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Posted on 10/27/2026 7:47:47 PM
By Donald Fox
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SunSpots
I have been working with abstraction for many decades. Depending on how one thinks about abstract art or abstraction in art, I could say that every artist works abstractly and that every artist works concretely. For ease of discussion, let’s say that we focus on painting. A painting is a concrete, physical object that represents something: an idea, a perception, a picture, an image, a symbol, a metaphor, or various combinations of these concepts. Over many years, my thinking about abstraction has narrowed and expanded simultaneously. As an artist, I spend more time thinking about art – its purpose, its meaning, its importance, its necessity, its history, its source – more than I spend actually making it. This is what I do as an artist, for without that thinking and contemplation, I would have little reason to make art, or whatever I did make might not be called art. It certainly would not have the same creative well from which to draw.
When most artists learn their craft, at some point they learn basic principles about design, expression, and pictorial possibilities. Those principles are abstract ideas that can be interpreted in varieties of ways. Even the briefest look at artistic samples from generations past will illustrate the incredible variety of interpretations of those basic ideas. The visual alphabet may be the same, but the visual words and sentences made from them are unique to individual artists (except when an artist may copy another, but then that copyist is likely not considered an artist). The point, though, is that artists are working with a similar set of principles (abstract ideas) that underlie any resultant art. A representational painter who makes paintings based on observed reality is using the same principles as an abstract painter who is not working from anything seen in the external world. Both artists are concerned about color, shape, form, texture, and other visual tools, but what they do with those tools diverges greatly from the other.
My concerns with abstraction are discovering and exploring congruent elements in work dating back to my earliest dabbling in art. I have discovered a range of design elements in many early works that have continued to evolve through years of expression. One of these is diagonal movement within the picture space. In landscape paintings this may have appeared as the line of a road moving into the distance, a fenceline moving from foreground to background, a line of trees, receding telephone poles or houses, or other linear perspective examples. Brushwork freed from the confines of recognizable shapes has taken on meaning as visual handwriting and expressive gestures that for me embody energy and whimsy. The rectilinear shapes and parallel planes of my Window and Doors series have taken on curvilinear sides and diagonal movement across and into the picture space that create multilayered tension much like that seen in some early cubism.
Compositions are found within linear gestures that intertwine and overlap, and from these a design emerges as shapes begin to reveal themselves in blocked areas of color. Sometimes I will see bird-like or fish-like shapes that I may enhance or disguise as part of a symbolic image or set of images that also suggest a title in line with natural or spiritual thoughts and feelings. Memories and dreams are also conjured by some of these spontaneous expressions. Overall, the process feels intuitive, abstract in that there is no observed subject, and improvisational as there is no intentional concept to be illustrated. What is of particular interest to me, however, is the growing body of interrelated images that emerge from painting to painting.
Posted on 10/5/2026 2:27:04 PM
By Donald Fox
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Clouded Moon
Since about 2013 (earlier if I include sketches in various notebooks), I have worked on a series I titled “Windows and Doors,” a metaphorical title for abstract designs that played with the idea of entrances and exits within a spatial field. I’ve written about this series in the past and won’t further elaborate here except to say that often in those paintings I included curvilinear shapes and lines, sometimes partially obscured, that were spontaneous, energetic gestures contrasting with the geometry door- and window-like rectangular shapes. Those playful elements have now come to the fore as spontaneous gestural brushwork or paint-stick marks from which a composition develops. Both the geometric and freeform abstraction echo brush drawings and paintings from the late 70’s and 80’s that in turn were derived from more traditional landscapes of earlier (and later) periods of my art. A new series, “Archaeology of Thought,” has also been addressed previously, and the following relates to that series as well.
I have a long-standing tendency to contemplate what I do to understand and clarify the general context of my work. I have strong memories of childhood and teenage experiences of playing in the forests close to home. Close observation of seasonal changes was important to me. There are many experiences of flying (my dad was an airline pilot so family often flew on passes), and I loved studying the patchwork of ground patterns seen from the air and the irregular billowing motion of clouds, especially while flying through cumulus cloud formations that created incredible air canyons and spatial architecture like nothing else. I loved spending time at the beach not far from home where I experienced the rhythm of waves on calm, sunny days as well as stormy ones. I also loved exploring tidal pools and the variety of small-scale life found therein. Reflections were a major part of these pools including distortions created by moving water.
A feature in current work is a kind of distorted rectangle that has either convex or concave sides, sometimes both, that for me function on several levels simultaneously. These shapes appear to move within the picture space playfully and rhythmically. I can see them also as whimsical windows like something from a fairy tale or imaginary other-worldly space. To me, they also feel lyrical and poetic and, at times, musical. A thought I frequently have while working is that I am making a visual poem.
A poem is a kind of narrative and in some cases specifically so. A poem is also condensed language, most modern poetry utilizing images, twists of language, juxtapositions, leaps in time and space, and expressive freedom for emotional and intellectual impact. A poem also moves across and down a page similar to the way a written narrative moves in a story or novel. Rime and other devices echo previous statements or images as the poem refers to itself while also connecting with something larger than itself – the writer, the reader, the world outside, the past or the present or the future, the universe – whatever or wherever the poet intends for it to go.
A painting is not linear, and its elements move within the picture space however the painter has designed that movement. The possibilities are many, but important considerations are the center and the edge limits. Each has definite impact on the viewer, but even a small painting can represent nearly infinite space if that is the artist’s intention – a combination of intimacy and expansiveness. Perhaps this is the appeal of abstraction; there is virtually no limitation to imaginative expression.
Posted on 8/31/2026 8:33:24 PM
By Donald Fox
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Layer Cake
Memory is important to any kind of painting but especially to realistic painting. The painter makes many observations that require working memory to accurately record an image or complex of images. As part of that process, the painter makes many adjustments or corrections to shape, line, color, and value. In outdoor settings under natural light, the painter also must establish the light source and shadows because the sun continues to move, and shadows change position. Memory is necessary to keep the original feeling of the scene since it is literally changing in front of the artist by the second. However, artists learn to incorporate adjustments into their paintings in order to produce a final result that is unified, believable, and effective.
Abstract painters similarly make adjustments as their paintings develop, but the visual feedback comes directly from the surface of the painting unless they are working from a sketch or possibly making a spontaneous work in a dance-like performance. They may also sometimes pull images or ideas from long-term memory to relate a new piece to previous work. I often do this in my work. A few months ago, I wrote a poem about memory that partly relates to the idea of painting although it more generally applies to a variety of remembered experiences.
The past dwells in memory
constructed as it were
by successive moments
like links in a chain
that worn with time and neglect
erode lesser links
that fade to sameness,
lost contrast reads like gaps,
and only isolated moments
shine through,
clearly at first,
but even they
sway and buckle,
photos faded on ragged paper,
a little touch-up necessary,
a bit of fill-in
to restore clarity,
and now an image emerges
that seems real enough
but likely never happened
at least not as remembered.
We inevitably edit our memories while trying to complete a remembered scene or circumstance. We all do this, and this may bring into question whether the past – or more specifically – whether memory is reliable long term insofar as personal experience is concerned. Even so, I use the feeling of memories, the emotion behind memories, as part of the painterly experience. Perhaps that comes from my early training in landscape and figure painting. However flawed it may be, I (and other artists) utilize memory in the making of, in the consideration of, and in the study of paintings. Memory also helps create continuity of artistic approach and philosophy. Mnemonic devices, aids to memory, are useful in personal learning, but we also have many modern ways to record experiences in practical ways that were unavailable in the past. At some point, though, we interpret what we experience or what we think we know, and that is where memory can become creative.
Posted on 2/20/2026 5:35:47 PM
By Donald Fox
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Diamond Mine
February is well underway – Valentine’s is past, the Winter Olympics are ongoing, Presidents Day is Monday, and Sunday is my dad’s 108th birthday (he passed one month shy of ninety-nine). Timing is everything, so many have said, but that still involves matching preparedness with action, and, for the artist, matching resources with expression. A spontaneous action does not come from nothing to suddenly manifest. Even spontaneous combustion requires specific conditions for its occurrence: combustible material, heat, dry atmosphere. And time. Nothing of significance occurs within an instant. There is always a time frame.
Painting requires certain conditions as well. Motivation and purpose, materials, and coordinated action or series of actions that lead from blank canvas to completed work. I, and most artists that I know, spend a lot of time thinking about painting either beforehand as part of preparation or certainly in the process of creating a work. So many choices are made from moment to moment that it is difficult sometimes to isolate steps other than in the most general way. Over time, many of the steps may become or seem to become automatic, but I believe that conscious awareness at each stage enhances the creative experience. As I lay out my palette of colors, for example, I am thinking about and seeing before me the relationship that exists among the various colors. As each layer of paint goes down, the complexity of choice for what comes next increases. Sometimes new variants seem to be required; other times simplifying or reducing colors is required. The process is mysterious and almost mystical.
I sometimes think that the new layer building on the previous layers is like a city built upon the ruins of another. I suppose this is where the phrase archaeology of thought came from, a phrase that has now generated a new series of paintings under that thematic heading. As each painting progresses, new applications of color hide what came before while creating new relationships in terms of shape, color, and from with the parts untouched. Even so, I remember what was there and often record each stage of development for later perusal. I can dig backwards in time while also moving forward in time. I believe this to be parallel to how we remember experiences and create new sets of knowledge and experience through our everyday lives. A painting, then, is a chronicle of its own development while also being testament to the artist’s creatively expressed experience. Perhaps this is from where the numinous merges.
Posted on 1/30/2026 2:23:04 PM
By Donald Fox
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Within a few weeks the Winter Olympics will begin. I am not really a sports fan, but I am a great admirer of athletes, for I appreciate what they do as a form of aesthetic expression that involves creative thinking wedded to physical skills, the body being the vehicle through which creativity is expressed. Even those sports that rely on brute force – American football, boxing, or mixed martial arts as examples – have a creative side though it’s usually caste as competitive. The Olympics, however, have a very long history, include countries from around the world, and the competitors are most often competing to better themselves even though prizes are involved and sometimes long-held rivalries are also at play.
