Tag: painting

Cinefield® Miles

For all my work, I’ve always had two main goals. To develop a discernable voice and to create works which in some manner effect the viewer. The first was achieved via lots of sweat and singular concentration, while the second will be a life-long mission.

The problem with having a recognizable voice is that one can either unintentionally or out of laziness lapse into mere mannerisms. This is to be avoided at all costs. It is the motivation behind my constantly leaving my comfort zone and trying new things.

For Miles I sought to make it different than what had come previous. It can still be recognized as a sibling of the predecessors as the medium does to some extent effect the voice. The mission for this one was that I wanted the viewer to be able to go back multiple times and find new little moments occurring within to notice.

As is always the case with these works, I only use photos which I personally took. For this piece, I was fortunate to find an area which was trying to entice night people with entire buildings being lit up in purples and pinks. These colors being new to my Cini palette were a great way to further the newness I was trying to achieve. I would combine an overall different color palette with an increased rhythmic complexity.

There is no digital magic, I used my trusty scissors to cut out tiny pieces and a brush for adhesive. The piece is 11×17 inches.

I always have a sort of soundtrack when I do Cinefield® pieces. I do not merely listen to same albums over and over, the soundtrack is what i start out with and as the day goes on other things are put on. They serve as an initial mood setter. This piece’s soundtrack:

Miles Davis Big fun

The Soft Pink Truth Is It going to Get Any deeper Than This

Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef

Mozart (Rene Jacobs conducting) La Clemenza di Tito

(C) 2024 Wayne Wolfson not for use without permission

by Wayne Wolfson

Blinky

There’s a cottage industry devoted to helping people to pursue the dream of becoming a working artists. There is a lot of advice, some contradictory and other things just not how it works in the real world. Or, if it works that way, it is far slower going and heavily sprinkled with rejections and other unavoidable negative aspects.

The one commonality though is that one must have an online presence. Starting with a personal page which should not look as if only free sample software was utilized. There is also the need to have a social media presence. This is the thing so many get wrong.

Have updates of what you are doing in regards to new releases, shows, concerts etc. (It is strange though to keep up a steady stream all day long on twitter et al. When are you working? )

The biggest mistake with social media is the machine gun approach. The theory being if you have something you want people to buy/see just send a deluge out onto social media non-stop. Ten, fifty, one hundred thousand people see it and then if only “X” percent act….

Rarely does it work this way, to a higher percentage of people you are being an annoyance or another thing to mark future communications to go directly to spam folder.

Of course all artists want their work to be seen, myself included. But you should want an audience, not customers. Social media has definitely made it so that there is potential to reach many people with the press of the button, but done too often or two impersonally the only thing achieved is adding to the volume of cacophony of voices yelling “look at me, buy my stuff”.

I have several pages which have been around at this point for years. Anyone familiar with them sees that I rarely steer people towards commerce side of my artistic life. Exceptions being mainly when i have a new book out.

My newest collection is just out and you can find it at amazon in Paperback & kindle versions.

by Wayne Wolfson

Selfie

There’s a long existing tradition of painters doing self-portraits. Even those who do not often do portraits but work in realistic/figurative style, over the course of their career will do a few. One reason every painter finds themselves giving it a try is that it is almost a way of proclaiming yourself a painter to the world, swearing allegiance to the process and planting your flag.

The painters who do it more regularly often have a Whitemanesque I celebrate myself, and sing myself element to it. Or as is usually the case for myself, pragmatism. Sometimes it is just easier to do a selfie. I do not need to worry about waiting around for a model, I do not need concern myself with if the light changes.

The relationship between artist and model, it is as if they are describing a person but using their words. The words in this case being the artist’s voice/style. Everyone looks different moment to moment. One looks different depending upon health, mood, location. You will look different sitting across from me in restaurant than at my side in car going down highway et al.

