I am, admittedly, an art information junkie. I troll websites, bookstores, magazines, anything that I can find to get my fix. With the re-emergence and renewed interest in classical realism, there has been a lot written about how to capture classical effects in an artwork. There are demos, youtube videos, discussion forums etc;.
         One of the main sticking points for me are artists who put out books or articles on classical painting, and include demonstrations of their own work, when they clearly cannot paint or draw well. They might be okay for doing demonstrations at the local library but they shouldn't be including their work in a book filled with reproductions of old masters. I'm sorry but if you can't seal the deal in your own work, then everything and anything you write about the work of others becomes suspect. I have bought a few of these books, because they feature the work of artists that I admire that usually aren't together in any other collection. My inclination is to take a razor blade and cut out every page featuring the author's work. Yes, they are that bad. 
           You cannot become great by association. If I rubbed my hand across a Rembrandt a thousand times that would not allow me to suddenly declare myself a master. Of course publisher's are not art connoisures and probably are more than willing to publish any monograph that might find a niche in what is clearly a growing audience; classical realism. But the student should beware of taking too literally any advice or expertise from people who clearly do not have the training they claim to have or the talent to make use of it. It is good that books and articles are coming out that cater to the classical enthusiast, I can imagine how cigar smokers must have felt at the first issue of "Cigar Afficionado", but we have to be wary of false prophets. If Jacob Collins or Daniel Graves, wrote a book on painting or drawing, I would give anything that they wrote some serious consideration. They know what they are talking about because it clearly shows through their work. If I wanted to be a great ball player would I read a book on batting technique by a minor leaguer or Mickey Mantle?.
          Their is a very famous book on drawing that I have enjoyed reading, which has some useful insights and features quite a lot of the authors own work. There is one problem; the author cannot draw feet. Their is something wrong with the feet on every single figure. They lack grace and they could not possibly support the weight of a human body. Now this may be a stylistic affectation, it's hard to tell . Another more recent, and also well written book features many of the author's drawings that look like the figures are made out of sausages. They seem inflated and somehow swollen. They remind me of Leonardo's comment that Michelangelo's figure drawings looked like sacks of potatoes (I don't agree!).
           I'm not saying that one must be an accomplished master to write a book on art practices. Perhaps you're an average, or pretty good artist, but really good at prose. That could be a valuable tool. Perhaps a really great artist might not be as good at communicating how to go about things, or at writing things down in a way that could hold a reader's interest. As a teacher myself, I have run across many knowledgeable and talented individuals who simply could not teach. So you're not the next Rembrandt or Carravagio, yet you've learned a few things and would like to share. That's fine, just don't include your own demos and examples, if they are not up to snuff. What exactly are you demonstrating, how to be a mediocre artist?. I get the feeling from reading some of these tomes that the author's may not be aware that they are so bad. Perhaps they've been moderately successful and that has led them to believe that they are quite accomplished. If you peruse through any art periodical it boggles the mind to see the proportion of bad work to good. Selling work is not an indicator of quality. As a child I thought I had a great singing voice. I even auditioned for a garage band. Then I got the idea to tape record myself and have a listen. It was not pleasant. Yet had I not done so, perhaps I would have gone on to take voice lessons. Maybe I would have even written a book about how to become a great singer.       
            It seems to me that one of the things that the greatest of the living artists have figured out is quality control. They don't accept things in their own work that would not have been acceptable to a past master. If they see a lack of training or understanding then they go out and get it, or keep trying until they figure it out on their own. You're not going to see this advice in the latest "how to" books because the authors are not practicing it themselves. Yet it is probably the one thing, besides talent and creativity, that separates the wheat from the chaff. If the young artist can learn to have a detached or objective eye, that will prove more valuable than a hundred ill informed demonstrations. This is not to say that one should destroy everything that they make until they reach perfection, but that if you see a shortcoming, and theres something you can do about it, then do it. Don't make excuses for your work. Don't write a book and try to get others to go along with the deception. The emperor has no clothes. I realize that this may come off sounding rather harsh, and perhaps a bit arrogant, (who am I to pass judgement), but art is everything to me and I don't like it when the pretenders to the throne try to jump to the head of the line.(how's that for a mixed metaphor?). It's kind of like those artists that always include the work of a master painter in their own paintings. Either it's a postcard or a painting set in a museum scene. I would not like to have my picture taken next to Brad Pitt. If you can't paint as well as the old master that you're including in your work than it is not an homage, it is a distraction.( your work distracting me from the work of the master).
