I realized a long time ago that Fred’s Lipp’s rules for painting can be applied to just about anything you do in life. There aren’t that many rules but just as you learn them, there are other rules to learn. Tonight I started with “draw the thing that you respond to” and that has opened up some doors.
Leave a commentHow Deep Do You Wanna Go?
OK, how many fundamentals are there anyway?
There is a drawing show at the Memorial Art Gallery now. Margaret Explosion played the opening. We scanned the show during our break and intend to get back over there before it leaves. I take a painting class with Fred Lipp at the Creative Workshop in the basement of the gallery. They have just put up a drawing show of students and teacher work. The kids drawings are the best.
I had a class last night and came away with another one of Fred Lipp’s fundamentals. Fred suggested that I start with what attracted me to the piece.
He asked, “What about the source material makes you want to paint it?” I didn’t have time to reply. He said, “I’m assuming you don’t just paint them because they are there”. I’m not entirely sure about that assumption. I have a high tolerance for the mundane. He was suggesting that I paint what it is that attracts me to the source. “Start with what it is that attracts you to this subject. Get that down first. And then ask what it is that the painting needs.”
This might be obvious to some people but I know I don’t do that. I ususlly start by trying to place the head on the page in the right proportions. And I certainly am not attarcted to a source because it has the right proportions. Turns out I’m getting in the way of my own paintings.
Leave a commentI See An Opening (Update)
Openings are the perfect opportunity to mark time and move on. What am I doing painting these anonymous mugshots from the newspaper when I have such colorful friends?
My opening was supposed to run from 7 to 9 and it went til 11. It was fun. The ginger snaps that Peggi made were a big hit. Someone told me they went really good with beer. I had really interesting conversations with Alice, my mom, Skip Bataglia, Jan Marshall, Peggi, Fred Lipp, Geri, Julie, Elizabeth Agate, and Elaine Heveron. I had a conversation with Beth Brown that fell apart. The one I had with Janet Williams was my favorite. She was standing in front of the close quartered wall of eight, where you could stand no more than four feet away from these guys, and she told me, “I wouldn’t mind being accosted by any of these people.”
I set the alarm in order to meet Peter Monticelli at 8AM at the Little in time to take my other show down before the next one got hung. This required a stop at Starbucks on the way. Once I was awake I remembered how nice the light is in the morning. I ‘m not talking like a painter or anything. I mean it was pretty out.
4 CommentsPost Dumas
This is the first painting I’ve done since taking in the Marlene Dumas show at MoMA last week. My show at the Little is up for one more day. It comes down tomorrow so for one night only, both it and the second half of this last batch of “Crime Face Paintings” is up at the two locations. The second half opens tonight at the Printing and Book Arts Center in the old firehouse on Monroe Avenue. I put the best light in the house on this painting when I hung it over there.
Today is the first friday of the First Friday series of openings this year. Small galleries, scattered all over the city, have openings tonight. So if you are out and about , stop in at the Book Arts Center for “Crime Face Paintings Pt. ll”. Peggi made spicy little ginger snaps (from Shelley’s recipe) for the occasion and dj Sam Patch will provide the music.
02.06.09 – 03.04.09 Printing and Book Arts Center 713 Monroe Avenue
Opening Reception on Friday 02.06.09 7pm – 9pm
DJ Sam Patch will provide music
Cross Country Dreams
We have to take our skis off to cross this creek.
Peggi helped me hang the second half of my Crime Face Paintings at the Printing and Book Arts Center in the old firehouse on Monroe Avenue. She gave a twenty foot high wall a fresh coat of white paint. This is an awkward space with old printing equipment scattered throughout the room but the paintings look pretty good. Still want to fool with the lights some more before the opening on Friday. Mitch Cohen, who runs this place, has a nice sound system but there’s no jack for my iPod so I might have to truck something over there.
We finished hanging in time to stop in at the Little for the last few songs of AMP (Alex, Mick, Peter). They sounded great. Jan Cuminale was there. She went out to her car to get a gift that she was going to drop of around Christmas, before she hurt her knee. It was two tree ornaments of of cross country skiers. The arm on the woman was broken off but they look just like Peggi and I in our cross country dreams, all smilely in space age blue and white outfits. We love them. Might find a place for them year round.
1 CommentPerformance Art
The survey of Marlene Dumas’s work at MoMA was an absolute sensation. I loved it! You have until February 16th to see it for yourself. I was like a kid in a giant candy store as we moved through the show. I didn’t want to make decisions on the work because I didn’t want to leave it. I kept going back to rooms I had already seen so the show wouldn’t come to an end.
I hardly ever take the headsets or those talking stick voice-over things around with me in a gallery. They distract and annoy me. But I caught a sample when I was standing too close to someone and it was Dumas’ voice on the thing. Peggi asked in the museum store if they had the narration on a cd and the clerk told her it was a free download at the iTunes store. I plan to do a personal tour with Marlene and the book back at home.
