Three to Get Ready

Deukmajian Wilderness Trail Sketch 
©2016 Katherine Kean
graphite on paper 8 x 10 inches

 I read somewhere that just thinking about the future—not even the rewards, per se—can strengthen willpower.

During the last few days of 2015 an artist friend had a great idea to sit down on an evening with calendars ready and pencils in hand and create a plan for the coming year. We mapped out how many paintings we would paint, what sizes they will be. We decided which new skills and levels of accomplishment we will reach and what kind of study, classes, or workshops might be required to reach these improvements. We also counted in time for travel, family, friends, and fun, time to experiment and time to take risks. When we were finished we marveled and laughed at our ambitions and wondered if the year would be big enough to hold all that we planned to put into it.

Foothill Storm Clouds Sketch ©2016 Katherine Kean
graphite on paper 8 x 10 inches

“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” – Kafka

I’ve always been curious about how other artists structure their days. I know what works for me, the hours that are the most productive, how to get started, and how to avoid distractions - that is, as long as I'm choosing to be productive. Mason Currey has put together a book that gives a glimpse into the routines and work habits of well known artists, composers, and writers in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

Liquid Sun Splash Sketch ©2016 Katherine Kean
graphite on paper 8 x 10 inches

“I calculate that I must have spent nearly 20,000 hours in writing Ulysses.” – James Joyce

“Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.” – V.S. Pritchett

So, with calendar, list of goals, and a calculator I added up my plan of paintings and divided by available studio hours to see if there is a possibility to make these studio dreams come true. Mathmatically at least, yes, seems that there is. Let's see how it goes...

Training and Use of Visual Memory, Deborah Paris TRAC 2015

Morning Light Deborah Paris
24 x 30 inches

As mentioned, I learned much from Deborah Paris's presentation at TRAC earlier this month:

The Training and Use of Visual Memory for Representational Landscape Painters

In her presentation, Paris reminded us of how memory works and how memory training was once considered a significant part of training for artists. Her presentation reinforced the importance of memory in loosening the contemporary reliance on photography as a reference tool and showed how memory provides a bridge to working from imagination.

The memory training method described by Paris is a logical extension of training made known by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran along with new, contemporary techniques developed by Paris.

In a nutshell (and as I remember it), the basic steps in this training, when working from a master drawing for example, are as follows:

   The big stare - at least 10 minutes of focused observation

   Describe what is observed to another person (or yourself) and/or write about the observation

   Make an air drawing - trace the contours of the subject in the air with your pencil, brush, or finger. 

   Make a drawing based on the memory and compare it to the original. 

   Repeat the process to strengthen and develop observation and memory skills.

It may seem odd that writing about an observation or verbally describing it to someone would help, until you remember that memory works by association. The stronger the associations the more quickly and fully a memory can be retrieved. Associations can be formed from a variety of sensory and cerebral input. In training for a massage therapy license, a group of us had heard that scent aids recall. We agreed together to use peppermint, and so studied and memorized with peppermint oil and we all wore peppermint oil to our final exam.

George Innes

Other training methods include removing oneself further and further from the subject, in both time and space. A friend who long ago attended the School of Visual Arts recalls drawing classes where the model would be on one floor and the easels on another. One either sharpened memory skills or got more of a workout than bargained for.

Nocturne James Abbott McNeill Whistler

You can see how useful this training can be when you want to work from imagination, or consider the many subjects that do not easily lend themselves to a photographic reference, such as the magical hours of dawn and dusk or the constantly changing clouds and ocean, or the night sky, or stars, comets, lightning, and volcanoes.

I've just touched the surface of Deborah Paris's presentation, and the subject of memory training in general. Fortunately, I understand that her paper will be published at some point.

UPDATE: Deborah Paris's paper is now online. Here's the link: http://www.deborahparis.com/Asset.asp?AssetID=42291&AKey=LCEK6WCL

Keep your eye on Field Notes  - Paris's teaching blog.

A few more resources:

Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran's book is available online here:
The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist

Memory Drawing 2 Stapleton Kearns

The Tradition of Drawing From Memory Malcolm Armstrong

Memory Drawing Techniques  Carol Allison

Deborah Paris's offering of online classes and field and studio workshops can be found here:
Deborah Paris, The Landscape Atelier classes and workshops.

