Tag: Wayne Wolfson

You’re Funny: Notes found jotted within pages of my pocket sketch pad.

Many bars in Paris still do not have televisions blaring from every free bit of wall space, luckily. I found myself, briefly in one of the few which did. Ironically, I was not even in the mood for a drink but to use the restroom. My personal sense of etiquette though, I ordered a drink.

The man on the stool next to me asked me about my accent.

“Sud Africain?”

“No.”

“Americaine?”

“Oui.”

With a thumb he points at the television, the thumb being chosen as it was a second class citizen to the index finger and all such displayed vulgarity was worth.

“What’s television like stateside?”

“We have one channel that shows twelve hours a day of either Seinfeld or Friends, NCIS and Law and Order are always on at least two channels in six hour blocks and most channels, when they have time to fill will throw up either one of the fast & Furious movies or Avengers Endgame.”

He could not picture what I was saying and only half understood. Part of him suspected I was having fun at his expense while another part thought perhaps I had devolved into some form of gibberish. He insisted on buying me a drink as to get me to lapse back into the silence of strangers, while in the background a dubbed in French episode of the Mentalist came on. With a weary smile, the bartender pushed a small bowl of stale pretzels towards us as he went searching for either the bottle or remote.

//

Jim Morrison wanted to give up the rock star thing and become a full time author/poet. Many people pointed to his lyrics, citing those as evidence that he was pretty much already a poet. Jim Morrison is like Baudelaire or , as he was rebellious and died young, Rimbaud. Jim Morrison is like Rimbaud, unless you have read Rimbaud.

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Even in North America, if one lives in the heart of a major city, eventually many strangers will see your private moments. Padding across a room naked, scratching or one of a million other things we all do. What separates us from beasts (usually, but slowly devolving to a 50-50 split) is the knowledge not to do these things in public.

You can have a bathrobe at the ready etc, reminding yourself every time you get up, who knows how many eyes are watching. Eventually though, all city dwellers become desensitized.

Paris is special in that even the smaller, cheaper apartments have the French windows or if not in this style, oddly shaped or strangely positioned. The way the buildings are piled up, at night I have many tiny illuminated in old- halogen- gold stage sets. You see people going about their lives, the erotic, the mundane, sometimes the poetic.

Like the time I watched a man building a model boat. He was skinny, bespeckled with sockless chuck Taylor sneakers, never a shirt and always some kind of sweat pants. No matter what music I put on, that season was mainly Chopin, it seemed to perfectly sync up with the scene he was acting out. Once the tiny ship was built, I never again saw his square of light against the dark silhouette of the building.

Being a demi Parisian, I know that I have had my time in being on the menu for the night’s programming. There he is, in bed pen dancing pirouettes upon the paper, book in hand he never falls asleep reading but snaps light off at proper end of chapter. Two corners of the bedsheets in hand, he is snapping them in the air with the flourish of a bullfighter before allowing them to float back down upon the mattress.

An interesting thing, during the day, it’s hard to tell what windows you had seen into at night.

I have always said that you can tell how great a city is by its relationship with cats. The best cities have plenty of cats to be seen in windows and walking along the streets.

My studio, when seated at my table a window two floors below mine and across is a fat cat I’ve named Porthos for his girth. Should I ever meet the owners and they introduce me, giving a different name, I will tell them that they are wrong.

One day as I was getting ready go to work, Porthos wasn’t in his usual spot but peripherally my eyes saw movement from a different apartments’.

There were two little kids in pajamas playing. I am horrible at knowing how old children are, a boy and girl maybe eight-ish. I thought it odd they weren’t dressed yet. Maybe they were tourists having arrived from far away, their internal clocks had not yet normalized.

Over the next few weeks, whenever I happen to glance by that window, the two kids still in pajamas, playing. It was weird because Paris has so many parks. You actually see children with their peers, with their parents, playing ping ping, chess and the Luxembourg Gardens has a large center fountain where you can rent a tiny toy sailboat by the hour. Yet this pair always seemed to be in that room.

After three weeks there was one change, a large tipi, but it was made of plastic, sort of Fisher Price(y). It gave them an unsettling Thirteen Ghosts aesthetic.

Once the sun went down that window never lit up and now I am pretty sure those two kids are ghosts.

(all pics by me)

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One of the things I have always treasure about Paris is how much great art is to be had just walking in the parks. There are some beautiful Giacometti’s, works by not as well know artist but beautiful none the less. Ages ago I used to go on Sundays to the Cantor Center at Stanford. They had a giant de kooning bronze. Rare because he did not really do too much sculpture, especially at that size.

Right as I found myself really getting into his work, the sculpture was gone. It ended up in the Jardin Tuileries across from one my favorite Parisian bookstores.

Art aside, the parks are a treat. Delacroix, even when older and famous would regularly still go the the Jardin des Plantes to sketch. The Luxembourg Gardens is large and has many paths laid out with different feels to them. Found among all these paths and trails are all types of statues, flowers, flowerbeds and plaques.

