Discovering Art, Part 3 of 5:

Sargent Dreams

This is the third of a series of emails this week, 5 in total, M-F.  You can read parts one and two, here.

Another major discovery, life-changing, came in the fall of 2005.  Since 2001 I’d had in the back of my mind the idea of taking up a practice of plein air watercolor landscape painting… with nothing to show for it.  Ideas and dreams don’t make paintings!  Ha, if only.  I found myself in Rome, again, this time as part of a college language study abroad program.  I was there for three months from September to December.  Being in a place for months, staying with a host family, is very different than a week or two of vacation.  What struck me most, that I hadn’t remembered or seen the first time around, was the light, the reflections on the river, the atmosphere in the morning, the tops of trees as their foliage turned, the afternoon sunlight on buildings.

I remembered the Sargent watercolors, his Venetian canals, his boats in harbor.  One specific afternoon, early on in the trip, I thought to myself, what am I waiting for?  If I don’t start practicing plein air watercolor painting now, in Rome, Italy, then exactly when and where is the better time?  I bought a watercolor block of paper and a small tray of watercolor paints the next day.  I wanted to start non-ambitiously.  I knew that if I tried to “knock it out of the park” with my work, I’d fall short of my own expectations, and that disappointment would discourage me.  So, for my first few paintings, I deliberately tried to pick the least challenging, most straightforward subjects I possibly could.  I found a building adjacent to another one of a different color, red and yellow, set myself up for a simple view of the sides, and went to work.  It was a successful first attempt, as I’d also made a graphite underdrawing to be able to place the paint in the right places.  I focused mostly on “local color” meaning just what color of paint the buildings were, and kept things fairly simple, nothing too complicated.  I worked slowly, in transparent layers and washes, letting the layers dry before moving back over them with a subsequent, darkening wash.  With a few repeats of this process around town, my confidence in this method grew, and I started approaching slightly more intimidating subjects, like the waters of the Tiber, or the dome of St. Peter’s at sunset.  I would go back to the exact same view on different days at the same time of day, hoping for consistent weather.  I’d pick new locations not based on preconceptions, but by exploring the city by foot, and always having my watercolor block, paints, and brushes with me, ready to throw down anywhere.

In the Campo De Fiori, where our school’s classrooms were, I was painting one late fall afternoon, in bitter cold.  I was putting the finishing touches on a painting I’d been layering gradually for weeks.  I didn’t, after all, have all day every day to paint - I’d been going to classes, having fun, working out, field trips… My rate of making a finished work was less than one / week, although I was sketching and drawing all the time.  I specifically remember that day I’d drawn a crowd around me where I was painting, people watching me work.  I went to wet the brush, took it over the dried pigment block, swished a few times, and went to make a brushmark on my paper - nothing happened.  No mark, just a resistance like I physically could’t bend the bristles of the brush.  All at once, I realized - it’s frozen!  I shared the news with the onlookers - telling them sorry, I guess this one is done!  The temperature had dropped below freezing, and the water in the brush was ice.

Back at College the following summer, I applied my same process to painting my school’s campus, Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.  The campus itself, especially in summer, lends itself to being painted, especially in the midday or afternoon light, at the time my favorite time of day to paint.  Similar to Rome, my rate of painting was slow, always laying out a careful graphite study, then visiting the same view many, many times over weeks and even months, to achieve the very detailed and finished resulting work.  It was a huge amount of energy to paint this way, and as I mentioned, I was not in art school, but had many other activities and obligations during the day, not to mention the non-static nature of the weather or the foliage changing as summer turned to fall.

I loved it though.  I loved being able to take what I experienced, outside, and to work on that seeing, that understanding, over and over again, so as to be able to share it with an audience, and to remember the moment for myself, forever.  For some reason, I am able to remember drawing or painting pretty much every drawing or painting I’ve ever made.  I could tell you about the process of making that particular piece, where I was, the context, the challenges, what went well, what didn’t, what I learned.  I thought of the Sargent watercolors, looked at them, still wondering, how on earth did he do what he did?  Would I ever even be close to being able to paint like that?

Check your inbox tomorrow (Thursday) for

Discovering Art, Part 4 of 5:

Paralysis

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Cheers,

David