The Slasher

I've been doing some spring cleaning at the studio, and that has meant that I've been slashing some old, unsuccessful canvases. Seems a good time to re-visit an earlier post on that topic--I could not say it better now.

I once heard somebody explain the difference between professional photographers and the rest of us -- the professionals only show 1% of the photos they shoot. 

I don't think that the "reject rate" for professional painters is as high as 99%, but I do know that all painters create some bad paintings from time to time. Jane Barton has written a wonderful post on this topic, entitled "Is there a Heaven for Paintings?" She talked about what becomes of unsuccessful paintings. She offered many suggestions, including

Now You See It...

Photo courtesy of BrainDen

Part of being a perceptual painter is studying human visual perception. Sometimes it seems that you have to be a physicist to understand how all of this stuff works. But even without understanding the "why", you cannot refute the fact that the same color looks quite different depending on what surrounds it. For example, both dogs you see above are exactly the same color. They just APPEAR to be different colors because of the colors that surround them. And then we have the classic checkers illustration below:

Squares A and B are exactly the same shade of gray. (I could say something here about 50 shades, but I won't). This is Adelson's well-known "shadow illusion". It is because of this principle that the painter Kevin Macpherson told us in his workshop that "Black in light is lighter than white in shadow". It's a tongue-twister, and sometimes a mind-twister too. Here's another example: planes A and B below are exactly the same color. No kidding. Test it out by putting your finger over the joint where they meet.

We painters need to understand these concepts so that we can make believable paintings from pigments that come out of tubes. Nothing that comes out of a tube can be as bright as the sunlight, or as dark as the ocean depths. So we painters have to create an illusion by juggling the COLOR RELATIONSHIPS. Eugene Delacroix certainly understood this when he said "I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will."

Delacroix knew that the same color looks quite different depending on what is next to it. Along those lines, the scientist Eugene Chevreul formulated the Law of Simultaneous Contrast. He noted that a color looks brighter and more intense when it is placed next to its complement. See how the orangy-red looks so much brighter when surrounded by its complement, blue:

It's really a bonanza for a painter to understand this concept and be able to apply it at the easel. I found out last summer that there is no way to make a lavender field seem as bright as it really is without bringing some dark green right up to it.

"Lavender Below Bonnieux"
8 x 12, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

Similarly, when I am having a hard time making terra cotta bricks look bright enough without washing them out, there is no better approach than introducing some blue into the surroundings. 

"Along the Lynx Line"
12 x 14, oil on canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

It all goes to show--an artist must be a master of perception---and of deception!

What's Your Focal Length?

Much is written and discussed among painters about "finding your style". I have come to believe that our style finds us, and we cannot escape it. What people often call your "style" is an expression of your artistic DNA that is inescapable. As Kevin Macpherson has said, a person's painting style is like his handwriting: it is absolutely unique, and  cannot be disguised, even if he tries.

Twyla Tharp writes that a key aspect of a person's creative personality is his preferred "focal length". I had sensed that concept for a long time, but

Orphans

"Counting Change"
Oil on Panel
(c) Lesley Powell 2011

Frank Hobbs wrote recently in his wonderful blog about all of those paintings that have been for sale, but have never been purchased. He likened an artist's paintings to his or her "children"--don't we all feel that way? That our labors have given birth to them, and that they bear our distinct DNA? We like to send our paintings