Kentile Floors

The 'Kentile Floors' sign is like the Eiffel Tower of Gowanus, Brooklyn. Located directly across from my studio, and visible from the elevated F and G train which passes overhead, it is a structure of instant familiarity to many commuters. The building on which it is perched no longer makes flooring (it now makes garments), but it is a mysterious reminder of the area's long history of manufacturing. The letters actually contain tubular light bulbs, which I assume worked at one point (what an awesome sight that would be!), and depending on the angle of the sun, glow with a crimson intensity. I've done a few paintings of the sign before, and thought I'd return to a familiar subject to paint over the winter months. I started this one in early December, once it got too cold to paint outside. However, I found that I still had to layer up and paint with my fingerless gloves on, due to the drafty nature of the studio building. I picked a spot near one of the hallway windows and knew I wanted to capture the sign as it towered above the skyline, all aglow with oranges and reds contrasting with the cold blue of a winter sky.



I started off doing a small oil sketch (12" x 16") with the light I wanted. I painted this in a few hours over 2 consecutive days, from about 10am to 12pm. In the study, I had captured this great swell of clouds behind the sign, which unfortunately didn't make it into the final painting. I find the sky the most difficult part of a landscape to paint. Not only is it the most transient element, especially if clouds are rolling through, but also because there is a unique and seamless quality to the atmosphere; a very particular field under which things are being played out. Painting a sky is so subtle; it's not just blue and white, but also contains reds and yellows. New York has the added element of that smog layer too, which broadens the color range considerably.

After the oil sketch, I realized there were things happening outside the picture frame which I wanted to include in the larger version. As I stood in front of the window, I found myself leaning to the left and watching the way the street curved away and up the street. There were a few open loading dock doors, as well as, a street light which caught my interest. I was also peering downward, looking over the window ledge at the street below. I had picked a difficult spot to paint from, since I couldn't step back from the painting (I was literally backed into a corner), but wanted to include these different extensions in space. I preceded to work on a large charcoal drawing from the same spot, investigating the way I was going to try to bend this space to include these different elements. In the drawing I added more paper to the bottom edge, in order to include the slow curve of the painted lines on the road. I liked the way the space was curving around the focal point of the sign, slowly sweeping around and up the street. While doing the drawing, I also got a chance to quickly sketch in a plane on it's flight path to Laguardia; a counter point to the static nature of the sign.



So from the drawing, I determined the size of the canvas, which was slightly larger. I transferred the drawing and blocked the colors in using the oil sketch as a guide. I continued working from the motif in front of the window, over the next few months. At a certain point the light had changed drastically, getting too low in the sky from my initial vision of it. I could work on the roof-line on up, but the bottom half of the painting, the face of the building and the street, contained a fleeting ocean of shadows. Early in the painting session, from about 9:30-10:30, I could see the lower half the way I wanted to paint it, but it was gone too quickly.



As the painting developed, I became increasingly frustrated by the curvature of the space, the thing that had intrigued me the most before I started. The constant craning of my neck around the window, proved too difficult to maintain. I kept losing my space in the painting. I realized I was trying to include too much...the right hand side of the painting was sliding off the canvas. I had to pull in my field of vision by cropping the sides of the canvas. Back in the studio, I started cropping the top, right, and bottom of the painting, taking about 3 inches off those sides. I let the painting dry for a week and pulled it off the stretcher bars, cut it down, re-assembled and re-stretched it. I've added more canvas to paintings before, but removing it was a first. It proved to be the right solution in this situation, reorganizing the space and pulling everything together.

By now the painting had been going on for about 3 months, me slowly watching the light creep higher and causing shorter shadows. Working on sustained paintings like this becomes a dance; working and re-working sections, fine tuning the light, making adjustments, working for periods in the studio from memory, trying to find that initial vision I was looking for. Spring arrives, the clocks change, things shift a little more. The blue-violet shadows of winter are gone and replaced by the warm yellow light of April. The sign proved the most difficult element to paint; the focal point and most intricate element of the painting. How do I paint all those supporting beams without painting every thin metal bar with a tiny brush? How do I keep this painting from freezing up and losing that freshness and immediacy of the sketch?

One of last things I did to the painting was to block out the lamp-post towards the right side of the painting; too cramped over there, and besides, I wanted the sweep of the sidewalk to go 'un-interrupted' off the side of the canvas. I re-worked most of the colors of the building's facade to adjust to the new spring light and painted the cloud formation behind the sign in one session. I loved the way the subtle arc of the dispersing cloud acted as a counter-weight to the arc of the building in the foreground...another one of those vapor-like visions that the painting needed. This is definitely one of the longest paintings I've worked on recently: December to April, about 4 months. It will always remind me of the view from my studio building and my many commutes into Manhattan. At some point I can imagine this sign being torn down like so many things in New York...a fitting portrait for a transient city.

