Plein Air Painter

I am unabashedly a studio painter.  Oh sure, occasionally in the summer months I set up an easel system in my garage and paint.  In my old neighborhood the kids would sneak over, filled with curiosity as to what Mrs. Barron was up to in her garage with the music blaring.  But that was about as close to Plein Air as I have ever gotten.  Now I am living where there is a major Plein Air Competition held by the Cedarburg Artists Guild (www.cedarburgartistsguild.com) every year.

I love my intimate environment with my canvas and paints.  It is important for me to build a relationship with my subject matter.  So I was rather perplexed trying to figure out how to be involved, enjoy the weather (when it was nice this past week), and meet other artists now that it’s no longer too cold to be out and about.  While at a Guild meeting I realized that I could use my time to walk around, meet some of the artists who have come here to participate, and do some interviewing with photos to share with all those who are friends of the guild’s Facebook page.  During this time I have benefitted more than I thought I would.

I have met some amazing artists and seen how they treat their canvases for outdoor painting.  I have seen many different ground colors used.  In fact, one artist used a very bright green undertone which he felt would be difficult to paint over but halfway through the painting he discovered that bright lime tone gave such inner light to his landscape.   We have shared discussions on numbers of brushes to bring, use, and the challenges with whichever they have decided.  However, I believe the most important lesson to be learned from plein air painting is the need to make quick decisions as the light changes so rapidly.  As an artist we forget to use our instincts and I believe plein air painting encourages us to push our talents to the top without allowing our safety devices to get in the way.  A lesson that I hope will stay with me forever.

Most artists have enjoyed the conversations by passerby people walking down the sidewalks and have been so gracious to allow me to invade their space with my pad, pen, camera, and questions.  I’d like to thank them all for their time!

Even though I didn’t paint this year in the competition, I do believe I came out a winner for having met those that I have talked to and for learning all that I have which will provide me that additional courage to participate fully next year.  If you are in the Cedarburg, Wisconsin area I hope you’ll come on out for Strawberry Festival on Saturday and head over to the Cedarburg Cultural Center (www.cedarburgculturalcenter.org) to see the plein air paintings and perhaps bid on one in the auction that begins at 4:30pm.

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE:

June 3, 2011…Well, it’s a good thing it’s finished and named!  I am calling this QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT which is a terminology that a group of scientists including Albert Einstein initially wrote about.  An old friend of mine mentioned this phrase to me in an email just a short while ago and I started reading about it.  I believe flowers are all connected based on their genus.  We cannot control how far the same seeds will spread in our world.

This work is being included in the NAAC (Northwest Area Arts Council) Member Show which opens tonight at the Dole Mansion at Lakeside Legacy Arts Park, 401 Country Club Drive, Crystal Lake, Illinois.  If you have never seen this show, you really must try.  There are a lot of members of this group and we are each allowed a piece to be included.  It should be a great big show and I’m very excited about being included.

The opening reception is tonight from 5-7:30pm and features appetizers, live music, and cocktails.  I’ll be there and hope you will too!  

Finished?!?!?!  As artists are we ever REALLY finished with a piece of artwork???  This image has adorned my wall as a resource for inspiration for years and my mind since September.  If Mother Nature won’t concede to Spring I shall create my own world!

This is one of my favorite compositions.  With the juxtaposition of the two blossoms…I’m not sure what they represent???

Gerda Meyer Bernstein - Self Portrait

Yesterday was a fabulous day of art.  Not only did I get to spend the day in my favorite art city (Chicago), but I got to spend it with my friend Amanda who was in town from Scotland.  We decided to take in as much art in the loop that we could in 3 hours. 

First we headed over to the Jim Nutt show at the MCA, which is quite a collection of portrait work.  Sadly, I don’t share the excited impact of the Chicago Imagists artwork that was done by the Hairy Who group in the 60′s as much as others.  Not that I don’t appreciate the movement and the embodiment of the artwork, because I DO.  However, the imagery (while fun and courageous) doesn’t leave a lasting impression on me.   But to see Jim Nutt’s painted heads is another story.  These pieces are amazing with fine detail work that  you have to see in person and up close.  The colors (albeit acrylic) are luscious with undulating colors that from a distance look one way, but from up close question what you saw from afar. 