Implied Narrative, Joshua Risner From TRAC 2015

As I mentioned earlier I got much from Joshua Risner's presentation, Understanding Representational Narrative Painting as Implied Narrative. He succinctly laid out historical definitions of what narrative is and why it is important, how ideas have shifted, and then explained how much painting is not narrative, but is actually implied narrative.

I've an interest in story telling strengthened by years of working in the visual effects for film business. One of the challenges of visual effects design and animation comes when handed a concept painting often depicting a culminating moment of a story, while asked to figure out/choreograph how the visual effects would support or move through a scene. This adds quite a new dimension to a highly technical job. A specific example that comes to mind is John Milius asking for animation around Conan in a rather long scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-umABjuNHo . His visual reference was Frank Frazetta.

In live action this is the domain of a team of actors, extras, directors, and choreographers. Storyboards help film makers pre-visualize their narrative. Storyboards, comic books, graphic novels and movies are usually narratives. On how this differs from an implied narrative, read on.

Some key points on what makes a narrative:

A narrative demonstrates cause and effect
A narrative shows how cause and effect are connected
A narrative moves through time
A narrative has a definite conclusion

Difference between implied narrative and narrative:

Implied narrative does not suggest a conclusion
Implied narrative allows viewers a more open ended perception
Implied narrative reinforces paintings inability to depict more than a single moment, instead lies somewhere between the spark and the outcome

"Unlike a book or a movie, a painting can only represent a static moment because it does not unfold over time."

Paul Barolsky makes case in his article that There is No Such thing as Narrative Art.

This difference is actually a strength in painting, not a weakness,
"Implied narratives emphasize potentiality which promotes free thinking, imagination and creativity."

So, if anyone is keeping score, it seems a picture is still worth a thousand words. Perhaps many more.*

To learn more about Joshua Risner and his painting visit his website:
http://www.joshuaadamart.com/

Joshua Risner's paper Ethics of Implies Narrative Art  can be found on his page and covers the subject in much greater depth.


*To the writers whose evocative words conjure incredible visions and feelings - you know I don't mean you.

15 of the Best Quotes About Art

Study of a Tree Vincent van Gogh

"I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it." Vincent van Gogh, to Anthon Rappard, August 1885

"The things that go into making a painting—the scale of the canvas, the shape of the rectangle, the texture of the surface, the length and force of the brushstroke, the selection of colors—all those things are connected to the painter at the deepest level, the way he or she orders the world. " - Eric Fischl and Michael Stone, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas 

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun." - Pablo Picasso

Horse Bath Odd Nerdrum

"Light is good for the body, darkness is good for thought. Dusk is where they meet."  - Odd Nerdrum

“Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.” - Robert Henri
  
"What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak to the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind." - Carl Jung

Seashore in Moonlight Caspar David Friedrich

"The artist's feeling is his law" - Caspar David Friedrich

"The reason people are so moved by art and why artists tend to take it all so seriously is that if they are real and true they come to the painting with everything they know and feel and love, and all the things they don’t know, and some of the things they hope, and they are honest about them all and put them on the canvas. What can be more serious? What more really can be at stake except life itself, which is why maybe artists are always equating the two and driving everybody crazy by insisting that art is life. Well. Cut us some slack. It’s harder work than one might imagine, and riskier, and takes a very special and dear kind of mad person. " - Peter Heller, The Painter: A novel

Red Rust Hills Georgia O'Keeffe

"Making your unknowns know is the important thing." - Georgia O'Keeffe

Spring Andrew Wyeth

"I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious." - Andrew Wyeth

The Goldfinch Carel Fabritius

“An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty’s dream, Vermeer’s dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that’s not even to mention the people separated from us by time—four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we’re gone—it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it’ll never strike in any deep way at all but—a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you." - Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch  

"Any great work of art revives and re-adapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world." - Leonard Bernstein 

Self Portrait as a Young Man Rembrandt

"Without atmosphere a painting is nothing." - Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn

"That is what perfect painting is: neither entirely dull water and stone, nor weightless representation. Not merely a wooden panel coated with cracked and abraded paint, nor entirely a madonna and child. Or as in Rembrandt, not just a slather of oil, nor simply a face. Perfect painting is imperfectly transcendent. Less interesting painters do not know what to do with the choice between substance and illusion. Poor painting does not push the equivocation as far as it can go, until the paint teeters on the edge of transcendence. An unsuccessful picture might have a passage where the paint doesn't matter at all, and the forms might just as well have been photographed instead of rendered in oil. Then in another place the paint might suddenly become obtrusive, and distract the viewer from the contemplation of some distant landscape, bringing the eye sharply back to the surface of the canvas. It may be that the human mind can only think of one aspect at a time: either a painting is what it represents, or it is a fabrication done on a flat surface. Or perhaps it is possible to think of both the surface and what seems to be behind it at once, in a "twofoldness" of attention that takes in both equally." - James Elkins, What Painting Is


