The End Part One

So, IP world.

Recently, I've been bad at just about everything in relation to you and I'm sorry about that. If I were into excuses, I would tell you that it's because of this short story that I had to write, illustrate, print, and bind, for this other class, and otherwise I would have been right on top of things, but I'm not into that so just forget about it.

The faculty consultation went well, I'd say. Key points that I'm remembering right now:

-I made the claim that faces and hands were the most expressive parts of the human body and that was why they play such a dominant role in my paintings and drawings. Robert Platt spoke of a performance artist (name to come) who is able to give tremendous life to every part of his body. The point being, that maybe I shouldn't be too quick to dismiss elbows, and feet, and ribs, or other less noticed parts of us, and that perhaps they too can have great emotive power.

-The fracturing and distortion can be happening a lot more. I need to be more willing to let go of parts of the human form. I have so much information on the canvas that I can afford to be less specific at times and it won't necessarily affect clarity of the figures.

-Splattering and dripping is easy but it's also not easy, because it's easy for it to look quite contrived. Maybe the splatters should look as if they are simply the result of the painting process. Maybe they should just be the result of the painting process.

We talked about many other things too, but the points listed above I hadn't thought of, or at least had not been considering them recently. I think addressing these issues will help me move forward.

In all, my faculty group was very constructive and encouraging. It was a good experience and I'm thankful for their time.

I'm looking forward to next semester when I will have only 13 credits and 0 of them will be Logic courses.

Over the break I will begin the process of applying to residencies and will also continue portraits of my family that I began last summer. I am feeling happy and optimistic :) Though, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow :(

*Happy Holidays*

The Presentation

So every once in a while an artist is asked to do this horrible thing called "explaining his(her) work." It's a torturous tradition and the worst part about it is that it's good for you.

In order to prepare for this I usually write a lot, and often about the things in my work that I'm most insecure with. I'll try to explain myself, to myself, in the most direct way I can. I'll start writing about my process or something and when I finish a point, I'll ask myself a question that might logically rise from the previous statement. I try to be direct and call myself out on my own shit (If I catch it). The point is to learn something. I do this until one of my selves is defeated, or I just can't go anywhere. It's this sort of schizophrenic exercise, but I find it really helpful.

So, I did this the other day, prompted by my insecurities about the role films play in my work. The result was, I defeated my insecurities, and so, approximately very little of what you're about to read actually made it into my presentation. . . That is, I no longer felt the need to explain myself, which was a small internal victory for me.

Okay, so.

In an effort to explain what I've been doing (something I feel I haven't been doing much, at least not here). Here is my unedited schizophrenic dialog with myself. I didn't write it intending to share it, so please excuse me if it is poorly written or not interesting. (If you get bored, skip to the end, there are pictures :D )

Emerson, What exactly are you doing?

I’m making paintings of people, mostly children, whose only connection to me is that I’ve seen them in films. I take hundreds of screen shots of obscure films and then I alter and combine them through painting.

How do you choose the films and how do you choose the images you take?

I will often choose a moment in a film with an interesting motion. Something quick, and I’ll take maybe a dozen shots within a second of that scene. This will give me a good idea of the structure of that motion. Along with that, I get the distortion that’s created through the digital filter. I do this because I’m interested in how people move. How we occupy space is something that fascinates me. We exist in our own bodies, yet our bodies are never still. My experience is that our minds actually work the same way. It’s in constant motion. What I’d like to be able to do is express this inner-motion, say an internal dialogue, an inner struggle, or just the combination of thoughts and feelings, through this external motion; The external movement that we see and experience all the time.

Other times I take screen shots to fill in the gaps. I use this method to capture faces or bodies or moments. Usually a painting will start with the sort of moment of motion that I described before, and then I will alter it with other bits that I’ve accumulated. I’ll change or alter faces or bodies, and add other characters or other information as seems necessary. The process sounds sort of Frankenstein-like. As if I’m sewing together different people to create something new, and that is what I’m doing, but I’m not trying to create a monster. I hope they will look slightly wrong, as if something just isn’t quite right, but hopefully it is more subtle than a Frankstein monster. I had a teacher who told me once that everything you find to be extraordinarily beautiful, you also find to be slightly disturbing. I really connected to that statement. It’s hard to be moved by something if there isn’t an edge to it, or something darker beneath it.

Why are you painting children?

Because they fascinate me. I think it’s often the case that there’s something more human about children than adults . . . In that they haven’t given up as much yet. They haven’t quite compromised who they are in order to fit into the adult world. There’s something equally fascinating about adolescence. Because they’re caught in the middle. They’re trying to negotiate between those two worlds, the one of childhood, and adulthood.

