Recent Pastels

These are four of eight pastels I did, in April of this year, while I was in Florida. They were all done from photographs that I took along the Gulf coast of the Florida panhandle.
I like using pastels while traveling .The paper and finished drawings both fit in a zippered portfolio. The pastels all fit into a hinged box. And my easel and drawing board sets up quickly.  There is no wet bulky canvases, and nothing to spill.
The shrimp boat drawing is a composite of three photographs taken in Apalachicola. The pelican was part of a different photo taken at the same location.
      

I like using pastels because of the freedom
they allow. Pastels  by their nature are not a precise medium, they are chunky blocks of color, so they force me to loosen up and let them take me where they will.
The three men in an oyster boat drawing was done from a photo taken at Eastpoint, a small fishing village just 30 minutes east of Apalachicola. I was driving south along Hwy 98 when I saw this boat moving in the opposite direction. It was late afternoon, the water and sunlight were perfect. I  thought I have to at least try to capture it in a photo.
I turned the van around , raced ahead of the boat,grabbed my camera, and got out just in time to get the photograph. 
Pastels is a very direct medium. There is no preparation, no mixing, or thinning with oil or water, just have color and mark. Also, pastels are very physical, at least the way I use them.
I'm not one to apply some color and smear it around. I use pastels more like crayons, filling the page with marks using my whole arm and shoulder, applying one color on top of another.
The drawing of the house among the liveoaks was done from a photo I took in Apalachicola. I was walking throughout the town taking photographs for possible pastel drawings, when I came across this small yellow house in a fairytale landscape.
Pastels are all about color. They are quick, direct

and inexpensive. They beg for bold experimentation. If it doesn't work out, try another one. I always use colored paper for pastel drawings. To me, white paper leaves pastels looking washed out. Most of these drawings were done on bright orange paper. The color of the paper often shows through adding a nice warm tone to the drawing.
This final drawing was done from a photograph taken from the Carrabelle river bridge in the town of Carrabelle Florida, just a half hour north of Eastpoint. The photo was taken just before sunset. The water in the marshes creates a beautiful almost abstract scene.

On Creativity

Often when working on a painting, at some point in the process, I get into a zone where time stops, and values, color choices, and brush strokes just seem to flow out of me. It is almost like someone else is making the choices for me. Other artists have been quoted saying the creative process brings them closer to God. Or God is in the creative process. There does seem to be an other worldly quality when in the middle of being creative.
A neurologist would say this creative feeling comes from  tapping into the right side of our brains. Brain scans have shown, when people are creative, the right side of their brains are more active. There are also case studies of people who have had  brain damage on their left side, and become more creative.
I once heard an interview of a song writer on the radio. The composer was asked about her writing process. She said that sometimes the writing is difficult and slow. But many times  it is like the music  just flows through her.She said it is as if the songs are streaming above her already written and somehow she is able to tap into it.
In one sense creativity is problem solving. The artist or scientist, or writer, or musician, or engineer is confronted with a problem. If there is no ready  acceptable answer, each person in their field tries to approach their problems from a different perspective. Finding the answer where there isn't one, is creativity.

 I remember judging a children's art show and being delighted by a little boy's creative problem solving. He drew the side of a truck on a road indicated by two parallel lines running parallel to the bottom of the page. Then he was confronted by a problem. He wanted to show the road making a left turn with another truck going the new direction. He only knew one way to make a truck and he didn't understand linear perspective. He solved his problem by drawing the lines of the road up the middle of the paper and turning his truck on end. By turning the paper you now see the truck going in a new direction. That is creativity!

My ideas about art and creativity were brought into question during an art history class at Eastern Michigan University. An abstract artist showed slides of his paintings done in the sixties. The paintings were all the same size and appeared to be large. "Each painting was divided into a square grid pattern," the artist explained,     "and each square of the grid was randomly assigned a number." "Then like a 'paint by number' with each number representing a different color, I painted in the squares." Because The numbers were randomly assigned, no two paintings were alike. Was that creative? Was the second one? I asked him if he ever considered  changing the color assignments if he thought it might make  a more interesting painting. He said no because it wouldn't be true to his original intent.

As a painter, without  the problem solving, the challenge to do something that has never been done before,without the creativity,  then why bother. Art to me is all about the creative process. To finish a painting is a reason to start another one.

Artist Statement: Drawing

I like drawings that leave something of the artist behind. Drawings that represent what the artist feels as well as what he  sees.  The marks on the paper in the end will look like the model, but at the same time the marks will still look like charcoal scratched on paper, identifiable marks, like a signature, that only that individual artist can make.

I like the spontaneity and lifelike quality that you can only get by drawing from a live model.  I have done many drawings from photographs,   but drawings from photographs look like drawings from photographs. The static lens of a camera sees something very different from our constantly moving, adjusting and focusing eyes.

My media of choice is soft compressed charcoal on large white paper. I used to tell my students, "Be bold, work large, make your blacks black." I try to take my own advice. Often my work is characterized by  dark bold lines, that I  then  smear and scuff and scratch with an eraser and make them my own.