Plein Air Painting from Photographs Workshop

A few weeks back I taught a two-day painting workshop at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts entitled Plein Air Painting from Photographs. 
It was a lot of fun for me and my class to work together for the two days, which went by fast.

The idea to pitch the class came to me because I know many, many people who love to paint landscapes but for a variety of reasons find painting out doors difficult. 

I also know many people paint from photos, so I thought about the strategies I have come to develop and employ when painting en Plein Air that aid me when working from photography, as well as the limits and the benefits of a photo, which are many. 

How we see verses how the camera sees, lens distortion, the contrast of photos tends to be greater, the color more intense, what the processing of  traditional or digital does to the color verses seeing it with out own eyes. The limit of the position of the camera in that moment, etc. There is a trade off when using photos, and the trick is to not let them or the  photo limit you or hem you in, but become a springboard for what you want to paint. An aid, not a crutch.

I do a fair amount of work based on my own photos of subjects I wouldn't be able to paint live on location. So having spent several years doing this I thought I could show students how to use the photos in the right way, to adapt them and ways of working in a classroom setting instead of outdoors.

Now nothing beats being out in nature for your senses as an artist, the sun on you, the sweat, the wind, the smell of the location, the meal you ate, the humidity, bugs, etc. Your sense memory is very essential, vital to pull from when working indoors and using photography, and that is something I stressed first off in the class.I try and remember the feeling of a place I took the photos and imagine myself back there and the conditions of the weather, etc.

Of course one of the biggest arguments that continues to play on like an endless game of badminton or tag is the argument against or for using photography as tool in painting. My students all told me they had been told to,"Never paint from photos!"  Of course one man's never is another man's must!
Photos--Bad! If I had a dime for every time I heard that in school I could buy the most expensive camera ever!

This is big art crime in art schools and was something I heard when I was first in college in the early 80's before dropping out, and I still found the same argument going on when I went back to the academy decades later. But at the same time everybody seems to be using pictures to paint from. And lets not even get side tracked by the whole Photorealist movement which started in the late 60's.

Honestly its a very silly and boring argument for me, and one I never heard Illustrators going on about, just mostly "Fine Artists" and those of a certain generation who grew up during Abstract Expressionism. And you hear all kinds of conflicting arguments form all camps in school as a student which my students said they found very confusing. Looking across the vast plain of contemporary art you can see the camera is a tool used by thousands of artists from Eric Fischl, Jenny Saville, Alex Kanevsky and David Hockney to name just a few. My favorite Illustrator Norman Rockwell used photography extensively as a tool and there is a great book on it Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. Just using a camera will not make you a Rockwell, that's for sure, there still has only been one of him.

To prepare the class I brought in a lost of paintings to show, paintings done plein air and those from photos and where and why I decided to shoot pictures that sometimes I would not come back to work from as a source for months, even years later. My Commuter Series was a good example where I have done many paintings from photos I took commuting on SEPTA into and out of Philly,

I gave a slide show talk on my laptop to start and next I did a demo for the class working from a photo I snapped in the Brandywine to show how I used the photo and the changes I make, which might be the same ones I would make on location. How the shadows were very dark in the picture but were not in real life, now the computers colors were much more intense and how I could decide which way to push these things as well as adapt what I see into a more pleasing composition. Move or eliminate trees, fences, etc., and in the end what my painting needs to work as a painting that trumps anything in the photo. Every painting is a process of choices, statements and corrections, of memory, even on location, you look at the subject, think and then look away to your canvas to make a stroke---in that few seconds you must use your memory to hold that "thought stroke" as I call it.

I finished up the demo and then we took a lunch break after which I had the students use their photo sources to develop their paintings with sketches first, starting with thumbnails and playing with the compositions. That took most of the rest of the day which ended with the students just starting to paint before the end of the first class. But I feel they got a lot out of the thinking part of the workshop on the first day.

 

The second day we started off painting again and worked till early afternoon again pausing for a lunch break, I worked a lot with each student as the class size was small, which was nice. By afternoon most had finished their paintings and wanted me to do another demo, which I did and they wanted me to do a night scene.

  
I choose a scene from 69th Street near my house which was very mysterious and sort of blasted out in parts which i told them allowed me a lot of freedom to interpret and play around and invent. 


