Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, by Leroy, oil on canvas 48x36"

Now that all the pictures I needed are here (Thank you Rick Womer), I can describe the week's events that started on Feb 20th with the unveiling of my portrait of Harper, commissioned by the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. It was quite a week, and wildly special for me as an artist. The portrait was used as a front page 5.5x7" four-color photo on the cover of 10,000 newspapers printed to announce the program "A Brighter Coming Day: Rediscovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper." My Artist's Statement was a column on page 2. During the week the portrait was taken to The Pennsylvania Historical Society for a panel discussion about Harper, and again to Drexel University for a fascinating historical presentation by Frances Smith Foster of Emery University. It will finally find its home in the Parish Room of the Unitarian Church.

The unveiling on the 20th began the morning church service, after a Call to Worship by Rev. Mark Tyler of the Mother Bethel AME Church - Harper had been a member of both the Unitarian and AME Churches. After that the unveiling took place, to a satisfying chorus of ooohs and aaahs.

First, I spoke (briefly) about how the portrait was crafted

Then I had the honor of lowering the drape to reveal the portrait

Next on the agenda, Larry Robin spoke about his discovery of the importance of Harper in the movements for emancipation and women's suffrage. Larry, through his Moonstone Arts Center had organized the week's events, gaining the support of eighteen local organizations to fund and promote the activities.

Larry Robin is a dynamo in the Philadelphia cultural sceneThe following speakers focused on Harper's contributions in her time and the need to continue her work today, and the choir's contribution was equally moving. And then as it seemed that things were wrapping up, the Church was stormed by the energy of the Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble who took over and rocked the rafters.

The African Dance Group, from Camden NJ, performs both locally and internationally

I'd met the spirited director of the dance group, Ronsha Dickerson, just at the time I was looking for a model to assist me in creating the portrait. Her group was performing a Kwanzaa program downtown, and I was taken by her energy and her work with the kids of Camden. Moreover, she had the body and skin color I was looking for, and she enthusiastically agreed to work with me for the portrait.

Rev. Nate Walker, Ronsha (with an initial study for the portrait) and The ArtistI was glad that my sister Arlene and her friend Dot could come in from Lancaster for the day, and of course Patricia, who had been supporting me throughout, and was deeply engaged in the process and the day.

Dot, my sister Arlene, Me, Patricia, and the Grump on the Wall

Just gotta take this post to be proud of my daughter, Ellen Forney: Cartoonist, Author, Professor (Cornish College), Painter and Illustrator. She's in town (Philadelphia) from her Seattle home at the invitation of the Philadelphia Free Library to give a Workshop tomorrow, based on her art - 65 plates - in Sherman Alexie's book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. She also gave a presentation at the University of the Arts and another at her alma mater, Masterman High School.

Tirdad Derakhshani of the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed her, and wrote a great article for the Magazine section of the Thursday Feb 3 Philadelphia Inquirer. Hit the highlighted section to go directly to the article. I wanted to include a picture or two from the article, but couldn't do it. Sorry.

It's been a long time since she was in Philadelphia, and it feels so good to have her here again, and to share the good things we enjoyed in the city.

It's been about a year since I received a commission from the 1st Unitarian Church to paint a portrait of the suffragette/abolitionist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (b.1825 - d.1911). Harper had been a member of both this Church and the Mother Bethel AME Church, here in Philadelphia.

It took some time to complete the portrait, and then a series of things kept delaying its delivery and unveiling ceremony. But now the date is firm: Sunday Morning, Feb. 20, in a service that will feature Harper and her decendants, and include special choral music and also the Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble, who always give a fantastic performance. That afternoon there will also be a concert at the Church by Sweet Honey in the Rock. It will be quite a day!

I've wanted to share the Harper portrait on this blog ever since I finished it, but felt that it shouldn't be shown until the formal unveiling. However, it is now the featured image on a newspaper brochure promoting a weeklong series of events, called: A Brighter Day Tomorrow - Rediscovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, sponsored by 18 Organizations organized by The Moonstone Arts Center. Some 10,000 copies have been printed and they are publicly available as of yesterday, so it seems that the wraps have been taken off.

Here then, is the Portrait. I also was asked to write an Artist's Statement for inclusion in the newsletter. It is awfully long to include in a blog but hey, this is a big deal for me, so I'll include it anyway. ( Nothing says you have to read it unless you want to.)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, by Leroy (oil on canvas, 48"x36")

Artist's Statement:

The objective of the portrait painter is not only to provide a likeness but to capture the personality and vitality of the subject. A portrait is akin to meeting a person through a conversation rather than by merely looking a photograph of the person, accurate though that photograph may be.

In approaching the portrait of a living subject I first make several sketches. This allows me to speak with and observe the subject over time, a process that continues throughout the development of the portrait. Thus I come to know the subject through many mood changes - curiosity, interest, boredom, impatience, humor, and more. Building on this background, the portrait becomes a composite that reflects all these intimacies within an authentic context, woven into the likeness of the subject.

Similarly with a historic figure such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the first step in creating her portrait a century after her death is to clearly recognize her uniqueness. To accomplish this in her absence, I immersed myself in her writings, what has been written about her, the context of her life and times, and her calling.

Harper (b.1825, d.1911) was a woman of unusual inner strength and vitality, proud and self-assured. The first verse of her powerful abolitionist poem Bury Me in a Free Land begins as follows:“Make me a grave where’er you will,In a lowly plain, or on a lofty hill;Make it among earth’s humblest graves,But not in a land where men are slaves.”

When she was 47, already a well-known national lecturer on abolition and suffrage, poet and author, she wrote in a letter to a friend:“The other day I, in attempting to ride in one of the [Philadelphia] city cars, after I had entered, the conductor came to me and wanted me to go out on the platform. Now, was not that brave and noble? As a matter of course, I did not, but kept the same seat. When I was about to leave, he refused my money and I threw it down on the car floor and got out, after I had ridden as far as I wished. Such impudence!”

This then is the spirit and the fire that my portrait of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper needed to reveal.

How to begin? Research at the Library Company of Philadelphia confirms that there are two photographs of Harper at maturity as well as one photograph and one etching of her as a young woman. They have been reproduced in subsequent histories and essays, sometimes of doubtful quality. But all of them portray a woman of great poise, dignity and determination.

From these choices, the formal photograph taken for the frontispiece of her most famous book is the genesis for the portrait. Specialists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at Philadelphia University indicated that the photo dates to about 1895, and they shared with me dresses, fashions and photographs of the type a woman such as Harper would have worn.

In the photograph, Harper stands before a typical backdrop used for photography in this period, a scrim painted with classical columns and encircling vines. Although these columns really have nothing to do with her life or work, they are suggest the formality that she would have desired for a public presentation, and represent the conventions of the period. And so the columns are retained (minus the vines) in the portrait.

These choices were the easier ones. A greater problem was find the correct way to incorporate Harper’s character, and then to approximate her skin color when working only from black and white half-tone prints. At this point another strong black woman, Ronsha Dickerson of the Universal African Dance & Drum Ensemble, stepped forward and agreed to model in Harper’s posture. So the final Harper portrait is based not only on the Frontispiece half-tone photograph, but also on multiple photographs and a study painting with Ronsha Dickerson for skin color and to observe how light falls on the chosen posture.

Final choices were compositional. Harper is depicted as a mature woman, but at a somewhat younger age than the 1895 photograph. She is leaning forward slightly with head high, and appears about to speak. One hand rests on her best-known book, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted, and her other hand is open in an attitude that welcomes the eye and beckons toward the book.

It is indeed an honor to portray a figure such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. May her memory and her concern for human rights and equality live on!

Leroy Forney February 20, 2011

With special thanks to:First Unitarian Universalist Church and Rev. Nate Walker, for the Portrait Commission itself, and for their strong support throughout the development and presentation of this work.Nancy Packer, Collection Curator, Philadelphia University, for her discussion and collected displays of the Leg of Mutton sleeve and Pigeon-Breast bodice.Dilys Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles, Philadelphia Museum of Art, for providing photographs and historical context for fashions of the late 19th century.Ronsha Dickerson and the Universal African Dance & Drum Ensemble for their inspiration and assistance.

I've made a bunch of new "speed paintings," maybe better called Quick Studies. An interesting thing about these little (6x8") paintings is that they feel so free and easy. They really are like making studies or sketches for a larger work. But some of them, more than I would have expected, turn out to be interesting on their own right. And it is an easy way to try things out before using them in a large scale painting. As Nancy Bea Miller suggested, I've come to of think of them rather like a musician doing scales to maintain technique and skill, and maybe try some different fingering in the process.

Mike: Painted during a Plastic Club workshopThe channel behind Dave & Sandra's cottage in Oklawaha

The dock at Lake Oklawaha

What could be a more common subject for a Still Life than apples?

This was another exercise in painting cavities - and metallic surfaces.

Two months since my last posting? Well, I've been in China for most of that time, and I have done quite a bit of new painting there. Also, I learned a lot more about contemporary Chinese painting, and I expect to write about that and give some talks on it before too long. But I have more organization to do to organize, write, and edit before I pontificate.

So I'll digress for a moment, to share some painting I've done quite recently, since my return to Philadelphia. I attended a delightful two-workshop Speed Painting program offered by Nancy Bea Miller at the Main Line Art Center. Nancy set up little scenes (still lives, really) of one or a few objects, and then had us paint them, with a one-hour time limit. It was a great exercise in that it forced me to use bigger brushes than usual, and immediately concentrate on blocking-in the larger color areas. Most importantly, it requires that you work quickly to not dwell on the details. So here are the results of the program - better results than I'd have expected for paintings done against a time clock:

It was easy to get the shapes, but fun to work out the differing texture of "lemon" and "corks:"

(8x10")Pomegranates were common enough in China, but I didn't paint them there. (6x8") This one has ended up as a Christmas gift to my sister ArleneI haven't often tried painting shiny, mechanical surfaces, but both these were fun to work on. ( 8x10"} This one also ended up as a gift to a sister of mine, to Allegra. The cork was an attempt to really loosen up and let the edges smudge into the greater murk surrounding it. (6x8")

The vegetables were tricky: that is supposed to be a broccoli on the top, there. (8x6")

Of course an orange is a classic painting subject, along with apples. (6x8") The idea of these things is to think of them as STUDIES. A quick way to try out stuff, and maybe provide a basis for a longer, more careful painting. This way they don't have to be beautiful, or even successful, although some of them may (hopefully) turn out to be rewarding and pleasing in themselves. Nancy claims that if you do one of these every day for a month, it will definitely push your painting forward, and improve your technique. A lot of people do this, and there are passels of web sites dedicated to people doing a painting a day.

I would like to keep doing studies this way - frequently at least, if not daily. Probably not daily. The first one I've done since the workshops is a honeydew melon, sliced. Lord, just drawing that series of ellipses inside a circle was quite a challenge. I think I will keep coming back to this "study" again and again:

The gradations of green in the melon are really subtle, and great to explore. (6x8')

It hasn’t all been play and no work for me, here in Beijing. I have done a little painting to keep in practice, and I expect to do more, although my hopes of painting with Hao Li haven’t taken shape just yet. I’d brought along the sketches and photo I did of the gourmand sitting at the next table a couple of weeks ago at the National Portrait Museum in Washington. Its been fun turning that into a small painting.

Gotta love this guy. He made the chair look so small!

But my real intent was to paint a scene typically and recognizably Chinese. I thought I would paint a produce market for its luscious rich colors, but they are so crowded that there is no working space. So I ended up in an indoor market, painting a butcher stall with great hunks of hanging meat. It turned out to be quite a challenge, and raised interesting issues. Those hanks of meat have personality, meaning, and they are not happy to be there all dismembered and nude, sliced and mutilated unceremoniously. That needed to come out in the painting, and made it all a very challenging exercise.

Indoor market on Chunxiu Lu (oil on canvas, 18 x27")

Now, if it all works out as planned, tomorrow I will be painting again with Hao Li. That should be totally delightful, with none of the issues lying under the surface as they seem to with the raw meat.