There is also a companion exhibition that was thrilling to me, to say the least.  You can see artworks by Wangechi Mutu, Francis Bacon, and a piece from Carol Dunham that I would have never thought he had done.  There is also artwork in the companion piece from some of Mr. Nutt’s peers such as Ted Halkin and Gladys Nilsson.  On some of the companion artwork, the artists write about how Jim Nutt’s work has personally influence their own work. 

 Don’t forget to see the haunting piece on the same floor by Susan Phillipsz.

After that we treaded over to a gallery that I never even knew existed in the loop.  The James R. Thompson Center has a gallery named the Illinois State Museum – Chicago Gallery.  We learned that it has various exhibitions that range from artistic to historic.  Amanda had heard of the current exhibition titled “Luminous Ground – Artists With History”.  This features Ralph Arnold, Morris Barazani, Fred Berger, Gerda Meyer Bernstein, William Frederick, Ted Halkin, Thomas Kapsalis, Vera Klement, Ellen Lanyon, Elizabeth Ruprecht, and Leopold Segedin.  These eleven artists have created artwork for over 50 years and while creating have influenced generations of other artists with their insight and their work. 

In this show (open until 8/26) you can witness the mesmerizing color usage of Elizabeth Ruprecht, be moved by the vast empathy and voice of Gerda Meyer Bernstein, be swept away by the gorgeous figurative work of Fred Berger, and jump inside the small assemblage boxes of Ralph Arnold.  This show is such a feast for the eyes and the soul…you have to get there if possible.  If for no other reason, than just to see the vast work of these amazing figures in Chicago’s rich artistic history and bask in the amount of experience and knowledge these artists possess.

Lastly we galloped over to the Chicago Cultural Center to see the “Off the Beaten Path” – exhibition focusing on Violence, Women, and Art.  While I found this artwork to be moving and disturbing, I was a tad disappointed in the continual slap in the face some of the images caused to me.  I believe this show is a cathartic exercise for some of the artists in view.  There were some disturbing images, so be aware, however there were also some amazing pieces that will inspire you and stay with you with positive impacts.  The one I felt had the greatest impact was a two video installation by Yoko Ono.  The first one was done in 1965 at Carnegie Hall in New York.  She sat on a stage with a black dress on and invited others to come up and cut pieces of it off of her.  It was beautiful and poignant.  There was also another version of the same performance, but done in 2006 with a much older Yoko Ono.  For me this one seemed to have more impact, perhaps because she wears the lines of fame and loss on her face more than from 1965.  For me, it appears as though the “cutters” are like vultures taking pieces of her away.  Pretty great stuff.  The exhibition features artists from all across the world and consist of varying ages.  It is rich in what it offers, but personally I would rather see women portrayed as stronger individuals rather than victims. 

I was really hoping to get to the Wangechi Mutu lecture last evening at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  I am fascinated by Mutu’s artwork as I believe it relates to my own work of questioning what exactly makes a woman a woman.  I am disappointed to say that I missed it, but instead I chose to spend that time with a friend talking about our art and the things we were feeling from all that artwork we had seen in that one day.

While finishing my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, we learned of the many things artists have to do that are not artist related in order to survive.  While there, we were being surrounded by such incredible artworks from the museum that we only dream of being a part of someday. It can be rather easy to forget that these same people, who created this unforgettable and ageless body of work, ever had to exist in a time that lied in between these accomplishments.  However, each day we were lectured about how artists continually have to find other sources of income while trying to sell and make their artwork.  The 2010 labor statistics believe that 60% of workers in the arts are self-employed with many of them working non-art related jobs to supplement their incomes.  All artists will acknowledge that it is true suffering to have to perform non-art related jobs.  Mostly I believe it involves a deep fear that to stop creating artwork will mean we forget how, lose our touch, or lose our forward movement to put our artwork out into the world.

Milan Kundera wrote “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” in 1984.  While the title also refers to love and sex, I believe it also contains a philosophical undercurrent pertaining to the awareness that our lives only happen once and therefore the act of being can become unbearable.  This is true of the artist who works in non-artistic fields for a primary living.

