Chelsea, acrylic on canvas
I love looking up close at sections of paintings and drawings, mine and other artists.’ It is there that the magic of plan and chance converge. In these two close-ups of portraits I created my brushwork expresses evocative things about, above and beyond my subject matter.
Old Tracks That Go Nowhere Now was inspired by a rusting spur that ran along a eucalyptus windbreak on the southern edge of Pomona College, Claremont, CA. In the mid-1970’s I was a student at the Claremont Colleges and the Pomona College Art Department was a short block away from these tracks. A dozen years later I revisited this location and painted. Weeks after, with the small, on-site study as my guide and college reflections as further compulsion, I created this larger and more expressive scene. I placed two crows beating the hazy, clay-colored afternoon sky, their dark contours a reminder that life is made up of millions of such beating, mortal moments.
A few years after Old Tracks That Go Nowhere Now was painted the old spur was torn out and the location cleaned up, probably in preparation for the new Metrolink commuter train service introduced to Southern California about that time. Alas, ‘All things doomed to die touch the heart.’ The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce commissioned me to paint a scene of that new Metrolink commuter service and Morning Commuters (below) is the study for that work.
What is it about the sight of train tracks that cause the heart and mind to race? Maybe it’s that uniquely human reflex to search for change on the horizon.
Morning Commuters, 18 x 24 acrylic on canvas
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I recall that moment I first approached Monument Valley from the highway. Suddenly, in front of me, an iconic Hollywood view materialized. In that thrill of recognition I realized both the logic and the hubris of Hollywood’s decision to use such dramatic scenery as a movie backdrop.
Film westerns don’t do Monument Valley justice. Only moving around the monuments and studying them at leisure and length affords a visitor the proper appreciation for nature’s ancient winnowing process, the grander geological drama that is present in stone and enveloping sky.
Painting the changing moods of provocative places, like Monument Valley, is a pleasure and a challenge. At the top of this blog the desert heats up in a late morning scene. An afternoon view follows this, the subject stylized in form and color. This more graphic approach continues in the third and larger work. The three pastels are painted on a pale yellow, olive-green, and black surface, respectively. Each color underpainting helps establish and express a different mood. As with all my work, rich hues mingle with muted colors in a search for visual rewards and emotional meaning.
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Along SR 39 (detail)
“Let the flower paint the flower.” I first heard that strange and provocative idea one day along a shaded creek in the foothills above the Claremont Colleges. I was a freshman at nearby Pitzer College and the speaker was my instructor and academic advisor, Carl Hertel. Carl was urging his class to think and see differently that day and afterwards. I didn’t absorb the lesson immediately for I was a young man more focused on results than process, but in time that would change.
Carl was a professor of Asian Studies and Art, a relaxed and soft-spoken intellect with a sparkle in his eye. He told me once about his participation in the Defense Department’s experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. Academics and others became willing ‘guinea pigs’ in those studies. The military was searching for a new Cold War weapon and Carl told me he and others were also searching, but in a different direction.
In my last blog I talked about sketching the ancient bristlecone pine tree and how this interpretive activity is, for me, a rewarding exercise in submergence, delving into my subject to know it better. That was what Carl had learned and was suggesting his students explore.
Now look closely at these drawings and you will see my mind at work in the record of the marks on the page. When done right drawing is a state of concentration that can transport the artist within the subject: “Let the flower paint the flower”, let the tree paint the tree. That was the point Carl was trying to make that day by the forested creek. We do not possess dominion over this planet and that impulse to create is, at its root, an empathic and healthy act.
Along SR 39
Both sketches were drawn with a carpenter’s pencil. Taking advantage of the pencil’s 3/8” flat graphite surface to record broad areas of value, for example the shadows under trees and bushes in Along SR 39, or the shadow created by the train engine in Train Stop. For needed contrast and interest I turned the pencil on its edge to produce fine lines and create details for a more dynamic and expressive message. You can see this within the crowd of human gestures walking toward us in the scene of the train station.
