In the Studio: Post war abstract Expressionist Painting

I recently completed a MoMA course featuring a total of 7 artists from the New York School who pioneered the Abstract Expressionist movement. Below are my studio exercises “in the style of”…

course work:

YKK Sea

Acrylics on canvas. 30”x48”

This is my interpretation of a Barnett Newman work. His work is characterized by “zips” or vertical stripes that interrupt a plain colour field, and are used to define the spacial structure of the painting.

I’ve taken a few colour palette liberties from his often primary colour scheme and have drawn inspiration from a coastal sunset. From right to left… a brushed out wispy zip, a style inspired by some of his later works, the off-white swirls and flicks represent the frothy surf. A medium brown zip is a less saturated tone of the bright orange and represents the wet shoreline sand. The deep dark blue zip made with a palette knife and allowed to “bleed” shows the depths of the unbound ocean. Followed by a complementary bright cadmium orange zip (which does harken to Newman’s adherence to colour theory), atop a shiny cerulean zip (which is the same colour as the background, with added gloss medium, and blue interference) to represent the shimmering sunset hues reflecting off swells at sea.

These Cryin’ Eyes

I started my Willem de Kooning inspired work on top of a palette knife painting of the beach that I wasn’t happy with. I knocked down a few of the higher points with sandpaper and began with a few gestural planning charcoal lines.

I worked with acrylic paints for this piece, instead of purchasing oils; which I know is not traditional but I did add a fair bit of “retarder” to the acrylics allowing for approximately 2hrs of working time vs the standard 10-15min dry time. I can appreciate where having a few days/weeks of working time with oils would come in handy. It is harder, or rather, more time pressing to make snap decisions about which areas to revise using acrylics, instead of having a day or two to muse over it.

I used a large brush, a smaller but perhaps more medium sized liner brush, a spray bottle of water to encourage drips and runs, as well as a palette knife both for scraping off and applying thicker areas of paint, and a wet rag to smear and erase some things. I also created several different viscosities of paint both with gel mediums and water and hope that I achieved at least a successfully de Kooning technique inspired piece, despite not having the correct oil paint medium.

I added a handful of loose “eyes”and what could be interpreted as a nose or two as a nod to de Kooning’s more figurative side, and I like how some of the more fluid paint drips can be read as crying/tears.

Overall I think that after 5 different paint application sessions this week with plenty of staring at it in between that there are a few rather successful areas as well as a couple that definitely still need a rework. On average I think the technique is there but the colour palette may not be. I think it’s reading a little too vibrant and almost graffiti-esque. I’m also tempted to smudge out and perhaps almost whitewash a few larger areas.

After trying this process myself I can understand why pieces stayed in his studio for so long. It is hard to find a stopping point. This piece probably isn’t “done” but is hopefully on its way.

Painted Ladies and a Bottle of Wine Mama

Acrylics and Enamel on Canvas, 24"x30"

I chose to reference Jackson Pollock's "Echo: Number 25" for this exercise. I've done more colourful wild energetic flicked drip paintings in his style in the past, but was unfamiliar with his black and white series prior to this course, and wanted to experiment with the more controlled application.

I had only white gessoed canvases in my studio, so ended up doing an acrylic titanium buff wash with a grey and brown toothbrush flicked paint application to emulate the raw canvas Pollock would work on. Followed by a combined, drizzle, drip, pour, flick (both directly from the can and off of a stick) of an Ink Black hardware store enamel paint. There are a handful of nude female figures within the random fluid paint application as a nod to Jackson Pollock's reintroduction of figuration in 1951.

I'm happy with the results in general, however I did not allow for the slow spread of the enamel before it dried, so some lines have merged and become thicker than intended. Learning curve!

No. 12

Acrylics on Canvas 9"x12"

I worked on a smaller scale for this Mark Rothko inspired piece (simply to compensate for the time crunch) and in acrylics instead of oils. I used corresponding smaller brush sizes to hopefully allow for the decrease in size, and hopefully achieved an effect that was still "to scale".

To emulate a similar effect of adding lots of linseed, varnish, or turpentine, I "watered" down my paints with water as well as both matte and gel mediums. I started with a relatively translucent ground of a few layers of Quinachridone Magenta, then on top used several built up layers or washes of Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow, and Dioxazine Purple. Halfway through my layering process I did a Zinc White wash to brighten up the colours that were getting increasingly dark/saturated, then continued with more translucent colour layers to add visual depth.

I think I was relatively successful in obtaining a Rothko-esque glowy edge and atmospheric depth of the colour fields. If you look closely you can see the built up layers of colour and see through to the layers that came before.

