I have touched with a sense of art some people – they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist? — Mary Cassatt

It was such a great experience to spend so much of this year preparing for my first solo show, and then all too soon and before I felt ready, to have the work get hung, to party with friends old and new at the fantastic opening, to have more people stop by throughout the month to look at my body of work, and finally to reach the closing day with my artist talk, at which so many people I know well and really respect came to listen to me talk about my work. Actually, that was a little intimidating for someone who’s a bit of an introvert.

I am also so grateful to Kevin Kuhn and Sharon Kyle Kuhn, who run the Bay6 Gallery and Studios, for giving me this wonderful opportunity to show my work in such a great space! They are delightful folks, and I am so glad to have come to know them. They made the process of having this show so smooth and unscary.

I picked up my paintings yesterday, and am packaging up for delivery the ones that have received a new home. I also picked up the comments left in the guestbook, and thought I’d share some of those with you. I’ll leave off the names in case anyone is shy about having their name plastered on the web, but if you would like your name attached to your comment, just let me know, and I’ll add it. Finally, I received a few more photos of the show courtesy of fellow Austin painter, Marilyn Rhea Nasky, which I will share here with you. Without further ado, here are some of the comments and photos:

Takes my imagination on a trip! Love it!

Beautiful and so free!

Awesome!

Lovely stuff!

Beautiful and so “e!”

Lurves it!

I love the duo “Frilly” and “Peeping Out…” especially.

Mind-provokingly spiritual

Everything looks fantastic. Like your colors, of course!

Wonderful show!

Fantastic!

Resounding color!

I can see your work evolving — it’s a fascinating journey to watch.

And now that my show is over, I plan to paint, paint, paint, and create a whole new body of work. I’ll keep you posted. Sooner than you may think! Stay tuned…

Thanks to everyone who came out for my artist talk yesterday.  We had a great little crowd, and a wonderful discussion.  I sold another painting and a print yesterday, too!  But mostly, I really enjoyed talking to and with all those who came!  

Thanks again to all for spending a gorgeous Sunday afternoon with me!

Photo courtesy of Clay Leben.

Come join me while I talk about my work and my process, how I got to this point, and what I think will be interesting to explore in the future.

Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 2pm.
Bay6 Gallery and Studios
5305 Bolm Rd.
Austin, TX

“The E Word,” continues at Bay6 Gallery until November 1st. Bay6 is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2pm – 5pm, or by appointment.

Tuesday night, my husband and I went to the One World Theater here in Austin to see Little Feat again. We had seen them there several years ago (from a front row seat), and they had really rocked the small 300-seat joint. My husband had seen them often in their heyday, though I think I had somehow missed them until the show a few years ago.

When we arrived at the gorgeous Tuscan-villa style theater Tuesday night, pianist and singer James Speer was playing in the courtyard. He was very good. He made a lot of music for one guy! (I wonder if he would perform at an art opening?).

Our seats Tuesday night were in row five (out of about only 10-15 rows). I love the intimate little theater at One World! Even with all the huge people in front of us, we had a great view of the stage. I wish more bands I like would play here, but I guess it’s just too small.

One World Theater had a special treat for us Tuesday night…a Cuban-American painter created a large oil painting on the side of the stage during the Little Feat performance. I’m pretty sure his name was Roberto Diaz; however, I can find no evidence of his existence online, so either I have his name wrong or I haven’t searched far enough.

Anyway, I don’t know about everyone else, but I found this kind of disturbing at first. I couldn’t NOT watch him paint! I was fascinated by every brushstroke, the rhythm with which he worked, how he worked kind of fast at first, laying down a background that reminded me very much of a beautifully colored Tchelitchew, how he then slowed down to begin adding a surrealistic figure while the music speeded up with a latin style number.

I loved watching him work; I could watch painters paint all day. But, I couldn’t really pay attention to the music or the musicians for about the first half of the show, until I finally pulled myself out of the reverie of watching Diaz at work.

