Instructors Exhibition at The Art Students League of New York

September 2 to October 9, 2014
215 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
Website

Around the World Creative Blog Hop

Many thanks to the extraordinarily gifted sculptor Midori Tataki for nominating me for the Around the World Creative Blog Hop, wherein artists answer questions about their creative endeavors and invite others to participate.

It's always fun to do a bit of self-examination so here's my entry:

What am I working on?

We're currently on break at the National Academy of Design, where I study painting with Dan Gheno, and so I've been dropping in at Spring Studio in Soho NYC to sketch live models.

My recent drawings are all short poses lasting about 10 to 20 minutes. Rather than doing the full figure I've been focusing on portraits and sections of the torso to study the abstract patterns that occur naturally in the human form.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I was trained in classical realism but over the past few years transitioned into figurative expressionism.

To paraphrase Lucian Freud, my object in painting is to move the senses by giving an intensification of reality. My art explores the fragmentary nature of perception, the selectivity of memory, and the heightened awareness that exists between the artist and subject.

In my paintings I aim for visual tension through opposing colors and brushstrokes. I often introduce an element of discordance, perhaps something that doesn't seem quite right, in order to startle the eye and encourage it to keep looking.

I follow many artists who combine realism and abstraction. I like to think of my own work as a part of this zeitgeist.

My pieces, however, differ from others in that I prefer live models over photographs. I believe that it is important to be in the same room with the model in order to accurately express his or her personality and energy on the canvas.

Why do I create what I do?

As a child I liked to sketch but it was only after seeing the movie Pollock that I decided to attend art school.

Drawing from life is intensely addictive. The focused, non-verbal exploration sometimes fosters a psychological attachment that is similar to transference. Indeed, I have become good friends with many models and have come to appreciate their feedback and points of view.

I believe that portraiture is an essential tradition that enables us to recognize the dignity all humanity. It has been my privilege to continue this practice.

How does my creative process work?

I have documented my creative process with Freddy, Lex, and Christophe.

I start with a realistic drawing then develop it in an expressionistic manner. If a painting takes more than one session, I photograph it and alter the image digitally to explore possible directions.

With these recent studies I've been trying to develop the fragmented, glitched qualities at the very beginning, rather than superimposing them later on in my process.

And now... with great pleasure I hereby nominate the following artists for this blog hop:

Martin Olsson - color field minimalist, based in the UK,

Daniil Belov - plein air landscape artist, based in Russia, and

Troy Stith - sculptor and painter, based in Ohio.

Please click on their links and enjoy their inspiring works. And thanks to all of you for visiting my blog!

Aria

Here are a couple of photos pf my painting Aria on a collector's wall. I've never thought of my art as decorative, at least not in in the conventional sense of the word, but I think it looks good in this interior.

The collector encouraged me to continue with larger scale paintings which I haven't done in over a year. Art class resumes next Saturday and so I'm looking forward to working on a big canvas again.

 

UPDATE:

Here are two smaller paintings in the collector's bedroom:

The Freshness

When it's cold and raining, 
you are more beautiful. 

And the snow brings me 
even closer to your lips. 

The inner secret, that which was never born, 
you are that freshness, and I am with you now. 

I can't explain the goings, 
or the comings. You enter suddenly, 

and I am nowhere again. 
Inside the majesty.

- Rumi

New Photography 2

Here's the second installment of my photographic experiment. Like the first batch I focused on geometric abstraction and avoided narrative.

I took these pictures with my iPhone at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. The last three were of revolving doors at the MoMA where the blurred motion and reflections somehow reminded me of Gerhard Richter and Andy Denzler. These images gave me some ideas for future paintings.

This Saturday will be our final class for the summer at the National Academy, after which we'll have a few weeks' break before the sessions resume in September. I may take some more photos during this hiatus.

New Photography

I recently watched Finding Vivian Maier, a documentary about a nanny who compulsively took photographs on her daily walks.

Curiously, most of her pictures remained undeveloped in her lifetime. Maier's work was discovered a few years ago during a liquidation sale of her storage holdings. Since her death on 2009 her photos have received critical praise and found a wide audience though the internet and international exhibitions.

The film inspired me to try some photography during our two week break at the National Academy. Unlike Maier, I couldn't bring myself to photograph strangers on the street, not in any recognizable fashion anyway. I limited myself to abstract compositions in an effort to resolve a new set of pictorial issues that had nothing to do with figurative painting.

I have a Nikon DSLR but found it too clunky to carry around. I used my iPhone instead and online photo editing programs.

I took many pictures, deleted most of them, but thought I'd share a few images. Art class resumes this Saturday but I'll probably continue my photographic experiment. It's a new way of looking at things. I find myself mentally cropping everything I see in order to distill my daily life into its abstract essence.

Christophe

I recently watched one of my favorite art films, Love is the Devil. starring Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and a very young Daniel Craig as his lover George Dyer.

The film is an intense meditation on the creative impulse as an expression of the libido. While you won't see any of Bacon's paintings in the movie, the director filmed it with much distortion and strange lighting, evoking Bacon's artistic style and nihilistic frame of mind.

For our latest model, Christophe, I attempted something Bacon-esque, i.e. an abstracted head study against a dark background. I did the painting in one three hour session beginning with a drawing using acrylic on linen:

Then the application of color and, for lack of a better adjective, "angry" brushstrokes:

Here's the final image:



It was weird trying to channel Bacon. I became quite unnerved in the process but I think this was worth the exercise. I lost the drawing a bit, due to distortion, but still consider it a portrait since Bacon's portraits of Dyer weren't meant to be realistic or conventionally recognizable.

Maybe I'll try to imitate Lucian Freud next week.