7:09 PM: yesterday afternoon i went out to north crestone creek and made 2 new plein air paintings. it was an ideal afternoon and i found an ideal spot; one i've been to before. the light was spectacular, and the only interruption was a guy who brought his fly fishing gear and began casting only about 50 feet form where i was painting. i asked nicely if he would kindly find another spot, and he had no problem. i brought a few sips of a friend's wine and a few crackers with feta, which i had between paintings.
meetings went great, then sallied forth to the creek /
our actionlab360 meetings went far better than expected. once they ended and everyone left to return to boulder, i surfed the energy of the team & went straight out to the creek, where i made 3 new plein air gouaches at the unique campsite 8, where the creek backs up against a sheer stone cliff.
then and now /
11:14 AM: i'll be on a break & won't be able to get back to painting until next monday.
in the mean time, i've been surveying recent work and, because i'm preparing a dossier for a friend who offered to show my work to several galleries, reviewing past work.
upper left: before leaving for europe, i lived on elizabeth st. in nyc, attended the school of visual arts and made paintings heavily influenced by the tail end of the abstract expressionist movement. here's a detail of one.
upper right: if i go back to 1978, paintings like this one appear, executed during my 15 years in greece.
lower left: when i returned to the states in 1979, i lived for a year in santa monica and spent time visiting with david hockney. when i house sat for him, i made this transitional painting of myself standing on his deck, in egg tempera on board.
lower right: the plein air paintings i've been making ever since we moved to crestone in the early '90's, seem to be bringing me full circle, back to where i started in nyc.
bottom: in my current late summer series, there is an integration of all the points along my path, with the common denominator being my love for the painterly
preparing a proposal today /
3:50 PM: today i put together a proposal for a friend who generously offered to show my work to several galleries. there are 7 categories thus far. BELOW are examples form each of those categories.
gouache tree trunk study /
6:43 PM: here's the gouache i made this morning: it's giving me ideas for the next series of paintings.
11:52 AM: today is a short studio day, as we're walking up the trail in a few hours. i decided, before preparing a new canvas, to make a small study in gouache on paper to reconnect with some of the important source material for my late summer series. it will be along the line of a similar study i made last month, which you see below.
reconnecting with this material allows me to dream the next painting.
simpler sweet /
2:05 PM: i began work on revising sweet this morning, and continued working until just now.
i felt unattached to a particular result and fully willing to allow this painting to fail.
i knew it was obviously not going to be in the same genre as the last 3 or 3 late summer paintings, which were very spare, allowing the tinted ground to play a dominant role in the composition, and having the feel of a quick sketch.
i think what emerged is certainly not trash-worthy, but as usual it will take at least 24 hours to evaluate. a number of suggestive forms, one of which says "i'm a snail, can't you see?" are giving me hope that this one, while lacking the immediacy and freshness of the other recent ones, is it's own complete entity.
BELOW: yesterday and today
story hanging on our living room wall
sweet at the end of the day yesterday
8:12 AM: in looking at this earlier late summer painting, story, hanging on our wall, i received guidance about what to do today in simplifying sweet later this morning. the issue however has to do with whether or not it's possible to create this level of simplicity and freshness on a canvas that has, so to speak, lost its virginity.
sallying forth / squash-gouache: a new addition /
6:58 PM: here are pics of the 2 plein air gouaches i made this morning, plus a shot of the site:
5:27 PM: i don't think it was a good idea to work on this painting after coming back from painting plein air. i just went back over to my studio, and i now feel it was a better painting before my intervention today. i'll give it a try tomorrow morning, but, as i just said to a friend, this new direction in my late summer series, where i don't paint on a hard backed surface and therefore don't use collage at all, need to remain fresh. often they are completed in a day, while the energy is fresh. if i don't get anywhere in the first hour or so, i'll abandon it & start a new one.
4:15 PM: i made 2 gouaches at the creek this morning. then when i returned i did more work on sweet. the squash we got yesterday from suzanne & kent have already entered the composition, which may have become a little too busy. i'll see in the morning. i do feel it's an improvement on yesterdays version. you can see the difference in the 2 images below, and draw your own conclusion.
i'll post the plein air gouaches this evening when i'm back at the house.
YESTERDAY TODAY
11:18 AM: the prediction is that it's going to get windy again today, but in spite of that i'm sallying forth to the creek in a few moments to make new gouaches, which are largely my inspiration for the late summer series paintings.
yesterday we returned home with local fruit & veggies brought to crestone/baca by suzanne & kent. i got these little squashes with fantastic colors & patterns to add to my display of plein air gouaches i look at while painting the late summer series.
detail of yesterday' sweet, 36x36"
we'll see how they enter into the picture as soon as i begin the next in this series; either this afternoon when i return or tomorrow am.
"sweet" evolves /
2:35 PM: i had a huge appetite to delve back into sweet, which clearly not anywhere near resolved when i stopped working yesterday. a few elements remain, but i painted over the ground color i had created, which was too strong, too aggressive. as i have been saying for months now, a language is developing, emerging form my years of painting plein air, as well as from observing the shapes and marks i tend to repeat when making my abstract collages on paper. what you want, as an artist, is to know what's going on in your kishkes; a yiddish word for gut.
BELOW: the evolution of sweet since this morning:
noon 1pm 2:30pm
where will sweet go next? /
9am: i'll be in my studio in an hour or so. lets see where sweet goes next. here's a detail.
SWEET /
1:07 PM: this morning i started a new late summer series painting: sweet, 36x36" in it's present state (i'm stopping early so we can take our trail walk) it has 4 or 5 distinct elements & colors. it's a creek riff, as are the rest of the paintings in this series, and owes as much to thelonious monk as gorky. as long as weather permits, i'll continue my plein air excursions to the creek, which renew my feelings for the essential elements and mood in these paintings.