Seems kind of odd when I — like most painters I know — listen to music while I paint. But when I’m painting, the music I’m listening to kind of fades to background or becomes the soundtrack to my painting. Going to see musicians perform usually does demand my whole attention, though — watching them perform is part of the thrill of live music. I guess I’m not really as capable of multi-tasking as I thought.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the stage, Little Feat’s performance was good — though perhaps a little more like an excellent Little Feat tribute band (well, there is no better Little Feat tribute band, is there?). Their drummer, Richie Hayward, is pretty sick right now and has been temporarily replaced by Richie’s drum tech, Gabe Ford. He’s a strong and competent drummer, though not as buoyant a drummer as Richie. Still, their performance was good solid rock and roll, and the audience was justifiably thrilled.

They played mostly older favorites, including a whole marijuana medley sing-along which included “Willin’,” “Don’t Bogart That Joint,” and a reggae riff. According to my husband’s notes of the setlist, they also played “Time Loves a Hero,” “Day or Night,” “Representing the Mambo,” “Truck Stop Girl,” and “Tennessee, There’s No Place I’d Rather Be” (”Tennessee Jed”?) – not sure of this one. They also played a very long “Dixie Chicken” medley, during which various members of the band left stage and later returned, many solos took place, and a lovely duet of sorts was played by Billie Payne and Austin’s own string player par excellence Warren Hood (more on this below). I’m thinking they might also have done “Rag Mama Rag,” “Easy to Slip” and “Oh Atlanta,” but my husband didn’t make note of that, so I can’t be sure.

It was just before the marijuana medley, I think, when young Warren Hood came out on stage. Warren is an amazing young string player, who we first met at one of Nancy Fly’s house parties many years ago. I think this was when he was performing with the South Austin Jug Band, and just before he went off to the Berklee School of Music. He still looks like a teenager, though I believe he’s about 24 now. He was a delight to watch and listen to; I especially enjoyed the jazzy piece (mentioned above) in which he and keyboardist Billie Payne traded licks. It was lovely and quite uplifting.

Warren is the very talented son of Champ Hood. I used to see Champ perform with Uncle Walt’s Band at the Hole in the Wall shortly after I first moved to Austin decades ago, and later when he played with Toni Price at the Continental Club’s Tuesday Night Hippie Hour. Champ, a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame and five-time winner of the Best String Player in Austin award, shockingly died of cancer in 2001. I’ve been listening to his great guitar, fiddle and mandolin music live and on LP, tape, CD, MP3 and internet radio for over 35 years.

While I’m feeling weepy, at about this time during the show, the band also mentioned two other local musicians who have passed away this year: Tina Marsh (bandleader, vocalist, composer, dreamer, founder of the Creative Opportunity Orchestra), and Stephen Bruton, a wonderful guitar player and singer/songwriter. We had seen Stephen perform many times at the Saxon Pub (a club started many years ago by another friend of mine who was instrumental, so to speak, in the music scene in Austin during the 70’s and 80’s). I met Stephen Bruton years ago when he performed for the inaugural meeting of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Austin chapter. Tony Jones, then the president of SAIC, was a friend of Stephen’s and had come down to sort of christen our new group.

After the show, I met and talked to the artist Roberto Diaz for a few minutes. He says he had been a studio painter, and had somehow stumbled upon this performing the creation of paintings on stage, which has helped with his success. The sales of his works go to help out some disadvantaged group(s); his works are in the collections of people like Liza Minelli; there was something about him meeting or “performing for” President Obama. Sorry I can’t be more specific — wish they’d had a flyer, business card, or something, or that I could find his website or some info about him online – help me out here if you know anything. They were about to auction off the painting we saw him paint for a starting price of $5000 (signed by Diaz and all members of Little Feat); we didn’t stay long enough to see how that went.

Anyway, it was a delightful evening in a beautiful location with some great rock and roll and even art! I really enjoyed watching Little Feat perform again. However, I’m not quite sure how I feel about having painters painting on stage simultaneously. Great to watch, but too distracting for me to really enjoy the music that I came to hear.

