You haven't missed a thing...
But thank you!
Hello everyone! This post is to let you know that all is well here in the 96 Count Crayola Box! And you’re right, the last post was September 17th. You haven’t missed anything since that one, if you’ve managed to stay awake through all of the videos up to this point.
My apologies for the gap in delivery of a new video. I will be sending one before the Thanksgiving Holiday. Truth is that my painting schedule in the studio has been full to the brim, painting for gallery obligations, shows and commissions. Quite a few of those have been 4’x 5’ or 4’x 6’ canvases, consuming the studio space for anything else but getting them painted and off of the easel. A few are posted here in various stages, a couple have been finished.
So again, hang in there, I will be getting another video out as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience, and concern (for those who asked if everything was ok), which is very kind of you all.
On the easel now is this 48”x72” acrylic…
Another one taking up a lot of space is this acrylic diptych, two 48”x36” (in total a 4’ x 7’) canvases clamped together…
This one is a 4’x5’ acrylic on canvas, Lowcountry Haze. It has since sold.
And finally this one that is for a show coming up in December where we were asked to paint a “One Hit Wonder”, and it may just be that, but it was one hell of a lot of fun to paint. First photo is after the first day, second photo (and detail shots) are what happened to it during the second session. It has had a couple of other things done to it since, but no major changes. It is a 4’ x 6’ acrylic on canvas…
Results of the second session… and what it still looks like, except for some recent glazing of milky, complimentary violets on areas of the painting to subdue some of the chromatic intensity of the yellows. The way I began this was to think about using a double complimentary palette of yellow/violet and red/green, using fully intense, light and dark values, and grayed versions of all of those colors. The third primary, blue, is also there but as a very minor player and also in a less intense, grayed version so as to remain in the background. While it’s an abstracted idea, it’s still based on form in the natural world. My “One Hit Wonder” was fun to paint, it was a release to leave behind the rigors of painting representationally, for a little bit. But I find that this sort of work leaves me feeling sort of empty. It’s really just that my heart, and my mind’s eye, doesn’t see life this way. I find the beauty in Art, in my art, in the glory of life as it’s presented to us, naturally. That is my muse, the reason I paint. However, I’m reading a lot about the Abstract Expressionists, also referred to as the Action Painters, because it’s of my generational place in time, and can’t be ignored as one of the most influential art movements of the 20th Century. The books I’m reading are on Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, the deKoonings, Deibenkorn and others. A very vigorous time to be a young artist. I find it all, fascinating.
Lastly, a small 8”x8” acrylic painted in our backyard. Really was a needed escape to reality after painting the larger studio work lately.
So again, I hope to have another video out to you all very soon. Thank you for sticking with me.
Keep your brushes wet…
Cheers,
Marc
I love them all.
thanks for writing about your feelings re working abstract (non objective) vs realism. I have tried doing it and experienced the same sort of emptiness you describe -- a lack of an emotional connection to the work. Representational work IS abstracted from nature - edited and simplified in order to get to the essence. It's fascinating that what is acceptable in a photograph is different from what works in a painting. Painting is such an idealized and very personal response to a subject, no matter how abstract. But without an apparent subject, it's harder to figure out the why.