Cell phones have grated everyone ability to capture minutia of their lives. People have forgotten how to look at paintings. A subject or model wants to look exactly as they do in a photo. They want you to use their words to describe them so to speak and they don’t understand about the transmutable effect of time, being a different “I” from second to second as influenced by so many factors. To look exactly as one does in a photo, that is photo realism and that is a style, a genre not “the right way” over all. Very few of the immortal list of painters did photo realism. When you view their works, whether Frans Hals or Matisse, you know you are seeing a woman in a dress, you might even know who the subject is, but one is not going to study anatomy from the work nor confuse it for a photo. This is not a bad thing. Forgotten is that it was the artist’s hand, their voice in a work we treasured not merely because it looks so much like the thing.

In general I always want my portraits whether in paint or drawing to look like the subject, but ultimately it’s a flat square upon which one is creating an image which hopefully exudes at east a little something, life, emotion. Even with this goal though, I am not trying to hide that it’s not a photo. Why would I?

11×17 Tan Paper & Watercolor

by Wayne Wolfson

Drella

Picasso’s name still carries much power, although not for the reasons it formally had. Now, he is an aspiration for people. The imagined life, doing very little but acting as one imagines a famous artists to act via cues from TV and movies. Paying for huge bar & restaurant bills via scribbling on a napkin, grabbing your dealer’s or someone else’s wife’s breast and other such bad behavior, all done to endless applause.

Think what you want about the man, he actually worked hard. Those who daydream of reaching his level would give up even earlier than their eventual quitting if they knew the amount of work required to attempt to scale up to his heights.

The best art and artists have an aspect to them in which each fan recreates it in the image they need, their own meanings, regardless of accuracy.

Andy Warhol is another whose name has become totemic for many. The interesting thing about him is that he seems to be made by admirers (and some detractors) into a myriad of bewigged pixies.

With Picasso, whether one is fan or not, the various ways in which he is portrayed always have a main component of him being the conqueror.

Andy though, is legion. Some admirers see him as what he offered up to the world, the public face. Others wanted to dig a little deeper and went by his published diaries, which most likely had been done for eventual public consumption. A further put on or enigma, depending upon which camp one is in.

There is the parable about the six blind men and the elephant. This perfectly sums up Andy. Assuredly, we are told he was:

Master manipulator, someone whose other-worldly boho mien was a sort of act which amused him to do, a long con performance piece.

A true artist whose cool emotional detachment was birthed out of the initial ideas behind pop-art and the booming post war years of consumerism.

An on the spectrum man-child, whose wonderment at some of life’s more mundane aspects truly enchanted him.

Each of these members of an army of Andys have a plausible explanation as to why they are the true Andy.

He achieved such fame and was in the game for so long. There was a sharp eyed cleverness behind everything he did. Part of his genius was in letting others talk for him.

Early on he found a way to to do a put on to the art world which amused him. This was facilitated by letting critics, fans and peers do the talking, coming up with the theories and meanings amongst themselves.

He was a sort of naif. Handlers and an inner circle took care of all practical matters, while he walked through life in a dream like enchantment.

It was all an act which allowed an artist who was mediocre in execution of work and its promotion in the traditional manner to accrue power and money while secretly laughing behind his wig and shades.

Interestingly, the further forward in time we move, the clearer picture of which was the true Andy is formed. All the various Andy’s which people hold dear were aspects of him.

I am actually not a fan. Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing a giant silkscreen by Rauschenberg which i greatly admired. This combined with fact that every time I watch a documentary on anything going on in the 1970’s from clothes, music, photography, night life et al, at the very least during montages, Andy can be seen watching the crowd.

It served to make me think of the nature of his fame.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

Quick sketch on newsprint

by Wayne Wolfson

Dear Diary

I am in the middle of working on another Cinefield®. This means that painting temporarily takes a backseat. Like many of my musical heroes, I will still woodshed every night. My version of playing scales, sketching hands, eyes et al.

Drawing is not a second class citizen for me. It is very much a part of my “I”. While it does help with my compositional eye in photography and sense of rhythm with my painting and Cinefields®, I view drawing as a separate and equally important medium in itself.