Recently I have received emails from a couple of fellow art students that I hadn’t heard from in a very long time.  Each of them wrote of their current life situation. One wrote to share her story of her need to work as a means of family survival while considering another career path in the medical industry and the other wrote to me as a way to vent out his feelings with the uncertainty that it would be read in its entirety by me because he felt I wouldn’t be interested.  The emails describe their personal disappointment in the fact that they are not creating finished artwork daily (as we did in school) and how much they have taken ownership of this disappointment to their own emotional detriment.  While these two friends of mine (who graduated with me) live in very different regions of the country and do very different artwork with very different views about their work; the commonalities in their emails were exactly the same in detail.  Topics shared included their frustrations with the inability to put their feelings and views on the world into something creative, their sense of failure in not using their hard earned degrees in their current primary career, and the fear that their future will not contain a sufficient amount of time for their artwork.

I, too, have been working in other areas than my artwork with the same struggles. I have relocated to a different state and have been trying to adjust to the various changes in my life and lifestyle.  Having my collegues put words to their ”suffering” made me witness my own, like looking into a mirror.   I found myself responding to their emails in somewhat the same way. In my responses I discovered that we were sharing in that profound survival mode, one that we were lectured on but naively never thought we’d actually participate in. 

I never felt as though art school prepared me for the business world of art.  However, looking from this side of that academic experience, I see that they did help me achieve an ego about being able to make artwork for a living and accomplish anything I wanted in the art community.  This ego is the double edged sword that allows artists to put forth their artwork, but also acts as the cement shoes that weigh us down when we have to resort to non-art work to survive.

 I found myself replying to their communications by reminding them that being an artist is about so much more than just creating artwork. Being an artist is also about sharing a particular view of the world.  I believe we look at common things with an uncommon eye.  We feel emotional impulses from objects, ideas, inspirations.  I don’t believe that just because we happen to have a job as a counselor, waitress, customer service rep, or assistant that we lose our ability to see and feel the world as we artists do. 

Yes, we live this particular life only once.  However, we do live for a lifetime in which we create a lifetime of artwork.  For some that may be 10,000 pieces of artwork and for others it may mean 3.  The important thing to remember is to be kind to yourself while surviving your life, embrace your artistic self in all that do (art and non-art related), and do something creative each day even if it’s cooking something different or taking a photograph with your smartphone.

There is an unbearable lightness or likeness of being an artist, but the defining moment is how you choose to allow it to define you.

Chicago Art Open - River East Art Center 2010

It was so incredible to be chosen to exhibit at the River East Art Center for the 2010 Chicago Art Open hosted by Chicago Artists Coalition.  First of all the River East Art Center is such an exquisite gallery space to visit…but to have work there too…sublime.

Gathered were 350 works of art by various artists with varying degrees of experience and a multitude of media.  It was hung salon style and I was so delighted to see my piece in the center of the wall!!!  There was an entire room of paintings, flanked with rooms filled with mixed media and drawings.  It was all a feast for the eyes.

I’ve personally come to the conclusion, over this past year, that being an artist is similar to what I imagine having a bi-polar disorder would be like.  These past two weeks I have been on such a manic high.  I have experienced amazing things in my career and I know in a few weeks when things are slower I will be craving the rush of these past 15 days.

The Discovery Ball was an amazing event!! It was like being in a fairy tale.  The Friday before (23rd) as I was installing the auction gallery artwork, I was walking behind a couple of people.  As they entered the gallery set up one looked at the other and said “Wow…this gallery is SO much better than last year!”.  Music to my ears!  I had accomplished what I had envisioned for this years artwork offerings.  The rest would be gravy for I knew if it was better than last year than surely people would purchase the artwork providing funding for cancer research and the like.  Success…..  Actually half of the artwork was purchased and the other half will be offered this summer at the ACS Skyline Soiree which information can be found at SkylineSoiree.  Please consider attending if you are the Chicago area for this event is a young urban professional event and a TON of fun.  It’s being held at the Harris Theater rooftop in Millenium Park in the loop.   I have to graciously thank the amazingly generous artists who all contributed to the success of this event’s gallery!  Unlike last year, this year’s gallery became a gathering place for people.  It was so exciting to see people congregate in the gallery and discuss the artwork along with a range of other topics.  Here’s a picture of the crowd from an upper balcony and a picture of people in the gallery…

