4:57: sunset was just a few minutes ago. fresh snow on the peaks and a cold wind combined to create these stunning colors.
now that i've completed a first round of clean up in the studio, i may be able to get back to work tomorrow, although we both continue the to experience effects of this flu.
on a perfect day, during the time we were in houston for my show, we went to the rice university campus with our friend harwood.
12:10 pm: in yesterday's post i spoke of my awakening to the need for documentation of my career as an artist. obviously, even if i had help, it can only be done incrementally. and i'm going to have to balance it with work on new projects. this is the sky earlier today; the snow will begin later this afternoon & continue through tomorrow night.
and here are a couple of the slides i found, shot very poorly. the only way these transparancies can be accurately digitized is professionally, which is what i'll do. on the left, a painting from about 1983, of 57th street, now in a corporate collection in nyc. on the right, a really lousy image i shot with my iphone of a transparency of an important 1977 painting of myself with some of the construction workers i was painting at that time in athens. of course this is just the very tip of the iceberg. much work ahead.
2:05 pm: i'll expand on this later. in brief, i began the process of locating and sending for digitization a number of important paintings which have been documented as transparancies. fortunately, they were in a dark place and seem on first look to be in ok shape. this is one of the black & white photos, which is glossy & therefore hard to shoot. during this period, i was making a series of paintings and drawings of construction workers, who would come over from a nearby site to pose. they are all in private, corporate and museum collections in Athens.
today i thought i could start working in my studio. WRONG! i'm bleary eyed and finding it hard to focus; not surprising considering i had a fairly high temp just 2 days ago. so, in desperation & after breaking a plate i did something. i just had to do something. a small, insignificant work on paper. it's a start.
i went to the PO to pick up backlogged mail and there were more large envelopes from my friend louis skidmore in houston. one of them was a NY Times article announcing the death of olga hirshhorn. olga was present that day in 1979 in their naples, florida home when joe purchased 4 of the paintings i had brought back from greece. one of them is now in the collection of the hirshhorn museum & sculpture garden, washington, d.c. which of course did not yet exist.
she was a very sweet woman, and good for joe, who was difficult & had been married 3 times previously. god bless you olga.
can't do any work in my studio due to slow recovery from the flu. nor can we take our walks up the creek.
5 days remaining to my gremillion show, which closes on 11/28. the paintings will, of course remain in the gallery, where they'll be shown to clients and delivered with one of the two large gremillion trucks. here's one about to be taken to a client's home by my good friend and gremillion sales person, harwood.
12:56 pm: as i lie in bed, unable to do a hell-of-a-lot due to flu symptoms, i ponder what's next. surely, as actionlab, our startup educational product, ramps up and moves towards school sales, i'll be more engaged in supporting that vision. and, over the next week or so, once my symptoms become lees severe, i'll be loading the video i recently shot at 2 middle schools in edwards and doing some preliminary editing on my imac in the studio.
that said, my houston show is only up for another week. then, the ANO KATO paintings will likely never be seen together again. they'll join the gremillion inventory and be sent to various homes and businesses as the demand arises, and sold one by one or, in some cases perhaps, in pairs.
i definitely don't feel complete with this series, and as soon as i feel better, i plan to do more. and i'm also very motivated to continue my new grey series. the 4 paintings i've completed thus far in the series have all been painted over existing abstract collages i didn't feel satisfied with. locally, there's one more i can cannibalize hanging in elephant cloud, our local grocery store. and a few that will be sent back from gremillion, such as stivari, 38x38" which you see on the right. after that? don't know. will i create new abstract collages specifically for the purpose of painting over them with acrylics, as with the others? we shall see. click on LINK below to view the grey series.
10:41 am: it was kind of inevitable, after all that time with the middle school kids in edwards, that i come down with the flu. well i did. drippy, achy, temperature sensitive, etc.
i'm beginning the steep learning curve presented by any new camera, especially a sophisticated one like the nikon D7200. so i tweaked a couple of the grey series paintings this morning, getting the closer to the originals than yesterday. still have a long way to go. my friend, photographer martin will come over next week and give me a lesson and some tips, and i'm devouring the manual now that i'm in bed and can't go to the studio.
below, the results of today's tweaks:
4:49 pm: the eastern sky at 4:15 pm shot with my new nikon D7200.
9:38 am: oh, the difference a good camera makes. my sony NEX 7 was used to shoot the photo on the left. it was stolen from a friend's car while we were having dinner at prego following my opening on nov. 5th. so i replaced it with a nikon D7200 with a nikor 18-140mm lens. it's a steep learning curve, so i'm doing some preliminary test shots of paintings here in the house. on the right, a test shot of the same painting: grey 448x48" and on row 2, another comparison of the same grey series painting shot with the sony & the nikon.
just back from our monthly visit to edwards, colorado. we've been working with students and teachers at 2 middle schools, introducing them to our product, actionlab, which provides them with tools and curriculum for project based learning in all subject areas, with a multitude of choices adapted to a variety of learning styles.
we're documenting the entire process, and are always energized by and amazed at the student's enthusiasm and creativity. we've arranged for some of them to make a short presentation at the upcoming vail TEDEX on 1/8/16 at the vilar performing arts center in vail. the kids are totally excited and making huge leaps in their capacity to locate and develop their projects.
