"Poissons"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 6" x 6"

These cold fish have been on ice in my queue since my last trip to France, which, as many of you know, was quite some time ago. Fresh in my mind these many months, they have resurfaced to remind me of why I started painting in the first place - because it's fun! At least it's supposed to be. I seemed to have lost sight of that fact recently. What started for me back in '07 as an experiment in "daily painting" - a new art movement with the sole mandate of completing a small work of art every day, became something quite different. I must admit that I seldom attained the stated goal, but I was content with 3 or 4 per week. Trouble came when I felt compelled to make the work tighter and tighter. Not content with small, quick oil sketches, I wanted to do something that would wow people. The diminutive panels ceased to be mere little studies and became polished works of art. The praise I got from these little jewels was like a drug. I lived for the comments on my blog. I spent way more time on them than I could ever possibly justify, given the monetary ceiling of the internet marketplace. I started using the opti-visor more and more. Frustration set in and I began to resent them. That, my friends, is my long winded explanation for why I have not been posting. I recently made a pilgrimage to the Corcoran Museum in Washington to see an exhibition of Chuck Close's prints. That man knew how to have fun. His "fingerprint" works are a stark reminder that we should have fun in the process. Embracing this revelation, I allowed myself to once again feel the support - to scratch and scumble and toss the paint. This piece may not be great, but it was fun and that's a start. I feel like I'm swimming upstream.

"Paris Carousel"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 8 1/4" x 10 7/8"

I've been picking at this painting for a couple of days, not quite sure of how I wanted to play this. The subject is so colorful that I had intended to splash on the paint loose and free but my realist roots kept the piece in check. I think I'll sleep on it and see if I need to throw on some more highlights in the morning.

"Blessed are the cheese makers"

Oil on museum quality ampersand gessobord panel 6" x 8"

The cheese portrayed in this painting is a small sampling of the selection presented to us in Paris at Restaurant Guy Savoy. To try and describe the culinary experience of that night in mere words on these pages would be futile. Suffice it to say that it was the most amazing, decadent (and expensive) meal I have ever had.

"Paris Carousel - Blue Manes"

Oil on museum quality, archival ampersand gessobord™ panel - 6” x 8”

This painting is the first in a series of four  6" x 8" paintings gleaned from a carousel in Paris.  The fun twisted chrome poles are a challenge to paint and add a bit of sparkle.  All of the horses in this series have different colored manes and different attitudes, which should be fun to group together as a team.  My daily painting site is embarking on a month long theme - "Tribute to a Beautiful Earth; celebrating and conserving our planet with dailypainters.com" You may have to wait until September to grab the brass ring. 

"Antique French Hobby Horse"

Oil on museum quality, archival ampersand gessobord™ panel - 8” x 8”

While in Paris this past January, I went to Les Puces de Saint-Ouen which is also known as the Clignancourt Flea Market.  What a treasure trove of imagery.  From the look of it, this hobby horse was enjoyed by countless French boys and girls.  Well, perhaps maybe just the girls, given the floral pattern of the saddle, but then those were simpler times and powdered wigs and makeup was de rigueur and there was no clear line between what was masculine and what was feminine.  Barbies for girls and GI Joe for boys would come much later.

I chose to reach back into my distant past and use a technique that I used during my "mime" period.  When I was contemplating a career in art, I thought of becoming a fashion illustrator.  I loved the wonderful flowing lines of the sketches in my mother's Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines by René Gruau and Cecil Beaton.  I had no thought of actually designing the couture but I did want to draw it.  All that exposure to the fashion photography of the time seeped into my brain.  Placing figures pictorially on a grey seamless became my modus operandi.  Richard Avedon and Irving Penn had this wonderful shade of grey that soon found its way into my work.  A blend of equal parts alizarin crimson, yellow ochre and Prussian blue mixed with white lead was the perfect grey.  Oh sure, any combination of complementary colors will produce a neutral grey, but by using this triumvirate, you could pull it in all directions.  Want a greener grey? -- add more ochre; a cooler grey, more Prussian and so on.  The extraneous elements in the reference added nothing to this painting so I edited them out completely and, taking a page from my own book, I simplified the composition to its bare bones.  I think it works.  Click on the word "mime" and it will take you to the old theatre paintings that I did in the 70's.  A mime is a terrible thing to waste.     

"Photo Finish"

Oil on museum quality, archival 1/8" ampersand gessobord panel- 8" x 8"

I may add some text to this entry later today.  I just finished this and am going to rack out for a while.  It feels good to be back in the game.

"Loaves and Fishes - part 2"

Oil on archival, museum quality, ampersand 1/8” gessobord™ panel – 6’ x 6”

I loved these baguettes piled up like cord wood at the farmers market in Paris. The smell of fresh baked bread was intoxicating. It must be the coming of spring and Easter that made me think of pairing these paintings. I’m certain Saint Mark didn’t have this in mind as an illustration for his story of Jesus feeding thousands of his followers on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Did they have baguettes back then? If you wish to refresh your memory on the story; today’s lesson begins in Mark 6:30-44. (Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?)

This is how I envisioned them hanging together:

But I am selling them separately, for secular reasons.
(I could use the dough...I need a few fins...bread is always good)

Thus ends the lesson for today.