The Modern has a series entitled, “Artist’s Choice” where they invite artists to curate a show. The artist picks work from the museum’s collection that he or she likes. I could easily have spent the rest of my MoMA time with the Dumas show but Scott McCarney had recommended this so we had to do it. The Brazilian photographer, Vik Muniz, arranged his show in a linear pattern along the walls of two rooms. None of the work had identification tags although some of it was easily recognizable like Duchamp’s snow shovel, Picasso’s cardboard guitar and Joesph Buey’s wool suit. We snaked along with the crowd as if we were on a moving sidewalk. Each piece was related to the previous and the next and we were completely absorbed in the dialog when we heard a loud crash behind us followed by a woman’s voice shouting, “Jesus Christ!”
We instinctively moved toward the action. A guard was picking up the Plexiglas case that housed a work we had just studied. It was one of the more irreverent pieces in the show, a wrinkled up piece of paper by Martin Creed called, “Work #301 and it was part of a rock, paper, scissors combo that Muniz had arranged. An older couple stood by sheepishly, the man who knocked the case over with his bag and the woman who chose that opportunity to publicly berate her husband.
Peggi and I were with Duane Sherwood and we had hooked up with my brother, Mark, at the museum. The four of us were studying the case, which was now cracked, and marveling at the new location of the wad of paper. It was up against the side of the case and you could see a little gob of clear glue in the center of the bottom panel where the paper used to sit.
A women guard behind us let her frustrations out by repeating to all those nearby, “People have to watch where they’re going. It could have been worse. He could have tripped over that rock down there (she pointed to another work in the show that sat on the floor). People have to watch where they’re going.”
The chief security guard came briskly around the corner with a walkie-talkie in is hand. He was sporting a really bad hair piece and it became the center of attention for us. He studied the crumpled up piece of paper and said, “Jesus Christ!”
This theater of the absurd completely overshadowed the show. I don’t even remember finishing it.
Leave a commentAnybody Have A Kind Heart?
We got on the F train in Brooklyn at Fort Hamilton and headed for the Modern in Manhattan. We were sitting at the front of the first car. This line brings you above ground for a few stops before going down under the East River. A very short man with a camouflaged hat got on and started singing a beautiful folk song in Spanish. I gave him a dollar. At the next stop a guy in a trench coat got on with a styrofoam cup that he was rattling. I tried not to look at him.
A women burst through the door right behind him and loudly addressed the passengers, “OK people. I will try to be brief. My husband has abused me, humiliated me. . . etc.” She kept walking to the other end of the car and we tried to tune her out but she worked her way back to us with her hand out, repeating, “Anybody have a kind heart? Anybody have a kind heart?” She said this like it didn’t have a question mark. Next on was a woman with missing front teeth. She was dragging a big black trash bag. She leaned against the pole in front of us and began singing, “I believe the children are the future”.
The distance between stops as the train goes under the river is longer than that between most stops so this train is a magnet for buskers. Duane, our NYC friend and guide, told us he has seen guys bring a whole drum set in, set it up and bang out a hip hop tune. They get of on the other side, cross over and ride back all day long.
Leave a commentThe Same Painting Over and Over
Thanks to Boo Poulin, I know how to pronounce Marlene Dumas’s name. I have watched this video five times now in preparation for the Dumas show at the Modern. I can hardly wait.
4 CommentsTwo Notes
I brought my tripod to the Little Theater last to take a few shots of my painting show before it closes. I found a note tucked up under one of then that read, “Sorry, but this is some of the most unappealing “artwork” I have ever seen”. I was happy to see they were able to get under someone’s skin.
Jaffe sat in with Margaret Explosion for the fourth week in a row. He emailed us this morning to say that he thought “we got to a special place last night”. We found another note in the tip jar at he end of the night. It read, “I.O.U. We accidentally came out without any cash tonight. We saw you on WXXI’s On Stage and really enjoyed your sound. We’ll pick up a cd at your next gig.”
5 CommentsA Very Important Privilege
Peggi’s mom gave us a subscription to Smithsonion Magazine and January’s issue had a great article on the Metropolitan’s Van Gogh “Night Vision show. The author tells how Van Gogh, the best drawer ever, was kicked out of an early drawing class and he quotes Van Gogh telling a friend, “I aim to paint with such expressive force that people will say, I have no technique.”
Turning from abstraction to storytelling, the work Philip Guston created in the last ten years of his life was roundly criticized as being clumsy, crude, artless, cartoony, affected and klutzy”. Guston is quoted as saying, “I got sick and tired of all the purity.”
