Ron Weaver's Painting Blog

Figure Drawing, 22" x 30", pencil on BFK Reeves paper

Rocks in Madera Canyon today.
10" x 8", acrylic/canvas

 
Madera Canyon Rocks, 10" x 8", acrylic/canvas

Two acrylic notes from Madera Canyou this week.

 
 
Dead tree in Madera Canyon, 8" x 10", acrylic/canvas

 

Dead tree and Sycamore, 9" x 11", acrylic/canvas

 

I have an intense aversion to sales and “being sold.” And yet I realize that we all have to sell something. Everyone must provide something that someone else thinks has enough value to pay us money for or to trade for. As for me, I offered my ability to paint and teach painting in exchange for a salary. Several colleges and universities saw value in this. I didn't advertise (which I also despise) to try to attract students but some of them thought that entering my classes was of some value to them. Often this "thought" was not very distinct since most of them had little idea of what is involved in serious painting. Most of them in fact, drifted into the class because of the requirements to gain undergraduate and graduate degrees. But some students, the ones that interested me in particular, were drawn to the class with another kind of vague interest. For these few, there was something intimately compelling about paintings that they had seen and been moved and stimulated by; And they had this indistinct hope that they might do something like what they had experienced. Something told them that they wanted to try to be a part of this wonderful visual language they knew was contained in great paintings they had seen. They had generally matured just enough to realize that they wanted to do something that they were really interested in. Often, their parents didn’t think this interest was going to provide a living for their sons and daughters. And those parents were generally right. So I would say to the student that if they really wanted to do this, they could and would find a means of support. I’m sure the same advice is given (or should be given) to actors, musicians, and writers. Once said, I didn’t bring it up again but focused on the serious business of finding ways to help them understand what it took to be involved in the kind of image making that had begun their passionate fascination with paintings.
Let’s be clear, all this had nothing to do with Commercial Art or Graphic Communication as the universities came to call the teaching of the designer‘s skill. To me, that’s mainly about advertising which I’ve already said, I despise.
There are sales involved in real art too but it’s a very different enterprise.
The real artist is motivated by a desire to make an image that has no other purpose than to satisfy the spiritual and intellectual areas of their mind and eye. If they succeed there will be an audience who can recognize this success and may want to own one of the results of this kind of heroic effort. Only in that sense, is there anything resembling the ordinary exchange between product and money.
The more intelligent and visually astute is the painter, the more value the painting has to those of similar intellect and visual experience, understanding. and taste. But the exchange rate is not calculated by the inch or yard or how the product can be used to sell another product. It is only valuable in itself and may go to a particular painter’s audience for very much or very little money or trade goods. It might even be given to the audience because of a mutual respect, understanding, and appreciation.
There are many grotesque examples of valueless paintings or other art works having been bought for ridiculous sums of money and for ridiculous reasons. And there are many so called artists who are attracted to these kinds of opportunities rather than the kind of motivation I‘ve described. But some of my students whom I’ve worked with, during my 48 years of college teaching, are “out there” making work that has nothing to do with directing attention toward buying a product that has nothing to do with their painting. Some are making a living with their painting and some are poor or rich by other means. Bless them. They got it!

Everyone needs to find their own "voice" based on qualities they admire in great historical models. There is nothing extraneous in this painting by Albert Marquet. Imagine the difficulty of making it appear this simple.


Albert Marquet, Harbor at Hamburg

Alice Neel is a painter whom I've been interested in for many years. I spent a few days with her since she was a guest artist at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh where I was teaching painting.  Together we selected 33 of her paintings from her apartment studio in New York for her show at the universtiy. Soon after her visit to the university she returned to Chicago and I took her through the Chicago Art Institute's collection. What I mean by "taking" her is that her age didn't allow her to walk through the collection so I wheeled her through the galleries in a wheelchair. What an exceptional time that was for me since her responsive comments about what she was seeing was a delight to consider. I want to explain my appreciation for what she accomplished through her work and at the same time discuss how (and perhaps why) she differs from other painters whose work I greatly value.
In my opinion, one produces emotions through form in a painting or one isn't painting. So I want to point out two different attitudes toward form and the kind of emotions they generate.
I'll begin by comparing Andre Derain's Genevieve Taillade in an Orange Jacket and Alice Neel's, Mady and also Neel's Portrait of Sam. (all below)
There is a huge difference in form making and in the emotional content intended by both painter's formmaking.
These three images are highly energized oil paintings of people. Very lively people. And they’re made by two very different sensibilities.
Let me introduce the emotional aspect that I’ve suggested. And I’m going to do it crudely first of all.
The Derain is deeply charming and warm whereas the Neel is absent of this tenderness. (And you’ll not find that emotion in any of Neel’s paintings whether they be of children or adults.  (Charming is far from the operative word for Neel's paintings). In any case, what I see and feel is caused by the structure of the painting and all the complications that involves.
Of course, not everyone’s eye and mind receives the painter’s illusions of form in exactly same way. Actually the mechanisms in the eye operates the same but what one does with the information is different in each viewer.
And the representational painter is looking at the motif and trying to get their hand to put down what he/she is actually seeing in the motif and onto the flat surface before them. But what they‘re “actually” seeing and how they get it down is the most relevant and interesting issue.
When I first saw Neel’s people paintings (she’s painted few other "subjects".), I thought they were more or less cartoon-like caricatures and yet……. they were more than that.  But there was no denying that they were lively and lively seemed like the right idea for people painting, of course.
I’ll continue below the 3 reproductions concerning the very different means and results that Neel and Derain have brought to bear on their paintings. It really is extraordinary.


