interested in thinking about this?  Come join one of the Identifying your Palette sessions at the Lexington Art Academy, January 24th or 25th. For more information and registration, please go to: http://www.lexingtonartacademy.com/.



Aligned megaliths at Carnac, Brittany





A Little Light on the Subject

Jack Frost has decorated the clover

I was cutting watercolor paper for an upcoming class. Too many lights were shining from different directions and I could not see the proper edge of the paper (it is just an indentation.) I turned off a light, so that a low angled beam was coming from one direction. Voila! The edge appeared.  It occurred to me that this is one of the gifts of the season we are in right now.  The sun shines more briefly and the low angle makes for nice long shadows in the afternoon. This is one of my favorite aspects of walking Carly in the winter.

     While I was cutting the paper my thoughts were on how to guide students in painting the sometimes complex images, such as a tangle of tree limbs. We are painting snowy scenes, and the snow has a unifying aspect color wise and shape wise.  That helps.  Still, you have to take the information at hand and simplify it to the level where you can convey the idea you want to present. This is somewhat like the season we are in right now. Although nature gives us the opportunity to see the world in a more simplified way, through an angled, brief light; our culture makes up for the subdued lighting with a bounty of lights and activities. Our environment is more complex than ever!  So, the same skill that we can use to simplify our images can be used to determine how to interact with the overwhelming holiday spectacle. Filter out the extraneous noise and light. Focus on the important message and enjoy.

Advent Evensong and Art Show 2011: Art and the Spiritual Journey

Abbo's Alley in the Fog

Every Advent, St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Paris, KY holds an Evensong and Art Show. This event showcases two great strengths of St. Peter's: terrific music and artistic expression. The focus of past years has been Angels, but this year we've expanded out to consider Art and the Spiritual Journey. How appropriate then, that our guest speaker at the Evensong will be Dr. Everett McCorvey, professor of voice at the University of Kentucky and founder of the American Spiritual Ensemble.  The Evensong begins at 5 pm. this Sunday, December 4th, in the sanctuary of St. Peter's, 311 High Street.
       
       Following the Evensong, will be a reception in the Parish Hall, for the exhibit Art and the Spiritual Journey. Works of poetry and all manner of media will be on display (and there will be food, too!) Everything from needlepoint to Mother Chris's drawings and a delightful ensemble of knitted creche figures will share space with beautiful paintings, including angels and landscapes. Who knows where your spiritual journey might take you--come have a look!

Truth

Chicory and Lace

Yesterday evening during my Experimenting with Watercolor and Pastel class at the Lexington Art Academy, I was talking to a participant about the image she was painting.  It was an autumnal scene, with incredibly bright leaves of red, orange and yellow. She was dotting in the yellow leaves and I said that it was like a "thousand points of light."  My friend Celeste, whom I met more than three decades ago, didn't know what I was referring to. She partakes of news blackouts and was not familiar with this famous idea promoted by George H.W. Bush.  We had some fun with her self-imposed lack of news knowledge, but it got me to thinking. How truthful is the news? What would life be like without it? Think how much room there would be in our brains it they were not stuffed with considering whether Miley Cyrus is fat  or even believing that politics and politicians were the answer to everything. For that matter, what if we did not count on the news to tell us to take calcium supplements or that multiple vitamins will kill us off.  Drinking causes cancer! Teetotalers have heart attacks!  On and on.

       Meanwhile during the class, I encouraged students to keep in mind what attracts them to the image they are portraying.  Rather than being literal, the goal is to bring out the truth they see.  Maybe this is a truth of the heart, then again, perhaps it is more objective than that.  We all need to know how to gather information first hand; to know what is true for us.  Take a walk and look at the color of tree bark. It can be pretty surprising. Be willing to decide for yourself what you are seeing.   Being a news junkie, I don't think I could give it up as completely as Celeste has.  Yet, it is good to spend some time in our own, first hand reality. Making art provides an excellent opportunity! 

Clarity in the Sewanee Fog

Abbo's Alley in the fog

Last week, David and I drove down to Sewanee, Tennessee for his 50th Reunion at the University of the South.  Leaving Lexington, we could see a bank of clouds; a forecasted front pushing southeast.  Midway along the Bluegrass Parkway, the rain began and accompanied us all the way to Sewanee.  One of our first stops upon arriving at Sewanee was the wonderful bookstore on campus.  David and I always find terrific books at this relatively small establishment.  This time, since Barbara Brown Taylor had recently been on campus (I knew this thanks to Mo. Chris) there was a nice selection of her books and I purchased Leaving Church.  David and I took our leave from the store and noticed that the famous Sewanee fog had rolled in while we were browsing the volumes.  Looking across the campus, it was at once soft and bright, as the leaves were close to their peak in color. The foggy backdrop had a luminescent quality that did not dampen the leaf colors, but turned them into rich accents.

The next morning, alumni were welcomed to attend classes. David and I went to a second semester French class, which turned out to be an excellent review of en and y, along with the subjunctive (which I can always stand to review.)  Next, David went to a topology class and I hit the trail, walking around campus and heading to Abbo's Alley, an enchanting place, especially in the fog.  Line and color became elegantly enigmatic. So many places called out to me: Paint Me! Paint Me!

        Our schedule each day was full with reunion activities, but at the end of the day, I would enjoy relaxing with my new book. In Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor paints a picture of how she came to faith and it is first and foremost grounded in the wonderful creation that we all dwell upon.  And she notes that in Celtic theology, "God's 'big book' of creation is revered alongside God's 'little book' of sacred scripture." (pg 81)  Taylor and her husband come upon a "thin place" when walking over the land that would become their home.  The idea of thin places is also Celtic. These are special places that are also part of another realm.

        On Saturday, the sun returned, just in time for the homecoming football game.  The colors were intense and brilliant; a bright blue sky beyond the vibrant orange leaves.  I walked past the same scenes and the same gracefully curved trees. A certain mystique had disappeared.  This set me to thinking: can you ever really see the same scene twice?  Are there really thin places or is every place thin and it just takes a readiness to see that makes the difference?