Watch Me Paint

Thursday, May 14, 2015

A disciplined talent

Along the Na Pali Coast, oil on canvas, 48X72, by Brad Marshall.

I met Brad Marshall on an overpass in Queens many years ago, on the way to a party at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria. The shindig was drowned by torrential rains but we’ve been pals ever since.

Besides being a skilled landscape painter, Brad works in a niche industry unique to New York—he paints those billboards insanely high above the city’s heads. This resulted in his shoes being featured in the New York Times.

Porta Maggiore, Rome, oil on canvas, 42X60, by Brad Marshall.

Perhaps this regular aerial painting gig is what gives him such discipline as a painter. He seldom seems to get bogged down in self-destructive self-criticism. His studio work, which is represented by Fischbach Gallery in Chelsea, is consistent and assured.

Brad also paints en plein air. He once memorably called the total loss of focus that happens to all of us from time to time “flailing around.” Since it’s the bête noire of every plein air painter, it’s a relief to know it can happen even to him.

Isola dei Pescatori, Lago Maggiore, oil on canvas 24x36, by Brad Marshall.

“I want people to enjoy my paintings. When I was younger and saw some incredible painting at a museum by Bierstadt or Church or Sargent or Rembrandt, it gave me an incredible sense of euphoria and transcendence (yes, like a religious experience),” he told me. “I would love to think that one of my paintings could give someone that feeling.

“But that’s not why I paint, I paint for selfish reasons. I paint because the process is so enriching, absorbing and fun. I don’t paint just because I want a finished painting (though I do want to see the final result). I paint because I love the act of painting.”

I asked Brad to pick out his favorite three paintings. This, Baroque Arch, Rome, 54X36, oil on canvas, is probably mine. The drafting is superlative, the lighting drives a wonderfully measured composition.

To see more of Brad’s work, visit his website, here.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in August 2015. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Last class in Rochester

Nina Koski and Cece Tassone painting in my garden. (Yes, I'm partial to the jungle aesthetic.)

There is no lovelier place than the Genesee Valley. From the six spectacular falls in the Genesee River to the Lake Ontario shore to the old neighborhoods of Rochester to our parks and arboretums, our area shines in May. So where did I decide to teach my last class? In my front garden, of course, coming full circle around to the place where I first declared myself a teacher.

Me, Nina and Carol Thiel painting in my front garden.

When my friend Catherine suggested that I hold painting classes, I was skeptical. I’m not credentialed in education, and my teaching experience was limited to Sunday school. But I rapidly realized that I could, in fact, teach.

What teaching teaches you is that your method can be divided and described as a process. I really didn’t realize how much I knew about painting until I taught it, year in and year out.

Brad Van Auken and Aaron Boucher painting in my front garden while Carol takes a break in the shade.

Still, a lot of people can paint well and even describe their process. However, not all of them care whether others reach their full potential. That’s the basic difference between someone who should be teaching and someone who shouldn’t.

Victoria Brzustowicz and Teressa Ramos listening to my blather.

My husband plays with an Eastman-trained musician, Pastor Debra Parris. He once said to me, “she’s got all the talent in the world, but she spends so much time encouraging others to make music.” That’s a fine legacy and something to aspire to.

The solar queen attended and waved regally at us.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Time like the tide

Pointe du Hoc, Lee Haber, 11x14, oil.

Baby Boomers’ youth was shaped by two galvanizing events that were also polar extremes. We were the children of men and women molded by the last heroic war, World War II. Yet we came of age during the deeply cynical and anti-heroic years of Vietnam.

Last Friday was the 70th anniversary of VE-Day, which marked the end of World War II in Europe. Most of its soldiers have joined the long grey line marching silently into history. Their wives and sweethearts wait out their days in nursing homes.

Omaha Beach #2, Lee Haber, 11x14, oil.

For those of us whose fathers served in the war, this is a stunning realization. We remember our fathers as young men, reminiscing about their wartime experiences. To realize that the better part of a century has elapsed is astonishing.

Remnants, Omaha Beach, Lee Haber, 16x20, oil.

Earlier this year, painter Lee Haber visited France, including the beaches where Allied troops mounted the vast D-Day assault on the German Atlantic Wall defenses. Casualties were heavy on both sides: of 156,000 Allied troops, there were at least 10,000 casualties.

“I grew up during the war and realize the actions that very young men—boys, really—were compelled to do,” he told me. “I consider myself a bit of a World War II historian, and can hardly imagine the horror, the pain, the hurt.”

