Primary Wall
April 2014, South Pasadena, California
Author Archives: de witt
T/Here again
Quick and dirty video experiment looking at the strangeness/surrealness of travel. My impetus is the déjà vu/simultaneity strangeness of between two places you know well/when it involves a long flight/when there is a plane or train at all. We’ll see if this idea goes anywhere/if i don’t get completely fed up with iMovie first.
LAX > LHR
BA0269
APR 22 > APR 23
[And yes, i know that’s a lot of slashes/deal with it/;^)]
RCA Secret 2014
Hey London peeps! Want to get some great art at a great price? Help support current and future RCA students? Then, make sure to check out this year’s, the 20th annual, RCA Secret Show. Some 2900 postcard sized works will be on display and for sale. Contributors include students from all across RCA’s School of Fine Art (aka me and my colleagues), from notable RCA alums, and acclaimed artists. The kicker, all of the work is unsigned, unlabeled, and on sale for £50 each. So you can tell the difference between a Paula Rego and my work? Prove it!
Show opens Thursday, March 13th and will run until the 21st. Open daily 11am-6pm (late opening until 9pm on 20 March only) at the RCA Dyson Building on Battersea Bridge Road. The sale is on Saturday 22nd March, 8am-6pm. All proceeds benefit bursaries which help students afford RCA. Buying art at the show means more people can go on enriching their practices and contributing to the vibrant artistic community at the Royal College. Don’t miss it.
Work In Progress: Show & Private View
Print me for entry into the private view. Be there or be square. Show runs thru Sunday.
I’ve Got Stripes
I’ve got stripes
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, March 2013
Capitol Wall
Capitol Wall
Capitol Reef National Park, August 2013
An End of the World
An End of the World
Butt of Lewis, July 2013
Andrew Bird in LA
Gezelligheid: Dutch abstract noun (adjective form gezellig) which, depending on context, can be translated as convivial, cosy, fun, quaint, or nice atmosphere, but can also connote belonging, time spent with loved ones, the fact of seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness. The word is considered to be an example of untranslatability, and is one of the hardest words to translate to English. Some consider the word to encompass the heart of Dutch culture.
Definition via Wikipedia
I’ve been talking lately with my friend Jessica Lah about ‘Artistic Fitness’ a term we use to describe the very traditional practicing of the an art practice. And how we both feel we’re not doing enough of it, yet we’re both very much around art. She teaches at a children’s art program and i’ve just finished term one of my MA. I frequently, if not always, have a sketchbook with me yet i don’t fill them with regularity. Too often i turn only to my iPhone camera telling myself i’ll do proper studies later. Which doesn’t happen. I just try and work larger directly from the photos, which admittedly are valuable research, but the results are not the same. The resulting work lacks a richness and it preserves an exclusionary zone in my work—something i’m trying to minimize.
Which, in a bit of a roundabout way, leads me to Andrew Bird’s Gezelligheid show in LA at the Cathedral Sanctuary at Immanuel Presbyterian. Totally entranced by the shadows of the horn speakers flowing across the the Cathedral’s warm red-lit walls, i took some video and a few photos. Still, i knew that the results would really be just a ghost of my reaction to Bird’s eerie folkie yet classical music filling that cavernous space. I wanted to draw but the light was so low and only my near-invisible-in-that-light orange pen felt right. Luckily, i got the self-restraining part of my brain to get the hell out of the way and went with it.
Not quite automatic drawing, but almost.
Pulaski at Night
When That Helicopter Comes
Waiting to Talk
Something Biblical
Danse Caribe
I don’t think these capture a gezelligheid feeling, but i think only those fortunate enough to be up close the the show’s literally close-knit trio enjoyed that a sensation. For those of us father back the feeling was different, not cozy nor distant, but much more intangible. Not ghosty, but rather expansive and mysterious and dare-i-write-spiritutal? I dunno. But any-which-way here they be. Soldier on. Soldier on.
(endnote: if i manage to get my hands on the set list for that evening i’ll add the rest of the song titles since each drawing is a single song.)
Should i get you another beer?
In the process of documenting this piece, i’ve thought a bit how i want to describe its undertaking. A phrase, it’s the hardest thing i’ve ever done, has come to mind, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I’ve done much harder things all of which aren’t really appropriate to talk about on this blog. What i can write is that this piece has given me the confidence to keep pursuing this crazy art making thing.