Wendell Castle
Music Stand (1964)
Oak, Brazilion Rosewood
55.5″ x 25″ x 20″

I just discovered this great blog post about an artist/craftsman named Wendell Castle at Emily Evans Eerdmans’ blog.  Wendell Castle has been creating amazing furniture for over 50 years.  He has ten “Adopted Rules of Thumb” for staying at the top of one’s creative game that I find very compelling:

1. If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its beauty or value.
2. It is difficult to see the whole picture when you are inside the frame.
3. After learning the tricks of the trade, don’t think you know the trade.
4. We hear and apprehend what we already know.
5. The dog that stays on the porch will find no bones.
6. Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms it was brought to you.
7. If it’s offbeat or surprising, it’s probably useful.
8. If you don’t expect the unexpected, you will not find it.
9. Don’t get too serious.
10. If you hit the bullseye everytime, the target is too near.

To find out more about Wendell Castle, and view more of his amazing creations, visit his website at wendellcastle.com

Many thanks to everyone who made it out to the opening reception for my first solo show!  It was a great opening!

People started to arrive right on the dot, and before long, friends and art fans were arriving so quickly that I did not get to meet at least a couple of dozen guests (sorry!), nor talk to quite a few of my friends!  The good advice I got from another artist was indeed accurate: “Think of it like a wedding, you won’t be able to have a complete conversation with anybody, but they won’t mind.”  At least I hope no one minded!

It was so wonderful that so many of my friends, some who I haven’t seen in years, showed up.  And I met so many new people, too.  I sold three paintings, and got a lot of wonderful compliments on my work.

The Treachery of Others

The reception was scheduled to go from 7:00-10:00pm, but we were all having so much fun that it lasted until well after midnight.  The great band, The Treachery of Others, even played an extra set.

We had a wonderful spread of food — from fruit to nuts and everything in between, it seemed, and it was nearly all consumed by the end of the evening.  One of the friends of Bay6 smoked a salmon for the opening, which was completely consumed before the night was out.  Cantanker Magazine had also hosted a performance in the Big Medium studio three bays down from Bay6.  Part of the performance included a butter churner of sorts with a guitar neck that indeed made music.  After their performance, they donated cups and cups of whipped cream made from the musical butter-churner.

If you missed the opening, you can still see the exhibit, which continues through November 1st at Bay6 Gallery, open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2:00-5:00pm.  (See the calendar to the right for available dates and times).

Photos from the show are online here: The E Word Opening Reception.

Solo show of over 40 of my recent paintings!

I hope to see you at my opening reception tonight – Saturday, October 10th, 7:00 – 10:00pm.

Food and drink will be provided, with music by The Treachery of Others.

Bay6 Gallery is located at:
5305 Bolm Rd., Unit 6
Austin TX
78721
Link
View Map

The show continues on weekends through November 1st.

In eight days, I will be greeting friends and fans at my solo show at Bay6 Gallery in East Austin. I am really looking forward to that moment!

Getting ready for this has been an amazing process.  Doing all the necessary organizational stuff besides trying to paint every moment that I can for weeks and weeks and weeks, that is.

I sent out email invitations to most of the people I know; and Bay6 has also invited a large number of folks.  We’ve notified people via email, Facebook, Twitter, EventBrite, Eventful and word-of-mouth, and we may be expecting a great turnout!  I picked up my beautifully printed postcards today from Tom at ipgprint.com; I will be mailing those tomorrow.  Plans are set for music, food and drink, and we will start to hang the show next week.  I owe some responses to emails and blog commenters, which I will try to get to as soon as my mental energy rolls in that direction.

I will keep painting right up until the last minute; though I will have to switch from oils to acrylics and/or encaustic tomorrow or Sunday. And I still have to pick up some frames, add wires to the backs of my latest pieces, sign them, print all the bits that need printing, etc.

I just spent about three hours adding a few of my recent pieces to a new gallery page, The E Word.  I may still work on some of those paintings, and I’ll have to reshoot the one shown here — the true colors are not really coming through on the screen.

