Tag: essay

50’s Riffin

The place was upstate & in the middle of nowhere. She had heard about it from some of her friends. No one said what actually went on there but merely alluded to it w/slightly arched brows. The boy her parents insisted she spend time w/. “I know where we can go…” The drive was mostly done in silence as the small talk that they had attempted made it seem even more awkward. For his part, they forced jocularity he had tried out made him instantly think of his father and so his mouth snapped shut with no sound but much force. The ride was just long enough for the night quiet that surrounded them to become exciting, as if they were at the start of becoming co-conspirators.
There were some cars parked unevenly out front.

He took her hand and they went through the door. At first they had both been scared. Julia had been so frightened that much like the accident when she was younger, she became very quiet and although she moved, radiated a stillness. All of this kicked in before she actually became calm. For his part, his nerves remained a sea whose surface continued to roil. He looked at her, she was so calm, his palm was a wet guilty verdict.

Julia looked all around. A few people were holding beer bottles with the necks between their fingers like a piece of sporting equipment for a game with which they are only vaguely familiar. Antonella was slow dancing in the middle of the room. She had never been one of the pretty girls, the group within the group of burgeoning women. But after summer vacation word got around that she had done more than any of her better looking peers and this was parlayed into a type of popularity. All the times that she was ignored, she was now getting hers, insisting that her boyfriend dance with her.

Some of the boys sit on the lip of the fireplace, cigarettes dangling from their bottom lips, nudging each other with their shoulders and giggling.

In very little time Julia realized that there was nothing to be frightened of, this was just a giant playhouse with children playing at being adults. An entire night of watching the behavior of others, the effect similar to someone trying to describe a movie which they had not seen but merely had heard about, adulthood. Her date never fully relaxed and for the rest of her life Julia always gravitated towards men who were more frightened than her.
FiniOct 8 W.Wolfson

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Picon et Biere

Traditional beauty bores me. It becomes a generic, fleeting pleasure. With painting it also easily lends itself to being overly academic, lean against the railing baby, tilt your head. I mainly use people I know, I let their naturally occurring body language and emotions present themselves. The true will always be beautiful because it is real.

 

9×12 Watercolor & Multi Media Paper

 

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Dior Glasses

There is a pleasure to exploring when on the road. A different but equally satisfying thing is to have places all over the world where one is known, a regular. This is a self portrait of me at one of my favorite places while on the road.

Watercolor & Multi Media Paper 9×12

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Caro Diario

On the road. This paper was just laying around. Although it was generally being put to use as scrap paper, it is landscape style. It was nothing fancy nor great but I decided to improvise part of my trip diary on it. It is not whether something is frame worthy or selleble but the process itself which brings me joy and is the personal payoff for me. I was pleased with the results.

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by Wayne Wolfson

Mis-Beckett(ed)

The best art in any medium has the effect of feeling extremely personal to each person who enjoys it even as it touches a multitude. Everyone has “their” author/painter/band/musician. This thing is recommended  to friends or in general conversation akin to how a proud parent talks of their child.

We all make totems of artists & their work. The more levelheaded ways are when we associate it in to the memory of the place/time/person(s) of first discovery. The work/artist can serve as inspiration or a brief respite from daily life with all its mundane commitments.

This is all fine so long as an audience keeps in mind that, although it may not be broadcast, the artists has an intent or idea behind the work which is the absolute truth beyond what one may make of the work. Its true meaning and intent.

Samuel Beckett has always been a favorite author of mine. His work often possesses a density whose meaning on the surface may seem a little open ended, but which is rarely the case.

Anyone with boho or intellectual leanings knows of Waiting for Godot. As for the rest of his work, with the advent of social media Beckett is often reduced down to bumper sticker aphorisms. This reduction is made worse by how often orphaned from the rest of the text, the use and meaning is wrong.

I was once again reminded of this via twitter which is 40% people posting quotes & material by others as to assert their individuality, 40% memes/gifs also by others and 10% original material.

It was the end of the night so I decided to peel off a portrait of Beckett. I used a Blackwing Palomino pencil I wanted to show the depth of his eye sockets and crags without having to rely on heavy shading. This pencil always lends a graphic feel to the work but also allows for volume and mass to come through.

9×12 Beckett

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Serenade

Emotion is the most important aspect of all my work, regardless of subject matter. Once one has an artistic mission or aesthetic in mind, next comes putting it into practice.