 It started very abstract and I worked explaining my thought process as I moved along. It takes practice to do this two-brain way of working but the class was very good with questions which helped.

In the end the workshop was fun for me and for 
the class and went over so well I'll be offering another one in the summer.

The DPC on Plein Air Collector

A nice article by Bob Bahr on Plein Air Collector featuring a small collection of the paintings I own by friends. I discuss their work and what i like about each painting and painter.

Repaint Rework New Work

                                                               Two Figures 18 x 24

Since moving everything home from my PAFA studio I have been going through a lot of old paintings from my student days there in cleaning and sorting and reconfiguring my home studio. Some of the paintings I have sold recently in a studio fire sale via my Facebook page ( one going to a fan in Italy) and others are being recycled for surfaces to be painted on again after a fresh coat of primer. I love painting on the surface of an old painting, its so rich and sometimes textural in unexpected ways.

There are so many paintings  though that I can't keep them all and I have even just tossed some---you can't keep everything and you end up it seems as a painter keeping too much stuff anyway. Some of them are also just terrible, and failures--but its good in a way to see the paint mileage add up when looking at all of this old work, some of which I remember painting and being pretty frustrated with at the time. I can see though that being a prolific painter can also create serious storage issues in just a few short years as these paintings can start stacking up if they are not sold or going out to galleries.

There are other paintings though, a handful that I decided to revisit and rework as an experiment and see what might happen in going back into and over them, playing around stylistically using the old painting as a sketch a in a way to build off of. The compositions were good like the one above and it gave me a good ground to start on.

In playing around with paint and revisiting these sometime four year old paintings I took some big liberties style or approach wise based on what I had done the first time. I think having an old work to play with kind of gave me a freedom that I have in a sketchbook as I were, the risk is small, if I messed up-oh well, it was a "gonner anyway".

I also had some ideas or thoughts to try and work looser and push paint around having seen the Zorn show in NYC and Alex Kanevsky's last show got me hungry to push paint around in a more vigorous fashion. I have also been looking at the work of Daniel Pitten and Balcomb Green who both paint in a more abstract and textural fashion with a sometimes collage-like and dreamy feel to their work.

I also wanted to just get back to the easel and haven't had the chance yet to get out and plein air paint yet and these studio paintings can be worked on at any time after my commercial deadlines are over for the day.

I really played around with the paint handling, trying in a way to not make smoothly painted transitions, roll the brush, etc. In this case I liked painting on the one below ( Life 11-14) on panel the most and the one at the top ( Two Figures) the second. The bottom one (Grandma Scarf )was from a Sunday Life session at PAFA with Scott Noel and I started thinking of how the Russian Social realist so boldly applied their strokes of paint. Their work as a whole remains a big inspiration for me in the meaty way they approached painting.

                                                               Life 11-14 16 x 16 Oil

                                                        Grandma Scarf 16 x 20 Oil

Some Thoughts On Painting Part 3: Painting To Serve Your Aspirations

It's been a month now that school has been over and I turned my key into my studio a week ago and officially moved all of my school studio supplies and paintings home, there has been a lot of sorting and dumping going on both physically and mentally. I've sold some older paintings via Facebook ( and will offer more in another studio fire sale) and have a big pile to either paint over to reuse or to trash. I've hired a friend to help me slog through all of the "guts" of my school years at PAFA.

While I have been doing the physical sorting I have also been doing a lot of mental sorting as well and reviewing some of my old notes from classes and lectures from the past six years. I did chronicle a massive amount of my student time at PAFA as this blog clearly shows. I've posted demos and pictures covering a lot of my process visually, butI haven't yet really written as much about the mental aspects or the "Paint Thinking" as I like to call it.

Part of the reason may be that for me a lot of the thinking is actually the doing of 'it", the moment of response as a painter to the stimuli. In that instant of looking, feeling and response there is a universe churning in my head--then BAM! You make a stroke, mark, passage, scrape, wipe, or many a tiny little tap or wipe the last mark or stroke out.

One of the things I noticed about watching experienced painters work, is that they looked at the subject they were painting or drawing, if working from life, at least 60-70% of the time they were engaged in that session and actually making marks or strokes about 30% or so of the time. I have read that Sargent spent a long time looking very intently, and then striking with his brush. Sometimes he would then go a wipe it right off again, and repeaedt this way of working.

