Jeremy Lipking Workshop in Scottsdale

Jeremy is the tall one in the center. On the left side of the picture is Tim Perkins, a still-life artist whose work is for sale at Scottsdale Fine Art. Next on the left is Marci Oleszkiewicz, from Illinois, who was having a one-woman show of her work at the Russian Gallery in Scottsdale. The woman in the white tee shirt and apron is Tess Olson from Alexandria, VA.

Watching Jeremy Lipking paint was a surprise. He spent a considerable amount of time posing the model, looking for pleasing shapes, planes and shadows, not beginning his investment in paint haphazardly. Second he took careful measurements from his easle, making certain the figure fit well onto his canvas. He made some very subtle marks on the canvas Thus, he made no mistakes in draftsmanship and avoided the need to spend time scraping paint and painting over them later. Looking at the figure, he analyzed what was the most important part. Since the face was visible, it was the focal point. He began by painting her head, and developed it to a pretty high degree, painting wet into wet, before he moved on. In fact, being the most complicated portion of his figure, it was all he painted on the first day. He was careful in his color judgments. Again, painting deliberately and with due consideration, he didn’t have to correct anything later. Unlike other painters, he didn’t really draw the entire figure in ahead of time.

The model was lying on her side, facing him, her face slightly averted, bent at the pelvis and the knees, so the significant planes were her face, her neck, her chest, her upper waist, her lower waist, her thighs and knees and lower legs. Her upper arm lay behind her back, tilting her upper torso at an angle backward, and her lower arm was thrust forward, embracing the pillow upon which her head lay.

Jeremy kept in mind his tonal range from darkest to lightesas well as the temperature range of the skin tones and tried to nail the correct tone right from the start, making it darker, rather than lighter, if anything. One can always bring out the highlights later. Again, he finished a section before moving on because the next day it would be harder to blend the colors. He uses a palette of skin tones cooler than most other figure painters. He analyzed the light coming through the high windows behind them, identifying it as cool, even blue. I couldn’t see it myself. I can tell when light is warm, as it is in late afternoon, but I couldn’t really tell, and honestly, I thought her skin tones more creamy and warmer than he initially painted them. The end result of his color blending was gorgeous though. See below.

He said that at home, he paints with a mirror behind him, so that he can see the reflection of the painting backwards. It helps him to see whether there are any non-proportionalities (my word, not his). As it was, he took the canvas, turned it on it’s side or upside down to check his measurements.

The palette Jeremy used was:
A lavender mixture made up of Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson and White
Lemon Yellow (Rembrandt)
Cadmium Yellow, Deep or Medium
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red
Pyro Ruby Red (from Studioproducts.org) or Alizarin Crimson
Transparent Oxide Brown
Burnt Sienna (Windsor Newton, because it is less opaque)
Ultramarine Blue
Cobalt Blue
Golden Green (like Sap or Terra Verte, by Old Holland or Windsor Newton)
Medium Gray, made up of Viridian, White, touch of Cad Red and Yellow

His typical medium is 1 part Stand Oil, 1 part Damar Varnish, 5 parts distilled turpentine

He painted on L600 Traditions, linen covered panel (from newtraditionsartpanels.com)

My figure study from the Lipking Workshop

In Scottsdale, I stayed at the Homestead Suites. It was half a block away from the Scottsdale Artist School and within easy walking distance of the Main Street Galleries. I had a refridgerator and a microwave in my room, so I could eat breakfast in, then make a quick run to Starbucks before class began. After class, I would whip home, change into shorts and tee shirt and hit the galleries before they closed between 5:00 and 6:00. On the first day I visited Gallery Russia, where Marci had her show (see workshop show for link) and the Legacy Gallery, where I was very impressed by an artist from Australia — sorry, I mean Traverse, Michigan — named Jacquelyn Bischak. The painting “Velvet Cape” was especially stunning. I don’t think the image online does it justice.

On my second night out, I popped into Scottsdale Fine Art to see Tim Perkins work (see workshop blog for link) and again into Legacy to take another look at Jacquelyn Bischak. The Gallery had just mounted a new show of Daniel Gerhartz though, which was hanging in the same spot. I LOVED these paintings, especially “Their Journey Together.” I was thrilled to learn he was from Wisconsin. I also discovered Romel de la Torre at the Willow Gallery. I thought his flesh tones were lovely. He reminded me of Richard Schmid, painting the figure more tightly, then semi-developing the rest of the painting with bravura brushstrokes. I met Marci, Elizabeth Pollie and Catherine Mamola at contemporary restaurant called AZ88 and we talked art on the patio…..It was in the 70s in Scottsdale. Sigh. The restaurant was especially memorable for the johns. They were difficult to find, first of all. The door was set into the wall without a frame. From a distance you don’t even notice it except that across the foot of the door in red letters it is labeled SHE. Once inside the stall, you can view yourself on the throne from three walls of floor to ceiling mirrors. An experience.

