The Oil Painting Blog : still life

Join the Controversial Conversation

MaureenSharon — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:43:00 GMT

The moment the June issue of The Artist's Magazine hit the newsstands we started to receive a deluge of letters of protest and of praise. The cause of controversy was an article I’d written on the work of social realist Max Ginsburg, whose beautiful Swing graces the cover. Ginsburg’s immediate subject is the city of New York but the incendiary work in question shows the horrors—both physical (on the enemy/victim) and moral (on the warrior/perpetrator)—of war.

I invite you to join the conversation, as our September issue will feature our readers’ letters and Max Ginsburg’s response. Also in the June issue are articles on nocturnes in pastel (Stan Sperlak), improvisations in acrylic (Robert Burridge) and still lifes in both oil and pastel (Claudia Seymour), plus answers to your questions on using water as a medium for acrylic, advice on entering art fairs, and, as always, much more.

--Maureen

Creativity and Apple Pie

Carolyn Henderson — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:14:00 GMT

Like his father, our Son and Heir likes to bicycle around the countryside, and during the autumn he never returns without panniers full of wild apples, picked from abandoned fruit trees.


An abundance of apples or a challenge to face in your art--both are best met with creativity and ingenuity. Afternoon Tea by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art.

Every afternoon found a new pile of fruit product piled somewhere on my kitchen counters; when I mentioned that the apples were getting in my way, the Heir moved them from one counter to the next, but then filled up the released space with a newly discovered variety from yet another forsaken tree.

I had apples on top of the microwave, behind the toaster, in the breadbox, and tumbling out of the refrigerator; when kitchen counter space became scarce the laundry room was the new landing page for these refugee fruits.

Yep, I could make applesauce; I'm sure that's a great suggestion, but I really hate canning. I also hate wasting good food -- especially unsprayed, organic food -- so I did adjust our meal plan to incorporate apples in all forms, for all meals. You can make a really quick healthy apple concoction on the stove with water, a little sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, butter, and -- what else -- apples, and I shortly found that this was a fast, cheap, easy breakfast option. We ate it day after day, and the pile of apples grew noticeably smaller (it helped that the weather grew colder and there were no more afternoon harvest sessions).

So what do apples have to do with painting, aside from being a still life painting subject?

Just this: as you work around a potentially overwhelming situation or circumstance -- in this case, it was apples everywhere; in your case, it could be trying to create oil paintings on the side while working a day job, or making do with limited financial resources to purchase painting materials, or not having the art studio of your dreams (who does?). You get pretty creative with what you have, and the solution you find to your problem changes how you do everything else.

How do you like them apples?

--Carolyn

Feel Its Rough and Smooth Surfaces

judith St. Ledger - Roty — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:55:00 GMT

It's the strangest thing. As I have said before, when I started taking art classes so many years ago, I really did not like still life painting. Now I love it, finding objects with which I connect and arranging them. There can be something almost zen about the compositional process with still life art. The connection that began this painting was with an antique French pot, of which I acquired several during the years I was traveling to France.

I arranged the composition on a table in front of me, elevated by putting a large flat box on the table under the fabric. Then to the block in of the still life painting. I did not try to spell everything out in the block in; rather I found the relative positions that I wanted, paying attention to and putting in the largest shadow and light shapes for the flowers and ceramic pot on the wall behind the set up. I did pay particular attention to the shape and light and shadow of the antique French pot. (I did not try to find shadow and light in the flowers.)

I went rapidly through the block-in process to start painting the focal point of
this still life: the ceramic pot.

After I finished the block in, I went straight for the ceramic pot. I knew it was my focal point and the reason I was painting the still life in the first place. I also knew it would take several layers of paint so I wanted to begin with it directly. You can see that the actual pot was varnished on the top portion, but not on the bottom. I did the whole pot in the same manner initially, with a dull finish. Only after I had that dullness did I start to try to make the glaze, a little at a time, with simple brushstrokes to emphasize the reflective light. Too much would have made it seem artificial or industrial, which is the last thing I wanted. I wanted to produce a pot you could image picking up and feeling both its rough and smooth surfaces, imagining it being made long ago. While I know how important it is to work all over the area of a painting at the same time, I violated that rule in this case, but it worked.

In the end, I judged the success of this still life artwork on whether the ceramic pot's
rough and smooth surfaces were executed convincingly.

I suppose one lesson I was reminded of was to do the roses early in the still life painting process or do a more complete block-in of them, as they wilted fairly quickly under the light. I actually used six roses before I had a painting of two, and of course each rose was different. The sun flowers were much more hearty.

I think the ceramic pot was a nice success as the focal point of this still life artwork. Next time however, I will spend more time on edges, and take more advantage of the opportunities to merge shapes or shadow or values, etc. Nonetheless I feel good about this one! Hope you enjoy it and learn from it too.

Best, Judith

Words of a Winner

Austin R. Williams — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:06:00 GMT

The winners of our Self-Portrait Cover Competition are featured in the September issue of American Artist, and they share advice about how to paint the figure and how to maintain a successful painting practice. When we asked David Tanner, the winner of the competition, to give his advice, he offered more than we had room to print. So I thought I'd share it here--hopefully it's useful for those of you working on how to paint the figure realistically, as this artist does. Here, then, are David Tanner's recommendations:


Self-Portrait by David Tanner 2009, oil painting, 16 x 12. Winner of American Artist's Self-Portrait Cover Competition.

If you are interested in representational painting, make sure you find a school or take classes taught by artists who can "walk the walk." Even the most general of painting classes should be taught by a painter capable of doing a basic still life demonstration painting from life.

Paint what you love, of course, but also challenge yourself to paint subjects that hold less interest. I had no idea how much I would love plein air landscape painting until I tried it for the first time, and I'm positive it has improved my reaction time to light and color in other genres.

Draw from life constantly--both alone and with fellow artists. Take advantage of local open figure drawing sessions, where you can join other artists and chip in for a model fee to practice with a live model outside of your classes.

Go to museums and galleries, and linger over the paintings that resonate with you. In particular, look to see how the artists have simplified their subjects down to the masses of color-values.

Study magazines like American Artist, and pay close attention to the advice presented in the articles. In my early days as a painter, I created my first successful flesh-color combinations after reading an interview in American Artist with a well-known portrait painter.

Painting from life is the only way to successfully sensitize your eye to color, value, and form. Avoid frequent painting from photographs until you have extensive experience painting all subjects from life.

Squint and compare when observing your subject and your painting to see value relationships. Let your eyes blur and go out of focus when observing colors on your subject. The blurring will simplify the color to a mass and may make your color mixing choices easier.

Stand far back from your canvas after every few brushstrokes to monitor the success of the effect you are achieving compared to the subject.

For more information about the artist, visit Tanner's website. You can learn more about the artist's painting--and see all the finalists of our Self-Portrait Competition--in the September issue of American Artist.

--Austin

Is It Ever Too Late to Start Painting?

bberlin — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:20:00 GMT

Not if artist Claudia Seymour has anything to say about it. This year I had the pleasure of meeting Seymour at the Salmagundi Club in New York City to create two three-hour DVDs with her, including this year's The Art of Painting Flowers in Oil.


Spring Things by Claudia Seymour, oil on linen, 2011, 18 x 24.

Meeting Claudia initially was a daunting proposition. Before we met I did my research to discover that she paints a fantastic array of floral still lifes using both oils and pastels. I called her office, and was told to meet her in the lobby of the prestigious Salmagundi Club, where she is currently the president. It was an honor to meet her at such a lauded organization. The 141-year-old club has been a meeting place for artist-members such as Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, and Howard Pyle. If you're ever in New York it is worth a visit to see their many ongoing, and free, art exhibitions.

As Claudia entered the club I found myself getting quite nervous. What made things worse was as she welcomed me into the club, she immediately tripped over a piece of my equipment. "Now," I thought,"I'm done for." But aside from me tripping such a distinguished woman, she had the grace to give me a warm welcome with a bright smile, and we hit it off immediately from there. After we spoke for a bit on her painting instruction workshop, she told me something I was shocked to find out. Seymour's work is exhibited in numerous galleries around the country but she didn't pick up a brush until she was in her 40s!


		Notes for Two Horns by Claudia Seymour, oil on linen, 2005, 24 x 22.

I was shocked that such a well trained artist could have been painting for only...well, I won't say as a gentleman never reveals a lady's age. But it just proves that at any age, with a little time and commitment, you can really dive deep into your craft. Claudia certainly has.

We've just finished filming The Art of Painting Flowers in Oil, in which Claudia takes you into her painting practice and shows you how to compose a still life painting, light your still life art, and really think about everything you need in order to create a really beautiful artwork. I can't wait for her next workshop dealing with floral arrangements in pastel, coming 2013. But most of all, working with Claudia has made me think about whether it really is ever too late to start painting. What do you think? When did you start painting, and do you think it has made a difference concerning where you are now with your artwork? Leave a comment and let me know,

--Ben

Ben Berlin is the video guru of American Artist magazine.