The best demonstration of this I have seen was watching Nelson Shanks paint four times in the past few years. Shanks is a painter of grand, traditional gifts and the head of Studio Incamminati here in Philly. He is very much about the classical approach to painting and Sargent's way of working and subject matter. Every year or so Shanks would do a painting demo to promote the school or some activity related to the school and it was really a great opportunity to learn about painting as a process by watching somebody as good as Shanks paint. I like his demos more than his finished pieces as they really have guts, life and energy in them that his more finished pieces loose. Watching Shanks is like watching a top athlete you can marvel at, someone at the top of their game work or play. Unlike the NBA though, you don't have to be 7 feet tall to be a great painter. You can see Shanks painting my friend Alina here on a youtube video. I warn you the music is bad and distracting---why they have to use such cheesey music is beyond me. This isn't his best demo, as I think he was feeling ill, but it does show his process well even though it's speeded up.

My point is talking about this all is that there is a lot of "paint thinking" going on by Shanks in such a demo. Certainly the pressure to complete and also to perform are big factors and conditions on this type of demo and his thought process. An experience painter like Shanks has lot of time in "thinking" this way, I imagine there is almost a groove in his mind, worn into his Neural Pathways as a result, like an athlete who is supremely trained to move so precisely between choice and instinct.

 Two paintings by Scott Noel that use the construction of the Convention Center in Philly as a subject, energy or element of a painting. Scott painted these as the construction was happening and so the energy of the painting was always live as the subject was alive and changing minute by minute as the construction site changed and "breathed" just as the models do in the process shot of the second painting.

This relates to another set of notes on my iphone from a painting seminar (maybe from Scott Noel) I took down and reconstruct here:

What are the connections to be discovered between a classroom painting and a studio painting? Do these different types of paintings, done under different conditions, different desires or needs inform each other and if so, how do they inform each other? What is the energy about in the work?

What are the crucial energies in the paintings and how do these energies manifest themselves in a mature painter and a mature work? Are there certain patterns that come together, passion, intellect, strategies employed , conscious motives? What is the aspiration of the painting and the painters and how does one construct the the best self that is a unification of all of this energy and motives as a painter?

Whoa, pretty heady stuff...

An answer to the first question for me was that the classroom painting was never a painting I would have chosen to do on my own. The conditions of that painting were set up by the teacher as a way to stress and practice ideas that the instructor wanted to teach. Some days I'd look at the set-up and go ugh! I'm sure that was at times a big failing on my part.

I always felt frustrated when doing the class paintings, even the ones that worked better than others. So my aspiration was to try and learn the lesson or "paint thinking", to take with me and apply the ideas of the lesson later, better. I suppose a mature painter does this and uses any opportunity to manifest their motives as a painter with any subject. In my final year in my undergrad and in my painting seminar in the master with Scott I did attempt to turn the classroom painting into something more that doing the art school equivalent of doing curls or military presses. It's also very easy to get your strategy confused, your paint thinking confused or unfocused and end with a mess of a painting!


 

















 These two paintings were done a year apart at school. The first was done in the last semester of my undergrad year in my class with Peter Van Dyck. I painted on this over the course of a few weeks. The second painting is a one session painting in my MFA Painting Seminar class with Scott Noel. Scott mostly had one session poses in that class so my strategy or Paint Thinking was different  from the start.  What I was able to do in both was find the energy or idea I wanted to paint right away, and try and make that work for me. The conditions of both painting were very different and thus my thinking had to take that into account to satisfy my motives. What was similar for my approach to in both paintings was taking the time to find the painting I wanted to paint. To make those set-ups work for me. I had 90 minutes for the second  painting and maybe 5-6 hours for the first painting. I actually had even less than 90 minutes for the second painting as the "light event" lasted only 20 minutes. This was a growth point for me in my last year of my undergrad how I made a painting in terms of  my "Paint Thinking".
 
From that point forward I did try and turn any opportunity to paint of draw into an opportunity the employ my energy and aspiration, motive as a painter. I don't always succeed in making a good painting or one I am happy with, but then no painter does that.

