Challenge

I like to paint big. If I had my way, my paintings would be measured in feet rather than inches. I’m talking four by four feet minimum. My wife has put down her foot because we have no walls big enough to accommodate large paintings, and they stack up.  

I get to paint big when I play around in my carport. I buy canvas drop cloths and cut them into manageable sizes and staple them to an old sheet of plywood. I don’t use gesso or any kind of ground for these canvases. I get out all the old cans of wall paint and the quarts of various colors I’ve added. I use wall and trim brushes from two to four inches wide. I turn on the music I enjoy, Brazilian jazz, the Hot Sardines, Cassandra Wilson. I go to town splashing paint on those canvases and enjoying myself. The mail carrier smiles at me and I take a break so I don’t spatter her. This is fun. But I end up with rolls of canvases. A friend who teaches in Florida moved to a new school and asked for several of them. I sent them and she uses them in her classroom as discussion and decoration.

The biggest ‘formal’ painting hangs in our living room and is a little over four feet square. I see a geometric seascape. Other people find meaning I hadn’t expected - icebergs, for instance. It took weeks to paint and I enjoyed the process. When I took it in to be framed, because I hadn’t used braces, the framer re-stretched it with multiple braces to make it square. We enjoy the painting, and I sit and look at it, get lost in it.  

But there comes a time when I need to challenge myself, when I need to find a new path, when I need to get out of my routine. That’s when I paint small. 

I am currently working on a series of fourteen six by six inch paintings - The Stations of the Cross. Every one of them has at least one figure in it. Complete with faces. Instead of the large brushes I love, I am working with small -tiny even - brushes. Some of them have only a few fibers. The faces on the figures are frequently less than an inch wide or tall. It challenges me to paint this small. It challenges my eyes to paint this small. But I persevere. And I learn from this process. As always, if I don’t like something, I paint over it or re-stretch the canvas. Some of these figures have faces that are three or four layers deep. It’s ok. The one I am most pleased with so  far is of Mary holding the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion, a Pietá. It’s the next to the last image in the series. When I stand back and look at it, I see the anguish. If I examine her face closely, however, I see all the imperfections in my painting. Be that as it may, I’m going to keep this image. That’s kind of the point. I paint until I am satisfied with the images.

And I’m going to keep working out of my comfort zone because that’s where I learn. 

View Widely 

    I strongly believe that it's important to look - really look - at other artists' work. I do this frequently, and frequently write about my impressions and the artists' techniques. This week I am sharing my writing about Lucien Freud, 1922 - 2011, the grandson of Sigmund Freud. His family escaped the Nazis in the 1930's and settled in England. He is famous for his portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. She reportedly sat for a year for this 9.5 x 6 inch painting.

    So let's take a look:

“Double Portrait,” (1985 -1986), No size given, no media given, photograph from The Lucian Freud Archive / The Bridgeman Art Library

    Recently I finished up a commission of a man and his two pets that I was talked into. I googled dog paintings and this is one of the first paintings that came up. I love Lucien Freud and his monumental paintings. Freud usually painted whippets, because that’s what he owned. Now, the painting: The dog is the center of the painting and the woman has her arm over part of her face so we cannot see it, and the dog is the focus. The size of the dog (I’m trying to figure out relative proportions from several unrelated photographs for my commission) is clear in relation to the woman. While this painting is realistic, it is not photographic. Perhaps it is super realistic in some places like the veins on the woman’s arms and hands. Flesh tones are difficult, and in some ways Freud ignores actual skin tones. Her skin is as much blue as pink, interestingly. The dog is also painted in shades of blue and pink, with ochre and brown thrown in. The dog shows up, in part, because of the contrast between the dark garment of the woman and the dog.

#2

“Girl with a White Dog,” (1950 - 1951), oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

    This painting, 35 years earlier than the previous one, is much different in style than the other two. The dog, the woman, the background, the couch, are all grayed and cool (despite the supposedly warm yellow), pale tones, so that it is almost ghostly, but also has a luminous quality. The woman’s nipple seems to be the focus rather than her face or the dog. The dog is well grounded (one of the things I am having problems with), with its head lying on the woman’s leg. The figures form a backwards L in the negative space, and the woman’s head touches the edge of the canvas, in violation of all rules. But it works. Again, this is very realistic without being photographic.  This is not a painting my wife Ann would allow me to hang, but we couldn’t afford it anyway.

    Analyzing other artists' work informs mine. I encourage you to try it, at least occasionally.