Category: Notes On Painting

Talking A Good Game Is Easier Than Painting

Posted on

Head On

Philip Guston "Web" 1975 on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY in "Paint Made Flesh" show.
Philip Guston “Web” 1975 on view at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY in “Paint Made Flesh” show.

“Paint Made Flesh” originated at the Frist Center in Nashville and then stopped at the Philips Collection in DC before arriving at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. It features an all star lineup of top-shelf, painter’s work from 1952 to 2006. I was asked to make some short comments on the painting of my choice. The MAG sent me the tiniest jpegs of the collection and I spotted Philip Guston’s “Web” painting in there so I claimed it. I had seen this painting at the Modern when they had their sensational Guston retrospective a few years back. I was given a brief opportunity to preview this show at the MAG (It opens this Saturday) and it will be an overwhelming treat for painters.

I used my smoothest delivery to record these comments for their audio tour. It can be accessed at the show with your cell phone.

I’m Paul Dodd and I’m happy to say a few words about Philip Guston’s painting entitled “Web”.

After a very successful run as a painter of gorgeous abstracts, Philip Guston decided that he wanted to “tell stories” and he returned to the figure. These late paintings are blunt, humorous and dark. Here he depicts himself face down on the ground, his monstrous, bloodshot eye has looked too much or seen too much yet he is still looking, eye wide open. He poured his entire life into painting and and he confronted it head on. He recognized the absurdity of it all and had the graphic skills to express it, often painting about the act of painting itself.

You have to move back a bit to take in the scope of this landscape, the dramatic advance of the spiders capitalizing on the artist’s inertia and the blood pool that stops abruptly and floats in transparent space while his wife, Musa, his life-affirming source, pops up at his side.

I find Guston’s late work to be heroic in its openness and thrilling in its directness. I hope you enjoy it.

Now if I had a cell phone I could hear it back.

2 Comments
Posted on

Considering The Space

Considering the space as your first move
Considering the space as your first move

In painting class last week our teacher, Fred Lipp, was discussing his painting that was recently on display in the faculty show. It is a tour de force and it was a pleasure to hear him discuss it. He talked about his approach to creating this work and coincidentally it overlapped with the way he teaches us to think about our work.

Fred guides us by constantly reminding us to address the worst first and the whole trick is to be able to identify the “the worst.”. And if you don’t start a piece by throwing down a whole lot of “worst” you will have a lot less headaches. It is important to consider the space, the white rectangle, the whole, right from the onset.

Fred strives to achieve maximum results from minimal information so that very first mark must work with the space. “Always address the whole”. Fred says he knows what he is after but he doesn’t know how he will do it. That is the adventure. And he has the confidence to know he can pull it off. He thrives on improvisation and each move is a dialog with the whole.

The Little Theater has a promo display of free New Yorker magazines and I grabbed one between sets at last night’s Margaret Explosion gig. Peter Schjeldahl reviewed a retrospective of the Flemish artist, Luc Tuymans, on display in Columbus, Ohio. Although I had never hear of him, Schjeldahl described him as “the most challenging painter in the recent history of the art.” Tuymans was quoted as saying, “untill I get to the middle of the process — its horific. It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing but I know how to do it, and it’s very strange.” Schjeldahl says this, “— uncertain ends, confident means is as good a general definition of creativity as I know.

2 Comments
Posted on

Out There

Fritz (Fred) Lipp "Out There" Watercolor 2009
Fritz (Fred) Lipp “Out There” Watercolor 2009


Detail of Fred Lipp Watercolor “Out There” 2009

My snapshot does not do this beautiful painting justice. It is a watercolor by Fred Lipp entitled “Out There” and it is on display in the Lucy Byrne Gallery in the Memorial Art Gallery. I suggest you stop by and see it. This painting does so much with space that it almost becomes sculptural. And it shares its name with one of my favorite Eric Dolphy songs.