Pick Up a Few Pointers from This Dutch Master

James Duncan — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:31:00 GMT

A willingness to experiment with perspective and style is often the determining factor between a competent artist and a master. A new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Van Gogh Up Close," takes a compelling look at the choices Vincent van Gogh made with depth, line, and perspective that helped him create many of his seminal works, and who could resist picking up a few pointers from this master Dutch painter?

Undergrowth with Two Figures by Vincent van Gogh, 1890, oil painting, 19½ x 39¼.

The exhibition examines Van Gogh's study of nature between 1866, when he left Antwerp for Paris, and his death in 1890. Through his daring use of bold colors and his abandonment of traditional oil painting techniques, Van Gogh sought an engagement between the viewer and his depictions of nature, be it a wide view of a wheat field at harvest or an intimate depiction of almond blossoms in full bloom. His experimentation brought many of his compositions "up close" into the foreground, allowing a much more personal view of his depictions of the world.


Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh, 1890, oil painting, 28 15/16 x 36¼.

Upon reaching Paris, Van Gogh initially moved in with his brother Theo and focused on still life paintings, investigating detailed aspects of scale, angle, and color. Later, the landscapes he creates in Saint-Rémy and Auvers in 1889 and 1890 showed more large-scale structures and complex compositions. The 45 paintings in "Van Gogh Up Close" run the gamut of his experimentations in these final years of his life, yet all retain the drama and dreamlike flair that he infused in all of his works.

The exhibition will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until May 6, but the exploration of master artists and their groundbreaking experimentations doesn't end there. American Artist magazine is a constant source of exhibition updates and "up close and personal" feature articles of how capable artists become masters.

The May issue includes composition advice from fantasy and commercial artist Gregory Manchess, an examination of Howard Pyle's powerful influence, and a study of how pulp artist Everett Raymond Kinstler developed his own style to become one of today's great portraitists. The issue is available now in print and eBook formats, so why wait to take the leap into the company of master artists?

--James

James is the assistant editor of American Artist magazine.

3 Ways to Assure You Are Always Growing as an Artist

Patricia Watwood — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:03:00 GMT


Ellen Cooper’s In Defiance of Erebus won the People’s Choice and First Place Award.

After participating in a panel discussion about career goals for artists at this year’s Portrait Society of America Conference I wanted to share a few more tips that I use to keep my art growing and evolving every day. Or at least, that’s what I’m striving for.

Believe: You’ve got to have faith in something bigger than what is on your canvas. Art is how you express it, but the idea has to be bigger than yourself. One of my favorite spiritual quotes is, “I know not where He leadeth, but I know who is my guide.” You cannot make good oil painting art for the long term without a constantly renewable source of inspiration and support. So believe in something that will give you a foundation no matter what successes and failures, triumph and heartache land at your door.

Eyes on the horizon: Don’t chase previous moments of inspiration—Go to the Source. Great art happens when inspiration meets effort. And inspiration has to come from the source and not by trying to repeat previous conditions of inspiration. So, this also requires continued growth and development and forward thinking. Inspiration is the opposite of doing something by rote. It is by nature original every time. Inspiration happens most readily when you are working at the edge of your comfort level, at the moment between competence and risk. Now, art galleries always want you to do the same thing, and to give them consistently marketable material. However, the best art gallery dealers also know that genuine feeling cannot be faked. So, try to find a balance between consistency, integrity and growth.

Always improving: Never stop trying to improve your work through study. My friend John Morra, a well-known still life painter, recently spent a few months working on Bargue plates because he wanted to sharpen his drawing skills. The best artists are never too proud to go back to square one. Take a year and copy old masters, brush up on your oil painting techniques, draw the figure from life, learn cast drawing. It’s never too late. Long term career planning includes taking stock of your abilities, and taking time for acquiring the skills you need to succeed.

--Patricia

For more painting instruction from Patricia, check out her latest DVD, Figure Painting: Realistic Skin Tone.

Finding Meaning in the Details of My Painting

Patricia Watwood — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:26:00 GMT


Some of the inspiration for the landscape in my painting, Leaves of Grass, came from found images of industrial areas along the New York waterfront.

Sometimes in making a small study for a larger oil painting, an artist will sketch in certain areas very loosely. It's almost as if she says to herself, "and there's some other stuff that fills in this area of the composition, but I'll think about that later." With the set of small paintings I was doing recently, I wanted to push myself to answer those questions earlier, and allow myself more time to critically consider the elements I include, before committing to the time and scale of a large work.

The still life and landscape details in an allegorical painting are the passages that tell most of the details in the narrative story. In what time period is the piece set? Where? What kind of person is this figure? I am interested in creating images that tell viewers they are looking at a world we share and live in. It is important to me that we have images of the human body that show a contemporary experience of the figure in art, as opposed to a sensibility that refers to a time past.

I mentioned in a recent post that Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," was the inspiration for my painting of the same name. So, I wanted this painting to feel like the figure has flopped down on a grassy bank, but not in Whitman's time--in the modern world. I chose the still life objects around her--paperback books, an aluminum water bottle, and an iPod--to show that she is contemporary to our time.


	I often take simple snapshots of landscape elements for my paintings. I don't paint directly from the photo. I use the details to support my imagination.



	Creating plein air studies is also a rewarding way to get a basic knowledge of natural forms that you can draw on for later studio paintings.

The bright colors of these objects also anchor them in modern life. All our stuff is so colorful! What a feast for a painter! To compose the still life painting elements for this work, I gathered objects mostly from my home life, though I'll sometimes shop or borrow for something specific. For example, I knew that I wanted the fabric my figure is laying on to be blue, because it would complement her skin tone, work with the overall design, and to create a relaxed setting. So, I headed to the fabric store to find something that suited the picture.

The landscape is where I departed into the world of imagination. I designed the landscape based on the composition needed for the image. The dark of the trees behind her creates a good contrast for the paleness of the model's skin, and also makes the space feel more private and secluded for a bit of nude sunbathing. The open meadow slopes down to the waterfront of Brooklyn, and shows both nature and industry peaceably cohabitating. Whitman is big on embracing the Holy in the World as it is, not prettified or cleansed of human messes. The waterfront I ended up depicting is not a specific viewpoint, but an amalgamation of elements from the New York waterfront and park landscapes. I combined observation from nature, landscape paintings by other artists, and a few photos from the internet, for my references. I usually print out a set of reference photos and then invent the landscape from my head based on all this material.

For more detail on the landscape, I'll often do outdoor studies, search for found images on the internet, and simply take my own photos for precise details of say, an oak tree branch or a container crane. In general, I paint from life as much as possible, but I am happy to be able to draw on photo reference for background details such as this. I have done many plein air studies, and so have a basic knowledge of natural forms and atmospheric effects to invent from as well. Combined, they express my vision.

--Patricia

For more painting instruction from Patricia, check out her latest DVD, Figure Painting: Realistic Skin Tone.

Oil Painting; Morandi: Painting and Appearance in the 20th Century

American Artist — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:00:00 GMT

John A. Parks examined the art of Giorgio Morandi in the December issue of American Artist. In one section, he asserted, "[His] paintings are a testimony to the act of something deeply contemplated. It is a kind of painting that has nothing to do with simply recording appearances." We asked Parks to expound upon this bold statement, and he responded with the following essay.

One of the most fascinating features of art is its ability to use subject matter from the real world to illuminate the sensibility of the artist. A painting doesn’t have to reconstitute the appearance of its ostensible subject—say, a view of hills or a bowl of oranges—in order to engage us. It might instead draw our attention to what is happening between the artist and his subject. Even a superficial glance at more or less any still life by Morandi will reveal that the work doesn’t really give a full account of how light and color move around various forms. Rather, the painting seems to be the result of a reverie about the objects conducted in paint. The artist makes numerous little nudges and shifts of the paint as he looks at his subject, endlessly simplifying and restating as his mind and eye coalesce around the various simple pots and jars. In other words, the painting is a record of an extended act of looking and thinking rather than an attempt to render the appearance of the subject.

Obviously the success of such a painting depends on how captivating and entrancing this process is for the viewer and how attractive the quality of the mind that it reveals. In the case of Morandi the process seems to release a sense of quiet poetry, as though we have been drawn into the artist’s state of reverie. Given the busy and noisy world that most of us inhabit, this is a pleasurable sensation, and it no doubt accounts for the enormous fame and wide popularity of the artist’s paintings.

Toilet of Venus
by Francois Boucher, 1751, oil,
42 5/8 x 33 1/2.
Collection Metropolitan
Museum of Art,
New York, New York.

