Sally T Johnston

From a young age, I have been drawn to the glint and sparkle of objects that reflect and refract light.  I find myself staring deep within these objects following how their facets and curves create abstract spaces that both reflect and distort what is around them.   So much of what interests me about painting can also be reflected in these crystal and glass objects that I am looking at so closely.  The exploration of light, color, and space on a flat plane featuring the delicious materiality of paint is the goal of my paintings.

It is important to me to look closely and record what I see but to also emphasize the process of painting itself in my technique and compositions.  By creating paintings of these objects that are large in scale, I am able to showcase the abstract nature of the spaces within the objects I am observing as well as the paint itself.

Over the past six months of this semester, I have found myself wanting to ‘skip over’ essential steps I needed to take in order to progress in my work.   This was in part because I felt that it had been so long since my undergraduate work that I thought I should be ‘over’ working figuratively and ready to launch into abstraction, which I have always admired and responded to.   But, I found after putting in the time in the studio, looking at artists that I admired, and understanding many artist’s process surrounding abstraction, I realized that my ideas about abstraction and the figurative were too stringent and narrow.  And that perhaps my idea of ‘abstract art’ was outmoded and uninformed and was causing me to hastily overlook what made sense for me to focus on in my work.

The first few months of this semester I found myself exploring ideas and concepts surrounding the idea of “what do you love?” that many people emphasized with me during my Group 1 residency when looking at my somewhat unfocused portfolio that I presented.  I began to answer this question almost immediately when I was deciding what medium to work in.  Although I had brought some photography to my first residency, by the end of those first ten days there was no doubt in my mind that painting was my first and only true love.  Nothing gets me more enthused than looking at and thinking about painting.

So, my medium was determined, next I had to understand what it was I would love to paint.  I wanted so very badly to create works from the abstract ideas and concepts I had in my mind, but everything I painted in that first month and a half that was conceptually based looked hollow and silly to me.  I felt like they were illustrations of what I ‘thought’ an abstract painting should look like.  I knew that the first semester was about experimentation and finding what makes sense to each of us as artists, but the more I tried to experiment with abstraction, the less it made sense to me and the less I liked painting.

And so, I asked myself again what it was that I loved about painting and I came up with an answer I did not expect.  What I realized is that what I love about painting is the process of looking at something, then recording what I see and the challenge of conveying this with paint.  In fact, once I realized this, I understood that is what I loved about so many of the paintings that excite me.  Even the more abstract work that I have admired has a referential figurative element to it that strikes a chord with me.  It is something about the illusion that is created on the canvas using the delightful materiality of paint as filtered through the physicality of the artist that I am completely enamored with.

This epiphany was the result of several factors that came together in such a manner that it became very clear to me what my next steps were.   First, in my frustration with my lack of abstractionist abilities, I knew I needed to paint from life again to remind myself that I had some skill at painting and that I actually enjoy the process after my frustrating foray into ‘abstraction’.  When deciding what to paint, I pulled out the question that had become a mantra to me by this point in the semester and asked myself yet again what it was that I loved.   What did I love to look at?  Well the answer was:  I really love sparkly stuff.  I started thinking about what it was about sparkly things that I found so interesting.  What I realized is that these objects contained many of the visual concepts that I had been trying to tackle abstractly but provided me with ready-made abstract spaces that I could observe and explore in my paintings.

Another experience that helped me determine my focus on painting from life was my first meeting with my artist mentor in early September.  I showed him all the work I had done until that point and it did not take long for him to hone in on the one painting that I had done from life of a crystal bowl.  We both knew it was the most successful of the paintings I had done so far in the semester.  I had just begun to get that working from life was something that I responded to without yet understanding why that was.  During our discussions that day, I expressed my frustration with not being able to create abstract paintings.  His insights helped me begin to loosen my stubborn grip on the idea that I needed to paint abstractly to explore the concepts I found interesting in painting.  He emphasized that simply because you are painting an object does not mean that the painting must be so much about the object that the essential abstract concepts of painting could not be explored.  A painting could be just as much about space, color, and shape as it was about a crystal bowl if I wanted it to be and translating those concepts through a figurative painting was a perfectly legitimate way in which to express them.  At the end of our meeting, I had a plan to create large paintings of four different crystal objects and to see where it would take me.

My artist mentor also suggested that I look more closely at the artist Janet Fish when thinking about writing my first research paper comparing the work of two artists.  Exploring her work and her discussion of her subject matter was yet another factor that reinforced my decision to work from life and how I approached my work.  During my research into Fish, I read several interviews in which she discussed why she began working figuratively when it was not what was considered ‘of the moment’ when she was in school and just starting out.  She said that she needed a way out of her head away from the theories and baggage that she had from her schooling.   Focusing on something tangible that was outside of herself provided her with relief from a background of theory and the critical voice in her head that she found stifling.  Hearing Fish articulate her ideas were legitimizing for me, my decision to work figuratively, and helped silence my own critical voices.

The research I conducted for my two research papers was instrumental in helping me define what it was that wanted to pursue in my paintings and why.  It was my advisor’s idea for me to study other artists, how they speak about their art, and why it is they do what they do.  This resulted in my being able to examine the work of four artists whose work I admire and understand their thoughts on their art making.  All four artists (Janet Fish, Amy Sillman, Cecily Brown, and Jenny Saville) emphasized the materiality of paint in their work and discussed how their work was as much about the paint and painting as it was about the subject matter they were depicting.  I think this is something that many painters relate to and as turns out I am no exception.  But again, hearing it articulated by four very different painters each with their own style was incredibly influential in how I have been approaching my latest paintings and in defining what it is I love about painting.