Train Stop pencil on paper
Train Stop (detail)
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The ancient bristlecone pine is a tree one doesn’t forget. Its form is dramatic, its trunk and limbs almost alien. Sun-bleached and wind-whipped through the centuries and millenia (the oldest specimen, “Methuselah” is 4,767 years old), the bristlecone’s form combines awkward bends with graceful, flame-like twists that often terminate in talon-like claws and spikes that threaten the sky.
Using pencil, pen, and the written word, I have been enjoying this latest re-consideration of this ancient creature. Skillful artist’s techniques blend with inescapable chance in these examples, lines and marks sometimes too thick, sometimes too short, too light, too dark, but in the end interpretively interesting. In the mix of deliberation and the acceptance of happy accidents, rewards flow to the creator and observer.
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Dawn is an exciting time of day to be out and about. Add to that general experience the rumble and roar of a train or two, headlights ablaze, trailing car lights, glowing signal lights, and the moment is about complete.
Commuter and Amtrak schedules overlapped only once during an afternoon visit to a local Orange County train station. Fortunately, creating images in my head and putting it onto canvas or paper with feeling is what I like and do best. So I began this painting by imagining a morning scene and composing (painting) in the early stages using a brilliant lemon-green color. You can see this hue peeking through later layers of color, particularly in the sky. This rich color and a sprinkling of passengers, their gestures in gentle sway, establish the mood and bring life to a quiet station platform. The figures direct the viewers’ eyes back into the painting and into the arriving morning.
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Ralph Wadsworth is a strong and focused personality with a kind spirit. I sat watching Ralph smoke a cigar one evening as he shared some stories from his life—an interesting life, I should add. The cigar seemed a natural element to include in his portrait, an object that makes for a dynamic hand gesture to contrast the relaxed hand draped over the chair-back. The bold and bright background ‘knocks out’ Ralph’s darkened figure giving the scene power and simultaneously echoing the man’s engaging persona.
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I drive this stretch of road almost daily from Hacienda Heights through La Habra Heights and back. State Route 39 is a north-south artery running from the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Coast at Huntington Beach. I have painted this little, semi-undeveloped oasis in the coastal mountains between the urban sprawl of Los Angeles County to Orange County Southern California many times.
This scene was painted with a set of 72 soft pastels on a cream-colored, commercially manufactured pastel board. The warm ‘underpainting‘ was allowed to show through the pastel and bridge the cool colors in the foreground and near-distance with the sun-exposed hills beyond. The image is 17 x 23.
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In the parade of life we are all participants and spectators. The five figurative works here are my latest in a series of community-inspired subjects. As it is in all the art I create, the subject determines my materials and methods (technique). The pleasure of drawing and painting comes down to getting lost in a world of marks inspired by living.
John Creed, soft pastel on pastel paper This is a colorful, little reflection on a longtime friend and ex-neighbor who I still have the pleasure of seeing at Starbucks on weekends.
Clayton, acrylic on Bristol paper This cute, little redhead belongs to Brianna, an employee at Starbucks.
Don, pencil on paper Don manages sales for a home improvement ‘big box’ store. Communicating something about Don’s warm spirit was my objective.
Kevin, acrylic on Bristol paper Kevin is a mail carrier with a fine mind for trivia and a welcome and engaging spirit to run into at ‘Bucks.
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The two pastel paintings shown here are of the same handsome private garden. Each was composed with a difference in mind. The first effort, above, is a smaller painting, 12” x 16”, and includes more ‘real estate’ to left of the walkway, an area that invites the viewer’s eye back into the distance with suggestions of more garden beyond the olive trees and tailored juniper cones.
The second pastel painting is 17″ x 25″ and extends the view in the opposite direction, to the right in order to include more foreground walkway, more stairway and stairway-landing, with part of the residence architecture rising above the gardens. Both views reveal and appeal in subtly different ways.
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