A Passing Reference

Red Phalarope at Wissahickon Waterfowl Preserve. Moku Hanga by Ken Januski. Copyright 2023.  9x12 inches.

 Earlier today I was looking through some of my earliest blog posts trying to find one in which I talked about the problem of making a painting that had a bird as the subject. I never did find it but I did run across one on ‘building a picture.’ It touches on the same subject.

In my many years  as an artist, but particularly in my early years, including all the time I was studying art in college, my art was about building pictures, not portraying something. During my many years  as an abstract artist that remained true. One of my main concerns was making the picture ‘hang together,’ or as Matisse said to have every inch of the surface contribute something to the overall work.

 As my work veered toward abstraction that seemed organic and seemed to reference the natural world in some way I also started considering those references when I built my pictures. An overall disillusionment with the art popular in galleries. and art magazines in the early 90s, coupled with my practice of drawing insects that I found in the garden, eventually led me to use birds as my primary subject.

As I did so I was surprised to find what an easy transition it was from abstraction to naturalism/realism! Except that I did have a fair idea of what birds looked like. And because I knew what they looked like it was easy to see how wrong my work often was! All the formal elements of abstraction could be used in realism. But accuracy was another matter.

To finally get to the  point (!!) I also realized that I didn’t want to fudge my inability to draw birds with some degree of accuracy and realism by resorting to abstraction. So I spent 5-10 years trying to paint and draw them somewhat realstically.

In doing so I sublimated my interest in building a picture. You may guess where this is going. I no longer want to sublimate building a picture to accurate bird portrayal. Sometimes I still get a pretty good balance I think. But sometimes I don’t even want a balance. I want to abstract the bird, especially in the interests of the entire picture,

Such is the case with my newest moku hanga. It is based not  only on a specific bird, a Red Phalarope, but also on the other birds even at the Wissahickon Waterfowl Preserve that day. It also includes the island on which a number of the birds were situated, a tree on that island, the very bright washed out colors of the day, and the bubbler/aerator which  seemed to attract the phalarope. All highly abstracted, and all in the interest primarily of a visually exciting picture. Many of the subjects I just mentioned are seen as passing references, just an in music you may only need to use a note or two to recollect a much longer musical phrase.

In my journey through bird art I have tried a lot of things in order to actually build a good picture but also be true to the bird portrayed. Much of it has frustrated me because I felt giving up too much ‘art’ to keep the’ accuracy’, not just in terms of the bird itself but also in its environment and space. Many viewers might have actually felt the opposite, that I was letting ‘art’ get in the way of accuracy. But here’s the thing. Cubism is over 100 years old. Non-objective art is over 100 years old. Even Abstract Expressionism is over 50 years old. So much art has happened  over the last 100-150 years. I really don’t think bird art or wildlife art does well to ignore that. On second thought bird artists and wildlife artists would probably not do well, at least financially! I think that is probably part of the problem. The buying audience is very conservative, with some exceptions. I know bird/wildlife artists who are not at all conservative and yet do very well in terms of sales. So it is possible. In any case I at least I know that I can’t ignore the last 150 years of art, sales or no sales. To do so is like being forced to wear someone else’s clothes. So my art continues to try to find a way to portray the natural world with a contemporary visual vocabulary.

Toying with Abstraction

A few posts back I showed a small experimental watercolor of a number of shorebirds, almost all of them Dunlin, landing. It was an idea for an entry in the Bike Art show at Manayunk Roxborough Art Center. My thought was that the sense of dynamism was similar to that of a bike race, especially going up the Manayunk Wall and also at the sprint to the finish line. Limbs and wheels are flying everywhere just like the Dunlin wings, bills, legs.
Though I liked the watercolor I wanted to try another one that was a bit larger and more developed. It is at top of post. It's about 9x12 on 140# Arches cold press paper in watercolor and white gouache.
Some viewers will I think appreciate this, some will think it's a valid idea that just didn't get executed well, and some will wonder why I waste my talents with naturalistic art doing something like this. It's mainly for the last group that I'm writing this.

Above is an abstract oil painting that I sold to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, now part of NASDAQ, a little less than 10 years ago. It's representative of most of the artwork I've done in my life, before I turned from abstraction to naturalism. I don't want to write a treatise on it but will just mention Matisse's quote about a painting being an orchestration of elements with everything in the right place. I always liken my abstract art to music. It is an orchestration of color, shape, texture, composition space that all adds up to something expressive, just like music.
When I turned to naturalism it was difficult to leave all that power of expression behind. Of course I gained something instead, the ability to portray nature, and thus gain all the expressiveness of nature. I'm happy I went in that direction. But sometimes I feel like there's something missing, that I'm speaking in Latin while the world converses in the Pidgin English of the web. So this bike art show gave me the chance to explore once again the melding of naturalism and abstraction. We'll just have to see what happens from here.
By the way the title of the abstract painting is "Short Arthur's Oblique and Non-stop Song", in honor of the jazz musician Arthur Blythe. I told you that I likened my art to music!

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.

Taking Liberties

While waiting for my computer to reboot after finishing the painting above I leafed through a new issue of a birding magazine that included some photos of Common Redpolls. I was reminded again of how beautiful birds can be. You can see why many people desire to represent them as accurately as possible.

Of course one can easily argue about what is meant by accuracy. I've done it at other times. But for now I just mean something that resembles photos but doesn't mimic them. Some would say it emphasizes a scientific approach to birds over an artistic one.