1 Comment
Posted on

In Ovo

Illa Loeb In Ovo at Nazareth Art Center in Rochester, NY
Illa Loeb “In Ovo” on display at Nazareth College Art Center

In egg. In embryo. “In Ovo“, a show by local artist, Illa Loeb, may still be up at Nazareth’s Margaret Colacino Gallery. The show officially ended yesterday but the student run space is still accessible. We saw the show with Peggi’s mom and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Peggi wheeled her mom from piece to piece while providing a running, descriptive commentary. The heroic commentary was intended to engage her mom while her defenses are down. Peggi’s mom loves art and we love art but the art that we love hardly ever overlaps. We have seen a lot of art together and difficult, non literal art heightens the experience for both of us.

Illa Loeb, a former student of Fred Lipp, creates luscious, painterly, three dimensional art. Her work has an intensely physical hands on feel. You want to touch her work and she does exactly that. She photographs herself wearing her pieces like clothing or aprons. She created “An Alphabet” of with charcoal and vaseline on her mouth and transferred the look of the letters on her lips to paper. Photos of this process are on view on a monitor but you have to ask the student attendee to turn it on.

1 Comment
Posted on

New Tricks, Old Dog

I shot this dark movie in Steve Hoy’s trailer in Tennessee.

I was laying in the outline of a head and fussing with trying to get it right but I couldn’t when it dawned on me that I should always be painting the whole thing at once. I moved on, addressing the whole instead of beating up the parts and I had much better luck. I already knew this.

More photos from Tennessee

1 Comment
Posted on

Going Green

Green pond in Durand Eastman Park
Green pond in Durand Eastman Park

We have had so much rain around here this summer that people are comparing our weather to Oregon or Washington State. The ponds in Durand look like pea soup and we keep spotting green on the walls of the street pool even though the chlorine level reads right. I’m not complaining. I could care less about the weather. Our tomatoes are doing great.

I looked at the pictures in “Wolf Kahn’s America” for about four weeks and then continued reading the book. He is as fluid and colorful a writer as he is a painter. In fact John Updike wrote the Introduction and I kept stumbling over that. This quote struck me. “A subject is worth painting only when it transcends the everyday and gets to represent an over-arching insight. This insight only reveals itself in the course of work.” I kept wrestling with it because I am so drawn to the everyday.

7 Comments
Posted on

Maximum Security

Paul Dodd Crime Face at Schweinfurth Art Center
Paul Dodd Crime Face at Schweinfurth Art Center

We drove to Auburn yesterday for the Artist’s Reception for the “Made In NY 2009” show at the Shweinfurth Art Center. One of my favorite Crime Faces was accepted in this show and it was given a prime spot in the center room. They have good taste in Auburn or maybe it’s just that they have the maximum security State Correctional Facility here and they recognized one of their own.

Sarah Palin was there yesterday with the first dude celebrating William Seward’s decision to purchase Alaska. Seward, radical opponent of slavery, practiced law in Auburn, became governor of New York and then Secretary of State under Lincoln before returning to Auburn. He made the decision to purchase Alaska from the Russians, a call that was ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly”.

We were delighted to see our friends, Alice and Julio, at the opening and the four of us darted around the room picking our favorites. We were the last ones to leave. Peggi, Alice and Julio can be seen studying Scott McCarney’s piece in the background of the blowup of this photo. Auburn, like so many small cities in New York, saw it’s heyday about a century ago and has settled in as a beautiful town.

1 Comment
Posted on

Less Is Still More

Street kids sketches by Paul Dodd, oil on craft paper

Painting never gets any easier. Make that a big PERIOD at the end of that last sentence. Developments, realizations and even breakthroughs only open the door to a new set of problems. Last night I sat down in front a Crime Face painting that I recently considered done. It still had a problem with it and I tried a few things that only made the problem more obvious so I sat back down and thought, “Do I really enjoy the struggle?”

Without answering that question I carried on and found a familiar solution. White paint! I painted out the problem. Gone. It’s a funny thing how often the “less is more” method works in art or music. It can’t be any sort of modernist concept because it is too sturdy. And it only intensifies the remaining interactions or dialog.