        I guess this diatribe is just a symptom of my frustration with the quality of writing so far that pertains to traditional realism. Where are the Harold Speed's of today? Speed's books are great but there have been a lot of changes in art and life since Speed's time and some of his information could be updated with a contemporary approach. Really, there has never been and there will never be any book that is a substitute for training under the guidance of an experienced and accomplished artist, or a substitute for spending years, hard at work, in learning one's craft. But a well written book can be a kind of affirmation on why we do the things that we do. Why the sacrifices are so worth it. I often would find myself smiling when reading Speed's books. I would read a passage and think to myself "exactly!".

                          I have to admit that for a long time I just didn't get what all the fuss was about the paintings of Bougereau. I've had instructors past and present who's eyes glaze over when you even mention his name. I'd seen some of his work in books and magazines and to me it looked like a lot of doe eyed little girls with broken pitchers. What's the big deal?
                 In college Bougereau was mentioned in every Western art survey class I've ever taken. He was the turnpost that marked where the Impressionists had resisted the drollness of academic painting and re-invigorated French painting. When the professor sneered at the work of Bougereau we would sneer also. It was fun to feel superior about something. Bougereau was the boogey man of painting. "Don't get too interested in technique or you'll end up like Bougereau!". Picasso's cast drawings would always be dragged out at this point, the idea being that he narrowly escaped the fate of letting his prodigious talent determine his fate rather than his striking originality. I had a good friend that was in the same art classes with me at college and he was obsessed with WB. I thought he was losing it. The professor's used to break his chops all the time. Looking back now I can see that he just really wanted to learn how to draw and paint. Boy was he in the wrong school.
            Yesterday the studio was all a flutter and I inquired as to what was up and was told that everybody was excited because there was a Bougereau just down the street at Christies auction house. So. determined to see what all the fuss was about, I put my brushes down and headed on over. It was kind of cool to have security following me around. I guess I looked kind of scruffy, I was wearing my camoflage shorts, a tank top, and I was a little bleary eyed from trying to determine which way the amoeba on my cast were facing the light. After walking though a few galleries filled with fake Titians (it's funny how people would emboss a label on the frame of a painting, "painted by Titian", that was so obviously not!) I finally found the Bougereau.
              I have to give Christie's credit, they did reserve one of their nicest locations for WB's "Pieta". It's set into a skylit alcove that affords a long view as you walk up to it. It really is a stunning painting, and if you're a student of Classical drawing or painting, it exhibits everything you've been learning about put into practice by a master who's not so far removed from our own time. I could see how he uses light to pull everthing together. The forms on the figures, particularly the dead "Christ" are just filled with subtle whiplashes of light that weave in and out of the dark and light zones. Bougereau was not a "show-off". When there are passages of painterly flourish there is always a good reason for it. Nothing is wasted. I couldn't find a single dead zone in the entire painting. If I had just the chalice that lies at the feet of the figures I would stare at it every day with a smile.
          So am I now a full tilt Bougereau fanatic? Of his "Pieta", absolutely. As to the rest of his ouvre I'm going to be smart enough this time to hold my opinion until I see more of the actual paintings. Janson's has been doing this man a disservice for over thirty years. You really have to see the work in person. I guess that can pretty much be said of any artist, but Bougereau in particular because the effects that he was after are so subtle. In the next room was an unfinished Lion Hunt by Gerome, who I've always liked probably due to his connection to Eakins. It was a painting that had all of his stages, from pencil drawing to wipe out with varying degrees of ebauche and frottis. I had a little bounce in my step as I walked back to the studio and as I was painting the head of a lion cast my brain spun with visions of angels and deserts.

                         It's usually about this time of year that I start thinking about how to make the most of that little window of opportunity that allows me to be a full time artist, called "summer vacation". As a full time high school art teacher, it's not often that I get to "do my thing", twenty four seven, for an eight week stretch. So when that magical time approaches my brain starts formulating plans to squeeze the most out of every free minute. I'm usually thoroughly drained and exhausted by the end of the summer and need a vacation from my vacation. That's a good thing. Each summer has been like a little ladder allowing me to hop off this plateau to the next higher level.
               This summer is particularly important because my school has been slated for closure and the next few years until I can retire promise to be very stressful. It's too bad because after twenty five years of teaching I feel like I'm really starting to hit my stride. I'm taking the recent additions to my training and incorporating them into my lessons. I'm excited, my students are excited, I'm really working hard to make sure that each student gets something useful out of the lesson, regardless of their skill level. My classroom has become an inner city Renaissance workshop, with students doing charcoal transfers, open and closed grisailles, glazes and scumbles etc;. All in a forty minute slot a day, with about thirty some odd students in a class. Sounds crazy I know, but somehow it works, and at the end of the day I go into my own studio and try to keep the energy going.
