The Week in Paint

I am painting a lot this summer.   I am making sculpture, too, and some paintings are moving into low relief mixed-media wall sculpture, as one might expect.  But these are a few canvases from the past week or two.  Quite a few more are under construction.

Most of these paintings are, obviously, seascapes.  Until recently I lived for twenty years beside the Sea of Japan, and these days I miss it.  It had a profound influence and effect upon me, particularly as an artist, mostly in terms of colors and textures.   But for now it serves as a convenient format for my interest in paint as a material, for I am exploring what one can do with paint.  I am doing a lot of glazing (water), heavy impasto  (land)  and pouring (sky), and the format allows simple strong compositions that do not get in the way of the paint.  So, I might be all full of nostalgia for coastal rural Japan, but it is just an excuse to slap paint on hot summer days.

Other Recent Paintings, all along the same lines

These painting are elsewhere on this blog, but I put them here as well, as they are the sort of thing I am doing now, this summer.    I usually make sculpture year around, but it is so hot right now that (A) real work is no fun, and (B) I can use the sun's heat to dry the oil really fast, getting some really interesting effects - make hay when the sun shines.

As I have said elsewhere as well, I am making "seascapes", but it is just a format, one that allows large areas and simple composition, letting me concentrate of the painterly and color field aspects.   Mostly I am experimenting, seeing what sort of depths, textures, translucencies, etc., I can get out of paint as paint, rather than trying to illustrate anything.   I am going for simple, bold compositions that don't get in the way of the paint itself.   This is very much the "no method, no guru" approach to painting - let it roll and see what happens.

Sailing to  Ehime across the Bungo Kaido, 

oil on panel 24" x 65", 2011

Sea of Japan

oil on panel 24" x 65", 2010-2011

Alex and summer efforts

This is an email I sent to my old pal Lon Anthony yesterday.   It sums up what I am doing these days.

"Dear Lon,

I paint, if that's what you would call it, daily as it is too hot to make sculpture, given the money involved.   So I paint, rarely using a brush other than to slush stuff around - trowels, brayers, buckets are more my thing.  This particular work, if that's what you'ld call it, is bentonite/water slurry mixed with latex paint for a ground (really thick at the bottom), followed by spar varnish (by the quart) mixed with phlatho, cerulean, and prussian blues.   I hope to get about 1/2 inch of glaze.    Might include some sheets of plexiglass in there just for bulk.    I am looking for the sort of deep  transparency of water and the roughness of earth like you get in the keys.

 I expect to use chrome paint near the horizon, and have a minimal landscape, pale turnesque sky up top later on in the week.   I try to start three canvasses a week.

Alex"

I tend to paint flat, wet, and thick, troweling and pouring, seeing what sort of action I can get out of paint as paint itself.   My works are somewhat pictorial, sea scapes I suppose, but that is really just a format, and not important in itself.    Note my trusty Morris Traveller in the background, a source of daily inspiration.  

I think this is a good example of what I am going for, maybe Alberto Burri meets Mark Rothko, Clifford Still and Barnet Newman at the beach?

Coast of Hokkaido, Late Showa

I really like painting, BIG canvases in oil, and have done them for decades, rarely ever showing them.  This is a great favorite of mine.

Pool

Pool, 38" high, hide over wood, with fiberglass and steel.    I love to paint.   It is odd how we grow:  I draw and make etchings almost daily, but these are always figurative, from life, with considerable realism.   I paint weekly, but these are always abstract, painterly, and formal, nearly content free.   I make furniture and architecture, always well crafted, and make sculpture which is defiantly never well crafted. Don't ask me why this is so.   It has puzzled me for many years.

Sailing to Himeshima, 2008

"Sailing to Himeshima"

wood, rope and encaustic

42" high,  2008