I started a new painting project with some street kids from a local shelter. I took photos of them so my source material is considerably better than the tiny mugshots from the Crimestoppers page of the newspaper. I’m hoping to involve the kids with the whole project somehow but I haven’t figured out the details. I did these sketches the other night and may try some more tonight.

Duane Sherwood is guest posting to Kevin Patrick’s “Juke Box in the Sky” site and that can only mean vintage Jamaican music like this gem from Prince Buster.

1 Comment
Posted on

Enjoying The Problems

Frontier Telephone guy out back
Frontier Telephone guy out back

The telephone company had their trucks out back all day yesterday but we were too busy to go down and see what was going on. They showed up again this morning and woke us up. So right after coffee we headed down the hill to investigate. The guy up in the ladder figured a truck pulled down the wires where they crossed the road. Just as I was wondering whether our neighbors were without phone service one of them drove by smiling and talking on his cell phone.

Only have two more painting classes this year before summer break. Our painting teacher, Fred, told me I was on a roll. I looked unsure and he asked if I was aware of that. I said, I feel like I have improved by a small margin and I held my thumb and forefinger close together. He said, “But you are enjoying the problem solving.” And damn if I don’t keep missing the big picture.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Ten Six By Six

Paul Dodd Crime Faces for upcoming Rochester Contemporary Sis by Six Show
Paul Dodd Crime Faces for upcoming Rochester Contemporary Sis by Six Show

I really enjoyed doing these small paintings on canvas paper.  I knocked out about twenty in the last two weeks and was planning on submitting them all to the Rochester Contemporary 6 by 6 Show. But then someone told me there was a limit of ten entries per person. When I found that out I kicked around whether I should be submitting the ten I like the least or the the ten I liked most.

I settled on the later and spread them all out on our kitchen floor yesterday so Peggi, her mom and I could pick our ten favorite. Peggi’s mom was a little disturbed by the women with no pupils and she she joked that none of them were exactly good looking. Of course I thought I was going to submit the the ones I liked regardless of what they thought but I was easily swayed by the two astute Fourniers. And it turned out the ten best didn’t exactly work together so we chose the best group of ten. They are twenty bucks a piece at RoCo.

1 Comment
Posted on

Untitled

Two of Peggi Fournier pieces submitted to the Six by Six Show at Rochester Contemporary
Two of Peggi Fournier pieces submitted to the Six by Six Show at Rochester Contemporary

I know which pieces I’m going to be scrambling for when they open the cash registers at the upcoming 6 by 6 show at Rochester Contemporary. My only problem is that I can’t decide which piece I like most of the two mixed media pieces that Peggi Fournier submitted.

I parked around the corner from RoCo and was cutting across the Episcopal Church property as the bells chimed five o’clock, the official deadline. I had to fill out duplicate forms for each of Peggi’s pieces and the ten of mine, twenty four in all. My crime faces all had the same name so I swung a deal with the girl there make copies of the first one. Peggi’s pieces were untitled so I left the space provided for “title” blank thinking that “Untitled” would actually be a title.

On my way out I noticed someone sitting on the sidewalk sketching the church on a six by six inch board.

1 Comment
Posted on

“Come On. We’re Goin’ Downtown.”

Paul Dodd "Crime Face 01" 2008 headed for the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY
Paul Dodd “Crime Face 01” 2008 headed for the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn NY

Back in the early eighties Peggi and I held a wedding reception for the bass player in our band. He and his wife got married in a church and everyone came back to our house for a party. Their parents and family and our friends were all there and I was spinning records in the living room. The bass player’s brother asked if it was ok if he set some fireworks off in the backyard and I said “Sure.” There was a tremendous boom in the back but I didn’t pay much attention. Those things sort of scare me. I kept playing records.

Our neighbors and people from blocks away called 911 and and the next thing I know there was a cop at the door. He asked me if I was the owner of the house. I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Come on. We’re going downtown”. There were about ten cop cars on the street by this time and they had already spotted the crater in the backyard.