              A lot of my artist friends have been asking me what workshops I plan to take this summer. Grand Central Academy of Art has a lot of great ones going on, and it would be fun to paint or draw alongside some of the acquaintances I have made there, but I think I'm starting to feel a bit "workshopped out". The money that I would spend on a workshop could be used to hire a model for the summer, or get a better digital camera and learn to take better photos of my work, or travel to some great landscape painting destinations. In other words, I'm going to take an instructional hiatus, and dig deep into my own psyche to get a little closer to discovering the kind of artist I'm meant to be. I've acquired a lot of knowledge over the last few years and it's time to start putting the pieces together.
             I've already put one of my plans into motion. I talked my bi-montly figure drawing group into hiring a model once a week for all of June and July, one long pose, so that we could do some painting. Last summer I took a class with the same setup. I got five minutes of criticism a session for an amount of money that would have paid for a model to come to my studio every day. Not that the instruction wasn't helpful, it was, but weighed against what one can learn from more intense study, even uninstructed, seems like a no-brainer. I've already formulated a plan of attack. I'm going to draw with charcoal directly on the canvas, ink it in, and do the wipeout, all in the first session. The second session will be spent working up a thin, full color ebauche, and if there's time left over, I'll pick a spot and begin focusing on turning the forms. Sometimes when people see my work at one of the classes or workshops that I've taken they make remarks about how gifted I am. I want to tell them that my work looks the way that it does because I work my a** off. I'm grateful for whatever meager abilities I may have been blessed with, but I have scraped and clawed for every square inch. I use to think just the way that they did, that some artists are just born super gifted until I started really paying attention to what these artists were saying about their work and the sacrifices they made. Now I get it.
                    I have some ideas about doing some outdoor paintings this summer. Not so much the alla prima landscapes. It's not that I don't enjoy setting up next to a river or a glade and slashing away it's just that it's not really my passion. I think I'm going to stick to my own back yard. I plan to do a series of small paintings using my canoe or kayaks as props, possibly involving my wife (if I can come up with a bribe), and I also want to do some plein aire still lifes. Maybe I'll set up a tent as a little outdoor studio. I caught glimpses of things last summer that have been pinging around my brain all winter and now I'm ready to get them on canvas.
          So there you have it. I'm selflishly calling this the "summer of me" (I hope my wife doesn't read this, she thought this was the summer of "her"). If I can accomplish all of the goals I have set for myself, and my track record is pretty good, I'll be able to enter my classroom re-invigorated and able to handle anything the screwed up educational system plans to throw my way. All the educrats in the world couldn't prevent me from my pursuit of knowledge and the joy that I get from working with students who seem grateful to be learning from a teacher who's torch still burns.

             I am currently at work on what may end up being my last cast painting. At least the last one done under the eye of an instructor. It's not that I don't enjoy painting them, I do, and I feel like I've really learned a lot that has applied to all of the painting that I do. It's just that I've done quite a few of them now and it might be time to move on. So far I've painted the eye cast, ear, mouth, a satyr bust, a classical portrait bust and now I'm working on a lion statue that looks like it may have been done by Barye. I think what I'll probably do after the lion is to get some statues of my own and include them in a still life every now and again when the mood strikes me.
            A cast painting begins the same way that a cast drawing begins, with a block-in. The idea is to work large to small, from the inside out, using the "Bargue" straight line method. Even more so than with a drawing for pencil study, it's important to take the time to get it right. Once you're drawing is on a canvas, ready to paint, there's not too much that you can change. And make no mistake about it, you will see things that you missed, and you won't see them until you are ready to paint. That's just the way it works. You have to resist the temptation to start re-inventing your drawing after you begin painting or it will slip away from you like a greased pig. A slightly imperfect foundation is better than no foundation.
           Once I feel like my drawing is pretty much locked in than it's time to transfer it to a canvas. Some artists like to outline every major value change. I pretty much just indicate the core shadow line in as descriptive a way as I can so that I have a good indication of where the form will be turning from. Then I trace my drawing with tracing paper, flip it over and then trace it on the back with hard vine charcoal. I like the hard charcoal because I can sharpen it to a point and it doesn't slip around as much. Some of the artists at the Grand Central Academy of Art like to photocopy their drawings and then cover the entire copy with charcoal and use that to transfer their drawings. What I like about the tracing paper is that I can see through it to the canvas so if I want to change the placement slightly I'll be able to see it before making the transfer. The next step is to ink the drawing. I generally like to do it while referring to the actual cast so that I can regain some of the refinement that is sometimes lost when making a transfer.
