Tag: paper

Green Clogs

The nature of fame has changed. Like a lot of things, it’s properties are no longer agreed upon facts. Where once it was tied in more with the possessor’s talents and the work put into achieving the abilities, now it is often more align with coveting the “fame”.

The reality star/internet influence is largely the ultimate ambition of an entire generation. A main element of this phenomenon is the “look at me/look at what I have” aspect. It allows for feeling good about oneself without having to really work (i.e practice to become the best guitarist et al). This new fame is done by of looking down on those without while also being watched.

Social media (Instagram etc etc) is full of postings of people showing others their fab lives even if it’s largely artificial. People taking photos of their tropical vacation, Parisian jaunts. (mostly) They are not trying to show you the poetry of the sights but rather what they have that you don’t, where they are but you are not.We should all try to be the best version of ourselves but this is perversion of that concept, people putting forth an idealized, artificial version.

There is a company now where you can rent a private jet by the hour, it doesn’t go anywhere, it is for photo ops, so you can post photos of yourself chin on hand gazing out plane window or leaning back in plush leather seat champagne in hand smiling at the start of your adventure to nowhere.

The zeitgeist? Immediately pre pandemic a celebrity gave her boyfriend half a million dollars in cash, putting it up on social media. Putting aside whether the money was earned, in what way is any purpose served aside  from “look what I have”? (although Marie Antoinette didn’t actually say it, and the proper translation is brioche not cake) if ever there was a “Let them eat cake” moment that was it. Art should inspire. Even bad art can inspire as the viewer feels that they can make a better painting, write a better song etc. There is no discernible culture involved in any of this. For now we all live in self imposed exile and the “celebrity” peacock(ing) to some extent continues, albeit from living rooms and bedrooms.

My studio windows face a new building with the same color scheme as mine. People go out onto their little Juliet balconies to drink coffee and smoke. They are too far away to talk to but we have now all become part of each others daily lives via our mutual observation. I can chat while painting but I am also simultaneously absorbed into the process so I do not mind being a show for neighbors.

It will be interesting once we are all through this, to see whose values change.

Of course I have no idea of their web presence and its content but I have yet to see anyone leaning back against the railings of their balcony glass champagne in hand looking up, duckbill faced to raised phone, snapping a selfie.

One of them, i have noticed seems to have learned my easel working hours. We have a tacit understanding, I do not mind her watching and I do not ogle her when, on sunny days she walks around in the nude. We sealed our social contract with a series of casual waves.

I have started working big. I will not switch the usual scope of my pieces but I like the occasional challenge to keep things fresh. I slip a larger piece into my oeuvre now and then. I am still learning my preferred paper, trying a new one with each large piece.   I do have my method down and size too. The large pieces are all 22×30.

Regardless of size and subject of my piece, I seek to convey beauty from the real.

 

“Green Clogs” 22×30 Watercolor & Paper

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

M Shelter in Place

The building across the way from my *studio, I had used images of it in my last large collage. I knew to Wait for no one to be around as to not have my phone being pointed in that direction misconstrued.

When it is my painting hours I am now sometimes watched by others  from their Juliet balconies. At first it was just something for them to do while getting some air, cup or coffee or smoke in hand. After first week of this i know there developed some curiosity about what I was working on.

Now, when I finish a piece I turn it towards the window so that they may from their concrete and steel nests, see it.

I am currently working on a large 22×30 painting. I must go slower as its new paper to me and the weather has been wet. So far I am pleased with the results.

During tough times I think it important anyone capable of creating beauty to do so. Not as a means of distraction but rather a reminder of what we eventually will return to once the crisis is over (beauty/culture). It is the reaffirmation that as long as the night seems, there will eventually be a dawn.

Beauty & culture also serve as a reminder during a crisis of who we are, not merely people trying to survive but a small part of a greater whole.

*I have live/work studio and am not breaking quarantine

This piece is 9×12 Watercolor & Multi Media Paper.

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Fa-Flex

The propaganda aspects of a lot of renaissance art has been lost to the more casual peruser of paintings and sculpture. The shorthand of what they were doing has now become that Michelangelo, da Vinci et al were presenting the physical ideal. The ideal being equated to something to strive for regardless of its impossibility.

