Updates on Kasebier Piece

(Acrylic Painting, not complete at this point in time)

Well, my painted version of Gertrude Kasebier’s “Miss M”, is coming right along.  It’s been a little over a month since my last post on the topic and, boy, has this woman gone through some changes and transformations to reach this point. 

 

Luckily, I did enough pre-drawing to nail down most of the figure fairly accurately, when it came down to applying it to canvas.  I am thinking I am using less line in this painting (vs. some of my older acrylic pieces), because the “drawing” aspect has, for the majority, already been accomplished on paper well before paint has been applied to canvas.  This is a new discipline for me and I am enjoying its results.  I’m imagining in my mind: painting as “game day” and all of the drawing that goes behind it as “practice”.

 

I’ve enjoyed working this large, this canvas runs 36×48, so my woman here is nearly life-sized.  “Drawing” has been a bit easier at this size, than the standard 8.5×11″ I was drawing/practicing on. 

At this point the top-end of the painting is nearly complete: her face, the patterned background, neck and shoulders (almost done).  I believe I’ve settled on the color palette within this “finished area” and hope to bring down some of those greens and peaches into the whites of her dress. 

 

I’m struggling a bit with deciding how to treat the headboard behind my woman.  In the original photo this area is pretty non-descript and a blanketed-dark.  I’m imagining it should be left that way, but I’m not wanting it to “sink” behind the patterned wall either.  This backboard should be something of a middle ground behind her and in front of the pattern.

 

When considering the patterned wall behind her, I was itching to have it command attention and almost compete with her face.  The impasto/texture applied accomplishes this.  I played with the idea of having her meld-in with this background but she has some definite color differences from the pattern and sticks out above it none-the-less. 

I like that she is distinct, but I also enjoy that the background is also complicated, floral, feminine, and I imagine that it speaks of her personality like all of our home decorating often comments on us.  I found freedom to express my own feminine side in this background and didn’t shy away from the traditional floral and uterine shapes found often in patterned drapery and old-fashioned wall papering.

Painting in Progress…

(painting in progress, picture #3)

(painting in progress, picture #4)

I’m not sure where this is going, but it seems to be working out it’s own color issues.  This usually happens with every  painting.  It takes it’s own journey under your brush.  Hopefully, you’ll let go and let it become what it was meant to become… it’s like raising a child.

I was thinking of adding some seashell type shapes in the headboard but decided against it when I got to the painting the next night.

Inspirational TidBit

Dance On, Crappy Dancer
by: Charlie Pratt

The following bit is meant to inspire someone.

Whatever it is, there’s something. A talent, an itch, a hobby, a pipe dream, a whimsy, or better still, a fancy. You’ve got it in there. It’s lodged in between your car payment and your cell phone bill, like a well-meaning third-grader between two Pro Bowl linebackers.

I’ll be honest, that metaphor didn’t develop like I planned. To my point.

I have always loved words. Words like fickle, blitz, and niggle. I like words that paint a picture, words so delectable that you would swear they actually leave a taste in your mind. I like the fact that I can choose which words I want, that no one can tell me otherwise, and they can be delivered on paper, in person, on a Post-It note, with a skywriter, over the radio, through a tin-can telephone, and can even rise up to the fingertips all bubbly and knobbly, a verbal relief in luxurious Braille. In a pinch, I can deliver them over the internet, like I am now, but I’d prefer that you just pretend that this is all on a rugged Egyptian papyrus, scrawled in my scratchy hand by the light of a single candle, handmade and flickering particles of light over a random bit of prose.

I’m not sure what it is that you like. Maybe you fancy yourself a painter. Maybe you like to make your own beer. Maybe you dance in your bedroom or sing in your shower. You’ve probably told someone at some point that no, you don’t have any talent, or no, you aren’t really any good at all.

Of course, you might actually suck. You could be the worst dancer of all time, with jerky limbs and a wayward hip. You might not be able to paint anything at all, slopping expensive oils onto expensive canvases, only to realize that your Picasso looks more like a preschool entrance exam. Your singing voice could be shrill, off-pitch, out of rhythm, an aural irritant. Your photography might not even make the wall of the employee lounge, much less the cover of National Geographic.

I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. No really, don’t sweat it. There is a time in the history of anything spectacular when it wasn’t.

I write a lot. A lot more than you will ever, ever see, so help me God. I backspace like a fiend. I rearrange, reshape, cut out, add to, insert, cut, copy, rotate, invert, expand, simplify, tweak, touch up, and edit so much that if I play my cards right, begin to make something actually interesting. Now, bear in mind it’s just interesting to me. I can’t speak for you. You might think it’s total crap. That’s okay, though, because I’m doing this for the love of it. No one is holding a loaded pistol to my temple screaming, “Write, damn it! Write!” If they did, I’d politely tell them to fetch me a thesaurus, whereupon I’d make for the nearest ventilation shaft. There’s always a ventilation shaft.