In the 798 Art District, the XYZ Gallery represents excellent artists and today I had an opportunity to share a delightful lunch with its curator, Catherine Chen. She speaks knowledgeably about Chinese contemporary art during the 90s, when the response to the Tienenmen Massacre prevented exhibition of contemporary art. Her view is that while some artists who had established relationships did leave for the west (primariy Paris, London and New York), most remained in China. Even without access to museums and public galleries, they continued to share and show their work privately. She wouldn’t agree that artists “went underground,” because that has connotations of opposition or resistance that were not part of the scene.

She had a great story about her uncle, who was a working artist during the height of the Mao years. She said he supported himself and his family with his paintings, but he painted only pictures of Mao. But even more than that, he painted only at night out of fear that someone might see an uncompleted painting and say that he was making a bad painting to deliberately defame the Great Leader.

Chen’s XYZ Gallery is already set up for a sculpture exhibition, Sculptures from the Holy Land, of Jonathan Darmon. It will feature graceful polished metal figures, parts of which can be moved to change the nature of the pieces – finally, sculpture that you are encouraged to touch and interact with! I hope Matt and I can attend the XYZ reception for the show, coming up very soon on Sunday, the 24th.

XYZ is also exhibiting very interesting paintings by Wang Zhidong. They look layered and three dimensional, like a Jackson Pollock work - but they are not, they are thinly painted, with images that disappear into a blur as you move closer to the painting itself. He certainly has a very noteworthy and unique approach to depicting the cityscape. (And with the pollution level where it is in Beijing today, I think I know how he may have found this inspiration.)



Catherine Chen and I share the spotlight with Wang Zhidong’s Memory 2, a large recent painting (oil on canvas, about 6.5 x 7.5ft) that appeals to us both.

Catherine also introduced me to Sunlight, an artist with her own gallery in 798, the Season Pier. Sunlight was/is a poet who does beautiful, gentle drawings (ink washes, really) on absorbent rice paper that complements the Chinese characters of her poetry. These delicate images contrast with the strong, passionate oil paintings that she began about two years ago, and which seem out of character with her sensitive, soft nature and appearance.

Season Pier is a small gallery with a friendly staff

and stunning art

Creating the ink washes requires a precise and a very controlled hand, as the manner in which the ink enters and spreads into the absorbent rice paper is central to the image:

Sunlight creates the image first, which then inspires her poetry

Two years ago Sunlight began making oil paintings. She finds that with this medium she can release her passion and work wildly, rapidly, repeat and re-do until the image reflects the onslaught of the brush - in essence, the antithesis of the delicate ink washes:

It is in her oil painting that Sunlight expresses the force that drives her art

FINALLY the photo upload function of this blog is working again. I feel all backed up with things that have been happening here in Beijing, but I couldn't do anything while Google had their system screwed up.

But first - a diversion to an exhibit of Goya drawings, here in Beijing:

You can find an Alliance Francaise in ‘most any city, promoting the French language and culture. Likewise, Spain promotes itself at replicated Instituto Cervantes centers. The Center in Beijing is featuring a posh exhibition of drawings by Goya. Goya, the incredible painter of masterful monsters and misfits, one of the three greatest Spanish artists (Goya, Valezquez, and El Greco – and whether Picasso should be considered Spanish or French is another discussion). I wasn’t familiar with Goya drawings, so was glad for this opportunity to see them.

The exhibition is built around some 82 aquatint etchings , all fairly small, maybe 8x10” and very detailed, which makes you wish you had a magnifying glass to really inspect them up close. And as works of art, they are fabulous. His use of contrast and the power of the images he creates with very few lines is astounding. This is supplemented with a video of war photojournalism, information about Goya himself, and his techniques.



Pairs of drawings like this one showed how Goya both simplified the image and made it more intense in its final presentation

Details of faces from Goya's drawings

The next reaction that hits you is to shudder at the subject matter. These works are raw, and savage. He does not spare the viewer. The exhibition is titled “Goya, Chronicler of All Wars” and as one announcement understates: “The exhibit explores the connections between Francisco de Goya’s famous Los Desastres and current images of war”. Some are of the “Heroic Men at War” variety, but it ends with a large section portraying the victims of war – soldiers but especially civilians – missing faces, butchered babies, dismembered corpses, sexual mutilation….

The Goya drawings were made at the invitation of a Spanish General who invited artists to view and record the devastation of the War for Independence (1808-1814). In this way, the drawings are presented as precursors to war photojournalism, and this is illustrated with a strong documentary showing the work of war photographers in a chronological sequence through WWII, ending with Viet Nam, as current images of war.

This history got me to reading about this war – also called the Peninsular War. It seems to have been a model for the success of irregular fighting units against organized armies, and was the source of the term guerilla warfare (the Spanish “guerra de guerillas” translates as the “war of little wars”). Given the daily news of our ongoing wars, the topic of this exhibition hardly seems coincidental --- but, why here in Beijing of all places?

Anyway, quite a surprise detour, coming in the middle of my Art Tour of Beijing.

Strolling and Looking

Still spending time exploring 798, I dropped in at the Oriental Light Art Space. Although I didn't much like the exhibition, I found a catalog of the work of Chang Weiting, and liked his work. Cindy Chen (asst. mgr.) confirmed that he was one of their artists, and pulled out an impressive seascape of his from their stacks for me:

Cindy shows the Chang Weiting painting

The 4th Beijing International Art Biennale 2010

By good fortune, I was here for the closing days of the Beijing Biennale at the National Art Museum. It features the rather ho-hum theme “Environment Concern and Human Existence,” so there were quite a few paintings of garbage dumps and used tires and stuff like that. (If there are/were any counter-exhibitions this year, lke Ai Weiwei's a couple of years ago, I am completely unaware of them.) This Biennale includes some 500 works from all over the world – a pretty strong Chinese representation, but only a few from the USA, England or France. It was an interesting exhibition although it lacked sequential or stylistic organization, and that made it feel rather kaleidoscopic.

Lots of very interesting - and diverse - art at the Biennale

Expressing Feelings, by Yan Ping, 2009 (oil, 180x200cm)Does this remind you, too, of Bonnard?

Couldn't resist this McDonald's Revenge by Tobias Marx, of Germany

Downtown

There is a whole other world of Chinese Painting that should also be mentioned, and can be diverting. China is rightly known for its skill in making cheap knockoffs and for reducing difficult processes to simple routine hand labor tasks. These skills are not limited only to Rolex watches, electronics and high tech items – it applies to art as well (Beware if you are in the market for ancient artifacts).

In all the tourist areas there are kiosks selling hand-painted oils and acrylics on canvas, metal, and just about anything else for very little money. Essentially this is all in the Starving Artist category, and most are horrid attempts at reproducing things like the Dutch Masters or Impressionists, (after all it worked for THEM, so ....) but also there can be some nice things in the piles of paintings, too:.

A typical Art Kiosk in the big Clothing/Textile market in Sanlitun

Where they sell copies (ripoffs?) off well-known Chinese contemporary artisits as well as the Dutch Masters and Impressionists

I am a poor negotiator, but still got this unsigned floral 12x16” oil on canvaspad for under $15.

So now I’m in Beijing for almost two months to hang out with family. For sure I'll use some of that time to delve more deeply into the contemporary art scene here. And hopefully to do some painting of my own, too. I think I can be a bit more relaxed about it this time, as compared to the time I spent here last June. But I’m still looking forward VERY much to getting together and painting again with Hao Li – that remains a major objective of mine.

My interest here stems from my relatively recent immersion in oil painting, and remembrance of the stunning INK NOT INK exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at Drexel University in 2009, as well as my quick survey here this past June, and an interest in studying some aspect of how China is changing and developing. Add to that, of course, my incredible good fortune in finding the artist Hao Li and painting with her (revisit my earlier posts in this blog for that story).

NOTE: Clicking on the highlighted words or phrases will take you to that site.

Disclaimer: What follows here is solely my own opinionated, confused, biased search for what I think is going on and find interesting – exciting – provocative - new. I am neither an art historian nor a student of Chinese culture. But I read what I can find, enjoy shoeleather explorations of what is being shown and exhibited, and I talk to people.

For a GOOD discussion, a very knowledgeable and highly readable summary of contemporary art in China, start with this excellent summary by Jeffrey Hays.

My Explorations

That said, I’ve come to see the background for what is happening in Chinese art in the following way: Mao, like the imperial dynasties before him, wanted to erase the past and build anew. So, no more classical works based on calligraphy, beautiful spare ink drawings of mountains, swans, and all that. Rather, the Soviet Realism of the Happy Laborer and the smiling Female Red Guard and the East is Red - lots of Grand Heroism.

FIND EXAMPLES

After Mao came the economic loosening of Deng Xiaoping, which found resonance in China's cultural domains as well. Thus, in the 1980s a group of professional artists and professors began meeting informally to “debate the place of contemporary art in China” and how to move on from traditional styles. They wanted to move on from the Soviet Realism and build from the past without trying to emulate it. From this ferment came a 1989 exhibition in Beijing of 168 artists at the National Gallery, titled “No U-Turn/Avant-Garde,” and a series of Art Biennale Exhibitions with some government sponsorship. Of course this has engendered a certain backlash: At the 2000 Shanghai Biennale a number of artists (including Al Weiwei who has achieved celebrity status in the international art scene) staged a counter exhibition titled “F*CK OFF.”

Beijing is home to the 798 Art District, a recycled old industrial area now home to studios, galleries, crafts and bookstores and more - kind of comparable to a combination of SoHo and Chelsea in New York City. Shanghai, the other Chinese center of money, culture and politics, has its similar area called M50, as well as a carefully designed Art Development Project, Wujaiochang 800.

The end result has been fragmentation, as artists explore new directions, with more than a nod to historical styles and traditions. The trends away from the ICONOGRAPHY of Soviet Realism lead toward Classical Realism (you find a lot of stunning Photo Realism, especially from Tibet), and to a great deal of Pop Art and Political Pop such as grinning soldiers and takeoffs on Mao, a-la Warhol (but nothing confrontational to the political power structure). Also a lot of Surrealism, Abstraction, and paintings in the style of Major Western Artists especially the Impressionists (much of this almost embarrassingly poorly executed).

Beijing’s 798 Art District

This past week I managed to spend half a day back in the 798. Not enough time to look up Hao Li, but I wanted to see an exhibition described in Beijing Today magazine before its imminent closing. It was a solo exhibition by Zhang Yongzheng at the New Age Gallery, titled “Awakening in Puzzlement”. It turned out to be a series of starbursts of different colors, tedious in execution and generally lacking in interest – at least to me.

The puzzling thing about these paintings is what they have to do with puzzlement and amazement.

And this is my frequent criticism – I find that much of the contemporary Chinese art scene in galleries and museums is just not interesting, at best. But, to be fair, that is pretty much true anywhere, including gallery tours in New York.

However, there are some galleries here that are definitely showing exciting new work. I returned to the Amelie gallery for a long discussion with the asst. mgr., Carmen Feng. Last June I enjoyed their exhibition of Duan Zheng Qu:



These color-field paintings felt so reminiscent of Elizabeth Osborne's style

On my visit this time, their exhibition features Yong Zhengou and Chen Maling:



To me, Yong Zhengou paints traditional subjects, but with added color and abstraction

Chen Maling plays games with perspective with his super-flat frontal planes

Amelie is also featuring paintings by Huang Kai that I assumed were strongly influenced by Lichtenstein, but by extension rather than repetition. But not so! Carmen emphatically assured me that his paintings are based on popular Chinese black and white comics of a decade or so ago. Chen Maling

I still see a lot of Lichtenstein Huang Kai's paintings

There are so many great art exhibitions in NYC right now - Patricia and I took the Chinatown Bus in to the city to take in a few of them.

Relaxing in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art

All the exhibits right now seem intent on driving home just how hard the artists worked to create the product they were looking for, and how their work developed over time. The Design Center in SoHo features drawings by Gerhard Richter, in an exhibition called "Lines which do not exist." They are thought pieces and experiments that he drew before paintings. To me, they are marvels of imagination and learning, and make me realize how tight and circumscribed my own doodling in my sketch books seems in comparison. Lesson: Do not compare your sketch books to those of a truly imaginative artist.

