Studio Update:

This site is under construction, as you might tell from the Studio Update title page. Be patient as the site is cleaned up.

Two weeks ago I received several works that I had in storage for over 15 years! Here are a few of the images. I have not combed  through all the work yet but I look forward to that showing some of them in the next Studio Update.

 

Pert, November 1994, pastel on paper.

I visited Greece twice before I moved there. This pastel was from the 2nd visit in November of 1994. After that trip I moved there in January of '95. The things I love about Greece are  the environment and the light. The light is brilliant and colorful, not washed out, with brilliant oranges, golds, and blues. I found it interesting that the Mosque domes are suggestive of female anatomy.

 

 

Wave, 1990, pastel on paper, 19 x 26"

I didn't remember which works I had stored away and it was a little shocking to think that this piece as not seen the light of day for 12 years. It is from a series of pastel nudes that I made in 1990. Its interesting for me to recall the fabrics he is lying on: The red was used in the paintings Absorption and Blithe; the blue, in Counterpose. At the time the model made a critical observation, which my emotional response was a sting of embarrassment: he said that he was tired of artist making him look light skinned. Nonetheless I think this piece is beautifully composed with a flow of light and intense color.

 

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Last month I was invited to participate in an exhibition at Java Street Studios in Brooklyn, In the Buff: A Survey of the Nude. Here are a few of the works I exhibited there.

 

Arrangement in Black, Gray, and White No. 2, 2006, pastel on paper, 19 x 26"

Its interesting to contrast the earlier pastel with this one. I used black paper and took pains to keep him as dark as possible and playing a great deal with all the lighter things around him.

 

Suggestion, 2006, pastel on paper, 19 x 26"

Art is funny. Its not just technique. A big part of it is translating emotional responses. What I have always enjoyed about pastel and, specifically, color is that it can name my emotional response. I doubt that I can explain it clearly. The model was posing with white walls behind him, but that were literally bland and it didn't convey the model's excitement about being a foreigner with a good job living and with the promise of an intense life in New York.

 

Aware, 2005, pastel on red paper, 16 x 22"

This is a finished color study for a future painting of Kimberly. I think it is a really wild piece--but then intense red paper combined with pastel medium tend in that direction. The inspiration for this piece came about from the paintings of the Madonna's of Da Vinci and Raphael--the idea of elegant classical figure with a landscape behind. But there is an innovative element to the color theme of the light. She is lit by indoor light, a hot color and the background is lit by the sun, a cooler color. The grass and plants in the landscape have cool highlights and hot shadows. Its a lot to go into here...but I am very happy with integrating the red paper, the two light sources, and making it all flow.

 

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Color Studies for Kim, images are about 4 x 5", pastel.

 

Color study for Kim, 8 x 8", pastel

The medium of pastel are color sticks about as wide as your finger. This color studies are thumbnail pastel sketches; they are small. These sketches were drawn live. For an artist I think it is very important to explore. To try new things, feelings,  and ways of looking is what growth is all about. These studies for the painting of Kimberly I am looking into radical use of color yet I want it to feel natural. Often drawing from life with pastel helps a great deal towards seeing new color combinations and drawing small is less time consuming, less precious, so it is easier to explore and try different combinations.

 

 

Arrangement in Pink, Green, Blue, and Gold, 2006, pastel on paper, 19 x 26

My most recent theory of light deals with a hierarchy of light and dark and triangulating them. This was a 4-hour pastel done in a life-drawing workshop at Spring Street Studio in Manhattan. The idea is to punch the lights: the wall behind her head; the glow on the floor; and the light on her hand. And to punch the darks: the black of her hair; the navy of cloth; and brown behind her. And try to keep all the tones in-between those extremes more neutral. I found this to be a great way to exploit the range of light and dark in an image.

 

 

 

Unfinished

This piece is stretching the color red as far as I can take it, I am enjoying the experiment. I hope to have one more session and then call it finished. The final touches will be lighting the thigh and stomach areas, which, I am certain will give a great sense of spot lit glow. Symbolically I have to consider that the idea behind the piece is that the mid-section of a man is where is light comes from!

 

 

 

Kelly, unfinished, charcoal on Rives BFK, 19 x 26"

This piece is of a friend of mine, Kelly. Its unfinished and I am looking to finished the background and a bit more work on her as well. This piece is also the subject of a Tutorial on Triangulating the Figure. I have begun a series of tutorials about art making which I am posting at http://www.newberryworkshop.com/Tutorial/tut.html

 

 

Detail, Lovers Jumping.

The most important work in my studio is Lovers Jumping. I would love to concentrate solely on it till its completion but that is not practical as my smaller works are my bread and butter. I look at my major, principal, works as my investment in the future. Anyway, I hit a snag in the painting; her face had to be made a little larger and and realigned. The faint squares you see are the charcoal grid lines I used to transfer the image from a small pencil study. If things go well with this I might finished it within a year.

 

Little Bird, unfinished, oil on panel, 12 x 16"

I set up a still life for students and I enjoyed it so much I decided to do a series, variations on this set up. This work has proved to be exceedingly complex and the detailing excruciatingly difficult. Its loaded with my particular brand of symbolism, which I will talk about when its finished.

 

Little Bird No. 2, unfinished, oil on panel, 9 x 12"

 

 

Little Bird No. 3, unfinished, oil on panel, 9 x 12"

 

Little Bird No. 4, pastel on paper, 19 x 26"

 

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Medusa's Head, 2006, oil on canvas, 9 x 12"

Last winter in Florida I painted about 30 plein air paintings (outdoor paintings painted direct from life.) Fog, and gray, and dead things aren't exactly my style. But painting fresh, looking at the world around you, and what you visually perceive has a lot of value for me. My studio in New York is magnificent and one of the reasons is that I have 50 feet of distance to review my work. Having that distance is an incredible help to an artist because if there forms in the painting can hold their integrity at a great distance you hit a home run! Having look at these two for a few months here I decided to put them back on the easel for two reasons: I wanted to increase the drama of the light and dark and I saw a way of expressing something sinister in me!

Medusa's Head and Headless remind me of postmodernism. Art instruction in my college was postmodern and I have a justified negative opinion about it. It is all about the things you are against and not the things you are for. So let me be a little irrelevant and a little postmodern myself; I am against death and foggy minds!

Headless, 2006, oil on canvas, 9 x 12"

 

An early self-portrait. This oil sketch as been with me for 11 years, I have always liked it, and last week I decided to "clean it up". I glazed (its a technique something like staining wood furniture with a colored varnish) the background a couple of shades darker and now I am elated with it. The theme here, is a difficult one. When I lived in Greece, on a Island, I began to realize the importance of keeping your mouth shut and being very careful what you choose to discuss. To give you one example, I wanted to teach a life-drawing class on Rhodes, but modern Greece is not like ancient Greece it has been profoundly influenced by Byzantium and the Greek Orthodox Church. I was advised by very close friends not to have classes for life drawing because it would harm my reputation. Strange.