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Posted on 3/27/2018
By Donald Fox
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Sometimes I write my blogs in longhand on a notepad (the lined kind), or even occasionally on whatever scrap paper is at hand. Since it’s a blog that gets published online, I also may write it in a Word document which then is copied into the website space where it becomes accessible to whoever is interested. My habit of writing was formed many years ago, long before computers were a reality and convenience (almost said necessity, but are they?), so it feels natural to physically write my thoughts with a pen or pencil.
The connection between mind and hand, between thinking something and then seeing it manifest letter by letter on the page is still as magical today as it was when as a child I created various images on paper with crayons or chalk. The written word is just another kind of image, in some ways more precise than drawn images, at least in terms of meaning. The draftsman learns to create meaning with line and shape and tone just as the writer learns to layer meaning by combining words to enrich, imply, and cajole through juxtaposition and context. Lines that from a child’s hand might reveal energetic scrawl will flow from the draftsman’s hand into flowers, thighs, or limitless space. A child’s collection of simple words the poet may turn into rhythmic expressions of love, piety, or transcendence. How the mind controls the hand and how the hand influences the mind are interconnected – we learn and grow as we respond to our environment and pay attention to the subtleties of that developing mind-body relationship.
In different areas of growth I heard teachers or facilitators say, “You already know that,” meaning that the knowledge is within but has yet to be brought to awareness. I don’t dispute that there is ingrained knowledge, perhaps at the cellular level awaiting an awakening. We can readily see the physical changes that occur from childhood to adulthood. The body knows how to grow itself when properly nourished and maintained. Even if deprived of certain essentials, the body will still grow as best it can utilizing its limited resources. The mind, however, needs stimulation in order to grow healthy and strong. The majority of that comes from the outside but eventually the mind will also observe itself and learn from itself. This we call self-critique, and this is done in most fields of endeavor.
The visual artist and the writer reveal aspects of him or herself in the work. It is part of the expression; call it the personal signature if you will. Traditionally, the visual artist has literally touched the work and carved it into existence. Traces of that manipulation are evident. The writer is perhaps one step removed unless the work is a personal diary or letter. The published work is like a disembodied voice brought to life inside the reader’s mind, yet the accent is always that of the author. The same could be said for music that is recreated from the composer’s score. The signature will be in the organization of notes and the peculiarities of sound. Those artists to whose work we respond, we feel connected to because we appreciate that voice, that touch of the hand, that expression that is from the heart. I always think about this when I encounter the work of others and sometimes when in the midst of my own creation for it is like hearing a familiar voice that echoes in the wind. I feel it as it reverberates within.
Posted on 3/26/2018
By Donald Fox
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Curtain Call
Work progresses on repair of my studio from significant storm damage. That is exciting to see after so many delays. Lacking that workspace, however, has simply redirected my creative efforts into drawing and watercolor painting, often a combination of the two. Among the many boxes and piles that are negotiated daily as there was also damage to the house, I find various notes or old sketches that had never been properly organized. The undated ones raise speculation as to when they were done. I can guess but many will remain unknown as far as time frame. In a flat file, though, I did find a group of six small pencil drawings, each roughly six inches square that were dated 1986. These are abstract drawings that were not my main focus at that time, and it’s quite interesting to see their relation to work done in the past few years. The more recent ones are better developed, more intricate, and more powerfully expressed, but the lines and forms in those done thirty-some years ago are definite precursors. If I play the sleuth with my own work, I will also find drawings and sketches in various notebooks, some of which go back nearly fifty years, and I can see the seeds of current work, which I tout as my most significant and mature to date.
Life is a particular journey, and we like to pretend that we know where we’re going. We rationalize choices, mythologize the path or the destination, and many of us romanticize who we think we are. We may be spinning along at a regular clip when suddenly we encounter something that takes us by surprise and sends us in a new direction or shifts our thinking beyond the narrow path we may have been on. Likely, too, there are some few souls who know well from an early age their particular direction and follow that unwaveringly. Sometimes I admire them, and a few I have envied but now appreciate what they have demonstrated as possibility and versions of truth. Artistically there are many roads, and these serendipitous routes can lead to full-fledged alternate universes that hum with their own peculiar rhythm and song. I appreciate those variations just as I appreciate every little side trip, excursion, or tributary that runs out of or into the path I tread on a daily basis.
