New Painting: Grey Building, Blue Sky

Grey Building, Blue Sky, oil on canvas, 2010, 30 x 40 inches

Living in Southern California, one quickly becomes acclimated to the agreeable climate. We do have weather, and our fair share of air quality issues, but some days are so gorgeous that it literally stuns me when I walk outside. There are often no clouds, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, so blue that it is hard to describe.

My paintings are inspired by what is around me every day, and this image is no exception. I walk by this building on my way home from work, and I am often struck at how beautiful the grey building looks against the blue, blue sky.

Describing that sky became one of the major problems with this painting. While the composition is admittedly simple, painting this image wasn’t easy – the colors had to be perfect. In the early stages, the colors I mixed were solid, opaque, flat. While this is a common way for me to deal with architecture and solid areas of color, it wasn’t working in this painting. I soon realized that a more complex color palette was necessary to balance the simple composition.

The final colors are built up of thin, transparent layers, using a technique called glazing, which is nearly as old as oil paint itself. Through optical blending, thin transparent layers merge to create a solid color, but a color that has more depth and richness than a flat mixed color. The blue sky was created with several different shades of blue layered over each other until the right brightness and color was reached. The grey building was built up using several colors of grey, and finished with a thin wash of orange, to give the building warmth and to bring it forward from the receding, cool sky.

I am happy with the end result. This painting is my most recent exploration into the "Natural Beauty" of Los Angeles. While more abstract than most of my work, I love the image and hope it has the same freshness that I feel when I see this building on my way home from work.

New Painting: Fading To Pink

Fading To Pink, oil on canvas, 2010, 19 x 21 inches

Sometimes I question why we paint what we do. I have often thought that if I truly wanted to be happy as an artist, I would be a color field painter, because that is what it is really about for me – color.

Those that know me well artistically know that drawing isn’t my favorite of things. I don’t get the same satisfaction from drawing that I do from painting. While I recognize the importance of drawing, as it is the most fundamental aspect of art, it has always been more of an arduous process for me. Painting, especially large fields of color, is a more joyful experience.

So why am I not a color field painter? I love color field paintings, and Rothko has been a major influence in my work. But I think that to be a painter is to create problems for yourself that need to be resolved. Before a painting is begun, the canvas is white and perfect. Along with the first brush stroke comes the first problems to be worked out – is the color right? the shapes? the composition?

The silhouettes in this painting were the most difficult problems for me to solve, as it was largely drawing. When I was very young, I taught myself different styles of calligraphy, and that was what I was thinking of when I was painting the trees and vegetation. While I am fluent in Western styles of calligraphy, I was also considering Chinese calligraphy, of which I am not well versed but I appreciate. I am hoping that the similar elegant qualities of line show through with this work.

The inspiration for this painting was a sunset I saw from Mulholland Drive, and this work continues my exploration of the natural beauty in the Los Angeles area. This painting is also reminiscent of works I completed in Costa Rica in 2009, which is when I began to explore silhouettes of vegetation, as a way to make sense of the layers of shapes in the rain forest. While Los Angeles and Costa Rica couldn’t be more different, there is a similar quality of light, and beautiful sunsets abound in both places.

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.

Natural Beauty

Immediately ostentatious and fabulous, Los Angeles is a place of contrasts. From the gloss of West Hollywood to the urban grit of Silverlake, from the faded glamour of Hollywood to the vast suburban sprawl of the Valley, Los Angeles has much to offer. Los Angeles is not one city: really, it’s more like a collection of eighty small cities or neighborhoods, each with its own distinct feel. Early on, I met a friend while at a club, and at one point he said, "If you are bored in LA, then you really are a boring person because you can do whatever you want here." I think he is right. Do you want to get caught up in the celebrity lifestyle? You can do that here. Would you like to study spirituality? You can do that here. Every world religion and culture is represented. What about free yoga? That is offered three times a day in nearby Runyon Canyon.

Los Angelenos are more health-conscious than most. I don’t know where to get ice cream in LA, but within a few blocks of my house there are three yogurt shops, several juice bars, many private and public gyms, an organic burger shop, as well as several tanning salons. Everyone works out, and in a way it makes sense – there is no getting ready for summer here, because it is always summer. The weather really is as good as they say it is – in the month that I have lived in LA, it has been sunny with clear blue skies every single day.

Los Angeles is classified as subtropical desert, but when in the city, you don't feel like you are in a desert. In fact, many parts of LA feel more like an airbrushed Eden. Beverly Hills has tree-lined streets and large expanses of grassy lawn. West Hollywood has clean streets and planted palms, and in the Valley, you are sure to find on nearly every corner a nice midcentury house with a lawn. It is only when you get outside of the city, or go for a hike in one of the many canyons, that you realize: this is a city that should not have any water. Water is a major issue here, and we are actually in the middle of a drought – but you would never know it. Los Angeles is a place of illusions, where appearances are more important than realities.

When I first visited LA, a short weekend trip to look for an apartment, I was struck by this apparent disconnect with the natural environment. Even palm trees, an iconic symbol of LA, are not actually native to the city. They have been planted, and the native environment has been changed so much that little of it remains in the city. I found myself questioning what is natural. If an environment has been changed for so long, does the new environment become “natural”? And also – what is beauty?

There is much beauty here. A short hike in Hollywood’s Runyon Canyon reveals planted palms, native vegetation and sweeping views of Los Angeles. The ocean is truly beautiful, with rocky cliffs and palm trees and expansive silky beaches. The puffy pink clouds of the sunsets against palm trees are breathtaking.

All of these elements are informing and inspiring my new body of work, titled “Natural Beauty.”