"Art is a lie that tells the truth." - Pablo Picasso

These are some of my current favorites, the ones that are motivating, making me think, and look. A few of these quotes come from novels; fiction about art or that includes an art theme in the storyline. I think novels, like painting, can be "a lie that tells the truth". What would you add to this list?

A Piece of TRAC 2015

I was given the opportunity to go to TRAC 2015 by a generous friend who gifted me with her pass when at the last minute an injury prevented her from attending. I couldn't take advantage of every event, but caught some wonderful highlights. 

I arrived in time for Breaking In: 21st Century Museums and Representational Art, a panel discussion between Elliot Davis, Michael Zakian, Peter Frank, and Vern Swanson, moderated by Joseph Bravo. The content of the discussion was just as you'd imagine, as the panelists explained all the ways the deck is stacked against all artists and biased against representational artists in particular. Paradoxically, museum attendance is highest for representational artists, as Elliot Davis, Curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston explained, giving the Jamie Wyeth retrospective as an example.

Two other presentations I found informative and thought provoking were Joshua Risner, Understanding Representational Narrative Painting as Implied Narrative and Deborah Paris, The Training and Use of Visual Memory for Representational Landscape Painters. Both of these presentations put forth ideas that deserve more thought and I'll go into them in greater depth next week.

Between presentations I managed to scoop up a big bunch of Rosemary and Co's Brushes. I went for the synthetic ones, of course, to spare the animals. The synthetic brushes also seem to last longer and hold their spring and snap for longer.

Later in the afternoon, a line of shiny, black, limousine buses whisked us away to Thousand Oaks to California Lutheran University. One side of the bus had ocean views of the sunset through turbulent storm clouds turned red from the sun. The other side was a vista of mountains glowing gold set off by the deep, dark, blue sky and illuminated by a fat rainbow.

At the end of the rainbow was Brad Kunkle's Artist in Residency at the Kwan Fong Gallery, Michael Zakian's talk Meaning in Contemporary Realism, and Transmission, a group exhibition at the William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art.

It was cold, the wind was nippy, the hors d'oeuvres disappeared quickly, but yes, it was worth it.

Detail of The History of Nature Brad Kunkle

A big part of the appeal of the TRAC events is the opportunity to meet other representational artists. Artists and educators travel from all over to attend so it is a unique opportunity to share ideas. It is also a pleasure to re-connect with TRAC alumni met during previous conferences.

I wish I could have stayed longer.

Romantic and Sublime, The Critique of Reason at Yale

Lion Attacking a Horse George Stubbs

I was fortunate to take in The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art 1760-1860 at Yale University this summer. I had never had the opportunity to visit Yale or the Yale University Art Gallery and I was happy to find the gallery is extensive is size, located in a substantial building. The exhibition took up the entire 4th floor of the building, accessed by an enormous elevator. Someone attuned to the current tiny house trend might find the elevator large enough to live in.

As told by The New York Times review, this exhibition is a sweeping, 300-piece survey of the Romantic movement that reformulates the concept of the Romantic artist from dreamy introvert to critical, political thinker. 

Hadleigh Castle John Constable 

The exhibition's title, recalls Immanuel Kant's two philosophical tomes: Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason. The rise of Romanticism out of the Age of Reason encompassed the general shift against the scientific rationalization of Nature and towards subjectivity, and includes the sublime; the overwhelming forces of Nature and the vulnerability of mankind.

Vesuvius in Eruption Joseph Mallord William Turner

As the first major collaborative exhibition between the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, as might be expected works of Turner and Martin were present, but none of Caspar David Friedrich - whose work to my mind is almost synonymous with Romantic art. However, for me, the absence of Friedrich was compensated by the abundance of Stubbs.

