Let's talk

Let's talk. I could start by saying that just as I'm hitting my stride again, I'm out of my fine arts paper, and it's a logistic exercise to get to the art supply store.  Meanwhile, I have to do something.

In an ideal world, I'd like to paint the human figure -- people in their home environments, for example -- but I'm the kind of artist who needs a model. For this reason, like my early virtual mentor Harriet Shorr, I turned to still lifes. So right now in a less than ideal world, I consulted my figure sketches (made from memory, from people observed on the street from the car or bus) and my file of "study photos" to do some figurative mini-paintings from imagination.

I have lots of sketches of people in the act of just sitting around -- at bus stops, in coffee shops, in parks. I decided to use some of these for a brief series of seated figures called, "Conversations," working on 10"x14" paper from a pad of samples.

In "Conversations - 1", I simply started splashing -- no preliminary planning, just an impulsive plunking down of paint where I thought faces and arms might fit or coffee mug shapes be saved in the base yellow.

That same week, I actually spotted the entire scene of "Conversations - 2" and tried to recapture it from memory:

As I was painting this second one -- again, with no preliminary colour plan, just working step by step -- I was reminded of the observation of another cherished virtual mentor, Mary Beth McKenzie.  Writing about her interest in the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, she talked about how he used small spots of the colour red to move the eye around and through his complicated crowd scenes.

Time to get out of the coffee shop! This time, I worked from some "bus stop" sketches and rather consciously thought about the placement of colours. As I'd done with the male figure in "Conversations - 2", I started by pencilling in the figures and caught myself in the act of committing one of my bad habits:-- getting too precise.

The resulting "Conversation - 3" was a pale imitation of a Vancouver bus stop -- and of a successful painting, for that matter. (Overall, I think the impulsive "Conversations - 1" is the best of the lot).

In my final splash of this mini-series, I decided I'd use vibrant colours against a grey background. The artist and teacher Jeanne Dobie calls this "mouse power," referring to the oomph that grey gives to adjacent colours. Again, I couldn't resist pencilling in the figures at the beginning.

As I worked through "Conversations - 4", I carefully considered where I'd repeat colours, where I might add pattern, where I would leave some white paper untouched. As I filled outlined spaces with carefully chosen colours, I began to think that working this way, without a preliminary plan, was quite a profound and meaningful exercise.

And it was so much fun! ...and it was the fun and the satisfaction I had in looking at the four completed "Conversations" that brought home the truth:-- Whether or not this was a deeply meaningful exercise, its origins were my pleasure in working absorbedly in my colouring books 60 and more years ago!