                                                                         Diebenkorn

                                                                               Sargent

This makes a Sargent a Sargent and not a Diebenkorn or a Shanks. I suppose a mature painter is able to move back and forth between the studio and the classroom or demo or whatever the impetus is for the subject to paint and connect his or her painting energies and strategies in a way the serves their aspirations for the particular painting as well as their own as a painter.

Some Thoughts On Painting Part 2

In my last post I talked a bit about the Perceptual Painting Process or theory of it's principles as I came to understand it in relation to my own process as a painter while in school at PAFA, and specifically working with teachers like Scott Noel, but also Peter Van Dyck who also would fall under the same "school" as a painter.

 Here are a few more notes on painting from Scott in one of my last master's painting Seminars I had with him:

"Slosh and cut with paint with very little rendering, wet into wet. Pay attention to the scale and location of what you are painting as well as the precision of your stroke and the opacity of your paint. Paint on a surface prepared with cremnitz white, which will give you a unique quality to the way your paint behaves. No glazing or underpainting, build with blocks of broad color. The paint is most beautiful when it is not cut with medium. Paintings with scale and complexity are exciting. In the end it comes down to what you really value as a painter, it shows in your work." Scott Noel

The medium Scott said he uses is a 1to-1to-1 of Gum terps, Stand Oil and regular terps. Mix it so it has the feeling of honey.

Two life paintings by Scott Noel

I think Scott has had a huge influence on both Peter and his wife Carolyn Pyfrom who also teaches at PAFA and I have both of them as teachers in the Certificate Program. Peter and Carolyn both attended the Florence Academy, The Florence Academy which was founded and run by Daniel Graves is a school who's curriculum is probably even more like the traditional cannon of the 19th century, much more focused that PAFA, which while embracing the past does embrace the present and modernism. I had Carolyn only once as a teacher in my first year in the Certificate program at PAFA but I had Peter a few times as a teacher, first in Animal Drawing and then Life Painting, but the class I where learned the most from him was his Painting Interiors class.  I did a post on taking that class with Peter here.

I this class I got to see Peter paint and demonstrate the Perceptual Painting process live and then apply that philosophy in my own paintings. I guess what I want to state here is that for while I did learn a lot from my teachers I am not a follower 100% of any one teacher, category, philosophy or school. I can't bow under one flag or one way of working or thinking, but try and take in these sometimes divergent ideas and let them cook down through me. That said I did learn a tone from Scott and Peter and Vincent Desiderio, who I will talk about in a future post.

Some ideas will strike you so boldly as a painter, like a lighting bolt illuminating your darkness tossed Zues-like from the hand of your teacher, it will strike and brand your mind and stay, and some will not. Some ideas from teachers will just fade out, not fit in with your personality or taste.

Buddhist master Lin Chi is supposed to have said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” I think this is true, at some point you must break from any system of teaching and any teacher or you risk making it a fetish or worse a dogma and a poor imitation of another artist's work. It is very tempting, especially for the young artist to fall under the spell of a strong and dogmatic teacher. They offer you all the solutions its seems to all your problems. This actually is what I think happens and works for most painters, especially what we snobs call the Sunday Painter or hobbyists, which frankly is the bulk of people painting in the world today.

It's so seductive to follow a guru, as the worry and struggle and fight is gone, you can worship at one alter and all the answers are given. But "Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!" I think that leads to being brittle and inflexible and that is death as an artist. Struggle is life! Struggle is essential, But it is not all.

While I do have some very deep core beliefs, such as drawing is the foundations of art for me, the foundation of thinking and analyzing and painting, I'm don't think you must draw only in one way and never have to follow any teacher 100%.

In that PP category I would list painters like Lennart Anderson, Isreal Bershberg, George Nick, Stuart Shills, Caroyln Pyfrom, Philip Geiger and maybe the king of them all, Antonio López García. For so many painters he is the top of the top in the Perceptual Painting world. I do like his work a lot, but I don't fall under the romance of his struggle which I think many painters do. That can be a false way as well. A trap that you can fall in and think as a real "arrrteest" it must be all hand-nailed-to-the-forehead and never a joy of real gains and performance from practice and hard work. So many holes you can step in as an artist.

