Fiddler, no. 1

“Fiddler, no. 1“, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Proposals–”Music in the Mountains” and “From Start to Finish”

As a painter becomes more confident and develops a sizable body of similar work she might begin to think of proposing an exhibition to art institutions, galleries, community art organizations.  This year I am in the happy position of having two proposals accepted to two different art organizations, at two ends of my larger community.  The planned exhibitions are similar but different.
The first scheduled for June, 2009 is “Music In The Mountains” , Walt Meade Gallery of the Roxbury Arts Group, Roxbury, NY.  This is a themed show of paintings inspired by a summer of traditional music in the Catskill Mts.  Over the past year I have sketched revelry in many forms: dancers moving fast and furiously, musicians in concentration over intricate finger work, group playing.  I have used the sketches in paintings depicting an environment entirely of my own making but reminiscent of the mountains in a glorious fall.  The show will include my initial sketches, oils and acrylics, and monoprints.  The earlier postings of this material is filed under “Music in the Mountains”.

The second accepted proposal for August, 2009, proposed and scheduled a year in advance, is “Figures, From Start to Finish”, Wilbur Mansion Gallery, Arts Council of the Catskills, Oneonta, NY.  In this show I will exhibit my creative process starting with my sketches and ending with the finished paintings in which the sketched figures are used.
I learn of opportunities to propose exhibitions through publications like Art Calendar and Art News, membership bulletins, posted notices and the web services.  Most often the calls for proposals and entries for juried shows appear in the advertisement sections in the back of  publications.  There are strict requirements for entry and following directions is most important.

I have struggled to manage the digital requirements for copying and sending my images.  One should always photograph all your work and keep the images on a file on the computer.   I use Kodak EasyShare that came with my camera.

However, the dpi of each of those original photographs may not be what is required for proposals and/or exhibition entries.  In that case, they will require resizing.  I am able to manipulate the image files to the size required with FastStone, also free or with a contribution.   It is an easy, uncomplicated program, that does enough for me but certainly not as much as a program like Workshop.  In Faststone I am able to make notes about size, price, where it has been shown etc., that stay with each image. 

Copying the files to a CD, after having adjusted them for size is standard procedure on every computer.  However, getting the files to appear on the CD in the order I require took me some time to figure out.  “Everything is simple once you know how”!  Number the titles of the file in the order you want them to appear and that matches your image list and voila, they are in the order in which you need them.

This whole procedure produces different versions of images that should be kept in dedicated folders, and requires renaming files in those folders but it is necessary.

EBDRPAP/MHS Silent Auction flyer

EBDRPAP/MHS Silent Auction flyer, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

East Branch Delaware River Plein Air Painters auction to benefit the Historical Socity of Middletown

I wrote earlier in the spring describing an exciting collaboration the EBDRPAP had entered into with the Middletown Historical Society.  The society would choose eight historical sites in our area of the county and the EBDRPAP would paint at the sites during the summer season, 2009.  We worked all summer painting the suggested locations, visiting some of the more fruitful several times.  It turned out to be a challenging and exciting project.

Many of our members are traditional landscape painters while many of the sites are dominated by buildings.  Of course, buildings sit in a landscape but ultimately our project was a fund raiser for the society and which would necessarily want a readily identifiable product.  That issue turned out to be phantom; each painter had no difficulty finding inspiration at each site, a process that was very interesting to observe.  We had, of course, as many different visions as we had painters.  Variety among creative people is always exciting to watch.

We painted all summer; eight painters met the guidelines for participation.  MHS wanted about twenty paintings for the silent auction.  We eight, had of course painted far more than that!

We gathered all our paintings in my studio to whittle the number down to twenty, large and small, by each participant, and including each site.  First of all, considering all the perimeters, we had produced a very impressive body of work.  Impressive by any artistic measure.  It was very difficult to exclude some beautiful paintings but we managed to choose 23 that fit our criteria.

In addition to those works to be auctioned, EBDRPAP donated the digital images of all the works produced to the society.  They will choose from those images the ones to use to produce note cards that can be sold at area retail establishments throughout the year in this tourist destination.

The final piece of the fundraiser is a silent auction to benefit the society with the funds going toward the erection of historical markers.  This particular silent auction also departs from the usual way of doing things in this neck-of-the-woods.  Increasingly, in this area, artists have been asked to donate 100% of a work to benefit nonprofits.  In that model artists donate their works and have no say in the minimum price of the sale.