The idea that the subject of a painting might be the workings of the artist’s sensibility rather than the objects or figures represented in the work is largely a modern phenomenon. Almost all painting from the Renaissance until the late 19th century presented a window into an illusion of real space. Whether it was a Dutch interior by Vermeer with its carefully organized and restrained realism, or a ceiling by Tiepolo with its spiraling angels and clouds, or even a Rococo pleasure-fest like Boucher’s Toilet of Venus with its sensuous artificiality, the viewer was presented with a coherent space in which he might conceivably imagine himself entering and moving around. This applied even when the visions presented bore only a tenuous relationship to the normal world. A landscape by Poussin, for instance, is more ordered and organized than anything we ever come across in nature, just as Watteau’s Embarkation to Cythera transforms a landscape into something just short of the fantastic. Nonetheless, the space is coherent and we are invited to enter it, to enjoy its qualities and to consider its subject matter. Even when the Impressionists showed up and began to explore a radically different means of recreating natural light on a canvas, they were careful to present a coherent and unitary visual world.

All of this changed with the work of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). Originally an Impressionist who studied with Camille Pissaro, Cézanne came to be obsessed with the very nature of perception. His work began to concentrate on the process of looking at a subject, and he started to use carefully placed marks arranged into shallow planes as he tried to record his experience of perceiving and locating objects in space. Moreover he tried to bring to his shifting perceptions the idea that nature might be broken down into a number of simple geometric forms, announcing that he intended to “treat nature by the cylinder, square, and the cone.” As he proceeded, his work also began to incorporate the experience of binocular vision so that he sometimes showed the position of the same object from the differing points of view of his right and left eye. The paintings, rather than being composed beforehand in the traditional manner, instead grew out of this searching process of looking, as the artist struggled to understand and relate his perceptual experience in front of the object. If we look at a painting like Quarry and Mont Sainte Victoire (1898), now in the Baltimore Museum of Art, we get a clear sense of the results. Unlike Impressionist painting, which is greatly concerned with color relationships, we can see that here the artist is content to allow the same set of color values appear all over the painting. The dark blue line with which planes are defined remains the same in the foreground as in the far distance. The same green-to-yellow color run is repeated through most of the trees. This results in a radical flattening of the space and the reduction of the scene to a motif. Within this we can see that individual elements, rather than being rendered, are merely hinted at with tentative and shifting strokes of the paint. The artist is literally figuring out where everything is right in front of our eyes. The result is that we enter the uncertainty of his state of mind and share the joys and woes of his struggle to reconstitute his experience of seeing. A strange new sense of clarity and resolution emerges as we feel the power of his mind at work and his ability to bring order to his world in a wholly new way.

Quarry and Mont Sainte-Victoire
by Paul Cézanne, 1898–1900, oil,
25 1/2 x 32. Collection Baltimore
Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland.

The work of Cézanne was among the first modern art that Morandi saw when he went to Florence in 1910. It clearly remained a strong influence. Cézanne, with his creation of a shallow space and multiple viewpoints, is generally heralded as a precursor of the Cubists. But his liberation of painting from its task of rendering also gave rise to other ventures. The very thoughtful and quiet paintings of the English artist Gwen John (1876–1939), while less radical than the later work of Morandi, share an approach in which the painting is built around the artist’s sensibility in front of the subject. This is much in evidence in a painting like Young Nun of 1915, now in the National Gallery in Scotland. Here a closely worked palette and thoughtful painterly brushwork function much the same way as Morandi’s approach. The same could be said of the later paintings of Eduard Vuillard (1868–1940), whose delicate and inventive paintings of interiors share a delight in understatement, suggestion and quietude.

The idea that a work of art might grow out of the following of a perceptual process is also greatly in evidence in the work of the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966). Giacometti began his professional career by making surrealist sculptures but became increasingly interested in what happened to his figurative images when he continued to try to define his experience of seeing. In his drawing and painting we can see him making endless attempts to locate his subject matter in space using a spindly, moving line. His works are full of partial erasures, second guesses, and sometimes heavy overworking. Rather than the quiet and beautiful ordering of Cezanne’s world, however, Giacometti’s endeavors resulted in a strangely distorted space in which figures and objects often seem to diminish bizarrely under the weight and pressure of the surrounding space. When it came to making sculptures, this process often resulted in figures or busts that are whittled down into grotesquely thin objects. The artist, overtaken by a quest that he continually experienced as impossible, would often go on to destroy his work in the process. He generally regarded all his efforts as unfinished and unsuccessful.

Some later 20th-century art took up the notion that art might be made by displaying a process rather than simply presenting a finished product. More usually, however, these were processes undertaken without the intense perceptual involvement of artists like Cezanne, Giacometti or Morandi. The mature work of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) for instance, depends on the display of a mechanical means of swinging and dripping paint, but seems to connect with us as a powerful and highly theatrical statement. The influence of Pollock was in part responsible for the emergence of the Process Art Movement, first recognizable in the work of Robert Morris (1931–). In an essay for an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1968 he called for an art that grew out of process and time rather than involve itself in the production of what he called ‘static icons’. A whole generation of artists, including Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse, Bruce Naumann, and Richard Serra became interested in incorporating natural forces of rusting, staining, dripping, decay, natural growth, and weathering into their work. But at this point we have moved immeasurably far from the quiet poetry and carefully contained world of Giorgio Morandi.

Oil Painting: Daniel E. Greene: Gleaning Inspiration From Formative Experiences

American Artist — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:29:00 GMT

In the Fall 2007 issue of Workshop magazine, we presented Daniel E. Greene's approach to teaching drawing and painting in art-school classes, short-term workshops, and filmed programs. Here we reproduce the article from the November 2007 issue of American Artist that focused on an exhibition of still-life and figure paintings inspired by the experiences and objects of the artist's childhood.

by M. Stephen Doherty

It’s Thrilling
2007, oil, 44 x 72.
All artwork this article
courtesy Gallery Henoch,
New York, New York,
unless otherwise indicated.

Daniel E. Greene is a master painter of portraits, still lifes, figures, and urban scenes executed in pastel or oil. Many of his noncommissioned pictures are based on personal experiences, including a series of New York City subway paintings that took him back to some of the locations he discovered in the 1950s, when he moved from his hometown of Cincinnati to study art and establish his career. His latest series of paintings is based on an earlier time in his life when, as a child, he was captivated by board games, an amusement park, and organized sports. “I loved competitive games that challenged me physically and mentally,” he remembers. “I did well at those competitions, and I think in many ways they prepared me for the problem-solving aspects of being an artist. Painting can be thought of as a similar process of acquiring knowledge, planning strategies, maintaining stamina, and facing challenges.”

That series of paintings, which is currently on view at Gallery Henoch, in New York City, uses game boards, balloons, toys, stuffed animals, signage, and orchids both for their identities and their visual impact. For example, a game board represents aspects of gamesmanship and also serves as an abstract pattern of shapes and colors that work in concert with the figures and objects painted in front of them. The collection of forms also introduces the theme of contrast that has always interested Greene. He continually juxtaposes objects that are animate and inanimate, new and antique, smooth and textured; but the recent paintings go further in contrasting the emotions of boredom and excitement, disappointment and achievement, risk and security.

Dartboard &
Balloons
2007, oil, 42 x 66.

“I first started using game boards, dolls, and other childhood memorabilia in my paintings about 20 years ago, but I didn’t make them the focus of a series until I began working on these paintings about two years ago,” Greene explains. “I placed orchids in front of game boards within square-format paintings to contrast beautiful, living, flowing plant material against well-worn geometric patterns; and then I expanded the scale of the work with nude figures against boards enlarged way beyond their actual size. Eventually I allowed the pictures to become more autobiographical by pulling in images from my recollections of the Coney Island amusement park near Cincinnati.”

Greene documented the development of several of these paintings, including It’s Thrilling. “I visited an amusement park in Connecticut with my family, and I was struck by the images of garishly colored stuffed animals, crudely painted signage, bored attendants, darts, balloons, and colored lights—all of them associated with games of chance and skill,” the artist explains. “I remembered how exciting all of that was to me as a child, how my daughter was reacting with the same enthusiasm, and how the carnival had remained much the same as when it was depicted in drawings and paintings by such artists as Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, and Isabel Bishop. I imagined how I might respond to these scenes of isolated, lonely figures engaged in a business that was intended to be amusing, challenging, and rewarding. I was especially intrigued by a game in which contestants would earn points by rolling balls, with the number of points being used to determine how fast they could race cars occupied by ghosts. The person who won the most points and moved his or her car to the finish line first would win a prize.”

Whack-A-Clown
2007, oil, 54 x 54.

FOCUSING ON THE race of ghosts, Greene made replicas of the moving cars and positioned them on a board, hired a carpenter to construct the players’ booth, and asked one of his daughter’s friends to pose as the attendant. “I was determined to create these new paintings from life, not photographs,” the artist explains. “I searched the internet to locate appropriate stuffed animals, and then by chance I found a bag of them my daughter won at the very same amusement park. It was tedious painting the graphic designs on the booths and the signage above, and it took me a long time to determine where to position the stuffed animals and how to paint portraits of each of them.”