Finally, going to New York, visiting the galleries, and researching contemporary painters this semester provided me with yet another perspective that has broken down the strict boundaries I had in my mind surrounding what is abstract and what is figurative.  So much of the work I have seen has been exploring the space between the abstract and figurative trying to either reconcile the two or simply declare the distinction between the them as irrelevant.  It has been incredibly helpful to see the current dialogue going on in the painting world and to form my own ideas about these ideas.  I have been able to define my interests further by gauging my reaction to what I have seen this semester whether my reaction is positive or negative.

While at first it was more instinctual move to paint crystal and glass objects figuratively so that I could get away from my feelings of failure in working abstractly, it became increasingly clear that this was an avenue I needed to explore more thoroughly and that my desire to work ‘abstractly’ was almost irrelevant.  And so, beginning in September I began working on the series of paintings that I am currently involved in[1].  I have found that although the subject matter is visually challenging to translate onto the canvas, everything that I have learned during this past semester has supported that it was the correct path to go down in my work.   I hope to continue down this path in the coming weeks to further refine my technique and explore the spaces within the crystal objects I love to look at.

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[1] For images and further commentary on my experiences this semester, please see my blog at: http://www.sallytjohnston.com

Is as follows!

Some close ups for your viewer pleasure:

And so there you have it.  By the way, painting 6 by 4 foot paintings takes a long time.  Note to self.

Coming soon!  My semester summary and artist’s statement.  Kinda crazy that it’s almost time for our next residency.  Kinda crazy.

So, I was reallllly realllly careful to try to make the drawing better on this one, but it’s haaaaarrrdd….  Sigh… it’s already a little messed up, but at least I am somewhat aware of it.

This painting that I’m about to post some in progress pictures of is 6 feet by 4 feet and lemme tell you something, that’s a big friggin’ painting.  I am VERY sore from looking up and down and all around and being on my feet using my arms for 3 days straight, and yet I am still so very not done.  I would be finished by now it if were smaller, but it’s HUGE-NORMOUS.

I have been working wet on wet for this one, section by section instead of working the whole canvas at once and am fairly happy with it, but the muddy factor can come in to play pretty quickly which is frustrating.  It will be interesting to see how or if it works out if I need to go back into it after it’s dried (which may take awhile, I have been really piling it on) and whether the color will look too ‘on top’ of the other color.

Ok, so here’s the object I am painting, a delightful vase compliments of a clearance sale at Macy’s (how can I incorporate the secret real reason I like to paint these things – which is because I get to shop for sparkling things into my artist’s statement?  hmm… food for thought)  which is a big object, probably two feet or more tall and really heavy lead crystal (if I ever have an unwanted intruder in my studio, all I have to do is huck one of those vases at their head and they’d be down for the count – although, I’d probably also dislocate my shoulder, I’ll have to throw it shot-put style.. ):

And here’s what I’ve got so far painting-wise:

And a close-up:

The color on these are off because I took them after the sun had gone down and it’s hard to light them without the shiny thing happening with the paint but you get the idea.

The painting is two smaller canvases one on top of the other which is mostly because I was using what I had and I’ll be able to fit it in my car to bring to school.  But it’s interesting to me how it breaks up the space of the painting.  I’m curious to see if multi-paneling things will add to abstracting them.

Originally, I was going to be painting three large vases in a little cluster and perhaps focusing in on a section of them to make them more abstract, but when I was trying to work out the composition I realized, that I really just wanted to paint another object on its own really big.  Twice the size of the earlier ones (which were 3 by 4 feet).  I’m curious to see what really cranking up the size does for the final image.  I was definitely inspired by both the painters I wrote about in my last paper, Ms. Cecily Brown and Ms. Jenny Saville.  Brown is super into wet on wet and mushing all the paint around but also having an image somewhere in the craziness, so that was really interesting to me and Ms. Saville paints more representationally, but cranks up the size so that when you’re close you have an almost abstract visual experience than when you are further away from it.  Janet Fish does that to some degree too.  I really like the idea of painting something that I’m observing in front of me but also making the painting just as much about paint and painting as it is the object, if not more in some cases.  The wet on wet technique serves two purposes towards those goals in that it shows the fluidity of the images in the glass (glass is fluid after all, no?) but also highlights the materiality (is that a word?) of the paint.  It’s so yummy!   Have I mentioned I really like paint?

So the biggest challenge I’m facing with this painting so far is that it’s friggin huge and getting the perspective of the object I’m looking at fairly closely is kind of weird.   Like if I’m standing facing the canvas, it’s taller than me so I’m reaching up and down to paint, but I don’t want to sit while I’m painting and looking at the vase because then my perspective totally changes on how the shapes and color looks.  It’s a very interesting and odd situation that will probably end up making the painting have a wonky feel, but as we all know, I’m not necessarily put off by that.

Oh and, of course, now I’m like chomping at the bit to re do my old paintings.  I can’t even look at them without seeing what I want to fix.  So that’s nice.  I’m almost a little too predictable sometimes.

Well, I have no images for you today because, well, I’ve been sick with stomach cramps and a fever until yesterday and so have a lot of catching up to do.  And not of the chitchatting with my friends variety.  Plus, I’m sure I’ll be getting the piggy flu right on time for my final artist mentor meeting and then he’ll flunk me somehow.  So, anyway, I have to work like 60 hours a week to get up to speed.   And I wonder why I’m always sick!  Har!

So, after working yesterday and today and contemplating things, looking at my past four paintings, I think I might be ready to go back into (some of) them.   I needed a bit but now sitting in front of them, looking at the objects again to get some ideas about what I might do, but the idea isn’t as repellant to me anymore.