The 2 year model we negotiated with the historical society differs in several important ways:

1. The auction is 50/50 or the artist may choose to contribute 100%.  Contrarily, the artist may take the 50%,      and then write a check to return it to the nonprofit and the tax laws view that transaction more favorably than donating a painting where the artist can only deduct the cost of the materials used to create the it.
2. The artist sets the minimum bid thus eliminating the possibility of a painting being sold for an unacceptable amount.
3. The artist keeps ownership of any painting that does not sell for the minimum amount.

Now the time is here. The auction, set for the day after Thanksgiving is approaching and we are so excited. The paintings are previewed at NBT Bank, Margaretville, NY, one of the sponsors of the event.  Publicity is appearing. Keep your fingers crossed that our “experiment” does indeed make money for this good cause and the artists.

Open studio

Open Studio, Oct. 11, 2009, photo originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Open Studio, Oct. 11, 2009

My first Open Studio was fun and, I believe, enjoyed by all:  the artist, her family, friends and collectors and the students and their friends.

It’s fall here and we pursued a fall theme with the preparations.  I pitched the canopy outside the door of the studio. The canopy is industrial grade because my “good buy” purchased last summer for $50.00 collapsed after 3 installations.  The weather could have been beastly but as it was we had the only lovely day in two weeks!

I had purchased a fire pit and arranged lawn chairs around a gentle fire.  The chairs were occupied most of the time.  A steady blaze is so soothing and the guests lingered to visit.

I prepared hot mulled cider, banana nut bread and oatmeal cookies.  Students brought fresh fruit, cheeses and wine.

The studio, a former blacksmith shop constructed in 1886, was comfortably full throughout.  Though I sold no paintings my students sold many.  I collected the names of several persons who were interested either in lessons or my plein air painting group.  The students were pleased with the event and I felt it was a successful effort in furthering my painting activities and contacts.

I will repeat the event next year.

Meadow before mountain

Meadow Before Mountain, watercolor, 21×14 in, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

from RED, by Rafael Alberti (1902-1999), Spanish painter, poet and playwright; these verses are found in his collection A la pintura, or On Painting

1.
I am morning’s first color,
day’s last.

2.
I wrestle with the green in fruit; I win.

12.
Indistinct in certain nudes,
diluted by the snow.

15.
Purple through glass;
goblets, bottles, tumblers
warm with wine.

16.
Come to me, cadmium yellow; I want to be an orange,
a lustrous sphere amidst the green.

21.
In Goya, I’m diluted by the air.

24.
All the way down to the rose rose of Picasso.

33.
Think how I’m lost
in the tiniest violet.

These verses speak for themselves.  I am indebted to Professor Maria Horvath, Assumption College, Worcester, MA, for drawing my attention to these lovely and truthful words. 

I have been waiting for the right moment to share these lines.   Autumn in the mountains has arrived and with it many manifestations of red are sweeping across the landscape.

Stilllife of bottles and cans

Stilllife of bottles and cans, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

More onTeaching–Cans and bottles and “monumentality”

Cold weather is upon those of us in the Catskill Mts.  My students and I are in the studio where we recently painted a collection of cans and bottles from my kitchen cabinets.  As I laid out the items I detected a definite lack of enthusiasm on the part of the students.  The idea of painting these mundane subjects definitely held no excitement for them.  But that was because they had not yet closely observed their beauty of shape, color, and placement.  Their reluctance did not last!

I set the items, some familiar, some not, on a table in front of a window and we painted two paintings each, taking a different position each time.  For me, as usual, the backlit setup was the most exciting.  I loved the bright light framing the shapes and the rich colored light flowing through glass of the two bottles.  The olive oil in its bottle cast a green gold glow that transformed the clear color of the glass. 

Of course the set up was colorful and shapely.  Marketers and designers have devoted many hours and much money into choosing designs for products that will attract buyers and be instantly recognizable.

A big question in this set up is how not to be overwhelmed by detail, to suggest print but not require the viewer to read and, as with any successful painting, to have an assortment of satisfying shapes, hard and soft edges and a range of values from the lightest light to the darkest dark.

