Interior Landscapes

In a recent Painter’s Keys newsletter, Robert Genn summarized some of the key ideas from Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” These definitely resonated with me, and I thought it was worth reposting them here.

Your work needs to be independent of others’ work.
You must not compare yourself to others.
No one can help you. You have to help yourself.
Criticism leads to misunderstandings and defeatism.
Work from necessity and your compulsion to do it.
Work on what you know and what you are sure you love.
Don’t observe yourself too closely, just let it happen.
Don’t let yourself be controlled by too much irony.
Live in and love the activity of your work.
Be free of thoughts of sin, guilt and misgiving.
Be touched by the beautiful anxiety of life.
Be patient with the unresolved in your heart.
Try to be in love with the questions themselves.
Love your solitude and try to sing with its pain.
Be gentle to all of those who stay behind.
Your inner self is worth your entire concentration.
Allow your art to make extraordinary demands on you.
Bear your sadness with greater trust than your joy.
Do not persecute yourself with how things are going.
It’s good to be solitary, because solitude is difficult.
It’s good to love, because love is difficult.
You are not a prisoner of anything or anyone.

This month I have a painting in the Associated Artists of Winston-Salem’s American Landscape Show. The show runs from October 12th through Novermber 18th at the AAWS Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC. Unfortunately I won’t be able to see the show since it’s across the country from me, but if anyone out there in web-land gets a chance to check it out I’d love to hear about it.

The painting blog has been rather quiet lately, but there’s a reason for that and it has to do with wings. Almost 20 years ago when I was in college I learned to fly and earned my private pilot’s license. I haven’t really been back in a small airplane since. That is until last week. There have been many times over the years that I have thought about flying again, but it’s only just recently that everything has fallen into place. So last week I arranged some time with a local flight instructor and have started working to get current again.

So far it’s been a wonderful experience, and in a couple of different ways. Flying is one of the few things in life that I’m as passionate about as painting, and I think there a lot of parallels between the two. As with painting, in flying there are many, many things one has to master to become a competent and proficient pilot. And even after basic proficiency is achieved you never stop learning (at least you better keep learning unless you want to end up as another sad crash story in the newspaper). The more you learn the more you realize the bar was higher than you thought, and it starts to sink in exactly how much you don’t know.

And as with painting, flying can be very challenging and, at times, humbling. I felt that way last week after those first couple of flights. Some things were easier than I thought, but other things were harder. Getting the feel back for certain things again (especially landings) will probably take a few hours, but that should come with practice. But the really great thing about flying is that it invites you to take on these challenges and improve. Heck, that’s part of the fun. Overshoot your selected touch down point on landing? Well, go back and try it again and practice some more. Struggle with that crosswind on landing? Find an instructor and go out and work on crosswind landings. The flying culture and the pilot community tend to promote competence and encourage a constant desire to improve. And it doesn’t really worry all that much about ideas like talent or professional status. The name of the game is becoming a better pilot.

Even in just a few hours of flying I’ve been reminded what an important lesson this is, not just with flying but in everything in life, and especially painting. Often I have a tendency to get discouraged when things aren’t going well in the studio or in the field. And many times it’s difficult for me to face these situtations without beating myself up. But figuring out a way to meet the challenges inherent in painting or anything else without becoming negative or defeatist is the key to progress and growth. So it’s been ablsolutely wonderful to be back in the air after so many years. But it’s been just as wonderful to be reminded of this very important lesson as well.

In their wonderful book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland provide what they call an “Operating Manual for Not Quitting” artmaking:

OPERATING MANUAL FOR NOT QUITTING

1. Make friends with others who make art, and share your in-progress work with each other frequently.
2. Learn to think of [1], rather than than the Museum of Modern Art, as the destination of your work. (Look at it this way: If all goes well, MOMA will eventually come to you.)

