New Paintings About to be Updated on Site

After teaching two painting classes, I have learned many things about my trade and the act of painting. I will be creating several posts about the processes of teaching, the lessons that I shared with my student and how I was able to decipher what I do subconsciously into terms that the layperson could understand. Articulating the process has really helped me in the process of my own painting.

I am planning on posting probably twelve paintings or so in the next few weeks. I have finished eight paintings already and after photographing, signing and finishing they will be posted to the www.artbygordon.com and with each painting on the site I will either include poetry to describe the place if appropriate or the mechanics of the original inspiration and how long it was on the list of paintings to be done. This I hope will give a better insight into the process of the creative experience.

I believe my paintings have really come full circle-they have gone from very dark, to ridiculously light and now back to somewhat darker but much more colorful and rich in color. More changes that are coming to the website is a page on photography and a page on writing. I will also be highlighting some upcoming stories that will be published on the site. Please check back and I will keep posting about the upcoming paintings.

Capturing Depth in a One Dimensional Frame

In real life, the brain deciphers reality and the depth of a scene by visual cues but much of the dimension is filled in by certain assumptions that the brain makes by experience and reason. The assumption of reality often hampers the effects that the artist tries to create, what we assume of reality is often more complicated or visually incorrect, in creating droplets of water the initial conception would attempt a complex process of capturing the depth and clarity of water when in actuality the process is very simple and basic, the less detail you can achieve especially trying to create water the more believable the end image.

In seeing images across the visual plane we use our experience and concept of depth and color to make decisions on depth and the distance we are seeing. You know that the ocean is a great distance of space, the visual cues you record only support and confirm the distance. I recently went to a cave in California, Moaning rocks cavern-the distance to the ceiling of the cavern is roughly the height of the statue of liberty but because of the lack of visual cues for the brain to decipher the distance the distance seems much less than the actual depth of the cave. The illusion of distance and space is something that the artist and the photographer must capture and relate on a one dimensional field.

Many times you see a scene and photograph the image hoping to capture that same feeling of depth and beauty and unfortunately many times we are left with a flat uninteresting image in the end. There are two processes at work here, first the camera attempts to capture everything in a gray basic tone and will make a multitude of values a close semblance of constant gray, photographers must meter their light to exaggerate lighter or darker areas of a scene to make the camera decipher a scene in a more significant range of tones therefore allowing the depth and space of an image. Another factor that is involved is the availability of visual cues that allow the viewer to decipher the distance between the back of a one dimensional plane to the front. These visual cues capture the illusion of a distance that is deciphered on a flat plane.

Painting is the same kind of visual illusion, you must adjust, exaggerate and highlight changes in light, tone, sharpness and value-this is how you allow the eye to go deep into a one dimensional scene capturing the illusion of space on a flat plane. Surrealists often bend this illusion and often the feeling of a reality that is awkward or somewhat disturbing may be achieved, cubists capture various planes of an image and flatten the each plane on the same plane-all of these techniques is how the artist manipulates how the viewer sees the space the artist creates. Art is an illusion and the more options the artist has to manipulate it, the more options and cues that are available to interest the viewer. This is the first lesson that I taught my recent student and how we approached each area of the paintings had to do with this premiss.

Finding A Finishing Line

I  have a short attention span in regards to painting, that is why I end up painting multiple works at once. There are steps in the process of creating that are all very integral but often intangible. I call the first stage of the inspiration the fermenation period of the idea. I have no interest in painting something that is just attractive, there needs to be a feeling, an emotional response that comes to the viewer, with this in mind I believe the need for the fermenation of the original concepts captures the subtle edges that turn a pretty landscape into an emotional scene.

Over the recent years, I have gotten very scattered in my painting process which has come to equal an amazing amount of works without any sign of finishing. I have worked on paintings that originated up to twenty years ago and continue to map out creations that will eventually become sketches and finally finished works. These ideas tend to stay in the fermentation point and recently I have all images stopping abruptly at that stage, this is a dilemma for an artist wanting some product to display.

The problem with my somewhat fickle approach to painting is the original idea is often so fleeting that in the middle of creation the idea and original inspiration become barely tangible. In my recent teaching experiences an observation has occurred to me-you either work forward toward the finished product or you are pushing paint around. The pushing paint around is a feeling where you tend to just move paint around and this is often when I get the feeling I am painting someone elses’ painting and I have become lost in the details, the original inspiration is gone. I have watched my recent student turn from someone that asks what next to someone that knows where the paint and stroke needs to go, almost instinctively and that is in my opinion when you are creating and not just pushing paint.

My studio is filled with so many paintings that hang on the wall in varying stages of completion, some are so far beyond the original idea I have often thought of just trashing them and often some are just never finished. I recently pulled down all the orphans of my creative inspiration and decided which needed to be finished, which needed to be trashed and the difference in the stages of their completion, in this process I was able to get closer to actually finishing paintings that before had hung on the wall waiting for the next step.

