By Diane: Ice Storm and how I as a widow process the second acquittal

Rose buds incased in ice but the freezing rain did not last. Though others in Albany were without power for day, our neighborhood was much more fortunate with only a short outage.

   

Friday I wanted some comfort food when I woke with no power.  Going outside for firewood at 4:30 AM, the only light was from the sky lit by surrounding areas with power.  The dim sky light was enhanced by light bouncing back from the ice covered earth. Silence everywhere until I heard the crack of trees breaking. But I did not fear for myself because I knew the sound was not on my property.  Fisherman Hubby took care of our trees. And last week my grandson and girlfriend pruned the fruit trees severely.  Several years ago the rotting birch tree was downed. We did not have shade in the summer, but in winter I feel a little better for not having big, old trees around the house.

        I got a good fire going with just one match. I felt a surge of confidence. Just maybe I will be OK living in place.  It took awhile for the firebox to get hot but I did finally have hot chocolate and left over roast beef with fresh steamed vegetables on two corn tortillas. I learned a faster meal could be had by placing the tortillas on aluminum foil. I was satisfied.  

        Almost 7:00 AM I was surprised to get power back. But not trusting the outcome later, I emptied the ice from the wheelbarrow and brought in wood from the stacks between the house and studio. 

But still nearly no contact with the outside world until afternoon!  My server was down. Then OP B TV coverage was down but finally figured out the radio option on my lap top. 

         I heard the closing statements of the trial of the impeachment. So my thoughts went to how these arguments are being received. All that really maters is public opinion. His Senate trial is not a criminal trial. Trump should be tried as a criminal in State and Federal courts. 

         Though I am very much  a Left Liberal, I believe Trump should not be the main target of disgust. I feel collectively guilty. I'll explain later in another post tomorrow.

         All afternoon rain or shine I heard chain saws in the distance. By 3:00 PM most of the ice had melted. And after listening to the last part of the trial on the radio, I could turn on TV for a short while listening to pundits speculate on the motives of the Republicans who voted not guilty.

         I believe we are all human and mostly good but sometimes do very, very, bad, bad things. Criminal behavior is real;  the trouble with using the word "evil"  as a hot button word is that it can be used to categorize behavior so continued searching for meaning is stopped.  Like in destructive, polarizing propaganda, in my opinion, on both sides.  Bad propaganda often is based on the core conviction that bad tendencies dominate behavior. When our core shifts to the belief that we are mostly bad, we will believe statements that validate this core belief without examining the complexities.

         Watched cartoons and children's programs instead of repetitive news analysis and predictions.  I read some of my first issue of January and February "Mother Jones" and ordered "Nation" to inform my more Liberal opinions.

          For a snack I had microwaved sweet potato dipped in ground almonds. For lunch I had steamed salmon, salad and fruit. For dinner I had Romaine lettuce salad, home made chunky beef pot roast soup and sweet potato/salmon mash softened with milk and a thin melted pad of butter.

         Sunday morning I was treated by Mr. Rodger's trip to a museum. In addition to a wonderful demonstration of how to make the experience exciting for preschooler to early youth, I learned that a Van Gogh country landscape had similarities to finger-painting. The grass fields forming a patch work quilt of fields moving back to the horizon.  Van Gogh's brush work can be likened to thumbs making vertical short lines in the foreground.  Then with each more distant patch  progressively smaller fingers make lighter shorter vertical lines and the sky moshed around and round with all fingers. His mark making so much like the marks of a hand and finger might be part of the appeal of his style.  Can I develop this connection in my own paintings?

      

by Diane: Brushing up for teaching watercolor workshop

Ten more days for me to get ready for teaching a watercolor workshop Saturday, November 2, at the Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center Fall Creek Art Festival.

This year the workshop will be entirely different in focus from years past. The focus will be on the brush and the marks they make naturally. The marks from a single brush is dependent upon how it is filled with paint or ink, how it is held and moved. The brush marks can be individual to each person. Their desires, skills as well as the paints and surfaces they choose enters into the results. The numerous ways the brush is handled is like a vocabulary is to the writer.

Brushes are advertised as if each brush has a single purpose like liner, blender, mop, round pointed for detail, or long ones for calligraphy. If limited to their advertised label, their full range of natural mark making characteristics are missed. Perhaps the advertising labels are to get more sales. For example, the number 1 liner made by the Princeton Art and British Co. has extraordinary possibilities. When the entire length is rolled in wet fluid watercolor or ink so it  holds its maximum capacity, it is capable of making a line that goes, goes and goes increasingly thin and faint.

 

If the 1/8" wide by 3/4" long liner is swiped sideways along its length it makes shapes.

Many lines close together make textural shapes. These two methods are among many ways to use a single brush type. For me personally, getting to know a brush is a springboard to abstracting the subject as well as revealing a story  of how the painting was made.  Secondly, as I become familiar with a brush, I feel  how it might be expressive of how I feel about a subject.

My fourth painting of "Turkeys in the City" has just a few different

uses of the liner brush other than the usual use of it for the rigging on ships or tree branches. The open spaces between the brush strokes makes it easy for me to make major corrections even as the painting is near completion. I just noticed the heads of the turkeys are too large.

  

 

The third painting of Wild Turkeys in the City was painted with a number 12 round Kolinsky Legend brush made from the tail hairs of Russian mink ( in last week's blog I wrote incorrectly that it was sable.) Because it comes to a point it makes good curved feather-like strokes. Also the large brush makes nice big washes. The signature characteristic of the big Kolinsky brush is the round corners from ample wet color stored in the many hairs in the brush's rounded bowl.