SLIDE SHOW NOTES BY PAGE:
1. PARADE: this is the source of the entire ANO KATO series: a painting titled parade, which is based on photos i shot of a parade on skoufa street in athens in 2009. this painting was part of my 2010 exhibition at skoufa gallery in athens. a few years later in my colorado studio, i discovered hundreds of photos shot from above, that i had been taking over the years. it was then i recognized myself in this perspective from above, how much i love foreshortening and simply seeing intimate, ordinary moments from that perspective. thus the ANO KATO series came into being.
2. PASSAGES: i shared these selections of some of my favorite passages in the ANO KATO paintings, spoke about the meaning of passages in this context and asked the attendees to wander about for 5-10 minutes and pick out their favorite passages, then report back which ones they chose and why.
3. PROCESS: here i spoke of my love of the process of painting; how much i love the entire gamut, from making the drawing to stretching the canvas, squeezing the colors…..and how i really get as much pleasure and satisfaction from that process as i do from the act of painting and from the completed painting.
4&5 FINISHED/UNFINISHED: here i explored the whole concept of finished vs unfinished. the beauty of the unfinished painting, the way it accentuates the significance of space in the painting; how it reminds us that a painting, like everything in life, is a process, with beginnings and endings being arbitrary really. the importance of a breathing space, a place where the mind and eye can fill in the blanks. i gave as examples, aside from my own work, the paintings of 19th european plein air painters, whose work we experienced in a beautiful show titled a brush with nature. and a giacometti portrait which beautifully illustrates my point here.
6. TEACHERS/MENTORS: my greatest teachers/mentors in greece were tsarouchis, niki karagatsi and sotiris spatharis. i talked about how and why these extraordinary greek artists affected my growth as an artist and as a human being. tsarouchis with his deep grasp of the byzantine and western traditions in art, how they crossed paths in greece and his ability to synthesize the two into a new, 20th century form. niki karagatsi with her deep love for the beauty of the everyday, her way of bringing vuillard and bonnard into a totally contemporary greek context, thus creating a language all her own; her series of small scale drawings and paintings of stunning and intimate beauty. and spatharis, master of traditional greek shadow theatre. he was as great a painter, in his sets, shadow theatre figure designs and posters as he was a practitioner of this unique art form, which was the greatest and most available form of entertainment for young and old alike before the arrival of television.
7. figures: they have always been part of my work. i told the story of how, in nursery school, my teacher reported, in a document i still have, that “philip loves looking at construction workers.” 20 years later, in athens, my main body of work was a series of paintings of greek construction workers. the centerpiece of this series was kyriakos, the street sweeper in the center of the horizontal composition at the top of the page. i spoke of the seated figure of an indigent andriot in his threadbare coat. how, in the andros of that period, no one went hungry or was without shelter. the community took care of them. this man moved me, with his sweet, innocent visage. his air, in spite of his poverty, was one of a prince. years later, when i showed this portrait in my 2006 skoufa gallery exhibition in athens, many andriots recognized him, knew his name, and looked fondly at his portrait. and i spoke as well of the crouching figure at tourlos, a well known landmark rock at neimborio in andros. we don’t see his face, but his posture reveals his passionate search for shells and rocks. there is mystery here, as well as intimacy. mystery and intimacy are two qualities, one could speculate, that run through my entire body of work. a version of this painting hangs in the hirschhorn museum and sculpture garden in washington, d.c., a part of the smithsonian.
8. rubens beard: when i first came upon this rubens portrait hanging in the met in NYC, i let out a cry of excitement. it was this beard! in rubens’ beard, i found confirmation of my long held belief, reenforced by something tsarouchis once said to me, that abstract and realist painting are one and the same. at the same time, i knew beyond doubt that rubens was more excited about painting this beard, with it’s gestural swirls of grey, than he was about the actual portrait. looking at this beard, i could feel his absolute delight in the act of painting; the movement of his brush across the surface; the loose gesturing strokes his hand made as he became lost in the ancient process of making marks on a surface. little children and aboriginal peoples are compelled to make marks. these marks always reveal the soul & spirit of the mark maker; how could they not?
comments; light-filled, joyful, love the color gamut, thought provoking, as if you were reveling in your ability to see these intimate, ordinary moments while not being seen; the horizontal painting with the little girl, old woman and the man with his back to us, looking, on with the abstract swirls in the background brought to mind twombly; …
questions: what inspired the views from above angle? why the long narrow paintings? how long does it take to make one of these? how do you know when it’s finished?
