I Like it, I Don't Like it

I've been trying to decide exactly why I like certain artists and not others and there doesn't seem to be any particular reasoning to it, though when I really dislike the artist personally, I almost never like their work either. For example, I can't stand Gauguin as a person because I consider him to have been an incredibly arrogant and obnoxious man and I loathe the man's paintings equally as much. Every last canvas. Even when I was a child, I couldn't stand to look at his work. But by the same token, I adore Van Gogh who was also an arrogant, obnoxious human being yet I not only feel a warm spark for who he was but love all his work as well, in spite of the fact that he routinely made basic painting errors on virtually every canvas.

Most of the time it isn't the subject matter that makes the decision for me as to whether I like the work or not, but the artist who is the deciding factor, oddly enough. One exception to this personal rule of mine would be Gustav Klimt. There is nothing particularly irritating about the artist as a man yet his work is among the most annoying I can think of (except for maybe Mary Cassatt whose work, to me at any rate, is equally irritating to behold). I've also found that even when I come to a body of work knowing little to nothing about the artist personally, the work that I find least appealing (or in many cases, downright horrible) usually ends up being by an artist I end up disliking just as much once I learn about their lives.

Apparently for me, the person who has created the work is equally as important as the work itself. I'm not sure why this is so important a factor for me, but it obviously is. For some people, the artist and their work can be seen as separate entities, whereas for me, they are intimately entwined. I guess in my mind, an ugly soul makes ugly art. I'm still trying to work out why, exactly, I feel this way.


Self Portrait, graphite on handmade paper, digitally altered to halftone, 2008.

Drawing 101: No Previous Experience Necessary

I'm always surprised when people tell me they wish they could draw but they have no talent and so it isn't possible. Granted, drawing really well requires a certain degree of talent, as does any skill, but in all honesty, anyone can draw. And like any other skill, it can be learned and mastered. I don't know why people don't believe this when I tell them that once they learn the basics, they can draw just about anything. Take a class. Buy a book. There are a ton of books at Barnes and Noble, all of them called "You Can Learn to Draw in Six Easy Lessons" or some variation thereof, yet so many people think there is some great mystery involved in creating a drawing. You don't have to be an "artist" to make a pretty picture.

Granted, being an actual artist is very different from someone who likes to draw just because it's fun or because they enjoy meeting new people in an adult ed art class at the local tech school. While an artist can learn new skills and develop new techniques and abilities, I don't believe that someone who isn't an artist in their heart and soul can "become" one through a few lessons. Either you is or you isn't. But even the isn'ts can master enough skill to make a pretty good show of it. It's what you carry inside you that makes the difference between the Sunday Draw-er and the Real Artist. When art is the air you breath all day long and every little thing you do is somehow done with creativity on the brain and you can do nothing less, then you're an artist.

But to all my non-artist friends who swear they can't draw so much as a stick figure: try it, you just might be surprised at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Honestly.

Sketch of Edison Jack standing, graphite on handmade paper, 2008.

All My Missing Artwork

I don't have any of my own artwork up in my house anywhere. Not a single piece. Not too long ago, a woman who lives here in town who is a storyteller by profession (how many of them to do you meet in a lifetime?) was walking by and invited herself into my house to see it and be given a tour of it. Odd, yes, especially since I had never met this woman before, but as I know she lives in a very old house and I live in a very old house, I understood her curiosity in seeing what David and I had done with our house as opposed to hers, which is just a mile or so from ours. (David and I have actually seen her house before as it was on the historic house tour one year and we went through it, though she didn't know this at the time).

Well, anyways, we went room to room with me pointing out what we have done and what we plan on doing and she offered her opinions on many things; some quite astute and some, like herself, very odd. She asked me what I do and I told her I'm an artist and she told me she's a storyteller who performs regionally (I knew this already) and as we roamed about my home, she began to ask, "Is this one of your paintings?" each time we passed a different work and each time I replied, "No, I didn't paint that." When she finally just came out and asked me if any of them at all in the house were mine, I had to answer that there wasn't a single painting of mine in here. I have never found this to be curious as I would far prefer to look at others' work than my own (since I can see my stuff any old time and frequently do), but she found it strange. Honestly, I had never given it much thought nor do I believe has anyone else who lives in my house or, prior to her visit, anyone who has just been in my house (or maybe they have thought it odd but just never said anything).

But of late I have been thinking about this. Maybe I should have something that is mine in here somewhere. I actually have two places right now in need of artwork: a corner wall in the living room that until recently had a lovely Charles Franklin Pierce cow painting on it and an entire wall up one side of the stairs that has never had a piece on it but has simply been begging for something to adorn it since we moved here. I've been toying with some subject matter and think that perhaps after the holidays, when life settles back down to its usual dull and uneventful self, I'll start a painting for one of those two spaces. Both will have to be fairly large, so either will be a considerable amount of work, but I think I might enjoy this.

Looking at the finished product every day, however, might be a different story.

Edison Again

Edison Jack seems to have become my latest muse. A very small, hairy little muse.

Sketch of Edison Jack, graphite on handmade paper, 2008.

Genius or Hoax?

I just watched a documentary called "My Kid Could Paint That" which some of you might know is about Marla Olmstead, the "child prodigy artist" from upstate New York whose paintings each sell well into the five figures. There has been much controversy in the last five years regarding Marla and her art. She has a dad who is an aspiring artist, but who works the nightshift at a (I think, though I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly) Frito Lay or Oscar Mayer plant and has never gone anywhere with his own paintings. One day when he was painting, Marla asked for her own canvas and paint and the rest, as they say, is history. When, at the age of four, her work began selling for substantial prices, 60 Minutes did a story on her and based on the footage they got of her working, came to the conclusion that she didn't actually paint the pieces herself, or at the very least not without help, thus angering her parents who in turn released a documentary DVD showing Marla completing a piece from start to finish.