So, there is a time for every purpose under the sun, hippies of the world, oh there is.  Touché.

Oh hi.

I have been sick AGAIN with something that gives me horrible stomach cramps and a small fever.  It’s great.

It has made me so very cranky that I don’t feel like writing much right now, but I did finish another painting so I’ll post pictures of it.

Also, I met with my artist mentor again and have some thoughts about that, but would really rather just lie down.  So I think I’ll do that instead.  I’m going to try to tackle some of the readings that I am supposed to have done by the end of the semester, all of which seem to be hard philosophy books that were translated from French.  Just what I want to to delve into when I am slightly feverish.  Mais oui!

So, here’s the latest… Ok fine, I’ll talk about my artist mentor visit because we talked about the technique I used in this painting among other things.  I found that when I was doing wet on wet, I was able to capture the embedded light visual that you see when working with glass much more.  It’s a difficult spacial thing to figure out how to portray using paint because there is obviously this very bright light white in the object but it is not just reflecting on the outer surface of of the space/object, but is actually inside the object too.  Conventional rules of light and dark and forward in space and back in space and all that fun stuff says that if it’s light and bright it’s the closest thing to the light source, but in the case of these things that’s not always true.  Also some of the colors are so luminous that mixing them first and putting them on the canvas almost didn’t do them justice.  So I started embedding the whites into the wet paint and started mixing the colors but not totally on the canvas as well to give them the luminosity I wanted.  As you’ll see in this painting I’m about to post in some of the detail there’s that going on.

However, I also found that I had to work really fast to work wet on wet and my painting would be too dry when I got back to it the next day.  So, with my next painting (which is twice the size of these – literally two large canvases one on top of the other on the wall) I am blocking out the whole thing first and then working in sections which goes against what all of my painting teachers always told me, you know?  Work the whole canvas!  But in actuality, it’s more in line with my natural way of doing things, focusing on one small bit until it’s done and then moving on.  I remembered that several of the artists that I liked and have looked at this semester have mentioned working that way, so I’m excited to really push that technique farther for myself.

Which brings me to the part of my artist mentor meeting that made me grumpy (sorry if you’re reading this oh mentor of mine!).  Well two things actually both of which are totally valid and good points and the advice given by him surrounding these points was also perfectly reasonable and good but they made me SO cranky.  Which, of course, means that I need to take a closer look at why because they hit a nerve in me.  (Now you can see why I thought I might elaborate later… it’s going to be a long one!).

First he pointed out that in each of my paintings my drawing of the objects is slightly off and that breaks the illusion of space for him.  Now, he wasn’t completely negative about it, although I got a little defensive sounding (not on purpose, but there you go) about how drawing doesn’t really interest me as much as the painting, which is true.  But he also pointed out that I’m entering into a conversation with these paintings that has been going on a long time and if I was doing that, I needed to be aware that that dynamic was happening in my paintings.  Some one is going to mention that the drawing is off and ends up flattening the space and I need to know that it does and either decide to make it happen on purpose or try to address it.  Or something.  The sad thing is is that until he mentions it, I don’t notice the drawing is that off.  And then he mentions it and I’m like ‘Oh of course!’ which is strange because I would notice it on someone else’s work immediately.  Actually, admittedly, there are some areas of the paintings that I know have a little bit of an issue, but while I was doing it, I was so consumed with getting the space inside the object and the color and the light right, that I the drawing was really not concerning me that much.

But it’s not like he doesn’t have a point.  It’s not the first time that paintings I’ve done start flattening a bit a la Cezanne because of my treatment of the perspective.  I have always sort of liked the way that ends up turning out because I have always been more interested in things other than making it look ‘realistic’ so when the perspective is wonked out, I’m kind of into it because it gives it a more abstracted look.   However, I can’t say I did it entirely on purpose and consciously in these paintings, so well, I need to be aware of it.  I think I was also surprised that it happened every time because it’s something he’s mentioned during our earlier visits and I was consciously trying to block out the space and draw it correctly before I started painting in earnest that I almost couldn’t believe that it didn’t work!   But I do know, once I am in the zone of pure observation of an object and recording of what I see, I get lost in the space and the paint and don’t necessarily step back as much to look at the over all drawing again until I’ve painted something I really don’t want to have to do again.  So I leave it.  :-)

I think in some ways, mulling over why I was so bothered by that comment has been very instructive for me because it’s made me define even further what it is that interests me about a painting and about the process of painting.  It also points out that I have a tool in my arsenal (or should it be weapon?  Am I mixing metaphors here?  eh, who knows?) that I can use to start screwing around with the space and making these things look more abstract.   The irony of the whole venture is that I never planned on making ‘realistic’ paintings, I just wanted to paint these objects to explore space and light and color on a canvas.   The fact that they have ended up (somewhat) looking like what I was looking at when I was painting has actually surprised me every time.  I take these photos of them and I’m like HOLY SHIT!  I had no idea that would look so much like that!

So, that’s one to grow on for sure, thinking about how my drawing changes things up either in a way that I mean to or not, or perhaps I almost did mean to in that I wasn’t as careful about it as perhaps I could be and so even though it wasn’t a conscious act, by omitting the careful attention I needed to pay to the drawing, it was in fact on some level on purpose.

