Mantras for the New Year

"Hydrangea Twosome"
16 x 12, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

It's that magic time, when one year is drawing to a close and a new one is just about to dawn. I always relish this interval, especially the week between Christmas and New Years. Much of the world almost seems to stand still. I like to reflect on things that have grabbed my attention during the past twelve months, which I hope to implement in my work over the coming twelve months. Here are a few of those "Guiding Words" that I have written in my sketch book this year. All are mantras for the New Year. Ideals to strive for!

"Paris Pont
12 x 8, Oil on Cartón
(c) Lesley Powell 2019
(SOLD)

"Life is so compacted, intricate and unknowable. I try to break it down, capture some of that confusion, hoping to simplify but contain all that I have observed.  I try very hard to leave out as much as I can, until it screams at me to put it in. I want the viewer's brain to say the unsaid." --Ishbel Myerscough

"Atmospheric Hills"
6 x 12, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

"The draftsman navigates between statement and suggestion to create movement and life--as in literature, descent into too much description kills the image." --John Lessore

"Murs from Below"
10 x 16, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019
(SOLD)

"There is no beauty without empty space. There is no music without silence." --Dominique Loreau

"Living Room Wing Chair"
12 x 8, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

"One only does well by being succinct, and one can only be succinct by seeing little." --Edgar Degas

Come Inside

(c) Lesley Powell 2019

As the weather has grown cooler, my attention has turned indoors, and I have been working on paintings of interior spaces. Something about the early nightfall and the chill in the air draws me inward, and fosters a desire to snuggle down in a cozy room. Preferably one with a fire glowing in the hearth!

"Parisian Salon"
Oil on Linen, 10 x 10
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

True confessions: I find interiors very difficult to paint well. So much perspective, so many angles. I have been told that the human eye is very ready to perceive the elements of a landscape--it is simply in our DNA. We are hard wired to understand the land. But if the viewer is to perceive and understand an interior, an architectural space, it must be well drawn and carefully color tuned. Easier said than done!

(c) Lesley Powell 2019

One issue in painting interiors (for me, at least) is that my subjects of choice are rarely places that allow me to set up and easel and work on location with oil paints and solvents. Too much risk of spillage. Photos are not great resources either, because most camera lenses cause a lot of distortion when it comes to interiors. I can, however, make pen and ink sketches, or charcoal drawings, on location. I use these as a springboard for the oil paintings. Sometimes I work exclusively from the sketches and don't even refer to my photos.

"Living Room at Night"
Oil on Linen, 12 x 7.5
(c) Lesley Powell 2019

In this post, I'm sharing some sketches I have done recently on location, as well as paintings based on them. The rooms range from an elegant Parisian apartment we rented on vacation, to my own living room. 

(c) Lesley Powell 2019

I'm concluding with a work in progress. I really like the "bones" of this one, but the hard part comes in taking it from here to the finish line. Wish me luck!

Going Public

"Passerby"
Oil on Cardboard, 7 7/8 x 11
Félix Vallatton, 1897

Whenever I visit a special exhibit at a museum, I always catch my breath to see a previously unexhibited painting that is on loan from a private collection. Such a rare treat! I marvel at the luxury it must be for those private collectors to live every day with paintings by Manet, or Bonnard, or Vuillard--right there in their dining rooms. 

"Yellow Gable"
Oil on Cardboard, 11 7/8 x 10 5/8 in.
Maurice Denis, c. 1895

Occasionally, through the great generosity of a collector, an entire collection comes into the public realm (rather than being parceled off and auctioned to private purchasers). One such occasion is being heralded now, at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The Nabis collection of Roger Sant and his late wife Vickie Sant has been pledged as a future gift to The Phillips Collection, and the works are now being shown in a special exhibit that runs through January 26, 2020. The exhibit is entitled "Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life".

"Apprentices"
Oil on Cardboard, 12 x 9 in.
Édouard Vuillard, c. 1891-92

You don't have to have been reading this blog very long to know how much I love the Nabi painters, and especially Vuillard and Bonnard. The Nabis were a loosely organized group of avant-garde French painters working in the 1890's. They rebelled against the old-line, classical academies of art, as well as against the new-fangled Impressionists. 

"Street Scene"
Oil on Cardboard, 10 1/4 x 133/8 in.
Félix Vallotton, 1895

Although their styles were diverse, the Nabis were united by certain common factors. Their paintings tended to focus on scenes of domestic life, and they employed abstracted shapes of vibrant color. They often disregarded the rules of vanishing point perspective, so that their scenes were "flattened" into into an arrangement of color patterns. In fact, the words of one of the Nabis, Maurice Denis, became a sort of rallying cry for the group:

Remember that a painting--

before being a bottle horse, a nude woman,

or an anecdote of some sort--

is above all a flat surface

covered with colors

arranged in a certain order.

"Sleeping Woman"
Oil on Cardboard, 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.
Édouard Vuillard, 1892

The term "Nabi" is from the Hebrew word for prophet. Some say that these painters paved the way to what we know today as modern art. And yet their diversity and the quickly changing times led to an early disbandment. The Nabis held their final exhibit in 1900, and then went their separate ways, each going on to develop his own style and body of work. But the Phillips exhibit shows the group at its zenith.  I can't wait to see it.  If you can't make it to the exhibit, the book that accompanies the exhibit is excellent--well worth a look. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Sant family for this transformative gift.

PS: It seems that the Nabis are having "a moment"--another Nabi, Félix Vallotton (some of whose works are pictured above), is the subject of a major current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York....