A week after the fairy tale event was my next opportunity.  I organized and curated an art sale that was being held as part of the TriCity Family Services Art of Giving first annual event.  This wine tasting / art sale was being held to raise money for TriCity to continue to provide counseling services for people who cannot afford it in the TriCity area of Batavia/Geneva/St. Charles in Illinois.  TCFS partnered with Water Street Studios and we were honored to have ten of their artists put their artwork on display with 30% of the sale proceeds being donated back to TCFS.  I too was able to include a painting.  We had over 100 people in attendance and I was even interviewed by the Daily Herald in a story about what I am hoping to make a career out of along with a connection to the event.  The article can be found HERE if you wish to read it.  We had some artwork sell…of course its never nearly enough. 

So…during these past couple of weeks I’ve had the success of two events helping others, a published interview, and a painting in the Chicago Art Open.  Now if I can only sustain this….that’s what I’ll be working very hard on.

As a reflectionary note….thank you to anyone who has come to see my blog over this past year.  We are quickly coming up on my one year anniversary of my BFA graduation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It’s been a whirlwind of a year and I am so thankful to all who have been so supportive and given me an opportunity to make a difference or show what I am made of.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the next year will bring…..

Until then I remain….artistically optimistic!

So…without further adieu…I’ll get on topic.  My insomnia has me waking up around 3am each morning.  It starts with an occasional shift from side to side but by 4am my conscious brain has caught up with the large intuitive Rolodex spinning in my mind and then the fun begins.  I start to think of all the things I have to do that day and start to pre-plan my travels.  I’m also one of those people who has to have a “pre-rehearsal” of the day’s conversations so I feel like I’m ready.  Well, the next thing I know it’s 6am and Aurora begins to work her magic across the sky.  This is where it gets good….

You see from 6am’ish to about 6:45am there is something magical that takes place in my bedroom.  The colors of my abode are butter yellow, steel-blue, with various wood tones and metals.  But during those magical 45 minutes…everything is measured by value alone…no hues…no saturation of color…no atmospheric perspective.  Just value.  The copper mirror is a dark blue grey on the buttery yellow wall that appears light blue grey.  The white mirror is a very light blue grey just like the white linen lampshades that dangle nervously from the high arched dark steel looking arms.  It really is magical and I wonder if that’s what fascinated Mark Tansey as I think of his monochromatic paintings when I experience this.
But after those 45 minutes, or so, the sunlight starts to skew the pigment atoms in my world and it all comes into colorful view so quickly; almost as quickly as the sun sets on the horizon.  Then my blue grey walls turn yellow, my mirrors become copper and white again, and the brown wood tones come into warmth and no longer shades of cool blue.  Just a thought if you’re ever awake when it’s too early to get up.

I was going to originally write how about how poor Picasso cannot keep his paintings from being ripped accidentally…first there was Steve Wynn who accidentally stuck his elbow through a $139 million painting in 2006 and more recently a woman who lost her balance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and fell into “The Actor”.  I guess stuff happens, but instead I wanted to focus on how stuff “happens”….

If you are my friend Suzi Amedeo, then please quit reading now as this blog contains a *spoiler alert*. 

Last weekend I lost a 13-year-old chocolate lab friend/protector/cheerleader named Riley.  He was my friend Suzi’s dog but has lived across the street from me for about 8 years.  Each day I would come home from my “journey” wherever and be greeted with a low yet audible woof from across the street.  Suzi’s house is situated so that I could never see Riley’s face in the window, but that acknowledging signal was there each time I left, I returned, or if I was just painting outside. 

Whenever Bill or Suzi would take Riley for a walk and I was visible anywhere he would pull them over to my house or wherever I was located.  He even pulled down a bookcase in the garage that his leash was attached to when I walked up their driveway for a visit.  He was a one-of-a-kind and thank you for indulging me to go on and on about him.  But his story is not the reason for this entry. 