The parlor

This is a painting I've been working on over the past 3 months. It's been very refreshing to be painting inside over the winter, as well as, working at home. The painting was done at night, after my kids are in bed, from about 8-10:30pm. It depicts the second floor of our house, seen from the street end and looking towards the back of the house where the kitchen is. There have been countless painting sessions, as I've become more involved with painting in a more exacting and descriptive manner. Initially I was thinking of painting either my wife or my children on the sofa, but as the painting progressed, I liked the idea of seeing the vacated space with a human presence in it. There are some subtle references to this, such as the scattered toys in the foreground and the TV which is on (the right-hand side of the painting). After a few weeks of working on it, upon returning from checking my email on the computer in the kitchen, I noticed the screen was emitting this beautiful cobalt blue glow in the background. I decided to add that element too, not only as another focal point of light, but as a nod to the previous painting of the banana palm I did.

The scattering of different light sources throughout the space, the lamp on the left, the upward light of the wall sconces, the TV screen, the computer, the warm glow of the light in the kitchen, keep the eye moving through the space. Initially, I had planned on painting the floor without the toys, but it looked too neat and barren. The fact is, by the end of the day, my kids usually have their toys scattered all over the place in the living room, and it's a constant battle to have this space organized. I felt it would be more true to life if the toys were depicted as being left out on the carpet. The hard part was keeping it from looking too composed, so I edited out some of the toys that were left out one night, and took a photo to note the position of each one. This way, I could refer to the photo to set the toys up during a specific painting session. Most of it is Playmobil, which are my son's favorite toys, and I welcomed the opportunity to paint these objects with their bright, synthetic looking colors. I included one of my daughter's, a princess, which was added during the last painting session.

The painting is rather compact, for having such a large sweep of the room included, which accounts for the distortion that occurs when fitting a wide field of vision into the parameters of the canvas. I still find painting by lamp-light rather difficult, as there is always an adjustment period with the light and colors when I bring the piece to my studio. It's the same as working outdoors, but there it's usually a matter of too much light rather, than too little. It's good, because it actually forces me to work without the motif in front of me, something that needs to be done if I'm actually going to see what the painting is doing.

Entrance to Lowe's

Here's the completed painting of the one I described in a previous post. I had started it in November, but had to stop because of the weather and changing light. I had worked on it awhile in the studio from some photographs I had taken, but was unhappy with the way it was progressing. The colors in the photos were bleached out and lacked any depth and detail, so I threw them out. I had it in my studio all winter, in the corner on a easel, patiently waiting there while I worked on other paintings.

The weather began getting warmer recently, so I decided to re-engage with the painting and took it outside again. The scene depicts the entrance to the Lowe's parking lot on 9th street, where I park my car when I go to the studio. I pass by these buildings all the time and was captivated by the way the forms in front of me stood out against the clear blue sky. The looming streetlight towering above, in front of a jagged roof-line of triangles and an old chimney. Overhead is the elevated F and G train line, as it passes over the Gowanus Canal for 2 stops, beautifully draped in black mesh to keep the cement from crumbling off. I included the supporting posts on the left and right sides of the painting, hinting at the structure overhead, but out of sight. This Spring and Summer, I plan to do a series of paintings depicting this elevated track from different angles; the slow, gradual, black bulge of the tracks as it rises above the ground and through this space.

The painting was actually done in a high traffic area, something I don't usually like doing. People were constantly passing by, to and from Lowe's, usually wanting to ask me questions or talk; all cordial and respectful though. I had a few nice conversations with people, from construction workers to junkies, just amazed that someone was out there doing a painting of this wasteland they see everyday. It's intriguing for me to have my work seen by an audience that usually doesn't have any contact with Art; it allows people to re-evaluate what beauty and meaning is, and my hope is that they see their surroundings as something that can inspire. But what I'm out there to do is to paint, and small talk usually just gets in the way. And, whenever I hear someone ask me if I "know that painter-guy on TV with the Afro", I feel like jumping in the canal.

When I returned to this spot after 5 months, the light had obviously completely changed. I was prepared for this, and decided that I liked the composition I had set in place enough to just re-work the light and color. The shadow areas had changed from a blue-violet, to a warmer gray and the face of the buildings had a richer, brown-orange hue, due to the light hitting it more directly, rather than raking across. To my surprise, a small elevated barricade had been erected directly across from me, along the face of the building in the center of the composition. This was just what the painting needed, not only because it gave the painting more depth, but the green coloring provided a compliment to the red-orange of the building's facade. Also, the support poles stood out as bright cobalt lines against the shadows behind it. Another one of those surprises that happen only through sustained looking and working before the motif; the subject giving you something more that the painting needs.