The Deluge John Martin

A Lion Attacking a Horse George Stubbs

The Stubbs painting above is one of sixteen in a series that preoccupied him for nearly 30 years. This one is almost life size in scale and was displayed at the entrance of the building.  The sublime in art, as in Nature, activates the emotion of awe. The sublime is defined as a terrifying or disturbing event, contemplated from a safe distance or within the controlled confines of art and inspires the more potent emotion of excitement stoked by terror. In Stubbs 'sublime action' one form of the sublime is overpowered by another.

Hazy Skies With a Touch of Green

Hazy Before Thunder Chatham Beach © 2014 Katherine Kean
oil on linen 12 x 12 inches

This painting is about the feeling of when the beach is the only place to escape the heat and humidity mere minutes before the thunderstorm breaks. 

Have you ever noticed how the sky sometimes takes on a greenish cast right before a storm? People have noted this phenomena for centuries and modern scientists don't deny it, although there is no consensus on what the cause is. It could be the mixing of yellow sunlight scattered by particles in the air that makes the blue sky a greenish color., but who knows?

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is the word for the phenomenon of seeing unplanned, or unintended images in artwork. Typically faces, the most famous example is probably the Man in the Moon.

 Leonardo da Vinci wrote this about pareidolia,

"If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms."

Indeed, uneven surfaces, textures, broken brush strokes all seem to add to the effect.

Below are a couple of examples of my paintings that I've been told have unintended images in them:

 
Can you spot the pareidolia? I've been told that the top image has a man's face with a beard and white hair, in the clouds, sort of like Santa Claus. In the next painting I've been told there are fighting beasts with gnashing teeth, eyes, and guns. But then, someone else saw flowers and stars.

Like Rorschach blots, when it comes to pareidolia, state of mind seems to have a lot to do with what one does or doesn't see.

For fun, here are some links to more obvious examples:

Martian Face

Monkey Tree

Skull Flower

Great Marsh, Melting Snow

Great Marsh, Melting Snow Sketch   2014 Katherine Kean
charcoal 8 x 10 inches

"The snow is melting into music." - John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

Another drawing of the marsh at dusk in the winter as the snow melts.

Not just beautiful to gaze upon, marshes are valuable for many reasons. I find encouragement in the findings of this research:

Salt marshes may help slow the rate of climate change in the future, as rising and warmer oceans will enable them to more quickly capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a study published in the journal Nature: Salt Marshes May Slow Climate Warming . . . For A While.

“Our research suggests that the value of these ecosystems in capturing atmospheric carbon might become much more important in the future, as the climate warms,” said Matthew Kirwan, a University of Virginia environmental scientist, and the lead author of the USGS-funded and supported research. 

Salt marshes store enormous quantities of carbon, essential to plant productivity, by, in essence, breathing in the atmospheric carbon and then using it to grow, flourish and increase the height of the soil. Even as the grasses die, the carbon remains trapped in the sediment. The researchers’ model predicts that under faster sea-level rise rates, salt marshes could bury up to four times as much carbon as they do now. 

 “One of the cool things about salt marshes is that they are perhaps the best example of an ecosystem that actually depends on carbon accumulation to survive climate change: The accumulation of roots in the soil builds their elevation, keeping the plants above the water,” Kirwan said.

Thoughts From TRAC 2014: Part 2 Unofficial Art

Rembrandt Painter in Studio

So where does today’s representational painter fit in to this post modern art world?

Nowhere, apparently. According to the values that define Postmodern art, we do not make art. Don’t despair, we can still make work, it's just called something else, and that something is kitsch. Before anyone becomes offended, makers of kitsch are in good company. Robert Storr, now the dean of Yale’s School of Art, once named Andrew Wyeth “our greatest living ‘kitsch-meister'."

Wyeth Spring

As Jan-Ove Tuv explained in his presentation titled "Kitsch as Superstructure for Representational Narrative Painting", the values of postmodernism are non - objective, ironic and unemotional, making use of distancing objectivity, and innovation.

Kitsch, as defined by Keynote speaker Odd Nerdrum - is not the kitsch that we shrink from, meaning art that is in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but art that employs mastery of technique, combined with narrative, romanticism, and emotionally charged imagery – all of which are taboo for the postmodern artist. As a philosophy, the Kitsch Movement as Superstructure is based upon personal experience and is humanist in nature.