Part of the magic of painting which started with the immediate precursors to   impressionism (Courbet, Fantin Latour, Millet) was that they were begging to slowly move away from the subjects when not a still life or landscape being restricted to  those of myth, biblical or historic. The heroic, idealized.

When the Nazi occupation of France became inevitable there was a scramble to get the high profile residents, thinkers, politicos and artists to safety. Matisse was on this list. At the last minute he backed out of fleeing, saying:

“If everyone who has any value leaves France, what remains of France?”

After the fact asked to expand upon what he meant in greater detail he cited culture not personality as what he had been getting at. If the abstracts which gives us pleasure, define us and add to us are gone then what is the point?

Unfortunately in current times art and culture by default often is associated with an elitism. Art has a duty, not in the sense of promoting a message or agenda though. Now is the time for any who can, to create something of beauty. And if you can’t, it is of equal importance to appreciate and enjoy it.  The purpose art and beauty can serve now has changed since the renaissance. None of it should be tied in with any sort of “ideal”. It represents something not necessarily perfect, an impossibility to be striven for but rather something outside of ourselves, the “I” becoming part of a greater whole.

This should bolster the thought that no matter how bad things get, we all have to live with ourselves when it’s over and back to normal. Paraphrasing Matisse’s train of thought, to lose what we value about ourselves as a society just to stay around, well what would be the point?

W.Wolfson 2020

“Fa-Flex” Watercolor & French Cotton Paper 7×10

 

Fa-Flex

 

 

by Wayne Wolfson

Trufb Theninggin # 2

This is the second piece in a series.

Watercolor & French cotton paper 7×10
The size I choose for my works is intentional. I want the viewer to feel as if ease dropping on a scene.

As important to me is the new or first time collector.
Art collecting has become for the average citizen nearly unobtainable. This is because of a pervading bigger is better mentality. Not all people have gallery like wall space to work with. I keep in mind the apartment dwellers and first time art investors.

Space aside, burgeoning collectors are just starting to form their taste. A large piece runs the risk of informing the aesthetics of what to collect. I want my audience to live with my work, not under it.

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Two Pieces

After painting for a few years and garnering some chops, i notice that while my voice is ever present in my work(s) different paper have their own inherent properties. The characteristics each paper brings to a piece is akin to a spice intentionally added to a dish for a desired effect.

 

Here are two pieces I did in same week:

 

“Hey” 5.5×8.5 Watercolor  & Paper

 

“Soak” 9×12 Watercolor & mutli media paper

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

She is Tall

I like my pieces to exude the feeling that one is a voyeur into a scene. I try to not rigidly state what the viewer is seeing. Pleasure, pain, either or so long as emotion is present.

 

7×10 Watercolor & French Cotton 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

The Sea (for Kini)

I used to do large paintings, acrylic on canvas. Door sized things. I was not very good at the time and I sometimes think the real art was in the making of the pieces as I often had an audience. Everyone liked the works but I think it was being caught up in the moment or after the fact, remembering the time.

I got serious about painting, I got good. I am far better with watercolors than I ever was with acrylics. I got rid of 95% of my old works.

My paintings and drawing tend to be far smaller now. my largest graphite pieces are 9×12 with the paintings being 7×10. (more often than not 5.5×8.5)

I have a logic to this. I want the viewer to feel as if ease-dropping in on whatever scene I am putting forth. As important as the emotional effect, i have the first time or new collector’s in mind.

When  first getting into art there is a vague sense of what one likes. The more you delve into art, the more exposure you have, the palate becomes fuller formed. To get one of the larger pieces so en vogue when first starting out, you run the risk of it dictating the timber of a burgeoning collection.

I want a collector to live with my works, not under them. For people where space is at a premium, the now seemingly typical big-boys dominate a room. The real big pieces, you have to almost put goggles over the mind’s eye, you stop noticing it except for rare instances and this defeats the purpose of having art.

With my now firmly established voice, I have no idea if my technique would even work with large pieces. As a challenge for myself I have decided to do a few larger (for me) pieces. Regardless of whether I can make it work, I still do not see myself going as big as is popular. Bigger is not better it is just “more”.

This is my first “big” piece.

The Sea (for Kini) graphite & paper 14×17

 

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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