About Time Off

I have taken time off, away from my usual and beloved routine, to spend with family and friends during these holidays. It is not easy for me to do that as I love to work and feel safest when I am taking care of the business of life. My parents each had small shops in Brooklyn at a time when it was against the law to open a business on Sundays. The cop on the beat would turn the doorknob on the front door to make sure you weren’t trying to fool anybody and doing business on this day of rest. My father locked his door and worked in the back part of his cabinet shop. My mother would try to get him out to a movie and sometimes succeeded. I understand my father’s need to work. It feels like the right thing to be doing most of the time.

The biggest painting I have done is named Time Off (see also About Scale) because I did it for fun in intermittent bursts between what I considered more serious pursuits. The other projects that were in progress were well thought out and I had plans for them. Time Off was about putting colors together to please myself with no thought about any kind of outcome; I thought I would play with it and then take it apart. I put twelve inch squares of color painted on paper into groups on a twenty foot wall in my studio. I started with one group of five rows, four panels in each and went on to make three groups of that format. At that point I thought I might mount each of these groups separately as I did later with Structures and some others in 2008. But then I filled in the gaps and it became one painting. After that came a big job. I had to think of it differently. It was one thing to compose groups of sixteen or twenty pieces and keep each color panel close to those others that most enhanced it, and at the same time have the color distributed through the entire piece in a way that made some visual sense. I had never attempted to do that on such scale as had come together here. It could look like total chaos, which is not my inclination ever, or it could be harmonious and serene and coherent.

While that took a lot of time it never became tedious or laborious. It was always time off for me and a joy to work on from inception to completion. If I ever were to win a to week of all paid vacation on a beach in a tropical paradise I would give it away. I would rather have time off at work or with my family any place on this earth.

I use Time Off (with me in it for scale) at my web site. The image above was taken at the show I had with The University of California, Humboldt Division, two years ago. The details are ©2002, Mixed Media Collage on Canvas, image 62” x 198” on canvas 84” x 255” .

About Scale

TIME OFF, pictured here was photographed before completion. If you look closely you might notice that a lot of the elements are taped in place. It was finally mounted on canvas and measures 62 x 198 inches.

At a very pleasant dinner party recently, my friend and hostess Jane, asked me to address the subject of scale. I have worked from tiny (3.5 x 2 inches) to very large (62 x 198 inches) but I have not given a lot of thought to scale. While I have heard it said that small is as much a challenge as large, there is definitely some contrast. What is the same (and I speak only from personal experience) is the attention. The involvement with the project at hand, that effort to “get it right” seems the same. The difference lies in seeing the work — how far from it you need to get to see it and then how to keep that image in mind when you are close up and nose to the canvas (or whatever the surface) again. Therein lies some of the greater challenge of a large work. And then of course there is the pure physicality of working on something really big — just getting from one part of it to another and —  yikes! Moving it! The canvas pictured here was stapled to the wall; my son helped me get it up there; my daughter watched over me as I adhered the painted squares in place (using a diagram to be sure I was putting each where it belonged), and a group of talented young interns from the First Street Gallery took it down, rolled it and rehung it for the show I had with Humboldt State University. I was totally daunted by the process and amazed at how well these young people handled it.

So why work that large? Well, mostly for the presence and majesty that something that large can have, though clearly not all big paintings make the grade. Robert Motherwell translated a very small gestural sketch into an enormous painting that hangs at the National Gallery in Washington DC. The original little one had the energy of his hand and the life in him. The big one, which I raced up the stairs to see when I got to the museum, was totally dead. A zombie. In the next room was a huge painting by Mark Rothko that caught me by surprise and brought tears to my eyes. It was wonderfully beautiful. Rothko said he wanted his viewers to enter into his paintings and so made them large enough for that. This one sucked me right in. The large size in Rothko’s hands and in some of Motherwell’s more successful works, becomes heroic. There’s a power to command your attention when the artist deals well with that scale. So why work small? The answer for me is for the intimacy of the process and its result. You must stay close as you work; you can always hold it in your field of vision, and the viewer must get close to see it. I like all of that.

There it is, Jane. I have addressed the subject of scale, a personal view. Comments always gratefully accepted.

P.S. If you haven’t already subscribed to this blog, please do. Just go to the Feedblitz icon in the sidebar, put in your email address and follow the instructions. You will then receive the posts as email with the images and links back to the blog. I really like writing it and want to have an audience for my prattle. It is the best remedy I have found so far for the loneliness that can come from so much working in solitude. And any comments you are inspired to leave (where it says “Comments” below the posts) are truly welcome.

About the ColorWalls

While I am making a painting, I live within the limits of that rectangular flat surface. If I am painting for a gallery show, I am aware of the look of the exhibition space. I want the work to be appropriate in size and strength to its surroundings. 