Odd Nerdrum Self Portrait in a Tree Trunk

Another term that has been suggested by Alexey Steele is Novorealism:
“Novorealism addresses the capabilities of evolutionary developed human sensory systems as opposed to technologically based expressions. Novorealism has opposite priorities to those of 'official art'. Instead of chasing novelty it strives for authenticity, instead of glorifying ugliness it contemplates beauty, instead of prescribed irony it searches for sublime, instead of detached objectivity it engages the personal, instead of craving shock, it strives for greatness.”

What is needed now? What stops representational art from becoming kitsch – and now I am referring to the other kind – the one that IS the art world “no - no"? In a word, authenticity.

Although I don't remember who said it, this stayed with me, "One must paint each brushstroke as originating in the heart and moving straight through your arm and on to the canvas."

 "You should be able to go to art with the burden of your life." Roger Sruton

Friedrich Winter Landscape

Thoughts From Trac 2014 Part 1: Postmodernism's Rules

Diebenkorn Girl With Plant

Hopper Western Motel

Diebenkorn Seated Woman Green Interior

Hopper Intermission

Although in many ways a division already exists, put firmly in place by our educational and cultural institutions, let me start by saying that I do not feel the need to hold postmodern art and representational art in opposition to each other. The history of art can be seen as cyclical and we can draw from many traditions. Art movements can be seen as a continuum; as something that is relative to the taste, development, and character of the artist and the viewer, and just as with temperatures, where there is no line that distinguishes where hot stops and cold begins, there does not need to be a line defining where postmodernism stops and representationalism begins.

That said, I found much to agree with in some of the discussions at TRAC; and language that describes and clarifies the mechanics at play that have often left me feeling at odds with large segments of the art world.

The rules of Postmodernism, how art is defined and judged in our times, were defined: self -referential, ironic, unemotional, using distancing objectivity, and innovative – it must always be something that’s never been done before.

Keynote speaker Roger Scruton bemoaned the"jokes" in contemporary art; Marcel Duchamp's urinal, Koon’s Balloon dog, Hirst’s pickled animals, and he spoke of kitsch in the negative sense of the word.

Koons Balloon Dog

Scruton:
“Current society is a culture of self loathing permeated with violence and objectification. “
“Kitsch is fake emotion, demands less of the viewer, it is easier to deal with.”
“Jeff Koons’ pre-emptive kitsch, pretense on all levels, so ostentatiously kitsch one hesitates to judge it.” And quoting Oscar Wilde, “Cynics know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”

I appreciate a good joke as much as the next person, however I've also observed how the class clown uses humor to distance, to cloak and defend against genuine feelings and interaction. While there is undeniable cleverness in much contemporary art and often notable intelligence, I understand that irony's power is destructive and after awhile all the jokes become worn out and tiring. I'm just left wondering, is that it? There must be more to art than endless cerebral kidding around.

Banksy No Future

So where does today’s representational painter fit in to this postmodern art world?

To be continued …

The Representational Artists Conference 2014

Little  more than an hour away from Los Angeles, Ventura, CA was the location for TRAC 2014. Feeling lucky that it was nearby, I bought tickets, booked a room, got a cat sitter for Zabrina, and off I went. There were people from all over the US and a dozen countries all gathered together to share ideas about representational art. 

Odd Nerdrum

Roger Scruton

Organized by Michael Pearce, key speakers were Roger Scruton and Odd Nerdrum along with notable presentations from art world scholars and practitioners, among them Michael Zakian, Jan-Ove Tuv, Brandon Kralik, John Seed, Michael Pearce, numerous others. In fact, one of the sad things about conferences is having to choose to hear only 14 presentations out of a possible 40 some papers.

The presentations were broken up by painting demonstrations and field trips to local exhibitions, including Women by Women at the Kwan Fong Gallery, where we were in time for a talk from Ruth Weisberg and Resonating Images at the William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art.

Women by Women Kwan Fong Gallery

Resonating Images William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art

 My head is quite full of intriguing ideas, images, and philosophies about what art is, or is not, or was, or was not, or maybe will be. It is an ongoing conversation. 

Can Artwork Keep You Awake at Night?

When I first heard the quote by Donald Hess, "I only buy paintings that keep me awake at night." I wondered, what does he mean by that? My inner class clown quipped, (inwardly) "Does he own a collection of James Turrell or Dan Flavin light paintings?" While it is true that there are many Turrell's in the Hess Collection, the paintings that Hess is referring to are the ones he has seen and then after seeing them is woken up in the middle of the night able to "clearly see the piece of art in front of my eyes" To me this suggests a strong sense of connection.