Greene indicates that one of the devices he used to resolve these kinds of compositional issues was to make a quick painted sketch of the objects on sheets of acetate, move them around the canvas, and then decide on the best placement. “It seemed a little curious to be assigning so much importance to toys, but a realist painter has to be willing to paint everything with the same degree of attention and detail,” he says. “They may have been stuffed animals, but they functioned within the pictures as colored shapes that would catch the viewer’s eye and contribute to the context of the ideas being explored.”

Wheel of Fortune
2006, oil, 54 x 54.

It was actually difficult for Greene to replicate the crudely painted signs in the various carnival booths depicted in the series of paintings. “My inclination was to make them more polished and precise, but that would have been inconsistent with the graphic images that are part of a carnival,” he describes. “In most cases, placards were painted decades ago by amateur sign painters to identify the individual booths and to encourage people to compete for prizes.”

The crudeness and harsh colors of the carnival became even more pronounced when Greene developed the paintings Ring-A-Ghoul and Whack-A-Clown. “I actually had to add some unfamiliar paints to my palette to replicate the day-glow orange, iridescent blue, and shocking purple of the bears in Ring-A-Ghoul,” he reveals. “And I spent many hours painting each of the pegs and their cast shadows on the spinning wheel included in Whack-A-Clown. The combination of shapes, textures, and patterns in that painting were unlike any I had ever combined into one picture.”

In recalling the creative process involved in each of these new paintings, Greene points out that for the past 25 years he has documented every aspect of the development of his art. “I keep careful
records of the canvas, board, paper, colors, preparation, mediums, model, preparatory studies, starting and ending dates, and hours of labor involved in each of my paintings,” the artist says. “I
recommend that every artist keep such records for his or her own benefit. I frequently refer to my notes when I want to recall how I achieved certain effects in a painting, where I got the still-life material, who the models were, what medium I used to modify the paints, what varnish I applied once the picture was dry, and where the paintings were exhibited and perhaps sold.”

Ring-A-Ghoul
2007, oil, 54 x 54.

Although some of the detailing of the carnival paintings was tedious, Greene relished the opportunity to paint portraits of the models and to create convincing images of such objects as the balloons in Dartboard & Balloons and the clothing worn by the man in Wheel of Fortune. “I particularly enjoyed painting each of the balloons because several were translucent enough to reveal the numbers underneath, while others reflected the colors and shapes of the nearby balloons,” he explains. “And I decided I wanted to paint a portrait of the young man in Wheel of Fortune as soon as he arrived at my studio in North Salem, New York, to model for one of my summer workshops. He was actually wearing that orange shirt and the decorated jean jacket, and I thought they characterized the kind of rebellious, free-spirited drifter who would take off to join the circus. His pensive gaze also suggested the contradictory emotions of a man who is supposed to be enticing people with a game of fun, excitement, and reward.”

In addition to including a captivating portrait in Wheel of Fortune, Greene used the opportunity to develop an elaborate border along the top of this oil painting. “I have long been fascinated by the decorative elements in Russian icons and gold-leaf decorations,” the artist says. “On some level the antique boards and well-worn signs serve a similar decorative function in the carnival paintings.”

Greene was able to take the carnival artifacts to another level of expression in the painting Dartman by including several menacing images. “On one level, the painting uses a standard portrait device of positioning a figure against a warm, brown background,” he describes. “But when you consider that the man is holding sharply pointed darts used to pop the balloons and penetrate the red-and-white wheel, and that there is a folk-art game in which contestants use a pistol to shoot metal objects extending from a man’s mouth, you recognize that games often involve a level of violence and destruction. I suppose one could extend that recognition to include the current video games that treat violence as a form of entertainment.”

Dartman
2006, oil, 68 x 68.
Private collection.

Greene created the paintings included in this current New York exhibition on single- and double-primed Claessens linen and Fredrix No. 11 single-primed linen using the Daniel E. Greene line of oil colors manufactured by Jack Richeson & Co., as well as a few tubes of paint made by Winsor & Newton and Grumbacher. His standard medium is a mixture of 1/3 stand oil and 2/3 turpentine; but he does occasionally use a gel medium such as Maroger, as well as an oiling-out medium made with a higher percentage of stand oil thinned with turpentine (5 to 1, 4 to 1, or 1 to 1).

About the Artist
Daniel E. Greene is a former instructor of painting at the National Academy and the Art Students League of New York, both in Manhattan. In 1969 he was elected to the National Academy; in 1983 the Pastel Society of America elected him to the Pastel Hall of Fame; in 1995 he received the John Singer Sargent Award from The American Society of Portrait Artists; in 2001 he was awarded the Gold Medal from the Portrait Society of America; and in 2003 he received the Gold Medal from the Salmagundi Art Club, in New York City. Greene is the author of Pastel and The Art of Pastel (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, New York); he is the subject of six instructional videos and DVDs; and he has endorsed sets of pastel and oil manufactured by Jack Richeson & Co., as well as brushes manufactured by Silver Brush Limited. For more information on Greene or his art supplies, visit his websites at www.danielgreeneartist.com and www.wallstreetart.net. For more information on Gallery Henoch, where Greene’s paintings are on exhibition from October 11 through November 4, visit www.galleryhenoch.com.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.

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Oil Painting: Daniel E. Greene: Gleaning Inspiration From Formative Experiences

American Artist — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:45:00 GMT

In an exhibition opening this month in New York City, Daniel E. Greene presents still-life and figure paintings inspired by the experiences and objects of his childhood. Those paintings allowed him to explore the themes of challenge, contrast, and competition.

by M. Stephen Doherty

It’s Thrilling
2007, oil, 44 x 72.
All artwork this article
courtesy Gallery Henoch,
New York, New York,
unless otherwise indicated.

Dartboard &
Balloons
2007, oil, 42 x 66.

Whack-A-Clown
2007, oil, 54 x 54.

Wheel of Fortune
2006, oil, 54 x 54.

Ring-A-Ghoul
2007, oil, 54 x 54.

Dartman
2006, oil, 68 x 68.
Private collection.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.

Oil Painting: David Koch: Using Photoshop to Create Ageless Paintings

American Artist — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:10:00 GMT

Utah artist David Koch likes to bring elements of his state’s pioneer past into his computer-aided compositions.

by Linda S. Price

Crossing The Sweetwater
2002, oil on linen,
55 x 44. Collection
Walt and Katie Gasser.

Until David Koch won a competition to paint two 8'-x-10' murals for The House of Representatives Chambers in the Utah State Capitol building, the largest canvas he’d ever worked on was 40" x 60". “I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was not much different than painting a 16"-x-20" canvas,” he says. “I just used bigger brushes and more paint.” For the competition, the legislature chose the subjects to be depicted—both scenes from the state’s history—and gave the artists a month to come up with the concepts and sketches. Koch thoroughly researched the topics and posed models in costume to recreate the events, which he claims gave him the competitive edge. Then he worked with digital images and Photoshop to develop the final composition.

After stretching the large canvas on a custom-made frame, the artist laid out a grid and carefully drew from the Photoshop image. Once the drawing was complete, the artist started painting in one spot and worked outward, using his 24"-x-30" oil sketches, rather than the computer image, for color reference. In total, the project took about five months, with a few interspersed breaks to provide paintings to keep his galleries happy.

The artist admits that he probably put in more details than were necessary, especially for two murals destined to hang 30 feet above the chamber. But he realized the scenes would be viewed by generations of legislators, and he wanted his paintings, to be not only decorative but also inspiring, uplifting, and motivating for the lawmakers. In fact, Koch often includes symbolic meaning in his work and does many religious paintings as well as what he calls “pioneer pieces,” which depict scenes of the Mormon migration. The artist is currently working on a scene of a wagon train with a towering thundercloud bearing down. Besides providing a dramatic contrast between light and dark, the artist says the scene echoes the story in the book of Exodus, where a pillar of a cloud leads the Israelites out of captivity and toward the Promised Land.

Hope Shining Brightly
2006, oil on linen,
40 x 30. Collection Corey and Lisa Willis.

Koch also paints portraits with a historical context, and many of his portrait commissions are of children. “If I paint them in jeans and T-shirts the portrait becomes dated,” he explains. “If I can introduce a costume from the past, it becomes timeless.” Most clients come to him with a preconceived idea of the portrait they want, usually a superficial one. However, as he talks to them, he discovers what elements he can interject into the portrait to give it deeper personal meaning, even if it is only a subtly suggested background location. “I want people to say, ‘That’s a great piece of art’ rather than, ‘That’s a great portrait,’” he says.