The public performance for the athlete is ultimately a very small part of the athlete’s total experience. There are many hours, days, and years out of the public eye where skills are honed and the body is prepared for the seconds, minutes, or hours of performance. Being an athlete is a lifestyle, and so is being an artist or most any other performer. I don’t know that I can remember ever not being in art mindset. Every experience has some kind of aesthetic aspect to it. Even those activities that most people would not associate with art of any kind – mowing the yard, washing dishes, feeding the cats – actually can be seen with the artist’s eye. When I do some ordinary task, a ‘mindless’ task, I work on artistic problems. I notice something about how the body is functioning or how colors in a room or backyard or pile of papers interact, how sounds overlap and intermingle, how the senses are activated by what a job requires. This, obviously, is a multi-layered experience.
Art is about perception – what the artist perceives that goes into the art and what the viewer/audience perceives in the art. I think of this as layers of experience that all of us perceive all the time whether we do so consciously or not. The layers accumulate, and I as an artist read them, interpret them, and recycle them into a new set of experiences, which are chronicled in the artwork. So, lately, I’ve been thinking about all of those experiences as relics that an archaeologist might study in order to understand whoever made them. This has led me to my current series I call Archaeology of Thought. My paintings and drawings are the relics composed of other relics which are the marks, colors, shapes and textures that are in constant motion relative to each other. Some may object to the idea of parts of a painting being in motion but let me explain my perception.
Paintings, generally, are considered static. The shapes and colors don’t move on the surface, and neither is there physical depth even when deep space may be rendered as in a landscape with distant mountains. However, a viewer can easily perceive movement from one side to another, along a painted road, or in the rustle of leaves on a depicted windy day. Sometimes certain shapes echo other shapes within the composition, much like words echo or rime in lines of poetry. Colors can also physically influence neighboring colors, making them appear lighter or darker, brighter or duller, a phenomenon Joseph Albers called simultaneous contrast. Adjacent complementary colors will appear to vibrate so strong is the effect each has on the other. Lines suggest direction and movement across the surface. All of these create a perceived dynamic quality to well-executed paintings. A painting becomes activated in the mind of the viewer.
As a painter, I consciously think about what is happening as a painting is developed. I see it changing before me with every stroke and every added layer. Sometimes portions of under layers are allowed to show through a top layer, or a cool color painted over a warm color (blue over red, for example) will appear different than that same color by itself. The effects achieved by manipulating paint and color can be dramatic or subtle, but every stroke contributes to the final product. This incremental process is filled with observations, decisions, and actions, alterations and refinements. Each painting is a chronicle of its own development, and I am the archaeological witness to that process.
Posted on 8/11/2024 5:21:04 PM
By Fox
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Many courtroom dramas on television play out some variation on the idea of the defense counsel presenting a credible witness or the prosecution attacking the credibility of that witness or of the accuser. Was what was seen actually seen or simply remembered as being a particular way? Are the remembered details enough to establish that something was correctly observed? Is there corroboration by more than one person? Does what was observed mesh with other physical evidence? What was the actual truth of the particular situation?
In a way, a visual artist who paints from nature or observed reality is a witness to the visual experience that becomes the painting. Can that observation actually be objective? Is the painted truth an objective truth that anyone observing the same scene would agree that, yes, that’s the way it was? Artists and spectators alike speak of capturing a scene, but to what extent is the result dependent upon verisimilitude? Is there also wiggle room for the artist to subjectively evaluate and render that scene with truth and validity? What is it that the artist is actually portraying that makes the painted scene truthful or not?
There has been much debate about illusionistic art, be it realism, impressionism, photorealism, or any other ism where observed reality is the basis for the painted experience. Many say that this kind of painting is a visual lie; it’s only deception and trickery. Maybe this charge could be hurled at trompe l’oeil painters since their intention is to fool the eye. I suspect, though, that even these painters would say that their painting is about more than the obvious mimicry.
What is it that a painter sees when observing a scene to be painted? I’m not even sure we can say for certain because different painters would give different answers to the question. Yes, most would allow that the basic design elements come into play – one looks for contrasts in shape, size, position, value, color, spatial movement, light and atmosphere. Unless one is painting under artificially controlled light, the natural light that reveals the elements will actually be constantly changing. This in turn can change the relationship of the elements. Since it is a given that a painting develops over a period of time, hundreds, if not thousands, of observations are made by the painter during this process. In effect, that painted result is a synthesis of observation, repeated applications of paint, adjustments of color and texture, and numerous other variations that are based on moment by moment decisions. After a time, what happens in the painting becomes more important than what is happening in the observed scene. The painter increasingly makes decisions based on the painting rather than the observed reality.
Where, then, is the truth in the observation of the painter? Isn’t what is happening on the painted surface the observation that becomes most important? The painted reality is a new reality in its own right. It no longer depends on that original experience of the observed reality, for that is only a distant memory. The painting is now where the artistic truth resides. If the artist has captured anything, it is his or her experience of the original scene filtered through accumulated knowledge and skill, emotion and sensibility, and whatever artistic intentions are of most concern to that individual. The truth is elusive and subjective rather than objective. It is most relevant to the artistic interpretation of the painter, which is then filtered through the lens of the intelligent viewer.
Posted on 7/10/2022 6:49:05 PM
By Donald Fox
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For several months I have been working on a new series of paintings with the primary subject of landscape. The past ten years, my work has been abstract images as I developed my Windows and Doors series of painting and drawings. This series is not finished but is merely on hold while I explore the new work. There are many reasons behind this new series not the least of which is a strong feeling of connection to the planet as I and others experience undeniable changes in weather patterns and climatic shifts.
Landscape as subject matter has a long history in western painting and even longer in oriental art. Western artists initially utilized landscape as a backdrop for human activity with landscape itself as primary focus emerging during the Renaissance. Landscape paintings were enormously popular in Europe during the nineteenth century becoming a hallmark of realism as artists incorporated Renaissance development of linear and atmospheric perspective into their work. French Impressionism had vast influence worldwide, and many current painters continue exploring impressionist ideas with personal twists.
As I develop this new series, I pay tribute to predecessors, but I am not interested in continuing or developing a particular style. I do make occasional reference to my own palette knife landscapes of the late nineties/early 2000’s that eventually led me into non-objective abstraction. In some of those abstract paintings, I still used atmospheric color changes and colored light/illumination to suggest imaginative space and light that, for me, held spiritual significance.
Now, personally, landscape is an ever-present thought as a kind of mother source for imaginative play. Nature shapes our lives in both overt and subtle ways. We often move against natural cycles and rhythms in attempts to extend days and shorten nights. Of course, we protect ourselves from extremes of heat and cold, and some of us even move to temperate climes to avoid those extreme shifts in our old age. Even so, the power of nature can be unexpected and devastating as people all over the world experience on a regular basis. Nature can also be nurturing, enlivening, and stimulating. This contrast between nurture and devastation has profound psychological impact even when we are not consciously aware of that. However, I think most of us look to nature in idyllic ways for stimulation, enjoyment, rejuvenation, and solace. There is much power in these connections.
My current explorations are imaginative responses to landscape. While in the past I painted specific scenes and places, sometimes on site and sometimes in the studio, for now these paintings are studio paintings that originate in imagination or memory or a combination of both. Some will seem to be realistic depictions of observed places, but they are not. Some are design-oriented and become stylized representations that may also incorporate linear abstract elements, unusual color combinations, or flattened planes as well as varieties of textural use of paint. In short, the series thus far is widely varied with landscape being the uniting factor. How far these landscapes will take me remains to be seen.
Posted on 8/29/2021 6:44:25 PM
By Donald Fox
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In some way or another, art is always about time. Artists, like most everyone are aware of their mortality, and some may even consciously think about their art expression as a form of immortality. The art will outlast them, or so they think. There are numerous historical examples, of course, where for different reasons, art is short lived, and is survived by the artist who will inevitably make more. Wars and natural disasters have eliminated art without concern for value or importance. In modern times, some art is made to be in-the-moment only, and thus becomes a kind of performance piece that unlike normal performance art, which is usually repeated by schedule, is a one-time event. The art is here and then it’s gone. Perhaps it is documented in some fashion and becomes historical, but it can’t be repeated or re-experienced because it no longer exists. This is only nominally different from art that is destroyed accidentally or purposefully.
Human beings are also sometimes thought of as artistic expressions. They are miraculous living machines that grow and mature and express all manner of thoughts, actions, and emotions that can also manifest into art, science, architecture, social constructs – all the many forms of expression of which they are capable. It is easy to conceive of humans as art forms within themselves. That everyone is an artist may be more than a simple cliché. And, sadly, like ephemeral art, humans also come and go with regularity because of their built-in self-destruct design.
As an artist, I am in my fiftieth decade of expression and my seventieth as a human being. When exactly I became an artist is debatable, but there has been at least fifty years of serious artistic endeavor. The last decade or so has been most challenging as the awareness of mortality grows stronger with each passing year. Both of my parents and my wife’s parents are long gone. In the past two years, I’ve lost half a dozen good friends, people whom I Ioved and admired and who influenced me in numerous ways, including creative ones. Now I have their memories, their internalized voices, and a few treasured artifacts with which to remember them. I often think of my late father-in-law saying more than once the only thing he disliked about growing older was losing good friends. At the time I sympathized but did not fully understand what that meant experientially.