In addition, cans and bottles are cylinders, cubes, circles, ovals, and columns constructed of a variety of materials.  These are the same cylinders, cubes, etc. that we find in trees, houses, and silos in nature.  They have warm and cool sides as the sun flows over and around them.  Shiny surfaces reflect the colors of neighboring labels.  They cast interesting shadows.  And they inspire lovely paintings.

At the end of the session one student commented that my painting had “monumentality”.  The comment stuck in my mind, “Why?”.   In considering her observation,  I believe this painting has a strong structural presence because the negative space in the painting has interesting shapes and duplicates the lines of the positive forms.  Because some of the shapes run off the top and bottom of the paper and there is no item against which to compare them for scale they appear very substantial in the painting.

Never say you have nothing to paint; just go to your kitchen cabinet!

Rockefeller Greenhouse, Cleveland, OH

Rockefeller Greenhouse, Cleveland, OH, watercolor, unfinished, 6×8 in, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Scale

My students and I are painting the mountains that surround us.  We are in the Catskills, not the highest, the most majestic or dramatic of mountain formations but absolutely beautiful.  The Catskill Mountains, thought to be the oldest range in North America, consist of very large rounded mounds or humps, covered with thick mixed forest punctuated with the occasional remnants of early 20th century farms.  Wide at the bottom, rounded at the top, each mountain is outlined by flat, twisting hollows.  The range rolls on and on as far as the eye can see and offers a stunning array of atmospheric effects according the weather and the time of day.

How to capture their presence in paint?  In studying our results we are confronting the issue of “scale”.

A subject is large or small, tall or short, wide or narrow, close or far away, only in comparison with something else. Landscape artists employ several techniques to depict features of an area:  layering, perspective, variations in color to indicate atmospheric effects of distance, and scale.

Just as the archaeologist, to accurately convey information about a subject in a photo must place a common object beside it to indicate size, the painter can include a commonly recognized object in her painting to indicate the subject’s size, or distance from the viewer.  “To accurately depict“– the difficulty for us is how to include an item of scale and still make the painting one that focuses on the mountains.

I went back into my own archive of paintings to locate one painting I remembered as “critical“ to my growth as a painter.  I have for nostalgic reasons, kept this unfinished painting of the huge, 10-12 foot tall, sculpted box hedge at the entrance to the Rockefeller Greenhouse in Cleveland, OH.  That day I was painting with my Plein Air Painters, Cleveland group and had completed a painting of the hedge and the walk beside it.  I thought it was beautiful when Betty McRainey, a friend and fellow painter, glanced at it and said, “You need to include a person for scale“.  Scale! I hadn’t thought of it and all of a sudden my painting looked different; I could not tell if the hedge was massive or waist high! I began again and included a nearby statue.  Above is the never finished painting that reminds me of the point!

Student exhibition

Student exhibition invitation, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Open studio and exhibition of students work, Sunday, October 11, 2009

                 “To learn to teach is to learn to pay attention to the work of others.”   Heather  McCue,                        poet and McArthur Grant Winner, interview, NPR, Sept. 22, 2009.

As a teacher I have always felt that students should prepare for real life experiences. My students should have the experience of choosing and hanging their work for their friends, family and potential collectors to view.  To that end we are hanging a student exhibition as part of my open studio afternoon.

There are several important processes involved:

      Selection involves a critical look at one’s work.  We have been practicing this as long as we have been learning, looking and critiquing at each painting session.  We use mats to view the work which automatically adds a degree of seriousness to the painting.  I ask that the students take their work home and attach it to a wall.  After a while that wall becomes crowded and the painter must remove less successful paintings to hang the latest paintings. After a while the wall is transformed into a space filled with successful paintings and the painter can begin to analyze why one is more or less satisfying than another, what the painter did well and what not so well, to which paintings one develops an emotional attachment and why.  Many answers show up on that wall.

      Confidence is required. Going public involves risk taking; it takes nerve and confidence.  The paintings we have chosen to exhibit have to look good!  Preparing for a show takes looking at one’s own paintings with detachment one step further.  Because the paintings are to hang with two other students’ work the whole exhibit must “work” together requiring a certain amount of personal sacrifice for the success of the whole.

      In addition, there are also the organizational tedious details of title, medium, size for labels.  Each student has been practicing signing their paintings in watercolor with a brush.

      This time I matted but next time they will.

Van Benschoten Barn, no. 2

Van Benschoten Barn, no. 2, 30×23 in., originally uploaded by ahtravis.