Also in SoHo, we went to the Status Factory of Ron English, which features his high energy anti-corporate snarkiness. I'd heard him in a lecture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art just a week or so ago. He portrays himself as the outsider, taking pot-shots at timeworn slogans and images through what he calls Popaganda, the Art and Crimes of Ron English. It is good fun, and I especially enjoyed his creepy, sensuous, UV-enhanced cave and his takeoff on Happy Face:

Creepy-ness in Ron English's UV-lit cave

I'm wearing English's take on the ubiquitous Happy Face

From there, uptown to the Morgan Library and Gallery for an exhibition of the early work of Roy Lichtenstein, showing how he developed his signature style over time, and how much of the power of his work comes from the contrast of the intense emotional situations of his comic-book images with the mechanical, impersonal method of their presentation.

Lichtenstein also did a couple of KNOCK or NOK or SLAM additions to doors, like this. I think I would like to try that on my apartment door too, and see what kind of reaction it gets (if any).

Finally we ended up at the MOMA, the Museum of Modern Ar,t for the exhibition of works by Matisse with special emphasis on forensic methods (ir, uv, etc, etc) to determine what layers of paint are under the final work and what does that tell us about how meticulously he worked to improve the composition and appearance of his images - and how, as time passed, he more and more was willing to allow the changes to be apparent in the finished work. Still, I felt that with all this emphasis on analysis of individual works, the sheer joy and beauty Matisse presents was somehow diminished.

This little girl just plopped down, and was totally into her painting of the Matisse flowers!

Well, for all that, it was a gorgeous day for walking in the city and ravishing all this incredible art. Now I have tomorrow to pack, and on Monday I am off to China. Oh my!

Continuing in the sequence of painting Cityscapes, I decided to tackle (again) the difficult subject of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. I tried to paint it once before, straight on, and the result was horrid. It is really a tough subject to make into an interesting composition - it is fairly small, and is plunked into the middle of the city. From the park in its frontal view it is lost in tree foliage. From the back, it is up against Chestnut Street with big office/apartment buildings around it. Also, with it's distinctive tower, it is as tall as it is wide and so is difficult to create an interesting pictorial composition.

This time I approached it from the rear, which faces Chestnut Street and is the way most people see it anyway. But then I skewed the Hall, broke all the "rules" on perspective, painted it from an impossible angle, and kept in place those background buildings that tend to overpower the structure, using them to provide a protective frame and halo for it.

I like what I got from it:

Otherwise, the news is that next week I am returning to China to stay with my son and granddaughter in Beijing for two months. In addition to just getting in the way around the house, I expect to continue my exploration of the contemporary Chinese art scene at least as it pertains to oil painting, and do some painting of my own. Perhaps some Chinese cityscapes to add to my portfolio, and some interesting portraits. I'll keep up my blog if I can, but I think China blocks out blogspot and that could be a big problem.

The crazy thing is that I will have two paintings in an exhibition at the Plastic Club while I am gone - View of a Thousand Windows and Elfreth's Alley (see previous blog) - and the whole thing will have come and gone while I am in China. I won't get to see how they show in the context of the exhibition. In the same way, I might have another painting at Off the Wall Gallery while I'm gone. So it goes.

Anyway - the best way to contact me during October and November will be by email: leroyforney@gmail.com.

Fortunately I have not been as careless in my painting as I have been in my postings lately. I'm still avoiding a focus on one type of subject or style, though. Since returning from China, I've taken a summer course on Cityscapes with Doug Martenson at PafA - I keep coming back to his courses, because he is such an excellent instructor and inspiring painter.

Our Cityscape paintings were all made looking out from the Harrison Building, at Broad and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia. Gotta say that I didn't really enjoy the process of my first painting, although it turned out pretty well as a grouping of skyscrapers. I wanted to emphasize the vertical lines of the view, so used a 24 x12" canvas. That was a good choice, but I call the painting "View With a Thousand Windows." It taught me the value of simplifying the subject for a painting:

Cherry Street, to the West: 24 x12" oil on canvas

With that experience in mind, I painted the buildings right across the street in a much looser style. I didn't think I liked this painting at first, but the longer it hangs on my wall the more attached to it I become. Somehow it is a very pleasing arrangement of shapes and colors. Interestingly, it turned out to be almost a classic illustration of the landscape format, "dark foreground, lighter, bluish middle layer, and still lighter, bluer distant space (the sky, in this case):"

Across the Street: 12 x16" oil on boardAfter that, we just had a portion of one period left, so I did a quick skyline painting, and even this one will even look OK, if I cut the dimensions from the current 9 x12" to, say, 5.5 x12" as shown in the full and cropped versions here:

Left: Skyline: 9 x12" oil on canvasboard. Above: 5.5 x12"

Well, after all that, I went out on my own after the class was over to apply Doug's principles to a set up my easel and paint at Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously occupied street in the USA. That provided an opportunity to use the perspective information that Doug was giving us in class, in spades. It was also fun to interact with the guides who were there to tell Philadelphia Stories to the tourists dropping by.

Elfreth's Alley: 16 x12" oil on boardIt might be interesting to compare a landscape that I painted two years ago, in Rittenhouse Square. I think there has been some progress over this time. By the way, I just recently added that little dog in the lower left - it does a lot to add interest. It also fills a blank space, and provides a reason for the posture of the person there who is clearly holding a leash, now. Before, in the absence of that dog, the figure seemed to be dealing with severe stomach cramps.

Rittenhouse Square: 9 x12" oil on canvasboardFinally, what's going on Otherwise: I have a painting in the current Plastic Club exhibition of Self Portraits, which runs until Sept 25. They actually wanted a TITLE for the Self Portraits. ??? So I left mine "Untitled."

Hao Li, the artist that I painted with in China, has a major exhibition in Beijing opening later this month - good for her! And, I may be returning to China myself for October and November to spend time with my family. That would certainly be quite interesting, although it would postpone my intended study with Frederic Kaplan at PafA.

14 x11" oil on canvas

So I've been posting about my painting in China, and how taken I am with the work of Hao Li. I thought it would be interesting to look a little at how I'm playing with technique after painting with her. Her style looks so loose brushy and immediate, but only follows a very detailed drawing of what she is after. Here is a painting of her model (her niece, actually) in-progress and a very similar one, at completion.

Of course, it was her portrait of me that just blew me away. All my painting looks so serious and formal by contrast to this playful, fun likeness:

So I began to work at getting a bit looser with my brush, working on letting something happen rather than carefully reproducing something. Here are a couple of small (6 x4") quick watercolors I did - the face is just imaginary, the mountains are from the patio at the Wei's, a short hike from the Great Wall.

This new (to me) also seems to lend itself wonderfully to landscapes. Last weekend Patricia and I were camping at the delightful Atsion State Park in New Jersey, and I painted this scene, "Campsite with Tent:" With the help of great suggestions from Doug Martenson, I even got some depth into the painting.

And what else am I doing right now? Taking a "Cityscape" course at the Penna Acad of Fine Arts with Martenson, meticulously painting a scene that I think I will call "View With A Thousand Windows." Not the place to get loose and brushy.

Hutongs were the classic living quarters in Chinese cities, especially in Beijing. They are communities that are fenced in by a high wall on all four sides, with small doorways that are usually in the middle of a block. So from the outside, all you see is a high grey wall with small openings here and there. Inside, they are warrens of narrow paths with a multitude of small living quarters. Because the living quarters are so small, much of the cooking, washing, and living goes on in the community space.

These hutongs are rapidly disappearing as Beijing replaces them with huge faceless high-rise apartments, in the name of Progress. There is a lot of hand wringing over this loss of community and history, especially by foreigners and people who do not actually live in them (although it has to be admitted that some hutongs have been taken over and the living quarters consolidated, allowing the creation of marvelous living spaces for those who can afford to do this).

All this introduction is simply to create a background for the two paintings I did in the hutongs near where my son lives, in the Chaoyang District of Beijing, between the 2nd and 3rd Ring Roads. Of course, painting in a dense hutong quickly becomes a center of interest and a crowd forms. The attitude is a mixture of confusion as to why this strange person would want to paint a scene in a hutong, and pleasure at seeing what is coming to life on the canvas.

So I made a painting of a pathway through a hutong, and another painting of one of the “houses” there. While I was painting the house, a little boy came out of the house to see what I was doing. He painted with me for a time, then went back and tried to clean up the house a bit. Hopeless task, but touching in its innocence.



After we had visited temple after temple at the sacred mountains at Wutai Shan, I certainly felt I should at least paint some temple or other. So, I took an afternoon to pack my painting stuff off to the Confucian Temple in Beijing. Still didn’t feel moved by a temple, so ended up painting the groundskeepers there.

I wasn’t finished painting by closing time when they chase out the tourists, so I just kept on working. Guards would come rushing over to me, look at what I was doing, stay to watch me for a while, then smile, wave and leave. It was great - quiet, and birds came back and were singing... I finally finished as the sun was going down, and by then I had to find a small side gate to get out of the temple grounds. All the guards were there at the gate, smiling and wishing me a friendly good-by as I left. The painting:

I also did some sketching and a painting of street vendors in Beijing. That painting earned me a commission from a Chinese university professor, who wanted me to paint her portrait. We went to a coffee shop, and I did paint her portrait. Then when I gave it to her, there was the issue of what it should cost. I put that back on her – “Give me what you feel it is worth.” That caused a long discussion between her and her friends. Finally she suggested 50 Reminbi. “OK, Done.”

( 50 Reminbi is worth about $7.50! )

I've been away from this blog for almost two months. Sorry. For half that time I was in China, where blogspot is blacked out, but for the rest of my absence here -- I've just had a hard time getting back into the world. So it goes.

It was a fantastic trip, visiting with my son and his family, and with Patricia for the first half of the trip. I hope to be posting a photo journal on that part of the trip before too long. But in this blog I want to concentrate on my impression of the art world in China, and specifically in Beijing. My interest is in contemporary oil painting, so I didn't survey the huge area of Chinese classical works involving calligraphy, brush and ink, or imperial art at all. My comments here certainly don't represent a balanced consideration of Chinese Art - they are strictly my own feelings, based on poking around Beijing for two and a half weeks looking for contemporary oil paintings. So, with that disclaimer:

One might expect the National Art Museum in Beijing to be a good place to start a survey. It is housed in solid building that reeks of Official Solidity. Think of a US City Post Office, circa 1935. Set well back from the street, surrounded by an iron fence with a guard post adjacent to the ticket office. About 13 large rooms inside for rather staid rotating exhibitions. The first time we went there it was closed for two days while they installed a new exhibition. Give it maybe a couple of hours on your tour.

It is much better to go to the 798 Art District. This is a large area that used to be heavy industry and warehousing, now redeveloped for artist studios, galleries, cafes, restaurants, sidewalk artists, sculpture, crafts shops, bookstores, and the University of Contemporary Chinese Art (UCCA). It has that loose feel of something unexpected and spontaneous happening, all a bit disorganized. It is a fun place to spend half a day - or a couple of days if you do want to get the sense of what's going on in the art scene. Of course some of the galleries there are showing atrocious stuff. But then, about the same percentage of galleries really have excellent and exciting exhibitions - I especially liked the Amilie, XYZ, UCCA, Astral and Hao Li (more about this one later) Galleries.

Generalities: I would describe what I found as falling into three groups. First, there are an awful lot of paintings that I think of as simply derivative, and poor. Oh look, that one was done by a Van Gogh wannabe. And this one by a Matisse wannabe. And that artist was channeling Modigliani - or Picasso - or Miro, or .... And this stuff is frequently found in reputable galleries and exhibitions, treated as worthwhile art - not only at 798 but also in other, long-established locations around the city.

On the other hand, there are quite a few Chinese and Tibetan artists doing a realistic style of portraits and figures that are simply amazing and breathtaking. As just one example, here is a painting titled "School of Project Hope - Good Student": 40 x50cm, 2001, that I scanned from the catalog of "Tibetan Oils by Yu Xiaodong.

