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| Heart recycled soda cans 2011 |
In June, I drove up to Palo Alto to pick up my son from his first year of college. A feat in and of it’s self. He returns home a young man. I have to fight the urge to restore life to what it was before he left, with me running around doing all the taking care of him. He is in charge of his life now. And I really, really, really want to respect that. No mama’s boy here.
When I go up there I always make time to visit the campus art museum.
At the Cantor Art Center, they had a show of contemporary
California artists: Bob Arneson, Janet Fish, Nathan Olivera, Viola Frey, Alice Neel, Wayne Thiebaud and many more, Frank Stella. George Segal, Calder, Manuel Neri (my sculpture teacher at Davis),Roland Peterson (my painting teacher at Davis).
For a few of the artists, there was a dvd that you could press to hear either the artist or someone talking about their work.
One such was on Alice Neel. The person sharing about her work was someone who had sat for a portrait by her. Their words struck me as profound.
She spoke of entering into a nonverbal dialogue with her subject. One where for Alice the first brush stroke was the hardest, akin to where to begin. And also about how the subject has agreed to let her probe, the subject has agreed to let her see what she is going to see.
Because I have never done portraits where someone sits for me, I was intrigued by the idea of how it goes down. What the process is like from the point of view of the painter. Each painter has a style and way they think. Which is reflected in the outcome of the painting.
I have always been envious of realistic painters. The ones that can make their paintings look almost real and of painters that paint realistic portraits. What skill, focus, technique and ability to use representational colors. I couldn’t do it. Wait.
I could do it if I wanted to. But I don’t. I like Jawlensky’s work, the colors, the craziness.
What I like about painting with acrylic is if you don’t like it you just paint over it. And over it, until you like it.
Back to the Alice Neel. Being probed, choosing to let the painter see what they are going to see. It’s like being naked.
Except you are not, but baring yourself for all of who you are to be seen, there is a vulnerableness. But also the painter has a point of view of what they are thinking when they begin the work.
It so impresses me that I took notes to remember this.
When I paint, I paint what I am thinking about. I am vulnerable. I open myself to be understood or misunderstood. Definitely I am responding to the stimuli of my environment. One day I may try my hand at representational painting, for now I will enjoy looking at it.
For copyright purposes, I could not put any images in this post of the afore mentioned artists, but google them.
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