         For most of my previous casts I would use a wipe out method. That's toning the canvas with an umber stain and then wiping out the light areas. Again, there are a lot of variations with this method. Some artists like to use a brush to pull out the lights and then will paint in darker details as well, rounding the form in a general way. My previous training at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art was to keep the wipe out fairly simple, get those major light and dark separations as a strong roadmap to keep you on track as you start to get into the details. Along the lines of the way the drawing started, working large to small. One of the things that I like to do after brushing on the thinned down umber is to take a Viva towel and give the canvas a very soft pass. This evens out the tone, removing those brush marks that would sometimes come back to haunt me. I can't take credit for this method though. I got the idea from watching one of my old studio mates, eighteen year old Hector do it, and I was so impressed that I've been doing it ever since. Apparently a young mind can teach an old dog a new trick.
          The method that I would then use to make the cast painting is often referred to as window shading. It's a finish as you go technique. Kind of like a map maker drawing a detailed topographical map as he walked along observing and noting everything within his path. It can be a little scary to leap into the void so to speak so one of the things that can help prevent you from losing your way is the poster study. It's not the Ted Seth Jacobs, Tony Ryder style of poster though. Their's is very abstract looking and if you didn't know what it was for you might not recognise the image at all. Their posters are used to get the overall tone and value-color harmonies established that will be used to key the painting. My poster is more of a simplifed, planar version of the setup, where I'm working hard to get each simplified plane to be exactly the right value that I need to successfully indicate it's position with regards to the light source. I want to be able to refer to my poster throughout the painting, so I take the time to get it right. Maybe poster isn't the right term. I guess it's more of a study in the classic sense of the word. When I mix up my value string, I will put little dabs of paint right on the study. This helps to keep the painting on track so it doesn't look piecemeal. I'm only working on my current cast three hours a week before I go to figure drawing class so it's important that I don't re-invent the wheel each time I begin. People seem amazed that I can progress at a pretty good rate, but it's really just the system that I'm using. Not having to worry about which values to use and how much of one color or another allows me to paint with confidence and stay on the form. As my instructor Nick always says when you can learn to really slow down you'll be amazed at how much faster things will go. Kind of a Zen thing or one of those Jedi mind tricks.
         Once my string is laid out on my palette, I'm ready to go. I will lay in my darks along the terminator line and then start roughly laying down small tiles of value that indicate the form turning toward the light. I'll do this pretty quickly. One of the things that I've learned is that you can't get anywhere pussyfooting around with paint. You have to get the paint down solidly and with confidence. You can always make adjustments, but if you start off thinly smushing paint around you'll quickly have no form left to adjust. I usually lay in an area that's about a square inch. I don't want to lay in more area than I will have time to completely bring to a finish. The form comes first. I ignore details and cracks etc; until I'm happy with what the larger forms are doing. Then I will go in with more paint to seam the tiles together. Once I'm satisfied with that look than I will start to dig a little deeper. Are there areas where the light seeps through and seemingly connects disparate forms? Are there smaller micro froms within the larger forms that have a slightly different angle to the light? Once all that's done than I start to look for significant details, but very often the processes that I just mentioned have painted the details for me without even trying and all I have to do is a little accenting here and there.
         Hopefully the above little essay has given some idea of why I found cast painting to be so rewarding and instructive. It has changed the way that I approach my paintings and it has helped me to conceptualize form and light in ways that previously were more intuitive but now are more analytical. I highly recommend it but like those daredevil reality shows I recommend that you don't try this alone at home but get the guidance of a good instructor.

              Recently I was being interviewed by a gallery director who was interested in possibly exhibiting some of my paintings. He was concerned that I might be going off in too many directions and didn't have a recognizable "look". He wanted to know how he could go about saying to a customer "that's a Shawn Sullivan", he wanted to know, what is a Shawn Sullivan? He recommended that I do a series of paintings. He suggested that one of my recent paintings "Book with Jawbone" or "Grapes" would be good for that. Shawn Sullivan "bone painter". Shawn Sullivan "grapes unlimited". I tried to explain that what makes my paintings unique is the way that I "see" the objects that I paint. The way that I apply the paint (I believe that my brushwork has become as recognizable as my handwriting). The way that I use color (I was an abstract painter for many years and I think that makes me a little more fearless than your average traditional realist). But even as I was saying these things I could sense that they weren't landing, that they were too esoteric and that I wasn't really nailing my essence in a concrete way.
            So, it kind of got me to thinking about who I am as an artist and why I paint the things that I do. Certain things do re-occur in my work from time to time; brown and white ceramic jugs, bottled condiments, frying pans, colored bottles, silver goblets, to name a few. But I have to admit that I haven't really gone after any one item or setup in particular with the dogged determination that I see in the work of some artists. It's not that I haven't thought about doing a series. Recently I've been toying with the idea of doing some paintings based on the five senses. Another idea is on the four elements. I've begun some sketches, but who knows, something else might come up.