Many of my friends are in the service industry, restauranters or bartenders. General consensus is that the two worst nations exporting tourists are the English and then Americans. England should not feel too bad though ,as most of the worst America has to offer proudly have no passports.

Any place in which Spanish is spoken, the English merely add an “O” to the word and say it several times louder as if this were a spell transmogrifying it into Spanish. For French they add a “Le” and roll their tongue a bit like Johnny rotten at the mic in a huff.

I was walking the ‘Luxe. There is a moving, large statue in remembrance of the holocaust with, in case one couldn’t figure out what was going on, a plaque at its base.

I watched a group of American girls in athleisure wear, with central pony tails clamber to the base of the statue, all turn semi sideways to face camera, in what many articles have said is ideal positioning, while making phony gang signs and letting mixed drink coated tongues stick from the corners of their mouths until the snap of the camera.

This is a direct effect of what we get when we try to get rid of unpleasant things from history books. This is how people act when there is zero empathy because they do not know from anything other than what has directly impacted their lives.

FINI

If you like what I say or how I say it, my books are available via amazon for kindle & paperback

by Wayne Wolfson

Paris Painter

Instagram has made it so that the visual must pop, every canvas, drawing or photo the equivalent of today’s big budget movies. Eliciting ohs and also while being viewed, but ultimately forgettable. (“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”)

Many of the greatest paintings of the 19th century were just sort melange of raw reportage/visual diary of what they painters saw on a daily basis.

Now these works are immortal. At the time, the impressionists abandoning the heroic, allegorical or mythological to portray a friend reading the newspaper, a worker having a quick eye opener before starting the day or a wife’s hat left on a chair was scandalous.

We marvel at these works not merely for the technique but also the emotions which they continue to exude. A sense of organics is a large part of how they are able to do this, still.

This has been my guide post for painting. Poetry from the seemingly mundane, A personal lexicon of what I see on a daily basis, the real.

This watercolor painting is 4×4 inches on custom cut paper for my disc system pocket pad.

by Wayne Wolfson

Blinky

There was a slight gap of time between my Cinefields® . As much as I enjoy them, they are very time consuming and when in the process of creating them, they dominate my studio space.

For what would be the last one before returning to Europe, I wanted to stretch myself. I only used two photos which I knew would limit the color palette.

Not necessarily apparent, this is my most rhythmically complex piece. I wanted to present flowers of light. Vast unfurling urban fields for people to look at and do their own journeys.

As is always the case, I only used photos which I personally took. There is no digital magic, I used the traditional method of scissors and adhesive applied with a brush.

Blinky 11×14 (The photos do not give the sense of it, but each piece is tiny!)

Errata: There has been much talk of artificially created art. This, along with fact generation Instagram does not feel taking work they find online for their own content/page a crime, makes copywriting one’s work more important than ever. However, most gallerists, agents and collectors I talk to all feel to emblazon a work w/ copyright notice is mark of amateur. It also ruins the work. If someone wants to “borrow” your work, they are just going to crop the notice off or sometimes not even that. Then why copyright? Because it gives you quick recourse for when you do find someone using your work. I am not blasé about my work being taken, of course it’s upsetting but that notice is no deterrent. It will make whomever react quicker when you come across your work out there somewhere. It’s worth paying the fee, filling out the forms.

by Wayne Wolfson

Voyages

For artists in any medium an online presence is now necessary regardless of how one’s methodology used to be. Connected to this online life for amateurs (even if they are not aware of being so) is the myth of the numbers game with its implied short cut to money and visibility/site numbers.

The basic premise, which has a myriad of variations depending upon who is explaining it, can be parred down to a basic concept of the greater amount of times one puts out there a work they have for sale or perhaps an appearance/show, then the better chance there is of achieving satisfying sales/head count. The true believers explain it thus:

“If you have one hundred thousand views of your post and only five percent of people buy your thing, well that still works out to be…”

Aside from the fact I think machine gun firing (this is making constant mention everywhere) what one has to offer out onto the net is uncouth, it also is naively optimistic. It’s one thing to look at a posting, it’s another to purchase something. Regardless of how inexpensive it is, most people follow at least a few hundred people and it can easily add up fast.

All that aside, I personally want an audience, not customers and this is the great disconnect often now occurring between artist and public. I dont want to hustle for sales etc. If I were going to do that, then I would just have a straight job where sales would equate to large commissions and expense lunches.

It’s all right to mention something available to the public when pertinent. As an artist you hope your work gets seen. Anyone who reads my blogs knows that I rarely make mention of for sale things except for when they are brand new.

I am proud to say that my latest collection has just came out. It’s available now for kindle & Paperback on amazon.

by Wayne Wolfson

Dilated

I have been taking some short trips which was impetus behind doing a smaller painting. Even with it being small, bad weather made me have to put it aside after only being quarter of the way done as I hit the road.

