Ending January - Month of Herons

Often the blahs of winter seem to nudge me towards colorful neo-tropical migrants in my art. I remember beginning 2011 with a quick watercolor of an Indigo Bunting. The grays, white and mud browns of winter seem to call out for brighter, warmer colors.

But as this January ends I think it has to be called 'The Month of Herons.' Between the new painting of the two immature Little Blue Herons at Morris Arboretum, the juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron seen at the Manayunk Canal last week and then the comparison of it with the juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron seen at the same place in the summer of 2010 it has been a month of herons.

There have also been a number of sparrows, particularly the dead Song Sparrow killed by a backyard cat. But mainly it has been herons.

So as the month ends it makes sense to show the latest version of the immature Little Blue Herons. It has definitely gotten more realistic. I don't think I've ever painted tree bark before, or even had the desire to. And even though this painting started out in an abstract vein something has pulled me toward realism. So for me it is a surprising painting. But part of the enjoyment of art is being surprised.

I think this is about done. If so I'll include it in a show that opens next Saturday and which I'll mention in next post.

Slouching Toward Realism

Well maybe. When I started this painting I thought I'd head in a more abstract direction. And I did for awhile. But today I took a step in the opposite direction. I had left different color planes in the water so that there was a largely abstract subdivision of space. I llked this and I think it may be why I thought of Matisse's 'Bathers by a River' when I started.

But I also knew it wasn't realistic. It bothered me a bit. Today after adding more details to the head of each heron as well as to the painted turtle I decided to try to unify the water. Maybe the realistic direction of the detail on herons and turtle was contagious. In any csse for the time being we're headed in a more realistic direction.

As I said earlier my old abstract paintings always meandered like this before finally settling down. It's always been the way I've worked, though media like watercolor and linocut allow only so much meandering and change of direction. In the first you eventually end up with mud; in the latter you've cut away all the lino and have little left except the bare white of the printed paper. Oil and acrylic though lend to nearly infinite variation. That is both good and bad. One thing I am reminded of is that on a large canvas it gets expensive! Paint, and more paint, and more paint....

I'm not thrilled with the expense. But I am thrilled by working in this manner again. When I first started this blog I often wrote that I felt my work was no longer very ambitious. I was too busy learning realism and birds to be ambitious. But now I'm more comfortable and I like the excitement of trying to do larger, more ambitious paintings.

They can also entail more mental strain though at times. So it's good to know that warmer weather is slowly winding its way here and field sketching will soon be available again. It's the perfect break from ambitious paintings.

Starting a Large Acrylic

Well 'large' is relative I guess. The above painting is 2'x4'. Compared to my work of the last few years, which rarely get above 18", it's large. Compared to my much older abstracts in oil and acrylic, generally around 6'x8', it's not large at all.

In any case this is the painting after about eight hours work over two days. I think it's evident that there's a battle between realism and abstraction. I keep trying to get the pose of the immature Little Blue Heron scratching itself correct while taking great artistic liberties with the rest of the painting.

Who knows where it will go? If it's anything like my old abstractions it may look nothing like this by the time I'm done. On the other hand my recent forays in naturalism may rein my experimental impulses in a bit. One thing I should note is that Henri Matisse's 'Bathers by a River' keeps floating around in the back of my mind. I haven't seen it in years but I know a vague recollection of it is somehow entangled in this painting.

One last thing. Because this painting is large it's hard to get a good photo of it. This photo is very much out of focus, and also photographed in horrible light. As the painting moves along I'll see if I can get some better photos.

Reconciling Naturalism and Abstraction

I was an abstract painter for many, many years. But I've only done one primarily abstract work in the last six or seven years. A few days ago I was sorting through some old frames and canvases from my abstract days. I was hoping that I could salvage a few unused frames to use on my recent bird paintings and drawings.

I found one or two. What I didn't expect to find were some primed but unpainted canvases all set to be painted on. Nor did I expect to be taken with some of the old abstract paintings I found.

I put a lot of work into my abstract work. I consider them very accomplished (even if the rest of the world doesn't). Most of those paintings I remember well. But I'd forgotten about some of these smaller works that had been banished to the basement. One of them is at the top of this post. It's an acrylic, about 32x32 inches. Since I can't remember what I originally called it, or if I even named it, I'm temporarily calling it 'Sit Still.' This for the slightly rocking, off-balance quality that it has. It might not be evident in the photo but there is much visible underpainting in this. It comes from changing, changing and changing until I felt that everything, shape, color, balance all fit together. In many of these works there's a balance that, at least to me, always seems about to fall apart.

One of the unpainted canvases I found was an odd 2'x4' shape. I don't like such strong horizontal, or vertical if you turn it on its side, formats. I can't imagine why I made one in such a size. But beggars can't be choosers, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, etc., etc. My recent return to acrylic painting has been limited to canvases not much larger than 18 inches in the largest dimension. I've been happy with them but they seem like studies. I used to paint 6'x8' paintings. So this fairly large found canvas seemed like a good opportunity.

Because it's such a strong format many things wouldn't work on it. Sometimes sketchbooks are sold in this shape and called 'landscape' format. It does lend itself to some panoramic landscape scenes.

I haven't done much work like that, especially work that includes birds. But I did remember one recent ink and watercolor sketch that might work. It is the painting of an immature Little Blue Heron with a Painted Turtle on a log above. It's really not that horizontal but I might be able to improvise on it.

That thought led me to this earlier watercolor of immature Little Blues, itself a composite of numerous sketches and photos.

This morning I did some preliminary sketches combining these two works in various ways, using a very strong horizontal format. They're at top, beneath the abstract painting.

I suppose this might seem very odd compared to the realism of my recent sparrow works. I probably wouldn't have done it if I hadn't run across the abstract acrylic, realized how much I liked it, and then found the blank canvases.

I sometimes wonder if art should not be split so much into abstract and realistic as urban and rural, or perhaps modern and traditional. For most of my life I've preferred the modern and the urban to the traditional and the rural. But never exclusively. Even in the height of my infatuation with Matisse and Picasso I admired people like Chardin and his quiet still lifes. Since I've been working naturalistically I've stayed closer to the traditional, rural, respectful of nature and not willing to take liberties with it. I still don't like the idea of possibly cheapening it by using it as just a frame for abstraction. But I think it may be possible to avoid that. In any case I think I'll be trying it soon on that odd, horizontal canvas Many of my lincouts tend more toward abstraction but never so far as the painting at the top. I'm guessing that this new painting will go even further toward abstraction, but I might be surprised.