Workmanship: Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 2)

Workmanship n. 2. Evidence of such skill.

In the previous post we see Vermeer’s porcelain-like rendering of a beautiful young woman, whose face is painted in such a way as to leave no visible trace of brushwork. She is a vision of idealized, youthful beauty that transcends brush, paint and canvas.

Rembrandt                                                           Self Portrait  @ 1660

Rembrandt's self portrait stares back at us from the other end of the artistic spectrum. Looking at the careworn face we can almost hear the bristle brushes being dragged across the canvas.

Here Rembrandt makes no effort to hide his workmanship, allowing the individual strokes to stand out from one another, rich in variation and texture. He is as honest about the years that show on his face as he is about his brushwork; we see here a man whose youth and optimism have left him, a man worn and resigned and altogether changed from the young, playful artist of years before. 

Rembrandt                     Self Portrait with Saskia 1635

 What has happened to this man in the 25 years between the execution of these two paintings? If Rembrandt is so worn and resigned, why does he still paint? Why would someone paint such a picture of himself? Unlike Vermeer, much is known of Rembrandt’s life and a brief account of his family and career sheds a great deal of light on the mood of the later self portrait. 

Workmanship: Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 1)

Workmanship n. 1. Skill as a workman; craftsmanship.

Here we have two examples of workmanship from two well known painters. I have chosen these examples for three reasons: 1) they are well crafted but very different in execution, 2) the artists were contemporaries and 3) they were both Dutch painters. The first similarity is the most important while the second two make for a more apt comparison.

Johannes Vermeer, The Girl With the Pearl Earring @ 1665  Collection of the Mauritshuis, the Hague

It is said that Vermeer is more representative of the Dutch tradition of painting with his carefully composed and exquisitely rendered genre scenes. A close up of the painting shows the carefully blended brushwork in the face of the sitter while the turban is done in much broader and defined brushstrokes. 

The painting is a beautiful example of the deceptive simplicity I enjoy in some minor works as its subject has been the cause of great speculation. Who is the Girl With the Pearl Earring? Why did he paint her? What is meant by the juxtaposition of  the modestly covered hair and the sensuality of her mouth? That little is known of Vermeer's life and work adds fuel to the fire. (Having seen several Vermeers in person I can testify that they are definitely worth all the fuss.)  Of course, it is a great pleasure simply to look at the painting, but the mystery of it adds depth to its beauty. 

Part 2, a Rembrandt self portrait: the other end of the spectrum. 

A Few Words About What I Do (Part 4)

To conclude this little series I would like to make a distinction between the art of narrative painting and what is the most popular dramatic art of out time: the movies. 

Thomas Grimball 1780  (detail)                 Collection Mr and Mrs Paul Grimball Marshall Jr.

on permanent loan to the Old Exchanges Building, Charleston, South Carolina

A film maker has thousands of frames to tell a story, hours of screen time and with the aid of sound, dialog and music, his cameras and crew. A painter must put the whole thing across on a single canvas, with his tubes of muddy colors, a few brushes and what wits he has been given. 

Four colors for mixing skin tones

But by the same token, painting offers the artist and viewer time to pause and reflect at leisure on that single, beautiful moment, soak in its drama and consider its meaning. In a painting one can stop and gaze upon each character to love, pity or despise him. To consider what each element that’s been included adds to the picture. Attitude and gesture, light and dark, color and form, content and style. All these things can be taken in as a whole or considered individually. 

David and Goliath  (detail)  2007                                                  collection of the artist

The degree to which these things are possible, both in the making and in looking, are unique to painting; in no other artistic discipline can a single moment be taken hold of, ordered and held up for all to see. Nowhere is there so much freedom for artistic interpretation without doing injury to the meaning the story.

 This is what I do, or at least what I attempt to do, and this is why the practice of painting holds my attention and my affection and why I think it should hold yours as well.

A Few Words About What I Do (Part 3)

As we saw in Part 2 of this series, a painting of an object or a place can be read by the viewer as nothing more than what it immediately appears to be. A proper narrative painting like the one below is quite another matter: clearly something is happening.

"The presentation at the Temple"  2012                  Collection of St Philips Church, Charleston, South Carolina

The thing that is being attempted in such a painting is rather the opposite of the still life or portrait: to take a story, find the critical moment upon which the dramatic tension of the story hangs and capture it in a single frame. The figures must be arranged on the canvas in such a way so that their emotions and gestures add all they can to the story without distracting from the focus of the picture. 

It is a venture not without risk. Months of preparation and work go into a canvas and in it a painter has the burden of capturing a single moment in dramatic clarity, with skill of perception and brush, so that it is communicated to the viewer with all its intended meaning.

A Few Words About What I Do (part 2)

A portrait, still life or a landscape can suggest stories in a quiet way, inviting a viewer to fill in what comes before and after. 

Paintings or drawings like these are relaxing because they can be read at face value, as only what they immediately depict, and so are less demanding on the viewer as well as the artist. Their narrative value is optional.  

They can be pleasing to the eye and nothing more, but there is 

always the possibility to consider why the subject was so arranged 

and what might be the meaning of such an arrangement. 

In this way a still life can be "read" just as any work of art should be read: with the assumption that anything included by the artist has been put there for a purpose. The question then becomes "What is its purpose?" and that is where the fun begins because that is where art comes alive!

Keeping it Simple

On a trip to Saluda, North Carolina, 
we went to an orchard and picked a basket of apples.

When we got home this one was on the bottom. The way a few leaves and stem had come away with it and been pressed together in the basket gave it character. The bruise made it downright poignant and so I decided it had to be painted! Sometimes the days that knock us around and mess up our hair are the most interesting. 

A Few Words About What I Do (part 1)

If I must choose a title for myself it would be painter. But what drives me as an artist is the urge to tell a story. Not in words, of course, but in pictures.

More specifically, my desire is to either suggest some kind of narrative in the frame of a still life or a portrait or to find the single most pivotal moment in a story, compose it in my mind and arrange it on a canvas in such a way that it captures the attention and imagination of those who look at it.