I wanted to get a gift for Suzi that would help her keep Riley near by. So I found on Etsy (never shopped on the site before) a woman who makes medallion necklaces in silver focused on the subject of pets.  She goes under the shop name of gooseberrystudio.  Here’s where it gets good.  Her name…also Suzi.  While her dog was not a chocolate lab (that would have been too weird), it was a golden retriever AND 13 years old when it had to be put to sleep.  Etsy-Suzi has artistic daughters, one in school and one working professionally in the arts…and I just found out Etsy-Suzi has a mother living in the same town as my mother…way out west. 

I am finding this happening more often with my increased focus in creativity.  I am imagining that we’re all connected somehow, like blades of grass connected to their rhizomes.  I don’t know if it is because I’m opening myself up to these nuances of relationships…or perhaps it has something to do with globalization and online networking.  I would like to believe the former with a nod to the latter.

Regardless, I hope everyone will just make themselves more open to these chance meetings and enjoy the “journey” they take.

I know I have been away for a while, but I am back.  I had an aunt pass away recently…another voice silenced by cancer.  Death in our family is a double-edged sword.  During the wake, cousins from 5 factions come together in a common bond.  The span of ages, of all these cousins, is about 20 years between the oldest and the youngest.  In my family, I have 18 counsins total.  It’s quite a gathering and there is always a celebration of our childhood involved; sharing stories of my aunt and uncle who are now rejoined somewhere we cannot see.  We talked about all the adventures we had as kids in my grandparent’s tavern named Chuck’s Wagon; laughing about the Charlie Pride or Mac Davis songs on the jukebox, the toaster oven cheeseburgers grandma made us, or the Thanksgiving KFC served on the pool table because grandma forgot to turn on the oven to cook the turkey.  We had so many great times being together every weekend at the tavern.  Can you honestly imagine 15-18 kids every weekend running around a tavern?  It was the best, but I digress.  As fun as the wake evening is (to see everyone and reminisce), the funeral day is crushingly sad because of the loss we all feel.  The loss of our loving aunt and the loss of being those carefree children.    I will miss her.

But another thing that this past week or so has shown me, is how important the fight for cancer is and how the fight must continue.  I have collected artwork to auction off at this year’s Discovery Ball in April.  16 artists, including myself, have donated just under $18,000 of artwork for the event.  I could not be more proud of the work collected.  In this journey I have realized that this is what I am really good at.  I really care about the artists I meet along this path and I am passionate about what they produce and why.  I am also good at business and have interlaced non-profit work throughout my life.  Curating for a cause just seems like a natural direction for me.  I am excited about artwork and just as excited about a good cause.

This blog is to canvas my path after graduation and I would like to curate auction galleries for fundraisers.  Artists have a voice and their voices can be shared to make great changes in this world.  Art should never just decorate a wall, it should always be an extension of the artist’s heart and mind.  It may not scream it’s intentions; often a whisper is just as strong.  We are taking steps forward…

We landed in Phoenix in the late afternoon and the sunshine was intense and much welcomed.  I forget how blue the sky can be when not seen through the mesh screens on my studio windows during the long winters.  Not to mention the longer time you can entertain looking at the sky when your hands, feet, and nose aren’t going numb from the cold.  Every morning in the dessert I would race out into the street that my parents live on, look up, and just “be”. It’s quite magical to let your environment wrap itself around you, take note of the things around you, and take note of your personal boundary space.  Many people feel the dessert is too brown, but the winters are when the landscape comes alive.  Prickly pears are ready for harvest, lemons and oranges are getting sweeter by the day, and the grass is green on the hills. 

The same holds true for Florida which is where I went after Phoenix.  I was lucky enough to procure tickets to the Outback Bowl in Tampa.  The bright colors of the Floridian homes, a more tropical sun, a deeper blue sky, but all that lush green made my mind flutter.  I discovered my mind expands and my senses become heightened when surrounded by the color green. 

I discovered, as I “canvas” through my post graduation life, that I need to be in live environments in order to do my work.  My work is directly related to the botanical world around me, which is currently asleep until May’ish.  I used to be able to lose myself in my photographs of flowers and plants and get inspired by them, however that doesn’t appear as easy any more.  Plein air painters rave about their experiences and I believe I have a clearer understanding of their argument; sans the whole having to pick bugs off your canvas and out of your paint. 

Am I alone in this feeling or do other artists require a particular environment to make work?  Is there a particular environment that you need to be most creative?