Musa Mayer, writing in her memoir of her father, recaps a talk Philip gave to a group of students at the University of Minnesota in 1978. He ended his talk with the following remark. “Isaac Babel gave a lovely ironic speech to the Soviet Writer’s Union and ended his talk with the following remark, ‘The party and the government have given us everything, but they have deprived us of one privilage. A very important privilege, comrades, has been taken away from you. That of writing badly’.”
3 CommentsNew Beginning
Jeff Munson dropped off an Amaryllis plant for us this morning. Peggi added it to her centerpiece on our table.We helped him set up Skype for his trip to Mexico. He also gave me a beautiful shot of the “84 Lumber” sign out on Scottsville Road. I plan to add that to the sign section someday.
I spent most of the day in the basement painting. I was geared up to start a new painting and it hit me (again) how it is always a new beginning. Something never done before unless you are determined to repeat your same mistakes. Learning to see and identify your mistakes as such allows you have that redundant new beginning.
But how long does it take to learn Fred Lipp’s proceedural rules? Look at the painting as a whole at every stage and do the fucking worst first.
Leave a commentSatisfaction Is Nothing
“Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing”. Philip Guston told it like it is.
It’s physically tough too. I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago running down the stairs with a painting in my arms. And for months I’ve been watching this dry red patch between my thumb and forefinger get more and more irritated. It’s on the hand I hold my palette with. In the last week I noticed a funky odor when I brought my hand near my nose. I googled “skin oder” and found all sorts of skin cancer links and stories about animals becoming aware of their owner’s cancer before doctors. So I called my doctor and he got me right in.
He had a Joesph Cornell like box on his wall and I took a shot of it. I explained that my palette used to be painted white but I have worn the paint off over the years. My doctor prescribed a low level topical steroid ointment. He said it was probably a reaction to the chemicals in the plywood and suggested that I give my palette a new coat of paint. I thanked him and gave him a post card for my painting show.
2 CommentsEverything Is Right With The World
I found a Hawaii quarter in my pocket today. That completes my little green book. And it made me think of our brand new funky president.
We were going to drive down to New York this evening but we chickened out and called our host, Duane, to tell him we would not be making it. Martin Edic told us last night that Jet Blue had $49 dollar flights so we booked some for an upcoming weekend.
We skied up to the lake and around the ponds. We saw the Mayor of Durand and his posse. The mayor was drinking LaBatts from a can this time and he had a gun for measuring speed. He and his buddies were clocking each other on their sleds and listening to mellow instrumental music. It was eight degrees and sunny.
We checked online to see they had put anything in the Irondequoit Post about my painting show. They had and Peggi read it aloud. She got down to the end and read that I have a second opening on February 6. Only then did we realize we would be in New York City for my opening in Rochester. Jet Blue was very nice about switching the dates.
The first opening went well. I almost forgot that the walls are a burnt orange. Jaffe sat in with the band on piano. He told me, “I’ve seen some piddily ass artwork in here. This stuff is real”. I thought that was kind of funny.
Leave a commentEverything But Clean The Floors
Not these mugs again. This is just a little show at a little gallery. In fact it’s called the “Little Cafe”. But it has taken me most of the week to get ready for it. I made some small changes to one of the paintings a few minutes ago and I’m supposed to meet Peter Monticelli there tomorrow morning at eight to hang the show. I never see eight AM. This requires setting the alarm.
I counted the lights when we played at the Little last week and I’m bringing one piece for each light. Five will go on front wall behind where the band sets up. I settled the order tonight by spreading them out in our living room. I had a different five lined up here until Peggi put her two cents in. She was right. I might shuffle a few more around again when I get there.
I emailed the Democrat & Chronicle, City News and the Irondequoit Press about the show and Linda Quinlan from the Irondequoit Press called to ask if she could do an interview. She stopped by and we looked at the paintings. She was really sweet. She said she “did everything but clean the floors” for the paper. We gave her some Yogi Tea. We don’t read the fortunes anymore. I doubt those Yogi Tea people are real yogis.
1 CommentYou Are Invited
I numbered the backs of my paintings today so I can keep track of them. I plan to put half of this last batch in to a show at the Little Theater Cafe that opens next Wednesday, January 14th at 7pm and the other half in a show at the Printing and Book Arts Center that will open on February 6th.
The faces are all from recent Crimestoppers pages in the Democrat & Chronicle. I sent an invite to the Monroe County Sheriff and whoever it is that answers the mail at info@roccrimestoppers.com. I hope you can stop by for the opening party. You can preview the paintings here.
