1 Reply

Langland St at Knowlton – Markers

Chase Ave at Dane – Markers

Local1347 Colerain Ave. and Blue Rock

Hamilton Ave traffic light

Langland St near Knowlton

Still banging around Northside sketching and gathering information for senior thesis. A visit with my professor, Mark Patsfall of Clay Street Press, was fruitful. Mark suggested I simplify my work – to lose the details and concentrate on form. Spot on – that is one of the elements I’ve concentrated on in my recent paintings-form,value and color. Here are the newest studies…

Chase near Dane – Nu-pastels and graphite

Giorgio Morandi and Richard Diebenkorn

Leave a reply

The following two excerpts have been re-posted from the A Husk of Meaning art blog addressing Art and Aesthetics. David Leeds touched on qualities found in the paintings of Morandi and Diebenkorn that I am trying to achieve in my recent work. Through intense focus on form and subtle value changes Morandi conveys a sense of peace and tranquility in his sublime still-lifes. Leeds pinpoints my long-time attraction to Diebenkorn’s work – his concentrated exploration of place and focus on the physical world around him. Whether painting abstractly or representationally Diebonkorn’s paintings are filled with light and space. There is a sense of familiarity these are places he knows and has spent time in.

The Single-Minded Focus of Giorgio Morandi

“Still lifes are invariably about architecture, relationships and intimacy. Morandi has squeezed out the background to focus intensely on the formal relationships of the objects, and the light that models them. He has abstracted these common house-hold objects by taking away their labels, and washing away their reflections. These are quite the opposite of ‘Impressionistic” renderings of one exact moment. The forms emerge from an unspecific source of light. Like Cezanne, they are highly ‘Post Impressionist”, in that they attempt to find and portray the underlining, basic, and universal structure of the world. Morandi, like Cezanne, ” gave up the sweetness of the flesh for the cold force that binds the universe.” Morandi’s visual process is a slowing down of perception, and he forces the same patient, intense focus upon us, as observers. Morandi also said, ” I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life that communicates a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else.”’

Richard Diebenkorn and the Magic of California Abstraction.

“There have certainly been painters, and I think first, of Cezanne and Monet, whose work so intensely and specifically explores and expresses a particular place in all its physical attributes. But I have rarely seen an artist whose work so consistently and dramatically takes on and inhabits the terroir where he works as Richard Diebenkorn. That he does this while most often working abstractly, is even more amazing. He imbued every canvas he ever did with the light, space, the wind, and the very air of the local atmosphere. I think he was hard wired to be unable to reflect anything but the physical world in front of him. He was a slave to the physical gestalt of his objective perceptions. Nor can I think of any oeuvre where abstraction was so rooted in objective reality.”

New paintings

2 Replies

Fresh from the easel :

Primaries 22:x30″ on All Media Board

Bronze Bird Figurine 9″x12″ Oil on Wood Panel

Continuing with the Northside studies – to be used as possible thesis material

Northside

This week I began adding watercolor washes to some. Tip: if you buy a small watercolor set for outdoor sketching spend the few extra dollars for one with good quality paint such as Windsor Newton. My tiny sketch palette is designed nicely but the paints are a disappointment.

Hamilton Ave across from Northside International Airport

Chase and Langland

The Corner Store

4 Replies

The Corner Store

Sketching in Northside – the old neighborhood stores where we used to spend all our pocket change when I was a kid. The Corner Store had the best dill pickles in town for a dime and a few doors down Willis’ Grocery packed more stuff in their small store than any super Krogers today! Mrs Willis was all of 4’8″ and I was sure she was a native of Oz…..

Willis’ Grocery

Link

Gwarlingo – Franz Kafka : Don’t Water It Down.

Painting In Northside

Leave a reply

I’ve spent time in Northside recently painting the neighborhood. I hope to record some of the old vacant buildings before they are demolished as well as those being rehabbed and other older areas. I’m a little biased and not interested in all the new construction-however I can appreciate eliminating blight – just wish there was a way to save and recycle more of the older structures.

Laurel and Hardy’s oil on paper 7×10

Northside is one of my favorite neighborhoods. I lived there throughout my teens and early adulthood as well as later when my children where in school. I’ve always loved the diversity in the

Northside Shell 5×7 oil on canvas board

neighborhood as well as the charm of many of the older buildings and homes. It has struggled to rebuild a once thriving business district for decades.Finally through tenacity, creativity and an even more diverse population business in Northside is thriving. Still an affordable place to live and strategically located – young families, students and professionals are discovering the potential in this lovely historical neighborhood.