Dewy

Acrylics and Ink on Canvas, 12”x12”

This week focused on artist Agnes Martin who not only is the first female artist we’ve studied but also the first Canadian! She had an impressively long career; was born in 1912 in Macklin, Saskatchewan, made it big in New York in 1956-67, and then retired to New Mexico, continuing to paint right up to her death at the age of 92! in 2004.

I started this piece by re-priming the canvas with two perpendicular layers of thicker gesso and a “bad” wonky bristle brush to add some minute texture to the canvas surface and invite some imperfection. The gesso is followed by a translucent wash of a dusty blue.

I masked off a perimeter and have added a gold and silver grid in combination with a super fine black lined grid using a fine permanent pen/marker. I opted for pen instead of a more traditional graphite for longevity and the option to glaze in future.

I used a vintage wooden ruler that has some irregularities and held my pen loosely to invite it to skitter over the bumps and brush marks created in the gesso layers.

If you zoom in you can see the errors and the human hand in the creation of the grid, where the pen has skipped or the gold has bled under the masking tape. I actually found this aspect of the process very freeing!

“I hope I made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds, but that the paintings are very far from being perfect -completely removed in fact- even as we ourselves are.” - Agnes Martin

In discarding perfection as an achievable goal and in fact inviting opportunities for imperfection I think I might have achieved a better overall outcome if that makes any sense. There is some life to the strict geometry. And freedom within a structured confine.

As a side note when I was taking photos of the finished piece my phone was trying to select it and highlighting the painting like it was a QR Code, which is kinda cool! Successful grid I guess!?

Collage 4.0

10x10” each, magazine clippings, matte medium, on cradled wooden birch panels.

For this week’s Ad Reinhardt inspired piece I chose to not emulate his more emblematic 1960s “Black Paintings” and colour field paintings and instead look back to his earlier works and take inspiration from his “Collage. 1940”.

I opted to cut all of my magazine clippings into squared off rectangles. I feel like each little piece of magazine severed from its context on the original page becomes an abstract work in and of itself. Some cuttings do retain vestiges of their origin, but I believe many become their own entity and it is difficult to tell what the original zoomed out, broader image was.

In using the mini abstractions, combined with the severe inorganic geometric rectangular shape they are cut into I hope to have removed the trace of the human hand, and to have embraced an element of the abstract modernism with cubist roots Ad Reinhardt was known for. I also wrapped the image to and around the edges of the canvas as a further nod to his “all-over” aesthetics.

I also took inspiration from Ad Reinhardt’s “Untitled. 1938” and hope to have effectively employed the visual push/pull of warm and cool colours and to have emulated a similar “pulsing energy” that keeps the eye bouncing around the piece.

Taking note of Reinhardt’s paint mixing or rather his paint extraction techniques, I chose to use a matte gel medium to adhere the magazine clippings to the wooden panel. The medium works to mute the inherent glossiness of the magazine paper for perhaps not as pristine a surface as his works, but a generally even flat matte surface.

captured

Acrylics on Canvas 15”x30”

For this weeks studio exercise I chose to emulate one of Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Net” paintings, which are among her first works when she moved to New York in the late 1950s.

I have made what is nearly a black and white piece at first glance but it’s actually a very dark blue background with very light green gestural brush marks. I think this lends an atmospheric depth to what could otherwise be quite a stark piece. After solidly filling in the background colour, in her style I took a sanding sponge to the dried navy paint layer. I don’t think I actually achieved much in this process but I did reveal a few white specs of the gesso layer adding some very subtle visual interest.

Each brush mark is made with the exact same colour of paint, and the same wrist flick “c” shape movement but the waving variations in texture and tone are created by different additions of medium or thinner. The thicker strokes have a gel medium added, some are straight paint, others have a more fluid pouring medium added, and others still have been watered down or dry brushed. By grouping the different paint thicknesses together in amorphous blobby areas, the overall effect, stepping back, becomes that of a lacy fabric or “net” undulating in the breeze or underwater.

It did take me a minute for me to embrace the small gestural “flick” and not overthink the markings. The desire to go back over each one to perfect its shape is something that I had to consciously and actively avoid. It’s an interesting dichotomy to embrace the randomness inside the tight structure of the mark making. I don’t think a single “c” is actually identical to another one but in essence they are all the same mark. Once I was able to stop overthinking it, or stop “thinking it” period, it became a rather calming and freeing process. I found the contrast between the free loose mark making and the almost robotic nature of the repetition really interesting.

Psychologically these paintings were a form of catharsis for Kusama, who sought to obliterate her fears and even herself with the act of repetition. I can absolutely understand how that would work for her. In working on this piece feel like getting lost in the brushstrokes became a sort of meditative practice and quite suddenly an hour or two had gone by without really noticing the passage of time. I can see how she’d be able to find an escape and a quieting of the mind in this practice.

