Small Bites/ Big Ideas

Imagined Fall Landscape, translated from a view in summer of Plum Brook Pond, near Kestrel Land Trust's headquarters in South Amherst. Study in Color uses tone to form the composition rather than "local" or true color seen in person.

Small Horse > Big Horse > Small Horse Again

Mesmerized by horses at a young age, I gravitated towards learning all things equine in my middle school years. I dreamt of horses, drew them, studied Veterinary books about their joints and muscles and systems as well as typical ailments, and read about how to care for them. During long summer days I would daydream of their movement and cadence, my brothers would tease me-- seeing that longing in my eyes, calling me "horse-sick."

Imagine my delight, when during my 6th grade year, a stable was built just a short bike-ride from my childhood home. As an 11-year old entrepreneur to whom the horses seemed out of reach, getting connected to the equestrian world seemed impossible. It wasn't long before my little brain saw a path forward-- it was a crazy idea, but it might just work. I looked up the owner's name and phone number in the phone book, and called them with an offer to help in exchange for riding lessons. To my surprise, the owner said, "Yes!" That one call would be formative; after school, I worked in the stable, trading my "free" labor mucking out stalls, cleaning tack, washing horses, feeding them, tidying up the stable, and tending the fences, troughs, and pasture-- all for one thirty-minute lesson a week. This went on for a couple of years, and during the summers I would help teach and support children even younger than me during summer horse camps at the stable.

The proportion of riding lessons to free labor may have not been enough to build riding muscle, nor improve my mastery of riding basics very quickly, so my great plan, ended up being more riding-adjacent than effective. Back on the ground, I was getting really good with the wheelbarrow-- helping manage the stable and anticipating tasks needing doing. Yet meanwhile, on the riding side, I wasn't progressing; instead my beginner bad habits were being assimilated into muscle memory: hunched shoulders, looking down and not engaging all the new-to-me muscles in the legs. To tackle one of these issues, my instructor recommended I switch from the stable's usual beginner lesson horse, Rafa, to another horse, Asia.

During the lesson, I didn't fully understand why my favorite pal, Rafa, was back in her stall. Asia was safe, but she didn't want to move too much in the ring or or at any speed beyond standing really. Sitting atop her, my legs didn't go down- but were suddenly oriented more sideways and out along her large, wide belly. She wouldn't accept a tap or a kick; she needed consistent pressure to emerge from the side of the rider's calf and into her belly. Since her form was so much different than I had been accustomed, I found myself adjusting technique. As I bounced all sorts of directions, catching erratic air from on Asia's jotty gait, I put more weight in my heels, and felt my legs engage. It wasn't until the following week's lesson on Rafa, that I realized what my instructor had done and how brilliant it was. The ride with Asia had taught me to use my legs in new ways that had been assimilated into my muscle memory.

I am reminded of the Rafa>Asia>Rafa experience after reflecting on the forest pattern process and color studies. Similar to learning through artistic shifts in focus and targeted study, the forest pattern explorations are helping isolate certain aspects of art making, increasing confidence and as I bring these elements back together in a composition on canvas.

Big Art > Small Art> Big Art Again

Focusing on the forest pattern study these past several months, and gearing up for a show, I have been following a process for three different "patterns."

Prior to this, color selection was intuitive. I probably leaned towards being more true to "local" color. This means if the apple is red, I would use a form of red to paint it and garnish it with other colors like blues and oranges and yellows to give it form.

But the color studies of the forest patterns are liberating. The larger tile studies in black, grey, and white allow me to analyze the shapes, focusing on form and composition. While the even smaller tile studies with three different colors of three different tones, help explore color combinations and scales of combinations, and their adjacencies quickly. I've started being able to shift my seeing from color into tone or black and white and grey. Translating a local color into light, med, or dark and then reassigning it to another value that is tonally similar (red instead of green, purple instead of blue, etc). That one experience with Asia had born much fruit, for future rides and muscle memory, just as these small color studies on small tiles, is reinforming the work, and making me more brave to focus on color as tone, rather than local color.

Evolving Fast

Just like when I didn't realize all I had gained from riding Asia, I thought until now, that these were just studies--fun thought experiments, and ways to move quickly through color, as well as supporting non-artists in making art with the painting kits. I didn't realize just how much I was learning from these small bites of color applied to a pattern with different scales and juxtaposition of shape. That was until yesterday, when I got the call that I had sold a painting at the gallery and I needed to replace it with another of similar size in less than 24 hours.

I dropped my usually Saturday tasks mid chaos; shifting focus, I sat down at the kitchen table and began pouring, yes pouring paint on the canvas. I felt bold, brazen, and somewhat uncertain, yet confident that I could pull this off. Reaching for my paint box's newest additions: some basic colors of Liquitex Fluid Acrylic Paint, I started a thick underpainting. Intuitively, I wondered if their tendency to stay a bit more wet than full body acrylics could be more like painting in oils. I decided to make a underpainting of warm tones in a gradient, purple to pink and red. Oddly enough, my ability to select colors seemed easy, where it had only been challenging before. The paint came out fast, so I had a bit too much and ended up relying on a brush to wipe the excess off. Then over the course of the next 45 minutes, I worked back into the wet surface new colors, shapes and textures. After a break to meet a friend, I returned for another three hours to tinker with the composition, thinking in tone rather than color playing with light and dark as a pattern embodied within the work. The show is fall themed, but I didn't have exactly the photo I wanted to use as inspiration, so I relied on a summer scene, and chose fallish colors. This color study is not from sight, but imagination.

Lessons learned:

1) Thicker applications of acrylic as a "ground" layer can make for quicker and easier application of color over it. My typical process uses thin layers of acrylic on dry canvas, which is tedious and slow, but well suited for small chunks of time (15 min sessions or less). This alternative technique is very useful if larger sessions are available, and makes a more cohesive color representation overall.

2) Color as tone (aka light, medium, dark) will hold together regardless of the value (red, blue, green). Thinking of color as tone, can make it easier to adjust and work with the shapes in a composition without getting too hung up on "local" or the color an element may be at that time in real life.

3) Working at various scales, and using studies to isolate various aspects of art fundamentals for inquiry (color, composition, value, form, shape, line, space, proportion, texture, movement, light, etc). Will inform the larger body of work. The color studies this summer of 3 random colors on the 2.5" tiles, combined with the pattern studies in black and white on the 6" tiles, now on this smaller canvas at 6" x 12" can inform a future larger work.

Similar to my experience of Rafa> Asia> Rafa, working through various sizes and techniques is a quicker way to become a better painter.

And now, it is time to do the laundry and finish the vacuuming. The artist equivalent to mucking out the stalls and cleaning the tack.