Julie T. Chapman - ArtBlog

I’m working my way through a massive library find, Artoday by Edward Lucie-Smith, which attempts to survey modern art from 1960 to the late 1990s. It’s an enormous undertaking (the book, not my reading of it) and both interesting and thought-provoking.

F’rinstance … I perceive a bias on his part against representational work. Maybe he didn’t mean it, but quotes like these are hard to interpret otherwise:

“…an entirely studio-bound painter who depicts only what he sees…his work has no flights of the imagination.” (on Lucian Freud), or

“…seems like a fairly limited theme.” (on Realism), and

“This loss of stylistic direction … has led to a compensatory emphasis on content rather than style.” (on the 1990s New York art scene)

The last quote in particular struck me - is he saying that style really should matter much more than content? This doesn’t help me understand why people like some of the Expressionist stuff from the mid-20th century - I can’t forgive how deliberately raw, childish, and sloppy it is, and can’t look any further.

I spent a few hours at the Yellowstone Art Museum when I was in Billings about a week ago; YAM focuses almost entirely on post-modern Montana artists. Some challenging stuff in there, or just plain odd - although there are also Deborah Butterfield horses, and I really love her work. Why are plexiglas cubes filled with crumpled waste paper worthy of a museum? Or giant canvases with no discernible object, subject, or center of interest, and crudely rendered? For that matter, there’s a Montana artist who is well-known in this area (and in NY, I think) who has made pencil outline drawings of horses that look like a kid did them. I’ve seen these drawings humbly framed and offered for sale at $1200.

So am I just a philistine?

P.S. there will probably be more to say as a result of reading this book…not least of which is that it’s leading me down some interesting experimental paths.

My prior post led me to reflect a bit on my own artist residency experiences, to which I will now subject all of you.

In 2002, I spent 2 weeks in early June in Rocky Mountain National Park as an AiR (Artist in Residence). It was wonderful! There’s an historic old cabin built of stone and logs, circa 1860s, inside the park for AiRs…big wood-floored great room, a huge covered porch outside where we sat every day and watched the elk grazing in the big meadow across the road from us. We rescued a hummingbird from inside the cabin (it was flying against that big window), watched storms roll in, and were amused by a ground squirrel that attempted to climb up on our snack table - while we were sitting there! - on the front porch.

We spent each day as I do in Yellowstone: driving the park roads, taking gazillions of photos. RMNP requires AiRs to give a lecture each week to park visitors (mine was “How I finally got to paint bears”, or something like that), and that the artist donate a piece of work. I painted my first, and so far only, pika piece and gave that to the park. I had great luck getting photos of elk, moose, pikas, and marmots (among other things).

Bottom line: lodging provided, artist pays own travel and food, gives lectures, donates work. A fabulous experience, and RMNP has plenty of applicants each year.

In January 2008 I spent a week at the National Museum of Wildlife Art as an AiR. The museum does two residencies each year: a very short winter one and a month-long summer one. I can’t imagine being away from my studio and business for a month, so I applied for winter. The residencies are open to artists who are either in the museum’s collection or are participants in the annual Western Visions show (only the latter for me). The artist is required to be at the museum 10 AM - 3 PM each day demonstrating, and willing to talk to the public; I worked on a bighorn piece during my time there. Early each morning I was out in Grand Teton taking photos of the gorgeous deep winter scenery, and I’d cruise around again in the late afternoons.

The museum also asks that the artist give a lecture in Jackson Hole High School, which I did, and give a docent lecture. This latter was especially fun - it was a chance to get the docents acquainted with my work and what inspires me, and then we went back into the galleries and I picked out some pieces of Bob Kuhn’s to discuss.

Bottom line: The museum pays travel and food costs, lodges the artist with a museum benefactor, and provides a stipend. You need to be comfortable with constant interruption, repeatedly answering the same questions from visitors, and working under a microscope. The museum staff are incredibly kind and supportive of the AiRs. I stayed in the guest apartment of some collectors of mine who are also museum supporters - the apartment was exquisitely done and luxurious in the extreme. It was like being a rock star for a week!

Sandra Blair, a wildlife watercolor artist and a prior participant in my workshops, recently spent a month as an artist-in-residence at the Montana Artists Refuge in Basin, Montana. I asked her to share her experiences with all of you.

The residency experience at the Montana Artists Refuge was absolutely incredible. I wondered if I would be able to focus on painting on a daily basis for a full month…would I get bored?…would I be lazy? But I found it quite easy to just paint and paint and paint! I was housed in an efficiency apartment so my work was setup on a long folding table right in the apartment. Great big windows with north light! (My first experience with north light and it is addictive!) I’d get up, have breakfast then paint…take a lunch break then paint…eat dinner then paint…read a little then go to sleep. I stayed focused and in the zone so I accomplished so much more than when I can only paint two days a week. I know this will make you crazy just thinking about it (I can just see you rolling your eyes), but I finished one painting (14 x 22”) in three weeks and have the background completed on another. That’s fast for me!…

 

 

Basin Montana is definitely NOT a hot-spot! Tiny, tiny, tiny!!!! Town is about 5 blocks long, no stores, businesses or gas stations…just a bar (of course) with an attached café and a pizza joint. Certainly nothing to distract an artist from their work!

Sandra’s work is very detailed and time-intensive, so this was a wonderful chance for her to do nothing but art for a month.

You can see more of her work at her website. To learn more about the Montana Artists Refuge, visit their website: www.montanaartistsrefuge.org.

I’ll share some of my own A-i-R experiences in a post in the near future (at least, if anyone’s interested).

This was a worthy discussion in my recent summer workshop, and is also a topic I’ve considered in studio solitude.

I take pleasure in both process and product. But most of my zen and enjoyment comes from the doing - drawing, scraping, texturing, layering, lathering on paint - and engaging in a conversation with the piece thereby. Each piece (whether drawing, painting, or something else) is a micro-journey in its own right; none will match the vision in my head, but if I’m super-de-duper lucky, perhaps some will transcend that vision and take me along for the ride.

We are incredibly lucky to be artists - we get to play with great lovely messy art materials! Sometimes, though, we can lose sight of the pleasure of process and put too much pressure on ourselves to create a product . . . and when this happens, we become less like creators and more like factories. This can suck the joy out of one of the highest forms of play, and inhibit our desire to create, our desire to mess about with art supplies and simply Make Stuff. There are times when I piddle around with materials unrelated to my gallery oil paintings, just for the fun of pure creating.

So - what do you do to keep the play in your work?

Every workshop has its own character and personality, which is part of the joy and inspiration for me. One of the things I stress in my workshops is drawing without noodling; a prior workshop dubbed this “no scritchy-scritchy”, and the most recent workshop (June 2008, a few days ago) said “no stinkin’ dinkin’”.

In that somewhat tongue-in-cheek vein, let me offer a no-noodling example that comes from another species: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk&feature=related. It’s an elephant, actually doing figurative work. I’ve seen some of the abstracts that elephants have produced - this is the first time I’ve seen one produce something representational.

Leaving aside the staggering philosophical implications - which are many, profound, and worthy of deep discussion elsewhere - I want everyone to note that this boy works in a careful, deliberate manner. No noodlin’. No kiddin’. Check it out.

P.S. For a very few highlights from the June 2008 workshop, visit my Workshops web page. The handful of photos shown there represents approximately 0.001% of the 2000+ photos I shot.