And then, in the third group there are the contemporary artists who are doing exciting work, often a kind of mix of traditional styles or subject matter in ways that surprise and challenge the viewer. I especially liked some paintings by Duan Zheng Qu, who is a professor at the Fine Arts Academy of Capital Normal University (if I got all that right). His work uses rather a color field composition that I find rather reminiscent of our own Elizabeth Osborne. Here are his 2007 paintings, On Top of the Mountain (160 x130cm) and Boy on the Mountain (162 x130cm). Neat stuff, in my view:

But far and away, the highlight of my art exploration was finding the artist Hao Li and her Gallery. She paints figures and portraits in a style which I find very expressive and unique, and which yet maintains the feel of place, of China. I bought this painting to bring back with me (those are also her paintings behind us - you clearly get the sense of her style from these works):

Since I brought the painting home, I've been surprised at how closely it relates to the painting Senecio by Paul Klee, that I have always loved:

What made all this REALLY exciting is that I asked Hao Li if I could visit her studio. In turn, that led to our painting together, including painting (and trading) portraits of each other:

There is still other stuff that came out of this part of the trip, but I think this has gone on long enough for now. Have to leave some for my next posting. So stay tuned....

Yesterday I took the bus to NYC and spent a glorious day looking at art and doing the gallery thing. The Morgan Library has some wonderful Albrecht Durer drawings, and a great display of Palladio's architecture with lots of models to show just how he brought Greek features into the Roman buildings that have so influenced our formal government structures. Then, up to the Neues Gallery for a major exhibition of drawings, prints and paintings by Otto Dix. Strong unflinching stuff that, but beautifully done. After that, to the Gagosian Gallery for a really big exhibition of Roy Lichtenstein. Happy, delightful pop art that was a very welcome change from the depressing Dix.

Finally, I just went gallery hopping in Chelsea until I got too pooped to go into any further. It made me glad that I am painting in Philadelphia, out here in the Provinces. The contemporary NYC painters just strike me as FORCED. Like they all have to come up with some weirdness and then keep repeating it to establish some Personal Style - maybe an upside down horse floating in the sky, or an eye in the middle of a tree or something like that. Painted on LARGE canvases, of course.

Anyway. I posted a new self-portrait in my last blog entry, but haven't really been happy with it. So I've been doing a lot of tweaking with it, to good effect. Especially, my head is less of a dome - it looked something like the Capital Building, before. Then, my visit to NYC convinced me that I needed to do something more creative about a background. So now it looks like this:

Since my last posting, I finally overcame my timidity and asked one of my Bhutanese Refugee language students if I could paint her picture. She and her husband agreed, so I went to their home and set her up in a chair, adjusted the lighting, took photos and painted her there. I'd hoped to have a second session but it didn't work out and I had to complete her portrait using the photos and memory.

The resourcefulness and resilience of these people astounds me. Granted that living in a refugee camp for years is hopeless, demeaning and depressing, but what courage it must take to willingly leap into an unknown culture, not even knowing the letters of the alphabet, how you will support yourself or your family, and with your bridges burned and all family and support systems left behind. It is a one-way decision, for better or worse.

And so, let me introduce Wei Mae, in the accustomed clothes that she wears every day but sitting in front of a window with venetian blinds:

One final thing. This coming Friday I will be headed out to visit my son and his family in Beijing for a month. I intend to take my paints with me and hope to continue painting there. How that works out, we will have to see. And I don't know if I will be able to post from there, so maybe this blog will be in hold for a month or so.

The semester is over now. No more classes with Elizabeth Osborne. I feel a bit regretful about that - she is such a nice person, and I feel that I learned so much from her. I've completed that standing nude now. So three paintings came from her class - all of them in a very different style for me and larger than what I'd typically been doing before. I like all three of them. I don't expect to continue painting in this style, but I have learned a lot from it, and it will surely inform my work from here on. That's a nice feeling.

Here are the three paintings, more or less in their relative sizes. To complete the standing nude the white stripe was added and then toned down, some of the script was reduced a bit, a slight pattern introduced into the cloth along with some assorted tweaks here and there. The deliberately illegible script is from Robert Henri's discourse on the relationship of a model to [her] background.

Of course I have been doing a few other things along the line, too. A future Plastic Club exhibition will be based on self-portraits. Since I've really only done one and that was back in May 2008, I thought I should see what I would come up with now, as a straightforward head shot. So here it is - I think I managed to get my bulbous nose and dome of the head pretty well, and the beard is OK too.

Then, my friend Sheila has set up a 501c3 organization to provide some great art programs to school kids in Upper Darby, called Sunshine Arts. Check it out - she has a great home page on her website. She has a fund raising event coming up, and wanted some art work to sell. I gave her a few things, and also did some sketches with some watercolor added. They are done loosely, and I'm curious to see whether they find interest (ie, buyers) at a fund raiser like that. Here is what I put together for her, working mostly from some of my old sketch books:

I just gotta share, I feel so - what? happy, fortunate, rewarded - yes, all of that. There were two breakthroughs that fell to me this week. One regarding my artwork, but I also want to talk about my class in ESL (English as a Second Language).

I've been teaching ESL to a number of refugees from Bhutan once a week for maybe three months now. I took this on reluctantly - it was much easier, and more fun working at the low-intermediate level with Mexicans and assorted others from Asia and the Mideast. But then we had this Bhutanese group dumped on us. They knew NOTHING. Zombies! To say that they were at a basic level would be gross grade inflation. We have tons of great teaching manuals and materials, but you have to be able to at least communicate somehow to use them. There aren't any guides for starting with adults who know nothing. This group hit all our classes, and all the teachers felt flummoxed.

A little background: I'm working as a volunteer with the South Philadelphia Literacy Partnership, and we provide free ESL classes to anybody who walks in. Our classes are held in a battered Community Center in South Philadelphia. We provide eight 2 1/2 hr classes every week and by now have an experienced staff of volunteers and have established a degree of credibility (many groups start an ESL program that doesn't catch and soon peters out for a variety of reasons). So these Bhutanese were coming to a bunch of our weekly classes, not just mine on Wednesday mornings.

OK, so how do you start with a group like this? Lists of things (the alphabet, days, weeks, numbers, time, etc) and verbs. Flash cards of subjects, verbs and objects to assemble 3-word sentences. About a month ago, I realized that these people really were understanding some things and had memorized a lot of words, especially verbs - thank you to all the other teachers. They do great with flash cards. But they had no concept of reading, very limited writing (watching them write their names on the sign-in sheet is like watching a three-year old learn to print). And they refused to use English. Getting them to repeat a three-word sentence was almost impossible.

I kept lowering my entry point for instruction - finally realized that these poor people were starting without any knowledge of the Latin alphabet! They'd memorized it by now, but didn't have the easy facility that we all take for granted. They used Devanagari - the language used by some 17 million other Bhutanese, Nepalis, Burmese and Indians. It looks a lot like Punjabi with a line over every word. Also, English has sounds they don't use. So, I use simple children's songs, lots of alphabet exercises and we sing the Alphabet Song repeatedly in every class. I use stuff like Pat-a Cake to support the sound of English and add kinetic activity.

But none of that got them to use English themselves. So I tried games. Shoots and Ladders (actually, Slides and Ladders - how would you ever define a "Shoot?") was way too complex. I finally hit it with Dominos, and over a couple of weeks was able to get the idea of the game across. This week they got it that after they played a Domino, they should turn to their neighbor and say "Do you have a two (or whatever number was needed)?" and the answer should be "Yes, I have a ---," or "No, I don't have a ---." Wow! Lots of surprise and slow smiles. And when one of their children rolled a soccer ball to me, I got them to say "Throw the ball to him." They have now successfully put sentences together. And USED them! We have something to build from!

So that was big-time success, as far as I'm concerned. But there was more to this class. They do murmur "thank you" as they leave class, but it is hard to really know whether what I'm doing is appreciated - after all, we can't talk together (at least, not yet). The only indication is that the size of my class has slowly been growing (from the initial 5 or so, it is now 14 or so).

This past Wednesday after the class had started, we had to move to another room. That meant taking the easel and all my backpack, notebook, and piles of stuff. The class would not let me carry a thing, not even a paper! They took it all, and put it on the table in the new room, with even a little bow to me. Then they repeated the process at the end of the class. It was clearly out of respect, and made me feel so very appreciated and cared for. I still get a warm feeling when I think about it. What a great payback for being able to work with them and help them!

Part of my class, at Dominos: "Do you have a five?"

So that was my class this week. The history of these Bhutanese refugees is fascinating, and tragic. Another on-going catastrophe created deliberately, by political choice and intolerance of ethnic differences.

Click here for their story, including how they came to be in the USA after 17 years in refugee camps.

Ummm.

Still with me, after that long digression?

Then, on to the next:

The breakthrough in my painting comes from trying to find a background for my painting of a standing nude studio model that provides some kind of INTEREST, some CONTEXT that goes beyond simply being One More Painting of a Standing Nude Studio Model. My solution was to add literary content to the painting, but in a way which is in itself semi-abstract. The goal would be to use script to create a question or indicate subject matter, but in to way to make any kind of statement. That, after all, is what can and must be left to the observer.

After a lot of experimenting with oil sticks, brushes and different viscosity of paints, and paint markers, I found a system that I thought might work for what I wanted to do. And I think it did. Here is my standing nude studio model, as she is developing. Adding script did demand a lot of additional work on the figure (every small change in a painting always demands a lot of other changes to accommodate it), but here is where things stand now - before and after the script:

The script, again, is not meant to be clear enough to read. But it is taken from "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri, as he talks about the relationship of the background to the model. So there is this deliberate and logical contextural relationship.

This is still a work in progress. Some of that script needs to be toned down, the cloth needs a slight figuration, and that black panel now needs a white (or gray, I haven't decided yet) edge.

Preparing to add script to the painting, I wanted to first try the technique and see if I really did like the results on a work that I didn't care too much about. So I chose a figure I painted a year ago with Doug Martenson and have never liked much (no fault of his, he did his best to advise). It is just to vacant to have much interest. Adding script changed it dramatically, and I like it a lot better:

The same old painting, before and after adding script and scratches. Of course that also required adding some additional highlights to the figure, but that was pretty minor.

Reminder: Just click on any of these images to enlarge them

So I'm rather taken by the impact of what script does to a painting. I think it may especially lend itself to portraiture in a strong way. There is a lot to play with and learn, here. How literal should it be? In what way should it relate to or reflect or comment on the object? At what point would it begin to detract from the subject?

And of course, there is all the wealth of visual stuff - color, how clear, how large, what about erasures, blots, crossouts, scratches, broken lines, on and on. Much to explore!

I just returned from attending this year's convention of the Portrait Society of America, in Reston, VA. I thought it was in Washington, so the Reston location made it a bit more difficult to get to, but I'm really glad I went. The talks, painting demonstrations, and conversations with other attendees provided a rich experience. And it was a way to get to know the work of some of the outstanding portrait painters, and to recognize them. For the most part they are quite human, friendly and approachable.

The speakers and presenters provided a sample of their work for display, all on a similar format. It was really interesting to compare their work and styles. Later they were sold at a silent auction. Some sold in the low hundreds, but Bart Lindstrom's sold for well over a thousand, and Rose Frantzen's sold for $2700 in some rather furious last-minute bidding. Rose has been getting a lot of recent attention for her exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and for the demonstration she gave for the meeting.

Overall, I was especially impressed with the talk of Bart Lindstrom. He is noted for his use of color, but throughout his talk he stressed that really, color is easy and it is VALUE (the light-dark scale) that is the really critical component. He provided a wealth of information, tips, suggestions, examples and advice during his talk, and all with the panache of a stand-up comedian. He is a strong proponent of "Don't paint what you know, paint what you see." His web site, showing his beautiful and prolific work, is fabulous. I would love to take a workshop with him if that opportunity ever arises.

Rose Frantzen was another highlight of the meeting. She provided a painting demonstration, and talked rapid-fire throughout, sharing what she was doing, thinking, liking or not liking at every moment. She is noted for having painted portraits of 180 people in a small town in mid-America. Her portraits from Maquoketa are on display right now at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, through July 5th, and her project is also described and presented on her website. Here she is using oil sticks for the background (something I'd wanted to do on my most recent figure, but it didn't work out well for me. Now I might have to try them again).

Here is Rose Frantzen in the midst of her demonstration (left). She did about 60% of the portrait with oil sticks! The cover of the book about her Small Town Portrait Project is above.

The Society also had a portrait competition, leading up to the meeting. Some 1400 submissions had been winnowed down to 46 or so, and then the best 16 chosen for recognition at the meeting. All these portraits were breathtaking, but the first place portrait stood out like a gem. It was a portrait of the sculptor Richard Hunt, painted with one of his metallic sculptures, by Harry Ahn. And as his web site shows, this work was typical of the quality of his portraits. He is truly a gifted genius!

