Painting in a Pandemic

 Lately people have been asking if I am still painting.  The world has been in turmoil for a while now, however most of us artists just carry on as usual.  We go to our studios and pick up a paintbrush or whatever is our favourite tool. 

After I sent my paintings to Newzones Gallery in Calgary for my landscape show in March (yes, that March and no I wasn’t able to attend the opening), I returned to a series that I had started in 2019.  The subject is something new for me, or new/old.  Years ago I painted flowers, flowers by themselves or flowers in still lifes.  I had some success with those paintings and was very happy with them.  Eventually though I decided that I couldn’t compete with nature, nature had more sophisticated tools than I had, and I turned aside from that challenge.

 

It seems that this past decade of exploring colour – and simplifying detail to do so – has somehow led me full circle, however. Looking for a new starting point I started tentatively thinking of flowers again. In the same way that I had simplified the landscape, I saw how the flowers could be a beginning. This wouldn’t be an attempt at verisimilitude; this series isn’t really ‘of’ flowers.  The flowers with their radiance and intensity initiate the act of putting paint on canvas but they don’t control the result. The result has more to do with the curious act of ‘painting’, playing with hue, surface texture and markmaking.

You can see Neil Wedman's essay in my previous post.  He explains it much better than I can do.

Arbitration Place on Bay Street in Toronto

Nikola Rukaj Gallery in Toronto has placed some of my paintings at Arbitration Place on Bay Street. They will be up for June and July this summer.  I hope they are aiding the discussions and 'arbitration' taking place!

Here are a couple of them: 

'Layers-I', 36x48"

'Minder', 69x65"

Trees turning into Paintings

I am just packing to drive up to Edmonton for my exhibition there, "Totems", opening July 9, this Saturday at the Scott Gallery.  There will be lots to see on the way, some of my favourite scenery and sources of inspiration.

To elaborate on how 'trees' can become paintings, here is an example of what can happen.

This:

can become this:

Or this:

could become this:

Colour!

Paul Klee is an artist whose work has always captivated me.  Recently reading a book on him, "Paul Klee Painting Music"by Hajo Duchting, I noticed this quote about colour:

"Colour was for Klee the 'imponderable' and thus individual element in the picture.  .....    As Klee once commented:  'Colour has always had something secretive about it that is difficult to grasp.  This mysterious quality penetrates the mind.  The colours are the most irrational elements in painting.  They possess something suggestive, a suggestive power."

Paul Klee, 'Fire in the Evening", l929, oil on cardboard.

Peter Doig in Montreal

There is a wonderful exhibition of paintings by Peter Doig, just opened at the Musee de beaux-arts de Montreal.  

Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands

It is funny that if I had painted these paintings I would think, oh they are not good enough, I had better work on them to make them better.  That is how much I know; the Art World has embraced them.  What I do like is that they are paintings, an exuberant abundance of paint and colour on canvas.

In an interview in Canadian Art,  The Closer You Get: An Interview with Peter Doig   Doig says some interesting things, many of which I agree with.  For example, they ask him what he is learning from his paintings:

PD: I’m questioning where I am in the world, where I live in the world, thinking about other people, thinking about their situations. I think what I am doing is important—not because painting is important. As an activity, it’s important to actually do something. I feel guilty if I’m not painting. Once you succumb to painting, you have to carry on with it. Gerhard Richter said something very interesting to me—I’m not a huge fan of Gerhard Richter’s work, but he said, if you think about it too much, you stop doing it. That’s a great way of thinking about painting. You have to put your blinkers on, and stop thinking."

The Problem with Commissions

On occasion I have been asked to paint a painting as a commission, perhaps the same as another painting of mine that has been seen and liked.  As much as I would like to accept, I always refuse.  I try to explain that  it is impossible to duplicate a painting, that no one painting is ever the same as another.  However, this is a difficult concept for people to understand and I think they often wonder why I won't do it.

Recently I was delighted to read James Elkins writing about this individuality of every brushstroke in every painting:

"...each painting would insist on its own uniqueness, because no mark can be like any other, and no picture can duplicate another....  A painting or drawing...is unique, and so is every mark on it.  As every artist knows, a single brushmark can never be retrieved: if it is painted over, it is gone, and no matter how many times the same hand passes over the same inch of canvas, the mark can never be reproduced.  Every mark is a different beginning ...."    P. 41, "What Painting Is" by James Elkins.

If every brushstroke is unique, you can imagine how a whole bunch of brushstrokes can never add up to the same painting.

"What Painting Is" by James Elkins

How is it that this man (I mean the author, not Rembrandt) understands so much about the studio?  Here Elkins writes about paint as a creeping virus:  "...the paint gradually finds its way onto every surface and every possession....   Sooner or later every one of a painter's possessions will get stained.  First to go are the studio clothes and the old sneakers that get the full shower of paint every day.   Next are the painter's favorite books, the ones that have to be consulted in the studio.  Then come the better clothes, one after another as they are worn just once into the studio and end up with the inevitable stain."   P. 148, James Elkin, "What Painting Is."  Routledge, 1999.

No matter how careful I am, if I wear something nice in the studio, it gets paint on it.