Time constraints make working from photographs a necessity for the artist, but he explains that he’s painted enough from life that he can compensate for the deficiencies of photographs, such as the shadows that are too dark, the light areas that are blown out and don’t provide enough detail, and the midtones—actually the richest in color—that appear dead. Aware that the camera can’t record all the subtle color variations the eye sees, Koch occasionally paints from a black-and-white image and pushes the colors in the desired direction. The artist also takes digital photos that he then manipulates with Photoshop, and he’s enthusiastic about the program, particularly from the standpoint of composition. “It speeds up the process,” he says. “I can look at 10 different options quickly, combine images, move them around, and tweak them until the composition is right. As a result, my compositions are better.” It also allows him to show his clients the exact composition they will be getting in their portraits. The artist paints from the image on his laptop computer screen so he is able to zoom in and see details. Because he devotes so much time to making certain his composition is right, Koch alters little on his canvas. If the scene is complex, he may grid the canvas. When he’s doing a commissioned portrait, achieving a likeness is essential, so he spends more time in the drawing phase. The drawing on the canvas may be done with graphite, charcoal, or thin paint.

Silver Reef
2007, oil on linen,
30 x 60. Collection State Branch of Southern Utah (Hurricane Bank).

Although most of Koch’s portraits are done from photographs, many of the artist’s landscapes are done en plein air. Even when creating larger studio paintings, he works from on-site sketches as well as photos. Then, instead of using a computer, he usually creates his composition with thumbnail sketches, starting with a few key directional lines. Even though he uses photos for reference, he’s careful to compensate for their shortcomings and not get hung up on details. “I like to paint as loosely as I can and still have it read,” he explains. Koch also paints still lifes, which he sets up in his studio. “Painting from life is the best teacher, and it’s hard to beat the lessons learned by painting a small, simple still life,” he says.

The artist paints alla prima, explaining that he likes to put the paint on thick and push it around. “I want to see immediate results,” he explains. “That’s what excites me. Maybe that’s why I don’t glaze lots of layers—because I don’t have the patience.” Although at times Koch will block in an entire painting to determine how dark or light he can go with the piece, most frequently he begins by completing the focal point and establishing the lightest lights and darkest darks.

Blue Bonnet
2004, oil on linen,
12 x 9. Collection Brian and Jana Watts.

Koch teaches two workshops a year in which he incorporates what he calls those “a-ha!” moments of discovery from his own artistic experience. His basic concept is simple: The key elements of good art are shape, color, and edges, and each of these concepts contains subcategories. Under “shape” are such categories as composition—defined as the unequal distribution of shapes—and drawing—the accurate placement of the correct shapes. Value and temperature are two examples of the subcategories under “color,” and Koch points out that in almost all cases, value is more important than color. Edges, he says, may seem like a small thing, but they are what make your painting come together and read as a whole. He goes on to explain that it’s the variety in these elements—shapes, edges, textures, and value—that provides the spark that makes a painting exciting. Color, however, is different because if there is too much color variety in a painting it becomes a hodgepodge that doesn’t hold together. “My preference is to have a painting go predominantly in one color direction,” he says. “Otherwise it’s too broken up.”

The artist’s palette is fairly simple and consists of titanium white, cadmium yellow light, cadmium orange yellow, cadmium red light, Venetian red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, sap green, burnt umber, and raw sienna. All are either from Utrecht or Vasari Classic Artists’ Oil Colors. His paintings tend toward the earth tones, and he grays down his colors by using complements. For instance, he puts red in his greens—Venetian red and raw sienna added to sap green—to neutralize them. This means that even a slight shift can, by contrast, make the colors sing. The only time Koch uses any medium is when the paint on his palette gets too stiff, then he adds paint thinner or Liquin. He likes to paint on oil-primed linen, preferably double primed, because it is less absorbent than latex-primed canvas. Although he does use various surface textures, most of his work is done on smooth, tighter-toothed surfaces. He prefers flat bristle brushes, which help give his style its angular feel, and he frequently uses painting knives to exploit thick versus thin paint application, a technique that helps achieve the variety that provides interest and dimension to the painting.


By Small and Simple Things... 2006, oil on linen, 28 x 30. Collection Jon and Shauna Robertson.	Paper Boxes and Bits of String 2001, oil on linen, 30 x 24. Collection Margaret Barton.

In summing up his feelings on creating art, Koch says, “I believe that artists are made, not born. Granted, it comes easier to some people than others. But, if you practice, you will improve. All the elements of good painting are possible to learn. But I hate to give hard-and-fast rules because some artist will come along, break them, and do it marvelously.”

About the Artist
David Koch always enjoyed art-related subjects in school but didn’t realize being an artist was a legitimate profession. It wasn’t until his second year at Utah State University, in Logan, that he took an art class for fun and it dawned on him that art offered a career path. He enrolled in the university’s illustration program, although after graduation he went into the graphic- design field. Believing it would allow him more time to pursue his own painting, Koch eventually turned to freelancing, which resulted in even longer hours. After a few years, and with some local galleries selling his art fairly regularly, he took the plunge and devoted himself to fine art full time. Even though he admits there are still some financially difficult times, he claims he can’t imagine doing anything else with his life. “It’s a privilege to pursue something I have a passion for as a career,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like work, although there is lots of hard work involved.” Koch is a member of Plein Air Painters of Utah and is represented by the Kneeland Gallery, in Ketchum, Idaho; The Mission Gallery, in St. George, Utah; Apple Frame Gallery, in Bountiful, Utah; and Williams Fine Art, in Salt Lake City. For more information on the artist, visit his website at www.davidkochartist.com.

Linda S. Price is an artist, writer, and editor living on Long Island, New York.

Oil Painting: Gustave Courbet: The First Realist

American Artist — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:38:00 GMT

Heralded as a rebel of the Romantic movement, Gustave Courbet is today considered one of the first to propel Realism into the modern world.

by John A. Parks

The Desperate Man
1844–1845, oil, 17¾ x 21?.
Private collection.

Born in 1819, Gustave Courbet emerged from the quiet rural village of Ornans, in the Franche-Comté, to become one of the most famous artists and most provocative characters of 19th-century France. In an era dominated by Romanticism and the still pervasive Neoclassicism, he seized on a new sense of the real in painting and is often credited with coining the term “realist.” Working at a time of great social and political change, his paintings reflect the rising power of the masses, the ascendance of a scientific and utilitarian outlook, and the influence of a plethora of artistic and intellectual movements that swept through Paris in the middle of the 19th century and spanned everything from anarchism to symbolism.

But more than anything else, Courbet was simply and gloriously a painter whose thick tactile surfaces, aided with an aggressive palette-knife technique, gave his pictures a physical presence that was highly innovative, theatrically assertive, and completely unique. His direct, and at times almost naïve, approach to painting allowed him to show common people and ordinary events on a scale formerly reserved for visions of gods and kings. He welcomed the arrival of photography, which he was quick to use as reference for his own work, and his career extended beyond realism to a point where he began to toy with new ideas that would grow into Impressionism. From February 27 through May 18, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, mounted a full retrospective exhibition of the painter’s work titled “Gustave Courbet,” inviting viewers to take full measure of the painter’s accomplishments. The exhibition is limited only by the fact that several of Courbet’s most famous paintings, in particular his A Burial at Ornans and The Painter’s Studio, are considered too large and fragile to travel from their home at the Louvre, in Paris.

The Wounded Man
1844–1854, oil, 32? x 38?.
Collection Musée d’Orsay,
Paris, France.

“To tell the truth, I must declare that I have never had a teacher,” Courbet wrote to a newspaper editor in 1851. Like many of the artist’s personal accounts, this was not exactly true; in fact, Courbet’s training as an artist began early in life and extended for some years. His father, a small landowner, took care to have his son educated and hoped he would enter a solid profession like the law. In his teenage years, however, Courbet became a pupil of the painter Charles Antoine Flajoulot while attending the Royal Academy at Besançon. Flajoulot claimed to have been a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and his admiration of classical draftsmanship was certainly imparted to his young student. In 1839 Courbet found himself in Paris. Rather than take up the study of law, he set to work in the studio of M. Steuben, a minor painter who took in several students. Courbet also began a long practice of copying master works in the Louvre, frequently painting over previous studies as he worked his way through the Dutch, Flemish, and Italian masters, as well as more contemporary works by Ingres and Delacroix.

Courbet spent seven years as an apprentice before achieving any kind of recognition. At the time the only path to a successful career in art was through the official Salon—an annual exhibition, sponsored by the government—which had been held since the late 17th century. Works were vetted by a jury and hung floor to ceiling in huge exhibition halls to be viewed by a fee-paying public. Gazettes were published in which the critics of the day vented their opinions on the work, and in general the art received a level of scrutiny and passionate discussion that most visual artists would envy today. It was a society in which art mattered and the output of painters was seen as an important part of the political and intellectual discourse of the day. The French government purchased a number of paintings from the Salon each year at fairly hefty prices, to be hung in various public buildings, and any serious art collector would certainly pay close attention to the works offered.