           One of the things that maybe makes my still lifes a little different is that I generally don't pick some objects in my studio and then start moving them around until something clicks. What happens is that I will start thinking about some object that I already have or would like to have. That may be spurred on by the work of another artist that I was looking at or by something in a movie or a novel that I'm reading or just out of thin air. Than I start to make a bunch of thumbnail sketches from my imagination. These can be surprisingly detailed, almost as if I was actually observing the scene. This process might go on for months or even years. Recently, I got this book from the library that featured some paintings by Bastien-Lepage and other naturalist painters. That somehow led to me sketching a still life showing a four pronged pitchfork surrounded by pomegranates and a burlap sack. In my head I can see the splintery and steely quality of the pitchfork really setting off the auburn, fall like hues of the pomegranates with the burlap sack keeping the whole thing grounded. I'm pretty sure that at some point in time I will paint that image. Hard to say when, it might need to percolate for a while. The jawbone and book painting comes from an image that I had put together about twenty years ago. It was a large still life that I had painted in my first real studio and even though I didn't have much training at the time it got into a juried exhibit and won an award. My favorite part of the painting was the part that had the jawbone set on a copy of Gray's Anatomy and I'd been thinking about giving that image another stab for a very long time.
            I think that I'm basically a figure painter at heart. Not that I think of my little pieces of fruit and ceramic as characters on a stage, I don't. I detest anthropomorphism. There's a few artists that I'd like to smack up side of their heads and say "what the heck are you thinking?" It's really an embarassment. Chardin is cringing. But getting back to my point. I really depend on these little ideas that visit me from time to time. They're the reason that I paint. I know that if I focused on one thing and got to the point of doing that one thing really well I probably would be more marketable. But I also know that their are some people who really respond to what I do. They don't know why a plate of strawberries or a cast iron skillet should move them but they do. Art to me is a mysterious and wonderful thing. I'm not trying to put it in a bottle with a label. I respect my muse. I don't take it for granted. Painting is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before bed. I don't know if this little blurb has come any closer to defining what makes a Shawn Sullivan a "Shawn Sullivan" but that's about as close as I care to get and if that's not enough than too bad.

                A lot of artists that paint in a traditional or classical realist style seem convinced that there's some kind of conspiracy going on that prevents their art from gaining wider exposure and being taken seriously by some of the major art periodicals. They feel that their art is being ignored because it requires dedication, effort, and talent, while the work that is getting most of the exposure has none of these.
                The first thing that one needs to realize is that critics do not create art. They may ignore one type of art in favor of another but they are not the ones generating the art. Artists are the ones who create the art, and many realist painters feel that young artists gravitate towards conceptual art because of the lack of traditional training at most art colleges. If the young artists do end up using traditional methods they always seem to feel the need to put some sly tongue in cheek spin on it.
                Many of the artists working in the classical realist tradition today, that have studied at private ateliers, did not study art as undergraduates. It amazes me when I look at artists resumes how many of them list undergraduate degrees in philosophy, engineering, music etc;. A lot of them started off with a degree in illustration and then gravitated towards fine art. Very few resumes list an undergraduate degree in fine art. This may explain why so many traditional painters are mystified by todays art world.
              I went to art college as an undergraduate in the late seventies, early eighties. It's impossible to imagine, unless you've experienced it firsthand, the enormous emphasis that was placed on the students to carry the mantle forward, to make their mark on the history of art. One was led to believe that every artist has the potential within themselves to be the next Picasso, and that it was your sacred duty to give it your best shot. It was the young artists job to create a type of art that hadn't been done before. To create the effect , as Robert Hughes calls it, of the "shock of the new".
             In our art history classes it was pounded into us how every generation of artists has managed to "one up" the generation that preceded it. That new and worthy art should always be misunderstood at first until eventually the true genius of it reveals itself. The Impressionists banished Academic art, the Cubists killed off Impressionism, the Abstract Expressionists made Picasso obsolete etc; This was the way things were in the "real" art world and everything else was just hobby art.
          I can remember the long conversations that my fellow students and I would have about how we would seize our rightful place and show up our poser professors for who they really were; pretenders to the throne, aged dinosaurs, who needed to move over and make room. We weren't cynical about what we were doing, we were young dreamers who were excited to feel like we were a part of something that made us special. We had a mission.
          Things weren't much different when I went for my MFA. Even though the school that I went to was considered a bastion of realism, the professors still seemed to prefer innovation over craft. Some of my fellow students have gone on to glowing careers in the art world. One a highly touted and respected professor first gained notice with paintings that were enlarged from polaroids taken while engaged in sexual activity. I don't think things have changed much. My daughter attended an art school in a big city and she was chastized for trying to make her paintings look too "finished".