The painting at top is pretty much in direct contradiction to this notion. I've taken great liberties in this ballpoint pen, watercolor and gouache painting. Why? Well I can't really say except that that is what I wanted to do. I wasn't interested in portraying the birds, especially the Black Tern, accurately.

For me the problem with this naturalistic type of art, at least if I'm doing it, is that the bird often seems dead when I'm done. Not always. I've done some paintings that are fairly naturalistic and I'm happy with them. But they're not my natural inclination. That's not to say that other artists don't manage this style wonderfully. But for me it rarely seems natural or true to myself.

When I think about taking liberties I often think of Matisse, and of the painting Tea in particular. I first saw this painting at least 30 years ago. But it still stays with me.

The painting combines abstraction, design, color, realistic portrayal all in one painting. And yet it doesn't at all look like a photo. But look at the way the dog scratches and the shoe of one woman dangles on her foot. Look at the sense of dappled light. There is a breath of life in this painting that is often missing from more scientific renderings.

I won't begin to claim that the small painting, really more of a sketch, matches the ambition of Matisse's masterpiece. But I think it may help explain my motivation in doing it. Sometimes an accurate portrayal doesn't seem enough. I'd like to do more. I'm sure much of this comes from my many years painting and loving what was once referred to as 'modern art.'

Above is another version of the Bladdernut and distant immature Red-headed Woodpecker. It is done in Caran d'Ache Neo-color II water soluble crayons, and a lot of water. I think it's very similar in motivation to the painting at top. In both instances I'm taking something naturalistic and using is as a leaping off point for something more abstract, more 'modern.'

It's very odd saying 'modern'. After all this term was first used more than 100 years ago. So it's not really modern in the sense of being new. But it is modern in the sense of coming out of that tradition. I don't claim that this tradition is better than a more realistic or naturalistic one. It's hard to deny the tremendous excesses that have come out of modernism and it's easy to understand why some might dislike it. But for me what is good, strong and true there is undeniable.

If I follow my heart in what I paint it more often goes toward naturalism saturated in modernism than anything else. I suppose another way of saying this is that I'm just trying to make what I see have some expressive power.

These two paintings are steps along the way to something more finished I think. Either or both may end up as paintings or prints. This is my way of moving in that direction. I've taken some liberties with realistic rendering and my guess there will be more along the way.

Killdeer Getting There

I wanted to start off this post by quoting Henri Matisse about how every part of one of his paintings has its place and is important. I thought of it this morning while various considerations about my current painting flitted in and out of my mind. As they did I realized that a good painting is like an orchestral composition, with many parts all working together: the light, the color, the shapes, the brushwork, the lines, the values, the objects, their evocations, etc.

As soon as I thought symphony and orchestra I was reminded of Matisse's quote. It used to be when I remembered a quote like this I'd go search through my books hoping I could find it without spending too much time. But now we have the internet right? No need for books.

Well the problem with that is the sloppiness of the internet. Someone may say that something is a quote of Matisse but how do I know it's correct? I read two versions of one quote today that had somewhat different meanings depending on how much of the quote was shown. So I don't trust what I've found and am not going to use it. It seems safer to just paraphrase my recollection.

All of which just leads to the thought that I'm getting happier with this painting and all the various parts of it that I'm trying to get to work together. The newest version is at top.

You may notice that the killdeer is about the only constant. Everything else is changing. I hope it will stay that way. I've liked the bird from the beginning and have made only minimal changes.

I think this painting is also heading more toward naturalism now. The abstract pattern of the water is still there but it's toned down quite a bit. I've gone back and forth between naturalism and stylization in this. For now it seems like naturalism will win out. And yet even in naturalism every part of the painting has its place, every brushstroke, every color. In that sense every painting is somewhat abstract.

I need to turn this in for the show by Friday, and frame it before that. So soon it will be done one way or the other, at least temporarily.

Formalism, Naturalism, Sensualism

I worked some more on the watercolor from last week. I was happy with what I had accomplished but it seemed like just a good beginning. Most of what I needed to change had to do with more 'formal' considerations: value, color, variety in both. I was satisfied with the more naturalistic concerns: does it look like the dowitcher?

As I worked on it today I realized that I was finally getting close to what I'd like to accomplish in my naturalistic art: honest portrayal of what I've seen but also the sensual and formal pleasure of making art. Since graduate school or earlier I've had arguments about this with teachers and fellow artists. Artists are a varied bunch and make their art for various reasons. I've always ended up in the formalist camp not the deep personal expression camp, the political camp or any other camp.

Formalism can seem like a hard, lifeless reason for making art. But while working today I realized that for me it really is closer to sensualism: reveling in the materials that I use and what they can accomplish visually. Matisse was a great formalist. He said: "Then a moment comes when every part has found its definite relationship and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to paint it all over again." Every shape, color and brush mark in his art had a purpose. This is my type of art: color, brushwork, value, tactility all combine to make a sensuous and beautiful object.

In taking up naturalistic art about three years ago I needed to subordinate this tendency to that of learning how to portray birds so that they actually looked like what I saw. It's been a slow but rewarding process and there is still a huge distance to go. But today for the first time I felt that I was actually able to combine some of that desire to portray what I saw with my somewhat sublimated desire to use color, shape, lines, brushwork in the sensuous way that I used to do in my abstract work.


I've taken liberties with both color and value. They didn't look quite this way. But I do think that they make for a better painting. That is my goal: portray what I see, but do so with artistic freedom. For me that is what makes artmaking enjoyable, and I've always thought that what is enjoyable or at least truly felt to the artist, eventually comes through to the receptive viewer. That is all any artist can hope for.