Young Ladies of the Village
1851–1852, oil, 76¾ x 102¾.
Collection The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, New York.

Courbet began sending paintings to the Salon almost as soon as he arrived in Paris. Indeed, between 1840 and 1847 he submitted 24 paintings, of which only three were accepted. The reasons for the artist’s lack of success in these years are fairly obvious: his skills as a draftsman were modest, and his hand was somewhat heavy. Moreover, Courbet had yet to find himself as an artist and his work vacillated between experiments with a romantic style and more direct observation, particularly in his portraiture. One of his more dramatic achievements from these years was The Desperate Man of 1844. Here he shows himself as a lunatic, clawing at his hair, his eyes wide with intensity. What the work lacks in finesse—in particular in awkward details of rendering in the hands and fabric—it makes up for with theatrical drama brought about by powerfully drawn contours and heavy chiaroscuro. Two years later The Wounded Man finds the artist toying with a romantic look as he imagines himself languishing from a wound suffered in a duel. Here the heaviness of the rendering and the resulting monumentality of form seem uneasily at odds with the subject matter. This is a subject that calls for the delicate touch of a Fragonard or the flowing brush of Delacroix rather than the lumbering hand and lumpy forms of the young Courbet. In the meantime the artist had become immersed in the newly emergent culture of the bohemians. “In our overcivilized society,” he wrote to his friend Francis Wey, “I must lead the life of a savage—I must free myself even from governments. The ordinary people have my sympathies—I must speak to them directly, draw my inspiration from them, find my livelihood from them. Because of that I have just embarked upon the wandering and independent life of a bohemian.” Throughout his career Courbet would insist on his independence as an artist and as a man. His private life involved a long series of romantic liaisons, but he regarded marriage as a bourgeois institution and refused to have anything to do with it.

The Meeting, or ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet’
1854, oil, 50¾ x 58?.
Collection Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France.

Success began for Courbet when he exhibited no less than 10 paintings at the Salon of 1848 and received enthusiastic notice from Champfleury, a newly influential critic. Champfleury was a champion of a new realism in French art already evident in the novels of Georges Sand. Soon he was prodding Courbet in that direction. The following year the artist achieved a career breakthrough at the Salon when his painting After Dinner at Ornans was admired by Delacroix and purchased by the state. The picture was an enormous rendering of a simple evening in the country in which the artist and his family relax after dinner as one of their number plays a tune on the violin. The painting is obviously influenced by Dutch painters, such as Rembrandt, Hals, David Teniers, and others with whom Courbet had become familiar when he made a trip to Holland in 1846. Writing to a curator in 1850 he said, “All my affinities are with the Northern peoples. I have traveled twice in Belgium and once in Holland for my instruction and I hope to go there again.”

Courbet’s genius was to use a 17th-century Dutch approach to painting everyday life and transfer it to 19th-century rural France on a large scale. This was something radically new for the French public, who generally preferred renderings of country life to be wrapped in a pleasantly distant romance. Returning to his family home for the winter of 1849 through 1850, Courbet pursued this approach with a vengeance, producing his famous painting A Burial at Ornans. Working on a vast scale, he painted a large group of figures as they had appeared the previous year at the burial of his grandfather. “We must drag art down from its pedestal,” he wrote to a friend that winter, “for too long you have been making art that is pomaded and ‘in good taste.’ For too long painters, even my contemporaries, have based their art on ideas and stereotypes.”

Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine
1856–1857, oil, 68½ x 81?.
Collection Petit Palais,
Musée des Beaux-Arts de
la Ville de Paris.

Exhibited at the Salon of 1850 through 1851, A Burial at Ornans caused an enormous stir. It was monumentally large and showed in stark frankness the rural society that so many Parisians were anxious to ignore. The painting was condemned as ugly and many saw it as politically radical. France, and indeed much of Europe, had been swept by revolutions and social unrest in 1848, all part of the dynamics of industrialization, with its shift of power and wealth along with the rise of an urban society. Courbet himself never saw his pictures as particularly political. Rather, he seems to have found himself in paint as he tried to represent quite straightforwardly the life he knew best. In his Young Ladies of the Village of the following year, it becomes obvious that his somewhat heavy hand was then perfectly suited to his task. Something in the coarseness of the handling and the thickness of the paint gives the picture a sense of directness and authority, an aura of honesty that would be hard to project with a more skillful and polished approach. And if the scale of the cows in the background is at odds with that of the trees then it only serves as a further guarantee of the artist’s direct and difficult confrontation with nature. We are convinced that he only seeks to show us, in a manner devoid of artifice, a simple country moment as his sisters bestow a gift of money on a young cowgirl in the fields near his native town.

In 1854 Courbet exhibited yet another masterpiece, The Meeting, or ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet.’ The picture shows the artist meeting his patron Alfred Bruyas on the road near Montpellier in May 1854. But the painting is far more than a simple record of an event. Bruyas was a wealthy banker and art collector who became a big supporter of Courbet. In the painting, however, it is the banker who takes his hat off to the artist while his servant humbly bows. Courbet himself appears to have been walking holding his hat by his side and carrying his traveling easel and paint box on his back. He strides forward with confidence and authority. Again, Courbet’s powerful handling and strong sense of graphic outline has been deployed to great effect. The painting exudes a sense of open directness that is distinctly modern. Gone is all the measured elegance of Neoclassicism and gone too are any of the trappings of Romanticism. The artist is inviting us to look head-on in stark daylight at a world where the social order has been turned on its head.

The Wave
ca. 1865–1869, oil,
24¾ x 36¼.
Collection Städel Museum,
Frankfurt, Germany.

Courbet went on to make a number of large pictures of rural life along the same lines, although none of them ever achieved the same power as A Burial at Ornans. In 1855, however, he produced what is rightly considered one of the great masterpieces of 19th-century art, The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing up Seven Years of My Artistic Life. The picture is a large tableau in which the artist shows himself at work on a landscape in the center of the painting watched by a naked model and a young boy. He is flanked on one side by supporters and figures from his artistic world, including his friend Baudelaire and the poet Max Buchon. On the other side is a darker world that Courbet described as “the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, those who live on death.” Courbet intended the painting to be hung at the International Exhibition of 1855 and was greatly disappointed when the jury rejected it. However, he did show the work in a temporary structure he had built nearby, where he mounted one of the first privately sponsored solo exhibitions in French history. The event was heralded by a sign announcing: “REALISM. G. Courbet: exhibition and sale of 40 pictures and 4 drawings by M. Gustave Courbet.” A pamphlet accompanied the exhibition in which Courbet laid out his artistic principles:

“The title Realist has been imposed on me in the same way as the title Romantic was imposed on the men of 1830... I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality. To know in order to be able to create, that was my idea...to create a living art—that is my goal.”

Among the visitors to the exhibition was Delacroix, who wrote in his journal: “I stay there alone for nearly an hour and discover that the picture of his which they refused [The Painter’s Studio] is a masterpiece; I simply could not tear myself away from the sight of it.”

Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman
1866, oil, 21¼ x 25?.
Collection Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm, Sweden.

A number of Courbet’s paintings in the following years are distinctly erotic or at least suggestive, often focusing on *** relationships. He famously painted a picture of female genitalia for a Turkish collector and his various paintings of pairs of women culminated in The Sleepers, a monumental picture of two naked women entwined in bed. The “Gustave Courbet” exhibition shows one of the more sedate paintings on this theme, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, of 1856–1857. To the modern eye this work is simply a splendidly painted idyll showing two young women relaxing. At the time of its exhibition, however, it caused quite a stir. Parisians had begun to enjoy leisurely outings along the Seine on weekends and Courbet was one of the first painters to take up this subject matter, which would later become a favorite of the Impressionists. The audience of his day, however, was scandalized by the fact that the young ladies were in a state of dishabille. Although she looks rather overdressed to us, the lady in the foreground is essentially shown in her underwear—a chemise, corset, and petticoat. The fact that she still has on her yellow gloves was seen as particularly erotic. Courbet’s new friend P.J. Proudhon, a critic and anarchist, wrote copiously about the two young ladies who were clearly known to him and saw the picture as a moralistic comment on the state of “kept” women. It is entirely unlikely that the artist himself shared this view, and he may simply have enjoyed presenting the public with a provocation. Nothing, however, can detract from the sheer richness of the painting, with its luxuriant fabrics, its wealth of foliage, and the dreamy reverie of the ladies themselves.

