Hey, Bungalow Bill...

Returning for a repeat performance from last summer’s show in Bridgewater, is my Bungalow Series of paintings. This time, they will grace the main hall of Newton Free Library, 330 Homer St., Newton, MA. I’ve shown my work at this library before and it is a wonderful venue in which to view art. This time around I’m sharing the month of November with another fine artist, watercolorist Anita Helen Cohen. We will be hosting a joint opening reception on Thursday, November 7 from 7:00PM to 8:30PM. I hope you can join us!

If you are not familiar with the Bungalow Series, it is a collection of small paintings I did in 2017 and 2018. My wife and I were considering downsizing at the time, and were intrigued by the design, economy, and personality of the many cozy bungalow homes we came across in our travels. They were geometrically curious and distinctive, often painted in unique hues, and very friendly-looking. I found myself taking a lot of photos and cropping them to explore various compositions. Bringing those images into the studio, and painting from them, they began to assemble themselves into an unplanned collection, each informing the next, until a family was born.

Looking at the series now, I see them as group of portraits, each bungalow facing forward, proud and confident. Accordingly, they are presented in found vintage frames, such as you’d find hanging over the steam radiator in the corner of your Aunt Jane’s home. They feel like icons from an earlier, more humble time.

What's the Idea?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about conceptual art. More specifically on how it fits into my art-making process. And I’ve decided that it doesn’t, and that’s ok. Though most of the big shows and art press are all about installations, performances, and the like, I don’t work that way. I work the other way around - let me ‘splain…

All artist’s conceptualize - even Bob Ross did. His happy trees and babbling brooks didn’t appear out of the ether. We humans are thinking machines, even artists. It’s simply a matter of how you conceptualize. Some artists (like me) work out our ideas visually and then ruminate on a body of work to see what that unconscious incubator between the ears has been conceptualizing in the background. Others do the thinking part up front. And I would guess that the execution is already mostly completed in their heads before they pick up a tool. It’s simply a matter of the order of the process.

It took me awhile to figure this out. In art school, one of my best friends was probably the first conceptualist I knew of. Her name was Sharon McCarthy (RIP), and she was a conceptual sculptor. She often spent more time planning and thinking about her work than in the execution. We had many animated discussions about what was more important - the idea or the finished piece. The answer, of course, is both, but I didn’t know that at the age of nineteen.

Fast forward forty years and I’ve learned a few things, thank God. Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have the deep appreciation for guys like John Magnan. You can see his new show at The Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River. It’s entitled “Thor’s Hammer” and it’s well worth the trip if you want to be intellectually stimulated AND visually floored by a body of conceptual art. The entire package needs to be experienced in person, so I won’t synopsize here, but please check it out. It has everything a great piece of conceptual art needs: a unique perspective, clarity and an idea that excites your mind AND eyes.

THAT’s conceptualism.

The Shed Off the Kitchen

While cleaning in my studio this past week, I came upon a triptych tucked in a corner that played a big role in kicking off my expedition into the arts. The woman who painted it is unknown to me - she signed the piece with a rune/symbol not unlike Prince - but what she created, the space she worked in and how she brought a painting to life, has stayed with me to this day.

In the spring of 1971, my mother decided to commission portraits of her children by an artist in the neighboring town of East Bridgewater. So off we went one chilly spring day to sit for her. I was 14, Pam was turning 13 and Mark was 9. The idea was to have us each sit for a half hour at a time while the other two entertained themselves and stayed out of trouble. A bold plan, especially in the space we found ourselves - a cramped and cluttered shed next to the back door of an old farmhouse in the woods. It was heated by wood too, so staying out of the artist’s way, comfortable, and safely away from the pot-bellied stove was a challenge. We each balanced on a tall stool for our individual poses and, when “on deck” I found myself completely transfixed by this artist’s dance with her craft. I probably expected her to draw an outline and “color it in” with paint - blue for my sister’s eyes, brown for my groovy fringed vest, etc. What I witnessed instead was what later became so familiar - deep observation, not of the objects themselves, but of form and color, light and shape. And it was magic….and I wanted to learn how to do it.

When the sessions were over and the transaction completed, the three portraits came home and were hung on our den wall for a short time, as I recall. I don’t think they were well-received by my parents, being a bit too contemporary for their tastes, and they sat in a closet until I rediscovered them while in art school. Since then, they have traveled with me. Each time I see them, they immediately recall the smell of linseed oil, turpentine, wood smoke and earth - smells that forever mean STUDIO to me.

Postscript - If anyone out there has any information about the identity of this artist, I would be very grateful to hear it. As I said, she was living in East Bridgewater, MA (very close to Robbins Pond) in 1971. I think she was about 30 or so. Thanks.

Randy, 1971, oil on linen - Artist Unknown

Influencers

People often ask me who has influenced my work, but what they’re really looking for is an “art-anchor” to link me to a style. While I fully understand that need, I wish we as adults could clear our minds enough to experience things afresh and see art more viscerally. As adults we have a pressing need for context to what we’re experiencing at any given moment. We have big brains and, by god, we’re going to use them to their fullest! That’s why children’s reactions to my work matter greatly to me. Uncluttered minds and innocent eyes see and process clearly and cleanly.

