Snug inside The Bunkie Studio this past long and very rainy winter, once again I pulled together all prior year’s art making, took pictures and made them into another photo book (as I did last year), prior to putting it all away in storage to make room for whatever is going to happen this year. It was fun to look at it all again and remember what I was learning and why I was doing it as well as looking at the previous year’s book where it all began. Whatever it was that first inspired me to pick up a paintbrush, I haven’t put it down in over 2 years now, so it’s a pretty powerful force of inspiration you might say.

One day a year ago, in spring, when to all intents and purposes I had moved outside to the garden, I pulled out my easel and paints and for the first time set myself up outside to paint the Cryptomeria tree with the Thai Angel dancing beneath. I looked at my subject, decided on a composition, picked up palette knife, selected my paint, got ready, looked up and saw…Green. 12,000 shades of green. At least. Yikes! What to do? Not only that, but every few minutes the clouds would shift and every one of those 12,000 shades of green would change. How do I match what I see in front of me? No clue. I started off by mixing deliberately, or trying to, but by the end of my session I was throwing greens at the canvas like paintballs. What a mess! Clearly I needed to rethink a strategy. (Check out this photo of the Kinaree close-up with hummingbird perched on her hand. This was from a memorable day in summer when hummingbird stopped by for a shower under the garden sprinkler and hung out for several minutes with the angel).

So I spent the rest of the summer back in studio learning to mix greens. I collected everything in the house that was green – vases, mugs, old bottles, apples, troll dolls, you name it. Then I cut up a bunch of canvas paper into 6×6″ or 6×8″ sheets, repurposed the miniature theater into a still life stand, arranged backdrop and lights, and painted a picture a day for a month or two. Small and fast, in and out (back to the garden) in an hour or so.  Simple studies. By the end I had learned how to mix greens, using the Golden Open Acrylics, that are very slow drying and thus can be used in some ways as oils (which I don’t use as long ago I found I can not tolerate them) and also learned why you see so many paintings of apples and pears in galleries and gift shops. (Hint – they don’t move).

Later that fall I continued color mixing studies with larger, longer still lifes – every so often detouring back into abstract experiments which really make me dance. Until…drawing appeared in my life.

Previously, after painting for awhile after returning from an inspiring earlier trip to New Zealand, I took another drawing class at the local art center – a 6 week course culminating in the final class with life drawing – drawing with a nude model. As I took my place in front of my newsprint pad clipped to drawing board, with charcoal in hand, I looked up as the model disrobed, and spent a few minutes seeing what was in front of me before beginning. Whoa! Have I ever REALLY seen a naked man before? This is not entirely a rhetorical question. I’m learning that although related, looking and seeing are two very different things. This was a totally new experience.

I am reminded of the day I wandered into a gallery in Portland, Oregon a few years ago to find an exhibition of massive faces by the artist Chuck Close. These were full front views, face and partial neck, of all kinds of people, young and old. I find older faces way more interesting, with apologies to my young friends – don’t worry, you’ll get there. Mind you, this love of older faces doesn’t translate into the view in the mirror which is more often than not accompanied by a feeling of “Who the hell is that?” Anyway, as I stood there looking at these enormous (something like 10×8 feet) faces, with all lines, furrows, moles, sags and the lot, way way larger than life size, I thought, how interesting these all are and furthermore, how hugely distorted our sense of the human has become when virtually every image we see in modern life is hugely photoshopped beyond recognition, where advertising and editorial images in magazines and elsewhere have turned human faces into plasticized dolls. No lines or age or character allowed. I love fashion but the magazine human images are crazy making. The power and beauty of the images in the gallery that day came not just from their size, but from their feeling of “real”. And for me, this came with a realization of how truly fantastic the human face and body can be.

So that day at life drawing started me off on another path. I started going to life drawing at the Arts Center every week. Much as I enjoyed looking at naked men for three hours every Friday, and poking around with a piece of charcoal, it became very apparent that I had no idea what I was doing. I decided this wasn’t good enough and if I was going to draw, I wanted to learn to draw well. I went in search of a teacher to show me how.

Learning to draw is partially about learning to see. Another part is learning to translate the seeing through the mechanics of moving the hand and arm. And maybe most important of all – practice. My drawing teacher is a former athlete and views getting good at drawing as a skill that needs to be honed through daily practice and endless repetition. Over and over and over. Through the winter months I took this to heart, drawing upwards of 3-4 hours a day, all with a sense of urgency knowing that once the warm weather arrived I’d be moving outside again, and on to other things. Which indeed is what has happened. I don’t put in that kind of time during this season, but do continue to draw just about every day.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea or “No Day Without a Line,” is a motto traditionally attributed to the famous Greek painter Apelles by the historian Pliny the Elder, who recorded that Apelles would not let a day pass without at least drawing a line to practice his art. This became the motto of the Arts Students League of New York and is engraved over the front door of the building.

From AGO Exhibition 2015