The second thing that ended up making me cranky that my artist mentor talked about was that he really wants me to go back and work on these four paintings that I’ve just finished again.  Oh man, I SO don’t want to.  That suggestion, or rather assignment, from him, made me cranky for like 5 days after we met.  So cranky!  And so, time for further reflection, and I think I have an ideas of why that is, which are legitimate.  To be fair, he thought I should finish the large painting I’m working on now and even start another large painting before I get back to those other paintings because I’m probably too close to them right now to do that, and he definitely right about that.  At first I thought I was too proud to go back and work on them, as in, well I worked hard on these and I think they’re done!  But then I realized that can’t be entirely true because I know they aren’t perfect.  I mean, my goodness, I can’t look at any of them without thinking about what I’d like to fix.  So then I realized my resistance is twofold.  One reason, which I did bring up to him, was that I am terrified of screwing them up worse and over working them.  I’ve done it before and I can do it again.  Oh yes I can.  Now, again, at first I thought that was due to the fact that I was being precious about the paintings, but I realized that actually it had more to do with the fact that I want something I can bring in to school in January that isn’t totally fucked.  I am more freaked out about my January residency and the crits to come than I think I’ve let myself realize and I just CANNOT face going into them with work that I don’t feel like is up to par.  I’m ok with what I have at this point, again, realizing that they aren’t perfect, but if I fuck them up somehow, I will be so anxious about going in with them, I will have a heart attack.  After the residency?  Fine!  I’ll paint a whole new painting on each of them!  No problem!  I’m not too proud or even attached to them that I can’t do that.  But when I have time to fix what I may screw up worse before making better again, I’ll feel MUCH less anxious about it.   Maybe once I finish my latest painting I will be full of confidence and my technique will feel so strong and in my control that I will feel like I can go back into the paintings and whip them into shape in no time and be all happy without totally fucking them up, but as of right now, I’m in super experimentation mode with my technique and it can be hit or miss.

Realizing this made me feel a little better about it all because it was disturbing me that I was so defensive about it without knowing why.  However, there is also something else at work that I realized and is good to know about myself or at least understand.  I am REALLY impatient about wanting to get to where I’m going and feel good about it.  I feel like I have not painted regularly since undergrad and now I’m playing catch up to get to where I want to and/or ’should’ (a stupid word, I know) be at this point in the game.  I have an idea of what it is that I want to achieve with the paint and on the canvas and as was demonstrated earlier in this semester, I realized that I couldn’t skip over the intermediate steps to get there.  I need to be on the path that I am on to get where I’m going.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to blaze the fuck down that path.  I realized that the idea of going back to work on a painting that at this point, even a mere month or so later, I wouldn’t even make anymore feels so incredibly constraining because I am a move forward type of gal.  Do I understand intellectually that of course it’s a good idea to revisit your work and learn how to retool a painting to rediscover things that you didn’t know the first time around?  Sure, I do.  Do I understand that emotionally?  Um… not so much.   Emotionally I would rather paint an entirely new painting of that object using what I’ve figured out since I painted it than go over the same painting.   In some ways, I think I would probably just paint over the whole damn thing anyway and it would be a whole new painting.   Which would be fine if I didn’t have to bring work to a residency to show that I’ve done something that semester.  But I do.  I just feel like it would be hard to be like ‘well, I actually did like 5 other paintings, but they’re all under this one on this same canvas’ and get people to buy that.  Even if it would be true!  Probation!  Danger!   So that’s an aspect of my personality that is coming out in this process as well.  I am not a muller overer.  I am a mover forwarder.  Which is not to say that I don’t think I have lessons to learn from the past, au contraire!  but I would rather apply those lessons to something new rather than try to fix something old.  I’m a Gemini, what can I say?

Although a week later, I am more open to the idea of trying to go back to those paintings and fix them.  I am.  And I probably will.  I just don’t know if strategically for school if it’s the best idea for me to before January.  After January, I’m already warming up to the idea of doing it.  We’ll see.  I’m also sort of curious to see what other people will say about the issues that my mentor has brought up.  What their reaction will be, if any, and what advice I’m given in that forum, knowing what I think and what my mentor thinks.  At first I thought I was just making up an excuse for why I didn’t want to go back, but I do think I am genuinely curious to get some more opinions before diving back in, you know?

Who knows?  I may be all about doing them all over before January if you give me another couple days.  Another aspect of Gemini’s is that they are mercurial in nature, so don’t be surprised if next time I’m writing, I’m going on about the virtues of going over your old paintings with new stuff.  Keep you on your toes.

Ok, with all of that said here’s the latest painting that I finished and the detail to follow:

And there you have it.  Now I’m off to Ponti which most surely will be interrupted by my falling asleep.  French philosophy has that effect on me when I’m sick.

Hi.   I’m super tired and just got my computer back at the end of the week, so now have it to be able to post pretty things.

I have stopped working on the green globe and am actually feeling pretty good about it (although I feel like everything looks better in photographs, ha!).  I worked some with a more wet on wet technique and as you can see in the next painting I’m working more like that to see how it goes.  I was inspired by Cecily Brown and reading about her process so am working on that wet on wet situation to see how it works.   I think I just said that.  Tired.  Bit o’ a migraine too.  Fantastic!

Ok, let’s just move onto the pictures and get on with it, shall we?

Let’s begin:

And some close ups for good measure:

Ok, so, I ended up feeling a lot better about this (it seems I always do…) and I think I really kind of learned about getting the whites whiter.  Trying to add some contrasting colors around them..  Too tired to elaborate, more later perhaps.

So, next painting, first  picture of object, then picture of beginning, then picture of now, then pictures of details, woot!