But, I’m an adult, and have thought more deeply and thoroughly about my art than some would think. Someone once said “You don’t HAVE to be an idiot to be an artist” and I think truer words have not been spoken. I don’t know any painter, sculptor, designer, musician, writer or basket weaver who hasn’t studied fanatically their particular medium and it’s history. And, in art education you attach yourself to the coattails of some heavy hitters…and they become your personal gurus.

Among my personal Jesus’ are Fairfield Porter, Rackstraw Downes, Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn and Louisa Mattiasdottir. If you don’t know them, look them up. To me they are eternally interesting, inspiring and full of untapped lessons.

Sixth Avenue I - Fairfield Porter

Horizon, Ocean View - Richard Diebenkorn

Icelandic Village, 1991 - Louisa Mattiasdottir

110th Street & Broadway, Whelan’s from Sloan’s - Rackstraw Downes

Therapy

Watercolor painting is relatively new to me. In the past, I avoided it like the plague. I like to think that was because my sense of color is richer than the medium is capable of, but I suspect the real reason is because I’m a control freak. Tight composition and geometry has always been my strong suit and the thought of swirling, interweaving of pigment in my painting made me shiver with anxiety. At any rate, the only time I used watercolor was in solitary hikes among the woods and bogs of Myles Standish State Forest. This was about 30 years ago and I had a small field palette I would bring with me to sketch out plein air studies for future, larger paintings. They were useful as studies, but I paid them little mind, really.

About a year ago I lost my little sister to cancer - a loss that continues to deeply pain me daily. Immediately afterward, the very thought of doing any painting at all was practically impossible, though I knew that if I did, it would help me get through the sadness. Not to be over-dramatic, but me entering my studio has always been like going to church - a place of ritual where I hold conversations with my conscience and my better self. So, I dragged myself there as much as I could, though many times I just sat in my hammock-chair and brooded.

Enter watercolors, the medium that forced me to give up control and let expression flow freely. I still had the little field kit and a dusty pad of Arches paper sitting on a shelf. One day I picked up a brush, poured some water in a tumbler and made some marks….then some more, and the faucet was open. Watercolors became my tears.

Now, a year later, I have a tall stack of watercolors - some good, most not. But regardless of their quality and value as art, they served a very real purpose - one of grief, pain, redemption, second guessing, but also joy, confirmation and freedom. My work has been affirmed.

Failures

There is no one, absolutely no one, who is above failure and that is no different in the arts. Just as Mookie Betts goes 0 for 5 in the occasional game, a painter produces a dog here and there…in fact, it’s more often than not that the work doesn’t stand up to expectations. The basement archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art are filled with examples. A clumsy figure study by Degas, a boring still-life by Renoir, they are all there, only held onto because of historical and academic value.

The trick is to learn from the bad apples and try to avoid them in future projects. Lately I seem to have produced many, many simply bad paintings and drawings. I won’t even show them to my cat. But, I will take photos of them for my archive (far less impressive than The Met’s) and then trash them or save them for the springtime rite of studio cleansing and toss them in the sacrificial pyre.

Bogs

I’ve recently begun returning to an old motif that early in my career meant very much to me - cranberry bogs. They were everywhere around me at home and on weekends while camping in Myles Standish Reservation. I thought of their geometry and design as my own personal vistas - dare I say, much like Cezanne and his quarries. They were manmade landscapes, full of angles and planes and all the puzzle pieces I enjoy playing with on canvas.

Ironically, it was around the time I embarked on my corporate day job as a Graphic Design Manager for Ocean Spray Cranberries that I left the painting of bogs behind and explored more urban areas. Maybe it was because I was I need of relief from little red berries in both sides of my artistic life…or perhaps I was just sick of them. Nevertheless, I didn’t paint a bog, shack or surrounding area for many years.

Until recently. I walk by a couple bogs right around the corner from where I live and not too long ago, they began calling again. It was like finding an old friend on Facebook. They looked pretty much the same, but I have started looking at them in a quite different way.

The Shack at Rocky Pond, 1980 - 5x7, watercolor

The Bogs at Rocky Pond, 1980 - 5x7, watercolor

Tripledeckers

Throughout my art career, the three storied apartment building, commonly called a “tripledecker” (or in the vernacular, “tripledeckah” has often been a motif I explore. Of course, in my neck of the woods they are everywhere, so if you’re an urban landscapist it’s hard to avoid them. But they are also a deep part of my heritage. In fact, the first apartment my parents brought me home from the hospital to was in a triple that still stands on the south side of Brockton. And one of my own first apartments was the top floor of another one on Hillberg Ave. Many of my relatives, friends and acquaintances lived in them and the spiraling staircases to the 2nd and 3rd floors are a common pathway in my psyche. To me, tripledeckers represent family life, multi-generational living and interdependency. I’m comforted that they stand tall in my world.

