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Middle Valley Road -- Watercolor on Cold-pressed Paper
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When I first began watercolor painting, I must admit to having suffered from a bit of angst and frustration with my inability to control the materials and to master the ratio of water to paint, causing me to suffer from a lack of precise control over my work. I was always too tight and too controlled. I was always thinking "inside the box," trying to develop an identical likeness for my subject matter. It took quite a bit of time, not to mention paint and paper, through constant practice and repetition, to finally learn how to loosen up a bit.
On another plane, I was able to get some instruction by constantly going to workshops over the past three years, constantly trying to develop and assimilate others' techniques and methods to augment my growing knowledge of watercolor methods and techniques. Not all of my teachers and workshop leaders were that good, and some were downright poor; however, I did manage to learn something from every one of them, allowing me to advance my thinking and my technical ability a tad more at each juncture. Local artists such as John James, Sally Millspaugh and Tim Weaver played key roles in my development as an artist at a very pivotal point in my career, constantly urging me on and voicing a proper balance of criticism with reinforcement of skills. Recently, I participated in a watercolor workshop featuring NJ artist Ed Havas, and I was further encouraged to pursue my dream.
I think I was definitely heading in the right direction as a developing artist, but I did not feel a total sense of satisfaction or control over what I was doing; then, three things occurred. First, I discovered the Baum School of Art in Allentown and added some real structure to my artistic development in a discrete educational setting. Baum's Dana Van Horn made me pause and think about tonal values and how to "sculpt" the parts of a piece, even though I was in his life painting class. He made me think about every painting, regardless of its actual subject matter, as a developing landscape. That was followed by my falling into the waiting arms of Bill Wentz and his watercolor class. Happily, we were an immediate "proper fit" and he took me to a new level. Bill Wentz opened me up to the urgency and value of preparing black and white tonal sketches prior to beginning every piece, and he pointed me in the direction of Edgar Whitney's work and writing.
The final part of this pivotal educational process was my obtaining and assimilating three books, one by Whitney himself and two by Ron Ranson, also an English watercolorist and one of Whitney's star pupils. Now, having read these books and understanding form, function and composition much better, I feel more attuned to what the proper construction of art really entails.
Sadly, Whitney is long gone from this earth, but Ranson is still with us. I am so anxiously looking forward to spending an entire week with Ranson this coming September, 2008. Who knows what heights my work will reach, or what direction my growing watercolor skills will take, once I meet with him and have him work side-by-side with me for five entire days! I am floating on air with anticipation, and I cannot wait until the fall approaches and my time with Ranson commences!
What I produce now seems to flow much more easily because I don't have to think about technique or methodology to the same degree that I had previously. My subconscious mind already knows the mechanical aspect of how to create the piece. What I must concentrate on is studying the scene and making an emotional and spiritual connection with what I see. Thinking must become more temporal; emotional association must prevail. Only when I have made the emotional link to the scene before me can I begin to process it and make it appear on my two-dimensional surface as a feeling. If I have made the connection properly, my tonal value sketch should come more easily, but it must come. I cannot paint until I have developed a sense of where to place my lights and darks and where I want to move objects in order to convey a balanced view of the scene. I no longer see, but feel. Once I have gravitated to that level, I feel as though I am where I need to be.
The technical part of the painting process for me is about 25% thought and compositional construction and 50% tonal value sketch and refinement of shape placement, forgetting totally about fine details until the final stages of the painting process. If I have done my planning, thinking and compositional development properly, then, the final painting process of actually placing paint on paper should occupy a mere 25% of my time. The painting should flow far more easily because all the hard work has already been done.
The nicest thing that ever happened to me artistically occurred during May of 2008, when someone at the PoconoArts Council's Members' Show drop-off looked at my painting, the one which just garnered the 2008 Blue Ribbon for Watercolor The Walking Stick, and said to me, "I think I know exactly how your felt when you painted that picture." I was transported to Cloud Nine! Through my art, I had just made the ultimate connection with a viewer, and I knew at that precise moment that I had just moved on to a much higher plane in my work. A similar episode was repeated in July of 2008 at the annual juried Courthouse Square Art Show in Stroudsburg when I was honored with a Blue Ribbon for First Place in Watercolor for my narrative painting entitled Home From School.
Certainly not everything I produce is perfect and every now and then, a real clunker evolves; however, I now know the how to paint much better, and when I am teaching in a workshop, I am far more focused and can more easily motivate my students to create a piece that is much better procedurally, allowing for both my own progress and their assimilation of the proper skills and knowledge that will move them in a more appropriate direction for achieving artistic satisfaction.
Baby steps along a long circuitous route to creative happiness.
I can look at something now and get an almost instantaneous sense of where to move objects and how to develop an emotional association with the moment. I now paint from within myself and no longer look into my scene. I am part of it and see it from within and all around me. It is a very special place, a very good place to be!
I am a fine artist in my own mind, at long last. I am a watercolorist and proud to be so, and I am an impressionist by design.
What is most important to me is that I can create a sense of beauty that I feel and can share that emotional connection with my viewers; it feels like magic sometimes. I do what I want now. I paint what I want. I no longer feel constrained by the pressure of trying to please others because I only want and need to please but one entity, myself! I now simply feel my way through a scene and contrive a visual perspective or representation of what I sense, aiming at drawing the viewer into a small area of my heart and soul; it's a very good feeling to know that I can do that. It certainly doesn't work all the time, but when it does, it is pure magic! I am a creator; better yet, I am a gift-giver, for surely an artist gives a gift to humanity with every completed piece he offers up for public consumption!
I was born to paint, but it took me 62 years of Earthly existence to discover that fact, and I will not allow my remaining years on this planet to go underutilized or misspent. I know what I must now do with the balance of my life and I shall endeavor to make the most of my developing artistic skills, honing them at every opportunity, continually sharing my growing artistic knowledge with as many people as there are who wish attend my painting workshops and share in the Thrill of Watercolor, as I now know it.
This is a very good time to be a fine artist! I know because, at last, I am one!
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Upstream Sombrero -- Watercolor on Paper
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