Around the Coyote held its second annual Winter Arts Festival on February 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and I was a participant in the show, as I was last year. Around the Coyote, an organisation that promotes the fine arts in the Wicker Park area of Chicago Illinois, with a particular focus on emerging talent, has been around for about a decade. Their main yearly event is the Fall Festival, which is a quite large event, and takes place in many different locations at once, all over the Wicker Park area. The winter Festival is a much smaller event, with most of the activity taking place in two buildings on the corner of Milwaukee, Damen, and North Avenues; the Coyote Tower, and the Flat Iron Fine Arts Building. In spite of its smaller scale, and colder weather, the Winter Festival was quite well attended, and perhaps because of the cold weather, the attendees seemed to be a more artistically focused group than the Fall Festival. Because I was showing my own work in this event, my ability to see the entire show was curtailed; I made a quick trip over to the Coyote Tower building and saw what I could in advance of the show, and was able to do a better job of seeing the participants in the Flatiron Building, in which I was exhibiting.
I've limited myself to presenting the work of five artists, chosen because I happen to like their work. As a painter myself, I am far too opinionated to ever give an unbiased judgment on another painter's work. For this reason, I find it best to always focus my commentary on work that I found enjoyable, and never name the work or artists who I did not like. (This rule does not apply to discussing artists who have already achieved fame, especially dead ones. They are a part of art history, and as such, cannot possibly avoid having their work publicly criticised.)
I spotted this painting done by Ben Laskov in the dark and dingy stairwell of the Coyote Tower building. I turned up early Friday morning before anyone was around, to see what had been set up the evening before. I came around the corner in the deserted stairwell, and without a lot of light, I thought for a moment I had come face to face with an actual person, and almost jumped out of my skin before I realised it was a painting.
Photography will never replace painting; especially where the human face and figure is concerned. Photography captures too many details, and treats them all equally, and even if the photographer attempts to undo this by manipulating the print, s(he) will never have the kind of flexibility that a painter has. There is also peculiar sort of chemistry that happens, between paint, and the people who apply it, that defies explanation. There is always a rather large element of the painter in a painted portrait. There is often an unseen sense of the process as well; someone working alone, except for their thoughts and canvas, and the gobs of colour. I think it is not unusual for some of those thoughts to get mixed in with the colours, in such a solitary task.
I like Ben Laskov's portrait for reasons that I can feel, but not adequately explain in words. I also believe the painting stands well on its own, without knowing the title. Very often, a title can be an intrinsic part of the composition. Consider "Yo Mama's Last Supper", Renee Cox's interpretation of Leonardo DaVinci's famous "Last Supper." In this case, 'Yo Mama' made a definite difference in how the image can be interpreted. Works that depend too heavily on their titles compositionally (conceptually) risk diminishment, when seen by an audience that doesn't speak the language, which is a greater possibility in the Web environment, where an image receives world-wide exposure.
Watercolour is a considerably different painting media than oil, or even acrylic. Working on absorptive paper with a transparent, runny medium combines the reality that any errors cannot be completely erased or covered up with the very high potential for error that exists, working with pigment and water on paper that essentially refuses to lay flat when wet, no matter how well the edges have been taped. In addition, watercolour dries quickly. This is good, because it allows the work to proceed quickly, and problematic, because colours set fast, often in ways that were not part of the plan. I think that watercolour requires a totally different mindset than oil; it requires a better plan at the outset, and a greater ability to adapt and change that plan to chance, once the piece is underway. With oil, anything can be changed, at any time in the process. The work can be washed off while still wet, and overpainted when it's dry. With watercolour, one either learns to go where the media leads, and make the plan follow the serendipitous path the water dictates, or resorts to a drybrush technique, or leaves the medium alone.
Jennifer's work, which focuses on the nude female figure, and uses strong primary colours, and what appears to be a very wet technique, produces some very surprising results. Getting a human form with subtle enough contours to suggest mass and anatomy accurately has got to involve a serious balancing act. The colour choices are no simple matter, either. Actually, the opposite is true, the colour choices are too simple for the subject matter, and therein lies the difficulty; to paint a nude, with the one colour noticeably absent being flesh.
