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| Autumn Abstract 14x11 oil |
Over the course of my painting career, I've often wished to move from realistic representation to the more abstract. It doesn't suit my impatient nature to depict scenes that are better (and more easily and more accurately) captured with a lens. Of course, there's a market out there for realism, and it's hard not to paint to the market. And certainly, because painting is a craft, there's something satisfying about getting skilled enough to depict every grass blade and twig. But in my soul, this isn't what I want to do. I want to paint an abstracted impression.
So I came up with "Autumn Abstract," a 14x11 experiment in oil. You'll note in the image above that I still haven't managed to unglue myself from realism—the painting is obviously of a tree in autumn. Still, it's a departure for me. When I paint a tree in full foliage, I usually "mass" the leaves so they hang together in leafy boughs and look very much like a tree seen through squinted (or myopic) eyes. Here, I've tried to avoid that, preferring to suggest the masses of leaves with just swatches of color. For the tree, I've left out the twigs—I don't paint those, anyway—and have removed most of the branches. Maybe my next tree will have even less of the tree and more of the abstracted "treeness."
Abtraction is prone to laziness. I've seen many abstract (or non-objective) paintings that have hardly anything to them. A splash of color, a brush stroke—nothing more. It's as if the painter was proud of his laziness. But I want to create a painting that looks like I labored over it, to make it look like it's worth something. Worth the effort of a viewer to study, worth the leisure of the viewer to enjoy, and perhaps, worth enough to even buy.
Yes, I've heard that good art should look effortless, like it was born wholly-formed. But I can tell when I look at a seemingly-effortless good painting that much study, practice and thought went into it. It smells of sweat, not of laziness. It doesn't matter whether it's a landscape, portrait, still life or something conjured up out of the artist's imagination.
Here are some notes about "Abstract Autumn":
- I painted this almost entirely with a 1" foam brush, the kind you might use to paint the mullions of a window. The very last bit of paint went on with a painting knife.
- I purposely took my time with this painting. I painted it over several days, trying to carefully consider what path best to achieve my vision. (My vision: I wanted to represent the intense colors and warmth of a tree in autumn.)
- The first phase consisted of thin washes: Indian yellow, transparent earth orange, quinacridone magenta. (All colors are from Gamblin.)
- Once I'd finished this first phase, I took a hike. I went out to the canyon behind the studio where the color of the oaks was peak. When I reached the end of the canyon where the color was best, I stood perched on the canyon's lip and spent several minutes just observing color. The canyon's end is called the "bathtub," and it's a deep pocket that's been carved by summer rains and melting winter snows. A huge ponderosa pine is fixed like an axle in a wheel in the center of this tub, and at its base the oaks have gathered. It was a spiritual moment, with clouds sweeping alternate waves of shadow and light into the canyon. My attention to the colors was broken for a moment by the sudden appearance of a lone bald eagle, being chased through the canyon by a pair of ravens. My plein air experiences are often filled with this kind of memorable event.
- Back in the studio, I started the next phase: glazes of phthalo green, sweeps of dioxazine purple, and then all that warmth punctuated with a few notes of cool radiant blue.
- The final phase: more transparent earth orange, cadmium red deep, cadmium red light, olive green, permanent orange and cadmium yellow light.
- After a few days of letting the painting rest, I made a few adjustments with the knife.
I put together a short video of shots of the different phases. You can view it here: https://youtu.be/0BNRJRr00gc
