When I find wonderful artists I am frustrated that for so many years I didn't paint. There was a time when I aspired to paint like this man.
http://www.danielmarkduffy.com
I was in a painting class in 1978 and an elderly lady said to me "You are so lucky, you are painting while you are young". But I hardly painted seriously again, just in short bursts, exhibiting periodically in the 1980s, and over the next 20 years. And then my series of "mid-life crises" occurred, and painting took over. It was a wonderful space to be in.
I said I think there is more I should be doing. i still think there is. I don't think it is just because I don't think I am painting particularly well right now, although I am struggling to find my painting niche in a foreign land. Sometimes I miss my large and airy studio. I don't have a deadline to meet, and my next exhibitions are still evolving in my mind.
I told Sarah I was feeling lost as an artist. She said:
Lost is a great place to be! It's like you're out at sea and instead of working on your ship back at shore, you have the whole ocean to splash around in!
I needed to hear that. It is all about finding the right way to look at things. I have been in a life boat, not splashing, not heading out for adventure. Like my 9 year-old friend who was unteachable on Saturday, I have been cooped up for too long. I need an adventure...
I have promised myself no more harmful chemicals in my art-making. But I can still splash... there is another new brush waiting for me, it has been waiting for me since October 2006. It is so special I can remember when and where I bought it (Edinburgh, with Nicola, who has never seen her mother spend so much on something which looks so small and unimpressive to the uninitiated). I never did convert the price into NZ dollars. There are some things you just don't want to know.
My last exhibition was of local landscapes, a tribute to the people who welcomed me here. Now I am painting portraits for them. The exhibition before that was in a War Museum, tracing the shadow of war. Maybe it is time to paint for me, to paint from within, to really forget about anyone else and lose myself in my work again.
I need more space. I need my walking away from the artwork space. I think the bedroom has to go. I can sleep in a single bed in the passageway, and cover my big bed with art resources. There are no visitors due for a while. That's what I will do.
Right, she said, I'm off to town to buy huge sheets of plastic, it's time for me to paint up a storm too!
A New Season Begins – March 2024
3 weeks ago
4 comments:
This Sarah sounds like a pretty swell chick.
I vote we cover her in glitter and throw her up on a cloud, so we can wave to her at all times of day.
He has a very Philly-New York style of American Realist painting.
I have a problem with the concept of artist as jack-of-all trades. No one expects a Jackson Pollock or Franz Kline to paint a series of portraits in the style of Carravagio. No one expects Odd Nerdrum or Bo Bartlett to create works like Agnes Martin or even Lucien Freud. This is not a matter of style as much as training.
Daniel Mark Duffy can paint the way he paints because he studied under some major hardasses at some big-time East-coast art schools and was trained in the classical methods. My friend Jason (among others) was trained in this method and he is amazing, but he finishes a piece in about a month and he'll be the first to tell you that what he's doing is more craft, a trade, than Art with a capital "A."
If you want to paint like him, there is SOOOO much to learn. It's almost incomprehensible. That's one reason I stopped painting and concentrated on music for so long. I did want to paint like him (I probably know people he knows).
Otherwise, don't sweat it. As I told my friend Mark (who is insecure about his guitar playing but an amazing songwriter), there is more than one way to be good.
I'll bet that Daniel Mark Duffy is in a constand state of Sturm und Drang. He's an artist. By definition, artists are ALWAYS unhappy with something in their work. I think of art as a spiritual journey. Once you reach enlightenment, you stop flaggelating yourself. It's the struggle that creates great artists, and motivates them.
Thanks Brennen, I have just found your post in my in-box, after writing my own short sigh of relief.
The following is tired, probably unrelated, rambling. But it is what I am thinking right now.
I went to the Florence Biennale last December, and photographed everything that made me stop and look a second time, everything that drew me in. I find that this tells me a lot about where I am in my own art space. I haven't checked those photographs yet, they are waiting on the computer. But I know, without going there, that nothing in that work resembled anything I am doing now. They had the familiarity of the space I have come from.
Right now I am not making work that really satisfies me. I didn't set out to be a portrait artist, it just happened because here the expectation is that every artist is classically trained and can do anything at all. So of course, when commissioned to do portraits, it became my challenge. I don't like doing badly. I am enjoying the challenge, and I do get a buzz when the likeness is good, but most of all I want to paint more than a likeness. I want to pose my subjects, I want them in lighting I control. Instead I have to work from the photographs I am given, or have snapped when I can if the portrait is to be a surprise, and this lack of editorial research bothers me.
If I include the ones I want to do for myself, my own family to keep me company on my walls, then I have at least seven more to complete. After that, I will take stock of all the ideas and possibilities that I have been playing with, and see which one wins.
I am continuing with portraits though, because I think that people will feature in future work, and I need to improve my skills there. I think I want to make work that is a comment on what is happening around us, to us, through us. Those unpainted works bother me most. They will be a little raw, as is their subject matter.
For now, because I have a deadline, it is time to assess what I have here to exhibit in May, and see if I can pull a cohesive body of work together. It will be interesting, a new experience exhibiting with Italian artists, and completely outside my comfort zone!
Jack of All Trades is, of course, Master of None. I think my expertise is in watercolours, and, apart from a commissioned portrait of two cats, I haven't painted in watercolour for several years. That brush I mentioned in my post is a mop. A beautiful, beautiful mop brush. I can't wait to use it, but I will wait, as the moment has not yet arrived.
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