I take some small solace, though, in the reality (for me) that my artwork incorporates the spirit of all those who have impacted my life, for each in his or her own way have shaped some part of me through my experience of them and through our shared experiences together. An artist may be thought of as a sole creator working in isolation at a desk, in a studio, or elsewhere – and I sometimes think of myself in that way – but, as I’ve told my wife on more than one occasion, there is some of her in every painting that I do. Creative action, then, is time well spent, for it honors even those who will never see that to which they have contributed.
For John M., Benji S., Vicky T., Gilbert H., Leon F., Nanci G., John P., Debbie A., Phil M., Dorothy S., Allen D., Al L., and many others.
Posted on 1/1/2021 8:54:14 PM
By Donald Fox
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Mysteries of Light
Open the paints, squeeze the tube, and charge the brush with color. The first stroke on the first day of any painting is a celebratory event. The journey is in the making.
Posted on 11/19/2020
By Donald Fox
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All of us in our daily lives make decisions, perform activities, interact with others, move from place to place, and in the midst of all this feel excited, empowered, purposeful, and productive. And sometimes, we don’t feel these ways because the decisions don’t work out, the activities aren’t completed, the interactions are less than fruitful, or the movement is disrupted. Even so, we plan some more, address the challenges, and do what we do within a framework of how we think and feel overall about life and purpose and meaning. We may call it philosophy or faith or not even give it a name. We just understand that we do what we do because it is expected or this is what we’ve come to know as this thing called life experience. Some of us may step back from time to time in order to reflect on what has transpired. This reflection might result in new understanding, new possibilities, new resolve, or new directions to explore. We might adjust personal perspective to include previously unconsidered thoughts or actions. We also very likely draw upon connections to family and friends for support, for strength, and for comfort when needed.
As we move through time, we create our lives to which we respond in many ways. Being of a particularly reflective mindset, I have learned to use art as a means of expressing graphically how this life activity might appear. And, as one might expect, there are repeated passages or themes that are also continually varied. In some way or other, I suspect all artists use art to express life or their experience of it, and as much as I may admire what other artists do, I can also be inspired by it, learn from it, but ultimately always relate it to my own experience, and frequently reform it into new experience for myself. It was either Picasso or Stravinsky who once said that the highest compliment an artist can give to another is to recompose that artist’s work. Picasso did this with a number of paintings by fellow Spaniards, most notably Velazquez. Unlike detailed student copies done to learn the intricacies of technique, Picasso’s paintings are interpretations in his uniquely abstract style of works originally very realistic. Velazquez was one of a handful of old masters who has influenced generations of artists, but Picasso approached him as an equal. The black and white cubist interpretation of Las Meninas, for example, is an exercise in boldness and bravado. Interestingly, Picasso created more than fifty variations on this one Velazquez painting.
A viewer approaching any of my paintings will do so in whatever fashion he or she may choose. Any particular work may exert its impact in a variety of ways. One suggestion I would make for those less used to looking at abstract art is to begin by thinking of the image as a stage setting. There are lights and darks that suggest ambience and spatial movement. Often there are frames or partial frames that divide the space vertically and horizontally and sometimes diagonally. These are natural movements across a surface that when considered within the metaphorical framework of windows or doors suggest moving into, out of, through, or around that space created by light, dark, and color contrasts. I don’t want to say too much here in specific terms, for then a viewer may become stuck in only considering what I am explicating. Like the experience of life described above, the art is simply a reflection of that, and as I think we may agree, life seems so infinitely varied.
Posted on 11/4/2020 5:04:17 PM
By Donald Fox
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I just listened to an interview with Paul McCartney done by Sean Lennon, John and Yoko Ono’s son, that was recorded in early October of this year. I call it an interview, but it was really a conversation with young Sean asking, on the occasion of his dad’s 80th birthday, questions about some things he wanted to know from John’s longtime friend and musical partner. On one level it’s a wonderful tribute to John Lennon, but it also contains insightful historical information for any Beatle’s fan, and more importantly, insightful thoughts regarding the creative and collaborative process. I was also reminded that art is never produced in a vacuum. There is always a personal element to its creation, and once created, there is a personal element to how it is received in the world.
Perhaps more than previous generations before the invention of recording technology, music has literally become the soundtrack for many people’s lives. Most of us can think of nearly any song and remember the circumstances around the first hearing of it. We remember how music has sustained us through good and bad times. For me, this has also been true about first seeing an important work of art, for these were typically significant occasion in themselves. What I mean is, the art was sought out and not simply stumbled upon. A song or musical piece could be heard on the radio, at a friend’s house, in a restaurant, or in the background of most any scenario. Art, on the other hand, is often a pre-planned experience rather than encountered by accident.
As a painter, I frequently remember the circumstances behind the creation of most paintings. There are some exceptions, especially early works, but as art matures, I suspect most artists also create an internal chronology while their aesthetic expression evolves. Certain pieces will no doubt stand apart, the ones often referred to by critics as seminal pieces, but this latter is an externally imposed perspective that differs from that of the artist. Those pieces will likely have specific meaning to the artist and relate to personal events that aren’t necessarily presented as part of the work. I might, for example, hear or see something in the studio that spurs the creation of a painting although the painting is not about that stimulus. I have often told my wife that there is much of her in my paintings. It may well be that any work is a blend of many experiences, conscious or unconscious, including memories and feelings as well as observations or contemplations.
These incidental tidbits may be intriguing or interesting, but the ultimate experience any viewer may have with any work of art is dependent on the work itself rather than its history. Still, I suppose because we like explanations, there will always be questions that attempt to pin down concrete facts about a work or the artist’s intention behind creating it in the first place.
Posted on 9/20/2020 2:11:43 PM
By Donald Fox
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At It Again
Dreams sometimes occur as narratives that follow a reasonable story arc and as such seem believable until something unusual happens. At that point the dream may continue as an altered narrative with new parameters and many possible conclusions. Or, the dreamer in character or as behind the scenes manipulator rewinds to the last point of feasibility and moves the dream forward again on a different track. This is successful or not. If so, the narrative continues as plausible story. If not, the narrative may repeat the original altered track as that direction is too strong to change. This is a form of lucid dreaming where the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming, takes control of the dream, or cannot, and soon awakens.
My dreams are often like this. Even when changing the dream is unsuccessful, though, the experience of the dream world is powerful and satisfying. Other dreams may only be fragments or just a series of images with no appreciable narrative structure. At least, this is how I remember them. Often I do write my dreams since it has been a long-standing habit to pay attention to what happens in a dream state. I don’t claim that there may be great messages there although some do think so. I simply enjoy my dreams and pay attention to them, but I’m also aware from past study and theories of the unconscious that many symbols often appear in dreams. Jung and others have written about shared symbolism particularly in his theory of the collective unconscious.
The subconscious mind has to be a fascinating world, one that is private and hidden from others, yet also yields tidbits of imaginative constructions that can profoundly affect the world the conscious mind perceives. Art often comes from the subconscious and may emerge full blown like Venus from the sea. Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus is a wonderful representation of this story. Sometimes the subconscious vision is filtered through the conscious mind where it is shaped and polished by emotion and reason. The resultant creation still retains some of the raw energy that the sensitive viewer or reader will connect with through his own hidden self.
Even though many artists will argue for art as a conscious creation, and I too often believe this about my own art, they cannot explain where the urge to make art or the idea of art or the impetus to create originates. There is something very deep within the psyche that compels this creative activity. Whether from a dream state, a waking dream, some similar state of unconscious thought, or other mysterious source that is then crafted into physical manifestation – what does it really matter except as an interesting question upon which to meditate? The end result is the art. It is a human expression that is appreciated on the various levels of the human mind.
Posted on 8/15/2020 3:22:21 PM
By Donald Fox
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Homage to the Square Window
I can remember when I was a kid the times that I used the phrase, “I didn’t mean to do it” or “I didn’t mean it” as immediate responses to something said or done that shouldn’t have been. Either was a ploy not to accept responsibility by proclaiming that some action or utterance was not just a mistake but an accident. Of course, there could have been times when something was a legitimate accident, although, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the times we responded most adamantly with pleas of not meaning it were not really accidental. Not meaning it to the child’s mind meant no reason for punishment. Hopefully I, and we, have grown out of these lame excuses and modified behavior to become responsible adults.
Meaning for an artist has deeper connotations that suggest intention and willful action. A work or expression means something because the artist intended for that meaning and took steps to make that meaning apparent. Because art is a creative act as well as an expressive one, the artist uses his or her toolkit of technique, imagery, viewpoint, emotional input, knowledge, passion, and artistic vocabulary to make statements (in my case visual ones) that may by intention hold more than one meaning. This we call ambiguity, and it is not to confuse or obfuscate meaning; it is to multiply meaning so that a work can exist and work on several levels simultaneously. What do I mean by multiple levels of meaning?
I think it important to acknowledge first that art is not factual statement. A painting may represent something specific and recognizable, which, stylistically we call realism. Is the painting simply a picture of whatever is depicted? Or, are there elements in the work that suggest interpretation? How something is represented, even in a photograph, can give clues to what an image may mean. Suppose I’m walking down the street and I see someone sitting at a bus stop reading a newspaper. I might simply notice that ordinary person in an ordinary setting.
If I choose to photograph that person or paint that scene, the photograph or painting becomes art because of my intention to convey meaning through the chosen medium. I’ve chronicled a specific event that most people would pay little attention to as passersby. As the artist, however, I select the point of view to emphasize the solitary figure absorbed in reading. That individual is having an internal experience rather than relating to the outside world in that moment. We don’t know who the person is although we might make some assumptions based on attire, time of day, location, and intensity of focused activity. We don’t know what is being read, which could be local news, something political, or possibly something inspirational. Interpretations can differ. How much detail is shown in the painting or photograph may also influence how the scene is interpreted. Is everything in clear focus or are certain details blurred? Are facial features emphasized or is focus placed on the hands holding the newspaper? Meaning will become clearer as the viewer notices choices made by the artist as well as the skill of the artistic representation and whether the work has a specific title. What should become clear, however, is that the scene is about more than a person reading.