I said, “Wait. I have to go to the bathroom.” I went upstairs and the cop followed me up. I went in the bathroom and he wouldn’t let me close the door. He came into our tiny bathroom with me. I told him, “Look, I don’t really have to go to the bathroom. I’m just stalling, trying to figure out what to do.” He ushered me downstairs, put handcuffs on me and had me sit in the back seat of his car out in front of our house. I noticed the woman across the street looking out her window while I sat there with the dome light on.

I kept saying that I didn’t know anything about the boom. They kept me out in the car for over an hour while the “Exterminating Angel” like party going on inside turned into a a heated moral dilemma. The groom’s brother worked for the City and he had more explosives in his car so he didn’t want to confess and risk losing his job. There was a lawyer in the crowd he said he would represent me. We all showed up in court the next morning but the arresting officer never showed so they dropped the case.

I was thinking of this story this morning when I put the crime guy (above) in our car. I entered him in the “Made In NY” show at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn and he was accepted. I’m taking this guy downtown.

3 Comments
Posted on

High School Crime Face

Felix Esquilin portrait
Felix Esquilin portrait


detail from Felix Esquilin’s portrait at the Village Gate – click photo for full drawing

I like the idea of First Fridays a lot. I’m talking about the effort to coordinate openings on the same night of the month at various galleries around town. Bill Jones is developing a website to replace this one. We checked it last Friday before heading out. You can only take in so much. Our favorite from last Friday wasn’t even on the list and we stumbled on it on our way to see the Respect Sextet. It was a high school art show upstairs at the Village Gate. This kid, Felix Esquilin, makes it look easy.

Leave a comment
Posted on

A Lot More Work To Do

Cherry tree in bloom out front
Cherry tree in bloom out front

The Bop Shop’s Tom Kohn comes from a family of hunters and he told me he liked my post on the deer. He said he reads my blog every day now and this kind of threw me off so I didn’t post anything yesterday to throw him off.

I’ve been working on some six by sixes for the upcoming RoCo show. I spotted my stuff from last year in the bottom row of this photo. I submitted prints of paintings last year and never imagined they would sell. I really felt bad when they did, like I had ripped someone off. So this year I’m doing real, miniature paintings and it has been a lot of fun. Pete LaBonne was in town last week and he told us, “I have a lot more work to do before I record again. You know, to come up with something I can listen to when it’s done.” I know exactly what he means. That’s why I am happy to contribute art work to this RoCo show even tough they take 100% and even keep the ones that don’t sell. Like the Clothesline Show for the MAG, this is their largest fundraiser.

Our cherry tree blossoms came out today so I grabbed this shot while still in my pjs. Peggi and I spent about an hour this morning swinging a sledge hammer at an old stump in front of our house. It has been rotting since we moved in here it’s time to remove it. We borrowed a pointed sledge hammer from Rick and Monica. Monica had a name for the the tool that I have forgotten. It’s killer. I’m sore all over.

We took a walk and followed what sounded like the world’s biggest woodpecker. We used our ears as tracking devices while he worked away on tall hollow tree. When we got close but spooked him and watched as he flew to another tree. It was a beautiful Pileated, like Woody Woodpecker.

It’s Brad Fox‘s birthday today. We are the same age for two days. I plan on giving him a call as soon as I finish this entry.

2 Comments
Posted on

But What About?

Art Music blackboard message at the Ctreative Workshop
Art Music blackboard message at the Ctreative Workshop

When I showed up for class at the Creative Workshop I found this message on the board. I have an interest in the two disciplines. I know Fred Lipp has a day class on Tuesdays and I wondered if he might have posted these notes. The only time I remember him addressing the class with chalk in hand was when he drew a diagram of his winter accident. He is not the demonstration kind of teacher.

When he showed up last for class (he is that kind of teacher) I asked him if he wrote the note. He said no and and asked if there was something I wanted to add. I said, “Improvisation”, and he wrote that on the board.