Silver Current

If you haven’t already, I highly suggest you venture to downtown New Bedford to experience the site-specific installation Silver Current now hovering over Custom House Square. Conceived and created by artist Patrick Shearn and his collective team Poetic Kinetics, this temporary (July - September) artwork is breathtaking and inspiring. Fashioned from ultralight metallized film and netting and resembling schools of fish following even the slightest change in (wind) current. What immediately struck me was the sound and I found myself closing my eyes and laying back on the lawn. It was meditative and soothing, like waves hitting the beach.

The larger story of this work is that it’s the inaugural event of DATMA, the Massachusetts Design Art and Technology Institute, a “museum without walls” that takes it’s inspiration from Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. I am looking forward to more contemporary art presence in New Bedford and the cultural renaissance that it hopefully portends.

Down on Main Street

Town centers draw me in, no doubt about it. Some of it is nostalgic, I suppose. I grew up at a time in a small town when all the local businesses were clustered in the center and it was normal for a six year old to ride down there on his bike to get air in the tire at the gas station, buy some new fishing hooks from the hardware store and get a donut hole or two from the coffee shop. It may sound like Mayberry, but it was typical of the 60’s. And I think it’s coming back as malls die and Amazon grows. There is still an inherent need for people to be social and gather in a common place.

But some of my interest is also because of the visual variety, especially in the architecture. If you look carefully, you can often trace the entire history of a place by the buildings on Main Street. Sometimes you have to peel back facades and signage, but the bones are usually right there waiting to be painted.

Straße der Skulpturen

In the spring of 1975, I was fortunate enough to join a Student Exchange program sponsored by the Goethe Institute and spend some months in (then) West Germany. I was paired with a German student, Frank Schmidt , and his family and lived with them in a small town outside of Sankt Wendel. I was about to graduate from high school and had been accepted into art school, commencing in the fall, so I was quite excited to explore the art of the region I would be living in.

One of the most memorable places I visited was a large scale public art venue, the Straße der Skulpturen, located on a country road just outside of the city of Sankt Wendel. In 1971 the sculptor Leo Kornbrust initiated this project, creating a landscape populated by huge stone and concrete sculptures. It was like nothing else I had ever seen and though the contemporary work was less than thrilling to my hosts, they put up with me and brought me back there two or three times during my stay to explore and sketch.

Layers

I’ve been thinking a lot about layers recently.

If you visualize our “selves” as a collection of layers, like a tall stack of pancakes, or (if you are of a certain age) a stack of vinyl LPs on the spindle of a turntable, over time we accumulate a lot of layers. Not only in years, but in experiences, professions, partners, belief systems, and so on and on… And in the end, others only see the stack as a whole. The individual layers are often hidden.

I think of that sometimes as I’m slapping on new layers of paint. Some are light and barely noticeable at first. Maybe a soft glaze to take the edge off a horizon, or a more substantial reworking of the overall composition. And then there are the bold slashes of color that catastrophically change the direction of the painting altogether. But, in the end, the viewer is aware of only the finished piece.

Morning Shift

One advantage to self-employment is the flexibility to make your own hours. So, after many years of painting in the evening after my day job, I’ve decided to try a new pattern and work in the early morning. In theory, my brain should be sharper and rested and at optimal capacity….if only my body can stretch and keep up! The first day was today and so far, so good. The stillness is invigorating and the air feels new. The light changes quickly with the studio facing northeast, but I don’t often paint from life anymore, so it really doesn’t matter. I even eschewed my coffee until after as a reward. If I can discipline myself to continue this, I have high hopes for where it leads.

Take Me to the River

I grew up on a river - the mighty Nunketesett (known by most as the “Town River”) in West Bridgewater, MA. So I guess it’s not surprising that no matter where I travel, I’m drawn to the waterways that have nurtured most major cities. The painting above is of my home town river as it passes under the stone arches of…wait for it….Arch St.

I remember my excitement when I first experienced the Mississippi - first in Minneapolis, then Memphis and finally New Orleans. Same river, much different personalities as it grows and empties into the Gulf. And, it took me three trips to even realize that Denver sits on the Platte because it’s so tucked away in the urban spread.

As a painter, rivers offer me a wide palette and assortment of action. From dark cerulean to golden ochre, peaceful trickle to manic rush, when I walk along a riverbank, I usually can find a setting that fits my frame of mind. There’s also the industrial aspect of some rivers that fits nicely into my love of early manufactory buildings. The Saco River in Maine presented itself to me as a tired blue collar laborer, meandering between the red brick on its way home to the Atlantic.

Running water, wandering thoughts…

Summer Studio Prep

Cleaning my studio is not a chore for me. No matter how organized I think I am, in the act of picking up I invariably find a brush I thought I’d lost, a sketch that was “mis-filed” or a half-eaten cruller. It also becomes a time of rediscovery - an old postcard unearthed that you didn’t even know you kept or a library book that was not returned on time (sorry, Ms. Brennan!) At any rate, I really like doing it. To have one’s materials, tools, references and inspirational objects (read: assorted crap) at the ready is a wonderful feeling. And it frees me up for the real work when I walk into the studio.

The approach. The most difficult confrontation is facing a blank canvas. I prefer a full frontal assault.