Posted on 3/22/2018
By Donald Fox
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One of my early teachers and primary mentor as an artist, Claude Howell, was not academically trained as I was. He worked with a local artist when he was young, spent a short time at the Art Students League in New York after he graduated high school, and then traveled through Europe and Africa where he experienced firsthand much of the greatest of world art. Later, after he founded the Art Department at Wilmington College (later UNC-W), he brought his art history classes to life with personal stories about nearly every monument or significant work covered in various texts. Claude had a small but adequate studio at school where he worked continuously when he wasn’t in class, a demonstration to everyone, but especially students, of the dedication to art and craft that is possible. In the large adjacent art room, he also kept numerous examples of his work neatly stacked in bins that his work/study student assistant was responsible for organizing and cataloging (along with the extensive collection of art slides for the history classes). Additionally, Claude kept a logbook at his home with each paper and canvas work he’d ever created carefully described by size, medium, location, and exhibition history. All of this was before the computer age, and it served as a great example for those students who were serious about their own work and development.
During my time at school in Wilmington, I often spent late night hours in the art studio where I could work undisturbed after evening classes were complete and everyone else had gone. Rarely did anyone else stay around or show up, not even a security guard who must have been around somewhere. I did the same as a graduate student in Greensboro (UNC-G). Who knows where other students were, but I had space to work without any interruption. I relished that time alone and feel certain that Claude’s example was somewhere in the back of my mind.
A decade or more after I had left school and had been through graduate school, I crossed paths with a friend from my home town, a man several years older than me who interestingly I reconnected with at different times in Chapel Hill and in California. He also had worked with Claude, although briefly, and had become a potter rather than a painter. Claude came up in conversation and my friend spoke of how much he admired him. He reminisced about a time when late one night he was at school alone (somewhat inebriated) and spent hours pulling out Claude’s work, spreading it around the art room in chronological order, and appreciating the movements through time that Claude had made on his personal art journey. Very likely Claude would have been mortified that a drunk student was going through his art, but I think he would have appreciated the curiosity and brashness of the adulation. Few today would have such ready access to work that would be locked in vaults or hidden from public view in special collections.
When appropriate, I use Claude as an example to students who today have more virtual access that real-life access to examples of working artists. Videos of various quality abound on YouTube, but these also include professional videos about significant artists some of which actually show them at work. This can create a taste for what an artist may do day by day, but this is not the same as seeing that happen regularly while also being able to interact with both the artist and the physical work. Perhaps the student artists from hundreds of years ago had the better idea by apprenticing with a master artist, but I suspect that many today would be too impatient for that lengthy process of learning.
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 3/14/2018 4:08:00 PM
By Donald Fox
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Santiago Ramón y Cajal is considered the father of neuroscience but began as an aspiring artist. Through his father’s influence (an anatomy professor), he studied medicine instead. However, he never gave up his interest in art and utilized his drawing skills to illustrate his observations and investigation of the brain. During his lifetime, he created over three thousand drawings of brain cells and neural pathways he observed through a microscope, but this was long before electron microscopy and digital imaging. In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Italian pathologist Camillo Golgi. Cajal’s hand-drawn images are delicate and detailed works based on observation but enhanced by his understanding of imagery, essentially what any artist does when making paintings or drawings based on observed subjects.
Although the images are quite different, Cajal’s drawings bring to mind another great artist/scientist who also made hundreds of anatomical studies during the Renaissance – Leonardo da Vinci. Other artists during that time also studied cadavers and drew their parts in order to understand the workings of the body, primarily the skeletal and muscular structures. Most of them learned these so well that they could draw the human figure in most any position without the aid of a model. Leonardo’s interest included all aspects of the natural world and how and why things functioned as they do. His intensity of observation linked to his inquisitive mind are well preserved in the pages of his notebooks, which he often annotated with insightful notes.