 

The first turkey painting to the right consists of a build up of layer upon layer of washes using the the 1/2" Simply Simmons 1 stroke plat long . During the process I would put a wash on and then leave it to do some mundane household task, coming back for another wash when the painting was completely dry. I became fond of this synthetic hair brush. In this painting I felt it was forced

In the second painting of turkeys using the Simply Simmons 1/2 inch flat,  my initial drawing in paint did not go well, so on subsequent layers I was able to draw a new outer edge of the turkeys' heads. The right angle of the brush's tip lent itself to making angular shapes in the drawing and in filling in the background helping to unify the paintings. The lighter early drawing left a nice transition from the very dark background to the very white of the head giving the head a three dimensional form.

 

 

Branch with Fruit, Shih T'ao, Ch'ing period

Seeing an exhibit at the  Center Pompidou in Paris inspired my focus for the watercolor  workshop.  side by side were relics from prehistory with abstract works  of 20th century artists.  Prehistory A Modern Enigma reminded me to be mindful of how the marks of tools govern the form of all visual art expression from calligraphy on paper to lettering on stone. From watercolor paintings on paper to silk screen prints.

 The Chinese letter shapes are composed of a number of specially designed brush strokes. The form of alphabets made by the brush are formed in the character of what brushes will do. The letters made by a pen nib and brushes repeated many times take on the different characteristics of the tool that made them. 

Writing with pen or brush also take on the personality of the writer. I want to extend the personal touch to my own painting and inspire students towards their own style in the use of the brush.

 

by Diane; My changing ideas on teaching about paint brushes

Students in the past pressed me to teach them the uses of each kind of brush. They were used to artists on TV always talking abut the kind of brush they were using for different painting tasks. I believed brush detail to be just chatter to fill in the empty times as well as making it easy for listeners to copy.
My approach was to leave detail unanswered so students could embark on a painting as though it were a journey of getting to know what their tools can do as they paint. The brushes were unimportant as compared to quality paper and color and composition. These other basics were all I wanted to tackle in my short hour and half workshops at the Oregon State Fall Creek Hatchery and Research Center Fall Festival the first Saturday in November the past nine years.

The natural hair1/4 inch Blick Master stroke Eclipse one stroke inch and a quarter length holds enough ink to continue painting for a long time.

The 1/2 inch synthetic oval Golden Fleece was the only brush used on this 12' x9" watercolor.The oval shape challenges me when trying to fill in corners so in response I abstracted the hands. The tool can make for shaping differences.

 

The 1/2 inch synthetic Simple Simmons 1 Stroke plat long brush holds a reservoir of paint. It has so much body that the squared off edge works its way into the painting.

 

This much abused 1/2 inch sable brush has been used extensively with my acrylic paints and there is build up of hard paint at the base near the brush ferrule. Some hairs are broken and it separates as the brush empties the paint. Love these brushes with character.   At the workshop I will provide some of my old brushes.

Answer to how to keep paintings from becoming muddy

To the right muddy right area above the cat was disturbing before I brightened and lightened all adjacent areas and darkened the lower foreground.

Lesson: 

No color by itself is muddy. If your intention is to make a pleasant mood there are a number of corrections possible.  Think about the relationships of  the picture as a whole. Mutilated colors can sing making other colors more beautiful when they transition to colors that are either significantly lighter or darker. They sing with complementary colors that are their opposites on the color wheel.

Master Artist Klimt Used Negative Space and Placement of the figure for Expressive Impact

In Gustav Klimt's portrait II of Adele Bloch-Bauer the colors and style of  painting likely refers to
early 20th century Chinese Mille Fleures Imperial type porcelains.

(The Adele portrait is from Wikipedia. The detail from a porcelain is from my personal photograph by son-in-law Samuel Edge.  The vase is now on loan to The Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Oregon)

The Golden Girl, The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O'Conner is a scholarly book by a journalist.  From my painter's perspective and my Jewish grandfather's knowledge of the Silk Road influences to European art the esoteric symbolism was missed by O'Conner. 

  The second Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait (1912) is a special piece of historic symbolism. The background colors are the same as on Chinese porcelain Adele was known to collect.  Some colors were developed in the Levant and Europe carried to Asia by Arab and Jewish traders. In the 19th Century improvement in color s was assisted by the Jesuits. The Chinese figures and flowers in the background are in the style of Chinese porcelain painters making the portrait painting symbolic of the back and forth exchange of technology and artistic inspiration between East and West. With China's current interest in the Silk Road perhaps the painting will become part of the tourist experience.

Probably the gold leaf in both Adele portraits has special significance as on the porcelain vase. According to my grandfather the gold in the negative area is like the gold thread that connects life past, present and future. Gold leaf on the edge of pages in a book makes each page precious page symbolic of a day of life.

Am I going too far to see Adel likened to a porcelain vessel?  Her skin as luminously white as china? The rim of her hat - the abundantly flaring lip of a vase edged in white? White symbolizes mourning. The red is symbolic of virtue and truth.  Black symbolizes bruising and evil according to the book,  Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives by C.A.S. Williams, first edition 1931. The stylization of  her body - the body of the vase with arm and hands the handle?  The tiny feet the base of the vase?

To see more of Klimt's paintings and see a bio look at this web site:
http://klimtgallery.org

Future posts will cover how other master artists have employed negative space.