It is a very strange feeling when you pick up from a pile of paintings, each individual painting and suddenly you know what needs to be done. There are invisible cues that become real as if suddenly I  know where every stroke should go and what color goes where. There is a feeling of absence at this point just like writing poetry, suddenly you are lost in the image but your subconscious mind is completely familiar with the work and understands every nuance of the scene and what needs to be done to finish the painting. I have signed eight paintings in the last week and have started the six week process of eventually finishing them with lacquer, it is an exciting point in the creative process.

I believe one reason that it’s hard to keep momentum on the multiple paintings is when I get lost in a painting’s details I lose the subconscious understanding of the details and what needs to go where. Changing paintings and atmospheres disrupts that feeling of being overwhelmed by the details but unfortunately my short attention span takes over again and another painting begins its long process of becoming a finished product.

Finding the inner artist again

How does an artist regain their eye, or their inspiration? I believe life gets too busy to concentrate on the small details that lend themselves to art and creativity. I have always been the one that would stop and get excited about a sunset or the way light shines through the trees on certain times of the day, I couldn’t understand how others either didn’t see the amazing image I was seeing or maybe I was exaggerating the beauty of what I was seeing. I believe that is what separates the artist or creative person from others, its the excitement and celebration of images or words that others find mundane yet we see them in a new exciting way.
On of the worst things I have ever done to my sense of creativity is selling a photograph for a commercial purpose-suddenly I questioned the image that was in my view finder instead of relying on the natural instinct-I asked myself how could I sell this and suddenly that intangible image that I could find from normal mundane things became clumsy. I was looking for the sale, where would I sell it, how could I market it? This form of censoring my inner artist killed my inspiration and I could not see the way I normally saw as an artist. You can not question the inspiration, you must go with it, if I write and think of what to rhyme I am doomed, I can only write what flows through and the moment I censor or question I have lost the separation from the logical side of seeing things and the creative instinct that connects things that can not be compared and find the amazing beauty out of the most mundane. If an artist tries to be creative or stand out-it always appears contrived.
So how does an artist find his eyes when he has bastardized his gift that he was given for the sake of making money. It is going back to the simplicity of seeing through a child’s eye instead of an adult that judges and prepares what he or she sees to be something of worth. I remember being in a cemetery and noticing light on a grave with new flowers-instead of just shooting it, my logical thought was morbid or where could it sell and a great opportunity was lost because instead of reacting to my artist eye, the logical side questioned the purpose of the image.
I was sitting on a kayak in the middle of Lake Texoma when it occurred to me-I asked myself why am I not able to sit and take in the image like I used to. The question although not clearly answered, was simply stop and see, instead of always doing something or working toward something, stopping and just enjoying the movement of the water or the way the light danced on the water was the key that I had been missing. We move so fast and work so hard, it gets to the point that we forget the simple things that we had once enjoyed as children and that simplicity and seeing as a child is what I believe separates the laymen from the artist, the reader from the writer. 
So my suggestion-stop, do silly things, simple things that you would normally ignore in your busy schedule. Find importance in the simple and excitement in the mundane-the child inside still exists, they just need to be taken more seriously sometimes.

Locusts

Don’t be afraid of the locusts
But know they’re coming
Don’t be afraid
We’ll steer you in the right direction
In time
We’ll protect you from them coming
The corn is bursting in fields
And we will wait for summer harvest
They’re coming
Don’t be alarmed until we let you know
And than we’ll make you go
Away from that safe place
The corn rising in the fields
We’ll tell you how to see
And how to feel
When it’s time
But know they’re coming
We will facilitate
Evacuate
Mandate everything you’ll need to know
We have channels where you’ll listen to our words
We’ll comfort you
We’ll keep you warned
We’ll keep you updated daily
On their progress
Though you’ll never see a wing
We’ll protect your children
From everything
We’ll show you who is the enemy
We’ll create the image
We’ll advertise
And fill your dreams with dread
We’ll make you question
Starvation and the impending death
They’re coming
Most of the corn is already ready for harvest
We’ll keep them safe
We’ll spread them around
We’ll keep you feed
We’ll clear the clouds above your head
Buildings in the city coming down
Empty storefronts crumble to the ground
But don’t move
And don’t make a sound
We’ll tell you when it’s time to be alarmed
You won’t be harmed
We promise
We’ll herd you to where it’s safe
We’ll keep you feed
We’ll save face
The dying cattle
We’ve hauled them away
Nothing to worry about today
Until we tell you it’s time
The corn burned in the evening
You never smelled a thing
They’ve come and devoured
Everything
We kept you safe
We’ll spread what’s left
To who deserves the most
We will keep you bound
To that post
So we’ll rebuild
And we will conquer all of this fear
All the hunger
Rest assured
We’ve reached the deepest hole
We will need from you
All that’s left
We will keep control
We will keep you calm
We will keep you never feeling the pain
Of convulsing
Starving
As all of you do
We will spread what’s left
It’s what we do
When all the harvest disappears and next years’
Seems to be half as much
We will warn you of the locusts
The beasts you feared so much
And we will feed upon your corpses
And lay you all in the ground
In a small box
In that tiny dusty town
Where storefronts fall to the ground
No food, no belongings
Only the starving, with hands held out
And we on evil wings
Will persevere
On to the next small town
Or small city
Where we’ll devour
All the summer harvest
Before it comes to be true
And when you try to warn them
They won’t believe you…..
We are locusts
It’s what we’ve done
It’s what we do……..

