The other day I spotted this zen quote, which I can't credit because I can't remember where I got it from, "when the student is ready the teacher will appear". It stuck with me because it pretty much sums up the situation that I find myself in. I've been painting pretty much every day since I was in my twenties. A fairly large body of work. At a certain point in my mid to late forties I began to realize that I was to a large extent treading water. I guess in my mind I was making progress on a conceptual level but I could see that on a technical level I had been fairly stagnant. Not that I wasn't learning some things of value but it was things that I intuited on my own and led to dead ends rather than open paths.
     One of the problems was that my art training in college, especially in my painting classes, was all concept and no technicque. I was led to believe that my original bent, which I always had, was my best hope for success. The idea was that if I kept "pushing the envelope" eventually I'd have a breakthrough like Schnabel or Salle. It gave me a fairly large ego which acted like a protective bubble around me and pretty much kept me from valuing or gaining a productive art education from my instructors. I've always been fairly disciplined when it comes to making art and I guess I just figured I'd go to my grave with a treasure trove of unknown and unseen paintings. What I didn't get at the time was that the reason my paintings were going unnoticed was because they really weren't very good. They had bits and pieces that stood out but they weren't cohesive and I couldn't channel one successful painting into ten more. I was painting in a figurative style, from life and photos, but I was using technicques and principles gleaned from abstract and non-objective painting. Little wonder that they had a kind of "jack of all trades, master of none" feel to them. Once I had figured this out I realized I had to make some drastic changes in my approach and my thinking. I was "ready to learn".
        In order to really learn, I had to check my ego at the door of the atelier. I had to be ready to trust my instructors instincts without question. I think my instructor had an inkling of what I was going through because on the first painting, a small still life of oranges, he had me paint those oranges over at least ten or twelve times. Yet on my first pass at them I was getting praise from my fellow students. Wax on wax off. If my instructor had told me to paint while standing on my head or using my left hand I would have done it. A vessel that's already full cannot be filled. Each time I go into the atelier I try to think of myself as an empty vessel, what will I learn today. Even though I paint at home and exhibit and sell work, when I am at the studio, I am a student, I am there to learn. If I went there thinking that I know as much as my instructor, or that I have different ideas about things, how could I learn? Ultimately it doesn't matter if down the road my style is similar to my instructor's or not, the point is that if you subjugate your self to the knowledge of your instructor than eventually you will be able to be more objective about evaluating your own work and not fall instantly in love with everything that you make. That was my problem when I was working on my own; if everything is good than nothing is good.
     I see students impeding their own progress all the time. I want to yell at them that I'm not really any better than they are, I'm just good at following directions and realizing that there's a reason behind every method. After you've been studying for a while it's only natural to assume that the things you learned early on no longer apply because now you're more experienced. That's false. The basics that are learned in the beginning are life long skills that will always apply. Sometimes we artists and art students have this idea in our head that mastery means art becomes effortless and easy and inspiration rises to the forefront. We believe this because that's what our Art history classes have taught us. Again false. Well known artists who proclaim their easy mastery often make art that's stultifying and cliche ridden. If you seriously wish to realize your potential as an artist one must realize that it's a life long process of learning and discovery. One must always be "ready to learn".

   As I begin to dust off those winter blues, and the days begin to warm, I can't help but reflect on the past couple of months. One highlight was that I went to see the Spanish painting exhibit at the Guggenheim museum. There were a lot of incredible paintings but for me the Goyas stole the show. His still life paintings, which are rarely seen, were a revelation. One could imagine that Chardin and Goya would have had a great time hanging out together and talking painting. Or maybe not. Legend has it that Chardin was a bit of a tight-ass. Goya's figure paintings are like what Chardin's could have been if he had painted the figure with the same aplomb used in his still lifes. A few Velasquez paintings also, but mostly minor paintings except for the one of the woman sewing, for which I had a mind blowing experience. Looking at it from about six feet away, I thought "okay, pretty good, looks sort of unfinished.". But then I looked at it from a ramp across from the other side of the museum (one of the great things about the Guggenheim) and it was wholly realized and had a presence rarely to be found in figure painting. I said to myself " now I get it!"
         Working in my converted garage-studio was a little rough this winter. Usually, if the temperature stays above freezing, I can do okay with my two heaters plugged in. The up side is that when it got too cold it forced me to come up with a way to keep painting so I started doing interior scenes, which were different and a lot of fun. I'd like to do more but with the daylight savings time switched earlier, theres too much light coming in. For one of the interiors that was only partly finished I had to tape garbage bags to all the windows in the living room. I told my wife that she should invite people over because I'm pretty sure that I've come up with the next big thing in suburban haute-couture.
        I've also been working at least one day a week on portrait painting. I'm making slow but steady progress and the great thing is that even though the mind set for painting a portrait is so different from still life or landscape, I find that when I make inroads in my portraits, my other paintings seem to benefit as well. At least it seems that way. I'm torn between wanting to paint with the panache of Manet or Sargent, yet I'm also blown away by Ingres and Degas. In more current styles, I'm inspired by Jacob Collins and Anthony Ryder, yet i still have a soft spot for more expressive artists such as Odd nerdrum and Lucian Freud. Right now, my portraits are probably more in line with the more realistic schools. I start with a fairly tight pencil drawing, which is then transferred to a canvas and worked up with the usual rub-out imprimatura, glazes and scumbles. Once the imprimatura is set I paint from the focal paint using a window-shade technicque, trying to maintain the unity and integrity of the whole as I go along. It's kind of like walking a tight rope without a net.
    Things have been going pretty well in the classroom. I decided to ratchet things up a notch in my painting class. The great thing about the fact that I'm still studying is that I can take things that I've newly learned and pass it on to my students. Theres nothing funnier than hearing an inner-city kid say "Yo Mr.S, what painting string should I be using? Wheres the Burnt Umber?" These kids are painting still life paintings that they get to work on for forty minutes a day, at eight o clock in the morning, using acrylic paint. Yet they never complain, and there paintings look great. It takes me at least an hour of painting before i feel like i'm getting my groove on. My students leave me awestruck and inspired. Like they say on the Sopranos "what a great thing this thing of ours is!" I got to get my butt in gear and clean up and reorganize the studio. It's starting to look like a refugee camp. Someone was talking to me the other day about that famous photo of Francis Bacon's studio and mine isn't too far off the mark.