Art and Fear

Patchwork City, still drying in studio

Sometimes, when you are afraid the water might be cold, you just have to leap in. Momentum can keep second thoughts at bay. When I was first starting out as an artist, things moved very slowly. This gave me far too much time to try to talk myself out of it.

At one point I was ready to give up entirely, and go back to working for the man. My mother is also an artist, so she understood very well what I was going through. She sent me a book, Art and Fear, by Ted Orlando and David Bayles. The book explores the vast uncertain terrain that artists must navigate, both internally and externally, in creative endeavors. Tucked inside the book was a check to help me buy some groceries. It was such a perfect and thoughtful gift. I think I burst into tears!

The poppy phase

A few years later at an art show in San Francisco a soft spoken man bought a painting from me. He didn't have his checkbook on him (who does?) so he promised to mail a check, along with a copy of a book he had written.

I had no doubt that he would send the check, but what I didn't expect was that I would end up owning two copies of his book, Art and Fear! For a second time, I got his book in the mail with a check in it, but this copy was dedicated to me by the author and the (larger) check was in payment for a painting.

The tree painting phase

These years things progress more quickly in my art career. There are always doors opening, and artwork leaves my studio regularly. I've found that it's more about deciding which avenues I want to explore further, and which things I will leave behind me. This also goes with venues where I show my work. In some ways, I find I embrace uncertainty more. There's even a part of me that craves it.

The abstract color fields phase

Creatively, I find that I'm more of a risk-taker all the time. I have no fear of messing up a good painting if I think I can make it better. There is a confidence that develops when you've covered miles of canvas. You know that whatever you create, it will be a "you". So there's less pressure to find a predictable style and stick to it. I know that by experimenting I will sometimes uncover fantastic new ideas to explore.

This is why, over the years, I've had collectors return to purchase work from me again and again. They want a piece from the new phase, even if they already own several of my paintings.

Artists in the Material World

After the Rain was partly inspired by Rothko's earlier works 

Artists have always needed patronage. It makes sense, really. Some people like to create art. Other people like to buy art. In a perfect world, these people find each other and all is good in the world. Some artists are fine with the arrangement, while others feel it to be flawed. Can artists feel good about themselves while also accepting payment for the art they create?

 Rothko's Seagrams murals at the Tate

Mark Rothko, an enigmatic painter to say the least, was once offered the equivalent of $2 million to create paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan's posh Seagrams building. In 1959, after working feverishly on the paintings for 2 years, he ate dinner in the restaurant where his paintings would hang.

Shortly after that he returned the money and called the deal off. He realized while sitting in that rarified atmosphere of the Four Seasons restaurant that these people would never comprehend his work. He once said that sending art out into the world was essentially a risky endeavor, as it would be exposed to unfeeling eyes that would cause it to wither. After his suicide in February of 1970, his Seagrams collection went to the Tate Modern in London, where lots of people can now enjoy them for free. Note that the room they live in is not well-lit, and this is exactly the way he wanted it.

An artist I know once said that the best way to make a small fortune in art was to start with a large fortune. Artists, it seems, have long been at odds with the material world. De Kooning was broke for so long before his big break that he took to painting with latex house paint.

Indian Summer would have made my grandpa proud

As a third generation working artist, I am no stranger to the question of how to make a living at doing art. My grandfather gave up his art for many years while starting a family, then went back to it later in life when he had become financially secure through other means.

I watched my single mother struggle with raising a child while making a living as a waitress and moonlighting as a graphic designer. She would be up late at night under a lamp doing her art in our tiny apartment. She finally was able to make a career of it much later in life, and is now living off her art.

A lot of artists who go to good art schools have families who can afford to send them there. I left home early and put myself through college. It took several years of professional work before I even allowed myself to think about an art career. At first it was just a grand experiment. Anyway I had been laid off my job, so I had nothing to lose!

The first painting sales were so surprising. I just could not believe it was happening. Then the guilt set in, and I felt terrible taking money for my art. But I needed to eat, pay rent, buy art supplies, etc., so I knew I had no choice. While I hated the idea of commercializing something that was deeply sacred to me, it quickly became apparent that I would have to let people to buy my work if I was to continue. I was lucky to have my family support me emotionally through the early years, as it was sometimes a difficult transition.

There have been a lot of internet polls about what people would do for $1 million. As crazy as it sounds, in a recent one 38% said they would euthanize their pet, and 8% would have a limb amputated. That's right a limb amputated. Would I turn down $2 million for putting my art in an environment that I did not approve of? Not a chance!