Omaha Beach, Normandy, Lee Haber, 12x16, oil.

I’m glad that Lee is painting what is there now, rather than trying to reconstruct the assault itself. Instead, the energy in his paintings is suppressed, lying within the sea and sky. In this work, time, like the tides, eventually washes away all human endeavors, worries, and losses.

You can visit Lee’s website here.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Rescuing failure

Ellwanger-Berry Garden, 12X16, oils. This almost got scraped out; it's ended up being one of my favorite paintings.

There’s a view outside my house that has defeated me. It is a sycamore set against a curving street. It’s elegant, architectural, and should be easy enough to paint. But I’ve yet to realize it in a plein air painting.

If you fail at something, hooray! That means you’re pushing past what you know. You’re on your way to your next discovery. You’re breaking limits. Each failed painting, ironically, puts you one step closer to success.

Safe Harbor, 16X20, oil on canvasboard. Sometimes you have to paint something repeatedly before you get it right.

It’s a good thing that failure is such a positive thing, since I do it so frequently.

Occasionally, when a painting is past salvaging, I scrape it out and accept my failure. But if it’s not completely terrible, I save it, set it aside, and go back and look at it later. Sometimes I have found that some good paintings completely eluded me at the time I did them. But regardless, when it starts to go wrong, I've learned to stop throwing more time, energy, or paint at it.

Failure sucks, but the only way to defeat it is to try again. That doesn’t mean going back to that sycamore and beating it up with a pencil; it means painting again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day after that.

Moorings, 14X18, oil on canvasboard. I didn’t like this when I painted it. Marilyn Feinberg, who was with me, liked it. I’ve come to agree with her. Another set of eyes is always helpful.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Don’t believe half of what you read

The tail end of the anti-Bill demonstration at the bus headquarters.

Yesterday I was driving downtown when I passed a demonstration at the bus headquarters. Union members were protesting the decision to stop busing 9,000 Rochester City School District students on the RTS because troublemakers won’t stop fighting. The move will cost 144 jobs. I get their frustration but I was a little offended by the signs that read, “Fire Bill,” particularly as the graphics alluded to the “Kill Bill” movies.

See, I know Bill. He’s not an abstraction but a real, live human being. I thought for a moment about stopping and telling the protesters what a nice guy he is, but I didn’t think it would change their minds. Anyways, I was headed downtown for the National Day of Prayer, and I was running late.

Listening to prayers on the steps of City Hall.

On Wednesday a teenager was shot while playing basketball at a little park on Fourth Street. That’s right by the Public Market, and I know that park pretty well. My car was once totaled by a stolen vehicle alongside the jungle-gym. It’s absurd that a kid could be shot in a park full of children in broad daylight. If that happened in tony Loudoun County, VA, where our government muckety-mucks raise their families, the uproar would be appalling. But this is urban Rochester and it warranted three sentences on the news.

The closer you are to the city, the more aware you are that it is in trouble and that politics doesn’t seem able to fix much. It’s no surprise that the impulse to pray was led overwhelmingly by the inner-city churches. After all, if you live in Henrietta or Webster, the problems of crime and education are a pity, but a vague one.

Hands stretching in prayer from City Hall to the County Building.

The National Day of Prayer event started with politicians and formal prayers. But the real action happened when citizens formed a human chain reaching from City Hall to the County Building and prayed like mad for the welfare of our community.

At one point I caught myself thinking, “750,000 people in this county, and only several hundred of us came out. What difference can we possibly make?” But in fact we can. Prayer is not the work of our hands, but a plea for a miraculous intervention. The results, basically, have nothing to do with us.

This handsome shofar player is Eugene Henn from Brighton. It was a beautiful thing to hear the shofar ringing off that Medina sandstone.

I ran into Bill’s wife downtown. As we were leaving, I suggested that she take a different route home so she didn't have to see the protesters. “Maybe I should bring them water bottles,” she mused. The answer to the end of urban violence is to bless the ones who curse you, to stop keeping score, but it’s so hard to do. Anyway, they had folded up shop when I drove past a few minutes later. The prayers had outlasted the demonstrators.

A crime map for my fair city for the first four months of 2015. For an up-to-date version, see here.

Meanwhile, while both events were taking place, a woman’s body was found on Hudson Avenue. Just another day in Rochester.

Paint Schoodic