On my third evening I retraced my steps to Main Street to check out the paintings of Michael Malm at the Trailside Gallery. His subjects were very appealing, but more loosely painted than Dan Gerhartz, whose work I like more. I discovered an absolutely stunning painting by an artist named Bryce Cameron Liston in the Rive Gauche Gallery. It was called “Gather Ye Rosebuds”. Look on his website for a girl holding a backet of roses with candlelight glowing through her hair. That painting, in person, will stop you in your tracks. I liked the fact that he borrows themes from myth and literature for his paintings, as I do. All in all, I would say that “Their Journey Together” at the Legacy was the painting I would have taken away with me from Scottsdale. If only I’d had $34,000 in a bank account at home….

Homework Complete

We’ve been having a few technical difficulties with our computer, else I would have blogged sooner. I’m posting my completed new pug painting, but have much I want to tell about the workshop I just attended with Jeremy Lipking. Since things seem to be working now, I can hopefully blog about that tonight.Homework, 6×8, Oil on Canvas, Sold

Homework in Progress

It wouldn’t take too much to finish this painting: a couple of hours, more refinements. The picture above is my second step and the picture below is my third. The next will be the last. I’m leaving tomorrow for Scottsdale, AZ and getting ready for the trip has to take first place. This is the first time I’ve attended a workshop so far away. I’ve ordered canvases and paints to be delivered to the Scottsdale Artist’s School in time for my class. I’m only bringing a palette, a turps jar, brushes and an apron in my suitcase. Hopefully I will come back inspired to try techniques foreign to me. That’s the way it is with workshops. You get to see how a better painter works. Implementing their method, one feels awkward and hampered. Their method, the precise brushes they use, are unfamiliar. One feels they are beginning all over again.

In addition to visiting galleries, I’m looking forward to hiking amidst pueblos. I’ve never spent any time in the Southwest, so I’m eager to explore. I will blog about my experiences when I get back.

Here’s a poem by Sylva Gaboudikan:

COME BACK SAFELY

Even to say goodbye
even if it’s the last time
even reluctantly

even to hurt me again
even with the harsh acid
of sarcasm that stings

even with a new kind of pain
even fresh from the embrace
of another. Come back, just come.

Translated by Diana Der Hovanessian

A Pug’s Eye View of the World

With this 6×6 painting of a Pug puppy, I am continuing to build my Fine Art Pug Store.

At the end of this month, I am planning a trip to the Scottsdale School of Art, where I am going to have the opportunity to be instructed by Jeremy Lipking, one of American’s finest figure painters. This is so exciting for me. I was on a waiting list, but suddenly my number came up. I’ll be in Scottsdale from Feb 22 to 26, then I’m driving my rental car to Santa Fe, New Mexico until March 2. I’ve never been to Santa Fe before, but it is full of galleries, an art Mecca. I can’t wait. My close friend Andrea and I will be staying right on the Plaza, within easy walking distance. There is so much art to see there that apart from visiting major museums, I am probably going to be exposed to more good painting than I’ve ever been in my life. More on those plans later.

Also, two of my paintings are being featured in the WI Artsbuild Show at the Nohr Gallery on the University of WI Platteville campus. They are Angel of Music and German Chocolate Cake.

Here’s a poem by Chase Twichel:

PHYSICS

Think of the present as a splitting atom
one-half weighted, out of kilter,
trailing its roots and trash,
and then the liquid glamour of the other,
swimming forward into foreign darkness
and the soft folds of space.
If fate is a chromosome,
a man and a woman might be
capable of genetic love.

No one leaves for heaven anymore,
that ill-lit, inhospitable
planet the color of eggshell,
sick with candles and flowers.
It empties itself of all things outlandish,
that is its purpose.
It crushes the fossil stars
for its fuel, clogging the sky
with their dessicated seed.

One human body, female, shudders.
Think of her pleasure as a tiny engine
or a unit of generated energy.
As something for nothing.
All over the earth the separate sparks
flash quietly, with exquisite frailty.
A body holding more of a charge
would come apart like the fractured atom,
and heaven, inverted, be used
as a bin for the debris.

