Ken Auster

"Swarming"
16 x 20, (c) Ken Auster

Readers who are fellow painters may know that we lost "one of our own" earlier this year--Ken Auster. I was lucky enough to take a workshop with Ken some time ago, and I loved his approach. Sometimes (often?) irreverent, Ken bragged that he never cleaned his brushes.

Happy Easter!

"Thumper"
(c) Lesley Powell 2013
(SOLD)

Preparations for Easter are underway at my house. I could not resist sharing this painting--an oldie but goodie--and very appropriate for the season. 

Wishing you all a wonderful Easter holiday!

Copying the Masters

I recently read a wonderful essay by Maggie Siner. The essay touched on many different issues of painting, and is well worth reading (and re-reading!). The concluding paragraph  addressed one of my favorite topics--copying the Masters. Maggie wrote that a painter does not copy the Masters in order to "paint like Cezanne" or "paint like Monet", but rather "to learn how different perceptual minds work by re-living the visual experience and world of that painter." I love the idea of re-living the visual experience of Degas, or Manet. What a way to learn!

Maggie wrote that the practice of studying and copying the Masters lets a painter learn which of many approaches to painting truly resonate with him or her. By "copying", I believe that she did not mean actually reproducing the Masters' paintings, but rather mimicking their styles. Learning to see the world as they saw it.

The practice of mimicking the Masters is not limited to painters. The novelist Raymond Chandler admired Ernest Hemingway as the greatest American novelist of his time. So he wrote imitations of Hemingway's prose, in order to absorb what he liked about it. Likewise, Proust wrote a series of articles imitating the styles of the great literary figures Balzac and Flaubert. 

Twyla Tharp, one of the greatest ballet dancers and choreographers of the 20th century,  used a similar approach. As a young dancer, she would stand behind every great dancer then in New York and literally mimic him or her. She said that this imprinted their movements into her own creative DNA.

Yes--we all have our own "creative DNA", which leads to our individual painting styles. Maggie makes a persuasive argument that studying the Masters, far from making one a copycat, helps one harness his own unique predispositions. Here's to learning from the Greats!

Bridging the Seine

"Bridging the Seine"
12 x 18, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2016
SOLD

I don't mind admitting it: I have a fascination with the bridges of Paris. It all started in 2013, when I spent a month in Paris, and had the opportunity to paint on location along the banks of the Seine. What a treat! I did plenty of sketching there, and took a number of reference photos to bring home for future inspiration. 

"Sun on Pont Neuf"
10 x 20, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2016
SOLD

Did you know that there are twenty three bridges across the Seine, just in the short stretch between the Ile St. Louis and the Eiffel Tower? To me, each bridge seems to have its own

Quantity vs. Quality

We often think of quantity and quality as opposites. We assume that quality must be sacrificed if one's goal is quantity, and vice versa. Well, It turns out that the two just might go hand in hand, especially in the world of art-making.

The authors of Art & Fear wrote about a ceramics professor who divided his students into two groups. One group was told to produce as many pots as possible. Their grade would be based solely on quantity. The other group was told that the number of pots produced did not matter--they would be graded only on quality. It did not matter whether they made one pot or a million pots, they would get an A if they produced just one perfect pot. Guess which group produced the highest quality pots? The one that was being judged on quantity.

Turns out that the quantity group got busy right away, churning out work. They created copious numbers of pots, and along the way they developed their technique and learned what worked best. On the other hand, the quality group spent too much time theorizing about perfection, and not enough time working the clay. In the end they did not have anything to show for their efforts.

This finding is not inconsistent with what Malcom Gladwell wrote in his book Outliers: it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve world class expertise in any particular skill. Hmmm. It appears that there is no substitute for old-fashioned hard work.

So....onward! Let the creative juices flow, put in the mileage, and up your game!