So, the color in these photos of the purple flowery bowl thing is off, I tried color correcting it in photoshop with limited success.  I did a bunch of wet on wet on this and really liked how it came out.  It’s a precarious process because of the dreaded muddy color, but doing some strategic smearing with the colors and some layering/mixing on the canvas really had some nice visual qualities that I was pleased with.  I put off starting this painting because I was not psyched to paint another object in the same way, but then after my latest paper decided to experiment with my technique a little, get it a little looser but also controlled and I am happy so far, I have to say.  Or at least feel like I learned some more to put into my painting technique file.

Also!  I finally got my studio set up for the Open Studios this past weekend, and although I was only able to stay for a few hours, it was really great to see people’s reactions to my current work.  People more often than not ‘got it’ and understood that these were glass/crystal objects, but also got that it wasn’t really about them as it was about painting and space and color.  It was great practice for me to explain what I was doing and why too.  Get me ramped up for January crits.  I really hope that the crits aren’t too brutal in January.  I am actually pretty proud of this work I’m doing now unlike my work that I brought in June, so it will sting a bit more when people trash it.  Sigh.  If nothing else, I think these paintings will quell people’s notions about me not knowing how to paint properly.  Or so I hope.

Anyway, that’s all for now, I gotta go eat and pass out to get ready to paint tomorrow!

This paper is a continuation of my last paper in which I discussed the working methods and influences of two women painters and how I could relate what I found to my own work.  When doing further research contemporary women painters, I found myself looking at the work of Cecily Brown and Jenny Saville.   What draws me to a painting and a certain painter is the way paint is handled on the surface.   A dexterity with the paint and a celebration of paint and gesture that indicates that the creator of the image is interested in the process of painting and knows how to manipulate paint in a way that creates an illusion is fascinating to me as a viewer of art and as a painter.    It is what I find the most compelling about painting but at the same time, as I began to explore in my last paper, when the subject of the painting is paint and gesture itself, what is it that you paint to keep your interest as the creator of images and the interest of your viewers?   I know that, for myself, making paintings that are just about painting in an abstract space is not something that I am comfortable with or interested in currently and may never be.  A major issue that has arisen when thinking about moving forward in my work is how I want the viewer to respond to my paintings.  Do I want the viewer to be repulsed and then fascinated?  Do I want to alienate them with the figurative content and then seduce them with the technique filled with color and lush impasto?   Do I want the viewer to feel connection that inspires a sense of wonder and excitement? What would create these reactions?  Would it be the figurative content of the image or the treatment of the paint and the surface of the canvas?  Or both?  The possibilities are endless.  Which is part of the problem when it comes to making decisions about where next to turn.

This is where my research into painters whose work I admire and want to understand more has been and continues to be invaluable.  In this case, with the work of Jenny Saville and Cecily Brown[i], I see yet another aspect to working between the figurative and abstract all the while never loosing sight of the process and love of painting.  While Brown’s work is arguably the more abstract of the two, each artist creates paintings that cause the viewer to move between looking at the images and then looking at the paint.  Both painters also use flesh as a chosen subject matter that draws the viewer in whether it be because of repulsion and fascination in the case of Saville, or it be titillation and curiosity with Brown, but then employ technique with the paint that causes the viewer to see past the image and into the paint.   Interestingly, both painters created the most sensationalist of their images when they were younger and now are moving away from such literal and shocking imagery as they mature.  However, their use of sexual imagery by Brown and the imagery of the distorted and engorged female body by Saville, certainly got the viewers (and public’s) attention and arguably kept that attention by making their work about more than just those sensationalist images[ii] but about the act of painting itself and understanding this can be very instructive to me.

Although Brown and Saville both use very visceral imagery to draw the viewer’s attention to the visceral quality of the paint and painting technique, their approaches are different.   Brown’s work and technique tends towards frenetic swirls of color that move across the canvas.  The sexual imagery is there but often is hard to find at first (and sometimes not!).  When seeing her work, you are first taken in by the paint and the intense texture of it all and then the imagery begins to materialize.  The tension between looking at the paint and then looking for the imagery keeps the viewer in front of the painting, feeling that vibration between the two.  Brown explains: “The point is to make them stay and look, but for it not to be a disappointment if they don’t find the action, and that there isn’t a moment where they can find the action and leave.  It’s about the process of looking, the way things keep melting and warping and collapsing” (Enright).  She also explains that: she has “… always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention.  The more you look at them, the more satisfying they become for the viewer.  The more time you give to the painting, the more you get back” (Lewis). She explains that she “… often avoid[s] using the terms figuration and abstraction because [she’s] always tried to have it both ways” (Lewis).

In Saville’s case, her paintings hit you full throttle with their intense imagery.  Her paintings do not initially seem to live in the space between figuration and abstraction but upon first look seem to live firmly in the realm of figuration.  Her paintings have traditionally been enormous and without standing back from them, it may be difficult to get the full view of the images they contain.  The imagery and size is almost too much so much so that the viewer begins to move past the figurative imagery and into the field of the paint itself as a sort of respite from the intensity of the image and that becomes a more abstract visual experience.   Saville describes it this way: “I want people to know what it is they’re looking at. But at the same time, the closer they get to the painting, it’s like going back into childhood. And it’s like an abstract piece–it becomes the landscape of the brush marks rather than just sort of an intellectual landscape” (John).   She also creates tension in her work by playing the “intellectual encounter” that occurs when you “stand back from the painting” against when the viewer moves towards the painting and begins to see the brushwork (Schwabsky).  She explains that up close her paintings become “abstract” and “sensual” (Schwabsky).