What in a painting would wake you up in the middle of the night?

Robert Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic

Diane Marsh Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Would it be bold shapes, contrast or color, a composition loaded with internal tension? A compelling or inspiring message?

Or maybe, a painting that needs solving? As an artist these do keep me awake at night, but that's a different subject. In this case I'm thinking of paintings that seem to contain riddles or point to something...other, beyond language, and that perhaps the clues are contained in the artwork if only one could decode them.

Anselm Kiefer Am Anfang, 2002

The other kind of painting that I imagine keeps one awake is one that is very beautiful. Those that make me want to get up and turn on the light and see it again. To sit before it, maybe with a glass of something, while I stay awake and look.

What about you? Has an artwork ever kept you awake at night?

A Small Crowd to Watch A Bigger Picture

I sat down with a small group of art friends and watched “A Bigger Picture” a David Hockney documentary, which made for a very pleasant evening, followed up with even more enjoyable discussion and debate.

There is much to appreciate; the free, intuitive work of the hand, the sense of ease and playfulness, and of course the color, witnessing his process as it evolves from relying on photography to exploring nature in person, how he deals with the challenge of completing a large scale 50 panel modular painting for The Royal Academy of Arts in a brief two week period. Luckily he has the means; resources that include hot and cold running assistants to set up easels and supplies, move canvases, and record, digitize, and catalog every piece.

I am intrigued with Hockney’s exploration of alternate forms of perspective, the “moving focus” that Hockney describes – very evident to us in Eastern art, in scroll painting, where the eye is always moving, traveling as the scroll unrolls, rather than locked on a single point. ”Clearly, human eyes do not see in the same way as a single camera lens does.“  How we perceive, how the eye sees, is an ongoing and very basic question for artists, and possibly different for everyone and part of what makes art so interesting.

Watching this documentary may have raised more questions than answers. At least one person didn’t wholly believe that the idyllic English countryside Hockney is painting is real. Fortunately one of our guests grew up there, and validated that the lush pastoral landscape depicted does in fact, exist. We wondered whether the effect in person of the size of the painting is as impressive as it is made out to be. How important is spectacle in art? Is it more than just a method to draw a crowd?

We all wanted to know what happened to Margaret, Hockney’s sister, who moved out of the family home when Hockney and company moved in? And where can we find our own “Jean-Pierre” an essential assistant who seems to take care of all the details that threaten to obstruct the creative process.

In making this large , “difficult” piece, that as Hockney declares, ushers us into the “post photographic age”, is Hockney sincere, or is he thumbing his nose at the art establishment? Hockney himself says, "It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work."

Is It Done Yet?

Marsh House 2013 Katherine Kean
oil on linen 6 x 6 inches

How do you decide when a painting is done?

 For me this has always been something that's mostly intuitive, but as I go along I realize that these days I spend a lot more time thinking about it - especially as I'm approaching the end. Lately it seems to be a matter of whether I feel 've reached clarity on what I think the painting is about.

What do other artists say? Here are some quotes on the subject:

"To put it as simply as possible - and this is a simple answer, not a total answer - I know when a painting's finished when I understand why I wanted to do it in the first place." James Elkins

"The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared." Georges Braque

"One always has to spoil a picture a little bit in order to finish it." Eugene Delacroix

"That's the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it." Alberto Giacometti

"When a painting is done I feel it actually recedes from me. Everything coalesces and moves away, and I can no longer focus on a single part of it. It suddenly does this gestalt." April Gornik

"It can be difficult to assess when a painting is complete. For this reason, I often set aside the painting to prevent overworking it. When I am unsure, I ask myself if doing more would add or take away from the purpose of the painting." Mary French

"I paint until I become the audience staring at the painting staring back at me. It’s how I know the painting is done." Eric Fischl

"When nothing is wrong anymore, then I stop." Gerhard Richter

"One brief moment caught from fleeting time..."

Clouds, Valley Sketch Katherine Kean
graphite 8 x 10 inches

"There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact."
Milan Kundera The Art of the Novel

But must the moment elude us? John Constable's artwork sought to give "one brief moment caught from fleeting time a lasting and sober existence." Can the making of marks blend the present, future and past, connect the moment with the memory, and bring the past to a new present?

Or in the words of William Wordsworth: "Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay, Yon cloud, and fix it in that glorious shape."