Scale

The 96"x96". How it ended up- It weighs a ton.
It takes up an entire wall in my studio.

Failed work

Sometimes pieces die.There's nothing that can be done. In that case a belt sander is not a bad idea.

Careful observation

To work on the painting of small weeds, I planted a little wildish garden in a glass bowl.
I started with a detailed observational pencil drawing. After fixing the drawing with workable fixative I built up thin glazes of paint.

Fine brushes for fine paintings

Brushes become a different issue depending on the work they are supposed to be doing. Obviously, on small paintings one uses small brushes. But not only that. I use flats only for blocking in large areas, mostly I work with rounds. It is not possible to keep the smaller brushes in a bucket of oil, the rounds will bend, and it does not work to have old paint still in the bristles. Streakyness is not noticeable on a large, thickly painted piece, but it becomes a real issue with small, carefully executed pieces.
So I do clean my precious small brushes in turpentine. And then I wash them with dishwashing soap. To get the abrasive turp residue out. And then I condition them with hair conditioner. And lay them out to try so they maintain their shape.
Keeping the points is key.

Palette Knives

A palette knife is NOT a palette knife. Just as with brushes, palette knives come in different shapes and sizes.They also have very different "spring" from each other. Useful to experiment with a variety and find one that is comfortable. I am notoriously bad about cleaning my favorite palette knife, but it doesn't matter very much. It is easy to scrape off the paint with a scraping knife, even if it's dry.

Blending brushes

I have a number of these, mainly because they only work well for soft blending of the paint before they get too saturated with paint. And that doesn't take very long. It is possible to wipe the brush, basically after every stroke, to keep the tips of the bristle soft, but eventually they clump together anyway. Then the brush needs to be cleaned- in turpentine- and left to dry out. That takes overnight. In the meantime it is useful to have extras handy!

Brushes brushes brushes

I use flat bristle brushes on bigger pieces, anything from about 1/2" to 2".
I don't buy cheap ones. Shedding is a nuisance and the quality of the bristle influences the quality of the brushstroke.
Turpentine is extremely destructive. Cleaning brushes destroys them, they wear out more from cleaning than from painting. So I don't clean my big brushes. I keep them in a bucket full of vegetable oil. I only wipe them off, squeezing out most of the paint, avoiding turpentine as much as I can...

Painting with your hands

I painted all of the large piece with the exception of the figure using only my hands and arms. Because of the toxicity of many pigments I had to keep my palette very limited- I also used artguard to protect my skin.

Physicality

Working on the ground for multiple weeks is very different from standing at an easel. For one, it is much more exerting, the body becomes sore. There is a constant precariousness to the process, keeping balance is just as much part of painting as the paint itself.

Bridges

Sitting on planks by a river of paint.

Large gesture

I began this piece with a gesture painting that ran across both panels.
The shape resulted from an expressive movement engaging the whole body.

Custom easel/table

A custom built table/easel for outdoor work

Working on the ground

One of the panels functioned as my palette for the duration of my sabbatical.

Ground scaffolding

Working on a large piece on the ground requires a different sort of scaffolding

Scaffolding

I had to work on scaffolding to reach the top of the 96"x96" diptych.

Easel

A very good easel makes a difference- but it only supports pieces up to a certain size.

The Self Portrait

Self portraiture is self observation.

Rilke- Letters to a a young poet---Letter 1

Paris
February 17, 1903
Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.

The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.

Yours very truly,

Rainer Maria Rilke

Progression

Progression

Frequently my paintings evolve over time- they in a way build up like a series of pieces, one in response to the previous, with the final painting containing the energies of all the underlying works, revealing only the outermost layer.

Palettes

I used two different sets of paint- a slightly modified Old Master's palette, and an Impressionist's palette.
The former consists of Lead White, Raw and Burnt Umber, Raw and Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine blue, Alizarin Chrimson and Viridian Green. The ladder is comprised of Zinc White, Cadmium Yellow Light and Medium, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Medium, Cobalt Violet, Ultramarine Blue, Pthalo Blue, Cerulean Blue, Pthalo Green and Cadmium Green Light.
I use an equal mix of Linseed Oil, Damar Varnish and English Distilled Turpentine as a medium.

Prep work

I like to build my own panels. To me this is part of my artistic process. I enjoy the physicality involved, the effort that has to be exerted. Often it is impossible to buy pre made canvases or panels that fit the desired dimension, anyway. I stretch canvas over some of my panels, especially the larger ones. Otherwise the painting become to fragile- large pieces of 1/4 birch plywood could break easily during transport. Breaking is less of a concern with smaller pieces In any case, one thing I don't like is painting on just stretched canvas. I do not like the large amount of bounce. Also, some of my paintings are close to 1/2 inch thick in certain areas and canvas only would not support the resulting weight very well.
I buy high quality gesso- it's more expensive initially, but, in the long run it saves money. You need lot less of it! Depending on the size of the piece there are different methods of applying gesso, usually I use a squeegee on large pieces and cheap wide brushes to edge and on the smaller pieces. I tend to use gessoing as a warm up prior to painting- meaning I facus on brush handling and movement while I prep. To me priming a canvas is much more than a necessity. It is action painting.

Opposites

Photography for me is like sketching. It allows me to clarify my vision and provides me with inspiration. Photographs stand alone, though. I don't use them as reference, I find that to be counter productive and repetitious.

Enigmas

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.



Pablo Neruda

Enigmas

Enigmas