Most visual artists are storytellers, sometimes poets, and sometimes both. Any picture is not art unless there is intention behind its creation, and this intention conveys meaning to the audience. The creation does not come about by accident although some accidental circumstance might prompt an artist to make a creation (like the sighting of a solitary person reading at a bus stop). An abstract artist might respond to a shadow and the alteration of an object’s color by that shadow. A musician might notice the mingled sounds of traffic on a busy street. The stimulus can be anything. What the artist does with that experience is where meaning begins to emerge.
Posted on 7/28/2020 3:42:45 PM
By Donald Fox
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Red and Blue
Students’ most favorite test questions are multiple choice because those at least give some clues or reminders of potentially correct answers. The second most favorite questions are true-false ones because there is fifty percent chance of success. The least favorite questions require too much thinking and/or remembering. These include fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and, of course, the dreaded essay question. A painter facing a blank canvas is really juggling several visual/semantic problems. There is the blank that must be filled in. Expression could consist of a series of short answers kind of like a collage of various elements assembled or blended together. Or, a composition could be likened to a visual essay where elements support a thoughtful, seasoned statement that extols a particular theme.
Realist painters are sometimes described as copyists since they primarily jot down what they are looking at and make the painting appear as close to the observed experience as possible. Anyone who has seriously considered painting, however, knows that copying and interpreting are quite different expressions. Abstract painters, on the other hand, are often criticized as fantasists, as purveyors of an anything goes attitude towards creative expression. Again, someone who has studied art knows that abstraction is as challenging, and sometimes more so, as reproducing visual sensations. Whatever the form of expression, there is so much more to discover than what lies on the surface.
My artistic journey has explored both forms of expression, and today I think about painting simply as painting. There is a process that when followed with passion and intention produces a desired artistic result (and in my mind there is nothing simple about this process). The end product is a rich visual experience for the observer, and part of that experience may derive from metaphor, symbolism (the creative act itself is a symbolic act), personal mythology, and the interaction of color, shape, and texture, as well as whatever intuitive response the painter experiences in the moment of creation and that is somehow infused into the work.
In short, painting is about life experience although a particular painting may not readily reveal that experience to the observer – not my experience, that is. Ultimately, the painting becomes about whatever the observer experiences while appreciating the object before him or her. There may be emotional feelings conjured from the interplay of colors or textures. There may be spatial experiences evoked by those same colors and textures. A viewer may have some past experience come to mind that I as the artist would have no idea about its content or personal meaning. Possibilities here are nearly endless, and I don’t say this to be glib or trite or obtuse. Art is always a personal experience. The art piece serves as a sounding board or amplifier upon which that experience is projected or by which it is evoked. That is the magic and mystery of art, and it happens regardless of artistic style or surface appearance.
Posted on 12/16/2019
By Donald Fox
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Birth of the Window
Every painting is an aspect of self and glimpse of the world. It is both spontaneous and studied, crafted and expressed, intuited and discovered. I often think of the process as a dialog between me and the evolving field of vision that is an outward expression of feeling-thinking-perceiving and absorption into that field. It is seeing from the inside out as well as the outside in. Thought is projected outward and reflected back; it is constant give and take. To paraphrase what different writers have said, I am learning what I think while in the process of painting… (Flannery O’Connor – “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say;” Joan Didion – “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”) This creative endeavor is a kind of journey, whether heroic or not is perhaps for others to say, although there is some courage required to pick up the brush or the knife.
Posted on 12/9/2019 5:48:38 PM
By Donald Fox
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Red Field
Embarrassing moments or foolish mistakes can be forgiven or forgotten or somehow psychologically transformed. They become what we call learning moments or life lessons. Hopefully, we grow from them and don’t get stuck in guilt, blame, or shame.
Artists have these experiences in their expressive work. Several past teachers early on advised to keep these works and revisit them from time to time. Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. Make comparisons to more recent work in order to note advances but also to note what doesn’t work in the earlier pieces without then focusing only on the mistakes. I’ve used this process for myself and for my students. It is a powerful learning tool for students especially, for they can see progress and success while also developing critical observation skills.
Sometimes it takes great restraint not to fix old problems, to change an older work into a newer, better version of itself. I’ve found, for the most part, that keeping the flawed piece and painting a completely new work based on the earlier piece is the best solution. Some pieces, however, either were never completed or are just too embarrassing, and these get the complete make-over. Either they are scavenged for collage elements that go into new pieces, or, if the structure is still good, get re-painted and possibly collaged into to make new works. With these, learning means re-making the past into a viable present. This is an interesting and challenging process.
Posted on 12/1/2019 5:34:13 PM
By Donald Fox
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Pinwheel Window
One of three paintings completed this long weekend. Could be said it's my way of giving thanks.
Posted on 11/18/2019 6:23:01 PM
By Donald Fox
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Partial Shade
Yesterday while filling a jug with drinking water from the refrigerator water dispenser, I encountered what radio personnel call ‘dead air’ except my dead air was no water, only air coming through the line. The refrigerator is more than twelve years old, and the water line has become brittle with age. It cracks or breaks where the line connects to the small pump at the bottom of the unit. The line comes down from inside and has to curve up to attach to the pump. This curve stresses the line and makes it vulnerable to cracking. I’ve repaired this twice within the last three years. The first time I cut the tubing and reattached it to the pump with relatively little problem. The line has to slip inside a connector which has a compression seal to avoid leakage. The second repair after the original line again cracked required replacement with new tubing that had inside diameter just large enough to slip over the old tubing but wouldn’t create a proper seal at the pump. That problem I fixed with a waterproof epoxy putty that I knew would prevent any future repairs if there were a break at that juncture. Sure enough, the new break was right at the base of the epoxied joint leaving nothing to connect a new line to. The new choice was to replace the pump (hard to find for this model and expensive when available plus all tubing would need to be replaced – a challenge threading it through the inside paneling) or replace the refrigerator or do without the water dispenser and ice maker. For now, the later was the reasonable choice.
However, that choice meant shutting off the water line to the refrigerator and then capping it since it connected to the sink cold water valve. Like many household projects on an older house, this one grew in magnitude and ended only after having to replace a split extension nipple that was thoroughly corroded and broke in half, replacing the shut-off valve (the old one had the broken nipple embedded in it), and capping the refrigerator water connection that presented its own problems with persistent leaks that were eventually eliminated. Add in a trip to the hardware store, and the whole project took over three-and-a-half hours to complete. At least the sink water pressure greatly improved.
Art, too, has its challenges although most problems stem from subjective decisions, for example, that some stage of a painting isn’t working as it should. An area can be wiped out and repainted, the area can be painted over, or the whole can be scraped down and then the painting started over. Sometimes it takes long contemplation to find a solution and various experiments may be tried until a successful one is found. Time is not a factor here for the entire process is open-ended from the beginning, i.e. there is no specific time frame required. There is no charge by the hour. There are no trips to the hardware or art supply store. The main requirements are patience, the voice of experience, and trust in the process.
Posted on 6/14/2019 11:04:34 PM
By Donald Fox
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Cloud Hidden, Door Open
Classical music contains many examples of theme and variation. Within most symphonic works, a melodic theme is stated and is then followed by variations that eventually return to the main theme. This structure is partly what makes classical music, well, classical. Composers may choose themes based on nature, emotion (especially romance), spirituality, architectural space, or many other human experiences including “pure” abstraction. Examples of these in order may be found in the music of Debussy, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Stravinsky among others. The concept of theme and variation is also important to me since my life has played out in such a manner on many levels. Sometimes this was from conscious choice, but largely this is the way I have experienced the world.
My painting, drawing, and writing over the past forty plus years, both realistic and abstract, illustrate this fascination, and I continue to explore what some might label an obsession. I prefer to think of it as a calling. This most recent painting, Cloud Hidden, Door Open, is part of my Windows and Doors series and also relates specifically to several previous works that came to mind while I worked on it. The inspiration was a painting from several years ago titled Alternate Windows. Following its basic color scheme, I created a variation using a doorway rather than window theme. This led me to two other earlier works, Night Triangulation, the more recent, and Through the Door from roughly five years ago. Although the new work alludes to these earlier pieces, it also establishes a new statement as I continue to explore a potent theme with many variations.
Posted on 4/5/2019 6:04:46 PM
By Donald Fox
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Most car radios today have a ‘seek’ feature so that the listener taps a button and the radio’s tuner automatically seeks and finds the next strongest signal in sequence on what used to be called a dial. In my studio I have a portable multi-band radio on which tuning is accomplished by rotating a knob as early radios also required. The radio is powerful and even has a short-wave component with which I can pick up broadcasts from all over the world. Perhaps this seems less remarkable in the day of the internet where jumping from one country’s website to another is as easy as the click of a mouse. Even so, I find the radio amazing for its reach and for its ability to connect me to the past as well as the present. Pulling in weaker stations can be challenging because fine tuning is a delicate process. Often, many stations are very close on the frequency band. Just a fractional movement one direction or another will lock in or lose a signal. The goal is always a clear, strong sound.
When painting, I’m continuously fine-tuning colors or shapes as I build a composition. Since I work with abstract images - what I like to call non-representational as the images don’t reproduce recognizable objects – some viewers are puzzled by the process. They assume that scribbles or scrapes are child’s play and lacking in skill compared to figurative work. Actually, quite the opposite is true. What appears to be spontaneous is often well-considered and carefully planned. There is definite fine-tuning of color relationships and harmonies that relates to how colors interact and respond to each other either side by side or within a large field where echoes, repetitions, and colored rimes do in pigment what words might do in a poem or other literary writing. There is also a kind of musicality to color interactions that is quite intricate and evocative just as in an orchestral composition from intermingled notes crafted to produce a symphonic soundscape.
