Tuesday, September 29, 2009

My Obituary

I am taking a professional development class for artists here in Los Angeles, and our assignment for this week was to write our own obituary.  The goal of this exercise was to think about what we want to accomplish in our lives – what are our goals, and what do we want to be remembered for.  This was more difficult that I had anticipated – it wasn’t easy to think about what I want to accomplish, but ultimately, the exercise was rewarding.  It was effective in helping me flesh out what I really want to do with my art career, something artists often don’t think about.  If you had to write your own obituary, what would it say?  The text of my obituary is below:

BRADLEY HANKEY 1979 – 2067

Visual artist Bradley Hankey died in his Los Angeles home on April 21 at age 88. Hankey was born in Oregon, and moved to Boston to attend Massachusetts College of Art, where he graduated with a BFA in 2007. Hankey moved to Los Angeles in 2009, and graduated from UCLA with a MFA in 2013.

Hankey’s early work was influenced by Surrealism and artists such as Hopper, Hockney, Itten, and De Chirico. Places were also critical to his work, and his paintings were often inspired by his surroundings and travels. The “Natural Beauty” series of paintings, begun shortly after moving to Los Angeles, comments on the natural and the artificial environments of the area. These are among his best known works.

After graduate school, Hankey briefly taught at several area schools in Los Angeles, and was a frequent guest speaker at art schools around the country. His lectures often revolved around the importance of color theory and critical thinking in painting, as well as keeping traditional painting techniques alive. Hankey’s books are widely read. While his works often bordered on the abstract, he considered himself an observational painter, and championed this style of painting throughout his career.

Hankey’s works are shown in galleries in Los Angeles, New York, and Hanoi. His paintings have been collected globally, and he has shown in Museums in the United States, Vietnam, Costa Rica, and Tanzania. A retrospective of more than 100 paintings was mounted in 2035 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., as well as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Painting in West Hollywood: Day 4

Today was a great painting day in West Hollywood. After a couple of days of cooler temperatures, the heat was back today. I love the heat, but I have made a mental note to choose a shadier location for the next painting.

The painting is filling in with color, and almost all of the original white space is gone. One of the joys of my job is discovering the intense color in the every-day world around us, and this location is no exception. In order to bring color harmony to this painting, I mixed a large amount of a purple-gray color. I then mixed almost all of my others colors with purple-gray, especially the background colors in the hillside. Some of the foreground colors are mixed full-strength, without purple-gray, to bring those colors forward create a sense of atmospheric perspective.

I am excited about this painting, and glad that it is coming to fruition. I had been looking at this scene nearly everyday; when I walk home from the gym, I wait here for the “walk” sign to cross the street, and day after day, I could see this painting. It became an obvious choice for my first plein-air painting in LA.

A few people stopped to chat today. One woman commented, “That’s great, I love that you are doing this.” Another guy: “This seems like a civilized way to spend the afternoon.” I enjoy interacting with the public, and this is one of the major reasons I have taken to the street with my work. I am looking forward to getting back out there tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

New word: Pyrocumulus

As the now-infamous Station Fire continues to burn outside Los Angeles, a new word has entered the local vocabulary: pyrocumulus. This word defines the awesome cloud formations resulting from the intense heat and smoke of large fires. The mushroom cloud from the Station Fire has been looming over Los Angeles for more than two weeks now, and often it is the only cloud in the sky. It is awesome and beautiful, a fact that many Los Angelenos are torn about. It is hard to admit that something resulting from intense destruction could be beautiful, but we all took pictures in awe of the eerie pyrocumulus clouds, that rise from the ground instead of from above.

The fires and the resulting pyrocumulus clouds triggers thoughts about the common paradise/apocalypse dichotomy associated with Los Angeles. As a new resident, I find this dichotomy fascinating. Gregory Rodriguez wrote a compelling piece exploring this idea in the LA Times recently. An excerpt from the article:

“Here's what the pyrocumulus cloud tells me: We should stop thinking of Los Angeles in such hopelessly schizophrenic, contradictory, "pitched back and forth" terms. That's because the theological notions of paradise and apocalypse are not so much opposed as deeply intertwined....

Far from being the victory of hell in L.A. over heaven in L.A., they reminded me that in a very real way, we can't have one without the other. The cloud is just what it looked like: two sides of the same coin; the one defines the other. Heaven, hell. Ugly, beautiful. Apocalypse, paradise. Los Angeles.”

Susan Orlean also recently wrote about the Los Angeles heaven/hell dichotomy for The New Yorker. In her article, she writes, “this week, hell won out.” She wrote her article at a time when multiple fires were burning out of control. At the time of this writing, the only active fire is the Station Fire, and its 160,000 burning acres are 62% contained.

I have only been in Los Angeles a short time, and already, my thoughts about my personal environment are changing. The foreign is becoming domestic; the strange is becoming normal; the unnatural is becoming natural; the ugly is becoming beautiful. Los Angeles.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Painting on location in West Hollywood

I painted outside today for the first time in Los Angeles. I prefer to work from life, rather than from photographs or other source material. I have always painted outdoors while on residency, but I haven't painted often in public places in the States. It was so much fun, and many people stopped to talk while I was working. One tourist even took photos of me drawing, which I thought was funny. I had thought that it would be too hot to paint outside in LA during the summer, but we have been having a relatively mild summer. The normally bright blue sky was a little hazy today, because of the fires that are raging outside the city.

This image shows my easel set up on Santa Monica Blvd. near my apartment. The preparatory drawing I'm working on begins with the left margin of the photo, and ends before the orange and green sign. The large blank space on the right of the canvas is the cream-colored building across the street. Interestingly, the establishment with the orange and green sign is Barney's Beanery, a restaurant and bar, and a favorite of old Hollywood with celebrity patrons such as Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn.

This painting is part of my "Natural Beauty" series about Los Angeles, which is in full swing. I love it here, and I am excited to continue work on this series.