Harry Ahn's full portrait, left, and a detail from it, above. Tellingly, he writes that "All art, especially painting and music, need spirit. Without it, it becomes just another piece of work, technically sound, but with no heart."

Finally, I just have to include the portrait below, from the National Portrait Gallery. Actually, this is only a detail of the much larger portrait. I foolishly didn't record even the name of the painter or subject, but was just stopped in my tracks by the sensitive and beautiful presentation of this patrician grande dame:

A digression to another art form: Ballet!

My sister Arlene is a member of a water ballet troupe that prepares and performs at the Brethren Village in Lititz, PA. These ladies (mostly) put on an annual show of synchronized swimming that has been acclaimed in national TV, and attracts standing-room-only crowds. It is great fun, and surprising to see just what these women can do.

You can enjoy a more complete set of pictures from the show by clicking HERE and then clicking first on Mermaid Show and then Slideshow.

I'm in yet another exhibition - the sixth concurrent (!). This one is the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, with a juried show: Celebrate Age and Aging. It will show my Black Boots, the first large (30 x40") portrait that I did, about a year ago. It will be at Rembrandt's Restaurant (corner of 23rd St and Aspen St) from April 23 to May 28.

And since I didn't have a picture of it for my last post, here is the painting from Elizabeth Osborne's class that was accepted for display by the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. It incorporates Osborne's big blocks of bright color, and a style that rides the line between abstract and realistic.

Meanwhile, I am continuing to work on the standing nude from the last post that is our current class model. With the whole raft of tweaks I've incorporated, it is coming along rather nicely (below). I like that ominous black panel on the left. Still, I want to make this something more of this than just "Standing Nude," and have in mind scribbling in some of Robert Henri's thoughts on what a background should be, in sort of a Cy Twombly style. Then this thing becomes not only image, but literature. Another feature of this scratching should be a de-emphasis on that diagonal white-to-blue line, which seems too strong at the moment. It should also make her "at attention" stance seem somewhat more explicable. Whether all this works remains to be seen.

It surprises me - I actually have paintings in five (5!) exhibitions concurrently. The most recent, the big cahuna, is the exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for Continuing Education Students. They are still putting up the works, but I was there this afternoon, after I heard by phone that they had accepted my submission (one of the two I submitted - actually I consider it the lesser of my two submissions, but why complain?). It is a really strong exhibition, most of the works are exceptionally well done, and I feel honored to be included in this show.

I'd like to show you the painting they accepted, but I didn't photograph it in its final manifestation. I'll be there tomorrow for the class with Osborne, and again on Friday for the official opening of the exhibition. I'll photograph it then to post here on the blog. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I am working on the next painting in Osborne's class. It is another (ho hum) standing nude figure study. I want to work hard to make it look like something a little more interesting than that. I have some ideas, but will have to see how they work out. Meanwhile, here is it's rather unexciting status at the moment:



You'll note that ghost of a raised left arm. Originally the model was holding a pole there, but it just looked horrid. Militaristic, like trying to emulate Joan d'Arc, or maybe playing shepherdess or something. Much more interesting with her hand lowered, but it was surprising how much that changed her whole stature. Her weight shifted, her back straightened, and her shoulders twisted. It has been a struggle to incorporate all that - none of which has been accomplished yet in what you see here. But.... give me a little more time, and....

Oh - this image is in black and white because I photographed it and then converted it to b&w to photocopy. That was so I could then play with various permutations before the next class.

Onward !!!!!

Last year the goal was to exhibit my work to see how it looks on the wall with other artists. I did get into several exhibitions and was a good experience. I liked the way my work looked alongside all the others.

This year there seem to be a wealth of exhibits to enter, and I've been making the most of them. My Bookshelf and Back to You were in the Plastic Club Small Worlds Exhibition in February:

My Bookshelf was also accepted for display at the Off The Wall Gallery from April to mid-May.

Then Pitcher Posies, the flower painting I did in Vieques, was accepted for the Sketch Club Art of the Flower exhibition in March:

The upcoming Sketch Club Small Oil Paintings will be a large exhibition, and I've submitted a very different work (for me) done entirely with the pallet knife, Chimera, and a recent painting I did at the La Colombe coffeehouse that I called Study in La Colombe (I think I need better titles for my stuff):

And there's MORE! The Plastic Club is having a Black and White Exhibition. This will be huge, because it will also include photography, charcoal and ink sketches, the whole gamut. I'd painted my Night Bus in B&W some time ago so submitted that and also, for fun, an ink and charcoal sketch of the moon face I'd first painted on a paper plate, calling it Have A Nice Day Dammit!:

And then, the Cosmopolitan Club was looking for paintings of Philadelphia Scenes. So they will show my Wissahickon Creek and Rittenhouse Square through April and May:

Finally, the Student Art Show at the Pennsylvania Accademy of Fine Art is coming up soon, and I hope to enter one or two of the paintings I've been doing while studying with Elizabeth Osborne. That's an exhibition where I would feel privileged just to have a painting accepted for show!

So, consider it First Goal Achieved. I have sold a few paintings along the line, but none of this work above has sold - and not even the painting I donated to the church for their auction:

Guess that is another one of those goals that will stay in my list of future goals. Something to keep working for and learning about.

On Wednesday I attended a demonstration portrait study: The noted Philadelphia portrait artist Nelson Shanks was painting the talk-show host Michael Smerconish, for an audience of some 300 people over about 3 hours. It is always magical to see a strong image take shape on an empty canvas, like watching a photograph develop in a darkroom but under the artist's active control.

Shanks was working at an easel, of course. But to show the process to 300 people, a camera was focused on the canvas and the image projected to a large screen. I took a series of photographs throughout the process, mostly of that large screen. That distorted the colors a lot, of course. I tried to compensate for that with my photo editor, but you will see how much more "alive" the direct shots of the canvas are, compared to the screen-derived shots. In any case, here's the sequence:

After studying Smerconish intensely for a few minutes Shanks begins by blocking in the painting, working rapidly. He is using a rather transparent color that will disappear as he continues to work on the painting.

Then he begins filling in a middle color, laying it in rather thinly. He is concentrating on the larger areas, and leaving a lot of detail to be modified or worked on later.

During a break, I was able to look at Shanks' pallet. Large, neutral (woody) color, covered with a glassy material. He has a rainbow of paint that he works from, and lets little mountains of them develop at the edge of the pallet, adding just a little fresh paint to the top for a new painting. I'm told that is in the style of the "Old Masters," thereby keeping track of the colors and kind of providing an inventory of what should be there. Perhaps also providing an emergency supply of color that might be needed, (although I have never been successful in trying to use paint that has dried on the pallet - it clumps up and makes ugly globs on the canvas). You can see that he mixes only a little paint on the pallet and indeed, he works very thinly.

He has lots of brushes on the pallet, but seems to use only a few while he is sketching or painting the portrait - mostly only two. He does wipe them on a rag frequently, when he wants to change color.

After the break, this is what the sketch/portrait looks like:

Continuing:

and --- The Final Result:

Yeah, the guy is a Master!

Nell Kirkland Johnson, 1924 - 2010Nell Johnson was one of those special people who you feel privileged to know, and who you never forget. I was on a different kind of vacation - for me at least - when I met her in New Orleans where we had both gone for a watercolor course. It must have been in the mid-80s. This was a lark for me, as I had no experience with watercolors beyond splashing some color on a few sketches now and then. Nell, on the other hand, was accomplished - made beautiful paintings, and made it look so easy. She was the star of the class. I came to find out later that she had been instrumental in starting the Georgia Watercolor Society, and had been its President for some years. She had a comfortable, beautiful home and studio full of her paintings in Tifton, Georgia, and she taught both adult and children’s classes there.Nell was truly a Southern Lady, to the core. Impeccably but comfortably dressed, witty, warm, and with the abundance of the charm that just melts through the shell of the hardest Yankee curmudgeon. She dealt daily with crippling orthopedic problems, but without ever allowing them to interfere with her generous hospitality.We remained only in tentative, infrequent contact over the years. But she found me on Facebook recently and we talked by phone maybe just a month or two ago, She was still charming and her voice was strong as she invited me to again visit her in Tifton. So it is with sadness that I received a card with a reproduction of a painting of hers on the front, and the following message dated March 13:Leroy or Lee - I’m Nell’s daughter and I know you have tried to contact her recently. It has taken me some time to go through her mail and I found your 2/11 note to her. The address was incorrect and so there was delay in getting it. Mother died the evening of 2/14. I don’t know when you last talked with her, but her health had been an issue for the past few years and she really got worse, late Dec/early Jan. She’s been on O2 for almost 3 years because of probable lung cancer. The past 6 months she stayed in her apt at Maple Court in Tifton with full-time sitters and we got Hospice services stated just the week before she died. Mather hasn’t really painted since moving to Maple Court in the fall of ’05. She did attempt to teach a small class of residents at Maple Court, but that was infrequent. I know Mother found you on facebook, but not sure if she communicated with you or not. - Buttons Johnson

Nell, I am glad in can hold you in my memory, but my world is diminished in your absence.

There is no class with Osborne next week (spring break - already!) so I've brought my paintings home to continue working on them.

I'm wondering whether it is useful to continue posting on how these paintings develop - maybe this is becoming too repetitious? I am also thinking of the dictum "Don't let them see you sweat." Well, in posting all these twists and turns as my paintings develop, all the sweat is right here, on display. On the other hand, I did intent this to be a diary of this specific course, and so it is.

The Landscape Nude: I've recovered from the horrid Blue Layer that I had applied, but now the blue is too light and I'll have to repaint that yet again. Also need to add some definition in the bottom left quadrant. At least, I did a slight glaze on the lady's thigh and so managed to cool it down a bit. But meanwhile it is hanging on my wall now, and I do like it!

Painter: I've changed to color of her sweater to a very intense red - Osborne's suggestion - got rid of the blue on the back of the easel stand, and added some contrast behind her head. All good changes. Now I need to work on the gray - maybe darker and more into a lavender hue to set off those other colors. And of course, add a bit more definition to her features. This painting has been really fun to work on.

Flowers: I'd submitted two pictures to the Art of the Flower exhibition at the Sketch Club. One, Pitcher Posies was painted in Vieques while I watched how Doris Peltzman creates her fabulous flower paintings. I don't really like the painting much, it is just one more of a million flower paintings - ho hum. The other, Consuela, I thought was more interesting, sticking the flower in the ear of a rather distainful woman. Kind of tongue-in-cheek. But it was rejected. At first I thought the jurors simply had no sense of humor, but have since heard that the first thing the jurors did was to discard every painting that had a human being in it (one with squirrels was accepted though). I still think they lack a sense of humor, although the squirrels may disagree.

Today's Excitement: Electrical parts are being delivered this morning, and this afternoon a contractor will be here to install track lighting in my apartment/studio/gallery. This is the last really major thing that I needed to do after I moved in here last November. The living room has been 'way too dark, and the displays on the walls have been lost in dingy murk. All that should now change - hooray!

So how was that? You know when to stop painting when it will hurt the painting if you do anything more? Well sometimes that means you will go too far and then have to erase, or somehow recover. That is where I am with Corina: I thought a lighter "sky" and a layer of mountain-y stuff would be the cat's meow. WRONG. It makes it look like THIS:

Fortunately it won't be very hard to recover from this, simply by repainting the top of the canvas. That darker blue might show through anyway, but if anything I think a ghost of it might add to the overall quality. We shall see.

Corina is continuing to hold her pose for two more classes. I could do another painting of her, but I really am not thrilled to paint yet another nude, and I do want to try some other subjects using Osborne's style. Thought about the construction site across the street, with its heavy equipment, steel framework and flapping sheets. But too complex and no obvious central point.

So I decided to paint one of the other students. Did a quick pencil sketch to see how it might lay out, then got to work. I'm glad we will have another session, and hope my model is still painting Corina from the same position. As of now, here's where things stand on this one:

Otherwise, the Frances Harper portrait is still coming along. I finally bit the bullet and am now in the middle of re-painting her right hand. Actually, the amputation and re-implantation is going a little more smoothly than I anticipated. I showed the portrait to the Master, Ted Xaras, and he had some additional suggestions that I will incorporate. And I showed it to Rev. Nate, who was quite happy with it based on Frances' "serene but forceful" bearing.