As the years progressed into the 1860s, Courbet’s work involved itself in a mass of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and hunting scenes. The task of the painter, he felt, was to take the world as he found it and to present it straightforwardly, although he often seems to flirt with a certain amount of symbolism. Always gregarious and avid for new acquaintance, Courbet befriended the young Whistler, fresh in Paris, who came and painted with him for a while. The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition displays the powerful portrait that Courbet made of Whistler’s mistress Jo as she combs out her long red hair. Here the thick paint and great intimacy of the pose transmit a strong sense of sexuality. Courbet’s landscapes also became increasingly monumental, and it is hard not to read them as symbolic in some way. His painting The Wave reduces sea and sky to a powerfully simple format suggesting that the subject is symbolic of the power of nature itself. Using increasingly open brush- and palette-knife work, the artist continually drew attention to the physical nature of painting. He also prepared the way for the Impressionists, who would use a broken paint surface to recreate the effects of light.

Self-Portrait With Pipe
ca. 1849, oil, 17¾ x 14?.
Collection Musée Fabre,
Montpellier, France.

Insisting on his own independence as an artist, Courbet’s political views were always loosely held. He liked to claim that he was on the side of the people, a socialist, but in a world before Marx, he never saw politics in terms of a class struggle. Nor was he averse to becoming a minor capitalist himself. When he made money he used some of it to purchase land in his hometown and he invested in railroad shares. Moreover, he was highly desirous of public success and much of his correspondence involves intrigues to get work shown or purchased at the Salon. A very public figure and tireless self-promoter, he was notorious for engaging in voluble and furious arguments about his work in the various cafés and brasseries where artists congregated in Paris. He was delighted when his hunting paintings began to enjoy wide acclaim among the upper class and aristocratic patrons of the arts. Summering in fashionable Trouville in 1865, he boasted in a letter to a friend, “I am painting the prettiest women at Trouville—I have already done a portrait of the Hungarian countess Karoly, and it is a tremendous success. Over 400 ladies came to see it and nine or ten of the most beautiful want me to paint them too ... I am gaining a matchless reputation as a portrait painter.”

It is curious, therefore, that in spite of the artist’s clear delight in his success with smart society, he came undone over a revolution. In 1871, following the chaos of the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris mob declared a commune and seized the center of the city. Courbet joined enthusiastically and was quickly put in charge of securing the city’s art treasures. Gripped with a revolutionary fervor, he went along with a proposal that the column in the Place Vendôme, a sort of distant cousin of Trajan’s Column commemorating the triumphs of Napoleon, be dismantled. The commune survived for only two months, however, and when the army finally took charge after a bloody fight, Courbet was imprisoned for six months. Worse, the French government held him responsible for the destruction of the Vendôme column and in 1873 ordered him to pay the costs of restoring it. Faced with bankruptcy and further imprisonment, the artist fled to Switzerland. From there he conducted negotiations with the French government, which eventually resulted in a rather bizarre payment scheme under which the artist would make monthly payments for the next 30 years. But Courbet was ailing. The years of bohemian living, heavy drinking, and the stress of prison had taken their toll. He died in Switzerland, exiled and close to bankrupt, in 1877.

John A. Parks is an artist who is represented by Allan Stone Gallery, in New York City. He is also a teacher at the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, and is a frequent contributor to American Artist, Drawing, Watercolor, and Workshop magazines.

Oil Painting: Step by Step: Joseph Gyurcsak's "Subtle Grays"

American Artist — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:56:00 GMT

In the December 2007 issue of American Artist, Joseph Gyurcsak used the work of Giorgio Morandi and Paul Cézanne to help illustrate lessons on developing paintings. Here, we present a step by step demonstration of his painting Subtle Grays.

The Setup

Gyurcsak began this demonstration by setting up his easel, palette, and still life arrangement under the same light so that his color mixing would be more accurate. Notice how his easel is positioned approximately three feet from the subject, a perfect distance for the sight-size method.


Step 1 The artist next did a preliminary drawing—using a combination of Venetian red and ultramarine blue—to work out his proportional and compositional concerns before beginning to add color.	Step 2 Focusing on the largest sections of color in each object, Gyurcsak next mixed appropriate color mixtures using a limited palette. The artist explains that using a limited palette helps him maintain color harmony and unity throughout the painting.	Step 3 Gyurcsak continued to work the entire painting by intensifying color in the background and foreground, always evaluating and comparing color by its value, temperature, and intensity.


Step 4 Once he had established an overall feel of the colors throughout the painting, Gyurcsak worked on his lighter tones, avoiding the use of white until the end.	Step 5 As he massed in his light, middle, and dark values, the forms of the objects began to turn and take shape.	Step 6 Bringing the painting to completion, Gyurcsak worked on his edges, added highlights, and finished details, making sure he did not add unnecessary color or brushstrokes that might ruin the fluidity of the painting.

Oil Painting: Tree's Place Gallery Exhibition: Six Premier Landscape Artists

American Artist — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:45:00 GMT

Six top artists combined observation, investigation, and invention to respond to the encompassing reality of the landscape. They will be exhibiting their sketches and studio paintings together for the first time this summer.

by M. Stephen Doherty

The difference between looking at a photograph and a great painting is similar to the difference between seeing a plate of food and eating it. One tells us what we are looking at while the other provides a fulfilling experience. Among landscape painters, there are many who accurately describe the appearance of nature, and some who go beyond that to provide a complete response. The six contemporary artists exhibiting together in August at Tree’s Place Gallery, in Orleans, Massachusetts, all have that extraordinary ability.


Vinalhaven Sunset by Jacob Collins, 2008, oil, 36 x 70. Courtesy Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, New York.	Detail of Yellow Birch, Kaaterskill Falls, New York by Jacob Collins, 2007, graphite on toned paper, 13½ x 10½. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Three of the exhibiting artists, Jacob Collins, Travis Schlaht, and Nicholas Hiltner, have extensive academic training in drawing and painting the figure, and they apply those skills to the challenge of understanding and interpreting the landscape. The other artists, Joseph McGurl, Donald Demers, and William R. Davis, grew up sailing in the waters of New England and learned to draw and paint what they were obliged to understand about the forces of nature. Despite the differences in their backgrounds, all six artists approach landscape painting as a process of combining knowledge and observation to form a complete interpretation of the emotional, factual, and personal experience.

Collins, Schlaht, and Hiltner have painted together for a number of years and spent several summers creating pleir air landscapes. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 that they began working together to establish a new direction in landscape painting when they led a group of 30 artists (along with artist Edward Minoff) in the Catskill Mountains district of New York State. During the three-week workshop, the participants applied the same level of understanding and investigation to landscape painting that they were already using to create their figure paintings. The program began with an emphasis on scientific research and careful drawing of the elements of the landscape—clouds, plants, rocks, and land formations—and continued with plein air color studies based on observation. The students and teachers then returned to their home studios to use this collective knowledge and resource material to create imaginative, accurate, and comprehensive views of nature.

The goal of this Hudson River School for Landscape (www.hudsonriverlandscape.com) was to establish “a new movement of American art, modeling itself after the artistic, social, and spiritual values of the Hudson River School painters,” says Collins in reference to the 19th-century artists who established the first indigenous art movement in America. “The Hudson River School painters saw the beauty of nature as a deeply important part of our world, and they believed their job was to faithfully represent that beauty. In their tradition, the beauty of the land was a revelation. This deep reverence for the land and idealism is sometimes missing in the contemporary art world. Those painters also laid the groundwork for what became the American Conservation Movement. My hope is that reuniting the kind of idealism that these artists brought to their art with the reverence for the land that they helped introduce to American culture will make a small contribution to solving current problems.”


View Toward Stonehorse Ledge From the Saco River by William R. Davis, 2007, oil, 8 x 12. Collection the artist.	Washington Valley Creek by William R. Davis, 2007, oil on paper, 8 x 10. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

In a question-and-answer exchange Collins provided for the Plein Air section of the American Artist website, he mentioned being influenced by the writings and artwork of 19th-century American artists. “Last year I read Asher B. Durand’s Letters on Landscape Painting, and I was struck by the advice he gave to aspiring landscape artists to draw the individual pieces of the landscape for as long as it takes to understand them before putting it all together,” Collins wrote. “He recommended perhaps even years of drawing branches of trees and rocks, outcroppings, and clusters of trees with a sharp pencil, seeing them as the alphabet of the landscape. I was impressed with his analogy that trying to paint a landscape without learning this alphabet was like trying to write a novel without learning the letters and words of language.”

Schlaht and Hiltner also mention being influenced by Hudson River School painters, such as Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand, as well as other important landscape artists whose work has been presented in recent museum exhibitions. “We’re fortunate to have ready access to galleries and museums in the Northeast,” Schlaht says. “For example, the Brooklyn Museum recently mounted two shows simultaneously that offered an interesting comparison between American and European artists. There was a major exhibition of Durand’s work on one floor and a display of French Barbizon and Impressionist painters on a lower floor. It was fascinating to compare the connections between on-site observational work and studio pictures. I’m not a huge fan of the Impressionists, but I learned a great deal from seeing the way they responded directly to nature; and then I walked upstairs to study how Durand composed studio paintings from his sketches and color studies.”