Both Matisse and Renoir had said something along the lines of an artist should take time every day specifically to sketch things very quickly. In working fast, eventually one is able to capture the essence of a thing with a minimal of lines. Once you can do that, then when you slow down for a painting or longer worked on drawing, then it is easier to bring out the essence of the thing.

Here are some recent quick pieces:

Lyra Piece 5×7

Quick sketch & text by Me

Elliot Gould. If you haven’t seen it, highly recommend the movie “The Long Goodbye”

Quick sketch of Iggy

by Wayne Wolfson

Song About a girl

This is my first painting of ’24. I am very pleased with it. 11×17 Watercolor on tan paper.

As seems to now frequently be the case, the news is bleak. It is the duty for all artists to do their thing. Not put political messages into their works but rather offer up something outside of the here and now, which will some day be over. Facilitate inspiration and show that there are things bigger than ourselves, which are eternal. Things like art, culture, beauty and the general human condition.

The reason why artists such as Shakespeare & Homer are still so revered is because they reflect the human condition. Of course the social mores & politics have changed but things like joy, desire, grief, we can all relate. And that is one of the things art should do, relink us, especially now.

If one is not an artist, as important as the creating is the viewing. An artist with no audience becomes akin to the riddle about the tree in the forest. Take the occasional break from doom-scrolling. Try to If not every time, then every other time, when the urge arises to engage someone in what will ultimately be a futile bad vibe exchange over points of views, instead explore a new painter, author or piece of music.

In this way, with very little effort we can all improve the zeitgeist.

by Wayne Wolfson

Cupid Disguise

Read enough biographies on artists and regardless of medium and era a commonality becomes apparent. It is what I call The Sweet Spot. This is the time when the struggle/work for the artist to achieve their distinctive voice has been achieved. All the work which goes towards fostering the skill to do so now takes no more effort to motivate into action than a health habit. And there is now an audience which gets rid of the abstracted “someday,,,” aspect the lack of which causes the “Why am I doing this again?”.

There is an audience but not so big that the artist, even if only on a subconscious level, incorporates into the equation all the expectations of fans, critics and gallerists. There is the luxury of being able to work and experiment giving no thoughts to consequence.

More often than not, the artist recognizes this golden age only after they are well past it. If lucky, in old age they may get a second shot once established as an institution or national treasure but this is not always guarantied.

I feel fortunate, for among other things, recognizing that i am in the sweet spot. I decided to try a bunch of new things for this painting. Why not? I am very pleased with how it turned out. To me, it does not look radically different from my other paintings despite all new things I tried.

Cupid Disguise 11×17 Watercolor & Paper

by Wayne Wolfson

Beauty of the Everyday

compulsively, I read biographies on artists of every medium & era. I will even delve into people who are not my usual thing which has more than once made me become a fan. There is a commonality which transcends both nation and decade, that of practicality initially dictating artistic direction/materials & methodology.

The Impressionists are mainly talked about in relation to how they used color and lighting effects. Their importance was not just their revolutionary portrayal of light as it effected perception though. Before them, some painters had started breaking away from the pervading “must” of people being heroically portrayed ala history/myth/allegory (Courbet & Millet had started towards more naturalized milieu) they were the first to fold it into their works wholesale.

People were portrayed having an eye opener in a cafe before work, dirty nails, bad skin. Objects were portrayed in natural positions, a wife’s hat left atop a shrub, detritus atop a studio table waiting to be swept with forearm into the trash.

Part of the reason for this all was practicalities sake. Models could not always be afforded and it was easier using friends and family to pose, especially as scheduling could prove to be more convenient and often all it cost was to eventually return the favor.

These things would be enfolded into the methodology of their work and then honed. After this point, it was became their lexicon.

The same thing happened with Picasso/Braque cubist still lives, it was just things they had laying around which were part of their every day lives. Money need not be spent on flowers or any other kind of specialty objects. The only downside to this was that by the time Picasso was moving on from cubism, cubist paintings by participators in the genre more often than not had “required” objects to be included which had initially made appearances in a natural manner due to pragmatism.