        Realist painters need to stop pining for an art world that they can never be a part of. Realist art isn't trying to be shocking or innovative but instead is interested in beauty and truth and craft; all worthwhile endeavors but not in the least bit "shocking". Installing atelier style training in more colleges and universities is not going to change the appeal of the "art revolution" to the young artist. The idea of the misunderstood artistic genius is so engrained in our culture that it has become a powerful archetype. Realist painting will always be a part of the "checks and balances" that make up the current art world but it will never be in the limelight. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The art styles that become the next big thing usually have a short shelf life and the artists end up replicating themselves, frozen in a moment, unable or unwilling to discard their established signature look. Realist painters who stay the course, on the other hand, have the promise of artists like Titian and Rembrandt whose art changed gradually and poetically into it's final full flowering.

               Usually at the start of each new year I have a list of goals that I hope to accomplish before the year is out. I don't write them down or anything, They're just hanging out in the back of my mind waiting to be accounted for. This year I've been pretty much on target, but I don't beat myself up about it either way. I just dust myself off and jump back into the ring.
             My plan of study has been progressing on schedule. I'm finishing up cast painting and I've started to study figure drawing. Although I've been drawing the figure for a long time this is my first real figure drawing class. It's a little bit like art boot-camp. I guess the instructor senses that I'm not playing around and so he's been pretty tough on me. I've got a lifetime of bad habits to get rid of.
            I had planned to do more landscape painting, but things don't always go as planned. For one thing, my favorite beach spot to paint was closed down due to budget cuts. I also had air conditioning installed in my studio which made me never want to leave. I was pleased with the paintings that I did get to. I always re-read "Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting" at the beginning of the season. It seems to make more sense each time I read it and I can see his logic informing my work.
              I only managed to squeeze in one figure painting this year, but I did it exactly the way I had envisioned. I mixed up and tubed a flesh color string using a Zorn palette, and I worked on a single pose for eight weeks once a week. I've also managed to do a few quick three hour figure paintings at my bi-monthly figure group. I copied a Sargent portrait from a book, which was a lot of fun. I used  my tubed colors, as it is my belief that Sargent also used a limited palette in his early work.
               My still life paintings are beginning to show subtle changes. The cast painting has influenced my understanding of light, and I'm beginning to include a little more detail. I like brushstrokes to show so I'm focusing a little more intently while trying not to lose the spontaneity which has always been one of my strengths. The exhibit of paintings by Luis Melendez has had a strong influence on me as well. His exacting touch and breadth of vision has inspired me to push myself even harder.
                  In the coming year I plan to do more figure paintings. I'm thinking of hiring a model over the summer. My studio is big enough to accomadate two easels so maybe I'll get someone to go in on it with me. If that doesn't work I know a model who's price is right. I've been meaning to start a self portrait and now might be a good time. I can wait for a better circumstance or I can create opportunities of my own. That's pretty much ben the story of my life.
            Overall, I feel like 2009 was a good year. Things are going according to plan. I'm looking forward to doing more of the same only better. With the support of my wife and family I feel like I can succeed on my own terms if I want to badly enough. My self improvement goals encompass more than just my art. I have a few personality flaws that could use improving, and like everything else, the change is slow, but it is coming. Heres looking forward to a great 2010.

                       The function of an eyelash is to shade the eye somewhat from the sun and to keep debris out. Yet, when one looks at the eyelash mass we can see how beautifully it integrates with the iris. It creates a dark, calligraphic accent that captures our attention and our imagination. This seems to be one of the keys to representing nature; in order to capture beauty you must first understand the function of the thing being depicted.
                       In painting, one cannot hope to rival nature, yet we can use natures logic to create visually stimulating artwork. Every brushstroke that's placed should have a function. Every decision that's made about color and value and placement should somehow lead to our ultimate goal of creating an alternate world where the artist creates beauty that's inspired by nature, yet, of necessity, completely different. Verissimilitude might capture a scene with precision, but unless the artist has a vision or design, mimesis will not appear natural. It may seem strange that this is so, but I've seen it in the work of many painters. The functional aspect of the painting does not correspond with the beauty the artist is attempting to capture. Most scientific illustrations are not beautiful, because it is not their function to be beautiful.
                      In the figure drawing class that I'm currently taking, the instructor is really pushing me to learn anatomy. I've been a little resistant because I've always been pretty much of an eyeball realist. I figured that I would be fine with the parts of the anatomy that I could see and that whatever I couldn't see, I didn't need to bother about. I was also worried that my drawings would begin to have that clunky look that I see in the work of some artists who put their figures together like G.I. Joes. They know all the parts and where they go, but their drawings lack grace. In spite of this, I have been studying to learn the visible parts of anatomy and how they work and the names of the larger internal masses. It appears to be helping to improve my block-ins. The idea of the block-in is to capture the abstract quality of the large forms and the basic light and dark divisions. Yet some forms are resistant to being drawn that way. I'm thinking in particular of a bent, foreshortened, knee.