Flowering bulb (finished)

Here it is...the 'Flowering Bulb' painting finished. I thought it would be a quick 6 hour painting; it turned into a 6 week painting. The flower I did rather fast, because of it's blooming cycle, in a 2 hour sitting. I actually wanted to work on it some more, because I wasn't entirely happy with the way it came out, but when I returned to paint it, it had already started to wilt and die. It's window of time for me, and the painting, had come and gone. I actually enjoy moments like these when I paint. I've got this small opening to try and capture what's before me, maybe 20 minutes or a few hours, and then it's gone. All that's left is the residue of a vision, a fleeting chance to capture some moment of truth passing before me. Even if there's only just 1 square inch of the painting that works in the end, it's all worth it.

Flowering bulb

I started a new painting a few days ago, depicting a flowering bulb on our kitchen table. There are 5 flowers ready to bloom and, as of now, only 2 are fully opened. I'm waiting for the pinnacle of it's growth to paint that part, which should be in a few days. This probably means I'll have to get the flower done in 1 painting session, because of it's transient nature. Until now, I've mostly been working on other aspects of the painting, like the light and the space. It's really exciting capturing these slow, incremental movements of a plant's life cycle through time. (see the post I did about the banana palm painting) I'm beginning to feel Nature's slow, almost imperceptible growth all around me, through the paint.

The idea to do this painting came quite suddenly last week, after my wife Faith, moved the bulb from a corner of our kitchen onto the center of our table. I had sort of forgotten about it, as it had been slowly incubating there since Christmas. I'm always really impressed by her love and appreciation of plants, as well as, her excellent horticultural skills. Growing up as a kid, I was used to my mom placing plastic plants in unseen corners of our house where they would slowly accumulate dust (not such a green thumb). I love watching the slow passage of movement in a plant's growth cycle, as well as the bursts of bright colors that are sprinkled throughout our house and yard. It makes me aware of how dense and full of life the world really is.

I didn't do any prep studies for this one, but just grabbed a canvas I had in my studio and started painting. Usually I like to do some drawings and sketches first, to determine the composition and size of the painting. Recently, I've been determining my canvas size through drawing; working out from my field of vision, rather than having to fit what I see into the parameters of a pre-determined canvas size. This one is an unusual proportion for a still life, 14" x 22". Last Fall, I made a bunch of wide canvases like this to use for my quick, plein air landscapes. I like the wider format, as it is helping to re-emphasize the sweeping expanse of the horizontal table in front of me. I'm recording the slight bend and sag of the table as it sweeps away from the focal point of my vision, the flowering bulb.

Behind the bulb, is one of my wife's paintings. An initial impulse in painting this scene was how the flower was eventually going to mimic the colors and forms in her painting. We both feel that it's one of her best pieces, which is why it hangs over our kitchen table. By including her work in mine, it is bringing our paintings into a new dialog; a fuller relationship of the interconnectedness of our art and life together.

A Painting and a Photograph

I figured I'd write some thoughts on how I've used (and not used) the aid of photography in my work. There tends to be this deep divide in painting about how artists use photography as an aid in painting, and it's probably been around since the advent of the medium. The Impressionists, probably just after photography became available to the general public, grappled with how this new way of picturing the world was going to effect painting. Compositional devices such as the cropping of figures along the edges of paintings (I'm thinking of Degas in particular) seemed to generally mimic what was happening with early photography. It seems like now, we live in a culture that is saturated with photographic images (and more recently, computer generated imagery (CGI). From billboards to online ads, subway posters to Facebook profile pictures, we live in a never ending stream of the photographic image. I think that photography and it's related media are a beautiful and wonderful thing (as I write this, my kids are watching Pixar's "A Bug's Life", an amazing work of Art), but painting is quite a different beast. Besides being made by hand, a painting is an image created out of nothing. You start with a canvas, and through the accumulation of ground minerals and various plant materials, you arrive at a representation of reality. It is filtering the 3 dimensional world (along with the passage of time) through a consciousness, into a 2 dimensional, flat representation. The magic of painting for me is about condensing my vision of the world into the parameters of the canvas; it is a much slower experience than photography.

I find working from a photograph very limiting, both in finding the space of a painting and in observing the nuances of color and light. The photographic image is static, and sometimes the best surprises in painting can come when, after looking at an object for a long time, you tilt your head a little to the left or to the right and see something new. You lose that 'air' between objects, since you've compressed the image already. By slavishly copying a photograph, one is just making a facsimile of an already existing image. Your color sense becomes limited by the colors of the printing ink, which is very different from the color of Life. What I'm after in painting is the experience of seeing and looking deeply at something. It has it's advantages of course, like if I'm trying to paint a very transient thing like a cloud or a crashing wave. The photograph has to supplement my experience of looking at something, not replace it.

