Art and Travel and Travel and Art

I just looked back to see the last time I blogged, and... Oh my gosh it's been a long time.

Since then I've been to Switzerland, to Rome, to San Francisco (twice), to Athens, and I'm writing this now from Taos.

I did a painting that points in a very different direction for my painting practice, and then abruptly set aside painting for a return to sculpture. I've built a new mechanical sculpture and put it in my first art show in Sweden (a group show with Christina and other friends), and I've also received my first grant to build a new sculpture since moving there.

And we have begun a new building renovation project at our farmstead. 

Lots to catch up on.

I devoted almost the entirety of my last post to discussing my struggle with brush strokes. Not long after writing that, I noticed online advertisements for a week-long workshop in Lausanne, Switzerland with a painter who I like a lot, and upon realizing that I could fit it into my schedule I decided to go. I like this painter, Mustafa Özel, precisely because his strengths are my weaknesses; he paints confidently and organically, he is not afraid to use color, and he is comparatively free with his brush-strokes, all within an essentially realist and figurative framework. 

Lausanne was sweet (many steep hills and good fondue!), I had a nice connection with the model (who helped me solidify my commitment to posing one day as an art-model myself), and I made two paintings, one of which was good.

Lausanne

Me, one of the other painters, and Mustafa

My painting from the class

Wayne Thiebaud, the California painter I brought into the discussion in my last post, was still very much on my mind as I came into this worksho. And to be honest, the painting I made in Lausanne shows more influence from Thiebaud than from Mustafa. The courageous use of color, the thickly applied paint, the multi-colored energetic edges, and the white background are all from Thiebaud. To be fair, the contrasting use of warm and cool colors comes straight from Mustafa. And I think there was something liberating about just being with Mustafa, a real teacher, that allowed me to play with paint in a new way.

Anyway I was pretty happy with this painting and I returned from Switzerland intent on bringing some of these new ideas into my paintings. 

But it was not to be. 

That was over four months ago and I haven't painted since.

Not long after returning from this exciting trip it became clear that I would need to make a short-notice trip to San Francisco. My father, who still lives there in the beautiful city of my youth, is facing some health challenges and my brother and I flew there to assist him with a few things. With two 12-hour flights coming up, I tried to find a way to use that time productively. Initially I considered trying to make a painting on the flight, but Christina suggested I try to do a sculpture instead... and it turned out to be a fateful suggestion... because I've been sculpting ever since.

Sculpting a small portrait, high above Greenland

I liked the results of my portrait sculpting efforts enough that, upon returning to Sweden, I gave it a body.

Here you can see the head welded to an armature for the body, in front of some reference pictures. Several months later, as I write this, the sculpture is still unfinished. It's a long story, which I will tell in condensed form below.

Not long after that Kodiak had a school break and we decided to go to Rome, in part to keep him occupied (you parents know what I mean) but also to show him Rome.

After 3 trips in a month I wanted nothing more than to stay put for a while. Some friends had arranged a group show in Malmö in May, to which Christina and I were both invited. I decided to show some of my paintings... which I was excited about as it was to be the first time showing my paintings in public, but I also wanted to show the breadth of my work and include some sculpture. I had been working for quite some time on a small clay sculpture... 

... and I felt this was a good time to finish it and cast it in bronze. What followed was a very long story of failure, which ended up with me being unable to make a bronze casting, AND losing the original clay sculpture. The root cause of the failure was that I used the wrong kind of clay for working with silicone, which prevented me from being able to make a mold of the piece. But it was not for lack of trying...

... and I learned a lot along the way. In the end I showed the small bronze portrait that I made a year or two ago at the show. I also had an idea for a mechanical sculpture - a woman's hand endlessly and repetitively squeezing a stress ball - and so I spent the next month making that. I equipped it with a foot pedal so the audience could control it.

I ended up showing 6 paintings, the bronze head, and the mechanical hand. 

It was great to show my work, finally. 

And... I must admit that I was a little disappointed with the show. I had cautiously hoped for better attendance, and some sort of reaction... from anyone. I suppose I will need to organize a proper show for myself at some point, in a proper venue. 

