VITA BREVIS
Q. I am outraged! I have been following your pet 'project' for awhile and all I am seeing are insipid pictures of flowers, candy, sticky notes and now a pineapple swan ! Hello! Wake up! Wht aren't you addressing the urgent social issues of economic inequality, our stagnant political structure,pervasive racial prejudice and racism's by-products, world hunger and disease?
- Alyssa M., Cambridge, MA
A. I thought I was.
James Aponovich
From the Sketchbook, pencil on paper
" Flowers are very hard to paint, much harder than faces or landscapes."
-Alex Katz, Pop Artist
THE UNCOMMON CORE
When
Beth and I were asked to write an e-book for the California school system entitled,
How To Read A Painting, I knew that we had our work cut out for us. The book was directed at the seventh grade. I once taught the seventh grade and in fact I was once a seventh grader myself. I knew it as a difficult transitional time in life. The clarity of the childhood vision was clouded over by the way things were 'suppose' to be. It soon became apparent what we were saying to them applies to adults as well. We were trying to explain how to not just look but to see and then see deeper. To wit, may I introduce........
THE AMARYLLIS
I usually paint flowers in the summer or fall when they are in bloom in our garden. The Amaryllis is an exception, it must be painted in winter light.
In my studio
I found an old, exhausted canvas lying around the studio that just had a light wash of a garden scene sketched on it, I knew that it was going nowhere so I covered it in an Iron Oxide ( black) giving me a dark ground. The shape of the canvas seemed appropriate, it's the Golden Section, more or less.
I began painting the flowers all prima, directly onto the dark ground, no room fro error. I had marked where the pot was to be and a small section of the table.
DIALECTIC / DIALOGUE
I have said before that when I use a cloth in a painting, it is to balance what is happening in the other parts, by texture, form and color. Because I had no room below the table to establish the cloth, I placed it on top of the table, in back of the pot, in what I call "the sleeping cat position." ( I once painted a sleeping cat into a still life ).
I chose a brocade fabric with colors, if combined, would result in the same color of the flowers. I hesitate from calling it 'salmon', it doesn't seem right to use the color of the raw flesh of a fish to describe a petal of a flower....or maybe it does.
Amaryllis Flowers ( detail)
James Aponovich
The flowers are what you look at first, they are the stars, the lead singer. The cloth is there for support, the back up singers. I need to bring the eye up and down to both. I could paint water drop on the stem, but before I do that I've established a value gradation in the background, lighter at the bottom, darker at the top, nine values in all.
Amaryllis ( in progress)
James Aponovich
Now, to keep the lower part interesting, I've used some artistic 'smoke and mirrors'. The left side of the cloth is lighter against the background while the right side is darker against the same background, also before I paint the flower pot, the left side of the cloth is darker against the pot while the right side is lighter. There is a constant manipulation of value to keep the eye moving. but maybe the painting is a bit boring and uninspired. Perhaps its time to bring in......
The Greek Chorus
To Be Continued.
{week 23}
Copyright 2015 James Aponovich
