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Last Friday, while a friend and I were trying to find some time in our busy schedules to get together and talk art, we commiserated about how hard it is to pull painting time away from family and friends and responsibilities. Is there anyone out there who can’t relate to that?
It doesn’t matter whether you snatch an hour to paint on Saturdays or create art to make your living, there is never enough time. If the laundry doesn’t need doing, a grandchild is graduating out-of-state (airport, here you come). If the website doesn’t need to be updated, a class description with supply list needs to be composed, and the taxes need to be done. And then there is the husband/wife/sweetheart who expects (and rightfully so) at least part of your weekend time.
That isn’t ever going to change, nor do I want it to. Life would be darned hard without the people we love, and we will need to eat and sleep and clean up after ourselves as long as we live. How do we cope with that?
Years ago, my sister told me the secret: she said that the things that get in the way of creating art are the very things that enrich it. Oh yeah, right, you say?
Consider: When I spend all my time with artists and doing art -- which I was lucky enough to do for a couple of years in my unmarried thirties -- my work is good, but after a while it becomes predictable. I move forward in my development, but only in certain ways. When I have to squeeze art in sideways for a husband and a day job and non-art volunteer obligations, my development still continues in a fuller, rounder way.
Yes, you read that right. At first glance, it doesn’t seem possible, but I’ve come up with a theory. Art is very right-brain. Your left and your right brains are equally important, though. If they weren’t, one half would be smaller than the other. That’s how nature works.
On top of that, they are meant to work together; neither one is ever turned off. In order to learn and grow and just get around in the world, they constantly talk back and forth to each other, each one contributing what is needed for rich, full, human thought and development. And that means better art. Richer art. More “A-hahs!”
So don’t long for the time when you can do nothing but art every day. Find a balance. Make one. Take classes. Carve out one sacred hour each week to let your mind drift and two more hours to create. You need both types of art time.
Carve out more if you can. Squeezing it in sideways is too tight. Take classes or a workshop. Paint plein aire with friends or alone. Form a painting group. Hey, form a critique group, too. Mix and match until it works for you.
And always remember: both sides of the brain work better when they both have to work. Everything you do helps your art.
Hugs and happy painting,
K
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I really do. Taking them and giving them. Workshops with good teachers are a sure-fire cure for the creative humdrums.
That means the year has started out beautifully, because I had the opportunity to give a floral workshop in Reno, Nevada -- my old stomping grounds -- during the second weekend of January. It was a wonderful experience.
I don’t know exactly why, but artists are, as a whole, great people. This class was no exception. In fact, it was one of the best workshop groups I’ve had the privilege to teach. I cannot thank them all enough.
One of the joys of teaching is that in some ways I learn as much as my students do. This time I learned never to use industrial spotlights to light floral still lifes, even if that’s all that is available. They burn so hot that they shrivel the flowers within a couple of hours.
What happened next, though, was really exciting. I gave my demo arrangement to the painters whose setup had died, and ran out during lunch to buy some more lilies. The only stargazers they had were white. I bought them.
And painted them as though they were the pink stargazers everyone else was working on. I pointed out what I was looking at on a pink setup, then transferred the pinks and yellows and oranges onto the white lily shape on my paper. As I painted, I used the new white lily for basic value and shape information, melding it all together onto the paper.
As a result, the painting itself started making suggestions that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, and I took risks that I normally wouldn’t take in front of students.
Did everything work perfectly? No.
Right there in front of God and everybody, I had to “fix” things that weren’t going to work “on the fly” and think about my painting intuitively, while explaining what I was doing and why. The result was fourteen very excited students with a teacher to match. We all learned a lot.
I love workshops!
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A couple of years ago, my friend Charlie came back from his first Charles Reid workshop flying high. He told us Reid puts in his darkest dark first, then went from there to build the painting. He was intrigued and excited by the process, and his enthusiasm was catching. Hmm, I thought, I’m going to try that on one of my paintings.
Of course, I didn’t. Life kept moving and classes needed teaching, and intended exploration got put way back behind the mayonnaise. I guess I wasn’t quite ready for it.
Enter Jeannie McGuire. While I haven’t worked myself up to using a lot of titanium white, the way she started with intense color and deep darks grabbed me by the throat and shook me. Wow, I thought, and plunged into my own painting after her demo.
“Uncertain” was one of the pieces I started during that workshop. The very first stroke I put in was that dark viridian/quinacridone rose at the small of the model’s back. After that, the painting just flowed. At the end of the day, it only lacked the strand of hair and finishing wash in the top left corner that brings her shoulder into view.
Since then, I’ve been approaching my paintings this way, and am so excited with the results.
So give it a shot. It’s worth the risk.
Hugs,
K
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After Jeannie McGuire. While I haven’t worked myself up to using a lot of titanium white, the way she started with intense color and deep darks grabbed me by the throat and shook me. Wow, I thought, and plunged into my own painting after her demo.
The first stroke on “The Committee” (three men above right) would never have happened if I hadn’t been so fired up. I wouldn’t have had the nerve. The painting just flew out of my brush, though, and I was so happy with the results that I’m slapping in darks with great abandon.
I’ve made a few mistakes and taken things too far too fast a couple of times, but see how my work has grown. “Supper at Carine’s” earned my first Best in Show!
So try it. Or try something else that fires you up. And remember: No guts, no glory!
Hugs,
K
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Well, it was a heck of a winter, and now summer is sweeping me away! Taking the winter months to paint and learn turned out to be exactly the right thing to do despite requests to teach here on Cape Cod.
I started with Mary Moquin’s Master Class. In it she concentrates on helping artists find their “voice”...that is, how to get the emotion into one’s painting in your own exciting, unique way. It was fabulous, and I will be taking it again next fall or winter. It’s definitely worth the drive!
Then I got really lucky. An artist friend had me look up Jeannie McGuire’s incredible figure work. Well, her name sounded familiar, so I looked on the Web, and she was going to teach a workshop nearby. I leapt on that and got in. She was just what I needed. So many things went “click” for me during the workshop!
It turns out that I do a lot better emotion- and composition-wise when I start out with my darks and my main-emotion colors.
“Huh?” you say. The best I can do is examples. For me, cobalt blue usually means peace. When I was preparing to paint “Over the Rainbow”, I realized that I wanted cobalt blue to flow through it from left to right. “Why?” I asked myself while I was totally relaxed, and the words just popped out. “Cobalt blue is peace. I want peace to flow through it like a river.” When I started painting, I put the blue in before anything else, and the rest followed.
It was quite an experience. Give it a try. If you can’t float in your right brain until the answer comes, try writing about your painting-to-be, what it means, why you want to paint it. Write down anything that comes to mind, even gibberish. Eventually, if you write Everything down, the answer will eventually flow out of your pen.
OK, I’m off to prepare to teach my first two-day workshop for the The Falmouth Artists’ Guild. Go paint!
Hugs,
K