Cajal’s interest in the brain was primarily medical, but his artistic training gave him an advantage in observing and beginning to understand the complexity of the brain and nervous system. Some of his drawings were recently published by Harry N. Abrams (a noted art book publishing house) in a book titled The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Currently 80 of his drawings are on exhibit at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery through the end of March.
https://hyperallergic.com/427071/the-beautiful-brain-the-drawings-of-santiago-ramon-y-cajal/
Posted on 3/12/2018
By Donald Fox
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Merriam-Webster publishes a daily word definition via email that is a useful tool for vocabulary building. Sometimes these e-mails contain specialized information and a recent one focused on specific art terminology that knowledgeable people should be familiar with. General knowledge can help anyone gain a greater appreciation of everyday situations especially in this time of specialization and growing dependency on technical tools. One might argue that smart phone access means internet access and therefore availability of information by quickly looking up something unfamiliar. I don’t disagree since I use the internet often for exploration and research, but I can also appreciate literary references and allusions in film, in written text, in the news, or in conversation without having to look up something and especially when looking something up might not be an option. I learned early in my educational process that learning how to learn was a useful skill to develop. That skill has served me well for many years and continues to do so.
A reference publication like a Dictionary of Cultural Literacy may be helpful to someone desiring to improve general knowledge. This kind of dictionary is more like a one volume encyclopedia of current events, people, and ideas. Its effectiveness depends on its editors, but like online Wikipedia is a good starting place for information. Books still do have a place in the learning community and hopefully always will. What is sad, however, is that general courses for learning like history or geography and other humanities disciplines are becoming less frequent in schools or are taught in such ways that students do not learn. It was something of a high school cliché when I was in school decades ago that history courses were taught by coaches. Even in a college prep program like the one I was in, I had two history courses that were taught by coaches. These were not bad men, but they were not inspired teachers. Fortunately, I had other teachers who did inspire learning and made history alive with the stories of people not all that different from ones I knew except those historical figures lived at a different time and faced somewhat different issues. What I learned, though, was a continuous stream of human activity and experience reaching back thousands of years that flowed right into my current life.
I read recently about a group of people who had lived hundreds of years in isolation, and when they encountered white filmmakers, they believed them to be gods. This happened more than once in Central and South America centuries ago, but this particular incident occurred in the twentieth century. These people were not stupid, just ignorant in their isolation, and thus could easily be manipulated by outsiders. In a sense, many young people today are nearly as ignorant of their past and how they fit into the larger world. Thus, they are swayed by their peers, entranced by technology or social media, or manipulated by a charismatic or otherwise powerful person. Limited vision leads to fragmentation and that fragmentation to unnecessary conflict and discord. More often than not what manifests is a lack of empathy with others. Guillermo del Toro’s recent film The Shape of Water examines similar themes within context of a magical tale. It’s very interesting that he set the story in 1962 America, a time when science fiction films about space invaders and monsters begun the previous decade (War of the Worlds, Invaders from Mars, Creature from the Black Lagoon) paralleled fears of communist take-overs and nuclear holocaust, and 1962 was the year of the Cuban missile crisis. The paranoia driving many of the main characters is very time specific.
Any current conflict does not manifest from nothing. There always is precedence, something that may have been suppressed and festered for some time. Understanding the past is important to understanding the present. History is far more than a few names and dates.
Posted on 3/8/2018
By Donald Fox
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Self Portrait by Maria Schalcken
Today is International Women’s Day first celebrated in this country in 1909 (originally February 28) but was changed to March 8 the following year at the International Woman’s Conference in New York. The day was made a national holiday in Russia in 1917 recognizing women’s suffrage. Mostly associated with socialist countries until 1975’s United Nations International Women’s Year solidified March 8 as International Women’s Day and began International Women’s Decade, 1975 to 1985. These events highlighted years of work by women around the world to establish equality and recognition of women’s contributions to development and world peace. It is especially significant this year with the #Me Too and #Time’s Up movements in western culture. Gender roles vary from culture to culture and remain controversial among some segments of society (are roles learned or are they innate?), but equality is an undeniable principle of our democracy.