The documentary filmmaker who made this particular film really and truly wanted to prove that Marla does in fact paint her own works from beginning to end without any help from adults, that she really is a child genius whose work deserves to sell for the figures it sells for, but he came away from this shoot thinking what most other people have felt: that Marla's work is not her own.

The trouble, it seems, is that when anyone other than her parents point a camera at her while she works, her paintings just don't look even remotely like those seen in the gallery she is represented by. The subtle nuances aren't there, the delicate lines, the obvious dexterity, the polished and finished look of the works available for purchase. Her works that have been caught on film in progress and in fact are never seen completed, while they contain many of the same images as the finished pieces, really look like nothing more than a child's drawings of suns and flowers and scribbles. Sometimes the paint is blobbed onto the canvas and swirled into a giant mess of hideous color and nothing more. And while she's being filmed painting she also repeatedly demands that her dad help her out, that he choose the paint for her or even paint something himself on her canvas. He laughs too hard and tells her she knows that isn't possible. When questioned by filmmakers why she is doing this, the dad without fail protests too much. Way, way too much.

Having watched this film and then taken a look at the works for sale on her website, I too have come to the conclusion that if someone else isn't painting these works in their entirety, then she surely is having them seriously tweaked by someone older, more mature and with a certain sense of balance a work requires, even abstract modern art that on the surface appears to be just willy nilly daubs of paint. I began watching this film thinking how amazing it was for a very small child to possess such talent but ended it thinking what everyone else who has watched her "work" has come to think: someone, somewhere is lying. They have to be. While a great many people have stood in front of a Jackson Pollock and with scorn in their voices said, "This is garbage. My five year old could do that!" the fact is that there are few, if any, adults who could do what Pollock did, let alone a five year old. Yet Marla has a few paintings that are very similar to those of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings. And Klee's work. And Kandinsky. Coincidence? Not likely. And while her works all have a similar thread that runs through them that enables the viewer to readily identify them as having been painted by the same hand, there is also enough similarity to many well-known works that it quickly becomes obvious that a child that young couldn't possibly be adept at so many varied techniques and styles.

So one is forced to return over and over again to the one question that has plagued so many who have not only merely watched documentary footage of Marla, but have personally spent time with the Olmstead family: if Marla paints these works herself from start to finish without aid of any kind, why is she consistently unable to do this (even on hidden camera) when being filmed? Why is the only "evidence" of her abilities as an artist filmed by her mother? These are some lovely paintings, and Marla who is now eight, is a lovely child, but an artist worthy of making hundreds of thousands of dollars for her work? Sadly, I think not.

Encaustics III

And another one from that same show.

Head Study of Edison Jack

This is a study I did last night of my chihuahua's head. I was surprised how well he sat still and posed for the photo that I used to draw this from as he's usually on the move. The lighting was just awful, but as I actually got a relatively workable photo I won't complain too much. I'm not very happy with the way his muzzle came out, but I am pleased with his eyes. Catching the light in a subject's eyes, the essence of who they are, is the most important part of portraiture and I think I succeeded here. If you saw him in person you would agree. I do, however, see every little flaw, every little detail I could or should have changed or missed entirely, but that's okay. I seldom draw which is such a big no-no and I'm clearly rusty as hell. I should be drawing far more than I do, so this isn't bad given my lax attitude since it's been ages since I last picked up a pencil for anything more than a rough sketch that inevitably gets hidden under paint. I think it's been well over a year since I actually did a drawing that was meant to stay a finished drawing. I've been thinking how I could very easily knock off some sketches while sitting in front of the TV as I wind down late at night (if only to be able to squeeze drawing time in to my day) which would flex my tired drawing muscles and keep them in working order. If I actually manage to live up to this latest expectation, I'll post more of them here.

Head Study of Edison Jack, graphite on handmade paper, 2008

Chicken Art

Back in October 2006 I was at an open studios in a nearby town and one of the artists had done a series of chicken paintings which were very whimsical and colorful. I was very smitten with one particular piece: that of a mama hen with a series of baby chicks stacked on her back to the top of the canvas, but it had already been sold by the time I got there. After talking with the artist, who had painted these pieces intending to donate all the money made from them to Heifer International, it turned out that that painting had been sold to a neighbor of his. He said she loved them all and didn't seem especially attached to that particular one, so he gave me her phone number to see if perhaps she'd agree to take another canvas so I could buy that one. (I spoke with her some time later and she felt the way I did, that this was far and away the best of those works and wouldn't even consider swapping. I didn't blame her one bit, but it was worth the try!) I did end up talking to the artist for a bit about his birds, his art, my own chickens and photos and paintings I have taken and done of them over the years in between more "serious work" and then I left, never giving him another thought.

Flash forward to December 2007 when out of the blue I received a phone call from a man whose name I didn't recognize and had absolutely no idea who he was until he reminded me of that chicken painting he had done of the hen and chicks that I was so fond of. Ahhh! Now I remembered. Turned out that a gallery in a local town was having a large group show of just chicken paintings. A show that turned out, surprisingly, to be one blockbuster of a show, the opening so packed with people that they were lined up down the street to get in. So many people in fact that the owner of the gallery who had flown in from Spain that evening and had arrived late to the opening was not allowed in to his own gallery because it was too full to admit even one more person and was instead forced to wait outside with the crowds until the evening came to a close. Who would have thought that chicken art could be so compelling?

The piece above (Untitled, acrylic on wood, 2007) is a composite of two of my hens, Zelda Pearl and Trixie Bee.

Encaustics II

Another encaustic in the same series, from the same show.

Encaustics I