In chatting with some of my direct peers, something which seems obvious is reiterated throughout our ongoing conversations. We all approach the craft of painting differently.

For myself, i see the painting in my head done before starting it. Some of my pals know what they want to do but feel their way towards it as they go. With one piece they want to convey joy or sadness, established subject aside what will they do over the course of creation to facilitate it is what they feel their way towards while creating.

They get great joy in seeing what happens over the course of working. I would not want to work that way but they like the unfolding mystery aspect of it. To them, it would seem boring to know largely in advance whats going to appear out from under the brush but i never feel at shortage of joy when painting.

The one thing we all have in common is joy in the process regardless of how different it may be for each of us.

I want a discenible style/voice but to never lapse into mere mannerism.One way i avoid this is by challenging myself. I see the painting in my head, i know that a certain color is perfect for the background or I can get effect of dappled light on skin using a favorite yellow. I purposely will then use a different color and make it work. Like some of the dissonance in a Prokofiev piece, it works despite itself and becomes an important, naturally integrated  aspect.

Often when giving myself one of these challenges, during break I will be chatting with someone.

“I am trying some new stuff with this piece (my shorthand for one of my self challenges)”.

The finished work often does not look terribly different from any of its siblings. A potential dramatic let down to whomever I might have mentioned it to. Personally though, it is of great value. I got what I wanted without having to resort to now established methods & tricks.

I used French cotton paper for this piece. It is 7×10. It behaves different from both the multi media papers I use and the watercolor velum 5×8 which has become a favorite. The soundtrack was largely Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “I Talk with the Spirits”

 

by Wayne Wolfson

In a Moment

Renaissance painters largely did Royal/High Society  portraits along with the obligatory religious work. It was important for the portraiture to look like the subject. However, there could be subtext either positive or negative in the clothes the subject was wearing, the accoutrements around them.  These send their own narrative out into the world.

The painter locked in the subject’s position, then worked from there. Now, with camera/photos, people expect, if the subject is leaning their head to the left, then paint it exactly that way.

I have often written about the relationship between artist & model and audience expectation. Another aspect which has changed is positioning.

I want my portraits to look like the subject and I include every little bit of minutia that I see, from a blemish to an about to fall off button. when not working from a live subject, I do not rigidly adhere though, to position offered up in the photo .

Once I did a commission, working from a photo. When I was done, it was the spitting image.

“Oh, my head had been tilted back slightly more in the photo.”

It had not been a flattering angle, chosen because it decreased a chin but increased nostrils as focal point. A strange argument to me, as angle aside, it looked just like her. Most people would never see both the photo and the portrait.

Not by way of excuse but as part of my usual modus operandi, I do sometimes slightly alter an angle. It is as if I am capturing the moment before or right after that in the photo. Depending upon the naturalness of the pose, at other times I do not alter a thing.

She took possession of the portrait. Upon hanging it in her home, she snapped at photo of it on the wall. At one of the fuller cocktail parties she faux-casually brought up her portrait. Wanting some justification for her initial cool reaction she had been eager to show a party goer or two  the photo I had worked from and the finished portrait both of which rested within her phone.

“Oh, that is great, it looks just like you, especially in the eyes!”

After a few more comments like this, she felt better. She put away the photos of twins, born a minute apart.

 

“Blue Pillow”

Watercolor & multi media paper 9×12

 

 

by Wayne Wolfson

Left Bank

What makes for a good trip or proper travel is not checking off a list of places to see with their associated objects;

The Louvre, Mona Lisa….

It is absorbing the feel of a place, ambience of scents, sounds..In taking time to do this, one notices how others live their lives & what is important to them. It also allows for a deeper memory retention of the entire experience which then adds to the “you”. It is what is actually meant by “Travel broadens the mind”.

For artists there is even more of a potential benefit.

Every artists works & travels differently. I am always “working” regardless of where I am in the world. The only variation is what equipment I am utilizing. Short trips will find me leaving the paints at home, filling my coat pocket with my trusty pocket pads as I like to travel as light as possible and most likely would not have time anyways.

Any give place should effect an artist. Not in the most obvious way such as “I am in London, I painted Big Ben”.

It is ambient light, the lines of architecture, they become further accoutrements to the palette. It does not mean that one enters artistic phases ala Picasso and Cubism et al. Rather, work done in one place  does not look exactly as it appears back home. The artists voice is ever present but there are different components to the fore, mixed in with some of the more familiar.