"Tartelette de fraise avec des pistaches"

oil on archival, museum quality 1/8" ampersand gessobord panel - 5" x 7"

What can I say about strawberries? When I was a boy, my dad took me sailing every Sunday, whether I wanted to go or not (I didn’t). He longed for me to share his passion for being “in the wind;" I never did, although being “in the wind" on a motorcycle has been my passion for 40 years. When I was old enough to drink, preferably beer, sailing became way more tolerable. Dad kept a bottle of Chivas Regal on the boat which, I later found out, contained Four Roses that he had decanted into the empty Chivas bottle after he had finished it. That was my Dad. On the high seas, you drink what’s available...any port (or scotch) in the storm. For years I thought Chivas was swill until he sheepishly confessed. Dad, an old navy man, was ahead of his time. Long before the gas wars of the 70’s, when the price of gas on the dock skyrocketed, propelling all those Chris-craft owners to take up the sheets, Dad had his little wooden Spanish sailboat; the Señorita, moored at Stacy’s Salvage Yard. It was the only sailboat in the place. Later Stacy’s would grow to become the Trade Winds Marina, a huge sailboat facility, but back then it was little more than a marine junkyard. The bright spot of going sailing on Sundays was the prospect of getting a 25 cent hamburger at Gino’s or, in season, going to the farm near the boatyard and picking strawberries. There was a “pick your own” field on the road near the docks and this was my introduction to real fresh produce. The prospect of fresh strawberries and corn on the cob in late summer made those Sunday sails bearable. I grew up, as did most of us in the 50’s, with canned vegetables. I didn’t see fresh spinach, peas, asparagus or mushrooms (which I never saw, period) until I left home. I can tell you canned asparagus is nasty and don’t get me started on succotash. Who came up with that one? Why ruin perfectly good corn, even canned corn, by adding lima beans…yuck! Those ripe fresh berries made for some tasty strawberry shortcake!

"Camembert"

oil on archival, museum quality 1/8" gessobord panel - 5" x 7"

I had a difficult time going back into the studio yesterday. Perhaps it was the complexity of the painting that I had done the day before and the fear that henceforth, I had to stay at that level of intricacy. For whatever reason, I had to force myself to stand before the easel. It was pushing midnight when I put on the last stroke. I sometimes feel like Cinderella, knowing that the Daily Paintings are gleaned and put on the site as the bell tolls twelve. Do glass slippers come in size 13D? Required reading for all artists should be Robert Henri’s book - The Art Spirit. Among his random bits of artistic philosophy, he reminds us that we will have bad days:

"All things change according to the state we are in. Nothing is fixed. I lived once in the top of a house, in a little room, in Paris. I was a student. My place was a romance. It was a mansard room and it had a small square window that looked out over housetops, pink chimney pots. I could see l’Institut, the Pantheon and the Tour Saint James. The tiles on the floor were red and some of them were broken and out of place. There was a little stove, a wash basin, a pitcher, piles of my studies. Some hung on the wall, others accumulated dust on their backs. My bed was a cot. It was a wonderful place. I cooked two meals and ate dinner outside. I used to keep the camembert out of the window on the mansard roof between meals, and I made fine coffee, and made eggs and macaroni. I studied and thought, made compositions, wrote letters home full of hope of some day being an artist.
It was wonderful. But days came when hopes looked black and my art student’s paradise was turned into a dirty little room with broken tile, ashes fell from the stove, it was all hopelessly poor, I was tired of camembert and eggs and macaroni, and there wasn’t a shade of significance in those delicate little chimney pots, or the Pantheon, the Institute, or even the Tour Saint James."

This I read, lo these many years ago, when I was starting out on my own artistic journey. I was given a copy of The Art Spirit by Dr. F. Robert Lehmeyer, my Uncle and mentor and I, in turn, bestowed a copy on many a young aspiring artist. I can’t look at a wedge of camembert without thinking of this story and my early days as an artist. Blessed are the cheese makers.

"Gâteau au fromage avec le fruit glacé"

Oil on panel 6" x 6"
When I choose to paint this piece, I thought it would be a walk in the park. Little did I realize that the myriad of hues in all that fruit would translate to way more time than I would have imagined analyzing and mixing colors? I wanted it to be free and glistening and that it is. The cheesecake is held in place with a clear collar which reflected nicely the gold fluted plate. When I am finished with this Paris series, you will be well on your way to learning the French language. Pay attention – there will be a quiz. Répetez après moi - fermez la fenêtre.

"Poulets au marché de fermiers"

Oli on panel - 5" x 7
Although I fancy myself both a gourmet and gourmand, I have my head in the sand when it comes to the realities of food and death. Here in the states, our meat is cut into nice little pieces and hermetically sealed in cling wrap. At the farmers market in Paris, here were the chickens – head, feet and all. I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about Chicken Little when I came upon these little guys and felt sad for them. If I had to kill my own food, I probably would be a vegetarian. All that said, the almost abstract quality of the varying colors of the flesh made for an interesting painting exercise and I sort of like the pathos. I came home with a nasty, imported French cold and could use some chicken soup right now…sorry guys.

"Carrousel de Montmartre"

Oil on panel - 5" x 7"

If the French are so mean and unfriendly, why is it that they have so many carousels all over the place? The landscape is littered with them. That seems to be somewhat of an incongruity. Perhaps they are really a fun loving people after all. Well and why not? After all, it was the French that invented the carousel in the 17th century to celebrate the equestrian festival of Louis XIV. I was fascinated with the artistry of the carvings and their bold colors. This one was in Montmartre.