And We're Back

Sorry I've been out of touch! I've resolved to post more frequently, even if it's only a beautiful work of art, an inspiring quote, or an update on my own art and classes.

In that spirit, I give you ... Robert Henri.

Robert Henri, Agnes in Red

"We have great periods. Periods when we freshen, move forward into hopeful philosophy. Then comes the stamp of personal whim.

Technique becomes a tool, not an objective. We are interested and we have expressions we must make. All things are appreciated with an abundance of humor. There is an association with nature. Something happens between us and the flowers in a garden, a communication of gayety, a rhythm in the grass understood - something charming in a day's wash hung on the line - a song running through it all. Associations with nature. It's a state to be in and a state to paint in."

- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, p. 207

Monhegan, by Robert Henri

~

Islands Oceanic

This month I am out upon the Isles of Shoals as often as possible. It's a series of rocky, windswept islands nine or so miles off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire: Rhythmic surf, whitewashed wooden structures, tenacious sea-roses, bleached and battered stone. 

Nineteenth-century painters and men-and-women-of-letters once gathered for "salons" here, particularly upon Appledore Island, where poet Celia Thaxter lived. Thaxter wrote enduring descriptive essays about the life and history of the islands. It was she who convinced Frederick C. Hassam to add the archaic "e" to his middle name ("Child") in the manner of Byron's Childe Harold.

Childe (1859-1935), as everyone indeed called him, was an early American adopter of the methods of the French Impressionists. He rejected conventional academic training and technique in the manner of another frequent visitor to the island, the very influential Boston artist and teacher William Morris Hunt. I've written extensively about Hunt's Francophile influence on American art here.

"Seeing big" and expressing sensations directly is going to be a significant part of a workshop I'm leading on the Isles of Shoals next month. I will be exhibiting some 15-20 new paintings of the Isles of Shoals at the Portsmouth Discovery Center this August.

Childe Hassam, watercolor, the Isles of Shoals

Sometimes Hassam seems to paint the morning light striking the veins of quartz and feldspar that form the jagged island coasts as though responding in paint to Celia Thaxter's prose: 

"The sea is rosy, and the sky; the line of land is radiant; the scattered sails glow with the delicious color that touches so tenderly the bare, bleak rocks. These are lovelier than sky or sea or distant sails, or graceful gulls' wings reddened with the dawn; nothing takes color so beautifully as the bleached granite; the shadows are delicate, and the fine, hard outlines are glorified and softened beneath the fresh first blush of sunrise." ("Among the Isles of Shoals," 1875).

Childe Hassam, oil, The Isles of Shoals

My own challenge is to forget Hassam's work but to remember his achievement and to take him at his word: "Subjects suggest to me a color scheme and I just paint." 

"An artist should paint his own time and treat nature as he feels it," he said, "not repeat the same stupidities of his predecessors." In Hassam's case, I think we'd have to substitute "successes" for "stupidities." But the sense of what he says rings true, and the implications for the practice of painting are huge.

Above: painting friends Mary Graham, Donald Jurney, and Todd Bonita joined me on a recent painting trip to Star Island, Isles of Shoals. The lot of us painting out there looked more 1912 than 2012.

As I take it, lived courageously the act of painting sometimes leads to moments of fuller being. That's what I'm really chasing on the Shoals. In the words of one of Hassam's truest successors, Robert Henri, "what we need is more sense of the wonder of life, and less of the business of making a picture."

How to Be Original

Aspiring artists often imitate an admired artist’s style. It's a great way to learn to paint and permanently  adds to one’s store of available techniques. 

Rembrandt. Self-portrait. 1666

Paradoxically, in most cases the admired work ultimately came to the admirer’s attention because it resonated with enough people as unique, deep, or original.... So not only the technique but the quality of originality itself can inspire emulation without one even realizing what one's actually responding to. And of course we prize originality in art over imitation. All artists probably have to some degree a desire to express their own unique vision of the world; presumably, over the course of artistic development, emulation ceases to be as powerful a force.

Robert Henri. Figure in Motion. 1913.

It’s like American culture - too often we emulate others who we imagine are enjoying “the good life” by wishing we were (or actually trying to become) as wealthy as we think those other people are. But it's really the wrong goal - that is,  it's a goal that isn’t really suited for what we want to achieve. 


Instead of focusing on becoming as wealthy or secure as we believe “the beautiful people” to be, we should try to focus on our ability to deeply enjoy our present life first. We will then have achieved the desired end without even trying. So with art. 


Would-be artists often begin by emulating the style of a particular artist or group of artists (plein-air painters who emulate aspects of the Rockport or the Impressionist style, say). Later, through the doing, comes one's own unique style. 


Says Robert Henri in the invaluable The Art Spirit: "Don't worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick to you and show you up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do."

Monet. Water lilies. (detail)

I think one does best, in life as well as in art, to focus on one’s own likes and loves, enjoying the pursuit of idiosyncratic experimentation. My own new goal is to live as much as I can in the work I do when I’m in love with what I’m doing for its own sake.