                                                            Spring Fed, Andrew Wyeth

                                                    Sink and Mirror, Antonio López García

I think López García's work is very similar to the work of one of my biggest influences and painting gods, Andrew Wyeth. That statement alone would condemn me in many circles, I can hear the brushes breaking and teeth clenching now. To me both artists are more similar in temperament and subject than they are different. They both create a paint-space of powerful melancholy and memory.  A loving, deeply personal paint space about the worlds they live in, Garcia, Spain and Wyeth, the Brandywine. I think their work both inhabits an intense specific atmosphere, of a specific place, of a time, of their cities, homes and friends as intimate as a lovers hand caressing in the small of your back.

 There is an honesty I feel that makes them kin as artists. But the fact is one painter's honesty is in some circles is another's stage craft. This happened a lot more in the Masters Program than he undergrad, but it did happen at time there too--sometimes I feel I had to just pull away an disengage from that mentality and business as it was a dog chasing it's tail, and a waste of energy.

 
Under the general category of what I call  or think of as "realism" there are many different movements that are all like "kissing Cousins" to me, you have the Novo-realists like Jeremy Lipking, Alexy Steel, Tony Pro and a few others. These guys tend to hang out as a group much like the Ashcan School did so while its not an official movement there are a many artists who share a similar desire to paint a certain kind of truth.  See the world in a similar way as painters, At the Art Renewal Center you have another group of artists sharing a similar aesthetic. What I don't get is other than jealousy, why do one group have to hate on another? I think all of these movements have more in common than not and most all of them trace their love and art gods back to the same pantheon of great painters of the past.

And then there are realists like Vincent Desiderio and Alex Kanevsky, both of whom build paintings up out of concepts or ideas and both of whom often use photography as part of the process for generating their images. I don't see them as being officially part of any sub movement of realism per se, or I have never heard them claim an allegiance. Maybe this is imporant and why they are at the top of the painting world right now, they are not trying to play with a certain group or camp. I guess my thinking on this is that you can get caught up in this gamesmanship and waste energy that you could apply painting and waste negative energy on other artists that return you nothing.

Moving On

This week was the real official end to my time at PAFA. The ASE came down and Tuesday all of us students who exhibited in the show had to come in and pic-up any work that didn't sell and Wednesday was the last day to clean out your studio and turn in your key. Saturday I moved home all of my furniture, easels and bookshelves, etc., with the help of my buddy Will, so I only had to grab a few things to grab in the studio and some trash to toss.

                                                    My ASE wall looks so bare now...

 

In the basement gallery 128 you can see the work that did sell getting ready for the buyers, including some of my work on top of the table

I drove in early and grabbed my paintings that were left in the museum and put them in my car, and then painted my studio and took the last few little things left and turned in my key. I sold over half of my wall and that's great, I can use the $$ as soon the student debt will come calling, and I want to fix up things in the home studio.

I painted my studio pretty quick as I didn't really mark the walls up at all except for some pushpin holes. The last click of my now former studio door closing officially marked the end of my time at PAFA, and it felt great!!! I gave my rollers to a few fellow MFA's who were also in for the final day.

                        A great picture of Scott Noel and me that my Dad shot at graduation, I hope Scott has  a great sabatical, he really deserves it!


I know I will be returning to PAFA in a new capacity in the future, but for now my time as a student is officially done. I feel like the Alice Cooper  Schools Out song at the moment, and I know the next few days will be working on the strip and catching a breath before I turn my full attention to the next phase of my career and life, trying to move full time into the fine art world.

The focus of this blog will now change as well from being a student to blogging about getting more galleries, entering more competitions, etc. I'll be heading out to Arizona in a few weeks and doing the Scottsdale run at the galleries out there. Right now I am going to be making a master list of galleries I am aiming at, contact info etc.

In Other News...

So it's been over a week since graduation and things are still busy here. I have started to move out of my studio on the 9th floor and bring all of my book, supplies, etc. home.

I have a lot of stuff, waaaay too much stuff, so I will be sorting, tossing and leaving things behind for the students still in school. The amount of "treasure" you can find at this time of year on the upper floors after students move out is amazing. Canvases galore, stretchers, chairs, bookshelves, all manner of supplies, etc. Some people bug out of town quick and want to lighten their load. I don't blame them at all for just tossing out a lot of art and supplies. I still have things in my studio that friends left in our gang studio on the 4th floor from undergrad. I will have to decide about a lot of paintings I have from school, to either toss them or reuse them later for new paintings.