In addition to what you see on the The E Word gallery page, I’ll have work in the show from earlier this year and some from last year.  I should actually have many paintings in the show, from very small to pretty large, and quite a few in-between.

I still want to paint about four-five new pieces, and I have two more in progress to complete; and then I’d like to paint another five-six 6″x6″ canvases…in the next two-three days.  OK, I doubt I will actually get that much done; perhaps I suffer from an excess of optimism and enthusiasm at this point.

But, it is strangely thrilling to have this looming deadline — it gives me the freedom to say “No” to almost everything else, and it is just the berries to be able to spend so much time (mostly) painting!  Speaking of which, back to the easel!  Hope to see you at the show!

Hex
Oil on Canvas
16″ x 12″
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn

I recently read an article by a representational painter on another blog, in which the writer said that one should very carefully and thoroughly plan one’s paintings.  My first thought was, “No waaaaay!”  That would take all the fun out the process of discovery that, for me at least, is a great deal of what painting is about.  Feeling a little smug, I thought of the following much-loved quote:

You are lost the instant you know what the result will be. – Juan Gris

Then I started to remember some of the paintings that I got stuck on somewhere in the process — paintings that went awry perhaps because I hadn’t done any planning.  I began to reconsider my assessment of the writer’s claims.

In reality, the amount of planning one should do for painting probably lies somewhere between completely planned out and no plan at all, and probably depends primarily on the aims and temperament of the artist.

Marilyn Fenn · Still Life with Teapot and Orange · Oil on Panel · 14"x18" · © 1992

Planning Representational Work

When painting representationally, a pretty clear plan is suggested by the arrangement of the still life objects (or the portrait model or the landscape or interior scene) and one’s spatial relationship to them.

The process of painting becomes a series of decisions: where to crop, what color palette to employ, how to apply and arrange the paint on the canvas, etc.  Then you just keep painting until what you’ve created on the canvas looks something like the model from which you worked.

With any luck, the artist has breathed life into what was once a blank surface through such things as their own personal style and vision, their design decisions and their application of paint.

Marilyn Fenn · One Flight Down · Oil on Canvas · 28"x28" · © 2004

Planning Stylized Abstraction

The period of my work a friend named “prismism” — a kind of abstraction where the objects are broken up by lines and planes of color —  actually required more planning than painting from life.

I selected my object or objects, reduced the shapes through a series of lines on the canvas, and then chose each color with the utmost of care to relate to all the adjacent colors in a particular way, depending on whether the adjacent areas were part of the object in question or not.

After painting about 10-12 paintings in this style, I couldn’t keep going in the same direction.  It started to feel like I was just painting by numbers (but without a chart), and left little room for freewheelingness – something that apparently I need.

Painting is an adventure to an unknown world. New ideas and concepts develop along the way. – Ratindra Das

Planning My Current Abstract or Non-Representational Work

Now I prefer a loose plan, sometimes as little of a plan as deciding that I just want to paint circles or I want to see what I can do with a diagonal composition on a square canvas.  At times, I still reference images from life, but they serve at the pleasure of the rest of the painting, so to speak.  Often, I have some sort of imagery in mind, though usually not a whole composition.  Sometimes, I discover the most delightful things working this way; at other times, I create paintings that just strike me as too goofy or weird.  For instance, the painting at the top of this post, now called “Hex,” was once this:

Marilyn Fenn · Hot Links · Oil on Canvas · 16" x 12" · © 2009 · painted over

I think I scared myself a little.  Was it a mistake to paint over it?  Maybe, but it’s done now.  What remains in the piece named “Hex” is the 4th or 5th version of paint on this canvas. The history of the previous renditions still peek through the top layers of paint, adding a kind of interest to this work that wouldn’t have existed if I’d started with a basic plan for “Hex.”