So what does this all mean for me?  At the very least, it reinforces my findings that most of the painters that I interest me are in love with the act of painting almost more than the subject matter they portray in their work.  However, each painter I have looked at seems to be kinked towards exploring the paint using certain figurative objects rather than another.  Whether it be portraying glass and transparent objects as Janet Fish does, or the depiction flesh like Brown and Saville, using paint’s ability to mimic and amplify aspects of visual reality, these artists then move past those initial visual spaces and into as Saville explains the “[s]paces within the body of the paint” (Mackenzie) that become abstractions in the mind of the painter and hopefully the mind of the viewer.

It also reinforces the path that I have chosen to go down in terms of my own work.   Though as of yet, I have not begun to work with images of the figure and portraits, it is the process and intent of Brown and Saville’s work that they describe I find so instructive.  Looking at each painter and the ways in which they entice the viewer to look closer at the quality of the painting is very eye opening for me.  It gives me two more avenues within this genre of painting to think about when approaching how I want the viewer to experience my work.

Currently I am working within a hybrid of their two approaches.   I am painting objects that are recognizable as being painted images of something but instead of using alienating and jarring objects that I am painting (such as an enormous distorted fleshy woman) I am depicting objects (the crystal bowls and vases) that are alluring and that people generally find appealing (although perhaps not quite as scintillating as the graphic sex acts in Brown’s work).  Seeing the two approaches that Brown and Saville use to move between the figurative and the abstract within the space of their paintings also helps me think about how I want to work within that space in a way that is more defined.  Just like them (and many many painters throughout history – if I may so humbly place myself within it) I am initially attracted to the way paint can depict certain objects, in my case right now it is glass and transparency.  But now I am thinking more specifically not just about creating abstract spaces within my canvases by using the imagery of glass and crystal, but also how I want the viewer to take that journey into those spaces with me.  The questions I asked at the beginning of this paper arise again.  And although I do not yet have a definitive answer for these questions, I know that now when I am painting, understanding more defined ways in which these questions can be answered through my imagery and technique will be invaluable.

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[i] For reference I have included several images of Brown and Saville’s work.  In the writing of this paper, I am assuming that there is some familiarity with each of the painter’s work on the part of the reader, however, I hope that the images I am including in Appendix A will give the reader a feeling for the images and technique I refer to throughout the paper.

[ii] It is not lost on me that both women are working within the cultural context of being women dealing with subject matter that during interviews I read they were constantly being reminded of was normally (at least within the history of painting) reserved for men.  Both painters were aware of that context when approaching their subject matter, but I am not convinced they set out to be ‘feminist’ painters, per se.

Did they think about what kind of attention their work would get?  Perhaps, but much like most of the other artists I have researched, these women were also just taken with their subject matter in a genuinely enthusiastic way.  Saville broaches the subject of her paintings being a feminist statement more so than Brown when she speaks about her early work, but neither painter sees themselves as a primarily ‘feminist’ artist due to the subject matter they decided to pursue in their images.  Indeed, it seems they chose their subject matter as a way to explore painting in the paint as flesh tradition (both women cite DeKooning and Bacon as huge influences on their work) and as culturally aware artists, were not surprised when their work was seen within that ‘feminist’ framework.

Both women shy away from declaring themselves as feminists first and artists second, which I relate to very much.  Brown has said that“…I never thought, I want to take this male brush and make it mine.  I just thought, I want to take this brush and make it mine.  It was an equally arrogant desire but it wasn’t as a woman; it was as a painter” (Enright).  And Saville has said that “feminism interests her less now. “I was never that polemical. That feels like a conversation I was having with myself then. I’m not drawn to that kind of admired beauty but I can’t say if it is because I am a woman or because my instinct visually is not that way” (Mackenzie).

This strikes a cord with me in terms of my own work and my approach to subject matter.  There is no denying that being aware of the feminist tradition (or probably more accurately, the domination of the male point of view throughout much of art history) is important when thinking of one’s work and where it lives within the cultural context of the current art historical climate.  However, it is not the main point of my work at the moment, and much like Brown and Saville, I am far more interested in expressing my point of view as a painter.  Will the fact that I am a woman influence my work in some way, undoubtedly, but for now in my work, and for the purposes of this paper, I am focusing on discussing Brown and Saville as painters first and foremost, and formidable ones at that.  Which, to me, in the end, is one of the more feminist statements I could make.

Appendix A

(Brown, Night Passage)

(Brown, Teenage Wildlife)

(Saville, Torso 2)

(Saville, Reverse)

Bibliography

Brown, Cecily. Night Passage. 1999. Oil on linen. Saatchi Gallery. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/brown_Night_Passage.htm>.

Brown, Cecily. Teenage Wildlife. 1999. Oil on linen. Saatchi Gallery. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/brown_Teenage_Wildlife.htm >.

Enright, Robert. “Paint Whisperer: An Interview with Cecily Brown.” Border Crossings 24.1 (2005): 36-49. Art Full Text. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.

John, Elton. “Jenny Saville: whether they love her work, hate her work, or simply don’t know what to make of it, one thing everyone seems to be in agreement on is that this painter is one of the most daring of our time. Elton John gets the story.” Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. Interview, Oct. 2003. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_9_33/ai_108050851/>.

Lewis, Perri. “Cecily Brown: I take things too far when painting.” Art and Design | The Observer. Guardian.co.uk, 20 Sept. 2009. Web.

Mackenzie, Suzie. “Under the skin.” Art and Design | The Observer. Guardian.co.uk, 22 Oct. 2005. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/oct/22/art.friezeartfair2005>.

Saville, Jenny. Torso 2. 2004. Oil on linen. Saatchi Gallery. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/jenny_saville_torso.htm>.

Saville, Jenny. Reverse. Artnet.com. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artwork_Detail.asp?G=&gid=414&which=&ViewArtistBy=&aid=14945&wid=174555&source=artist&rta=http://www.artnet.com>.

