Posts from the ‘On My Own Art’ Category
With summer nearing quickly, so is my time in Israel, and this is causing me a bit of a panic. Have I painted the bedroom enough? Have I painted anything enough? Two years ago, my fiance came up with a new problem to solve in the world of condensed matter physics, and two days ago he found the solution. It is an enormous relief and a cause for celebration, a marvelous achievement after an important post-PhD assignment at the Weizmann Institute – but it also means that we will be moving on to a new place soon. New problems to create and solve. Packing, moving, and unpacking. Looking for a new apartment, discovering a new neighborhood.
I can’t quite relate to the kind of relief he is feeling, even though the parallels between painting and physics are so striking. As a painter, I can spend a heck of a long time on a painting, trying to resolve it as I discover new problems along the way – but whether the official “end” of a painting refers to relief and the solution to the problem is another unknown. I can paint a ton of failures, one after the other, filling a room with them. The worst is perhaps when I paint a failure but don’t know it. Just last week, I splurged on 30 new wooden panels. They are not too large (for moving and packing) but already I have started paintings on nine of them. I am trying to balance the urge to paint more with the desire to paint sincerely and honestly and with the knowledge of limited time and impending change.
Blue Diagonal
As I paint my messy home with nostalgia of our time in Israel, I am looking forward greatly to knowing what our new home will be, knowing that it is around the corner. Somewhere and sometime soon. Although we can change countries and cultures with a mere airplane ride, I think that the memories of places stretch from one place to another, exerting themselves on how we think and what we find important, despite the distance of time and place.
Postcard Painting
Purple Blanket
This painting is in about stage eight, with a ton of work to go, measuring 90 x 90 cm. My cat Visa is that grey thing that keeps showing up, and she is bound to show up a few more times, if I don’t edit her out!
These two window paintings I hesitatingly call “memory” paintings. I wake up often in the middle of the night, and on my way to the kitchen I pass by my studio door, where the window looks out on the building facing mine, lit up by some bizarre pink light.
This one is a sketch I did for the first painting, and I might take it in another direction, or leave much of it alone.
This one needs some serious work on the background, for I do see that horrible size of the door and wall treatment. Part of the problem is where I decided I needed to put the mirror: resting inside the ledge of the window, against a wire screen, difficult to ever get at the same angle twice – the wind one time knocked it over, but thankfully it did not break. So much is to be added yet and changed, but I found the size of the portrait a good challenge, with the panel measuring a total 40 x 60 cm.
What a crazy past couple months this has been, and I wonder if it’s the same all over. As I am leaving tomorrow for a much welcome trip to Italy (with a whole day in Rome to ponder Domenico Morelli and wander the grounds of Villa Borghese) I realized that I have not shared any of the recent paintings I have been working on in quite a while. The truth is, I have started so many, but they are taking longer. This has much to do with the fact that I am going through many more stages along the way where I stop, ponder, and decide to paint something else on top. So these images here are far from what I would call finished. They are moments of pause in the process, and will likely go through enormous changes before becoming yet another painting. Sometimes I have craved a rewind button, but the further I push it I find some interesting surprises happen that have very little to do with what I began. Losing paintings has become crucial to finding learned paintings.
As I am leaving for the US this evening for two weeks, I thought I would post some of the paintings I have been working on since my return from Italy to Israel. My flight does not leave until midnight, so amidst the little bit of packing I must do, I will also spend a good part of the day painting. It seems to appear that I am currently fixated on pink, but this is only because in the short time I have been back, the pink sheets were the clean ones! And they make everything take on a pinkish hue.
My trip to the US will include seeing my entire family reunited for a birthday and a wedding, before I begin a busy trip to visit about 20-30 contemporary artists across the country for a personal studio visit. I will begin in the Midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana), then California (San Francisco), and finish in the New York area (Brooklyn, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia). Quite a hectic trip, but I am very excited about meeting them, seeing their work in person, and discussing some international artist opportunities I am developing for significant contemporary figurative painters.
Pink Window of Time, 29 x 32 cm
I returned in the wee hours on Friday, September 3 after a 7 week stint in Italy at the Certosa di Pontignano just outside of Siena, and since then I have been able to improve my website and post new images. Though most of my time in Italy was taken up by things other than art and painting, I did manage to begin close to 30 paintings, all on linen, though many of these are “failures” that will become the underpaintings for others in the future. As much as I might appreciate the quick, rapid sketch, I also enjoy the challenge of returning to a theme again for further contemplation, allowing it to become a greater niche in my thought process. So some of these images here are very quick and not so big, while with others I was able to at least get a second session with it. The painting above, for example, was something I came across when going to answer the phone. That pink light coming in from the window lasts no longer than 5 minutes each evening before sunset, so I tried getting back to it a few days in a row. The painting below instead was another view I came across in my room when the entire Certosa lost power in a massive thunderstorm. I was struck by the reflection on the floor, the blast of white and the inclusion of a television, and I was forced to paint very quickly before the lights came back on an hour later.
Approaching of the Storm, 16 x 25 cm
Closet, 35 x 48 cm
Pink Journal and Paper Bag, 33 x 40 cm
I suppose one might think that a long stay in Italy would involve numerous landscapes or street scenes, but after my enduring plunge into domestic chaos and focus on the beauty in the mundane, even in luscious Italy I stayed away from painting the rolling hills of Chianti. I preferred coming across pink journals and paper bags. Still, I did venture outside a few times.
Blue Clouds, 16 x 25 cm
Afternoon View, 16 x 25 cm
Arch Study, 30 x 42 cm
But I kept returning to my room, where things seemed to change constantly with the flux of the days:
Amber Wall, 30 x 43 cm
Pillows, 16 x 25 cm
And the following are some other quick, unfinished sketches, which may hold something that can be resolved (but probably not):
About 2 weeks before returning to Israel, I began to think about my dilemma as an artist, about what it is I want to paint and what I don’t. As much as I would love to move often and walk into new places of transit to find new chaos and stories unfolding, it is hardly practical. And then the solution dawned on me, and I am extremely thrilled to get into this whole new world of works. And there will be no need to change countries, houses or furniture. What bliss.
Though I am extremely busy at the moment getting ready for a six-week painting stint in Italy, I have spent a lot of time in the bathroom lately working on this painting. Not a bad place to be, given the recent wave of terrific humidity in Rehovot. I have started a few other ones of the bedroom, including the mere beginning of one here. I find that though the setting remains the same, it appears differently to me each time. So much of the cause is the changing light and the composition. This start of the bedroom I actually envision more refined and detailed, yet less colorful and more solemn. The challenge lies in trying to accomplish this even though everything moves every day, and I am very intrigued about how I can face this and capture it in different ways.