At times there may be an improvisational quality to my painting process that I would compare to jazz compositions that are created spontaneously as a trio or quartet of musicians will musically dialog with each other and craft a song in the moment. It takes trained and practiced musicians to do this successfully. The trio in my case is the primary colors – red, yellow, blue – or the secondaries – orange, green, purple – that I manipulate in a kind of call and response. By intermixing three colors and making lighter or darker variations, I can create an almost infinite range of possibilities of colored tonal notes. This is a very exciting process where I can sing, dance, act out, and generally express across the field of the canvas or paper to make a small physical space seem expansive or a large space seem cosmic and filled with many constellations.
Nature, of course, underlies the vast majority of artistic expression. We are nature expressing itself. We are informed by light and sound and energetic motion. Art is a major way in which we respond by interpreting, sometimes mimicking, and always expressing what is internal as well as external. The artist fine tunes his or her experience of the world and makes it visible, audible, and available in new experiential format.
Posted on 3/19/2019
By Donald Fox
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Recently at dinner I showed a friend online images of my most recent paintings. She had not seen my work for four or five years even though everything has been consistently chronicled on my website. She was mostly familiar with representational work from six or more years ago. Even so, she asked useful questions to understand what I’ve been about in my work. I have to interject here that I’m often hesitant to explain what I do because once I get going, I tend to overdo it and go off on a tangent that can easily put someone to sleep. My interest in painting is my interest, and that interest is quite wide-ranging, often referencing the history of art, which many people have not studied deeply. Expression of that interest can be esoteric or arcane or sometimes lapse into a form of disengaged mysticism, and may eventually sound like the ravings of a heavy-breathing nut job. Mostly, I don’t want to prejudice one’s experience. I’d rather she tell me her experience. Sometimes, though, people are sincere and simply want to know what it is they are looking at – or, they don’t want to sound foolish by riffing on colors and shapes as if stoned or drunk or worse.
One question she asked is what I was thinking while making a painting. That seems like a reasonable request and was either preceded or followed by asking if I had something specific in mind before I started. Both are good questions that allow for extended dialog, but my extended dialog can go many directions at once. Say for example I come across a grand vista like I often observed in the Blue Ridge Mountains of my home state. What am I thinking as I gaze out over the blue and purple-tinged landscape of rolling forest-covered hills that extend into a blue mist? I could be thinking about the magical colors and also feel transformed by the breath-taking beauty before me. I could be thinking about blue skies hovering above an expanse of blue ocean seen so many times as a kid growing up on the North Carolina coast. I could be thinking about the blue and purplish hues of my thumb the time I accidentally smashed it with a hammer. Or, I could be thinking how the crests of several mountains looks amazingly like the curves of a reclining nude woman. Maybe I’m not thinking anything – I’m just inhaling the incredible beauty in which I bathe. How is this any different with a painting or any beautiful thing?
Beauty is a fecund word. It pulsates with meaning and spins so many tales that it can dazzle like the words of Scheherazade. Can we define what is beautiful, or more importantly, perhaps, say what it is that attracts us to beauty? It is my belief that many artists use their art to explore the idea of beauty (and harmony and order and relationship and emotion). As a painter I use certain elements to make a painting – colored pigments, line, shape, and various combinations of these things – in the search for what makes beautiful visual statements. To some extent I am thinking about how these elements go together, about how each addition seems to alter what is already in place, about how something else can move what is there to a completely different place or a different time. The result is new and ancient, transformative and puzzling, familiar and obscure, enlightening and provocative. It is tempting to try to explain it in words, but there really are no words, for the experience is visual and sensual and pleasurable. Painting is a visual language, and when I paint, I think visually. Anything I may say about painting, the result or the process, is simply my vain attempt to explain to myself what I’ve been verbally thinking over the course of a lifetime of approaching this curious practice of creative expression.
Posted on 1/13/2019 6:48:43 PM
By Donald Fox
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Totem Window
As a landscape painter, a path I followed off and on for over two decades, I worked mostly on easel paintings of moderate size. On location or plein air, I would work small scale, generally not more than 16” x 20.” The logistics of transport from the field of equipment and wet work in progress demanded a smaller scale. In the studio I could size up to paintings rarely spanning more than arm’s length. A four by five-foot piece was about as large as I chose to work mainly because that pictorial space felt sufficient in size to explore the visual space of a scene. A lot can be said visually within the span of an easel size work.
Much mid to late twentieth century painting, especially abstract painting, was monumental in scale. Large architectural spaces needed large works to fill them and artists felt moved to work on this over life-size format. Some painters began to think of paintings as pictorial environments and would create mural-sized works or a series of connected works that might fill an entire room or gallery. The viewer could stand close and have his or her visual field filled by the expanse of the painting. Or, the viewer could be surrounded by a connected work on all sides.
This was not a new concept, however. Some of Monet’s late works of water lilies were environmental pieces like those massive panels in the Musée de l’Orangerie, a museum built specifically to display the physically surrounding connected paintings. These were early twentieth century paintings by a painter usually associated with late 19th century Impressionism, but he lived and worked into the late nineteen twenties.
Even during preceding centuries, though, painters worked large scale to make impressive works for the French and English academy salons. And before that artists sometimes worked large scale for their wealthy patrons to make works that would cover enormous walls in castles. Of course, there are many Renaissance examples of mural works done for churches and chapels. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling mural being one of the most noteworthy.
That kind of scale has not interested me although I’ve done a few murals, the largest being about twenty feet in length. These were commissioned works that were not expressions of my normal areas of exploration. I’d call them strictly commercial pieces.
The abstract work of the last ten years or so has mostly been in the same scale range as my landscape work and has been an outgrowth of that work. I think of this work as experiments in color and texture influenced by landscape but also influenced by handmade paper explorations done during the eighties. That paper work was mostly about process and the physical texture of dyed fiber manipulated into collaged pieces with occasional paint added to dried paper. Sometimes I created low-relief cast paper sculptures.
Paintings done over the past decade are about painted surface and the visual and physical texture of paint on that surface. Process is important as layers of paint create spatial and gestural movement across and within the surface. I don’t reject illusory depth as some abstract painters have done. The illusion of depth contrasted with real physical texture from layered thick paint suggest to me the interplay between memory and momentary perception. I intend to create paintings that are as visually rich as the world each of us experiences every day.
As I continue this exploratory process, I find myself gradually increasing scale. The half dozen or so recent works are larger than previous ones and are also more complex compositionally. The largest so far is six by four feet. The physical presence of such a work makes a distinctly different statement from a piece one quarter that size. Somehow, I find this reassuring at a time when so many images are shrunk to the size of a hand-held screen.
Posted on 1/1/2019 7:16:32 PM
By Donald Fox
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The first painting of the new year is a small oil on Masonite that I titled Layers of Time. Our calendrical notation of time is somewhat arbitrary though we impose natural seasons upon it, which makes more sense. We’ve done the same to tracking days by dividing into twenty-four hours each cycle that varies one to the next and again fits better with the seasonal movement. On one level many of us crave permanence in the face of inexorable change. At some point, though, perhaps we come to terms with mutability and incorporate that into everything that we do. Very little of our experience is instantaneous, and most worthwhile experiences are savored over a span of moments. In midst of the very best of these, we are not even aware of time. We simply focus on whatever is at hand. Such is the making of a painting or any other work of art.
Recently I went to the Menil Collection in Houston – something I don’t do often enough – mainly to see the Jasper Johns drawings on view in the new Drawing Institute. I also visited the Cy Twombly gallery for the first time (embarrassed to say that after all these years) and noted in both exhibits how little time most people spent with each work. Some just walked down the row of works glancing at each but not reading titles and certainly not questioning anything about what they were seeing. Perhaps they were compelled by some time-sensitive agenda that kept their minds largely elsewhere.
One of the perks of art is that it entices us to slow down. A really compelling work will captivate attention for extended periods. Time becomes irrelevant. This is certainly the case for the artist while making a work. Some mediums or techniques will require quick attendance, but that is usually just one or more phase of the process. Acrylics dry faster than oils, for example, so a painter using acrylics is forced to work quickly. For the artist that kind of timing is built into the process just as a dancer must change tempo to follow the music. There may also be extended periods of contemplation rather than active expression – again, part of the creative process. I tend to spend more time contemplating than actively executing in the creation of most works. Whether contemplating or executing, for me time is irrelevant.
Contemplating time as the subject of a work is a different experience from being aware of time while making a work. Involvement in the making is an out of time experience and the irony of the art, most any art, is that once it is complete it becomes a timeless object though as viewers, we take time to experience it and often locate it in its time period chronologically. With powerful works we may remember the first time we encountered it and create a history of our experience with that work. Much more can be said, but these are my thoughts about painting in general and not necessarily this particular work. The viewer’s experience now is what becomes important.
Layers of Time oil on masonite 16" x 13"
Posted on 12/29/2018 9:42:45 PM
By Donald Fox
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Window Trimmings
I sat down a moment ago to write thoughts about the evolution of a painting. I sat facing a painting I’ve been working on most of this week. Part of the ongoing series Windows and Doors, this painting is as tall as I am and vertical in format, what in processor language would be called portrait orientation. The last three or four works have been either square or horizontal (landscape). Just as I was about to write, I looked up at the painting and something caught my eye. I noticed a shape, a potential shape really, that seemed to beg for clarification. This delayed my writing as I needed to explore this new option.
Such is the case with my painting process in general. I have a basic concept or goal in mind, but the path for getting there is exploratory. For me, the act of painting is a combination of inspiration, intention, action, thought, physical and emotional response to color, gesture, and the controlling idea. This last piece may only be partially known in the beginning and is often discovered as the painting progresses. To say that a work is the map of its own making is no exaggeration although the schema may be obscure to the casual viewer.