Schwabsky, Barry, and Aude Tincelin. “Jenny Saville: sans concession / Jenny Saville: “Unapologetic”.” Art Press Feb. 2004: 22-8. Art Full Text. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.

Wood, Gaby. “Cecily Brown: ‘I like the cheap and nasty’” Art and Design | The Observer. Guardian.co.uk, 12 June 2005. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/jun/12/art1>.

Oh hi… spent um…lesse, 45 minutes mixing ONE FUCKING COLOR of green today… and even still it was not quite right… BOO.

Ok, so here’s what’s up, no words from me, saving those for my paper which I haven’t started writing yet.  Ah the old Sally of yesteryear has arisen!  Glory!

And I started another painting because actually they both should be done by Sunday!   Yay!  But they’re not probably going to be, yay!

Aw crap, I forgot to get it off my camera… I’ll post it next time… it’s not that exciting yet anyway.

Toodles for now.

Happy Monday folks!  Actually, more like dragging my ass all over town to get shit done Monday because I’m so friggin tired, Monday.  More like that.

But despite my wanting to curl up in a ball and watch “Say Yes to the Dress” all day, I got up, went for my more or less daily walk (that has had NO affect on my waistline, which is SO annoying, but it helps my back, so whatever), actually TOOK A SHOWER (and I don’t have a job, so you KNOW I was dedicated to excellence today, I even busted out the shampoo AND conditioner, so, like, be impressed, or whatever), got dressed and dragged myself to the studio.

I must say, on a side note that this whole “having all the time in the world” thing is really over rated.  REALLY over rated.  Is overrated one word?  I think it might be.  Overrated.  Hmm….  Anyway, it’s amazing how you can suddenly shrink the time/space continuum by not having much to fill it.  I mean, really I only can work for like 4 – 5 hours at a time tops without loosing it and getting sloppy and impatient, even if I move onto a different painting.  And some days I only work for 3 hours at a time because I need stuff to dry before I keep going.  So what’s a girl to do?  Go for a walk, take a shower, eat food, sleep.  Sigh, it sounds delightful in theory, but somehow it’s not.  I think I need a job, just a little one.  Where there are people.  Just a few.  Blah blah blah, anyway, who cares about that right?  I should be so lucky to be able to not work right now.  Whiney whine whine.  I know I’ll figure it out, I’m slowly becoming more disciplined so whatever.  Can you tell I am full of ‘blah’ today?   A whole heck of a lot of blah.

Ok!  Enough!  Basta!  I  have more or less stopped work on my second painting and moved onto the next one (still have two more to finish before the end of October) so despite my blah, I’ve been pretty productive.

I will show pictures in a momento.

Also, I found this interesting article from a blog I follow that I think my fellow art students will find very interesting and full of ammunition for our next residency.   It’s an interview with the dean of the Yale School of Art about how theory and actually making art aren’t really all that connected.  Sorry Stuart!  I found it very affirming.  The blog is called Two Coats of Paint and the woman who writes it is insightful and has good taste, I think.  And is an artist in her own right.  Have a looky loo.

I have also had another chance to look at some new work in galleries in NYC (a sneaky and strategic strike trip to see galleries and my niece and family, bankrolled and accompanied by my mumsie), and let me just say that well, some stuff was really interesting and some stuff, well… I can see now how Wendy White is like super ‘of the moment’.  Lots of abstract stuff with florescent colors and black paint right out of the tube and it’s more like flat mark making and doodling on a white primed canvas but not as interesting as hers.  So, if you’re looking to score a Chelsea gallery, get out your random book of symbols and your florescent paints, because, it’s like a Stephen Sprouse/ Betsy Johnson meets the Lower East Side skinny jean rocker bonanza!  OH and make sure it sort of looks like you could have found it on the side of the road in Queens somewhere.  That will help.  (Bitchy, much?   Oh just a leeeeetle bit).  Obviously, not everything was like that, but my advisor wants me to sort of get an idea of what’s out there painting-wise, and well, I’m starting to get it.  I won’t be joining them, I don’t think, but at least I can understand where I might fit in and that is what he wanted so yes, I would say, a trip to NYC and Chelsea here and there is worth it.

I’m toying with the idea of going to Saratoga Springs in the next couple of weeks to see an Amy Sillman show that’s there, but seeing as it just SNOWED here yesterday, I may need to forgo such a trip.  It would be super cool to see her stuff in person though considering I wrote a paper about it.  Sigh..

Another artist I’m starting to look at who just had a great interview is Cecily Brown.  She’s really interesting to me because she really LOVES to paint and you can tell.  I saw her show at the MFA here in Boston a couple years back and now I’m sort of sad it was before I was really ready to look at it.  You know what I mean?   She’s also interesting because of her family history, the fact that she did struggle at first and had no expectations about her success and has kind of ridden this I’m a rock star New York via London artist who actually loves painting and is obsessed with it and can talk intelligently about art and her process.   I think I’m going to include her in the women artists I look at in my next paper.  Here’s the link to the interview. If anyone has any more stuff about her, lemme know will you?

Ok, so that brings up a point that I have been thinking about since my last trip to NYC.  And I think her stuff sort of speaks to it.  I am still thinking a lot about abstraction and how I feel about it and how it my come into play in my own work someday, if ever, and figurative painting and the combination of the two.  My last paper got me thinking about this more deeply as well.   I think the issue that happened with the abstract expressionists and with many abstract movements and painters is the idea that the meaning behind the markings on the canvas were universal and could be understood by any viewer without needing to be explained.  And that’s also the issue with much of conceptual art, with a few exceptions.  That’s all well and good but much of that art ends up being decorative or about whether or not people ‘like’ it rather than understand it.  It’s an issue I kept coming up against when I was determined to come up with abstract paintings in the beginning of the semester, and I’ve talked about in this blog and in papers and all over the damn place.