Final Project: Studio Exercise and Visual Analysis Essay

For this Analysis I chose to revisit the Studio Exercise in Week 6 and my painting inspired by Agnes Martin. I relate to her not only as a fellow Canadian and female artist, but also draw parallels with her work and my own almost obsessive fiddly-detail oriented practice. With her pursuit of perfection and the simultaneous casting aside of perfection, her work really stood out to/for me. It was a personal revelation that perfection can be noted but not achieved and that not being perfect is not only something that is okay, but that imperfection in the face of perfection can even be invited. I have found the Studio Exercises in this course in general a very freeing creative step away from my own work, but the more point blank acceptance of the theory vs. practicality of perfection that Agnes Martin voices was of particular note.

“I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect—completely removed in fact—even as we ourselves are.” - Agnes Martin

I also find it inspirational that “Martin worked on paintings as if they were drafts of a text, discarding many compositions that did not adhere to her vision and then repainting them until she felt she had gotten it right.” There is a freedom in the editing process and not being so tied to or bogged down by something that isn’t working, and allowing yourself the freedom to simply discard and try again, that I hope to embrace in my own work.

Additionally I have driven through the blip of a town that is Macklin, Saskatchewan on my way to visit nearby family in that area, and I find it really impressive and moving that someone who has ostensibly come from the middle of nowhere can have made such a name for herself in the art world.

I followed inspiration of Agnes Martin’s earlier naming conventions and have titled this piece “Dewy”. I think the soft blue-grey washed background emulates colours of peace and simplicity and of the quiet solitude and beauty in misty mornings, and that the gold and silvery line work picks up on dew drops and the reflection of the first rays of light in an early sunrise palette; “she sought qualities such as innocence and joy in her paintings, asserting that “beauty and happiness and life...are [the artist’s] only concern....They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art.””

I started this piece by re-priming a deliberately chosen square canvas with two perpendicular layers of thicker gesso using an old wonky bristle brush to add some minute texture to the canvas surface and invite some imperfection. “The inevitable bumps, jumps, and squiggles of the motion of her hand over the canvas’s rough surface introduce subtle imperfections into an otherwise highly structured form. By inviting such qualities, Martin softens the grid’s perfect regularity and introduces a tension between geometric rigour and manual imprecision.”

The gesso is followed by a series of three translucent washes of a dusty greyish blue acrylic paint. “Around 1964, Martin heightened the translucent nature of her work by switching from oils to acrylic paints. With considerable additions of water, acrylics allowed her to layer a series of translucent washes of colour without the yellow effect of thinned oils.” It is actually a mix of several different colours (that would likely be difficult to perfectly replicate) and a fair bit of water. I keep a jar of extra paint scraped off used palettes that I then save for backgrounds or eventually making my own “black” paint. In this case the jar of discards happened to be a fairly neutral cool-ish toned grey. To it I added a smidge of titanium white and a touch of cobalt blue, and a little bit of “blue interference” for both depth and airiness. I like that the base colour is made up of several. I think it lends more depth and nuance than a simple two or three colour mix.

I then masked off a perimeter, measured out 1” and 1/2” increments onto the tape and then added a somewhat thicker gold and silver grid in combination with a super fine black lined grid using a fine permanent pen/marker. I opted for pen instead of a more traditional graphite for longevity and the option to glaze in future. I do like the general matte quality of the finished piece, contrasted with the metallic glossiness of the silver and gold lines, so it is unlikely that I will actually glaze this work in future, but I set out wanting to have that option.

I know that “Martin’s compositions were carefully preconceived, as evidenced by her notebooks filled with measurements worked out in fractions and long division.” but after math-ing out a structure and tick-marks on the tape I then worked more organically for a first attempt at her style. Adding lines, adding broken lines, stepping back, reconnecting lines, staggering lines, and so forth. My composition evolved without a rigid plan out of the gate, but I still tried to strongly adhere to the notion of “focusing intently on process and materials” and on exploring “the nuances of the formal qualities of painting—line, colour, texture, translucency, gloss, and pictorial space”.

In making the grid I used a vintage wooden ruler that has some inherent irregularities and held my pen loosely to invite it to skitter over the bumps and brush marks created in the gesso layers. If you zoom in you can see the errors and the human hand in the creation of the grid, where the pen has skipped or the gold has bled under the masking tape. I actually found this aspect of the process very freeing! I was initially upset that the gold paint had bled under the masking tape but in discarding perfection as an achievable goal and in fact inviting opportunities for imperfection I think I might have achieved a better overall outcome, if that makes any sense. There is some life to the strict geometry. “Beauty and perfection are the same. They never occur without happiness.”