What interests me about people is who they are when no one’s looking. Underneath the pretense. As we get older, I think we build up those layers of pretense and it becomes harder to see who someone really is. It’s the same reason that I generally paint nudes, because clothing says more about how we want to present ourselves than it says about who we actually are.

Ok, but if you’re interested in how people are “underneath the pretense”, how can you justify painting from movies? Isn’t it fair to say that this when people are most self-conscious, when they’re being filmed? Also, how can you paint about who someone “actually is” when you’ve never met them?

Emerson, you’ve successfully put your finger on all of my insecurities about my process. Firstly, I would say that I don’t think this is the best way to do what I want to do, but it’s the best I have right now. I use this method partly for convenience. In theory, I could set up my own scenes, hire people to act, or pose in them, and then film or take photographs of them, and then use those images as the starting point for my paintings. And I may end up doing something like that someday, but the reality is that I don’t have the time to do all that right now, and I’d rather spend my time painting.

But that doesn’t even answer your question, because even if I did all of that myself, it wouldn’t change the self-consciousness of the people. I would make the argument though, that most of the methods we have of painting people are equally artificial. If a model poses for you for a drawing, s/he is certainly self-conscious. I don’t know of a way to get rid of that yet.

In films though, there are so many little moments that you can find the accidental ones. Especially in scenes with a lot of movement. You can pick the moments in between, the ones that you wouldn’t normally notice, and these can be really interesting.

And maybe I paint strangers precisely because I can’t ever know who they really are. The reality is, currently, I’m not painting about other people at all, I’m painting about myself. I project my own insecurities and inner-struggles onto the faces and bodies of these strangers. The emotion is my own, this is just the way I filter and express it. So when I say, “I’m interested in who people really are underneath the pretense,” I’m really talking about myself. This is my way of expressing things that I don’t express in any other way. (If you know me, you may note that the feelings created by my paintings don’t generally coincide with how I normally behave. This is not because I am somehow being dishonest, it’s just because it’s not socially acceptable to be constantly expressing that kind of emotion. I mean, if I acted like one of my paintings I would be a pretty exhausting person to be around) My hope would be that my own thoughts, emotions, and insecurities are not unique to myself, and by trying to honestly express something about myself, I will tap into something universal.

ah okay sorry, but timekeeping got all messed up . . . Will be back on top of that by next week.

The Cold

Hi friends,

So, I got sick this week and didn't get as much done as I would have liked. I'm what you might call a "whiny sick" person (psh whatever that means) in that when I'm sick I am very disinclined to do anything but lay in bed.

When I did get out of bed I did this:

I worked more on this one

And I started this one

I've resolved to finish the top one. Soon. Hold me to it.

Sorry there's not more to show. Tonight will be my last lazy sick night. Promise to make up for it next week :D

Timekeeping

Stretching / gessoing 3

Acrylics 6 1/2

Acrylics

I've been having a much better time with painting since switching to acrylics. I've continued with the smaller ones on paper, but they've slowed. Below is the only one from this week that I really like. I'm curious what other people think of it, because I think it's pretty close to the movement/distortion that I want to create.

I started a larger acrylic.

My tentative plan is to get it pretty close to where I want it, and then do oils over it for final touches. Acrylics are great for working fast and building up depth, but to me the vibrancy just isn't there, or maybe I just haven't figured out how to get it there. 

I built another stretcher bar, 40"x60", and will paint it the same way, starting with acrylics. So, officially, I have way too many paintings started and zero finished (excluding the little ones). It would feel really nice to finish one.

Timekeeping

Oils: 5 1/2 (okay, I went back for a minute)

Acrylics: 9

Grant proposal: 2

Wood shop: 3

The Breakup

Oil painting and I are officially on a break. We hope that with some time apart we may be able resolve our differences. Listen, it's not my fault that it's such a high-maintenance medium. Like, ERG, sometimes I swear . . .

In the mean time, I've taken this opportunity to see other media. Here are some small acrylic paintings I did this week. They are 7"x11" and on paper.

These can take me from 1 to 4 hours to paint, whereas an oil painting can take me . . .  Honestly I don't even know. An absurd amount of time. And I think you can see the freshness in these. You can see they were done quickly and there's something immediate about that that I like.

Also as a result of my break up with oil painting I've been drawing more.