Thoughts on Process: Meditation

Beach Day, by Lisa Feather Knee, 2011

Every artist has pre-artmaking rituals. For some, these are merely physical acts that get one 'in the mood'. This could be putting on music, mixing paints or sketching out ideas. My ritual of starting a day of painting begins with meditation. I do my preliminary work on a painting with my eyes closed!

When I was a child, I was instinctively drawn to churches. We were not a religious family. What attracted me were the hushed tones, and that feeling of a sacred place where one could step out of the daily chaos. While studying Art History in college, it struck me that art and the sacred have long walked hand in hand. 

Once, while spending the summer on the Côte d'Azur, I wandered into the Matisse Museum in Nice. There was so much to love there. Among the items that struck me were his windows designed for a small church in Vence. Matisse was not a particularly religious man, but he was a cancer survivor. A nun who nursed him during his illness asked him to create the windows as a favor. Looking at his windows evoqued a spiritual mood for me. That was 15 years ago, but it may have been the seed of inspiration for my recent painting Beach Day.

Matisse's windows at la Chapelle du Vence

Even Picasso, the modernist who wanted escape from all that annoying meaningfulness in everything, said that 'art washes from the soul the dust of every day life'. (Although, to be fair, he lifted this quote from the musician Auerbach.) It was considered modern in his day to thumb one's nose at sentimentality and icon worship. This paved the way for Andy Warhol to iconify soup cans. It needed to be done, I suppose.

We have gone from art that was purely sacred, to art that is purely meaningless, and all that lies in between. We now find ourselves in the sea of postmodernist white noise. It's sort of like fashion. Bellbottoms or skinny jeans? The choice is yours, Honey. Just do what you feel!

I believe this leaves artists with a world of possibilities. We are not faced with a dogmatic choice of painting to accepted standards or rebelling against them. It's all been done. You can paint photorealistic fruit or pickle half a cow, and everyone will agree that it's "art". There is a long creative history to draw inspiration from. We can express spiritual ideas or ridicule them. It can also be purely about surface, a pretty decoration. It's all good, as they say in the sorta-English realm.

So what is there for a modern artist to do, other than try to find my own voice in there somewhere? Perhaps in creating art from a place of spiritual clarity I can not only reinforce that part of myself but also create a sense of communion in my art for those who seek it.

Acquisition of New Paint Leads to New Painting!

It is remarkable how much paint I go through in a year! When I first bought a set of oils, it was a grand purchase. I still remember walking into an art store in Santa Cruz and carefully selecting my first collection of colors. It was sometime in the early 90's, and the $300 I spent felt like a huge luxury.

Shiny new tubes!

Before that I worked in gouache mostly, which is opaque watercolor. Most paints use the same pigments but differ in the binders. Oils use poppyseed or linseed oil as a binder. Gouache uses chalk. Acrylic uses plastic.

In school I used acrylic paints as it's easy to acquire a set of student grade colors for mere pittance. They looked fine when wet, but then dried to a dull memory of my original vision for a painting. When you are student, you pretty much suck anyway. It takes a lot of time and practice to create work that merit the use of fancy paints! Or so I've always felt.

My first set of oils, eked out sparingly in careful, often uncertain brushstrokes, lasted for years. I painted on weekends, evenings, and over vacations, and most of it was pretty awful!
It was a lot of time and sacrifice for something that most people around me didn't understand. Artists do tend to be the sensitive introverts, and I'm no exception.

I kept at it because on rare occasions a piece would emerge that finally said the thing I was trying to say with stunning eloquence and beauty. All those years of observation and thought, things I could never express, finally came out. It was as though I could at last show what my heart and mind felt. Not that I usually have much more to say than "see, the world is beautiful!" But I do often feel that people are too much in a rush, or too caught up in the minutiae of life to observe the world around them. Is that not profound enough?

Since beginning my adventure of being a full-time artist in 2003, I've had to buy more paint. Once I actually spent $6000 on paint in a single year! Back then I was repainting a lot, so it took much more paint to produce a year's worth of paintings. Many of my paintings would have 2 or 3 paintings underneath. I still do that, but far less. I seem to get it right the first time much more often these days.

Recently I treated myself to a set of shiny new Charvin oil paints in exotic pre-mixed colors! And they are lovely. Traditionally I've used a restricted palette, which is often recommended for plein-air painting as it simplifies your life. Even though I often paint completely abstract work, the habit of using a traditional palette has held. Sometimes I find a weird shade that really appeals to me but is not a classic hue straight out of the spectrum (Naples yellow comes to mind, and now it's lead-free!)