Practicality is often an important initial dictator of choices an artist makes, but once the path chosen is felt to be the right one, a philosophy sprouts up. Like the methodology, it is ready to be honed, its articulation, whether to the public or just in the artist’s head, fine tuned.

The Italian painter Giorgi Morandi rarely left his city of Bologna, Italy (only three times, much later in life and then only briefly). He did not portray life in his home city but was fueled by it. He mainly did still lives. Most of these were of bottle which had just been laying around. A cursory look at his work and they seem deceptively simple. There is no bursting forth virtuosic moments to be found in his work. What makes them remarkable is that they very much look like every day objects imbued with organically occurring poetry.

A generation later and half a world away, Henry Virgona worked along a similar philosophical line. He kept the same 300 square foot Union Square studio for fifty nine years (sadly, ending in 2019). He rarely traveled, preferring to stay within the confines of the city whose fabric he was very much part of. He did still lives which showed him to be the artistic son of Morandi. He was an accomplished draftsman and this urban Antaeus did amazing candid drawings of all the people that he encountered in his daily city life, their natural poses maintain the power of the pieces. Two men, one mainly using objects, the other, people encountered every day, both showing inherent natural beauty of regular life.

I had already hit upon my philosophy and modus operandi before discovering Henry’s work. We definitely have marked differences, some of which could be generational. It is inspiring though, to see that one’s idea of serving the process is not completely out of left field but rather an evolved link in a chain which goes way back.

Most of what I work in and how I work all started out from practical considerations. I mainly use people in my life in some manner as models for convenience’s sake. When no one is around, I will paint or draw whatever catches my eye which is right in front of me. I too go for the beauty which organically comes through in every day objects or scenes.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is to conjure up, even if only with a pencil nubbin and scrap paper, either something I am seeing or talking about.

I was at a concert and observed various moments where, as much as I was enjoying the music, got caught up in people watching. Doing a sort of raw-visual-reportage after the fact, I caught the moment in a bigger sized for me piece. Aside from the size of the piece, another departure for me was the fact that I did a few studies as I wanted the crowd scene to be accurate and maintain a certain degree of looseness which already having knowledge of positioning and compositional balance would help with.

“Sept. 19th” 14×19 graphite on paper 5×7 studies

by Wayne Wolfson

Going Under

When I first started seriously painting, I used a French cotton paper. I did not realize it at the time, but it is far less forgiving than the paper which I currently use (which is non-cotton).

I made the switch when the already up there price raised even more. There was much experimentation before I found the paper which became my main one.

In cleaning my tabouret draws, I came upon an unopened block of French Cotton paper. As my skill has increased from when I originally had used it, I was interested to see what I could do with it now.

My preference with cotton paper had always been cold pressed, but even with this, there is more tooth to the paper than what I currently use. This gives a sort of chunky effect when portraying flesh, watercolor impasto.

I enjoyed using this paper and I will work my way through the block but to my surprise I now prefer my current non-cotton paper. The cotton paper does not blend as easy, so getting effects I want with cotton paper will now make it “easier” with my preferred paper.

5×7 Watercolor & cotton Paper

by Wayne Wolfson

Summer III

Unintentionally, my last three paintings form a cohesive series. The news continues to be bleak. It is the responsibility of all artists to do their thing. Not necessarily art with a message but putting forth things of beauty as a reminder that there are things out there bigger than ourselves. And more importantly, not everything need be connected to a “Us versus them” issue.

As I cool down on use of some of my other social media sites I had a revelation. Just because you disagree with someone or even if they are legitimately wrong, it’s often not worth yelling back. You are not going to change hearts and minds. Even if in the right, more often than not it is just adding to the cacophony, feeding the pervading negative zeitgeist.

All art regardless of medium is a way to look towards better days, here’s hoping I see you there.

Summer III 11×17 Watercolor & Tan Paper

by Wayne Wolfson