No Artistic rock left unturned.

Note: This week is purely an art post. I didn't want to mix these foundational ideas about painting with the outside world. Today, I'll stay in the studio, music turned up, working on some paintings.

You might find it odd to start a blog for painters with a quote from a musician, but I don't think it is. What he's talking about is abstraction. Don't worry, I'm not trying to turn you all into abstract expressionists. To me, all painting is abstraction to some degree. You're taking a scene, dream, memory, or news headline and distilling it down to the important bits you want to convey. If the word "abstraction" haunts you from an art history class in a dark college classroom years ago, don't worry. You can replace it with "simplification" if that makes you breathe easier.

Getting back to Miles Davis, what he's really talking about is editing out what's not important to your narrative. Leave some space for the viewer (or listener) and emphasize the important bits. In a way, he's talking about contrast and the center of interest in a piece. A well-placed pause can make a new phrase even more powerful, similar to making a high-chroma color look more saturated by having grayed-down tones near it. If you want to get stronger at composition and editing a scene down to just what's needed to tell the story, I recommend plein air painting. Having a 180º view in front of you can be daunting, but arranging and simplifying what's in front of you is required. You really have nowhere to hide. You just have to figure it out and tell your story; after all, as painters, we are storytellers. It's a big moment when you look at something and say, "I could arrange it like this," or "I could use these colors and borrow this from over there." To me, that's the moment you are an artist. As a teacher, I love when students say, "I have an idea; I could do this instead..." It may be brilliant or a disaster, but either way, those are the first steps toward finding your own voice.

This waterlily is one of my favorite paintings I've done. It is simple and spare, with nowhere to hide in technique or detail. It clearly says this is about the feeling of the morning light on the pond that morning. The black negative shapes are there to direct us and give our eyes a map for moving around the painting. The subject matter was less important than wanting to portray the light of a summer morning on the lily. I painted this one in gouache (opaque watercolor); the thicker, gloppy paint helped force me to simplify the way I wanted to.

How do you approach a scene when something about it screams paint me!  What are your next steps?

Keep Makin' Art!

Carl