Today I must pick up the two painting that have been on display at The Plastic Club Small Worlds exhibition, and deliver two others to the Sketch Club Art of the Flower exhibition.

Meanwhile Howard, down at the front desk, seemed really interested in having me paint a portrait of his parents. But I haven't been able to move that along, so it may just have been happy talk. Oh well.

Today I worked on the figure - modified the head, added shadow on the neck, and generally cut 'way back on the greenish tint of the body (although that probably doesn't show in these images).

There is this whole problem area: when do you decide that a painting is finished? The answer is that you stop when doing anything more will make the painting worse instead of better. Well, I got to that point today and kept going. Had to wipe out some of the stuff I did to get the body of the model back to a good point. Osborne emphatically agreed that I had reached the stopping point. So the lady now looks like this:

Of course there is quite a bit of stuff to do. Edges to clean up like that strange bump on her hip, etc. The blue at the top should go lighter, with maybe an intermediate blue layer as well. And I've got to check out her glowing right thigh - I hadn't noticed that on the painting, and hope it is an artifact of the photo. But in any case, I don't need the model to do those final corrections and will handle them on my own time.

We still have the model for two more weeks, so I should be able to move to a new position, and try for a second (smaller) painting of her from a different angle. We'll see.

Well, my intent was/is to post to the blog every week, after each class with Osborne. But our double snowstorms this week wiped out the class. Philadelphia has been shut down - quiet, barely any traffic, all schools and lots of businesses closed. So, a reprieve until next week.

I know my postings have become rather sketchy, with about a month between posts lately. That's NOT good. Sorry about that. But now I'm in an exciting class with Elizabeth Osborne, so this is my fourth posting TODAY. I want the Blog to be a step-by-step diary of the course, for better or worse. So, to catch up on where things are as of right now, go back three postings and begin following the process from there. Won't say anything more about that here - if you go back and start three posts ago, you'll see what my intentions are well enough.

Meanwhile, I've been progressing slowly on the portrait of Frances Harper, so should have something to say about that before too long. And I've been working on something to get ready for the Sketch Club exhibition, "Flowers." Not a preferred subject of mine, but maybe with an angle....

This session began by comparing the large sketch I'd made with the actual model and correcting the proportions, and discussing the composition with Osborne. When that seemed more or less OK, I transferred the image to the canvas. Then, with trepidation, I tentatively began to lay in some paint in the light areas.

Osborne came by, and tactfully asked "Is that the usual way you begin painting the figure?" "No," I admitted. I'd been intimidated by the subject and the class, treating the whole thing as far too Precious. So I took a deep breath and painted the middle tones over the whole area and got much looser in my approach. That helped. I also laid in a little background color to see how it might work, before the session ended. Overall, this did NOT produce a result that I am at all happy with. As a matter of fact, if I can't do better than this I should just drop the whole thing - really, at the end of this session I was feeling rather depressed. But it was a start, at least. The only thing I do like about it at this point is the effect of that violent orange - a color I never would have considered before this class:

After leaving the class, I again did a seried of small studies to look at various ways to proceed:

The bright colors of the top right study seem best, although the shapes above the figure are not good, and I should go farther in decreasing the saturation of the colors above her (and, Osborne suggested, let them get cooler than the colors below the figure).

With all this in mind, things did get somewhat better in the 3rd Session:

There is still a long way to go, but at least I feel that I have the structure of something interesting. Proportions generally OK. Lots of tweaking of colors and relationships needed, and decisions about the level of detail to impose on the figure but as a start, I feel a lot better about it now. Whew!

A lot of the first session went into getting materials for various poses and setups of the model, adjusting lights, considering sightlines from various locations, etc. Finally the class decided on a horizontal pose with the model (Corina) lying on a table with a couple of solid-color blankets beneath her.

That left time enough to make a couple of small sketches of the model to think about until the next session:

My first thought was that I loved the full-length figure - her extended foot and her hand positions seemed to be very interesting parts of the pose. However, using the whole figure also elongates the figure a great deal, and almost seem a distraction from the figure. So, at home, I copied the sketch I’d made, and tried making a bunch of small studies with pen and ink, in order to (1) see if it would be better to crop the figure, and how strongly, and (2) to explore what dimensions would be best for the composition. Osborne had suggested that we use a relatively large canvas - and indeed, the kind of simple compositions typical of Osborne really do require a large space.

Some studies of the figure, with various length/width dimensions and various degrees of cropping:

Actually, I think the diamond shape is very attractive, but maybe a bit hokey. The full-length figure (top & middle, right) don't look so great any more - the interesting details are at the edges of the composition and it kind of leaves a hole in the middle. Cropping, but including the hands and face still seem to draw too much attention there (top left, bottom right), so the best option is the torso itself (bottom left). These little studies also suggest that the best height/width dimensions for the canvas would be 4x5.

But Utrecht Art Supply didn't have a large 4x5 canvas, so I ended up with a 30" x40" (3x4) canvas. Not exactly what I wanted, but OK. The next step was to blow up my study sketch to canvas size to see how it might look:

Now looking forward to our next session with Osborne, and Corina.

Good News! I feel very privileged, and lucky, to be in a painting class with Elizabeth Osborne this semester. I have to admit my ignorance: I didn’t even know of her until the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art presented a major exhibition of her work - last September I think it was. That exhibition absolutely blew me away! She is considered a color-field painter (think Diebenkorn and Rothko), but her work, while abstract, is always referential. Her brilliant colors and spare, beautiful compositions are absolutely stunning. I hope I can pick up a fraction of her vision and approach to painting in these classes.The scoop on her:

In class, we are working from a lovely nude model, Corina, posing horizontally on a table. Her body contours are beautiful, and her curves immediately demand that she be handled like a landscape. As it turns out this is almost exactly how Osborne painted a horizontal nude back in 1973, 37 years ago:So, the issue here will be to see Corina as my own subject and bring my approaches to the painting, but at the same time to try to think like Osborne. That is, to be REFERENTIAL without simply COPYING. Corina will hold the same pose for five sessions or so. That is great - gives me the opportunity to try different things and work out some ideas. I intend to keep posting about this exercise, to show how the final result takes shape over time. So if that interests you, keep tuned.

I don't know what is going on - the photos I'm uploading aren't doing what I want them to do. Hope this post comes out OK, finally.

Since my last posting, I haven't been ENTIRELY slacking off. Some, yes, since it was December after all, and Patricia and I spent a week + in Costa Rica for Heidi and Carlos' wedding - that I officiated, actually. What a kick! Then we were in Madison WI for Christmas, with Patricia's kids. And I've been shopping for furniture for my apartment. Should have bought stock in Ikea first.

But I'd done about all the homework I could reasonably do for the portrait of Frances Harper (b. 1825, d. 1911), so finally had to fish or cut bait. I have paint on the canvas, now. First I traced and then gridded my photograph of her - a half-tone print from the Library Company of Philadelphia - and blew it up to the 4ft x3ft size of the portrait. That defined her features and profile, after a bunch of adjustments, but I still needed a model for skin color and variation. I found that in Ronsha Dickerson, a dynamic black woman who was leading a Kwanzaa dance celebration in the Gallery. She has posed once for me by now, although she rescheduled the session at the last minute. She was to be here again last Friday, but again opted out at the last minute. That's two for two. Hmmmm.

Anyway, I wasn't satisfied with her hands, so spent a lot of today poring over the handouts from Neil di Sabato's course on Conquering Hands and Feet. That led me to look at paintings by Raphael, and I found this beautiful hand that became the model for her right hand - with a bunch of modifications, of course:

Then, in a grouping of sketches, there was an outstretched hand that was great for her left hand, after I drew it larger and played with it. Frances' hands will need a lot more work, but at least they are underway, and look like this for now (This much of the portrait I can show you, at least):

The object was to place the hands so that they would lead your eye to the book that is under her right hand, since she was an important writer/poet. The book will be a lot more prominent before the painting is finished, of course. That left hand also lifts your eye back in a circle to her face, which is a nice effect.

Meanwhile, I need to keep doing some quicker paintings so I don't forget that there are other things beside the portrait. A couple of days ago I made this little (8" x6" oil on foamboard) painting of the Christmas decoration I had stuck in my door knocker for the holidays. I put it in a glass bottle, and liked the effect. So this is my first more-or-less successful attempt to paint a bottle so it really does look like glass. Sort of. Maybe one day I will even try to paint white grapes, to see if I can get that beautiful translucent glowing effect that so many painters seem to achieve.

Patricia and I just came back from a great trip to Costa Rica for a destination wedding of two of my friends from the Peace Corps (see pictures at the Link, above). I thought about taking my oil paints along, but they just don't lend themselves to that kind of a trip. So I did pen & ink sketches instead, adding some watercolor for interest.

So here's some of the outcome from that: all are 5.5" x7.5" on 140# coldpress paper.

Nuevo Aranal is off the tourist track (menu in Spanish), and Mincho runs

a great streetside breakfast bar there, full of local color.

This couple had a little restaurant in Bagaces, and they served us excellent soup and salad.

Ocotal was advertised as one of the nicer beaches. And it was, except for the black sand beach

(volcanic lava). Nothing wrong with that, really, but black foam just isn't very esthetically pleasing.

Coco was a sleepy, picturesque little town full of souvenir shops.

Lake Aranal was really large and beautiful. We would have gone kayaking here, except that

both days we were there it doing a good imitation of the monsoon season.

Volcan Aranal is impressive, and is a main tourist attraction because it has been continually active for years, so that you can see glowing lava flows at night, and maybe even some explosions and flames. However, it went dormant last month, so no more nighttime fireworks shows, at least for now. We did not even see the top of the volcano while we were there (the monsoon, again), but I kind of like this view anyway.

So, a big point of discussion in Vieques was the age-old conundrum What is Art??? Views included the Human Interpretation of Nature, the Expression of Beauty, the Process of Illuminating That Which is Wondrous or Mysterious or the Essence of it All (I've taken considerable liberty in paraphrasing, here). I took a good bit of flak for my definition, but I still think it as good as anything else that was presented:

Art is anything that people (NOT including the artist him/herself, and preferably more than one person) say it is and pay money (or give something of recognized value) to obtain it.

So yeah, nobody bought Van Gogh's strangely sloppy work until after he cut off his ear, so when was he making art? I contend that it wasn't art until people started buying it. What about a masterpiece that got destroyed before anybody saw it - was it art? I say no, it wasn't art: it was only a potential masterpiece that got destroyed. OK, how about Urs Fischer who has somebody dig a big hole in the middle of his gallery and then calls the hole a work of art? I say it IS art if somebody agrees, and buys it (and believe it or not, his hole WAS sold. To a collector, for a LOT of money!). And if in 20 years we decide that the hole was farce instead of art? I say that the value changed and it stopped being art. There was a time when real estate was a very smart investment, like Dutch tulips and dot-com companies. Their value changed too, and they stopped being smart investments.

If that didn't generate comments or fiery emails to me, I don't know what will.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

I've been painting some - mostly making some feminine faces that get messed up in the background-foreground. I think they are interesting.

But much more, I'm focusing on Frances Harper. Have met with the Fashion Collection curators at Phila University, Nancy Packer, and the Phila Art Museum, Christina Haugland. We can peg her dress as 1895 +/- 2 yrs or so, which makes her age in the photo (see 2 posts ago) about 70, which seems amazing - she appears so patrician and forceful. Yeah, that isn't so surprising for 2009 maybe, but for 1895? And, the dresses in that period were amazing, with all their layers and hooks and bones and stays, bustles and puffy mutton sleeves. These ladies TOOK UP SPACE!! And the fabrics were beautiful, shimmery - mostly a heavy silk. Unfortunately older women tended to wear quite dark colors, but even so the fabrics were figured or textured.

Patricia and I are headed to Costa Rica for Charles and Heidi's wedding tomorrow, and soon after our return, will be going to Madison WI for Christmas with her family. So I can't start the portrait until January. But meanwhile, I am salivating with anticipation.

Whoops! I was just about to add photos of the wonderful dresses and fabrics that will help guide my portrait. I'd LOVE to share them with you, but I have signed papers that said I would only use them for research and would not publish them. See me in my studio!