There have been numerous powerful women from ancient times forward: Queen Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Artemisia of Halicarnassus, Semiramis of Assyria, Zenobia of Palmyra, Boudicca (ancient Britain) – all heads of state and some of them warrior queens. Closer to our time, we might recognize Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Joan of Arc, Maria Theresa of Austria, or Queen Victoria. In modern times, we find world leaders like Indira Gandhi or Margaret Thatcher as well as countless women making profound contributions to science, the arts, and culture: Jane Austen, Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, Pearl Buck, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Mary Leakey, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein – this list is nearly endless, but these are a few of my favorites.
The history of women in painting is sketchy at best, not surprising since much of history is male-dominated in both the making of it and the writing of it. Even so, particular artists stand out through the centuries although less known than their male counterparts. The Golden Age of Dutch painting during the seventeenth century produced dozens of outstanding women painters including Rachel Ruysch, Judith Leyster, and Maria Schalcken (some of whose work is likely mistakenly credited to her brother). Impressionism gave us Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzales and others. Twentieth century artists include iconic names like Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell (not to be confused with singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell), Judy Chicago, Agnes Martin, Yayoi Kusama, and the oldest living and still active female abstract artist Carmen Herrera (102 and counting). The number of women in all the arts is increasing, and rightly so.
We could not be complete without mentioning the one woman essential to each of us – our mother, without whom none of us would be here.
Posted on 3/7/2018
By Donald Fox
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When I was growing up, I read many adventure stories. Some of these were set in the Wild West and might include savvy Indian trackers who were adept at reading signs of the passage of men or animals in the wilderness. Other stories told the exploits of explorers who ventured into unknown regions but often made use of indigenous individuals who knew the region and could find signs of food or water. Some tales focused on mysteries solved by clever detectives who noticed small details that others missed and ultimately used these to close the case. Any of us who learn to read do so by recognizing alphabetical letters whether cursive or printed or in some fancy script. Once we learn the rudiments of words made from letters and the language structure of words combined together, we can read most anything. We also learn the difference between literal meaning and symbolic or metaphorical meaning so that our understanding of language becomes more comprehensive and subtle. When we pay attention to writing style, we can also appreciate stories and other written works on a much richer level far beyond the simple narrative or basic meaning they convey.
Visual art is another form of language composed of many types of symbols and characters, and many of these often do not have a specific meaning. There are words in English (and in other languages) that also have multiple meanings, and to interpret correctly what is being communicated, we as readers must understand the context in which these words are used. Imagine this idea amplified when considering color, texture, shape, light-dark contrast, and other design elements that make up the broad language of visual art. To truly appreciate visual art, the viewer must develop sensitivity to the possibilities of design elements and be open to unique use of them by different artists. The serious appreciator of art is continually studying and learning more in order to broaden his or her own visual vocabulary in order to interpret the unique dialects, as it were, of individual artists. In addition to developing heightened sensitivity to what artists do, the astute observer also becomes more observant in everyday life and experience.
There is a scene in the film Girl with a Pearl Earring, a fictional tale surrounding the inspiration for Vermeer’s famous painting by the same title, in which Vermeer asks the lovely and observant servant girl (the muse for the painting) to tell him what she sees in the clouds outside the window. At first she says they are grey. He tells her to look more closely, and she begins to see yellow and green and blue. She is beginning to look with an artist’s eyes, and she sees subtleties that most people do not see. She is not imagining – she is observing. The lesson, therefore, is a simple one, one that artists incorporate all the time into their works: stop for a moment and look more closely. Think about what is there in front of the eye. The deeper understanding that comes from careful observation carries over into other experiences and can even stimulate imaginative thinking, which is a kind of internal observation of the workings of one’s own mind.