                        When I'm drawing the figure now, I'm thinking about the relationship of the head to the ribcage and of the ribcage to the pelvis. I'm thinking about how they relate as shapes, as forms in space, but also how they flow along an invisible curve. In other words, not just how they function as body parts, but how they harmonize into beautiful and graceful gestures. I'm starting to get that learning how things work can give me insight into understanding how my paintings work and how I can get them to work even better.

             Recently a good friend of mine was asking me if I could ever foresee a time when I would be free on Saturdays.  I told him I would probably stop when I felt that I'd completed the Classical Realist training that I've been trying to stitch together as best as I can through part time study. It's been a while. I spent three years at the Long Island Academy of Fine Art studying still life painting for two and a half years and portrait for about six months. At that point I kind of felt like I was putting the cart before the horse so about two years ago I started to study cast drawing at the Grand Central Academy of Art. I stayed with that for about a year and then I moved into Cast painting. The GCA doesn't really have a proscribed program for part time students but if you read their mission statement it outlines a sequence necessary for a sound Classical education. So that's been my focus, not to jump around from course to course but to stick to the plan; cast drawing, cast painting, figure drawing, figure painting. Right now I'm doing cast painting in the morning and figure drawing in the afternoon.
           So, I do have a plan, it's just hard to say exactly how long it will take me to get there. But I do see the end of the tunnel. It's not my goal to be a perpetual student. I'm quite capable of working on my own, as I have been doing for twenty five years. I'm starting to get a good sense of the direction my work is headed in and I'm always eager to get into my studio.
           So why did I go back to school (private Atelier) after all those years of working on my own. It's simple. I just wanted to improve. I realized I'd gone about as far as I could on my own. My day job is teaching art at an inner city high school. I think most educators are life long learners. Our students ask us questions that make us want to know more so that we can share what we've learned. Going back to school has made me a better educator. Having confidence and mastery in what I love has enabled me to motivate students who possess gifts they didn't know they have. I'm never at work thinking I wish I was in my studio and I'm not thinking about work when I'm painting. The two aspects of my life have a symbiotic relationship.
              Teaching during the day and painting in the evenings and on weekends has never been a problem for me. I kind of enjoy the challenge of it.(I might be a little deranged) I know I'm going to miss it when I retire. I have no plans to retire in the immediate future although technically I could retire in three years. Unfortunately the city where I teach does not value the experience of older techers .They feel that our salaries are too high and that we become complacent and lack the enthusiasm of younger teachers. One of the things that I'm kind of known for is the older students walking into my room and saying "How come we didn't get to do that?" And my answer is because I didn't think of it then. In other words, my curriculum is constantly evolving. As my understanding of art deepens so too does the way that I present ideas and challenges to my students.
           When I first started to teach, it was the older teachers who provided me with counsel and wisdom that got me through the tough times. It's not an easy job. Doesn't everybody want summers off? Maybe so, but many who  make a run at it don't last more than six years. When I walk into my classroom I don't have to worry about classroom management . My classroom management is simple. Know what the hell you're talking about, be as excited about it as you want the students to be, and treat each student exactly the way you would want your own child to be treated. It's not brain surgery but it amazes me how few of the teachers I've seen out there are able to pull it off. The reason for that is clear. The trend is towards new schools, new teachers, new test scores. The passing on of wisdom and experience from older teachers to young has been tabooed. Younger teachers are wary of educators who are portrayed as bitter and burnt out. That stereotype was around when I started teaching twenty five years ago, and it's a bunch of garbage. I've met many educators who have inspired me with their constant quest to know more. To have more expertise in their field. To be able to answer the students question with " Yes, I saw it with my own eyes, it was wonderful". One of the teachers in the school within my school, that will eventually force my school to close, and possibly push me into retiring a little sooner than I planned, is considered a role model by the powers that be and gives workshops on better teaching methods. Yet the other day I heard him screaming at his class, essentially trying to browbeat them into submission. If I had a chance to counsel him, and if he thought my opinion was worth anything, I would explain to him why this doesn't work and give him alternatives that actually do work. Methods that aren't found in these educrats self congratulatory textbooks but come from years of experience in asking one simple question. "How could I have handled that better?" And then doing it better. That's the way that I paint and that's the way that I teach.
          If I think of my life like a painting, I would say that I'm drawn in, I've got a solid underpainting, and I'm starting to work up to a finish, keeping open to the possibiliy of changing things as I go along; a work in progress.

