New Studio, New Work

Top: Seated Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 16 x 20, 2007
Above: Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 16 x 20, 2009

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Finally! I am pretty much settled into my new studio. Honestly, that took about twice as long as I expected. Vinny helped me drag all the heavy stuff–flat files, drafting table, easel, boxes of books, etc–but I found the most time consuming part to be figuring out just how to organize and arrange the space so that I could comfortably work here. Took some rejiggering, but I think I have arrived at a good solution.

Since this was the first time I worked inside since my landscape residency this summer, I was very concerned about losing what I learned in the field and falling back on old studio habits. The discoveries that I didn't want to lose are:

1. A new way of seeing the subject. Rather than trying to accurately copy each object in my sight, I am looking to use what is in front of me to make an exciting composition. So rather than concentrating on the "thingness" of an object, I am interested in its shape and its relationship to everything around it.
2. A new way of starting the painting. Instead of drawing outlines and boundaries of objects, in the landscape I would start with large tonal masses, staying away from the edges. When I began this loosely, I was able to make a cohesive picture instead of painting a bunch of different objects.
3. A new way of applying the paint. My palette knives helped me to keep this looseness going. With knife or trowel, it is much more difficult to over-blend colors on the canvas. This is good. The knife also keeps me from going into too much detail and forgetting the "big picture."
4. A new way of seeing light and color. Outside I began to see the color of light instead of local colors. When the morning sun falls on a tree or a field of grass, the colors in the light pretty much overtake the color of the tree or grass. I am much more interested in the way the colors of the light play with the landscape.

So when coming back into the studio, my fear was of forgetting these things because I was in my old setting, and falling back on practices that I was accustomed to using in that setting. My solution was to set up a self portrait, and paint it as if it was a landscape. I focused on my body being a part of the "landscape" of the studio, and used the window as a backdrop to remind me of the sky that I was referring to when I was outside.

The solution is a self portrait that is radically different than any I have painted before. To demonstrate what I am talking about I am showing an older self portrait compared with the new one.