This happened while I was assembling a power point presentation of contemporary art to share with my students, and I responded to her work immediately. This is the kind of painting that makes a powerful impression without trying to impress.  It’s fresh, sincere and full of surprises:

More images at :http://chelseabjames.blogspot.com/

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Should we not struggle in our work?

This question came up during a fall drawing workshop held in my studio.  I was stressing the virtues of effortlessness, or at least the appearance of it, in one’s work.  I’m a big advocate of maintaining a positive mental attitude while creating art, which challenges the myth of the tortured, genius artist.

Enter Van Gogh, Pollock, Rothko.

The short answer, and my opinion, is that struggle is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, but largely irrelevant.  True it can energize one’s work to a certain extent, but there’s a downside.  Once the adrenals kick in, vision and creativity narrow, you see  more problems than solutions (or beauty for that matter) take fewer chances and paint defensively.

It does no good to struggle for example when dialing a friend; you know the number, in which case it’s simple, or you don’t, in which case it’s impossible.

How hard you work at dialing makes no difference at all, except perhaps to give the feeling that you are doing your absolute best.  But alas, all of your best efforts will be repeatedly met with a chilly, “Who is this?”

What’s the phone number in this analogy?  Observation.  Raise your awareness, keep your eyes wide open, focus on and enjoy the process instead of forcing a result.  Then make popcorn and go enjoy Kirk Douglas’ portrayal of Vincent.

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It’s my pleasure to be exhibiting this work in a fine exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art titled The Yankee Spirit, on view until October 29 – see exhibitions.  I’ve received some e-mail questions about the work and so thought I’d share with readers the experience of painting the piece.

In 1995 I moved from a small apartment in NYC where I lived and worked to a cavernous old house in north Jersey just outside of Manhattan.  I was struck by a powerful,  nostalgic feeling of returning home, although this was like no place I had ever lived. I was taken by all the space, light coming in on four sides and character of the place.  My first instinct was,  ”paint something big”.

I stretched up the largest piece of canvas I could find (90 x 72 in),  with no idea of what it would be and started painting. Floors, molding, furniture as we acquired it, putting objects into the work and taking them out. Halfway through I realized that most of my interest was in the magnificent light illuminating the floor, and so that became the protagonist of the work.  More deletions of objects followed to highlight the floor.

With  four shifting light sources  this had the feel of a landscape painting rather than an interior.   It’s an amalgam really- the illumination of these rooms over time rather than any one moment in time.

Three years later it was time to show the piece in Boston and I was floored, no pun, to realize that it wouldn’t fit down the narrow staircase and into the truck. It’s one thing to bring a roll of canvas and stretchers into a studio – quite another to move a framed and finished painting out.

The next  morning I removed a large bay window from the studio (demolished it really), barely slid the painting out diagonally  and gently lowered it to the ground with a rope, neighbors watching.  All the while praying my landlord wouldn’t show up and see the mess I’d made.

The piece has traveled a bit –  to Marymount Manhattan College, Hirschl & Adler Modern, The Federal Reserve Bank Gallery of Boston, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art,  the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Telfair Museum of Art, the Butler Museum, the  Georgia Museum of Art and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

I now work out of a different studio with a big mechanical door.
But  I paint smaller anyway.

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…but my God, what an eye!” –   Edgar Degas, on Claude Monet

A powerful statement by an artist not known for spreading around a lot of kindness.

It’s no coincidence that some of history’s most beloved artists – Velasquez, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Chardin, Monet, Wyeth (to name a few) all had extraordinary powers of observation.   But they also had great humility.  Their work draws you in while their presence, palpably felt, does not intrude.

One contemporary artist described the paintings of Vermeer as “an act of sublime love.”  The operative word here is “act”.  This stresses the process over the product.  It’s hard to look at a Vermeer without getting the feeling that, gazing intently upon his subject, he relished every moment.

I overhear visitors in museums sometimes, “What are the figures in the painting doing?  Where are they?  What just happened?”

Who cares?  A great artist, dancer, musician or athlete at the top of their game is an inspiration in itself -  a reminder of what human beings are capable of.  Which makes us all want to do better work.

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Danielle in Her Studi0, 2009, graphite, watercolor and encaustic, 28 1/2 x 17 in.

This is a re-post of a previous blog about the work of Tamie Beldue. Ms. Beldue will give a talk about her work, followed by a reception on Thursday,December 8, 6-8pm at the offices of Oriens LLC,
36 West 44th St., Suite 1212, New York.  Ple3ase  RSVP if you would like to attend:
212.213.5785 / info@oriensliving.com

Last evening I had the pleasure, in my new role as curator, of installing the works of  Tamie Beldue in the midtown Manhattan office of Oriens, LLC.  These exquisite portrait drawings will be on view through December 15, 2011.

