Background

The question of how I got here came up yesterday, so I figure I might as well blog about it.

I took studio art classes in high school (mostly with M.G. Martin and Nancy Lasar) and college, but my college classes (at Smith) were ultimately very disappointing, since I wanted to learn technique and they didn't teach that. I have a couple of oil paintings that I did in college, and they're terrible. Back then, I was fairly proficient with watercolors, but I had no idea how to work with oils. I stopped doing art in grad school, since I didn't have the time. I went 12 years without doing anything more than doodling, with the exception of a very small canvas I painted for a museum fundraiser event towards the end of those twelve years. That little canvas re-ignited my passion for painting, and it made me realize that a decade of curating and teaching art had taught me a lot about being an artist. As it has been said for centuries, if you want to learn to be an artist, study the works of artists.

In 2006, I felt ready to start painting. I had chosen a thematic subject: scenes of life in Waterbury, highlighting what a beautiful and enjoyable city it can be. I was partly inspired by the work of Peter Poskas, whose paintings of Waterbury are masterful but bleak and devoid of life. I wanted to show the city as I see it and experience it. I have studied a lot of cityscapes by other artists around the world and have noticed that in the past century, the tendency is to show cities as bleak and gritty. I see the city as beautiful and vibrant.

I had begun taking photographs of Waterbury in 2005. I sifted through them and found ten that I thought would make good oil paintings. I prepared the canvases, laying down the initial drawings, then began the first painting, of Ahab performing at the John Bale bookstore. It was incredibly challenging, but very satisfying. My skills had improved so much in 12 years, even without having painted!

The next painting I started was a view of Meadow Street. Frustration set in. I couldn't get the paint to do what I wanted. The colors were flat and bleak. The buildings were ugly. The trees were generic and oddly horizontal. The cars looked like little pink pigs. I decided that I did not yet have the skills I needed for this particular painting, so I decided to set it aside and work on something that would be a better next step after John Bale: Frankies! This composition, like the John Bale painting, had people and only a little bit of cars and architecture.

I did one other thing that proved vital to my progress: I bought a slender little book called Painting in Oil by William Palluth. I adopted two techniques from that book which have been a great help: creating a sepia-tone underpainting using a raw umber wash (just like watercolors, putting me back in familiar territory!) and using Copal Medium instead of Linseed oil. Copal was the missing ingredient I needed, allowing the paint to flow and glow the way I wanted.

During the course of working on the Frankies painting, I also discovered that sable and synthetic brushes work best for me. While working on the painting of East Main Street, I began to realize that I needed smaller brushes. This September, I bought the smallest brushes I could find at a store in NYC, and they still weren't small enough for certain components of the Shakesperience painting. I've had to hunt down miniature brushes.

So far I have yet to complete a painting with which I am wholly satisfied, but every painting has areas that I think are great, and I can see visible improvement with every painting. I'm noticing that I am usually happiest when I paint. It's relaxing and satisfying and mentally engaging. If I'm too busy with other things and don't have time to even think about painting, I start to crave it. My progress so far has been slow, but I seem to be getting faster and am finding more time for my art. There are four of the original ten canvases left to work on, and I feel optimistic that they'll be done by spring. I've started thinking about the next batch to prepare.