August 2008 Archives

I can put this drawing up now because Tracy got in the mail today. I sent it to her along with Tracy's Purple Passion.

I went to Dorian and Liana's last Sunday only to find they were having Stephanie pose for painting all day. I was totally unprepared for this. However, I had, almost accidentally, brought along a bunch of tubes of gouache -- those tubes I'd dug out of the attic last month -- so I worked with what I had and managed this painting on black paper.

This was a little strange for me because, first, I haven't used gouache like this in over a decade. And second because I decided to pretend I was Dorian and paint the way he does, with broad slashes and little pats, instead of how I usually do, which is with a lot of strokes and wrist action. He also holds his brushes way back near the end of the handle, while I tend to hold them like pencils, up near the ferrule. Nancy, one of the other artists, calls Dorian Zorro.

So this painting is built up from areas of color through layers of finer and finer detail. I really wished I had oils for this. Gouache has this tendency, which oils don't and which I'd forgotten, which is as you're laying down a layer, the layer below lifts off and floats away. Thus the ground has a way of resurfacing as you work, which is especially annoying when your ground is, say, black as the unforgiving night of a poor artist's soul.

In any case, here it is. It came out okay, especially considering I had barely a single correct tool.

I've been waiting to get some decent photos to show off my new studio space. Here it is. It's not much, but the neighborhood is lovely. It's in Gowanus, Brooklyn, by the way, not Red Hook. I was set straight by Stephanie on this point. I argued that New York neighborhoods are notoriously fluid, but, I have to admit, not so much when the border is a canal. The canal, incidentally, is one of the most horrifically nasty bodies of water I've ever seen, and I grew up two blocks from the Kill Van Kull.

I ended up in the studio entirely by accident. Or, maybe, it was one of those things that happens when you make contacts and contacts with contacts and so forth, and eventually meet someone who can help. In this case I was at Dorian's for drawing when Reilly started talking about this studio he'd been trying to put together. Because he's young and idealistic, he signed the lease and put down the deposit and first month's rent and last month's rent and who knows what all else New York landlords are extorting these days after he'd lined up six artists willing to split the rent. Then four of them split. Anyone over thirty could've told him that would happen, but as I said, he's young. So he was looking for four more artists to fill out the space and when I asked him the price he nailed my limit exactly: $150 per month.

I'd been noodling around, sort of half-assedly hoping to stumble into a place that cheap. I figured, since I live in north Jersey, and the area is simply chockablock with abandoned and half-abandoned former industrial buildings and shopping centers, I'd find something pretty easily. But every inquiry I ever made was rebuffed -- and with rancor and vigor and several other archaic nouns denoting energetic nastiness. Just what you'd expect from Jersey, actually. Imagine The Sopranos only stupider, less entertaining, and more corrupt. I can't understand it, but apparently real estate is so in demand around here, landlords would rather leave a building empty -- for years and years -- than rent it out below market value.

Well, no one in New York wants to make a studio visit to New Jersey anyhow, because public transportation out here sucks and the traffic getting here is ridiculous. Not to mention the tolls, which are astronomical. By the time a gallerist has made it to Jersey, they need to sell out at least one entire show to pay for the trip. A studio in Brooklyn has far more cachet than one in Jersey, and a studio in Gowanus -- an unrepentantly lousy area, unlike upscale Williamsburg or DUMBO -- gives an artist more cred than a tag on the el.

So I'm moved in. The building is great because there are a number of other studios filled with working artists -- comic books guys, mostly, and graphic designers and illustrators -- which means I can wander out of my studio every so often and annoy other people. Lowe's is right down the street for all your hardware needs and the subway runs conveniently directly overhead.

Since I've moved in I've done three paintings and started three more -- and that's only physically being in the studio for two days. I don't know how I'll be able to keep up with supplies.

Curiously I haven't done anything figurative, though. I've been working more on those squiggles -- Joe, Stephanie's boyfriend, called them waves -- and trying different things with them. The first three here are finished; the last two are in progress. Well, maybe 5 is done. I'm not sure on that one.

Once again I fell prey to mundane influences and did one of these in purple for Tracy.

The titles are getting kind of arbitrary, but what the heck. I did the red drawing, Red Ripple, with my newest most expensive brush, a #12 round 2410 from Escoda. It's not the most expensive brush ever owned by anyone, but it's expensive for me. But I wanted a good brush to try some of this kind of work in oil. I have three I tried with the incorrect brush -- a cat's tongue from Isabey, I think it is -- but I really want to try it with the right tool.

Yes, that's right, I've done some abstract oils. I'll have photos when I get my camera to the studio.

In the meantime, feast thine eyes upon these masterworks of sumi ink inspired by a tongue drum I saw a guy playing in the subway.

Artists are supposed to be immune to mundane influences, I know, but I have to admit my wife requested I use pink for my next painting, so I did.