More juried work

 

I just received word today that my painting, “Van Benschoten Barn, no. 2” has been juried into the 33rd Annual International Exhibition of the North East Watercolor Society (see links).  “VB barn” is one of my favorite paintings of this 2009 plein air season.  As anyone on the east coast knows, we had one of the wettest months of June on record.  The morning the East Branch Delaware River Plein Air Painters began painting at the site of this 1854 barn I had to begin with an interior because it was raining.  My second painting of the morning was done outside the barn but under a dark and threatening sky. For this painting, the third of the day, the sky turned blue with puffy white clouds and a brilliantly shinning sun!  The new, spring leaves were dripping dry; everything was fresh and sparkling.  I feel the painting nicely caught the sparkle.

The work was painted on 300lb Arches watercolor paper.  What a wonderful surface.  I used large brushes throughout the process until the very end when I turned to my rigger.

Old Blacksmith Shop Interior

Old Blacksmith Shop Interior, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Juried Shows

My “Onions On A Plate, no. 1” (see Flickr photos, “Demonstrations”) has just been juried into the Aqueous Open, 63 Annual International Exhibition of the Pittsburgh Watercolor Society.  I had submitted both of the “Onion” paintings and they chose no. 1. 

Many of my watercolors have been accepted into competitive shows.  (See the 4 most recent Flickr photos for a selection) While submitting works for possible inclusion in a juried show is instructive, I don’t know that the decision of the judges is meaningful in any substantive way.  Often my works are not included; often my works are included.  What makes the difference?  Does it matter?  I’m not completely sure.

However, I have noticed:

     Shows seem to have personalities and include similar works over and over again.  Some prefer loose, expressive paintings; others prefer tight paintings of great technical proficiency.  I do not know how this personality develops but it is self perpetuating because the show committee chooses judges from among professional artists who are know to paint in a certain way.  After a while an artist learns that there is no reason to apply to certain shows.

     Often my paintings included in juried shows are not my paintings that sell.  My collectors tend to purchase those paintings that are meaningful to them personally for some reason:  a location, a building, an activity, the colors. Paintings I choose to submit for jurying are those that I feel are technically superior, but not necessarily emotional and certainly would have no meaning for the jurors.

    Often, one particular painting will be juried into one show but not another.  Then one painting will be juried into each show in which I enter it.  The painting above, “Old Blacksmith Shop Interior”, has been juried into three shows and awarded a prize in one.  What is the difference?  Beats me!

     While having a painting accepted into a juried show makes my resume look good and makes me feel appreciated no one pays more money for one of my paintings with a pedigree than one without.

     After a certain number of acceptances into a given society one earns “signature” status.  Again, the award looks good on the resume and carries certain bragging rights but most often the buyer does not know what the expression means.  The resume does have meaning for certain professionals and I have noticed that as my list of shows grows I am increasingly approached to participate in invitational “paint outs”.

In the end, I know I am pleased to be included in any given show because on some level it means knowledgeable others share my opinion of my work and that is reassuring.

Roses before New Kingston House

Roses before New Kingston House, originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Technique–Painting “white”

The rose arbor at the end of the porch drew me to paint this picture of a white house.  The delicately colored pink flowers can be seen because they are much lighter than the dark shade under the porch.  The slightly vase like shape of the arbor contrasts nicely with the straight, rigid lines of the house.

A viewer is able to see any given shape within the vista in front of her because the shape is either lighter or darker than that which surrounds it or possibly is the same value but a different color.  Parts of a white house may be either.  A white building surrounded by snow is in all likelyhood darker than the snow, or if the sun is shinning on the snow parts of the building might be the same value but a different hue.  A white house might be blue surrounded by yellow snow.

One could just leave the house the white of the paper but that would be without details and be flat, uninteresting. To paint “white” one must paint in the palest of hues.  There are many colors present in a “white“ building:  the shady side of the house, of each column, at the edge of the window frame, under the eaves, reflected color under the eves or on a wall.

One must always be aware of reflected color. The building might be a pale apple green because of the reflected light from the sunny green grass in front of it. Gray is warmer than blue so gray will probably be found closer to the viewer than the turned side of the building. Sparkle is present in the lightest areas of the building and those may be the white of the paper or the whitest, white of the whatever medium one is using. Remember to always think warm and cool as measured against the other colors in the painting.