Margret E Short Fine Arts Blog

Juicy Paint

Painting number 4, detail at right, is complete. This one is larger than the first 3 and measures 26x30. Willem Kalf has long been one of my favorite Dutch artists, and sadly there are no paintings by him in this exhibit. However there is a lovely one in the Portland Art Museum collection.

The approach for this painting was to pattern the composition after a Kalf painting, but the color palette from a painting in the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art. Using this idea was doubly beneficial, especially enabling me to achieve the sparkling flecks of juicy color and light in the highlights of metal objects, one of my favorite techniques. This is done by adding lots of medium to the paint and using the "wet into wet" technique, meaning you put wet paint right into areas of paint that are still wet.

The vermilion is from the same red tones in the coat of Issac in the painting by Govert Flinck. In this piece I have turned the palette of a figurative painting into a still life, which was very challenging indeed.

Books Everwhere!

Even the sofa occasionally gets piled high with books and files. All the while things get stacked on the floor during furious efforts of reading and searching. Alas, I am guilty.

Amazonian Assets

Because many of you have asked, I have included more images of the space where I work. This shows how much of a book junkie I am. At one time my library card was my most valuable asset, but now it is my Amazon account. Did anybody see Sunday Morning on CBS this morning? For those of you who didn't, there was a very interesting segment on the mess people amass in their offices. It was hilarious to see how some people maneuver through, across, over and above the stacks of files, books, bottles of water, moldy hamburgers, coffee cups, shoes, and "you name it" stuff. I can't say that I am innocent of this technique in times of furious research for information on just that certain pigment.

Charles Osgood has a very creative technique of clearing clutter. He saves a little nook under his desk, to the side of his chair, keeping it clear for just that special moment. When a guest appears he gathers all the stuff on the top of the desk and pitches it in that void. Perhaps never to be seen again.

Another interesting filing idea...just stack files and papers as high as they will go and not teeter over. If you are looking for something from say...last month...it would be near the top of the pile. If it is..heaven forbid...from 6 months ago then you would have to "eyeball" the distance down the pile that might calculate to, well, six months ago. Do you think this could be called the "grab and pray" filing technique?

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf was a strong advocate for having a special private room to write, sculpt, paint, or just be and create. Here I have converted a room in my house that I now call "Lessons from the Low Countries Research Room" or just simply "Lessons Room." It was at one time a bedroom, a guest bedroom, a sitting room, and once I used it as a pastel painting room. When this project was developing, things, files, books, papers, and ideas were scattered hither and yon until the idea for this project room evolved.

I bought a 6 foot table to use as a secondary desk which abuts another large library table. This makes a very large L shaped work area to spread out as much as necessary with books and papers. Along the back of the table/desk is a row of standing files where I have, at hand and very convenient, all my research papers on pigments, techniques, articles, suppliers, and such.

This material has been amassed over many many years of avidly reading, searching, and studying the topic of the Dutch techniques. The "Lessons Room" room is adjacent to my painting studio and as such is very convenient. It is here that I turn on my Sting, "Songs from the Labyrinth" music and read, write these blogs, formulate ideas, or just day dream. Virginia had an excellent idea.

Dutch Treat Sneak Peek

This is all you will get to see of this painting until June when my exhibit opens at Lawrence Gallery. This color theme was taken from the palette of the painting shown below by Gabriel Metsu. This image is a small detail of a much larger painting which is now finished. The vermilion red was patterned after the red in the woman's dress.

Another Sneak Peek

Pictured is The Hunter's Present by Gabriel Metsu from the Dutch exhibit. I used this image for painting #3 which was an immensely enjoyable color palette to use because of the many variations. From a rich vermilion in the woman's dress to a subtle muted green in the background the lovely tones were perfect for my project. This painting has a humorous story full of nuance. The woman is lured by the double meaning in the gentleman's "gift" of freshly killed fowl but reaching for her bible to help her resist the temptation.

Impenetrable Goo

Last Thursday evening I finished painting #4. Each one gets a little larger as I become more familiar with the handling and brushability of the paints. Unquestionably, these historic pigments are profoundly different from the modern ones. Paints without a wax binder or other stabilizers are "long", meaning slightly runny and not in any way creamy and fluffy like the modern "short" colors. Instead of staying in a tidy little lump, these spread into a puddle form.

They can become thin and transparent if too much medium is added too quickly; but, at the same time, can be gritty. One beautiful green earth called, epidot, is extremely gritty and after being squeezed from the tube turns to an impenetrable goo. The only possible way to use this color is immediately after it lands on the palette.

The Natural

Now I know first hand why all those Old Masters had apprentices......to help with the hard work in the studio! Luckily, I have TWO; Dave and my sister, Nancy. Initially, Nancy and I worked in tandem while I taught her the techniques of paint making. But she caught on very quickly using her natural flair and easily developed an understanding of each individual pigment characteristic.

Each pigment easily takes about one hour to grind, place in the tube, clean up between pigments, and document in three places. A good sweat is worked up with each one too! One useful trick we discovered is to grind similar colors back to back. Say......a yellow ochre and a raw sienna. That way the grinding slab and muller don't have to be immaculately cleaned in the manner between say....vermilion and lapis.

Nancy has added several green earths, raw umber, English red ochre, Terra Pozzuoli, and a terrific yellow ochre from France to my ever growing palette. This project would easily take ten times longer without the help of my two indispensable assistants. Because of them I have been able to spend more time planning, painting, and documenting each piece.

Sneak Peek

Here you can see a detail of the still life painted from the color palette of the landscape by Jan Asselijn (shown below). Other than the color on the vase, it has the same monochromatic tone as the Dutch painting with several touches of bright color on the teapot. This painting will not be shown in its entirety until the exhibition in June at the Lawrence Gallery.

Sneak Preview

A Sneak Preview.......

Pictured here is one of the Dutch paintings used for this project. I have taken the color palette from a landscape by Jan Asselijn and painted a still life (a detail of painting #2 is shown above). There are some beautiful rosy reds on the gentleman's cloak (not showing very well here) which I used  in the color theme of the teapot(above). Also, there are some reddish tones in the bushes to the left. Otherwise, I used muted ochres, tans, and bluish/green tones. More in depth descriptions of colors and techniques will be revealed in later posts.