Montana Morrison's works on paper focus on the human figure in motion, with a few portraits thrown in for good measure. Most of the paintings were of groups of people walking; just anonymous silhouettes, disconnected, like strangers passing on a busy street. The colours are muted, low-keyed, and solid. The mood in most of her paintings is, to my eye, somber. The example here is an exception to that statement, however, which demonstrates to me how much of the mood is controlled by the poses of the silhouettes, since the colour schemes are generally about the same.
By now it should be pretty obvious that I have a strong affinity for work that focuses on the human face and figure. I see this as a good thing. For me, the human condition, and hence the human face and figure, are the major focus of my own work, and so it is only natural that I would find interest in how other people treat these subjects. I could never paint like any of these three people, nor would I want to. That does not mean that I cannot learn a great deal from studying their work, however, each excellent in its own distinct way.
I also have a great deal of respect for the tools people use; clever extensions of not only their hands, but of their minds:
Michael Dinges was one of the individuals chosen for 'Curator's Choice' recognition, and given the quality of his work, I am not surprised. This not-so-simple graphite drawing, titled 'Plum Bobs,' is, in addition to being a very carefully developed composition, executed with the kind of technical precision that is not often seen in contemporary work. Once again, I find myself admiring a technique that I personally would not pursue, for any extended period of time. While I am tremendously impressed with his technical near-perfection, and I know that I would be capable of executing such a piece, if necessary, it is beyond my usual 'perfection parameters.' On a field of such perfect white, any sort of error is going to be noticed. I am a person who uses my eraser almost as much as my pencil, when drawing, and so tend to favour techniques that have enough roughness to them, so that my false starts and corrections settle nicely into the background. Having seen Michael's work, I will certainly have to sit down and attempt it, and devote the time and care necessary to master it, at least for a few pieces.
The composition is something that I am familiar with, and have used myself recently in my January drawings. It is an 'open' composition, in that the strings originate somewhere above the image, and that while the shadows define the existence of a horizontal plane on which the plum bobs rest, there is no indication of the plane, except for the shadows themselves, and there is no horizon. Space and depth exist in the picture only where they serve a purpose in defining the existence of 'Plum Bobs'; an excellent union of skill, composition, and concept. We mustn't forget, either, that plum bobs themselves exist only because of the existence of a force that, while being completely invisible, influences everything in the universe... gravity.
Here are some more tools, taking an entirely different approach. While Michael Dinges worked strictly in black and white, and stressed a nearly 'perfect' technical approach, Margaret Jo Feldman, another person singled out as a 'Curator's Choice,' takes an approach that is technically looser and closer to the way I work. I believe the painting is executed in oil, but failed to make a note of it during the show. In this composition, the background has texture, which indicates a wall-like surface, in addition to being indicated by shadows. The tools themselves are laid out in a slightly simpler arrangement than the plum bobs, which tilt each in a distinct direction, but then the colour scheme lends a complexity that the plum bobs lacked, simply by the introduction of colour itself. There is also the ambiguity of one of the tools being a kitchen tool, while the others are more appropriate in the toolbox.
I at first walked by this painting, with my usual 'Yeah, I can do better than that,' but then I kept coming back to it, again and again... something about those red handles. Being a painter makes it difficult to be a critic. My first impulse, especially in genre that I paint myself, is often competitive. Forcing myself to study other peoples' work does, however, have the capacity to make me a better painter. I wouldn't want to produce work like any of these five individuals, and probably couldn't if I wanted to, but the more I see, and do not resist, the more I am aware of what is possible.
This year's festival appeared to be well organised, and well attended, and I did notice a significant number of sales, some of which had to be for substantial amounts. While I did not make any sales myself, I was satisfied with the show, overall. My primary goal at any show is to get the kind of feedback on my work that can only be gained from the viewer's face, while they study the paintings. I also had the opportunity to meet a number of interesting people, both artists and attendees. All in all, the event was a success, I believe, for most of the people involved.
My thanks and applause goes out to everyone involved in making the festival happen; Around the Coyote, all the volunteers, exhibitors, and of course, the many people who attended. And now... back to work.