I feel that I’m qualified to say this to you now, because I’ve just finished something that I’ve always wanted to finish: my first book. But that’s not the reason I feel qualified. I feel qualified because nothing’s come of it yet. It’s still just mine, no one else’s, and it feels great. I’d like to say that extreme discipline, fortitude, an eye-on-the-prize mentality, or a heap of hallucinogens helped me find this bit of success, but it would be an heinous bit of self-aggrandizing poppycock. The truth is, I just loved it. Each day, knowing there were countless bits, chunks even, of amateur flotsam floating around in my hopeful soup, and that no matter what I do, there’s no real way for me to hide it. Every kid’s first recital sounds like his first recital, no matter the inherent ability. It’s a relative thing, like so many things we wish were not.

If you don’t love it when you suck at it, you won’t love it when someone tells you you’re good. You’ll just love the praise, which makes you selfish at best and priggish at worst. So, paint on, crappy painter. You’re no Van Gogh yet. And sing your little heart out, you drunken warbler. There’s no Grammy waiting for you today. And you, the unhinged non-dancer – trip the light fantastic. You won’t be dancing with any stars anytime soon.

But you are the reason that I write.

See more of Charlie’s writing on his site:  www.CharlieWrites.com

Kasebier Portrait

Photo by Gertrude Kasebier

I have been haunted by this photo ever since I laid eyes on it a few months ago.  The contrast of this woman’s softness and aggressiveness have caught my attention and confused me all in one gasp.  She is alluring and beautiful.  She sits on, what I imagine to be, a bed with her shoulders bare.  Even the small pitcher she is holding is begging the question, “Will you fill me up?”.  But her eyes are not averted from the viewer.  She is steadfast in her gaze, unrelenting, unashamed and strangely confident with the viewer.  She is unwilling to hide her beauty and she is making the offering of herself plain and clear.

(Original Photo done by photographer Gertrude Kasebier–1852-1934)

drawing

This is to be my first subject in my series on feminity and woman.  So, I decided to draw this woman over and over, to get down her shape, gesture, and to figure out her seated position hiding under her flowing dress.  This is one of more than 20 drawings I completed as pre-painting practice. 

 

I thought that the empty pitcher was slightly heavey-handed as a prop–and decided to put a burning candle in her hand instead…  I wanted my re-created woman to be bringing something more to the table; an offering to her lover..She would be a giver not just a taker. 

 

Sleepy-eyed and beautiful, I imagined the 10 Virgins in the Bible who were waiting for the bridegroom late at night, with the mission to keep their oil lamps burning while waiting on his return.  There is an eagerness there that went along with the alluring Kasebier portrait.  So I replaced the pitcher with the burning candle a subtle expression of self-sufficiency, a burning of her own, as an offering along with her willing vulnerbility.

 

Matthew 25 The Parable of the Ten Virgins

 1“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.  6“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’  7“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’  9” ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’  10“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.  11“Later the others also came. ‘Sir! Sir!’ they said. ‘Open the door for us!’  12“But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’  13“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

Something Uncharted, from July 2008

 Something Uncharted, from July 2008

To start a watercolor and ink piece, I will sometimes bring different elements of shape together and then use it as a platform to create. The shapes’ configuration inspires a visual dialogue enhanced by free association. The shapes are empty and I get to draw in them, on them, and outside the lines; one instance feeds another, until I feel that the drawing is complete. I then move on to watercolor, after the ink is completely dry. Each step has its own stopping point, and I try to listen to a still, small, voice inside of me that lets me know when it’s time to stop.

This beginning form of abstract shapes, gives me the welcomed structure to let my memory and imagination run loose. When you really let go in a piece, you not only enjoy yourself more but your product is usually better in the end, too! The only time I really kill a piece, is when I can’t let go for some reason or another (and of course the reasons vary)!

When I was as a child, around the second grade, I would draw heavy lines of crayon color along the inward part of a shape, following the lines of the drawing. This gave me a great border from which to fill in the shape easily without going out of the lines. I loved it and was consumed by it.

I wonder how these childhood experiences of being taught to “stay in the lines” have formed our adult minds. Of course our drawings looked better when we stayed within the lines while we were kids; it took discipline to do so. But, after you have learned to “stay within the lines”, isn’t it time to begin taking the calculated risks of hashing out something new–something outside of the lines; to discover something uncharted? This might be what the abstractionists were attempting to do in the 1920’s (e.g. Picasso or Willem de Kooning).

But even before I lay down any line or color in a painting, I think I primarily try and quiet myself down, to let my thoughts come to a slow roll, even quieter still to let me just sit there and be for a moment; before I let pen to paper or brush to canvas. My utmost intention in my artwork is to be true to myself and to the one who created us; to reveal both in the hidden language of line and color and form.

“He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”

Romans 8:27-30 (Remix version)