Doubt

"Shrimpers"
Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36
(c) Colin Page

I have been following the work of Colin Page for quite some time. He is an extremely talented artist who lives in Maine. You may recall that I have written about another Maine artist, Connie Hayes, and I believe that Connie has been an influence on Colin. In the world of perceptual painting, it seems that everybody's "bloodlines" cross somewhere!

"Secret Island"
20 x 36, Oil on Canvas
(c) Colin Page

I was perusing Colin's blog this week, and came across this quotation. Though it is long, it is worth sharing in its entirety. It captures perfectly some of the ups and downs of the painting life. Colin was responding to a question whether he was pleased with his paintings, and whether they had become what he was striving for. He answered thus:

Sometimes I am struggling with every part of a painting and I get in such a funk that I don’t think anything I have painted has any value, and other days I feel like I can do no wrong while standing at the easel. Of course it feels better to have a good day, but they are rare. Usually I am seeing things I want to get better at. Even though it is frustrating to constantly see flaws in our work, that is the only way to improve. If we don’t see flaws in our paintings, we become repetitive and uninteresting. To push painting to better results we always have to be a little disappointed in our work. We have to know that we can do better, and even though the painting you just finished may be the result of your most sincere hard work and effort, we have to know that the lessons from that painting will help do the next painting better. The painters whose careers produced the highest quality work were all searching for something just out of reach and doing everything they could to capture something fleeting. It may drive you crazy and be disappointing. But look at your earlier work and the improvements you’ve already made and imagine how much further you can go from here. A creative life is a constant battle between the disheartening and the hopeful.

Don't you just love that?! "A constant battle between the disheartening and the hopeful". Sometimes, at least in my case, the pendulum can swing between those two in a matter of hours. Or minutes!

"Around the Bend'
(c) Colin Page

Colin went on to share this quotation from Robert Hughes:

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is given to the less talented as a consolation prize. Indeed, the idea that doubt can be heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne’s old age, is one of the keys to our century.” 

"Masonic Street"
18 x 24, Oil on Canvas
(c) Colin Page

It's good for me to keep in mind, when my own pendulum has swung to the disheartening side, that the struggle is universal. And that every painting is a springboard to the next, informing the next and allowing you to move forward. As Connie Hayes says, the path to improvement is not linear, it's spiral...

What's on my Easel?

"Radish Trio"
Oil on Linen, 6 x 8
(c) Lesley Powell 2015

It has been quite a while since I wrote about what I am painting in my studio. Lately I have been moving back and forth between two extremes--small scale still lifes and sweeping landscape vistas. I have wondered whether I am just indecisive, or perhaps have a split personality! Upon reflection, I think I know the answer:

Come Inside

"Hot Afternoon"
10 x 18, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2015

I have been putting the finishing touches on some new interior paintings. I love to paint rooms that are well lived-in. I always fall captive to the thrill of entering a space that contains the echoes of earlier footfalls. Or as Connie Hayes writes, I love rooms with "ghosts". 

The top painting is a room at a B&B, where I stayed in Normandy. I did many sketches there, and used them to work on the painting back home in my studio. I tried to convey

Taking In vs. Looking Out

"Villars"
8 x 12, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2013

Last week I watched a lecture given by the talented painter Connie Hayes. Like many painters whose work I admire, Connie is a perceptual painter. I was floored by the simple and powerful way she summed up the entire approach to perceptual painting. She remembered hearing these words from her mentor, and having the gestalt experience of the putting them to practice the first time:

The key is to receive the sensation of what you are seeing--not to paint what you are looking at. SEEING is receiving. LOOKING is outward.

Hearing this distinction was an "Ah-ha" moment for me. I have long been told, and tried to implement the practice, that you should "paint what you see, not what you know is there". I've also been told to avoid being too "object oriented". But this inward/outward formulation expressed by Connie Hayes somehow made it all come together. She elaborated by saying that "You look AT something when you name it. But you RECEIVE sensations when you SEE it." Yes, Yes!

"Tulip #32"
12 x 12
(c) Connie Hayes

I have been taught by Maggie Siner to use my peripheral vision as an aid to seeing. It helps keep me from naming the objects I am painting. Instead, it moves me closer to receiving the sensations of what I am seeing. The top painting is one that I have kept for myself, because it was a moment in which I felt that I was truly seeing, and receiving the sensation of what I was seeing. It was not a mountain in the distance, but a beautiful, subtle-colored shape. It was not a vineyard in the foreground, but a bright green angular shape. It was not a hilltop village in the middle distance, but a cluster of colored shapes. I use this painting to help me remember how to see and to receive those sensations.

"Summer Blue"
12 x 12, oil on canvas
(c) Connie Hayes

I am including some paintings by Connie Hayes, so you can see her beautiful work. I should have included the last Connie Hayes painting (below) in my post "Painting by Lamplight". It's a wonderful painting that succeeds marvelously with two different light sources. By the way, Connie, too, says that she saves her "breakthrough" paintings to continue to learn from them. No matter what a painter's level of accomplishment may be, there is always an urge to learn more!

"Inner and Outer Glow"
(c) Connie Hayes