One painting that I did last year with the aid of a photograph is a winter scene of some rooftops in Gowanus. I had met someone who had this great view outside his woodworking studio on 6th Street, a few blocks away from mine. The view was looking southwest, with the sun causing the elevated train line to be in silhouette as it went down. I started a medium sized painting (18 x 24ish) in early November (gotta love that November light!) at dusk, wanting to capture that orange glow of the sun as it went down. I worked on the painting over 3 sessions (about 2 hours each) and was happy with the progress of the painting. Unfortunately, it was getting cold fast and I had started a job in which I couldn't come back and paint on site. So in mid-December, I arranged to come back and take some photos in order to finish up the painting in my studio. However, when I got to the roof, the entire scene had changed. Not only was the light completely different, but the rooftops were coated with a layer of recent snow. The snow made the rooftops pop out from the deep shadows, and really put the whole topography into relief. There were these beautiful blue-violet shadows falling in the foreground, and this new sight completely changed the entire painting for me. Excited with what I had found, I went to the studio in the subsequent weeks and reworked the painting. I added the snow on the roofs and changed the light from a fiery orange sunset to a more mellow, diffused sky. In this instance, there's no way I could have done that painting without a photograph. It definitely helped me that the painting's space was already established, and I had put in a number of hours looking at the scene. In the end, it's the painting that dictates what it needs.

working indoors

Now that it is too cold to paint outdoors, I've started a few paintings inside. Besides being more comfortable, I've found that it's much easier to paint when I'm in control of the light source (lamps). As I've described previously, working outside puts me at the mercy of the weather and the variables of sunlight, so these new paintings are a welcome relief.

The most recent painting I've completed, is of a banana palm plant that is in my kitchen. During the winter months, my wife and I take many of our plants from the deck, indoors. Besides giving our house a lush, tropical feeling, it also protects them from the elements. One that I repeatedly find most annoying to deal with is the banana palm. First of all, it's now so heavy and bulky, getting it indoors is a 2 person job, requiring a dolly and some cursing. Secondly, the only spot for it is in our kitchen next to a window, which is just to the left of where I keep my laptop computer and our toaster oven. It's now about as tall as I am, and given the small space in New York living quarters, it sometimes feels like we've added another member to our family. It's leaves fan out over and in front of the window, and I find myself always bumping into it while checking my email or making toast. So after much procrastinating, and before the first frost, a friend and I finally pulled it inside. Looking to continue my work through the winter, I thought I'd somehow redeem my annoyance with this plant by doing a painting of it. I was struck by the towering grace-fullness of the plant, bursting out of it's heavy aluminum base. I also liked the idea having my computer in the painting; the organic next to the machine.

I did a sketch and a larger charcoal drawing, then determined that the size of the canvas should be about 18" x 24". One thing that fascinated me as I worked on the piece was how fast the plant was growing. Having scrutinized and observed it for about a month, I noticed how rapidly the plant's leaves were unfolding before me. There was this very slow, but perceptible rotation upward and outward of the plant reaching for daylight (phyllotaxis). I found this completely amazing, but also frustrating in regards to working on the painting. Having picked something to paint which I thought was static (a still life), I found myself painting a moving target again. It forced me to render the leaves' positioning in a one-shot painting session, usually about 2 hours. A few days later, when I returned to work on the painting, I found the position of the leaves had changed, forcing me to destroy and repaint it anew. At a certain point I was happy with the way the leaves were painted and worked on the rest of the painting. After about a month, I thought the painting was complete and took it to the studio to put some finishing touches on it. A few days later in the kitchen, I noticed that one of the large, lower leaves protruding out into the space in front of the plant, was beginning to slowly change color. The fresh, 'ripe' leaves, all have this dark variegated green with purplish splotches, which was was a thrill to paint. The dying leaf in the front was slowly losing that deep viridian color, turning yellowish-orange from the tip on upward. This last element is what finally tied the whole painting together for me. The new yellow-orange in the leaf mimicked the yellow orange of the floor and cabinet to the right, and added a focal point to the sprouting jumble of green leaves in the middle of the painting. I brought the painting back for one last sitting and repainted the front-most leaf in one shot.

It's moments like these that remind me of why I enjoy painting from life. There's no way that the dying leaf would have meant that much to me if I had just taken a photo and decided to do a painting from it. I had observed and witnessed the birth and death of this plant's life cycle over the past month. The course of the painting contained a succession of frozen moments which were seen and recorded. The unfolding of growth and decay; from the striving fresh shoots in the middle of the plant, to the dying leaf in the front. It is by this slow, sustained looking at things which allows me to see and know the world.