Artists do tend to observe closely and see more than the ordinary viewer. They also make connections between things that may not usually go together or are not usually thought of together. Yet, at an imaginative level, these things do have some relationship, and by saying (in effect) that this is that, the artist has created a metaphor, a visual or verbal expression that means more than what appears on the surface. Consider these lines form Shakespeare, “the eye sees not itself but by reflection” or “life’s but a walking shadow…” How many levels of meaning dwell within those words?
Posted on 3/5/2018
By Donald Fox
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When I was in graduate school during the early seventies, I worked full time at a small manufacturing company practically across the street from the university I attended. I ran a warehouse that stocked raw textile remnants and operated a tow-motor (a type of forklift with squeeze blades rather than prongs for lifting pallets). On crisp spring mornings as I drove along the narrow sidewalk between my warehouse and the main building, I marveled at the delicate webs accented by frosty dew that collected on weeds and grass either side of the pathway. Webs sparkled like crystalline jewels in the morning light. By mid-morning the dew was gone and the webs could no longer be seen.
The transformation of that space for a few hours each day was not unlike other temporal phenomena that nature displays at various times day and night. These miraculous sights surround us constantly, and we perceive them or not. Visual artists are often attuned to the incidental and the ordinary. Through their work, they may ‘capture’ or symbolize such natural displays or in some way represent the effect such displays have on the aesthetic mind. Lines, shapes, and colors that I may choose in paintings or drawings have evolved from countless observations and contemplation of the same. In a way, even the most abstract work that I make is informed by previous experience of the world at large. I would say that all my work is also autobiographical even when no specific story is told or particular place represented.
This is not to say that every work is a complex puzzle to be deciphered indicating that each line stands for some particular experience or memory or observation. My sensual experience of the world has, however, served to affect the visual vocabulary on which I rely as I create whatever visual art I may. It is my belief that all art derives from nature and human experience of the natural world, even art that might seem so non-objective that it might be described as anti-natural like a polished steel cube by Donald Judd or some other mathematical expression given corporal form. A single line may indicate direction or it may indicate a leg. Both are abstractions, the line representing something other than itself.
We sense rhythm, proportion, contrast, space, volume, movement, texture, temperature, pressure as well as objects we are able to identify. Abstracting our sensual experiences is as natural as interpreting what we see and hear and feel as we explain the world to ourselves. What could be more abstract than a birdsong or the varying shades of red in a single red rose? If we only identify the bird that sings or the flower that blooms, we miss a magnificent array of experience contained within a melody or those variations of light and shadow. A line, a gesture, a sound – all contain potential energy that artists lovingly transform into works with new potential for further transformation. All that’s necessary is the receptive audience.
Posted on 3/1/2018
By Donald Fox
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XXII (from Spring and All, 1923)
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
One of my favorite poems by William Carlos Williams is essentially a single sentence broken into verse form so that every word is singular including the two compound nouns wheelbarrow and rainwater both of which are separated by line breaks without being hyphenated. This makes each stanza contain a three-word line and a single word line so that the form is repetitive, simple, and parallel. Two images dominate – the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens – and a third is suggested by “glazed with rainwater” that creates a specific suggestion of atmosphere that alters the appearance of the wheelbarrow. It glistens and suggests a vibrant red, and the white of the chickens would also be brighter in the post-rain environment.
The other day as the poem floated through my mind, I thought of Rembrandt’s small drawing of three figures, two women and a toddler child, done in red chalk. The figures are captured with quick, gestural line with scant detail yet the emotional connection among the figures is palpable. One could say about this drawing that so much depends upon this very human expression between generations - simple, natural, profoundly human. Each figure plays a specific role, the two women supporting the child and the child looking forward perhaps with surprise at being fully upright and walking instead of crawling. For her (or him) this is a new perspective on the world.
The simplicity with which some artists make powerful statements in small works is often more compelling than the grand gesture of the complicated, over life-sized compositions that rely on scale for impact. We would do well to remember this in our information-obsessed social expressions governing so much of our lives. How much depends upon so much?