On one level the thematic concept Windows and Doors serves as a controlling idea. The inherent metaphor has deep meaning for me. An aspect of that literal meaning of entrances and exits, inside and outside, into and out of, is contrasts. In literature, writers pose dramatic conflict which propels a narrative. In visual art a different sort of conflict is proposed. Light and dark, positive and negative (shapes or spaces), textured and smooth, warm and cool, bright and dull, angular and curvilinear, biomorphic and geometric – these and more are pictorial forms of conflict. The painter uses these elements to create tension, to make some sort of visual dialog, and to propose visual ideas and their resolution not too unlike call and response in some musical expressions. I never tire of these visual games for they are as infinitely variable as each new day, which is like the one before but also different and always filled with surprises.
Posted on 12/10/2018
By Donald Fox
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Many Paths, Many Doors
Near the end of his life, the epitome of the prolific artist, Picasso, exclaimed, “What is this madness I have that I cannot stop?” The idea of the artist as a kind of holy fool, a seer, one possessed of creative genius that sets him or her apart from and above everyone else, the obsessive worker striving to get it right, never satisfied with what is expressed, and constantly editing, changing, adjusting, altering to create the perfect image, the precise word, the final voiced thought as a kind of theory of everything – all that is hyperbole. Artists do what they do because they choose to do it. Some may feel an urge or even a compulsion to work, but this is no different from anyone passionate about anything wanting to be involved with the doing of that thing.
Some also speak of being in the zone while actively creating much like a trained athlete executing at the highest level of achievement. I don’t know, really, about the experience of other artists apart from what I’ve been told. I do know my own experience in relation to creative expression, something I have worked at for decades with overall persistence if not daily engagement. I did tell a friend once that I think about art continually. A dinner conversation could set me off as easily as spotting a dew-laden spider web on an early morning run. Someone’s shared memory at dinner could sparkle as brightly as the light bouncing off dew, and I would slip into a kind of reverie where multiple layers of images and experiences would appear like a biographical snippet of time resonant with emotion and meaning. Somehow these insights, felt more than thought, would find their way into a painting or poem or story. The process of moving inward – a seeming disconnection from the outer reality of the moment – might ironically generate a powerful sense of connection to everything, perhaps similar to raised consciousness in a meditative state.
I know some artists who say they channel creative energy (or some creative spirit). That’s one interpretation of artistic expression, and it’s related to the divinely touched concept (although some religions would say it’s of the devil). All these ideas hold some interest for me, but I notice that when actively creating, my focus is on the immediacy of what is before me in the moment. There may be associations with memories and experiences in response to colors or shapes, but these don’t guide my hand or make choices for me. The process is visual and physical. I do sometimes think that I am in dialogue with the work but that is only figurative as I don’t tend to personify my paintings. The process of creating them is a life process as much as any other life-creating activity. Many cultures have made the link between artistic creation and procreation. Perhaps Picasso couldn’t stop, not as the result of madness, but simply because to do so would be the opposite of life.
Posted on 8/16/2018
By Donald Fox
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When I visit museums, I enjoy the first look at a painting unadorned by title or date or other information that may be placed alongside. I want that first impression to be mine alone. What’s my gut feeling? What sort of image am I seeing? What do I think the artist is trying to communicate to me? What else am I reminded of? Eventually I will read the title and date, and sometimes I’ll read the notes if the curator has provided them. Occasionally these will include a short narrative that relates an experience or event from the life of the artist at the time the work was painted. I shouldn’t have to be reminded that there is always a story behind the painting if not within the painting itself.
At one time the narrative was the core of the painting. Paintings had big themes that were illustrated in historical, religious, or mythical narratives of varying complexity that besides telling great stories also often conveyed philosophical treatises in visual terms. Tintoretto’s Last Judgment or Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow are two very different examples of both Italian and Northern Renaissance paintings respectively that depict narratives for specific purposes. With the rise of art academies and their emphasis on standardized teaching of artistic techniques and principles, narrative paintings became the accepted form. With few exceptions this so-called grand manner dominated painting well into the 19th century.
The seeds of modernism, though, an interest in ordinary things and everyday experiences, were sown early by painters not particularly attracted to the grand manner. Genre painting and landscape painting (not that in service of a narrative) became more popular among painters and a growing art public. By the late 19th century, the grand manner was all but extinct except within the academy. Artists were increasingly interested in their own experiences of the world as subjects. What remained of the narrative was now more of an anecdote as depicted in scenes of daily life set in both urban and rural locations. Eventually, narrative was considered unacceptable in visual art except in the newer form of illustration for publishing. This, though, was not the end of the story (so to speak).
Any student of art history knows the importance of the narrative that is history itself. The story can be sweeping in scale and encompass hundreds or thousands of years of people, events, and movements. The story can be narrowed to focus on a single point in time or a single artist’s life. The story could also be that of a single painting – its origin and development, its revelation of its time, and its effect on other artists.
Although any painting can be approached singularly, appreciated for its own sake according to what is contained within it, a wise viewer may also want to consider the context of its creation – in short, what is the narrative behind the painting? How did it come about? Who is the artist and what is known about him or her? How does the painting relate to other paintings done by the same person? Is there a text or subtext for the painting (just as in some classical music)? What can be understood by comparing the painting to others by the same artist or to others of its kind? Asking and answering these and other questions may not change the painting as a work of art, but the viewer will broaden his or her understanding and may even appreciate the work in a totally different way. That appreciation, more often than not, will take us beyond the single canvas before us and may lead those of us who are painters to new ways of considering our own work. Every painting I make in some way influences every one that follows.
Posted on 3/19/2018
By Donald Fox
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Years ago I worked construction in the petro-chemical industry near to Houston. Most of the work was literally outside and off the ground in pipe racks. This was not fun in hot weather, cold weather, or during rainy weather (heavy rains caused a rain-out and closure of the site). The projects were large, complex, and required coordination so different departments didn’t fall over each other. The insulators and sheet metal workers (my job) depended on the work of pipe fitters, welders, and vessel makers to complete before we could do our finishing job. If their work was shoddy, ours was more challenging. But much of what we did covered others’ flaws. I’d always heard that a skilled painter could make a bad carpenter look good. The painter would correct flaws with proper preparation and finishing. The same is true of insulators/sheet metal workers.
Some artists, sculptors mostly, and sometimes printmakers, depend on others to help realize a project. This also takes cooperation and coordination. I’m grateful that my artwork is a solitary effort, part of what attracts me to painting and writing. Others may make the materials and tools, but the utilization of them, the inspiration, and the execution are all solitary tasks. This is an important part of my self-expression.
In some ways, a blank canvas is like a fresh construction zone. Soon it will be bustling with activity, but each phase of the construction of a painting is dependent on what has come before. There is a simplified sketch much like creating a blueprint. Next might come coloring in of large abstracted shapes as opposed to detailed representation. Subsequent layers offer refinements, adjustments, rearrangements, all dependent on the thinking process of the artist. A consulting engineer (the artist’s intellect) may dialog with the designer (the intuitive, inspirational side) before alterations are made that take the concept in a different, assumed more effective direction. Finishing touches tie everything together and the piece comes to conclusion. For some works, assessment may continue; the product may be stripped down, re-edited, and reconstituted with new interpretation of an earlier idea.
It may not matter what metaphor is used to describe a painter’s process, for even two like-minded painters following a similar style and approach would ultimately create works unique to each personality. Remarkable as the short period of time was when works by Picasso and Braque were nearly indistinguishable, they soon diverged and took their similarity of visual language into areas of concern distinctive to each artist. Their shared vocabulary spoke new meanings and voiced interpretations that expanded what they had achieved together. As Frost might say, their paths diverged.
A painting under construction is not bound to a particular direction. Every brushstroke is an opportunity for the artist to move wherever he or she chooses. Some artists choose the singular vision beginning to end while others seek to explore the space of the painting as well as the inner space, the personal landscape that grows within. Neither path is more right or wrong than the other. They are different, but the results can be remarkable in either case.
Posted on 1/10/2018
By Donald Fox
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Last night we had dinner with friends visiting from Austin who were in town for one of them to give a presentation on healing family issues, specifically between parent and adult child. These friends travel frequently doing workshops and seminars, she being a therapist and he a retired Canadian rancher, poet, and primary support person for his partner. They’re a great couple we’ve known for years (her the longest). Both are creative, fun, and complement each other in their life journey.
My wife and I have not been able to travel much the past five or six years because of work commitments and family issues, so it was a great pleasure to share in some of their experiences that over dinner spanned Greece, Croatia, France, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. I know people from each of these countries, have other friends who have been to most of them, and though I’ve only been to Mexico and Canada as well as parts of Scandinavia and Russia, I still feel very much connected even without the internet.
I was fortunate to have teachers who encouraged reading and expanding personal horizons. Access to information via newscasts was not lost on me even as a child in pre-computer, pre-internet days. I was fascinated by travel programs, adventures in the wild, and exotic places pictured in encyclopedias from our living room bookshelf. I spent many hours in the public library combing through books on geography and history. I learned very early that history is the story of who we are, not just a collection of remote past events. Every place has its history and every place we go we make a history in that place. I thought of the many connecting currents as our friends spoke of the intersecting paths with people who led them to places on their first trip together to Greece that were not on their original agenda. Seemingly accidental meetings from a larger frame of reference could be perceived as a purposeful route of discovery.
The making of a visual piece of art is just such a journey. Often it is preplanned with several versions sketched in advance before the final map (design) is chosen. Once that designed is sketched out, the more intimate exploration of its secrets commences. Discoveries change the parts as well as the maker who often changes his thinking according to both logical and emotional response to what is developing in front of him. It is not unlike visiting places that inspire awe, evoke peace, or excite the senses. We always take our experiences with us, which tend to affect the experience of the moment, but we are also changed by the experience of the place. For the painter, dozens or hundreds of memories can flood into a painting, and any one of these can alter its direction. Many writers have expressed the idea that they don’t know what they think until they write it down and then read what they have written. This is the creative action that brings meaning to any work of art. The artist holds up the mirror, and the mirror reflects both here and there.
