Painting Space

I had a conversation today with a Unitarian Universalist minister about public transportation. He said, "The difficulty is to overcome people's resistance to waiting for a bus. If it takes ten minutes for the bus to arrive, people will say take their own car because they believe that waiting is a waste of time. But it is an opportunity to read a book, look around or even talk to a person who is also waiting.

The image here is a small painting of the parking area near Elizabeth, New Jersey with New York City in the distance. I painted it in gouache during the last class on Highway Culture. I like the odd pastel palette I achieved with my new Acryla Gouache from Holbein. I wanted to explore how abstract brush marks can transfer the banality of a parking lot into something more beautiful than it is in "real" life.

Barnett Newman said in his essay, "The Sublime is Now," in 1948—"The impulse of modern art was this desire to destroy beauty." I would suggest that sixty-two years later my impulse as an artist is to look at what may be ugly and to find beauty in it through the medium of paint. Painting space—parking spaces, air over a landscape is the challenge.

Speaking of space, the studio I work in has not been painted since 1995. Today, I embarked on that journey, around the four walls of this room with its 10 foot ceilings. I'm told the room was once a barber shop. The building was built somewhere in the 1850's, the walls are easily a foot thick and the windows have deep sills in them so that I can sit and look out at the street. The walls are getting painted "Featherdown White" because the paintings are colorful enough. I like to think I'm painting space on which objects can sit.

By the time I am finished the painting space will be painted and classes will commence again. The space will become a place in which to paint. Waiting can provide much needed space to create.

Highway Culture

In preparation for the final class in Abstraction in Watercolor today (before new classes start next week), I read Lawrence Alloway's book, "Topics in American Art Since 1945". He says, "Highway culture is the hardware and sociology generated by automotive transport and the road system...Highway culture is invisible because it's taken for granted, except by those who don't like it."

I think about Monet and Pissarro–their facination with all things in the landscape that pointed to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century. Trains, roads to train stations, "gares" all point to a new wave of motion for humans. The gray tone of "Sunrise, Rouen" by Pissaro from 1895 shares his fascination with engineering and this curiosity about the ant-like work of humans. Smoke stacks and rippled water imply action and time passing. We know between the specs of paint, daubed on the surface, life is going on in Rouen. Commerce is bustling.

Last night, I drove to Lebanon, NH to take some photos for the class. I have always liked neon, growing up in New Jersey. And night time offers a whole new look at a magic world of lights against the dark. Glows in watercolor should be easy to achieve, with a patient hand and a wet-in-wet technique. I like how text from signs become shapes or meaning. Logos become compositional conundrums for the artist, because they can be read without the context of the setting.

In class today, we're going to take the theories of abstraction we've begun to study and use them in a painting of "highway culture." The American landscape is a ripe resource for imagery. We are too quick to dismiss the "ugly" or "banal." At the hand of the artist, all could become beautiful.

Archiving Photos

I walked by my shelf today with photos on it. I'm pretty organized. Its just the volume of photos that's killing me. I have boxes dating back to 1991 on my shelf and in my mother's basement, I can show you photos from my childhood. Last week, my mother came to me with photos of my great grandmother from 1875. I should be glad. How many people have access to this kind of information?

The problem is, I don't have access either. I need to sort through them. I need to catalog and identify them and mostly I need to throw out and edit. I just put 45 digital images from this weekend's ski trip on my iPhone. I stored them in iPhoto. Shall I put them on Facebook? I have over 7000 images in iPhoto right now, dating back to 2005. I like that I can't see the piles of albums, but they're all still there, taking up space in my computer, like dust mites–clutter that's almost imperceptible to the human eye.

Where do I start? I'm scanning images from family history for my mother. I'm taking pictures for my class I'm teaching tomorrow. Tell me what you think.