When the music forces sadness on us,
the coincidence of joy unnerves us,
and the sexual lights flare up,
we drift into a universe of disasters
holding our slight, impractical instruments,
navigating by instinct,
as though that could save us.

You know what happens.
We survive straight through to the end.
We lie down together
on a hard, familiar bed
through each of us has been
already once or twice
a godsend to someone else.
Let love infect and reinfect us,
and endure in our blood
as a code of bright cells,
holy and incurable.

A Pug’s Eye View of the World, Oil on Canvas, 6×6, Sold

But I Too, Want To Be A Poet

But I, too, want to be a poet
and live a virtuous life
To erase from my days
confusion & poverty
fiction & a sharp tongue!

To sing again
with the tones of adolescence
demanding vengeance
against my enemies, with words
clear & austere

To end this tumultuous quest
for reasonable solutions
to situations mysterious & sore

To have the height to view
myself as I view others
with lenience and love

To be free of the need
to make a waste of money
when my passion,
first and last,
is for the ecstatic lash
of the poetic line
and no visible recompense.

— Fanny Howe

The conception for this painting is from a friend, fellow artist and aspirant to noble motives. I hope she likes this Fanny Howe poem (all except the lines about “vengeance against my enemies”).

But I Too, Want To Be A Poet, 9×12, oil on canvas, $350.00 USD

His Puppy Face

Pippin is my studio companion. I find him completely adorable.

The Peak Season at my other job at Land’s End is finally over and I can reestablish my painting schedule. It feels so good to be absorbed with brushwork and composition again.

Here’s a poem by Walt Whitman:

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage
for fear I effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love,
the pay is certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d
Yet out of that I have written these songs.”

His Puppy Face, oil on canvas board, 6×8, Sold

Wordsworth and his Sister get out there and walk!

We’re experiencing our first BIG winter storm. I wasn’t even able to make it out of our driveway for work and so, am blogging while I wait for the plows. The picture is of our neighbor horse cavorting in the snow, very much in the spirit of the poet, William Wordsworth, and his sister, Dorothy, who almost two centuries and a decade ago this week, went on a walking tour of the Lake District of England where they lived, for the enjoyment of itand to see the landscape of mountains and waterfalls in the brisk winter air.

They rode 22 miles on horseback, the first day, then hiked another 12 miles to their first lodgings. Wow! Are modern Americans wimps or what? On the next morning, the ground bore a thin covering of snow — granted, it wasn’t a foot, or even six inches — but, “Twas a keen frosty morning,” William wrote a week later, “showers of snow threatening us, but the sun bright and active; we had a task of 21 miles to perform in a short winter’s day.” They turned aside to see a waterfall. “On a nearer approach the water seemed to fall down a tall arch or rather nitch which had shaped itself by insensible moulderings in the wall of an old castle. We left this spot with reluctance, but highly exhilerated.” At another waterfall, in the afternoon, “The stream shot from the rows of icicles in irregular fits of strength and with a body of water that momentarily varied. Sometimes it threw itself into the basin in one continued curve, sometimes it was interrupted almost midway in its fall and being blown toward us fell at no great distance from our feet like the heaviest thunder shower. In such a situation you have at every moment a feeling of the presence of the sky. Above the highest point of the waterfall, large fleecy clouds drove over our heads and the sky appeared of a blue more than usually brilliant.” I can testify to the feeling of the presense of the sky in the Lake District. The clouds seem to race over the tall fells, shadowing the lakes and distant hillsides in a flowing pattern. It’s spectacular, always changing.

William and his sister spent four days walking across the Pennine Mountains for the exhileration of it. Life was slower paced then, I realize, and simpler for these two middle class people. They weren’t racing to don their clothes and wolf down some breakfast so they could get in their cars to race to work, then run errands, then race home to fix dinner and spend the evening spectating other people’s lives on the television or computer, stultified in mind and body. Dorothy, I’d like to point out, made this trip in long skirts! How I would love to have known them!

Rebecca Solnit, who wrote “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” claims that the Wordsworths “are said to have made walking into something…new and thereby to have founded the whole lineage of those who walk for its own sake and for the pleasure of being in the landscape.”

So, I would like to invite my family and my friends to imitate these Eighteenth Century nature lovers and get out there and walk!

(Thanks to John Nichols, associate editor of the Capital Times, whose column brought Wordsworths’ hike and Rebecca Solnit’s book to my attention.)