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.

Working outdoors

Most of my recent work over the past number of years has been landscape painting, done 'en plein air' with a french easel. I find it very liberating and challenging working this way. Liberating, in the sense that it frees me from the confines of the 'white cube' studio space, and challenging because of all the problems that come with it. First, the weather becomes a major factor; almost a partner in the creation of the work. Once a painting is started under a certain light condition, or time of year, I'm forced to proceed with the completion of it under the same conditions, as close as that's possible. So, most of the time the weather is dictating to me what times I can work on a certain painting. It also puts me on a timeline that syncs my painting time with the rotation of the earth. That is, if there are certain shadows that are cast in the painting, I only have a small window of time to paint them under the same conditions, during the same time of the day. Recently, my paintings have moved from a looser impressionistic interpretation of color and light, to a descriptive, exact factual space. Whereas before I could complete a small painting in a few hours, I find myself now returning to work on larger, more detailed paintings, over many weeks.
One painting I started in November, had to be put on hold. I was painting under the elevated subway line (F/G) near my studio, in the morning. I was initially fascinated with how the light was raking across the front of a series of old factory buildings, causing the bricks to glow with a fire-like intensity. The light in November has such a magical, crisp quality, causing very dark, violet shadows. I immediately thought of Edward Hopper, and specifically "Early Sunday morning" in the Whitney's collection.
So after a couple of prep drawings, I started a painting about 18" x 24". I continued working on it a few days a week during that month, from about 9am until 11, until the sun just peeked out from behind the elevated track above and behind me, causing my canvas to be flooded with direct light. This obviously was a severe limitation I was putting on myself, given the fact the I only had about a 2 hour window to paint this scene, and the increasingly shorter days and dropping temperatures. Needless to say, by the beginning of December, I had to stop work on it. The light had become totally different, and it was too cold to paint. Usually my threshold to paint outdoors is about 50 degrees, not only for my own comfort factor, but the paint and the media I use (25% poppy oil, 75% turpentine) doesn't flow or stick to the canvas right. I tried taking some photos, but they left me disoriented and confused in relation to the painting I started. At some point, I'll write about the use of photographic material in relation to my paintings, but for now I'll just say that it wasn't going to help me. I had gone too far with the painting, and what was recorded in the photographs and what was happening on the canvas were miles apart. I threw them out and decided I'll continue working on it in the spring when the weather gets warmer, even if it means redoing the entire painting under different light conditions. Hence, the frustrations of working 'en plein air'.