LOCAL CRIME FACES – RECENT PAINTINGS BY PAUL DODD
Show Is Split Between Two Locations
01.10.09 – 02.07.09 Little Theater Cafe
240 East Avenue Rochester NY
Opening Reception on Wednesday 01.14.09 7pm to 9:30pm
Margaret Explosion will play at 8pm
02.06.09 – 03.04.09 Printing and Book Arts Center
713 Monroe Avenue Rochester, NY
Opening Reception on Friday 02.06.09 7pm – 9pm
DJ Sam Patch will provide the music
For Alice
I’m reading a book by Musa Meyer, Philip Guston’s daughter, called “Night Studio”. Wow. There’s a good chunk of therapy in there. It is impossible to be a great artist and a good father. Philip Guston is no saint unless you redefine “saint”. And I do. Saints, to me, are heroes. They are not all good and that makes them more godlike. Philip Guston is the patron saint of existentialists.
His late paintings are his best. They blow me away. What more could you ask for in a painting? They are meaty as hell, ugly and beautiful at the same time. And heroic. The MAG in Rochester has one of the late paintings called “Reverse”. It’s a painting of the back of a stretched canvas leaning against a wall. There is an incredible sense of form like R. Crumb. Probably a white wall but not in Guston’s hands. This is a whole environment. There’s a bare bulb from his closet childhood and a chain swinging like the light has just been turned on. The confrontation has begun.
This is my favorite painting in the Memorial Art Gallery’s collection and it manages to get better each time I see it. The MAG has put it in the best spot in the whole place. Its almost has its own room. And there is even a bench across from it, not some dumb piece of art but a bench you can sit on. Look for this painting.
Leave a commentGive It Up For The Little Guy
We finally made it over to the Russian Icon show at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY. We intended to go with Peggi’s mom but she hasn’t been getting around very well. Yesterday was the last day of the show and I was glad to see that it was really crowded.
I loved this piece, entitled “Archangel Deisis with Christ Emmanuel”, from about 1650-1700. It looks downright contemporary or at least from this century’s “seventies”. The youthful Christ in the center looks cocky and mischievous, his head full of big ideas. And the former top dogs, Archangels Michael and Gabriel, respectfully give it up with a dose of healthy suspicion.
Leave a commentOver The Top
We don’t have cable tv but my mother-in-law does and she likes Fox News. So it is pretty jarring walking in on programming like this. Sometimes I forget that the world has gone over the top.
We previewed the dinner menu on the flyer by the tv and I set my sites on the “Chicken Parm”. We headed down the halls to the dining room and walked slowly by the residents art that hangs outside the dining room. Peggi’s mom sked what I thought of this painting of asparagus by E. T. Zogby and I said, “I love it”. Peggi’s mom laughed and said , “I figured you would like this”.
Peggi’s mom likes art and used to volunteer at the Detroit Institute of the Arts but she is always mystified by modern art and used to try to get me to explain why I like it. The best I could do was say, “It’s fun to look at”. She wrestled with the whole concept whenever we went to an art gallery and usually left frustrated. So I thought it was pretty cute that she knew I would like this painting and she didn’t seem bothered by it anymore. I feel like we are getting somewhere.
Suzanne, the dining room manager, stopped by to say hi and we started chatting. We said something about playing and she flashed on our old band, the Scorgie’s days, and realized why she always thought we looked so familiar. She was friends with Andrea Kohler and eventually married Jeff, the bass player in the Cliches. We always thought she looked pretty familiar too. It’s nice to know I have a connection to get my art work on the walls when I move out here in my senior years.
4 CommentsGetting In Sync
I have been too busy over the holidays to paint or even check in here. Been hanging with our nephew mostly. Peggi and I found an iPod Touch under the tree and our nephew, coincidentally, just posted his recommended apps for the new device on his site. His laptop is crazy glued to his fingers and he hunches over it, hiding his activities under a mop of hair.
It took us three NetFlix sessions to watch a sixty minute documentary called,”Directors: Robert Altman”. Altman reminded us of Martin’s dad, Kenneth Edic. Altman described how he wanted his movies to be adventures. And it was important to him that the actors that he chose be open to an adventure as well. This is what my painting teacher (Fred Lipp) says all the time. “Painting is an adventure. It’s not the execution of a plan.”
1 CommentNice Pixels
“Paul Dodd, Made from Paul Dodd Paintings” digital print by Steve Piotrowski on display at High Falls Gallery in Rochester – click photo for full picture
I first heard about this piece from John Gilmore. And then Steve emailed me that the piece was in a show at the High Falls Gallery. So Peggi and I headed over there this afternoon to check it out. Sally Wood Winslow (Janet Reno’s cousin) runs the gallery and she is so much fun to chat with that it took us about a half hour to get up the stairs to where the art is.
It is a portrait show and Steve, who also has a sensational oil painting of the falls on permanent display here, did this piece in Photoshop. He grabbed a photo of me off the web and digitally repainted my big pixels with other paintings of mine that he found online. You kind of have to squint or get away from it to make sense of the big picture. We were kind of knocked out by all this.
2 Comments