Details in painting are always a varied preference to the artist-when is it too much, when is the painting overworked or left unfinished? They can often be overwhelming and cause the eye to lose its focus. With teaching painting I have recently learned several ways to help a student get over the hurdle of details without wanting to discard painting all together.

The simplest option is finding shapes in the painting and isolating the areas. The student creates shapes and fills in the detail of each shape and the focus can be on the shape and its content instead of the whole image with all of its detail at once. The good thing about this technique is that the shapes create interest and the creation of the detail is more deliberate and distance and changes in value can be easily formed through the creation and separation of the individual shapes. When I first started painting, I used to get a technique of texture down and would overuse it, losing depth and interest, this technique helps to avoid this obstacle.

Another option is to cut a circle out of a cardboard piece and cover the picture that you are using for reference. This technique allows the student to concentrate on a smaller image of details and the work is faster and less intense. When the student finishes a small area of the painting the mask is moved to another area.

Details can be an overwhelming part of painting and often we lose focus of the overall painting when we concentrate too much on a small area of texture or extreme detail. It is challenge enough deciphering details for the artist in their own work but when you need to help a student get past handling detail it’s good to have some techniques that can help the process.

What else do I need to know?

This is a rant I guess you would say. My first question is when did we as a society become young helpless children that are feed what we need to know, told what to eat, told what we should be afraid of and how we should feed our kids and talk to our kids-there is this unknown adult that is always in our homes and on our  computers that talk to us much like the old teacher in the charlie brown cartoons. We are talked down to, treated like we are stupid, third class citizens all with a smile from beautiful people that assume we wish we were them.

The media, some celebrities and the government seem to have created this overblown image of themselves that seem to think their job is to help us make good decisions. We are told how we should feed our kids and what food is bad for them-who would have thought eating Mcdonalds all the time would be harmful to our children or ourselves for that matter-do we need to be protected from them? The government seems to think they are our stewards, they can’t take care of their own lives and keep themselves on the straight and narrow but they need to talk to us about how we live. Somehow we have inadvertently created a ruling class, a cancer that keeps itself in charge of us children.

I heard a radio commercial about drugs the other day-the other option was ridiculous even though it explained what the government has been saying for years-just say no but than it said go to the website to find out how to talk to your kids about drugs. Do we not have any common sense, do we not have friends or family that know us better and can give us options better than some government entity. We are advertised to and steered in the right direction, this week the stock market is a no-brainer next week-don’t waste your time with the stock market all under the guise of this company really caring. Buy gold-buy it now-what do they expect to be paid for that gold the same dollar that they are saying is history-they care that much about us that they will take our bad money so we can have gold-I’m a little skeptical.

The media, I guess it would be considered our big brother or sister-it tells us that all the things we thought might be safe are now dangerous. We shouldn’t leave our kids in cars in the summer? Wow, I am so glad they are here to help us with raising our kids, of course you never hear about their kids or their daily family traumas. I think we are shown too much bad news, we constantly have a neighbor looking out the window or over our shoulder and the news is never good-we are moths to the flame-interested and yet the flame burns us. Somewhere along the way all of these entities have grown to a level of a royalty that tends to make us little people pale in comparison-or so they would have us think.

The last entity is the celebrity-granted not all celebrities but definitely a large cross section act like they are Gods and the media treats them as such. Did you hear what Madonna said, did you see Kim’s new dress? We shouldn’t care but I guess we do because the television shows keep coming so we can see a family spend their daily lives. So here is the problem and it makes me wonder-maybe it is us, maybe they didn’t assume we were these needy children, maybe we’ve become the needy children after all. We are curios about car wrecks, some of us wan to know what the celebrities are wearing and some of us don’t realize it’s not good to eat too much fast food and we get a lawyer to blame another entity because it couldn’t possibly be our lack of judgement.

So enough of this rant-what is missing in our society that would replace these entities that treat us like children-I believe it’s one word-community. A self contained group of people that live together, learn together and share eachothers’ experiences, make stupid mistakes, feed our children questionable food choices and don’t do everything well-it’s the community, the people we care about and have grown up with that should help us with making good decisions and help us to learn how to be better people and better parents-not the overbearing government, the condescending media or the self involved celebrity-
we’re the only ones that can change our choice of role models and mentors-until we do, there’ll be television to teach our children and the media to tell us how to eat.

Artbygordon: Original oils on canvas, Original pastels on paper celebrating the beauty and mystery of nature. Water and night skies are my specialties.