I have known of Tamie’s work since 2005, and I realize how taken I am by for a couple of reasons.  First, in spite of it’s remarkable level of accomplishment, I find it completely non-threatening.  You would think the opposite.  But great art is transcendent; it lifts the observer’s spirit to a place where the ego can’t follow.

Second,  I didn’t want to stop hanging it, “…let’s raise this one a little, lower that one, swap out these two…” and so on.  Here it is Saturday, and I’m looking for an excuse to go back and tweek the arrangement.

A young artist, Beldue is the consummate pro and truly on the rise.  Her exhibitions list is impressive; it includes the Fort Wayne Museum of Art Realism Biennial, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Mobile Museum of Art, William King Museum, and Fontbonne University Arts Gallery. She is a professor of art at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Her works are in the permanent collections of the Arnot Museum of Art, The DeYoung Museum, Howard & Judy Tullman Collection, James T. Dyke Collection of Contemporary Drawings and the Sandy & Diane Besser Collection.

Please stop in and have a look; better yet give a call and one of us will walk you through:

Oriens LLC

The Bar Building
36 West 44th Street, Suite 1212  between 5th & 6th avenues
info@oriensliving.com 
www.oriensliving.com  212-213-5785
Hours Mon-Fri 11am-8pm

Square A and Square B are the same shade of grey.  I can hear the disbelief already so I’ll repeat it:  the two squares are exactly the same shade.

How can this be?  Simple; it just is, but our eyes are deceived by the tones surrounding the squares.  Both are a middle value grey – one is surrounded by shadow, the other by light.  So the squares stand out as lighter and darker than they actually are.  Hard to believe even when explained.

Vision is a survival tool, not a creative one.  To help us navigate the world and avoid danger, the mind simplifies, skews and flattens all the eye sees. Our ancestors didn’t have time to notice the subtle tones on a predator’s hide as it lunged toward them, they looked and got out of the way, fast.  This trait still serves us well in life, but not so well in art.

An artist’s development is one of continuous unlearning, or unraveling, thousands of years of programming.  What I most like  about artistic growth is the way in which it parallels spiritual growth.

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Study for Studio Chair, detail, 1998, charcoal and graphite on paper

Question: How do you paint the details?
Answer:  Just like anything else, I just do it smaller.

This is not meant to be sarcastic at all.  Visually speaking, everything painters encounter is a form.  With shape, color, contour and tone.  There are big forms (masses) and small forms (details).  They’re all handled in much the same way, just on a different scale and with different degress of precision.

The key is in the hierachy.  Details such as a crack on a surface or a tear must be subordinate to the larger form and integrated with it, otherwise it will jump off the form so to speak, and look strange.

And therein lies the challenge.  We are programmed early in life to notice details and tend to give them too much visual importance.  An artist must tend to the details, but keep them in their place.

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One of several beach studies painted during our shore weekends, which I look forward to all week.

My favorite medium for this type of work is oil on plywood, a good sturdy surface that is undaunted by the sun or wind. And the palette knife has become my favorite tool – it forces me to see  in a bigger, more abstract way and prevents fussing.

I have to keep reminding myself that the sky isn’t up there but suffuses everything we see, and so its color and tone should be integrated into each part of the painting. And the horizon “line” is actually the point where form of the earth or ocean turns away from view.

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Laundry Boiler, 2002, charcoal and graphite on paper, 21 x 26 in.

A while ago I gave a gallery talk at an exhibition and opened the discussion with a selection of FAQs that I’ve heard and answered over the years. I thought it was a good way to begin a dialog until someone threw me a question that I wasn’t ready for.

“What motivates you?”
Long pause.  I couldn’t say.

A moment of reflection later I confessed that it’s often a struggle for me (and I imagine some of my colleagues) get into the studio and get started. Or as the iconic portrait painter Chuck Close puts it, “Inspiration is for amateurs; I just work.”

Which brings me to the answer: working motivates me to work.  After a sluggish twenty minutes or so of painting the brain wakes up, juices start flowing and I’m hooked. Next I know the day is nearly over.

In the end it’s all about trust.  Begin work and the spirit will propel you.
Hence the word “inspiration”.

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Many artists would agree that when engaged in a work, labels inevitably come off of things.  We no longer see a tree, a face, or a flower, but the countless unnameable shapes that embody those things.  For many of us, a painting has little to do with its content and everything to do with the artist’s embrace of the visual world.

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