Back to the sculpture I started after making the head on the flight to San Francisco...

I said it was a long story, but basically... I got quite far along sculpting the body, as you can see above, before I realized that I had been using the wrong kind of clay!! The body (luckily not the head!) is sculpted in the same clay that gave me so much trouble with the previous sculpture. (For those who want more detail, I believe I accidentally sculpted it in Roma Plastilina, which contains sulfur. Sulfur inhibits the curing of silicone, and that is a show-stopper. As you can see from this image, the "wrong" clay on the body and the "right" clay on the head look exactly alike. What a pain.) So, not long after the above photo was taken, I had to strip off the clay from the entire body, down to the armature, and start over. As I write this, the second go with the body is about 30% done.

I've noticed something interesting about the different ways I approach painting and sculpture. Being a relative novice at painting, I frequently try to educate myself through reading about it (which is where I get all that advice about brush strokes.) Another thing one finds in the educational literature is the idea that one is supposed to float freely from one part of the painting to another, organically making corrections and improvements wherever you see the need. I have a very hard time painting this way... but it's exactly how I sculpt! When I'm painting I feel the need to focus on one section at a time and bring it to completion before moving on. It's a very uptight way of painting. Part of the issue for me is that oil paint dries too quickly for my taste, which makes it hard to come back to earlier sections and re-work them after a few days. That's something I like about the clay I use (which is called Plastilene)... it never dries. I've also put a bit of effort into finding the slowest-drying oil paint brands (which, for the curious, are Blockx and M. Graham). I believe the oil painter in me has something to learn from the sculptor in me.

So we are almost caught up here. We are in Taos right now, but we came by way of San Francisco. I started yet another sculpture on the 12 hour plane ride...

It was great to spend a few days in SF with my dad, who continues to struggle with health issues. The other thing that really excited me about being there was the opportunity to see a large retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud paintings currently on show at the Legion of Honor. There have been only two times in my life that I've gotten emotional seeing a work of art in a museum... Alexander McQueen's bamboo dress at the Met, and Thiebaud's Supine Woman last week...

I saw this painting about 5 years ago in Arkansas and it was the first time I'd understood that Thiebaud is amazing. I guess I've had a sort of relationship with this painting since then and I wasn't expecting to see it again... and it was sort of overwhelming.

Just quickly, before I leave Thiebaud, I want to show these two pictures which I think really illustrate his incredible confidence in using paint...

OK, so now we are in Taos.

It's complicated for me to be here. But I'll talk about that another day.

The last thing I want to mention here, briefly, is the fact that I have received my first grant to build a sculpture in Sweden, which is pretty darned exciting. Starting over in a new place involves many steps, and I would say that the last thing to fall into place for me, and Christina, has been work. We bought ourselves some time by selling our house in Taos last year (we did not sell the workshop), so we have had the freedom to try to find the right kind of work, and this grant is a significant step in the right direction. 

I will build a sculpture featuring three faces, each displaying a different emotion, which are suspended on a mechanism allowing them to move up and down. They will be counterbalanced against each other such that, despite their weight, they will move freely... and when one moves up the others will move down, and so forth. The piece is about the fleeting nature of emotion and is called "Emotions Are Like the Weather". Here is the proposal image...

For some reason this festival is keen on displaying two sculptures by each participating artist so they've allocated a few thousand more bucks for me to build a second piece as well, which is yet to be determined. I'm pretty happy about all of that!

OK that's about all I've got. We are here in Taos for another week or so and... who knows... maybe I will write a wrap-up about the trip sometime in the next few weeks.

I hope this finds you all well. Sorry about Trump and all that. Every empire falls eventually. It's sad to see people voting for their own demise, but the Germans also did it in 1933, so it's nothing new. Like I said in the beginning, we have begun a new building renovation project in Sweden, and when we are done at the end of the summer (hopefully), we will have a sweet new guest apartment. So to all our friends in the States, just reach out if you need to get away from Trumpistan for a bit. 

Hugs,

Christian