Before I start a painting, I will often spend an hour or two just mixing paint. It seemed strange to me to buy premixed colors straight out of the tube, but then Charvin has some gorgeous hues that only need a slight bit of graying or whitening to be straight out of nature. So after some hesitation, I decided to try something new. I've found that these premixed colors have inspired me to use purples in a new way, which is rather exciting.

Thoughts on Cities

When I was a child, which is really not all that long ago if you are thinking in geological terms, Santa Fe was a small town. It was a town you could walk easily, and would most likely meet several people you knew along the way. Aspen trees still grow in town, but there are far more people living there now.

Indigo City is mostly harmless

Although I wanted nothing more than to get out of the small town atmosphere as a teenager, I was a bit terrified the first time I arrived in San Francisco and saw all the freeway overpasses! A few years ago I made a pilgrimage to New York city to visit its museums, despite my deep undercurrent of fear about the place. Getting around the city on foot and by subway, I was relieved to discover that much of the Big Apple is quite friendly and entirely lacking in menace. People there have dogs, even! Central Park took my breath away with it's treed landscape and 19th c. wrought-iron details.

Given my humble small-town beginnings, I've always thought maybe I wasn't qualified to paint cities. However, I do live in an urban environment. Every day I ride my bike through streets rife with the worst of urban problems. My studio, like that of many other artists, is in one of the grittier parts of Oakland .

Shiny City

After leaving Santa Fe as a teenager, I moved around a bit. I've lived in Paris, Lyon and San Francisco. These places certainly left indelible impressions on me, although each of these cities guard a certain small-townness of it's own. Lyon residents will tell you that while it's thought of as the 2nd largest city in France (unless you ask a Marseillais) the city keeps une taille humaine, a human size. You can stride through Lyon easily, passing through the old town arrondissement to the business center through the passarelles, or hidden walkways between buildings once used by the resistance. San Francisco is a big city on one hand, but also a collection of little burgs on the other. Each area is distinct and small enough that you will run into the same people all the time once you live there.

City Tapestry

Paris, for all it's romance, is probably the toughest city I've had the pleasure to live and work in. It's a great city to visit, but living there is a different story. It's impossible for a builder to construct anything higher than 5 stories inside the city proper, so much of Paris feels intimate and close. In that sense, I was very much reminded of Paris when first I visited Manhattan. Once you get into the immediately surrounding areas you find yourself in the midst of gleaming skyscrapers and shopping behemoths. It's a tale of two cites in one. It's also for this reason that it's nearly impossible to get out of Paris for a weekend without being stuck in traffic for hours.

It's that first environment of life that seems to leave the deepest imprint on artists, I've noticed. No matter where I end up, I will always see colors more brightly, as though under a New Mexican sun. Picasso never got too political in his art until the fascists bombed Guernica. Even Gaugin's exile to exotic lands could not strip his work entirely of the shadow of Catholic symbolism that was so entirely French. And so in every city I will still experience the awe and wonder of a tourist, even if it is San Francisco.

Easter City, view from the Bay Bridge

Cities are different types of landscapes for me. When I see tall buildings, I still think of very tall mountains or trees that were built from glass, steel and concrete. But whereas being out in wild places makes me feel very small, as though nothing I did really mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things, cities tend to bring my attention to the importance of the moment. Cities thrum with a pulse of life in a hurry. The surfaces are more shiny and shapes are clean, geometric.

Maiden Lane, a modern take

When I see a city from afar, I feel as though I could almost hear the buzz of thought hovering around the buildings. All that brain activity and motion seem to give off a hum. Then there is the history of a city, the things she has seen and events that left a mark. Certain parts of London seem to echo with the weight of History. Kung Ming in China, on the other hand, almost felt like visiting a lightweight plastic future (with extremely bad pizza).

In films cities of the future always seem to be all shiny surfaces and flying cars. I believe that most cities will cling to the landmarks that have formed them, no matter what happens. Roman Colosseum and Gothic cathedrals will always command respect.

Maiden Lane in San Francisco is a place to go now if you want to see San Francisco's only building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, or shop for Chanel. In the gold rush days, however, it was a red light district. What a sight it must have been! I like to imagine away all the cars and see instead stage coaches, or picture in my head some saucy ladies milling about in lace-up corsets and petticoats. Or what must it have been like to see nearby Union Square as a rally ground for the Union Army, as it was in 1850? I'm not sure I can even imagine it without the looming shadow of Macy's, but it's fun to try.

Silkscreen!