Detail Study of a Rock by Travis Schlaht, 2007, oil on linen, 5 x 5. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.	Drawing of Trees by Travis Schlaht, 2007, graphite, 9 x 7. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Hiltner mentions that he also followed the example of Hudson River School painters by making annotated drawings in a notebook while participating in the summer workshop. “There happened to be several exhibitions of drawings in area museums, and I was impressed with the fact that 19th-century artists filled their sketchbooks with drawings and written commentary,” he explains. “They would draw trees, rocks, valleys, and streams and then write notes about the weather patterns, color relationships, and tree identifications, and that would inform their studio paintings. I followed their example and made a lot of small sketches during the workshop, and now I’m reading some books on woodland plants, species of trees, and cloud formation. All of that is helping me formulate plans for studio paintings that are filled with scientific details and, at the same time, are formulated out of the total sensory experience of being in the landscape. The hope is that the studio paintings will say more about what I felt, saw, and studied.”

Collins recently exhibited a 50"-x-120" panoramic landscape painting and over fifty preparatory drawings, plein air sketches, color studies, and paintings for that picture in a solo exhibition, entitled "Rediscovering the American Landscape: The Eastholm Project," at Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York City. In writing about the experience of using outdoor studies to create a large studio painting, he indicated that he loved “the connection between painting outside—scrupulously observing the details and nuances of nature—and painting in the studio, remembering, inventing, and conceptualizing the landscape. Each time I paint outside, I’m desperately trying to record all that I can, to organize the infinite complexity of nature, but sometimes it is hard to know what to look for and pay attention to. Once I’m back in the studio, I find myself asking a million questions—such as whether the horizon could conceivably be pink at this time of day or the surface of the water could ever be lighter than the sky in a certain context—and wishing that I had noticed more when I was outside. At these moments, I vow that I will pay more attention when I’m outdoors, and when I go outside, I end up working with a renewed intensity because I have so many questions in my mind.”


Rock Study by Nicholas Hiltner, 2007, oil on linen, 8 x 10. Collection the artist.	Rock in Stream by Nicholas Hiltner, 2007, graphite and gouache on paper, 6 x 9. Collection the artist.

The Tree’s Place exhibition will include many new drawings, oil sketches, and studio paintings that Collins, Schlaht, and Hiltner created since the 2007 workshop. “Although I’ve done a lot of landscape paintings in the past, these will be some of the first completed paintings created since I began pursuing this broadly informed approach to the landscape,” Schlaht mentions. All three of the artists (who will once again be joined by Edward Minoff) will be conducting a second workshop this summer through the Hudson River School for Landscape from July 17 through August 22, 2008, and they are developing a series of workshops that will be offered in the future.

Having grown up with a passionate interest in the sea and all forms of boating, McGurl, Demers, and Davis have had a personal connection to nature that goes back to their childhood experiences. “When I was an art student, my work consisted of landscapes, figures, and still lifes,” McGurl recalls. “Unconsciously, my work moved toward landscape as I delved deeper into what gave the most emotional feedback. My struggle then became one of getting beyond the rendering so the paintings were more real in every sense. At this stage, I can pretty much paint what I want and it comes out looking realistic, but I want it to actually be real. I want to paint a tree that exists in three dimensions and also will die in the winter and bloom again in the spring. I want my water to have depth and transparency and movement. I want the sun to be warm and so bright you have to squint, and the sky to extend through the universe. I want the viewer to become part of the painting so that he or she feels totally immersed in the realm I am trying to convey.”


Field Study for Autumn Point by Donald Demers, 2007, oil on linen, 6 x 8. Private collection.	Autumn Point by Donald Demers, 2007, oil on linen, 20 x 30. Private collection. This painting was exhibited at the American Masters show at the Salmagundi Art Club, in New York City, in May 2008.

McGurl goes on to say he understood from an early age that in order to paint an encompassing landscape he had to understand it as well as he did the information that helped him navigate a sailboat. He had to understand the forces that impact the shape and movement of the clouds, waves, branches, and grasses, as well as the physics of light that allows people to understand the texture, shape, density, transparency, and distance of what they see. “Without thoroughly knowing what I am painting, I can’t reach that higher level,” he explains. “Sketching from nature gives me a better familiarity with the elements of nature, not just the plants and animals but all the other parts that make up the world. That allows me to use them in the studio, not so much in a botanical, meteorological, or topographical sense but in terms of how these elements react to light, space, and color. Observation also gives me organic patterns on which to base the forms.

“I lean toward painting what I see, but I still want to understand why the world looks the way it does,” McGurl adds. “Why does the pine grove grow on a particular side of a mountain? Why is one cloud darker than the others? What’s causing the light to take on an amber glow? By understanding this, I can give more truth to my art and better master the scene developing on the canvas.”

Demers also makes sketches that inform his studio paintings. “I make graphite, watercolor, and oil sketches outdoors, often leaving them unfinished so I am not tempted to repeat myself in the studio,” he explains. “Once I have identified a subject worth developing into a larger painting, I close my eyes and think about what the observed scene really meant to me. That understanding becomes my guiding principle as I try to clarify the image on canvas.”


Into the Sun by Joseph McGurl, 2008, oil, 30 x 40. Courtesy Hammer Galleries, New York, New York.	Thumbnail—Composition Study by Joseph McGurl, 2007, graphite, 8 x 10. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Both Demers and Davis are closely associated with the field of marine art, or paintings that present accurate representations of both historic and contemporary sailing vessels. These artists, like most realist painters, are often negatively criticized for placing an emphasis on the literal content of their pictures. “Every painter balances the physical and emotional aspects of making pictures,” Demers points out. “Whether someone is painting a figure, a bowl of fruit, or a yacht, he or she is connecting to the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the subject while trying to also express a personal response to it. The challenge is to have the subject be very specific while also offering a personal interpretation or expression. A masterful painting can be a portrait of a specific person, flower, or plot of land that still conveys strong emotions and an informed understanding. The point of this exhibition is to clarify that landscape paintings based on observation, study, and imagination can be both specific and profound.”

About the Artists

Jacob Collins earned a B.A. degree from Columbia College, in New York City, and studied art at the New York Academy of Art, in New York City; Ecole Albert Defois, in Lex Cerqueux, France; and the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan. He is the founder of The Water Street Atelier, and he a founder and the director of The Grand Central Academy of Art, both in New York City. Collins has had over twenty solo shows and numerous group exhibitions at prominent galleries in North America and Europe. His work is included in several American institutions, including Harvard's Fogg Museum and Amherst's Mead Art Museum as well as a multitude of important private collections. Collins is currently represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern, in New York City; the John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Meredith Long & Co., in Houston. For more information, visit his website at www.jacobcollinspaintings.com.

William R. Davis grew up in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and in 1987 he was the first artist to mount a solo exhibition at the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut. Since then his landscape and marine paintings have been included in exhibitions organized by the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery, in Fairfield, Connecticut; the Cape Cod Museum of Art, in Dennis, Massachusetts; The Copley Society of Art, in Boston; the American Society of Marine Artists; The Guild of Boston Artists; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; Hammer Galleries, in New York City; Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts, and others. For more information, visit his website at www.williamrdavis.net.

Donald Demers studied at the School of the Worchester Art Museum and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston, before launching a career as an illustrator and fine artist. He is a fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists and a signature member of the Plein-Air Painters of America, and his paintings have been included in exhibitions organized by the Haggin Museum, in Stockton, California; the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts, among others. For more information, visit his website at www.donalddemers.com.

Nicholas Hiltner studied at The Cleveland Institute of Art and later with Jacob Collins at The Water Street Atelier. He has exhibited his artwork at John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco, and Meredith Long & Company, in Houston, and teaches at The Grand Central Academy of Art, in New York City. For more information on Hiltner, visit his website at www.nhiltner.com.

Joseph McGurl grew up working with his father, James McGurl, who was a muralist and scenic designer, and he studied with Ralph Rosenthal at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and privately with Robert Cormier. He subsequently graduated from Massachusetts College of Art, in Boston, and worked for a few years as a yacht captain. He is represented by Hammer Galleries, in New York City; Robert Wilson Galleries, on Nantucket, Massachusetts; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts. For more information, visit his website at www.josephmcgurl.com.

Travis Schlaht earned a B.A. degree from the University of the Pacific, in Stockton, California, and later joined The Water Street Atelier, where he studied with Jacob Collins. He has exhibited his artwork in New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Houston, and he currently teaches at The Water Street Atelier and The Grand Central Academy of Art, both in New York City. For more information on Schlaht, visit his website at www.classicist.org/grandcentralacademy/schlaht.html.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.