Posted on 11/10/2017 6:34:55 PM
By Donald Fox
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Underpass
I’ve addressed before the similarities between abstraction and realism from an aesthetic perspective. Technically, no art touted as realistic is truly realistic. It is, simply because it is art, an abstraction of something observed or felt by the artist. The image, which may be a painting, drawing, print, sculpture, or mixed-media representation, my present a convincing likeness of the thing portrayed, but it is only an object made from specific materials. Likewise, a photograph – what many consider the epitome of realism since it “captures” some aspect of reality through mechanical means (and therefore is not subject to subjective interference of the photographer – in short, it doesn’t lie – but any photographer knows otherwise) – is also an abstraction. Neither a painting of a tree nor a photograph of a tree is an actual tree. The tree exists in nature, but the painting and the photograph do not. All three, of course, are objects and do exist in what we call reality. One is a natural object and two are man-made.
I could argue that any painting, regardless of subject matter, is either realistic or abstract, but I would also argue that any painting is both realistic and abstract. The realism of a realistic painting is obvious. The viewer recognizes the image of a flower, a landscape, a person, or whatever the subject that is portrayed in the painting. Where, then, is the realism in a non-objective painting, a painting that does not attempt to represent something recognizable (something that can be observed outside the painting and upon which the painting is based)?
An abstract painting (just like a realistic painting) is a concrete physical object. Aren’t physical objects real? For something to be considered real, does it have to look like something else? An abstract painting is a picture of itself; it represents itself. That self is most often unique and is created from the intention not to be anything except what it is. Being unique and unlike any other image is by no means a handicap nor does it make the image obscure or indecipherable. Nor should anyone feel insulted by it, at a loss, confused, or alienated, that is, unless that is what one chooses to feel.
All art is designed to provoke the audience in certain ways. A viewer/participant can experience the work intellectually, emotionally, or some combination of the two, which could lead to a simple rejection because “I don’t like it” or to some profound realization about the self, the world, or the universe – and there could be an infinite range of responses in between. There is no right or wrong about the outcome, but there can be disagreement or agreement among viewers based on any number of intellectual or feeling responses. A realistic painting can lift one spiritually in a way that the original subject might not. It is the abstractness of that painting that generates that response. The painter saw or felt something and was able to channel that, to communicate that through the medium of paint. Similarly, an abstract painting does essentially the same thing by representing a feeling or emotion that the viewer connects with in a visual and emotional way.
Realism and abstraction are simply terms that designate one aspect of two different kinds of painting. They exist as categories to help understand something about these kinds of art. As with anything complex that we may encounter in the world, we create categories to help us understand and to make sense of things. We often find, however, that categories are not as rigid as we may think at first. The more information we gather, we may begin to refine our understanding of categories, and we also find that observed similarities may blur the edges of those categories. We make a shift in perception. One shift could be that realism and abstraction are not so different.
Posted on 10/22/2017 7:04:00 PM
By Donald Fox
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This is the first painting I’ve done in over a month since being occupied by clearing my studio for repairs. I’m still meeting with contractors, and it may be several more months before I’ll be back in a finished studio. In the meantime, my hope is to make smaller works this being the first because of the other distractions.
The title of this painting is somewhat tongue-in-cheek since there was no window box in the legend of Pandora, only a jar with which she was gifted by Zeus. Pandora, in fact, was a gift herself but in reality, a punishment for the all-male mortal humans in response for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and advancing human technology. Pandora’s box (jar) was further punishment since when she opened it, she unleashed plagues and all manner of troubles upon mankind. And, in this tale at least, Pandora as the first woman also introduced seduction, feminine manipulation, and jealousy into the ranks of men – not a feminine-empowering story. Hope was the one quality left in the jar, which ameliorated to some degree the punishments. It’s an imaginative tale if an alpha-centric one.
My version is a light-hearted Pandora, perhaps innocently watering her flowers on the window ledge as one small positive gesture against all the ills of the world – and these days there are many. Rather than contemplate the negativity, it’s much more interesting the muse upon the colors, shapes, and shifting spaces as they interact upon the surface of the canvas.
Pandora's Window Box oil on canvas 30" x 24"
Posted on 10/14/2017 7:58:23 PM
By Donald Fox
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When I first met my mentor Claude Howell, he was just coming to the end of a geometric phase in his work. These were primarily abstract landscapes that expressed the essence of the North Carolina coastline especially the tidal eddies and marshlands so typical of the undeveloped coast. The paintings were horizontal format with zig-zag hard-edge shapes in alternating colors, most often in a blue to red color range including cool grays. Here is an example from the mid-sixties.
These works are more abstract than most of what Claude painted. He had been influenced early on by the social realist painter Robert Gwathmey, another North Carolina artist whose work could also be called Southern abstract realism. It was largely from Gwathmey that Claude learned to focus on his surroundings, something that he did for his entire painting career. The denizens of coastal North Carolina remain the unifying factor in Claude’s work from the early ink, pastel, and pencil drawings of fish mongers and farmers to the beach houses and classic porch-front homes of his native Wilmington painted in his signature hard-edged, high-keyed colorful abstract realism of his later years.
Although I admired the quality and breadth of his work, I was never drawn to emulate what he did as students often find themselves doing consciously or not. I might say about him what he once said about Rembrandt in an art history class: “Rembrandt was a great painter, but we don’t talk to each other,” his witty way of saying that his work was far removed from the old master. Yet, in many ways, Claude was a classical painter carrying forward the realist tradition through a modern sensibility, and the twinkle in his eye when he made that comment communicated that he meant far more than his words expressed.
Interestingly, I’ve moved through many transitions that had little relation to that of my first and main teacher – and I do call him my mentor because it’s his voice I hear speaking to me through the years. As I think about some of those lessons, I also find small homages to Claude in my work that others would not know unless pointed out. I’ve tended to be drawn to texture in paint, something that Claude typically avoided, but most of my compositions use angles and zig-zags that for me derived from aerial visions that were part of my experience from an early age (my dad was a pilot). These compositional devices also echo what I learned from Claude about dynamism and stability that run through the history of western painting. The greatest lesson, though, is that as artists we are our own teachers. Influences and influencers may come and go, but we make the choices, learn the lessons, and shape the direction of the paths we follow.
Recently, then, I found myself musing on my old friend as I worked on a painting that I extended into the realm of digital expression from its original canvas embodiment. This literally became an exploration of beingness and where do we find that shift from existence to non-existence. Perhaps this came from losing my dad this year or just being aware that at some moment somewhere someone is transitioning into life or exiting from life. This is the spinning cosmic wheel. Historically, art has promoted life even when its subject matter has concerned death. Think of all those Egyptian artifacts and paintings entombed with ancient rulers to accompany them into the afterlife. Cultures worldwide have addressed this birth-death-existence/non-existence challenge for millennia.
I don’t think I initially intended for this piece to be a philosophical inquiry, certainly not a metaphysical one, but that is where I found myself headed. First, the original painting becomes another kind of image, so it already moves to a different dimension, a virtual one that also has a physical component as it exists on the computer screen but could also exist in hard copy print form – or, it could become the basis for another painting based on the transformative image. Second, as a digital image, I began to manipulate the shapes by copying portions; erasing portions; adding new shapes, colors, and lines; changing the focus by zooming in, which caused certain parts to lose clarity; contrasting the painted digital image (the digital simulated texture of painted texture) with purely digital image and texture (in the form of lines and superimposed shapes); making use of displacement, repetition, cloning, and distortion to further alter the original so that the digital image of the painting becomes a kind of digital collage. This to me is very much like any momentary experience of reality wherein the senses are overwhelmed with sensations that the brain is tasked to decipher and give meaning to. Our experience is of a continuous world constructed from these sensations in which we find ourselves with other beings while also being in our own heads thinking about what we are experiencing. Some things we pay close attention to and remember; other things we easily forget. Still others we think we remember, but likely only partially, and so construct new memories to fill in the gaps of what we don’t remember but think that we do.
As an art image, this piece can be viewed as a singular harmonious, though rather complex, image. Like most any art image, its contemplation will lead to judgments and observations that will alter its appearance in the eyes (and mind) of the viewer. This is to be expected. Unlike a traditional painting, however, this image can be altered by enlarging or reducing its size on the screen, but this simply underscores, to me at least, the question of its being. In short, what is it really, and what does it mean? Actually, though, isn’t that the question for any work of art?
Posted on 9/21/2017
By Donald Fox
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While cleaning out my studio in preparation for repairs, I have come across several portfolios of drawings and small paintings on paper done in the early seventies just prior to and during the time I was in graduate school. Many of the works I have no memory of, but I can see how they relate to others that I do remember as well as to what followed. Groups of drawings, some pastel, some brush and ink, and others in charcoal are surprisingly consistent as groups for the stylistic approach used in each. Most of the pastels were created using a cross-hatching technique with an impressionistic use of color especially contrasting complements. This makes for a unified textural surface while also suggesting tapestry-like effects of short, woven strokes of color. Many of the images are simple arrangements as in this example: the lower portion of the drawing is the surface of a table viewed from the front whose back edge makes a horizontal cut across the surface; the top portion of a ladder-back chair protrudes above the table edge and is set off by a plain colored wall backdrop – essentially two simple shapes with the chair back being the most complex shape within the picture frame.
Many of these drawings show an interest in abstract design and spatial arrangement that has time and again defined my work though images and surface treatment may have varied through the years. Another design theme, if you will, is angular linear elements moving into the picture space. These might be natural forms like tree branches, groups of rocks, or other landscape features that serve to move the viewer’s eye around the picture space and into the distance. Many figure studies have placed the figure in similar manner so that arms or legs created the same kind of spatial movement within the composition. I still remember the struggles, especially with the figure, of dealing with proportion and accuracy in notation, but it is interesting to see that a burgeoning sense of design is evident in these drawings as well.