I was really excited about this last drawing. I feel like it walks on that line between tenderness and something more sinister. Like you're not sure if what's happening is good or bad. That really interests me, because I think that's how life often is, or that's how relationships can be. They're more complicated than how they're sometimes categorized. Life isn't good or bad. It's both. I always find it contradictory.

Timekeeping:

Figure Drawing : 1.5

Oils: (before the break up) 3 

Drawing: 5.5

Acrylics: 10

Grant Proposal: 0.5

Faces, Acrylics, and Bad Photos of OK Drawings

This week I worked a lot on this painting. We're not fighting as much any more, but I'm not really sure I know where it's going either. It's looking a little zombie-like, which isn't really what I want, but I like the way the paint is starting to build up and the faces are starting to look convincing.

I worked for a while with acrylics on paper, which is really fun sometimes because you can get so much done so quickly, since the drying time is really fast. Acrylics can be less scary too, because I won't have to wait a couple of days to be able to cover up a mistake.

And I went back to figure drawing this Saturday.

This week we went as a class to the art history library to practice our browsing skills. I went away with more books than I could carry. Artists I am now looking at are:

Rembrandt (by most standards, probably the best painter who ever lived)

Toulouse Lautrec (Who I've always been pretty sure was awesome, but now I'm positive)

Andrew Wyeth

Glenn Brown

Nigel Cooke

And I had to leave Lucian Freud behind, mostly because he was too heavy. Freud's paintings can be amazing, but to me a lot of them can be painfully redundant . . . Like he needs to be a better editor. This is especially apparent when flipping through a book of face after face after face . . . But maybe that's just me. He has moments of brilliance though, certainly. Here's my favorite painting by him:

The light is like, Whoa! And the faces are so sensitive . . . While other times they just come off as goofy to me.

Time keeping:

Painting 10 1/2

Figure Drawing 3

Acrylics 3

Copying Rembrandt 1

Working on grant proposal 1 1/2

Progress

Hey guys,

Not a whole lot to report, just been plugging away. Took a break from the painting that was giving me problems but I didn't mange to take a break from painting like I said I would and ended up working on this guy:

And I think it's going pretty well. I think the tricky thing will be to make sure I'm portraying movement and not just creating a three-headed monster. But hey, even if that happens, I suppose I'd be okay with that.

I finally got back to the Saturday figure drawing session. I tried working bigger with charcoal. Here are two that look kind of okay.

And here's a drawing I did in my sketchbook. All of last semester I hardly did a drawing outside of my sketchbook, but since IP for some reason I switched to working mostly on loose paper. There's something really nice about working in a book though. It's very personal. Maybe because you can't hang it on a wall, so your audience is limited to whoever is holding the book. It's intimate.

I like books a lot. So much that I have to destroy them. If you want to see what that looks like you can go here.

Timekeeping:

Painting: 7 hours

Figure Drawing: 3 hours

Drawing in studio: 2.5 hours

Hands

Ruining a good painting is like hurting someone you love.

You're all like, wow. I really didn't want to do that. I mean, hurting you is the last thing I'd ever want to do.

I'd take it back if I could. But I can't.

And now you look like shit.

And not all the paint thinner in the world could scrub away that awful mess I put on your face.

I think I lost the metaphor. 

--

In other news, I did more hand drawings. I like these.

And the abstract is going well

We had a critique this week and I thought it went well. We have a very thoughtful group of people and it's always good to hear what they're thinking, and also to see their work. They shared their experiences of looking at my painting, which is my favorite thing for people to do during critiques because for me that's what painting is all about. Some people thought the image was violent and others thought it was innocent, and I thought that was great because I'm pretty sure it's both.

Well, I haven't been painting very well lately so I think I'm going to take a break for a few days and just draw because that's going a little better.

FALL BREAK!

Time keeping:

Writing project proposal: 2 hours

Drawing: 8 hours

Painting: 6 hours

Art Prize Interlude

Have you been to Art Prize? If you Haven't, well it's too late. But it'll be back next year.

Anyway, everything about Art Prize is great. Everywhere you turn, there's a huge installation, all storefront windows are plastered with art, and the stuff in the museums is at least twice as interesting as it usually is. Plus the hippies come out in full swing and bang on their guitars. What's not to like?

The only bummer is this took home 1st place.

Ugh.

But no worries, there was lots of good art to be seen. Here are a few that I took photos of:

-Damian Goidich (http://damianart.blogspot.com/)

Some Greenness

Erm, okay, so I'm already late on my Thursday claim. But in my defense, I'm lazy and easily distracted.