If you have never been or only as part of a tour group, then every place in France is lumped in together. Despite some commonalities, each area is distinctive with their own cuisine and habits. It is the same with the ambient light.

Aix-en-Provence is all beautiful yellows punctuated by bursts of trees and the sounds of fountains. Lyon is soft pinks as if the buildings are made or at least coated with the delicate charcuterie which they are the masters of making. Paris in itself is diverse. From arrondissement to arrondissement, from the Left Bank to the Right .

People, myself included, proudly proclaim themselves of their side of the river and which number arrondissement.

I like even some of the seemingly “ugly” streets with their time worn dirty gray and fatigued creams. These areas tend to be where some of my artistic heroes lived, cheap rent and every third door a no nonsense bar having been the draw.

I like working with colored pencils on gray or brown paper. I limit my palette intentionally as a challenge to myself. Getting the effects that I want in this way makes it “easier” when using paints. Although I use mainly pinks, it is realistic in that in the real world there are seemingly limitless colors but go out on street  look at buildings and the street. On encounters a fairly limited palette.

These pinks, urban children of Fauvists, remind me of some parts of Paris. Not that this color is found there but it is same effect, translated in my minds eye. This little corner I continue to pass almost daily. It has been there forever and i do not think it ever had any straight lines about it.

I initially encountered it when staying at my first great apartment. It was en route to my groceries and favorite bars. Four floors, impossibly winding stairs that made you drag your shoulder against the wall as you ascended since the light was always broken. The biggest part of the place was the bathroom, with a large old tub, frosted glass windows which opened up onto a shadowy verdant courtyard with its cracked flagstones. I kept the primitive hi fi in the bathroom doorway since it was connected to the bedroom. Only music with a minimal of voices sounded good as it was a mono player. Mostly Zoot Sims duets and Lester Young trios.The neighbors would lean against their window boxes of geraniums smoking and slowly nodding their heads to the music. Dark silhouettes with one wavering orange eye-dot that would flare with inhalation.

Hard work and I was fortunate to be able to trade up apartments. I remained in my neighborhood just moving a few streets down. The building has become one of the visual shorthand for the deep affection that I hold for the every day in Paris and those first exciting years.

W.Wolfson ’19

Left Bank 9×12 colored paper and pencil

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Face Dances

For Sharon Anderson

I had an acquaintance in Toronto who fancies herself a shutterbug. She walks all around the city snapping photos of whatever catches her eye. She does this on her own, with friends and as part of an informal group.

The city has some vibrant graffiti and murals. Someone had done one of Prince, which she snapped a photo of. Prince as he was in the first flush of mega-stardom, decked out in the white ruffles and purple sequenced jacket. The problem was, it looked almost nothing like Prince. The outfit was correct and served as a visual clue:  “you are looking at Prince”.  Had he had no shirt on (or a different outfit) as occurred in some promo photos and videos, then no one would have had any idea who it was.

A lot of stars, especially artists,  have one or two  images  ingrained in the public’s conscious. This is even more so for musicians of the pre Instagram age.  Record companies, Dj etc all had to have the promotional photos/packs. The publicity photo a pre requisite but not too often updated. Jim Morrison is forever fitting into his leather pants, shirtless or with white pirate shirt, starring back at the camera as he wonders whether it is all worth it, forgetting that Rimbaud gave up poetry to become a white slaver. Jimi Hendrix is caught up in a spider’s web of bandannas and clashing colors as he lights Monterrey Pop on fire. And Prince had the ruffles at the throat and purple sequenced jacket different in color but similar to what Pete Townsend, light years away stylistically from the purple one, wore in the sixties.

So much rock was born out of rebellion, which is why every generation still holds it dear. Lazily resorting to visual shorthand of well known outfits reduces them down to a sort of uniform, very anti-rock (rebellion).

The best art tied in to musicians/artists, they should be recognizable in a different outfit or even just the face.

What makes for an even more worthwhile work is not their recognizably but rather does the work radiate an emotion which in turn makes the viewer feel something. The handicap of doing the visual shorthand of obvious outfit is even with some of the better works, you are freeze drying the emotion(s) to what was offered up in the photo. All photos are the souvenir of a dead thing as the moment has come and gone.

Faces, not necessarily of famous people, have always called to me. To conjure up a face on paper is an important part of what I do. Emotion coming through is the most important facet of what I do.

Here are several faces, done on different types paper. The inherent properties of the papers adding themselves to my voice like spice(s) to a stew.

All are 9×12

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by Wayne Wolfson