This smaller size had long been my preferred size until I found myself switching to 11×14. Trips longer than three day and I will paint. So, it is good to once again get back into smaller pieces as that is what I will do on the road.

Often I use myself as the subject of my work. If not my face, then my hands or some other bodily part. This is for convenience’s sake. It is nice to start a work when I want to or to stop as i mull a line over. Throwing someone else into the mix, this is not always as easy. There is a pleasure in that it also puts me in the grand tradition of painters showing themselves in their work.

I am not ashamed to portray myself as I am. There is no idealization. It’s almost a form of visual raw reportage. I take the same approach when conjuring up someone else. In one of the later Truffaut films from his The Adventures of Antoine Doinel cycle, one of the characters mentions in passing how an artist should never use their craft to settle scores. This has always been my outlook. Regardless of how a subject looks in comparison to the notion of desirability, for me, truth is always beauty.

This piece is 5×7. I am pleased with how the sort of goonyness of flesh comes across.

by Wayne Wolfson

February 3

Compulsively, I read biographies on painters/artists and movements. I never restrict myself in regards to medium nor era. I notice that starting at about the time right before the impressionists, there was a common occurrence. A lot of artists had the same life trajectory with variations according to their personal temperaments and artistic voices.

There would be the years of learning followed by chrysalises period from which they would emerge with the base of what would become their distinct individual voice. Often, this would be followed by years of trudging forward while suffering through various slings and arrows of critics and the general public.

If lucky to still be alive, then once through this phase is the first blush of fame. Often times the fame would grow but it becomes sort of a trap. An artist starts to second guess themselves trying to hold onto all their hard fought for gains. This includes the temptation and pressure to merely repeat what had brought them their initial laurels.

From an artists point of view it becomes pandering where one pantomimes the familiar as to hear applause. Galleries don’t want to risk sales by the artist striking off in new direction. There is the danger that critics won’t understand or appreciate any deviation from what they like about an artist.

Even artists who mange to navigate all of this, when you read their biographies or “the letters of” type books they all comment on the same sweet spot of their careers.

It is when enough “fame” has finally happened so that they have met all of life’s basic needs (food, clothes, shelter et al) and can buy art supplies without having to think about the impact of any purchases on the rest of their lifestyle. The long gestated voice is recognized and appreciated but not to the degree that there can be no further evolution to it.

With no distractions from practical considerations towards daily living nor external pressures of audience, gallery or critics the artist is free to explore and follow their own North star.

This golden time is too often recognized only after it has passed.

In an attempt to buck the trend I try to take advantage of it as often as possible. Aside from a way of showing appreciation for my situation, it also fosters evolution.

Rarely do I do studies before doing a painting. This time I decided to, as to play around a little with compositional balance. Also, I decided to greatly increase the size of my work from the usual 11×14 inches to 25×30. when I paint it is usually flat upon my table. Because of the size, this time it was on an easel.

I have a great, heavy wood and brass easel which could be used for massive sized pieces. As I worked on lower sections of this piece, I sat on a stool with my feet on the bottom cross bar of the easel so that it looked like I was a windsurfer.

With my paints I always use half pan sets. I had been given a few tubes as a gift and decided to use those too. they required very much a different touch.

overall, I was very pleased with the results of this piece.

by Wayne Wolfson

(small) Murmured Songs

Tom Verlaine just recently died. His career had the dichotomy of he & his band Television even now constantly being cited as an influence. Yet he never broke big in the way that some of his direct CBGB’s peers like Blondie and the Talking Heads did. This isn’t a bad thing, as it allowed him to always do as he pleased with zero consideration for hits or video’s which would prove popular and remain in rotation.

One of the better remembrances I read was not by an artistic peer or current star who had been inspired by his work. It was an account given by a book seller that resonated with me and seemed one of the most appropriate send offs.

Strand’s Book Store in New York is, at least in America, one of the last of it’s kind. It is an institution. Tom haunted it’s aisles and the bargain carts out front year after year. People might have occasionally nudged one another with their elbows while nodding with their chin as he passed by but other than that he was treated as just another bibliophile on the hunt.

The book seller recounted the diversity of what he bought and cumulatively, the number of books he must now be in possession of.

I saw aspect of myself in all of this. When there is nothing that I need at an art supply store, if I happen to be passing one I will go in and wander around. This always leads to me buying a few pocket pads. I have one whole drawer in one of my tabourets that is full of small, odd sized pocket pads.

I always leave my preferred methodology to shake things up and foster evolution. Different exercises/series done besides my regular work as to learn more.

In my coat pocket or book bag there is always a pocket pad but I tend to use the same brand/size. There is no reason to be saving all the other pads and I am starting to run out of room. So I decided to just start randomly grabbing one and using it.

For my first series I added the challenge of not doing any shading and only using one specific pencil. These drawings are all intentionally executed quickly, often plein air.

125×90 MM

by Wayne Wolfson