Lately I have been thinking that I would rather not do any more gallery shows. Exhibitions are disruptive, expensive and sometimes disappointing in terms of the response I am hoping for. What has been a more practical and rewarding operation for me has been working with consultants who place the work and send me a check in the mail. (More about that in Blog by Joan Gold: About Marketing)

So I’ve been thinking about where I would like my paintings to hang because it’s nice to have that vision in mind as I work. It kind of helps me to get clear about the work itself and pushes it to resolution. If the work is not destined for gallery shows, where will I imagine it coming to rest? The answer is on the walls of any interiors that can accommodate them easily where people live, work or just pass through. With that picture in mind I know how I want to proceed with the next series I am planning. I am going to make colors for walls and maybe I’ll call them ColorWalls. I am going to make the paintings on heavy paper (thick, velvety, luscious etching paper), that will each focus on a color. There will be a panel about red, one about green, and one about every color that I can find a name for. The important condition that goes with these pieces is that they must be displayed in groups of three or more. More being better. Color is most interesting when juxtaposed with other colors. 

This could turn into such a big project, given the possible variations in approach, in materials and in scale, that I imagine it will keep me happy and focused until I croak. And just so that doesn’t happen too soon, I have invested in the new Jane Fonda workout video and a new set of hand weights. I’ll need to endure for at least another twenty years.

The image above is the project of the moment, a precursor to those described above. They measure 50” x 25” each and for the moment are made of acrylic on etching paper. They will soon be adorned with some collage elements (already taped in place) and then embellished with pastels to illuminate them. They were started at Yaddo (see About Yaddo) more than twenty years ago and will be finished now.

About Artist Prints

The tradition of artists making prints: etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, silk-screen and such, reaches  far back into art history and up to the twenty-first century.  Goya’s Caprichos, made in the eighteenth century, are aquatints, a process in use from about 1650. Albrecht Durer was an engraver in the fifteenth century. We also have drypoint, mezzotint and monotypes. And now we have the phenomenal advent of print by inkjet. I have a vested interest in promoting this process as, I might have mentioned before, I am hooked on it. But I have seen that it does not yet get the respect that I would like it to inspire. 

Today I will describe the process which produced the image above, an original print. Original because it exists (as do some of the other giclées I have exhibited here) only as a print. It is a lengthy, meticulous and expensive (the archival inks) operation which I revel in. So, in a rather large nutshell, I started with three of the Memory series that I described a blog or two ago. I took the flower shape from one; it was red in the original scan. The large red area came from another of these scanned old works, originally a flat opaque red on the top part of the scan. The pale pink area came from a finished piece in which I had achieved the desired degree of light. I made adjustments for contrast and scale, placement, saturation and color balance. The separate elements are arranged collage fashion, an operation for which Photoshop is well qualified. I have been working on this image for several days and will now start printing, making “proofs”, until I get the color and visible texture and interest as I want them.

I learned at school that editions were limited and each print numbered because the metal plate or wood block, or silk or whatever the print was made from deteriorated with use, making the first prints of finest quality. It seems that limiting prints done by the giclée or photographic method is about valuation or pricing. A case in point: Condé Nast is publishing a great  old photo from Vogue magazine for $2050, edition of ten. And this:  Recent auctions of giclee prints have fetched $10,800 for Annie Leibovitz, $9,600 for Chuck Close, and $22,800 for Wolfgang Tillmans.  April, 2004, Photographs, at Phillips de Pury & Company, New York. Limiting the editions in these cases keeps the price up and resale more profitable. My editions are limited because I want to go on to the next work when one has become all it can be. I print more on request but since even my collectors are interested in the next newer work, editions remain small. Numbering is an artificial embellishment; kind of silly, don’t you think? There is no deterioration of the giclée and the number printed is small by the very nature of the process.

I tried to keep this short, but got carried away again. Thanks for reading.

The image above is Red Blue Memory, 2010, giclée print, size varies. For information or to purchase any of the images on this site, please email Joan.

More information and an explanation of the term “giclée” can be found at: About Giclee Prints

Descriptions of the print processes mentioned above can be found at can be found at "P" | Subject Index | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

About Being Bored

I do not understand boredom. I have trouble fitting my life into the time allotted to me.

On the day to day there is everything I want to do, everything I think I should or need to do, and then what gets in the way, what finally gets done and trying to find the parenthesis in which to rest or escape. And afterwards moving on to whatever comes next.

On the life scale (as opposed to the day to day), there is: have I really seen, heard, tasted, experienced, all that was available to me? Will I die having missed something critical to the experience of life itself?  Have I done what I could with the gifts I was given, meager or bountiful?  

A life was given to me. I have raced through it responding to each scenario as it presented itself or that I had myself created. Was I ever or never aware of the bigger picture? The big picture being that a great deal was provided to me to savor, to delight in, to love or to just be aware of - did I take it all in? Did I use this life, live it fully? 

I fear that I was often too focused on the moment, on the laundry, the book, the work or even on the people, to be mindful of how short the moment of this light.

Today I filled out a form giving power of attorney to others in case the situation arose in which I could not make health care decisions for myself. My MD told me that an old one he had needed to be replaced by a fresher version. Same thing, different date.

Being dead must be very boring.

The image above is a new "Little House". I plan to make several versions of little houses to celebrate the little house that is my new home. I will give them prime space in the soon-to-be-finished studio when I open it for our open studio event in June.