When this book was first published (1994) we were still getting used to the idea of the Internet, and blogs were probably not even a twinkle in some software developer’s eye. But now we’re in the Web 2.0 era and blogs are all the rage, it seems to me that they provide an absolutely wonderful way to follow the above sage advice. In fact, I’ve found (rather unexpectedly) that the more I participate in the community of painter’s blogs the more I actually want to paint. Sharing work in progress and seeing what other painters are doing has definitely given my creative momentum a boost, and reading about others creative work and process has been incredibly inspiring. An unanticipated reward!

A couple of weekends ago I finally completed a project I’ve wanted to finish for quite a while. Inspired by the beautiful taborets at Wind River Arts, I decided after I received my new easel I’d take the computer table I use as a taboret and give it an upgrade. After a visit to the local home store for some hardwood and a little hardware, the basic frame was fairly easy to put together.

Currently I have a piece of non-glare acrylic I’m using for the palette. (I normally use glass but I’d thought I’d give this a try.) So far I love the new taboret top, and it cost me less than $100 to build. That is, of course, if you don’t count the cost of the tools I bought to build it.

(Oil on Canvas ~ 6×8″)

This is a first in a series of studies I’m currently working on, with three more to follow.

A few months ago I had the oppotunity to visit the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ. Not a big museum, they have a suprisiningly diverse and interesting collection of American art. This includes paintings from the Hudson River School (Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand in particular), other nineteenth century artists such as Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, William Merrit Chase, and George Inness, and twentieth century artists including Edward Hopper, Robert Motherwell, and Andy Warhol.

Of all the interesting art there, one of the things that left the biggest impression on me was the room they have dedicated to George Inness. (A native of New York, towards the end of his life he bought a house and studio in Montclair.) The “Inness Room” contains around 14 paintings that span the artist’s career, from early work in the style of the Hudson River School to late paintings that are unquestionably and uniquely George Inness. The progression is fascinating, and it’s rather like having a retrospective on permenant display.

If you ever find yourself in Montclair, the museum is worth a trip. Heck, if you’re in New York City and just want to take a little trip over the river, it’s well worth it to see this great collection of American art.

Apparently I’m not the only one thinking of daily painters these days. In case you missed it, this week there was a great article in USA Today on Duane Keiser and Justin Clayton. There’s no doubt to me that blogging, small paintings, and selling over the web are opening up original oil painting to a lot of people who didn’t know about it or felt they couldn’t afford it. Not to mention there’s some really good painting going on out there as well. Cool stuff!

Working small is another valuable lesson I learned from Scott Christensen. In his workshop, Scott had us take what I thought was already a small canvas (6×8″) and divide it up into four rectangles. Then he encouraged us to to fill them with several small, quick studies using the following approach:

1. Create a small thumbnail of the basic design.
2. Premix colors for each major color/value in the painting (no more than around 8 colors or so). For example, in a ‘typical’ landscape this would be the sky color, the light and shadow for the upright trees, the light and shadow for the ground plane, and the light and shadow for the slanting plane (mountains).
3. Attempt to capture the essential information in 20 minutes or less. You should be able to tell pretty quickly whether the small painting is working or not.
4. If the study doesn’t work, either do another one of the same scene or move on. Don’t beat the study to death.

The benefits of working is this fashion are numerous. First, working like this you can cover the 6×8″ panel with four paintings (instead of one) in 60-90 minutes, depending on how fast you paint. The benefit here is that you’ve practiced problem solving four times in the span usually spent on just one study. In addition, you’ve also had the opportunity to designs four paintings rather than just one. If the study doesn’t work out (which many don’t), you’ve only spent a few minutes on it. (I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted in the past beating studies to death that were going nowhere.) This encourages you to try to capture the essential information and move on. Also because of their size, if one study doesn’t work out, it doesn’t seem as daunting to try another version of the same scene.

Working small can take the pressure off, and it also helps avoid the “dead horse” syndrome of beating studies to death trying to create finished paintings. It’s also a more effecient way to learn. In the same amount of time it takes to do a larger painting, a painter working in this fashion can practice solving many more problems, work in many more types of light, and create many more designs. And hopefully more learning opportunities will translates into more learning.