The story begins with Wynn and Glenn Curry, who invited painters from the Sketch Club to spend a week at Bananas. That's their guesthouse on Vieques, the little island offshore from Puerto Rico that used to be the US Navy's firing range and now is a great tourist destination. Twelve of us accepted that invitation, and we had a fabulous time observing, learning, helping and critiquing each other, and discussing art, technique and process. Most (not including me) painted murals on the walls of the guesthouse - some fabulous creations came from that.

I want to share some of our discussions here, and post work from the other painters, too. The discussions were great, and all the painters did outstanding things. But I'll start with my own work, for this posting. Since this was an opportunity to try new things, and I'd never painted a seascape in oil before....

The view from Vieques. That is Puerto Rico off in the distance.

Oil on canvaspad, 10" x16"

The ocean was beautiful and the color of the water was changing every fifteen minutes which really made it interesting to paint. I used the white scumbles in the lower left corner to set up a Z-composition so your eye could find an interesting path to follow through the painting, picking up from the hillside(s) and then sliding up along the bottom of the biggest cloud.

Painting the view along the Malecon provided a seascape with more "structure."

Oil on canvaspad, 24" x18"

The rocks and the concrete railing provided a good contrast to the water and greenery. But it was tough to get those green palm trees to stand out against the green hillside behind them. I had to come back to it several times to get it to "gel." As it is, it is still a problem in the photo - the actual painting really is much better (But then, internet reproductions are always a sorry compromise when compared to the original paintings).

After those seascapes, I wanted to something that got me away from all those greens and blues. I'd been watching Doris Peltzman create wonders in her flower paintings, and thought that this might be a great way to use a different set of colors. (Doris is known for her flower paintings, and has exhibited widely - she will be showing this coming month at The Artist's Gallery in Philadelphia, and several other places.)

These Canaria were growing through the fence, just two doors down from Bananas.

Oil on canvaspad, 9" x7".

I got chased away while I was painting this. The flowers were growing through a fence in front of a shop, and the owner thought I might be keeping people from going in to buy things. He was unimpressed by my complimenting him on having the most beautiful flowers on the island right in front of his shop. Fortunately, I was able to finish the painting just before he sounded like he would make good on his repeated threat to call the police.

A handful of flowers picked during a fifteen-minute walk through "town."

Oil on canvaspad, 10" x8"

Doris generously gave us a workshop on her technique(s) for painting flowers. This is my attempt to follow her instructions - but I'll have to admit that I'm not as "loose" in my brushwork as she is, and so I did have to adapt the style to something that comes a little more easily to me.

A detour for a moment, from the Artblog: I've been putting so much time into painting the walls of my place, it feels like a real accomplishment to now be entirely FINISHED, as of this past Wednesday morning. The place looks good - but very raw and blank with nothing on the walls - yet. However, after having worked so hard to patch the scars and pull out nails, even moly bolts and a raft of telephone jacks, it feels almost criminal to go ahead and immediately put in my own hooks to hang paintings! Oh well, I will get over it.

I remember the first time I visited friends in an up-scale NYC high-rise. It struck me that even in their expensive apartment, space was very limited. In my rural background a home might be shabby, but there was always almost unlimited space. Another thing back then - the apartment doors lined up along long hallways looked to me like pigeon coops, certainly no place I would want to live. Well, now here I am on the 13th floor of a building with 600 residences, and the hallway looks like this:

My unit, #1320, is all the way down at the end, on the right. Whoopie!

That hallway is so unrelentingly beige! Oh the sacrifices we must make! Fortunately, the fabulous location and access to the city advantages more than compensates for living along a pigeoncoop of a hallway. And I like the idea of walking from all that beige into the splash of color and life that I intend to create in my personal space here.

Now I am so much looking forward to getting back to using my small brushes. My next big project is HUGE. I've been asked to create a portrait of Frances E.W. Harper. Harper was a black author and poet, a member of both the 1st Unitarian and the Mother Bethel AME churches in Philadelphia, and a leader in the abolitionist and suffrage movements, b. 1825, d. 1911. There are three known photos of her, plus an engraving. I've copied the photos from the files at the Philadelphia Library Company, and now need to find out what colors and fabrics/textures she might be wearing in this photo (Please contact me if you have any ideas or input on this!):

This is such a strong pose, and I love the period photographic background.

So much has happened since I let my Artblog get all moldy from lack of use and new postings. I’ll try to catch up on things, but can’t do it all at once. Last night I was just exhaused after painting the kitchen and bedroom, so fell asleep on my new sofa about 7:00pm. Woke up about 1:30am, which was lovely - gave me a chance to upload pictures from my camera and fiddle with them.

Here’s a preview of postings I intend to make in the near future to bring things up to date:

I’ve bought and moved into a co-op in a big building smack in the center of Philadelphia, only two blocks from Rittenhouse Square. Artists, especially Conceptual and Installation artists, talk about the PROCESS as being the important part of their art. Well, I think that works for new living digs too, and I’ve been enjoying all the Process of fixing, repairing, cleaning, planning, painting, outfitting. So I’ll have to talk about this and how it will affect my work.

It feels good to have more room to move around in

Then, Patricia and I were just in Puerto Rico with a dozen outstanding artists from the Phila Sketch Club, at the invitation of Wynn and Glenn Curry. They own the Bananas guesthouse on Vieques, the little island east of Puerto Rico. We spent a few days on PR, but the core of the trip was painting murals and new work in the group environment at Bananas. All that was fabulous - invigorating, exciting and motivating.

Lots of beauty here, and inspiration for paintings.

Patricia led a yoga class every morning.

My own rendition of the Bananas guesthouse

Then, I’ve been commissioned to paint a portrait of the black poet, abolitionist and civil rights activist, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (b. 1825, d. 1911). I feel honored to have this opportunity, and am in the process of deciding how I will want to execute the portrait.

Friends of Patricia (and mine too, now) have rented the Landsdowne Theatre and Coffeeshop for Monday evening, the 31st. Marty and Elliot have been flying around the world in recent years chasing solar eclipses. They will be showing their travel videos for all the people who have been interested in following their exploits. There will be friendly people, live music, and general milling about. I volunteered to add my collection of Lunar Paintings to the occasion.

By now my Collected Lunar Paintings look like this, hanging in my apartment:

Marty and Elliot thought that idea was fine, but reminded me that they are chasing SOLAR eclipses, not LUNAR eclipses.

Whups!

So I decided that in the week remaining I would paint a series of panels that feature a solar eclipse, and then I could provide a CELESTIAL display for the occasion. Thinking about depicting a solar eclipse turned out to be an interesting exercise, and it sure has kept me busy all this week. I ended up painting six panels, and worked on them all at the same time so that the colors would be consistent from one panel to another.

The style continues what I did for the Lunar Paintings, definitely a change from the figurative work I had been doing up to now, and even from the abstractions I was playing around with earlier this summer:

Eclipse Series

Acrylic and Oil on Board, 14"x 11"

As an aside, any discussion of “color” stresses the importance of how much the appearance of a color depends on what it is next to. That shows up so well in this sequence. The foreground is a dark green, overlapping a light green. In the first and last panels, the light green almost disappears and the dark green is predominant. But in the middle panels the opposite is true. They are exactly the same shades of green throughout.

This alternative version of "our gentle handmaiden" is currently greeting visitors at the front door to my apartment. Don't know why, really. But I like her, and I think she is a good antidote for that ubiquitous Happy Face.

Now - Go and have a NICE DAY, DAMMIT!!!

ENOUGH of this moonglow stuff!

OK, here's the other "little fun piece" that completes my submission(s) to Philadelphia's Art in City Hall exhibition PAPER WORKS:

LUNA with Star

Oil on illustration board, 7"x 5.5", framed

Luna with Star freely references the association of the Virgin Mary with the Moon, surrounded with stars to serve as a crown for her head (Revelations 12:1).

Well, actually this moon stuff was fun to play with, so I did paint a couple of other things too, sort-of just using up some paper I had lying around. But I kind of like them anyway:

LUNA, after a rough night with the cosmonauts

oil, 6" x5.5"

Night Riders

Oils, 3.5"x 5"

Philadelphia City Hall sponsors art exhibitions from time to time. The deadline for digital (jpeg) submissions for their next one, PAPER WORKS, was August 14th. I made it with a piece specially designed for this show, but it was touch and go to pull it together in time.

It was clear the City wanted more than just a painting or drawing on paper. Specifically, the prospectus called for "A celebration of works that utilize paper as a medium, including: art books, paper sculpture, paper-mache sculpture, assemblages, collages, constructions and installations: not just works on paper."

Well, that was a challenge! I'm an oil painter, so what could I do to join this so-called celebration of paper constructions and installations? The answer came to me like a flash while I was half asleep, riding the train to visit Patricia in Media: Paint the four phases of the moon, picking up on the classical nature of the moon as feminine (with the sun being masculine), and somehow arranging to present them in sequence. I would paint these on paper plates, and instead of just painting the shadowed surfaces of the moon black, I would indicate the shadow as black hair using paper mache constructed from paper serving napkins. Voila!

While I was doing the painting, a neighbor discarded the perfect lamp for me. I salvaged it from the trash for its SQUARE lampshade, patched a few holes, and I had the ideal support for the 4 moons. I tried mounting fan blades on the shade and using a heat lamp to make it turn, but that didn't work at all. However putting a fan, like from a hair dryer, under under the lampshade worked great.

So here is the way it turned out, with the required "artspeak" Artist's Statement that describes the work (NOTE: This is the first time I've tried to upload a video into this blog. Hope it works. I think it may take a minute or two to get itself together before it starts.):

LUNA

Oil on paper serving plates, paper cocktail napkins and stretched linen, with external fan:

12"x 9"x 9"

In this kinetic representation of LUNA, she joins Diana and Artemis as our constant feminine celestial companion. To emphasioze the benevolence of our gentle handmaiden, the material chosen for the ground utilizes paper serving plates, with paper mache hair created from paper cocktail serving napkins. LUNA is presented in a revolving sky, endlessly progressing through her four aspects; LUNA waxing, LUNA full, LUNA waning, and LUNA new, to repeat the sequence again and again in glorious mesmerizing display.

With that work as a centerpiece, I also submitted two other less grandiose paintings, an earlier study that I did of Luna, and then a little fun thing (that I don't seem to be able to upload at the moment):

Study for LUNA

Oil on paper serving plate with paper mache hair created from paper cocktail serving napkins.

This painting of the moon was made in preparation for beginning the full kinetic representation of LUNA

The Abstract Workshop I was taking with Kassem Amoudi at the Main Line Art Center is complete now. Amoudi teaches at the Penna Acad of Fine Arts and a number of other places, like the Main Line Art Center. I still don’t have a great interest in abstract art, but taking this course has been a useful experience. It has freed me up a bit to think about different ways to apply paint, and to just let things happen. And I have gained some appreciation of this art form - ultimately I think my work might go in the direction of combining abstraction and realism together in some way. Dunno.

The other thing is that this workshop was my first attempt to use acrylic paints. I found that I don’t like them - probably because I cut my teeth with oil paint. The acrylics in pure form dry too fast, even on the pallet, and if you dilute them they get all thin and watery. I’m sure this is largely a matter of technique and familiarity, but I like all the blending and the buttery feel of oil paints.

Amoudi really promotes the idea of starting an abstract painting with no object or goal in mind. Just let it happen and play with it as it develops - and think Outside the Box, to use that hoary, timeworn cliche. Although I am not enthusiastic about this approach, I really can bear to look at some of the things I came up with in the Workshop, that I rather like. (And then, of course, there are also others that I have painted over already.)

Anyway, to start off. This was my very first attempt at an abstract painting. It features lines of unintelligible script, and that seemed fitting, since what was happening on the canvas was equally unintelligible to me:

No.1: acrylic on 3’x2’ unprimed canvas

Then, this one started with red, white and blue bands. Then I saw another painter making lines by squeezing paint directly from tubes. So I did that too, and added a splash or two of color and let it drip some. Dripping seems to be a much-used technique in the abstract world. Feels like a cliche to me, though.

No.2: acrylic on 36”x24” 300# watercolor paper

We were at the shore over a weekend, and I did a sketch on the beach. I wanted to catch the way the horizon got lost in a beigey haze of sand and spray so you couldn’t see where beach ended and sky began, although the perspective lines of beach, dunes and houses and water all led to the same perspective point. I thought it looked rather abstract, and decided to develop the idea as a painting in the Workshop. So:

Sketch: Graphite (#B-2 pencil) in 5.5”x8.5” sketchbook.