Leave a comment
Posted on

That’s My Dad

Orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House in Rochester, NY painted by Leo Dodd
Orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House in Rochester, NY painted by Leo Dodd

My father likes to say he “can’t talk without a pencil” and it is pretty much true. Armed with a pencil he talks better than anyone I know. He knocked this painting off in our last class and it knocks me out. It’s a sketch of the orchard in front of the Stone Tolan House on East Avenue and it was done from a sketch in one of his many sketch books.

2 Comments
Posted on

Anne Havens Open Source

Ann Havens’ art

These are not Anne Havens’ colors but they could be. Peggi and I bought this piece years ago at a Pyramid Art Center show and I photographed it tonight in very low light. It hangs over our washing machine in the basement in the laundry slash band room. I love this piece and I was immediately attracted to it. Still am and don’t know why but that is the fun of it. I still don’t know who won the game of tic tac toe. It’s almost like I don’t want to know. It is too nicely drawn to look at what it depicts. And I love the beaker!

We were very fortunate to have Anne try out her “I’m moving to Florida routine” with us at the recent RoCo opening. It was delightful. She explained that she just gets so depressed in the dark winter months that she doesn’t want to do it anymore. She told us she only wears black here but wears white in Florida and she said it like she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. She told us she  “is thinking of changing her name to Annie.”

We are very happy for her.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Exactitude Is Not Truth

Four drawings-portraits perhaps - by Matisse in 1947
Four drawings-portraits perhaps – by Matisse in 1947

I only have a few days left with the “Matisse Portraits” book that I checked out of the downtown library. I’m going to have to remove all the bookmarks and give it up. It is so jam packed with sensational drawings that it took me a few weeks before I could even read the copy. Peggi has been page turning Ann Rule’s “Every Breadth You Take” while I stare at drawings until I fall asleep.

Now that I have been able to get to some of the text I’m finding that Matisse is as articulate with words as he is with the brush. In an essay for the catalog for a collection of his work entitled “Exactitude Is Not Truth” (a Delacroix saying)he wrote,

“Among these drawings, which I have chosen with the greatest of care for this exhibition, are four drawings-portraits perhaps—done from my face as seen in a mirror. I should particularly like to call them to the visitors’ attention.

These drawings sum up, in my opinion, observations that I have made for many years about the charactcr of drawing, a character that does not depcnd on forms being copied exactly as they are in nature or on the patient assembling of exact details, but on the profound feeling of the artist before the objects that he has chosen, on which his attention is focussed, and whose spirit he has penetrated.”

It kills me how much volume Matisse gets in these line drawings. He devoted his life to careful observation of nature and dilligent hard work in order to make drawings look this easy.

Leave a comment
Posted on

Ladies Choice

Paul Dodd "Crime Face 46" 2009
Paul Dodd “Crime Face 46” 2009


Paul Dodd “Crime Face 46” detail. Click photo for full painting.

I was preparing an online submission of a group of paintings to a show and I was trying to chose which paintings to feature as details. Naturally I turned to Peggi for her expert opinion. I had a few guys open on my monitor and she said. “Well I have already told you which one I like the best”. And of course it is the one I have featured up top but I hadn’t shot it yet. So I set up my Lowel lights tonight and shot her and few others.

2 Comments
Posted on

Public Fruit

Public Fruit
Public Fruit

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon we watched the gallery assistant pull the shades at Rochester Contemporary so we could see the PowerPoint display on LA’s cornfield project. L.A.-based writer artist and curator Janet Owen Driggs from the Metabolic Studio, a charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation, discussed our roles as industrial eaters and the new art movement toward not bullying nature. Her slides took us from Donald Judd’s aluminum boxes to Robert Smithson’s beautiful earth art to the political ramifications of public fruit. Janet used to paint but has turned her energy toward Edible Estates and Fallen Fruit and Islands of LA.

We stopped at Home Depot on the way home and bought a bunch of seeds for the garden.

Leave a comment