Here's what I've been working on:

This painting was super fun. Painting without subject matter is a really good thing to do sometimes; It really loosens me up, and it makes the other paintings come easier. Also, it teaches me so much about how paintings evolve, how to make them interesting . . . Yadayada composition yadada. Plus, if you work in acrylic, you can do a painting in like, super-speed. I'm gonna work on this one a lot more. Right now I'm pretty sure the colors are really gross.

I also think the colors in this one are sort of gross, but I think it's a good example of how I want to paint movement. This is the same figure, but his head is overlapped over its self in two different positions. It's kind of a cubist technique, but it doesn't look very cubist.

And you've seen these before, but they are developing. I'm going to try to work back and forth with the compliments, from red to green and back to red again, and see if that works. Also, if I haven't told you, I'm colorblind. So, if I do something super weird/ stupid with color, I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on that. But feel free to let me know.

Oh, and I made this drawing. It has almost every material in my studio in it, but most of what you see in the end is acrylic paint.

Time keeping:

Painting: 13.5 hours

Drawing: 2 hours

Photographing and photoshopping: 2 hours

Hanging stuff up in my studio: 1 hour (you probably don't care about this)

Some Redness

To keep things consistent, I'm going to make the claim that from now on I will update my blog every Thursday. Or at least by before-you-wake-up on Friday. We'll see how that goes. Also though, I might update in the middle of the week for some randomness.

This week I continued drawing/ painting on paper. I've been trying to get more invested in the individual drawings, so they're less like imprints. Here are two of my favorites from this week. The second one is closer to where I want to go with these.

I really, really like hands.

I also started painting.

um.

Here's what I did.

The struggle is to keep the looseness while making the forms convincing. This is the sort of thing that Jenny Saville (whom I brought up last week) is so good at. These are both in the very early stages.

Also, early on in the week, Lily and I painted portraits of each other. It was super fun, but I'm not so happy with how it turned out, so I'm not posting a picture of it. Hopefully she's not bored of my face yet and we can get another round in.

I'm starting to reconsider the role drawing will play in the project . . . Mostly because it's just easier to do given the studio circumstances. The scale is more convenient, the materials are less toxic. Plus, hey, I love drawing. I actually tend to find it way less stressful than painting. So maybe I can continue doing both in somewhat equal measure. I think I'm going to start drawing lots of hands.

We met in small groups the other day and had a really good talk about where our projects were heading. Here are some bullet points on what came up during mine, and things that I will be expanding on later.

-Honesty

-Spirituality

-Death

-Childhood

-The HUMAN CONDITION. AHHHHHHHH!!

If you ask me how these things are expressed through my art though, I will most likely curl up into a ball and cry until you leave me alone. So, I'll be working on that. . . Also, I'm very bored with the word "Spirituality" and the phrase "The human condition." You hear them so much that they almost don't mean anything anymore. They almost hurt to hear, so maybe I'll make up new words for them. More on that later.

I hope this is interesting to read. I'm kind of still figuring out what to write. Right now, it's just my brain on a blog, so maybe I can work on refining that a little more.

Time keeping:

Painting: 8.5 hours

Drawing: 3.5 hours

Taking movie stills: A stupid amount of time

thanks thanks thanks

Saville, Jodoin, Kanevsky

As a mid-week interlude, let me show you three artists that I think are super cool.

Jenny Saville

You've probably all heard of her. She got famous in a hurry after she was discovered by Charles Saatchi. Her work, I guess, can be disturbing. She sometimes paints things that people don't want to see, like corpses, or bruised flesh . . . But the paintings are so heartbreakingly beautiful that if you can get over that initial disgust they can be almost spiritual to look at. She paints like an abstract expressionist, but her figures are extremely convincing. Every brushstroke has a purpose and an energy to it. She is great.

Sophie Jodoin

"Haunting" is probably the best word to describe Jodoin's work. Her drawings are like images pulled from a nightmare. Her figures seem like ghosts. Like at any minute they could disappear or be washed away by the background, but at the same time they feel very present. They have a convincing presence and part of that is their ethereal quality.

Alex Kanevsky

Kanevsky's work reminds me very much of Saville's and is every bit as beautiful. There is generally a feeling of movement in his paintings, or sometimes like a vibration. They never seem still, but very alive. If you like his work, you should look on his website, especially at his in-progress photos. His process is very interesting. He'll do maybe a dozen layers, and to me, each one looks like a finished painting. Every part of the picture stays in flux until the very end, which I think is a very good way to paint.