Portraits and the Sitter

An issue facing every portrait painter is the acceptance by the sitter of the finished result.

A recent article in the New York Sun by the London Daily Telegraph writer Neil Tweedie neatly sums up this dilemma.

Tweedie outlines various past and recent, famous and less famous portrait painters who have faced this situation. For some the subject just destroyed the work so others should not see it. For others, they eventually learned to lived with the finished painting.

I have just received back a portrait painting that I gave to a couple to celebrate their wedding. The wife has requested that I rework her nose.

I have another portrait that hangs near my studio awaiting the sitter to return for a final sitting. In this case the sitter is embarrassed that I chose him as a subject and so far has not been brave enough to view the nearly completed work.

The dilemmas of a portrait painter.

After the Tour.

Well the Open Studios Tour is over. The summaries written and mailed in. And I am uncertain if it all was worth while.

Saturday we had only ten people come by. On Sunday twenty-nine. And that includes friends, family, and neighbors who saw my signs and dropped by. About of a third of the visitors were other artists who wanted to see how I do things.

There were no sales (I had some eighty paintings on show). There were three people who were serious enough to ask about prices. At least one of which seemed very interested in a specific painting.

Several of my visitors told me other artists they had visited had complained about the few visitors. Since the tour I have talked to several other artists who say they found the attendance thin. Maybe it is a sign of the times. There has been a lot written recently about the slowness of the art market.

The general tour promotion seemed very good. I cannot suggest where improvements might be made. Even the reception was well attended, though I am not sure that I saw any serious buyers or collectors.

It takes a lot of work to put on such an event. At the moment I am discouraged about doing it again. But who knows how I will feel in six to nine months time.

Busy Time - Getting Ready For My Studio Tour

Each Labor weekend I participate in the Santa Barbara Studio Artists Tour. Some 40 local professional artists open their studios so that art buyers and collectors may see how our art is generated.

I will be demonstrating how I develop a painting from multiple digital images - from choosing the source images, developing a composition, laying out my canvas, mixing my palette, to the production and finishing of a painting.

Come and visit my studio and gallery, and see how it is all done. View some of my recent work.

Next Friday evening (August 29) we will be having a reception at the local Arts Fund Gallery. There you will be able to see an example of each artist's work. Choose which artists you would like to visit and plan your tour for the following Saturday and Sunday (August 30 and 31).

Artists' Studios will open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m each day. The reception is from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

You may purchase maps ($20) at the reception, from any participating artist's studio – including myself, or online at the Santa Barbara Studio Artists website. At the website you may see a complete list of the artists and their work.

See you next weekend?

August has been busy – Retrospective Exhibit

A few weeks ago I heard that a Featured Artist area at our local collaborative Gallery 113 had suddenly become available for the month of August, due to a cancellation.

I quickly signed up and pulled together "A Retrospect of Figurative Watercolors on Paper." consisting of eight paintings from my own collection. They show examples of my work from the period of 1998 to 2001.

Today I mostly paint figurative artwork in oil on canvas. But earlier I created a large body of watercolor paintings on paper. This Retrospective shows selected early works reflecting examples of my evolving interest in the activities of people: the basis of my recent work.

Some works were painted “en plein air,” and finished up in the studio. Others are early examples of my current technique of painting from multiple photographs.

Also, at that time, I was beginning experiments with my palette to find a few light-fast pigments from which to mix my colors. These investigations lead to the limited palette of my recent and current work with its colorful backgrounds and bold painterly details.

In some of these early paintings I began to introduced opaque gouache, the beginnings of my next period where I produced many paintings of gouache on board.

Above: "Feeding The Ducks," Watercolor and gouache on paper. 8-1/4 x 13 inches. June 2001. Painted en plein-air at Los Carneros Lake, Goleta, California.

A new crowd painting - from France

Last Spring we touring France, arriving in Avignon on a Saturday morning. The central square was full of young people sitting, drinking, talking, visiting with friends, or just viewing the activity at the many small tables spread outside the surrounding cafés.

The spring sunshine was warm and encouraging the Plain trees around the square to bud out to make a green and yellow arbor over the scene.

There are over a hundred people shown in the painting – most of them enjoying themselves.

As we joined the crowd, we sipped our own drinks and took photographs to record the event for this new painting: "Saturday Morning In Avignon," 24 x 48 inches, Oil on canvas. Unframed with painted edges.

Brush Fire Problems

It has been a difficult few days. A raging brush fire is just a couple of canyons from our house and studio. For two days we have been under an evacuation warning, sitting with most of our bags packed, ready to go at a moments notice. Others have been forced to evacuate already.

Eighteen years ago we were caught in another faster moving brush fire and had to evacuate with less than five minutes notice. At that time we lost the house and everything in it.

This time we have plenty of notice. But what do you take? I have probably two hundred paintings stored or hanging in the house and studio.

From the last fire we learnt that the most difficult things to replace are personal photographs. Images of the children growing up. Of our parents. Markers of our history. Almost everything else is replaceable. Today we live in a beautiful new and much more fireproof modern home - all paid for from the insurance money. We found that a large number of things we lost really we never did use, and we did not replace. And, those we needed were only things!

This time the first into my car were our personal photographs. Followed by our medications, a change of clothes, just a few simple things. We put the cars in the driveway, ready to go. We have lost power several times over the last few days, making opening the garage doors an issue.

Over the last twenty or so years our computers have become more and more important as a depository of our life's records. A few weeks ago I was solicited for an off site computer backup service (Mozy.com). I use an external hard drive to back up my computer, but with the prior fire in the back of my mind, I have always been nervous of having bothe the original and the backup in the house. The outside service is a division of one of the largest backup organizations in the business. The service cost me $200 for two years. I have about 125GB of data to back up. It took about three weeks to upload all the data the first time. Now changes and new data upload in about half an hour at night. With the new fire, that is peace of mind.

This morning, things look a lot better. Many people have been able to return to their homes. The fire crews are working wonders, helped by diminishing winds and higher humidity. We are not out of it yet, but are moving in the right direction.

Sketching On The Subway - interesting article

There was an interesting article in Friday's (July 4) Los Angles Times. It is about people who commute into Manhattan on the subway, and who sketch their fellow commuters across the aisle. Wish I was a bettter sketcher (I would tend to take digital photos and paint from the images). Also I tend to be too impatient.