Artspace Open Sources 2022
This year Artspace’s Open Studios permits in-person showing of art in a public space. I’ll be located in the Creative Arts Workshop at 80 Audubon Street, New Haven, on Saturday, October 29, and Sunday, October 30 where some samplings of my paintings will be on display. Here are the nine photos I submitted this year that are now uploaded to the Artspace site here, and I suspect most of these will show up, and possibly others, while I’m in situ.
1. Philly Days 1: Mary + Kajsa 1981 (March, May, October 2020), 30x24 stretched canvas
The painting is based on a photo from 1981 showing my wife, Mary, and our newborn daughter, Kajsa, on a summer morning in 1981 in Philadelphia. The point of the rendering is to capture the light, as the photo did, but where the conversion factor into paint is determined by the feelings and perceptions of the moment. This is still my most painterly production where there is some evidence of painting “for the sake of” painting. Favorite features: the cut-off jeans, the reflected light in the diaper, and the central creases in the background pillow. Theme song: “In the Summertime” by Bob Dylan (1981)
2. 21st Century Studies 1: Kajsa in Norway 2015 (July-November 2021), 16x20 stretched canvas
3. 21st Century Studies 2: Max in Hamden 2021 (July-October 2021), 22x28 stretched canvas
Mary’s grandson Max visited us in January 2021 and posed for a photo in our sunroom. That’s the basis for this painting which tries for a looser interpretation than the previous two, if only in response to Max’s youth (age 20) and attitude. The likeness isn’t as precise as I might like but then again I’m deliberately trying not to be too slavish to photo reality in these renderings. Favorite feature: Max’s jacket where the force of some of the strokes on the sleeves is shown by residual swipes I chose to leave in. Theme song: “Snowblind” by Black Sabbath (1972)
4. Philly Days 3: MEM 1980 (October 2021), 18x18 gesso board
The photo of Mary in our first Philadelphia apartment in the spring of 1980 is, as one friend said, “mesmerizing” in terms of the gradations of light on her face. I didn’t do a bad job rendering them though I’ve simplified the photo—as for instance the painting in the background, which is Vermeer’s “Girl in a Red Hat” but which I’ve changed to a kind of modernist portrait. In a way that sets the tone of what I’d like to get to eventually. Theme song: “Dreaming” by Blondie (1979)
5. Philly Days 4: DB, PAFA 1983 (November 2021-January 2022), 22x28 stretched canvas
A photo of me, taken by a co-worker at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, on the office stairs (designed by Frank Furness) at the school door on Cherry Street, has long been a favorite of mine because of how the light “abstracts” the shapes and details in the shot. In the photo I’m 24 or almost and it’s very near the end of my time in Philadelphia, so the sense of disappearing in broad daylight, as it were, is the point. Favorite feature: the reflected light at far left and my left arm. Theme song: “Of the Instant” by Gang of Four (1982)
6. Philly Days 5: Tim 1979 (January-March 2022), 22x28 stretched canvas
Mary took a black and white photo of Tim, my oldest friend (since middle school), in August, 1979, a few months before his twentieth birthday, while he was helping us move into our first apartment, 1931 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia, in a building where he was our upstairs neighbor. The view out the window was of a parking lot behind the Philadelphia Public Library on Logan Circle, though in the painting it’s improvised (the photo’s windows white out). The point: to render this image with a sense of its present—back then—and my present, looking back. Favorite feature: my rendering of Tim’s legs, and the aforementioned view out the window, a kind of modernist fantasy of a neo-classical building. Theme song: “Cities” by Talking Heads (1979)
7. Famous Faces 1: 2.2.22: James Joyce, Ulysses at 100 (February 2022), 14x18 gesso board
During my time in Philadelphia, one of my big obsessions was
James Joyce’s Ulysses which I first read in 1980; eventually I became a
bit of a Joyce scholar, writing a thesis on Finnegans Wake and a
doctoral thesis that included a chapter on Joyce’s novels, as well as teaching Ulysses
to undergraduates in Yale Summer Sessions on six different occasions from 2002
to 2012. So when Ulysses turned 100 this year I had to commemorate it.
My painting combines a rendering based on a photo of Joyce in his late 30s (he
turned 40 on February 2, 1922, and at his birthday party was presented with the
first bound copy of his great masterpiece) and an image of the original
blue-bound version of the book. My intention was to do this in as few sessions
as possible; it took five, Feb 2, 3, 5, 6, 9. Favorite features: Joyce’s wrist
and forehead. Theme song: “Flower of the Mountain” by Kate Bush (2011)—which
takes its words almost wholly from the “Molly Bloom monologue” at the close of
the novel.
8. 21st Century Studies 3: Jerry by the Delaware, New Castle 2013 (May 2022), 16x20 stretched canvas
Back to photos from the 21st century: in this case, my
younger brother Jerry, the year he turned 50, by the banks of the Delaware in
Battery Park, New Castle, Delaware, our hometown. The month is August, my birth
month, and the painting combines a photo of Jerry by the river with a photo of
boats on the river, to create a kind of a companion piece to Kajsa by the fjord
in Norway. In this case, the light on Jerry and the clouds in the sky are my
favorite features, and just feel like Delaware to me. Theme song: “June Hymn” by The Decemberists (2011)
9. 21st Century Studies 4: Mary in Hamden
2016 (May 2022), 18x18 gesso board
Clearly, I tend to find photos of Mary worthy of rendering. This one she took herself (somehow) in the backyard of our home in Hamden, early in our residence there, as a self portrait for a photography class. My rendering deliberately went for a certain minimalism while remaining true to the dramatic lighting. Favorite features: the jacket on the left hand side and hand on the hat, and the jeans. It’s taken awhile, but I think I prefer the painting to the photograph now. Theme song: “Sins of My Youth” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (2014)
More paintings may appear as I get photos of them . . .
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