So, I was sitting on the train, with my herniated disk back pain and the wires down in Kingston and a broken down train in front of us, on the way to Boston and had AMPLE time to think about it.  I have a background in interactive design and was in the thick of it in Silicon Alley during the roaring 90’s when the world of the web and website standards were getting hashed out in the production of million dollar websites for clients.  I worked with some of the smartest, talented people I’ve ever  met when I was in New York (and in Boston too!).  We were all young, excited to be in this new industry and ready to revolutionize the way people used and interpreted information and the visual world.  Woot!  Let’s rock this bitch !  Let’s also get really drunk after work and be fabulous!  Super Woot!

While this was all going on, a certain fellow named Jacob Nielsen was getting SUPER irritated with all us artsy fartsy designer types that kept obscuring the information with ‘revolutionary’ web design.  He was all about usability.  Making sure people knew what was going on on a website so they could get the information they needed and get the hell out of there.  Have a look at his website, it’s still ugly!  Ha!

There was a mad scramble in web design shops and teams to figure out what should be most important, the creative vision, or the information the site was meant to get to the viewer.  Whether that’s just a branding message, an online shopping experience, advertising, whatever.  This was not a new battle, it’s been played out in advertising agencies throughout time.  I’m watching Mad Men now and I always giggle when the art department grumbles about how they would like to rule the process of it all.  So very familiar.  And for awhile there, the designers DID rule the school.  They made art with each home page they designed.   Highly conceptual and totally and completely frustrating for people who wanted to figure out how to navigate a site.

Eventually people called Information Architects and Usability experts were inserted into the design process in between the client services people, the creative director, and the art director.  These folks started to realize that there were standards of information design that could help people navigate a site quickly and get to the information they needed faster.   This was good because people are impatient and will only spend so long trying to figure out what the fuck is going on before they will move onto the next thing.  You need them long enough to get the branding and message across but not so long that they are pissed and confused and will never come back to your site again.

And so the designers were lower on the totem pole once again, and had to work within parameters and standards that began to emerge in web design that dictated where the menus went, where the ads went, where the content goes, that things needed to be obviously labelled in language people can understand and that somewhat unsuccessfully banned the flash intro (if you have a flash intro to your site, you have lost more than half your audience immediately – trust me, they suck).

Now, I get that I am talking about web design, but I started thinking about it in terms of abstract and conceptual art as well.  I consider myself a pretty well read and art savvy lady, and much of the time I don’t know what to think about something unless I read the artist’s statement or the gallery notes.  Does that make me a dullard um-sophisticate that just doesn’t ‘get it’?  Me thinks no.  Me thinks that I’m just willing to admit it more than most people.

Also, does that mean the all the websites produced under these standards were boring and un-creative? (a-la Mr. Nielsen?), mais non!  Not at all.

Also!  I get that the commercial website production is not ‘art’, because it’s meant to sell a product or get information across, but I argue that, in fact, it’s not all that different.  Sure as artists we’re not looking to just produce commercial products, we must have meaning and commentary and spirituality, and all that great stuff, but I do think there’s something to get taken from my experience in the roaring 90’s.

People need things they recognize to create meaning in something without some one telling them what is going on.   Employing standards that people are familiar with helps get the message across.  You see?  Whether it is visual or written or musical, taking the familiar and working with it serves to connect with people.  Now, of course, you as the artist, may not want to connect with people.  Perhaps your goal is to alienate the audience with your work, which is a legitimate point of view.  Even still understanding how people think about things in general (and I hate to tell you, most people do things pretty similarly, we are all the same damn animal – dogs bark – cats purr – we like narrative in things and our web menus in tabs across the top of the page or along the left side, what can I say?) can aid  you in your quest for alienation.

Asking someone to reinvent the wheel of visual meaning every time they look at a painting can be very difficult indeed.  That’s what the web designers figured out, and what I’m realizing too.  Sure you can force people to create a new visual vocabulary on a cultural level, and that has happened as new technologies have emerged, both in art and in the land of computers and robots and such.  It can and has been done, but being aware of what’s around you in terms of visual signifiers and their meaning, one can start to manipulate them in ways that can both challenge and engage the viewer.  Or not.  But at least it’s your informed choice as the creator of the image.  The abstract expressionists ended up being decorative and un-understood because they each had their own idea about how the painting’s interface should look.  It’s like a programmer doing the interface design for the software.  Usually not such a good idea because the programmer can’t imagine not knowing what they know and what it will be like for a person new to the software when they first experience it.  So often we think something is so obvious to others when it is really not very obvious at all.

Anyway, it’s all just something I am thinking about.  Does that mean I’ll be making Thomas Kincaid paintings because they use imagery that people are familiar with?  Mais non.  But it does make me think hard about where I want my painting to be in the abstract/figurative continuum.  Not sure where it will take me, but I was happy to be able to relate my previous life experience to what I’m doing now.  For what it’s worth.

Now, here’s what I’ve done.   I’m going to post all the stages I’ve had of this last painting so people can see the progression and then the latest and greatest that I’m working on.

Ok, so here goes…

Most recent painting finished in stages:

Here’s some detail on the last (and most current image):

Here’s a photo of the next sparkly crystal thing I’m working on:

and my painting as it stands today:

and a wee bit 0′ detail:

And so the journey continues…