Painting, No.3: acrylic on 3’x3’ unprimed canvas.

Amoudi didn’t like this sort-of beach scene because I’d started out with a specific idea I wanted to develop and he says that makes it stiff and uninteresting. I guess I sort-of agree with him, but I think it still has possibilities. I may work on it some more. I’d thought it might end up with some color bands, sort of Rothko-ish, but it didn’t go that way.

Finally: I actually like this one, and I’ve added it to the hallway gallery outside my apartment. That dark base color covered an earlier, particularly ugly abstract attempt of mine. That had left it with a vague snakelike figure that then became the base of the added lines and color splashes, here.

No.4: acrylic on 14”x18” canvasboard

Busy time. I’m still working through the problems in my Luna construction. That’s due mid-August, for Philadelphia’s Art in City Hall exhibition. But for a week in early August I’ll be in Seattle for a Peace Corps reunion and catching up with Ellen. Doesn't leave a whole lot of time.

Today I finished framing three paintings for another juried exhibition, MINIATURES. Submissions also due mid-August, for the Philadelphia Sketch Club. This one is open to any 2-dimensional medium, for images no larger than 5”x7”, framed to 8”x10” and with glass or plexiglass. Seems weird and undesirable to put oil paintings under glass, but if that’s what they want....

On top of that, Gamblin Paints has an interesting annual exhibition/competition going on that I would like to enter. But the deadline, again, is mid-August and I don’t think I can get it together for this time around.

I’ve learned that the quality of the frames is important, so put more care and effort in making the frames this time for the MINIATURES. There is a space of about 1/2” between the mats and the paintings, and this gives an enticing suggestion that there is more to the paintings than is being shown. (Of course that IS the case, in fact.)

The paintings, before and after framing:

Coffeehouse #1, orig. 5.5"x8" - Alla Prima oil on foamboard

This was my first painting on-site in a coffeehouse. I was really nervous, so painted someone who had her back to me. There is a nice feel to the painting, though. Unfortunately, cropping for the frame makes her look pinched and closed-in. And you lose the value of that cup beside her on the left. Oh well.

Imagined, orig. 5.5"x8" - oil on foamboard

Cropping this picture hurt it. It loses some of that red scallop on the left, and the curve of her neckline is incomplete. Too bad! Note: The color change is caused by shooting the original in daylight and the framed version by tungsten light. You see that in all three framed paintings here.

Susan and Naomi, orig. 8"x10" - Alla Prima oil on board

Cropping the size helps this painting a great deal, for a change. Gets rid of all that gray background, and seems to heighten the relationship between the two girls. Does good things to the composition, too..

Meanwhile, I am also taking a short course on Color Field Painting from Kassem Amoudi at the Main Line Art Center. Amoudi teaches there and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. I didn’t think I wanted anything to do with abstract art, but the beauty of Elizabeth Osborne’s work changed that. Now this workshop is opening my eyes to how much of even realistic paintings are truly abstract, in ways I hadn’t realized before. This is giving me new ways to think about how to paint. Right now, if I could, I would like to meld the techniques of Matisse (his figurative work), Alice Neel, Elizabeth Osborne, and Tom Wasserman. Wow!

This week’s homework from Amoudi was to choose an abstract painting and copy it. I chose Clyfford Still’s 1957-D#1. I makes me realize the importance of scale. His painting is 9ft x 13ft, and just the power of the size gives it a whole different feel than my 17”x24” copy. And, like my copy of Tomas Eakin’s portrait of Walt Whitman, how impossible it is to meticulously copy something that was done loosely and quickly. The goal has to be to capture the feel of the painting - if you are lucky enough:

1957-D#1 after Clyfford Still (original approx. 9'x13')

Acrylic on canvasboard, 17"x24"

I haven’t posted anything from the Capturing Hands and Feet course I just finished, with Neil di Sabito. I did get a lot from it, and feel much more secure dealing with those appendages that most artists seem to prefer to neglect. Here a couple of drawings from late in the course:

All: Pencil on Drawing Paper, 18"x24"

I was SO lucky! Last week I dropped in on the PafA exhibition of Elizabeth Osborne: THE COLOR OF LIGHT. I have never understood/enjoyed/appreciated abstract art, but have become convinced that something more than straightforward realism is required to make satisfying art. So to find Osborne using Color Field techniques with included representational images and references... with all her startling color, transparency and vibrancy, I was absolutely blown away.

With that experience fresh in my mind, I signed up for a late summer course in Color Field Painting with Kassem Amoudi, who seems to be the leading - or at least one of the leading - exponents of CFP at PafA. Of course, that means I have to assemble all the supplies to work in acrylic. More stuff to crowd my small apartment and keep more or less organized. And, he wants us to work on large canvases, which is a whole additional storage problem.

With that background, I went back to PafA to see the concurrent exhibiton of Sidney Goodman. But just as I walked in, there was Elizabeth Osborne HERSELF, just starting a tour of the exhibition for several collectors of her work who had loaned paintings for this exhibition. So I got to hear her talking about her paintings, how she did them, why she did them, how she changed her style again and again, and her experiences working with oils, acrylic, and watercolors. Even asked her a few questions. A FABULOUS experience!

E.O. has always been closely associated with PafA and still teaches a course there, but it isn't open to Continuing Ed students like me. But I had a chance to tell her how much I loved her work and wanted to enroll/audit/sit-in/hide behind the door in her class. Turns out that she is on sabbatical this fall, but will be teaching again in January and maybe.... Just maybe....

No, I haven't gone to sleep like Rip Van Winkle since my spring courses at PafA ended and we had an Open Studio Exhibition here in my apartment.  I've been painting on my own - some stuff just for fun, some paintings in neighborhood coffeehouses, Rittenhouse Square, and of Independence Hall.  I also took a course from Neil di Sabito, on drawing hands and feet, and will post some of those drawings as soon as I get them out of my camera.  Ditto for some of those coffeehouse paintings.

But my biggest project at the moment is based on the Moon, of all things.  I'm preparing to enter a juried exhibition on the theme PAPER WORKS, as in "works that utilize paper as a medium, including: art books, paper sculpture, paper-mache sculpture, assemblages, collages, constructions and installations; not just works on paper".

Ummmmm.  So, what to do?  I usually work - ie, paint - on canvas or board and that won't fly.

Gotta get inventive.  So:  It came to me while I was daydreaming on the train while going out to visit Patricia.  I would paint the four phases of the Moon as Luna, picking up on the feminine aspect of this celestial body.  The Woman in the Moon.  For this, the paintings would be on paper plates with the shadow portion of the phases treated as black hair fashioned from paper mache made from cocktail napkins.  Sound too macho?  Consider the sexual demographics of the average buyer of paper plates/cocktail napkins, and I rest my case.  Finally, the paintings will have to be mounted on a rotating box to emphasize Luna's ever-repeating cycles.  Voila - I now have an CONSTRUCTION, and the materials/process provide lots of opportunity to engage in supporting Artspeak!

Meanwhile, it has gotten me thinking about - and painting - other ways to depict my Luna.  They're fun, and I'll post some of those too.  Again, when I get them out of the camera.

I've been a little slow getting back to painting after all the effort of the Open Studio. But the Sketch Club Group Show at the Newman Gallery is underway now, and I attended the opening reception last Saturday. It is a big show and most of the artists were there. My painting Black Boots was there and it looked good - well lit. I got lots of good complements on it, so went home feeling very good.

Over the weekend the outdoor Rittenhouse Square Art Show was also underway, almost just across the street from the Newman. Snob that I am, I liked about four of the hundred and some artists who had booths. Dexiang Qian lives in Philadelphia and was showing marvelous paintings of mostly Chinese subjects, including lots of intense portraits. But my real "find" was Michele Byrne, who paints beautiful, bright on-location ("plein air") urban scenes - along with lots of other stuff. She was also giving a demonstration of how she paints, and I spent an hour or so just watching and marveling at how she works. Her handbill features:

Michelle Byrne: Jammin' on the Ukes

24" x 36" oil on canvas

She inspired me to try my hand at painting a landscape in Rittenhouse Square, and to do another painting in Java Coffeeshop. Both were sad by comparison to her work, but I learn a little more about what NOT to do, just from the attempts. Call them learning experiences.

Actually, I have been trying some new things since I am free of art courses and homework assignments these days (except for the drawings of hands and feet that come with my classes with Neil di Sabato). These paintings are rather crude but I think have possibilities, in a very different style from what I've been doing up to now. If anything comes of them, I will be sure to post them.

This is a pretty long post - it will make up for the time since my last one, before I was busily painting and preparing for the Open Studio:

Writing on the morning of the 31st.

I’m up early - couldn’t sleep. My OPEN STUDIO event is today - scheduled for noon to 4, to take advantage of the Society Hill Open House Tour that also happens today and is bound to bring lots of people to the neighborhood. The committee has agreed to give out a flyer for this event with the House Tour tickets - and they have sold some 250 tickets!

So since my last post, I’ve been working like a beaver - or, like an artist on a deadline. Made two paintings on-site in coffeeshops and another of chessplayers in Rittenhouse Square. This requires a loose, immediate style that is a nice change from the careful (overworked?) studio paintings I have mostly been doing.

The computer student was considering her data at the Bean Exchange (7th & Bainbridge). I found the couple at JAVA (right around the corner from me, at 4th & Lombard). They both sported magnificent dreads, but seemed somehow disconnected from each other. I hope I caught that. The chess game was in Rittenhouse Square, where the pickup games are usually played for money, using a chess timer.

I also made a rather meticulous painting of Independence Hall. There is no worthwhile background behind the Hall, so I decided to put it in front of an imagined flag. For that, I needed to do three studies of Colonial Flags to learn how to put it all together.

The gray-stripe flag actually found a buyer during the Exhibition!

The shape of Independence Hall makes it difficult

to create an interesting composition

Meanwhile, I designed and ordered handbills from PrintsMadeEasy. They put the “expedited” on the wrong order, but the ‘bills finally got here on Thursday. I’ve been spreading them around this part of town wherever it seems logical to promote our Event.

In addition, the OPEN STUDIO has expanded in scope. Among Patricia’s close friends are two excellent artists, and they agreed to join me in exhibiting in this event. Sandra Sanders was an art teacher and does excellent watercolors. Elizabeth Breakell exhibits her fabulous oil paintings widely and has won awards for her work. We will each be showing about 30 pieces, so this has turned out to be quite an affair. All the wall space in my Studio (nee Apartment) are covered with paintings as well as both sides of the rather gloomy hallway outside. I plan to take off the door to the apartment, to kind-of integrate this interior space with the hallway outside.

The problem with the hallway is that you can't get far enough away

from the paintings to really see how they "feel."

More, on the Morning of June 1st

Well, the OPEN STUDIO went smoothly and was a lot of fun. We hung my big (3’x4’) unfinished painting of bathers (3 nudes sitting at the edge of a swimming pool) in front of the apartment with a CAUTION-CAUTION-CAUTION tape across their boobs (to protect the morality of the young'uns in their prams).

Lots of people thought the CAUTION tape was a real part of the composition.

Hmmmm. Should it be?????

The bathers, along with an ART SALE sign and Patricia out front as Barker to get people in all worked well. It was a beautiful day for strolling. We had over 100 people drop by, and in the process met a bunch of nice neighbors for the first time. Several of the visitors were painters themselves or were quite knowledgeable about art, and we had some interesting discussions. I-Ling Eleen Lin lives and paints in Brooklyn, but brings her Taiwanese background into her interesting work.

Neighbor Marilyn Appel, Patricia and me in front of STUDIO 412 SPRUCE ST.

Left: Sandra Sanders with her watercolors.

Right: Me, with some oil paintings.

Elizabeth Breakell and a mannequin look at some of her (Betsy's) oil paintings.

Bottom line? I sold two inexpensive paintings, and one of Patricia’s friends would like to buy a watercolor from Sandra. We have gained the confidence and good will of the House Tour program, which should help out a lot for publicity of future Open Studio events here. Yes, Betsy, Sandra and I are all interested in doing this again, next year.