It's too easy to be a pack rat and think, "I'll use this canvas or piles of wood, etc." and then never ever, ever use it. How many cans of fixative do I need? So right now between the studio at school and my home its like a game of tetras to fit it all in.










I just received my final grades from PAFA this morning--as if they in any way really matter now.  They were exactly what I expected to get and I'll pin them on my fridge, but really what matters is the skill I gained, my hard work for me and my goal, not how well I painted to please my critics. The simple fact is usually by pleasing one you will displease another. No way to win that game.

The rumor I hear is that they might go to no grades at all in the next year or so in the MFA, just a pass, fail type system that many other masters programs have.

The whole system of grading in Art School is a prickly subject in many ways. In general I think there is an overall grade inflation on one hand, and no real test , or empirical test or measuring of whether skills taught are really learned like they might have in music school when you have you final performance at the end of the year.  I think there is less so in an animation or illustration program than the typical fine art program.

The best evidence might be that if you paint the way your critic wants, they give you a better grade, go against their advice, and you get a lower grade. You might be thought of as being close minded or stubborn. I did in no way paint to appease my critics, in fact the paintings I was doing to appease a few, or one, I stopped doing as it wasn't what I wanted to do.  I didn't agree with her points in the end and felt painting to show her I could make the type of work she wanted was a waste of my time--I should be painting what I wanted, not painting to prove a point. I felt it was like a commission for a critic.

To sum it up, the critics are there as a resource to help me to be a better me, not to paint or make work that reflects their desires--or TASTE. In the masters program that is the way I think it should be, not the way it often seemed, where if you paint figures or landscapes they want you to abandon that for something else or another aesthetic which you don't desire.

There are a lot of upset an angry students at the end of the year when Spring Prizes are given out, many feel they worked really hard but don't get a prize or recognition for that hard work. I understand that, really. I think being older in school helps here because pleasing a critic or being a star in school might be a great thing, in school. Its a reflection of you pleasing many of the people in the school. Hoverer it is by no means any guarantee of success or future recognition outside of school or that you will have a great and long lasting career in the arts. School is short, art is long.

It's maybe too easy to get A's and B's in art school, when in the end what you want is skill and ability, or that should really be your goal because that is the wind and sails that will carry you forward, and when they are not there, you better be able to put the oars in the water and row likes hell.

This last Sunday we had the annual Student Show for the After School Program at PAFA, where I teach the Illustration class. The teachers all showed up early to hang the student work on the 11h floor  and a few hours later the student's and their family showed up to celebrate their work and have some snacks.
 

I think this years work was the strongest so far since many of the students have been in the program now for 3-4 years, so you can really see their progress and growth on this year's wall. Its a mixture of happiness and sadness since a lot of the students I have taught are now graduating from high school and moving on.

 















I will miss my crew who are leaving, but wish them well, they are going to really do well in the future if they keep working and growing as much as they have. As a teacher there is no better feeling than to see some young artist blossom before your eyes. Its the best feeling in the world to see them just gain in leaps and bounds at this age. hats off again the Al Gury who put this whole program together, what a gift for any student in Philly to be able to come to this program,  I certainly would have loved to attend this program as a teen. My hope is that they can carry forward this moment of purity, the desire to be creative for yourself into the sometimes choppy waters of art school or as a way to enrich their lives in the future.

MFA Graduation! It's a WRAP!

                            Your's truly giving my thesis talk at my wall doing my best Shatner

The dust and shreds of the past month of school are finally settling down a bit a week after my final MFA thesis defense/critique in front of my wall, the Women's Board Preview Night, the ASE Opening and my graduation from PAFA with my MFA. It was like a Dagwood sandwich of art school all served piping hot and fast.

                                      The opening night of the ASE was swelled to capacity

Only now am I able to start really processing the events and my exit process or exodus from Art School. I'm sure I will continue to edit, reflect and sort my"Art School Experience" even more in the coming months after I have completely moved out of school and resettled home and started the rebuild of my studio and my life.  I started moving out of my studio today and took a full carload of books and paintings as well as supplies home. I have to shed some more, and well let's be honest, a lot more extra cargo before I can embark fully on the next stage of my Art Journey, for the sun is already starting to lower in the sky of possibilities.