            I can remember, I guess it was about six or seven years ago, when I saw my first Charles Bargue drawing, from the book that I believe translates to a "course of design". I was immediately struck by how much the drawings resembled the early cubist drawings of Picasso and Juan Gris. Particularly the first or block in stage diagrams. They had that same kind of schematic, straight line, abstracting of form. Picasso was trained in the classical method and one of his drawings that's always featured in discussions of his beginnings as an artist is clearly a copy of one of Bargue's drawings (although oddly enough it's never credited that way). Of course Cubism veers wildly off from any intentions that Bargue and Gerome (the co-author) may have had, but it does point out some things that are common to most types of visual art; that the beginning stages require one to think abstractly in order to get to the essential nature of what's being drawn or painted.
            Good design and solid compositions rarely have anything to do with ones ability to faithfully replicate a variety of textures and surface details. Not that these are neccessarily bad skills to have, but they are the icing on the cake, not the cake. Without a solid design sense, it's a pile of frosting and little else. So where does this come from, this ability to disassociate oneself from the subjective or empirical nature of what's being seen and instead tune into the order and organization of the shapes and tilts and black and white patterns, etc;? It's not easy. The brains survival mode is set up to scan and file quickly. This requires a database of known symbols and signifiers. When I scan a face I'm seeing every face that I've ever seen and making comparisons and distinctions. In order to objectively render that face I need to dump all of the symbols and associations that will naturally come to mind and in fact it would be best if I didn't think of it as a face at all, but as a series of light and dark patterns with boundaries. More like a map, less like a portrait. That's a pretty abstract way of thinking about the world but it's nothing new and can be traced back to the ancient Greeks whose statues are like math theorems made whole. That's not to say that their statues are cold and lacking in humanity, but that their timeless beauty goes beyond the mere recording of human physiognomy.
              There have been several occasions where someone has pointed out to me that the composition in one of my paintings or drawings falls along divisions associated with the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean or Section is a divison of any rectangle by a fraction, roughly about a third (.6218 to the whole) . It is a fractional division that can be found in the growth pattern of most living things, including humans( the location of the elbow to the arm, and the hand to the elbow) and was thought to be, by many of the Old Masters, the most pleasing division of a composition. I have to admit that any Golden Sections that can be found in my work are purely accidental. I wish I could be that methodical or cerebral, but alas, as I've come to realize, it is not in my nature. But that doesn't prevent me from appreciating it in the work of other artists.
              So, following this line of thinking, there must have been a point in the creation of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" when his canvas was criss-crossed with lines and shapes and little else. Did Botticelli than stand back and analyze his painting from a purely formal design sense before committing to his figures and subject matter or did he quicly sketch in his figures in a rush of creativity and then corral them into Golden Mean harmonies? It boggles the mind to think about it. I chose "The Birth of Venus" because in most of the diagrams that I've seen laid over the painting, the composition is overrun with structural grids and designs.Does that make it a better painting? Botticelli must have thought so. Still, I think that at a certain point abstract design is not something that can be quantatively measured or codified. I believe that it's largely intuitive or instinctual. I have seen some contemporary artists who have used the Golden Section in their paintings and yet their compositions are dead in the water. Setting up points of location in a design and using them to locate centers of interest, etc; is not neccessarily good abstract design. When one is moved by the pattern of dark clumps found in the foliage of a tree or the shapes made by cloud formations (go Joanie) , one is responding to something that I think is inherently human and yet something that cannot be labeled or bottled to say "this is what it is".
         The great painters of the past and present have many things about their work that can be analyzed and written about but there will always be that certain something that is intangible. It is why the students of Rembrandt could mimic his style exactly but rarely ever approached his greatness. It is why I think that labels and categorizations, when it comes to paintings, are pretty meaningless. I respond to paintings as a painter. I don't really care what style it's painted in. Either it works for me or it doesn't. It has to hit me in the gut. That's probably going to have very little to do with, initially, what the subject matter is. Once I've been drawn into the work than I will begin to contemplate the subject and mood etc: But if the first response isn't there, I don't care if you call your painting "The Greatest Story Ever Told", I'm moving on. I despise Bonnard's drawing abilities but yet I find myself liking his paintings in spite of myself. Whatever "it" is he clearly has "it" in spades. This isn't really meant as a discourse to present anything new. I think most painters realize these things whether they consciously think about them or not. I'm really thinking out loud about ideas that I have because I realize that as my work begins to get technically sound I mustn't lose sight of the bigger picture; that the work must be expressive as well as descriptive and that I need to constantly be tuning in to my own frequency or whatever essence I may have that's worthy of contemplation, will be lost.