Alice Neel, Mady

Andre Derain, Genevieve Taillade in an Orange Coat

Alice Neel, Portrait of Sam

Both painter's vision is guided by very different interests in what they want to say about what they see.  Neel paints people almost exclusively whereas Derain paints what might be said to be traditional 20th century motifs. ( Still Life, Landscapes, and Portraits).  Neel once said something like, I want to paint people who have been torn apart by the rat race of the city.  Again, somehting like that.  I'll have to get the exact quote and edit it into this.   Neel's consistant subject therefore has nothing to do with Derain's interest in consistant inventive beauty.  Both painters are extremely sucessful in doing what only they could do, being who they are:  And since I'm much more interested in painting than I am in installations, I'm drawn into each of their paintings by the high level of significant description  of what they see before them.  Neel claimed to fit into the Expressionist camp but in explaining that she said, "I suppose so" since she wasn't one to accept simplistic labels.  In trying to imagine how she was like an Expressionist, she said that she wished she would be out there in the territory of Soutine and that ought to tell you something.  She didn't feel that she was able to go where Soutine had gone but then, despite her tenacious courage to be herself and belive in herself, she had moments of desire to accomplish more than she had.  When sitting before a particular Van Gogh in the Chicago Art Institute, she said to me, "I will have left nothing".  Naturally I disagreed with her and said so.

But let me return to the idea of FORM and it's importance to great painting.  There is no question that Neel's paintings are form-ful.  But the forms are wrenched from their matter of fact positioning in ordinary "real life"  into interactive locations that are loaded with Neel's amazing brand of modern day expressionism.  Whereas, Derain's forms are caressed into relationships that are elegant modern day inventions based on classical underpinings.  Should beauty enter into this short essay here?  How about realism?  How abut, Who's telling the truth?  How about, How do you feel when you view either of these two painters?  For me, I feel there have been no better people painters on the modern New York scene during Neel's time nor currently.  And as for Derain,  I feel overwhelmed with a sense of beauty in this portrait of Genevieve.  What knowledge and sensitivity to cause paint to form into meaning in that way.

 

 

 

Could there be any more clarity and brilliant understanding about using paint to exlplain how and what one sees than in Cezanne?


Paul Cezanne, Paysan

In my talk at Manchester College I didn't mention so many things I wanted to but didn't have the time in the hour and 15 minutes I was alloted. Richard Lindner was one of my mentors too. He was a Bavarian Jew who was politically active in Paris and escaped the Nazis by going down to Marseilles and successfully joining the French Foreign Legion. But he found that his officers were German so he escaped to America and for the first time in many terrible years had found a safe home. God bless America, eh? Richard is the one who told me (when I was being a drama queen about the struggle of creation) that I must remember that if the painter wins the battle, the painting looses. Excellent advice that I eventually understood.
You can see why, despite being almost 70 in the 1960s, he was catagorized as a Pop artist.

Richard Lindner, HELLO, oil/canvas

We've arrived back in the Sonoran Desert after our 3,000 mile drive from the Maine Studio. Soon after pasing through Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the iconic western landscape began to appear (just as the fantastic foliage color that we saw all the way from Maine began to disappear). I began to get ideas for new paintings and to think of some of the other members of the Midwest Paint Group and how they might enjoy painting out here. We had stopped for a reception of my show, a talk, and meetings with students at Manchester Collge on the way to Arizona.
Tim King had driven over from Illinois for the reception and dinner but Phil Hale wasn't able to make the reception but has seen my show since then. The interest that both have had in the show was appreciated. This show was made up of 51 small landscapes from Maine and Arizona and I look forward to beginning some new work as soon as we get the home and studio up and running after 5 months away.
The monsoons are still happening here so the skies are spectacular against the mountains. I want to direct you to the blog of a friend who has painted and posted some cloud paintings done in his Nashville, TN area.

http://mikeboyleart.blogspot.com/

These are painted by Mike Boyle. Following his blog would be a pleasure for those interested in serious painting.

A large Edward Hopper show is going to close on Oct. 16th at the Walker Art Museum on the Bowdoin College campus.  I saw the show today. It clearly reveals Hopper's talents and limitations.  The small oil paintings done on Monhegan Island between 1916 and 1919 show his diciplined consistency within his method of tonal observation.   One can see this same reliance on accurate tonal perception  throughout his life's work.  These little paintings were relatively dark in value (darker than the overexposed reproduction of rocks and water that I've posted below)  In this and all of the small Monhegan paintings of this period Hopper did not vary in his method to understand his motif.  This includes the way the paint was applied.  This paint application is the weakness of these early paintings.  The paint has very little variation in the way he puts it on.  He relies almost entirely on tonal harmony to establish form and space and his inexperience in how the paint might be put on weakens the entire experience.  This happens in almost all of these small paintings that introduce us to the exhibition in he first room.  In the next two rooms, his watercolors contain all of the good qualities that one expects from Hopper.  They're well designed, light filled (even when dark).  It's a medium that he understands.  The lighthouse (below) is of course, typical of Hopper's work done later than the small tonal Monhegan paintings.  One wouldn't mistake this painting as being done by anyone else.  His light and dark contrasts, his color and personal pacing as one takes in the entire painting, is like no one else.  The drawings in the show are from the same time that the little oils were done but they indicate an inventive searching for the right marks to represent what he was looking at .  They are less methodical than the small oils.  A critic for the Boston Glode writes, "You'd be mad not to see this show".  Well.....hurry.  It closes after Sunday, the 16th.

 

Edward Hopper, Rocks and Shore, oil on panel,

Edward Hopper, Captain Upton's House, 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in. (71.1 x 91.4 cm). Private Collection.