Opening night was slammed     All the students and faculty had lunch in the cast hall before the grad ceremony

 
I will have to work even harder if I hope to catch a good wind and reach my future goals. I can't wait to start painting again, from life, models, the outdoors! FROM PHOTOS! I am chock full of ideas and inspiration. I'm thinking I will have two separate studios at home, one for comics and such and one for just painting. I am aware of time, ageism and the narrow window I face. By some standards I've read I am already too old to be successful as a painter, but I'm going for broke. One of the things I became very clear on is my idea of success doesn't gel with the NYC orbit outside of a handful of galleries. I am not an installation artist or a modernist.

The past month of school was literally just put my head down and keep running and try not to let any of the spinning plates slow and wobble. Honestly I'm still exhausted from the whole process and I know that having my great friends, who had my back and came in to assist and give me encouragement helped me a lot.

Having done two ASE's before and hung several shows in the past few years also helped me as well as my years of professional experience in dealing with multiple deadlines. I worked hard early so calling it a day and framing my wall early did help a lot.

I will openly admit I have pretty mixed feelings on my MFA experience and my final crit and exit from school. I have always been honest about my experiences at PAFA. I have always talked about what I like and dislike. The MFA was not as much fun as the undergrad, and maybe that is the nature of an MFA program, to make you feel uncomfortable and challenged.  Defending your process, goals and ideals is always a good thing--at least that is what the story we are told always says.



But it can also take the fun out of it as well and I have very little patience for art speak. talking about art, yes, but the idea that so many final critiques used the same language to describe so many different disciplines was rather frustrating. I attended as many crits as I could, even those that featured work I didn't care for as hopefully you learn things you can take with you that will help your process and journey as an artist, structures you can continue to build on, and I think this is true. But a lot of this is also a "school thing", the part of the process that really lives in an institution and not in your personal studio space and not in the world outside of school. I will say as well that right now there is an aftertaste I am not finding very palatable and want to wash out of my mouth right away.

 

I was very disappointed in my final review and in my critics that were selected for that review. Some people got who they wanted and some like me didn't, and that's the way it rolled. When I got my list of critics I knew it was not going to be a favorable exit review. So many just didn't know me or my process so having them as my exit crit I felt would be dicey, though I was glad that Dan Miller was the head critic for me. I love Dan, that man is really an amazing artist and human being.

I have always felt that I was 'out of sync" with the modernist or post, post whatever we call this time in the  MFA program, since I am both a figurative and narrative painter in the land of the Modernist. Worse that I like to paint women. I felt downright conservative at times. At times it reminded me of what I disliked so much about art school the first time back in 1980. I quit then.

                                    My friend Jessica giving me some feedback on my wall

 However I felt right at home in undergrad at PAFA and its the continuation of my relationships with the faculty, especially with Scott Noel that kind of saved me in the MFA. It was that ability to continue my dialogue with Scott for two more years that was the most beneficial aspect of the program for me, along with the new voices of the MFA critics like Martha Armstrong, even Denise Green, who I didn't always agree with. Scott and I battled a lot, but in a good way, he pushed me, challenged me more than any other teacher and I owe him a bigger thanks that I could ever pay him back.

For our final reviews once again we had our system of double crits going on at the same time. This meant critics were split into groups, this created issues as you'd have crits with two friends going on at the same time. I would rush back and forth between crits to try and catch as much as I could.
When Scott wasn't on my final crit I was very disappointed as I feel he understands me the most of any teacher in school. He "get'"s me, which I feel it was pretty evident in my final review.  That wasn't the case with most of the critics who had never seen my work before.

Dan Miller was the head critic and I know Dan gets me and was one of  my critics last semester. But I felt in the end I was basically going over old ground, "why work from photos, etc." They didn't even talk about my figure work at all. Tom Ceszar did put forth some good feedback, but it wasn't what I had hoped.