Silkscreen print drying on the line

After years of being a painter full-time, I began to have an itch to learn a new medium. Don't get me wrong, I am still completely seduced by the buttery allure of oil paint. Being a painter makes it easy to be impulsive, messy, and fickle with your colors. This suits me well.

Silkscreen has made me think about color in a new way, and I am glad for it. I am learning to commit. Once you have decided to use a large field of color, there is little you can do, other than wash your screen out and start over. So you start thinking a lot more before acting. They say making any sort of print is 90% preparation, and 10% action.

Why silkscreen? Well, I knew I wanted to do some sort of handmade printmaking process. I don't believe in making reproductions of my paintings. I wanted to create something more affordable yet also handmade. Woodblock prints were my first inclination, but I am not good with sharp objects. My mother is a printmaker. She tried to get me excited about monoprints. They are more painterly than lithos or etching, but still require a press. Plus, there is just one. How sad!

I've always had a fascination with 19th c. Japanese woodblock prints. This began when I visited Monet's house in Giverny. He was a big collector of woodblock prints, and even had a Japanesque landscaped garden complete with footbridge. It makes sense, really. The idea behind a Japanese tea ceremony is to bring every sense alive, and in a way this is what happens when you go outside to paint. You are still, observing, and letting sensation come to you. Monet's work always spoke to me as a child because of the sincerity in it. He was simply documenting his own experience of the world in a prosaic way. The beauty was incidental. He also made painting look like such fun.

"Red Lenin" by Any Warhol

Silkscreen, in my mind, had always been helplessly tied to Andy Warhol, an artist whose commercial work I found slightly annoying. Yes, I saw Factory Girl, and I get that was a 60's thing. (That movie is terrible, by the way! Poor Bob Dylan.) Anyway, it wasn't until I saw some of his other prints, the less commercial and more off-beat ones, that I started to think he was maybe onto something. I especially like the ones where you can see his Eastern European roots, perhaps because this type of personal reference makes me think an artist is being honest.

Then, I found Hilary Williams, an artist who was teaching a class on silkscreen, and decided to enroll. Her description was "painterly printmaking", which seemed ideal. Silkscreen work only require a small amount of space as you don't need a press. The screens are not expensive. Most of the work is done with your hands, which gives it a satisfyingly physical feel. My prints are all very painterly, with no two being exactly alike in an edition. I even use paint, Golden's Open series of acrylic paint, to make my images. Traditional printmaking inks are somewhat limited in palette, and also not rated for lightfastness which makes them less archival.

The image below is one of my earlier silkscreens, "The City Nestled in Fog". I started with a very pink sky, then kept adding blue to tone it down. There are usually only 10 prints in an edition, as I can't be bothered with the repetition of doing 25 or even 50 prints. I've seen a lot of those on Etsy and wonder how they manage to do it without going totally nuts! I guess it makes sense financially if you're only going to charge $25. Still, ugh! My arms hurt at the end of a printing day, but at least my head feels great.

pinker sky

bluer sky

Painting retreat in Yosemite last November

The fruits of my labors!

Yes, I'm aware that it's January, and that November 2010 was 3 months ago. Well, better late than never! I'm trying to capture the experience of doing art full time, and get thoughts out of my head and into writing more often. So I have to start somewhere.

Fall in Yosemite is, I've discovered, a gift to painters. It tends to be a bit less crowded, and the colors are glorious. So I've made a habit of heading up there to paint for at least a few days in the fall, as a sort of gift to my self.

On my most recent trip, I made the discovery of the quite inexpensive tent cabins in Curry Village. This left much more of my day for painting since I didn't need to drive into the Valley from the less expensive lodging just outside. Fall days are short and crisp in the valley. Next time I will definitely plunk down the extra $10/night for a heated tent cabin! Brrrrrr.

Over the years I have noticed that while plein-air painting I have lots of animal encounters. It's probably from standing still for so long. Animals start to take you for part of the scenery.

This year was the best so far for mixing with the furry set. I saw a coyote, many many deer, and a giant black bear! The coyote was the first I'd ever seen in Yosemite, after years of visits there.

"Doe and Fawn" Silkscreen, starring Mommy Deerest

While the encounter with a coyote was very magical, I doubt it will inspire a painting. Growing up in the Southwest permanently ruined me for coyote art. I could see the bear showing up somewhere, and the deer already have. A mother deer and her fawn that I ran into repeatedly while painting became the models for "Doe and Fawn". I saw this deer so often in the week I was there that I began to think of her as "Mommy Deerest".