The process of learning is not the same for everyone though psychologists have identified basic learning styles that can be enhanced and strengthened through practice and repeated use. It is the individual journey that varies more than anything. Life throws its challenges, and we all make decisions about what to do and how to proceed. The evidence manifests in different ways for each of us. For artists, the evidence is in the creative works that serve as chronological markers and tangible achievements. For me, I find it useful to remember that there is learning available in these past experiences just as in those moving forward.
Posted on 9/17/2017 7:50:33 PM
By Donald Fox
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The Windows and Doors series of paintings that officially began in 2014 had, like other work series, a precursor executed some years before. Ideas for specific works or series of works are buzzing around all the time. Some first appear as drawings, some full-fledged paintings, and some are notes in a journal or playful designs created as collages, photos, or computer images originally made as one-offs that later spur interest in further exploration. Paintings have also derived from dream images and sometimes paintings that are actually painted first in dreams. Pretty much anything visual is fair game for creative exploration.
Back in the early nineties I made several designs using an old computer paint program I no longer have. One of these designs was made into an oil painting several years later after I continued to think about that original design and how it might translate into oils. The painting was made about 1995 and then put aside for another series of works in impressionistic landscape mode that captured my attention. I revisited the painting from time to time but was not interested in pursuing more images of like kind although part of the concept, the window, continued to intrigue me.
Stylistically, the hard-edged abstraction of that computer drawing was not something I wanted to develop even though I had made nearly one hundred small-scale colored paper collages with hard-edge designs in the seventies with the intention of developing them into large-scale paintings. These were geometric designs with overlapping rectangles that moved into the picture space at varied angles. When I started that series, the hard-edges morphed into free-form shapes that were gestural and expressionistic.
This journey of art is like a continual hike in the woods where paths cross, diverge, disappear, reappear, and sometimes have no relational form at all. There are surprises, discoveries, remembrances, romances, and seductions, and somehow everything makes sense in an overall context because the memories connect even when the experiences do not. Those windows, then, that first appeared in the painting I called Window Bytes re-emerged in the Windows and Doors series that stylistically combined several applications and techniques from past works in both realistic and abstractionist modes. As the journey continues, there will be other connections between old friends and new ones.
Posted on 8/15/2017
By Donald Fox
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Landscape painting has great appeal for many artists because of the enormous variety afforded the treatment of space, light, and form. Plein air painting is particularly attractive for placing the artist in the midst of his subject, out in nature.
It could be said that nature has many moods. More specifically nature reflects the many moods of human experience. The four seasons contrast different color palettes. Within each season there is variation of light according to time of day. Morning to evening colors contrast quite strongly. Add to seasonal differences the variations of atmospheric conditions and the artist’s possibilities for range of color are nearly limitless.
Landscape painting has had strong influence on my abstract painting. I often think about color from spatial and lighting choices I have experienced in nature and through the treatment of nature in landscapes. Even so, I don’t think directly about making abstract landscape paintings. But my experience as a landscape painter naturally affect any painting that I do. Color always suggests light and space and at one level they are always the subject regardless whatever else might be represented.
Posted on 8/9/2017
By Donald Fox
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The blank canvas holds possibility that the artist recognizes though he or she may enter that blank space with no idea what will come. A color, a gesture, a memory, or an observed shape may be the stimulus for the first entrance into that barren field. Once that process begins, the practiced artist will continue as if by stirred passion and line after line, stroke after stroke accumulates within that boundary that now is coming to life. The image grows, and the artist moves it, shapes it, draws out forms and spaces that may suggest natural forms or may create a new space and new world that is filled with characters unseen before.
The artist allows imagination free reign and from this imaginary play aesthetic questions are raised, answers posited, and conclusions drawn. A visual piece of music is created in the moment to be modified by experience and creative intellect. It is an exercise in willful expression more often than accidental or spontaneous flow. The artist’s special language that has been honed over many hours of practice writes the message that will complete the visual statement.
Posted on 7/25/2017 6:53:50 PM
By Donald Fox
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I started writing this on a complimentary note pad from Bedford/St. Martin’s publishing. There is a logo with motto in the upper left corner that depicts four interlocking puzzle pieces shaded from light to dark blue. The words “It’s a perfect fit” are imprinted in white on a gold semi-transparent bar across the puzzle parts. The company name makes a half-circle above and the words “Custom Solutions” a half-circle below. The web address is imprinted in gold at the bottom right of the pad.
There are thousands of these kinds of promotional products in use by businesses throughout the world. Any casual note written and passed to another carries the company’s message even when the note may have nothing to do with the company. This is not unlike the many brand and/or logo T-shirts that are popular among teenagers and young adults. Selection may be unconscious or by chance, a gift perhaps, but that person becomes a walking advertisement whenever in public aside from whatever he or she may be doing, thinking, or communicating to others. Such is the way of much advertising. The point is to get the name as visible as possible. Subliminal suggestion or not, familiarity works to a product’s advantage.
Artists do something similar when they develop and become known for a style, an image or type of image, color schemes, use of line, signature, or other concepts linked directly to the particular artist. In modern advertising terminology, it is called branding, and it is a very strong marketing tool. Most artists, though, have something else in mind when they approach their art. It is not about selling art. It is about making art and expressing through that art a set of principles or ideas about the world, about life, and about the many human concerns that have developed through centuries and millennia of human thought.
This is not to say that artists are not concerned about selling work nor that they do not think about business and promotion. What I am saying is that first and foremost the artist is an aesthetic creator. He or she is most concerned with creating art, something that he or she has spent many years developing skills and gaining experience with respect to. In all likelihood, the artist has sacrificed and possibly struggled in order to create for there is burning desire to do this, and he or she will do this whether there is compensation or not. For most artists, the motivation is not the money or even the notoriety. There is a strong innate desire to create and to express through the chosen medium. That always comes first. Only later is there consideration of using that creation as a commercial product, but even then, many artists have a kind of magical thinking about their work. It deserves to be noticed, to be appreciated, and to bring about handsome rewards for its creator because of the powerful contribution it makes to people’s lives. As a result, we have the stereotype of the unknown artist who only gains recognition years after he or she has left the planet – posthumous success, or post-humorous as some might say.
Posted on 7/7/2017 6:23:15 PM
By Donald Fox
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Several randomly selected pieces from late 2014 to the present.
Windows and Doors #4 Window Box
Night Window
Windows and Doors #4 was painted in September of 2013. It is 25" x 32" on stretched canvas. Window Box is from January of 2016, is 24" x 18" also on canvas. Night Window is 24" x 36" and was painted on canvas in April 2017. Works evolve while also sometimes referencing the past. We move forward in life and carry our memories with us as we go.
Posted on 7/6/2017
By Donald Fox
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Inside Window
The motivation to make art comes from within; it is not something imposed externally. However, I believe anyone can be inspired by a perception, a thought or idea, another work of art, a piece of music, a person, or an event. In short, one can be inspired by most anything. Even so, the impetus to take action on any inspiration is internally generated.
Personally, memories often inspire both written and visual works. I use writing to zero in on and describe a memory in as much detail as can be accessed, but a painting or drawing is most often an interpretation of a memory and an abstraction. What may be conveyed is a feeling, a sense of light or color, a rhythmical response somewhat akin to visual poetry or music.
For me, at least, the visual response is not about mimicry or attempting to reproduce a scene or setting unless I am painting from an observed subject. That is about a very different visual experience. My interest with memory lies in more subtle material that will elicit variant responses depending on the viewer. These visual works ultimately relate more to each other than to anything else. Memory may be the catalyst, but it is the response to it that shapes the direction of any given painting.
Posted on 6/29/2017 6:30:50 PM
By Donald Fox
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Fantasy Window 1 is an experimental sketch incorporating several ideas developed in recent paintings but brought together into one image. Other variations are forthcoming to see where this concept will go. For now, this pushes oil painting and digital imaging into a merged format similar to collaged paintings recently executed.
Posted on 6/28/2017
By Donald Fox
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The making of a painting is an adventure in thought, in feeling, and in imaginative play. The latter should not suggest that the process is a simple pastime, for it is anything but that. The thought includes rational thinking, reasoning, deciding whether some combination of colors or shapes or linear elements work together or not. In some instances, thinking will shift to feeling. There is no rational explanation behind a particular color choice (though one could be made up). The choice is based on feeling. The combination feels right or the placement feels right. So, is this intuitive choice or is the choice based on experience? Is it the trained eye of the artist that lets the painter know when something feels right? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter – at least not to me – as long as I feel good about the end result. It is my set of choices that has created the image although usually I am very much aware of how I come to certain conclusions. I know when association is at play, or when memory of some previous choice affects a current one, or when a strong feeling (an urge) prompts me to make a stroke or alter a color. I am also very aware that I enjoy this thinking/feeling process that accompanies the physical act of painting.
It is interesting and engaging to contemplate how the creative process unfolds, how the painted image emerges over time, how elements relate to previous elements almost as if a story is written into that chronological development – I suppose on one level there actually is a story though not one with a plot and characters for there is only the painter and the product of his actions (the marks are the traces of the chronological development although portions are hidden and the full narrative disrupted). Once the process is complete, the study of the finished work is also instructive, for this is where new ideas begin to develop in relation to visual rimes and interconnected parts that were not previously recognized. Many artists will say when asked by a viewer whether a certain idea or interpretation was intended that the thought had not occurred to them or that they had not conceived the image with that in mind. This is the subjective power of art, not that any work can mean anything anyone wants it to, but that works have multi-leveled meanings, are ambiguous, and within reason are open to interpretation. Art is symbolic and metaphorical and by its very nature is equivocal, but I also like to think of it as precise, concrete, and mysterious. It certainly is enchanting and very often seductive.