Ugh. I mean come on, why are we even still having this discussion about photography at this point when I've been doing this for years in school and decades as a professional? The idea that craft is some kind of handcuff on creativity is just bullshit! Only in art school do we talk about such dumb ideas. You don't tell a singer  or a musician to not practice and that doing so makes them weaker artists. You don't tell an athlete to not practice. But we are always ready to shit the bed and toss out skill as some form of freedom when skills in the end frees you to execute and express your desires and impulses in the way you want. Its not some constant missing of the mark or qualifying or lawyering. That's a modernist argument/stance I 1000% disagree with.

 Craft alone is not enough, certainly, but then ideas without craft to execute them is garbage. Failure. Craft is the vehicle, the software that either helps you deliver your idea of fails you in my book. Its pretty simple, and so the review was pretty bad and I knew it would be so.

 
 I however wasn't going to take the idea that skill was bad laying down, and it did get a bit combative. A word of advice to any student reading this is to never let a critic take control and steer the crit in a way you don't want, or get away with stating things you honestly don't feel are true or valid about your work--and you are free to take any opinion in and also reject any opinion if it doesn't work for you. I was told basically my work is cold and unemotional, great skill but nothing personal to say. I of course don't feel this way and neither did Scott, but oh, well.

I again was disappointed and knew I would be, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable. I know many students who were at my crit felt the same way as I did, and I was disappointed some of my former teachers and critics didn't say anything at all. I would say over half of the critics in my review didn't say anything. Not one word. Why even show up then? They just sat there....

I was pretty mad for a few days after about how it all rolled out, disappointed, but I'm a pro, so you choke it down and move on to better things and tasks at hand. The fact that I had exactly the opposite reaction to my work during both the Preview party and ASE opening, the very pieces the faculty disliked selling first was the best validation of all for me.
  
David Brigham addressing the crowd of graduates and parents
 
People got my work, they saw the emotion in my work my critics simply could not, would not see. I had so many talks in front of my wall about what drew me to these subjects and the emotional response to the places, events I am painting.


I had many, many people trying to purchase the same pieces and the strongest reaction to any of my work to date.

 I sold half my wall during the Women's Board  Preview and even sold a piece earlier in the week to one of the Super Donors to the Academy. I felt good, great even for the moment that I had such a strong response and I also made some good contacts and commission as well.

The public reaction to my work was 100% the opposite of the faculty's ...why is there such a disconnect? Is it merely the BS of art school, academia and the lingering radiation of the modernists distaste for figurative or the classical approach? Its not contemporary--the most stretched out term to describe a philosophy or work. Is it that old saw again? I just feel so glad I will not have to go through that again. I  love and will miss PAFA, but not that type of atmosphere.

The crowd sang happy Birthday to Nancy

                                                       Dean Carr waves goodbye to us

In the next week I cleaned up, got some sleep and fought my Judge Parker Deadlines and went to as many of my fellow MFA's crits as I could. I also tried to battle the piles of laundry and house chores that had been put off in the past weeks.


Graduation day went fast, it seemed like things slowed down for a spell and then gravity suddenly let up and it was a whirl, class speakers, guest speakers then I was standing and the next moment getting my diploma and shaking hands. I think this year went faster than my undergrad ceremony. in 2012. It was great my parents could make it out and they really enjoyed the event and the show. I know so many of us students were so happy for this moment to be here and to while a bit sad to leave, to also be looking forward to what's next. I answered that question a 100 times that day. Its pretty simple, I will be doing what I have always done, just not have the plate as a student to keep spinning. That plate can now be washed and put out to dry. I will always be a student, but just not in school.
I had a great time and dinner with my family and friends at my favorite restaurant, Little Saigon, and I got a lot of great presents and a awesome cake. I know things will continue to settle into whats to come in the coming weeks. 
I am moving my studio home from school and have a lot to rearranging to do at home and head wise. I will continue to blog as I set up and set sail to the new horizons. Happy Graduation to the class of 2014!

Nancy B and giving out the Aluni Award that Peter is holding and Phillis giving her talk for our graduating class












Here I am seconds after getting my diploma.

My dad and and my best Bud Jamar Nicholas

My friends and family gathered at Little Saigon for the celebratory meal ( best spring rolls on the planet!) Ed even got me a cake!

                                                    Here's to a bright future as a painter!