On the other hand, another painting in this series, “Turbulence,” I repainted three times, which resulted in a great  improvement.  I did not have much of a plan for this painting, either: I just knew I wanted to paint some loops and something diagonal, and I was really grooving on the yellow color used in the background of this series.  I got the composition on the first shot, but the application of paint was a little too loose in places, a little too stiff in other places and a little too undefined in the area that now looks like a cloud.  The whole painting actually flows much better now due to my continuing to rework it until I was happy.

How Much Planning Do You Do?

I’d love to hear about your process.  How do you think the amount of planning you do affects your work?  Does it help or hinder the process?  Does it help or hinder the outcome — the finished piece?

Here’s one more of my favorite quotes that supports staying loose in the planning stage:

In the brush doing what it’s doing, it will stumble on what one couldn’t do by oneself.  Any art is academic by definition if you know what the result is going to be before you start. – Robert Motherwell

State of Mind
Oil on Canvas
16″ x 12″
2009
(work in progress)

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. - Jonathan Swift

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. - Josef Albers

I am getting very excited about my upcoming solo show.  I’m painting like mad, and I’m beginning to be very happy with some of the results.  I think I may just have a future in this wonderful world of painting!

When I made arrangements many months ago to do this show, I had no fear about filling a gallery with my work, as I had just come off of a long period of intense and successful creation, and was (and still am) very happy with the work I had created.  And there was plenty of it…more than enough to fill the gallery.

But creatively I was ready to move on to the next thing, though I wasn’t sure what that was.

So I began this year by doing lots of tiny sketches and many small paintings, searching for a satisfying direction.  To date, I have completed more than 70 pieces this year — which is a lot for me — though most of the pieces are the sketches and small paintings through which I’ve been exploring a wide variety of ideas.

I must say, this journey from representational to non-representational painting has been a long one and a bit daunting.

You may wonder why I would want to move away from representation.  Sometimes, I wonder that, too, as I find it far more challenging to paint abstractly than representationally (what do you paint, and how do you know when you’re done?).

But the thing is, when I go to look at art, it is the abstract and non-representational work that really thrills me.  I am interested in the beauty of color relationships, the juiciness and materiality of the paint, and the ability of an abstract painting to take me to places that don’t exist (as far as we know).

I’ve had one foot in the world of abstraction since I started art school, but I kept working on developing my representational “chops” for years.  I kept thinking I would paint still lifes and landscapes and the occasional abstraction until my own thing presented itself.  I didn’t realize until recently that, at least for me, I was going to have to really work at discovering what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, and that it would take hours and days and weeks and months and years of looking, thinking, drawing, sketching, painting, over and over and over…in fact, it may never end, and I may never feel like I’m finally “there.”

A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing. - William Dobell

Much representational work, while it may be technically proficient, does not elevate one beyond the ordinary — or does not usually elevate me — YMMV.  And even with those representational paintings which are astounding and really well-painted, the representational-ness (not a word, I know, but you get my meaning) can interfere with my enjoyment of the qualities of painting that only a painting can display.

Additionally, if the painting is primarily about something outside the surface of the canvas, I may be further removed from my enjoyment of the painting as painting.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and many of you may feel quite differently, but I want my paintings — as with the paintings I love to look at — to be purely and simply primarily about painting.  I guess I’m old-fashioned that way.

I don’t want the distraction of some kind of everyday reality.  I get too much of that everyday.  That’s what cameras are for.

So, basically, I want to paint the kind of paintings that thrill me the most.  Will I achieve with my new work the goals I have set for myself?  And in time for my solo show? It is probably too soon for me to answer that question, but I do feel that I am on my way.  If I don’t break on through in the next two weeks, come to my show anyway, but also check back with me in about a year.

“Wait a minute,” you say?  ”Your statement says your work is inspired by life at different scales. Isn’t that something outside the canvas?”  Let me add another quote to answer that:

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. - Pablo Picasso

So I start with the things in the world or the universe that I love to look at, that fascinate me in the details of their existence. Essentially, all my work is inspired by nature — some of it by human nature — and I can only hope that through the materials of my work and through the passion of my process, I communicate to the viewer my response to the wonders of this universe. Not a recapitulation of what is, but a creation of what else could be.