Without question, this is the largest piece i’ve ever tackled. It’s also taken me the longest by far. So long that it’s actually surreal to think that it started from plain grey linen. I was going to go into a long post describing the how exactly i created this monster. But i’ll save that for another day, if ever really since i’m not sure how much you or i would learn from that. What i will write is that i have have gotten more satisfaction out observing friends and family look at and become attached to the scene in Should i get you another beer?. Even when it was far from finished, they fiercely connected with and defended the interactions that they each saw in the piece.
‘I think this is going on…’
‘No, he’s doing this…!’
‘But what about…?’
And so on…
It’s those honest to goodness interactions between real people (vs the seemingly silent 2-D people in my work) that i seek. With interactions in mind, i want to thank the friends i made up in Groningen (you know who you are!) who welcomed me into their lives and their homes last February. I would be a very different person had that visit gone differently—or at the very least wouldn’t be applying to grad school with confidence.
Thank you all for that. And to my Mom. For once it’s not all your fault. Just some of it lies at your feet this time.
So without further ado, except to write, click to make it bigger:
Should i get you another beer? 136″ by 48″, oil, charcoal pencil & pastel on linen, 2012-13
Utah, Part 1
In November, i spent about a week up on the Colorado Plateau, winding my way up the Grand Staircase and spending not nearly enough time at f i v e ! of the National Parks in Utah’s share of the region. I’ve always been a sucker for red rock country. It probably helps that i was exposed to Lake Mead starting at just 18 months old. I’ve been lucky enough to travel many places, but i have yet to find anywhere else that, pardon my purple prose, alight my being and fill my soul with urgency and meaning. I read somewhere that “the function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.” (Sir Thomas Beecham apparently) For me the outdoors, and the National Parks like Zion and Capitol Reef and the Grand Canyon in particular, are like good music on steroids.
Which basically translates to me constantly cursing both under my breath and quite loud:
OH MY, THIS IS F—ING GORGEOUS!
It had been two yeas since i had been to Zion. I had planned on going both those missed Novembers like i had in years previous, but put simply, life got in the way. I love going in the late fall. The weather is wonderfully chilly. The park is quiet, but not deserted (though less quiet than it used to be. This must be what getting old feels like.). And the whole park is dressed in these amazing colors. That and i’m a sucker for the American flags the towns of Springdale and Rockville put out to celebrate Veterans Day.
I love to draw in the park, but tend to take more photographs. My impatience and want to hit all five parks during my limited time were the primary factors in this. Another was the less than dry weather while i was in Zion. I don’t mind being out in the cold. In general i’m with the Scandinavians in the thinking that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes. That written, trying to draw in the rain is problematic. Paper + water = mush. Und das ist nicht so gut. So on that rainy Friday, instead of hiking and drawing, i was driving and drawing. Each of these little sketches took me about 20 minutes. 20 minutes also is the time it would take for my warm dry car’s windows to start to steam up. Perfect timing to turn the engine back on and find a new spot. I have photos to supplement these quickies and hope to utilize the resources together to create larger pieces.
And without and any further drivel from me, the Zion, the beautiful:
More on my misadventures in Utah later.
Die Lineup
Die Lineup
Eisbach at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, June 2009
Just get on with it
In process…pouring
My friends out there know i am working on this big-assed (it’s a technical term—look it up) painting. It’s the largest piece i’ve ever tackled, and only the second in oil in a long while. While it’s been a joy in many ways, but the sheer size of the piece and the practicalities of working in oil have been…shall i say interesting? I’ve worked on it in fits and starts, and i have to admit that the possibly of screwing up has been a real hindrance. The dry media that i’ve principally been working with the past few years is much more forgiving to mistakes and can be reworked or completely redrawn quickly. I know paint can be painted over, the drying time is frustrating and in many sections i’m trying to preserve the natural color of the linen beneath.
I’ve worked most of the 14 and half foot canvas, but i’ve been dutifully avoiding fully developing certain aspects of the scene knowing that they require my best drawing abilities. All in the center of the canvas, but mentally shoved in the corner. I had set a goal of completing the piece (a stage 1, kind of complete at least) by the end of summer. (The season’s end not the school year’s beginning!) Well, with September well underway it’s long past time stop avoiding and to attack.
To-do list in hand, after much fussing, (obsessively scraping old paint of my pallet, oh Schama’s Power of Art: Rothko on youtube!, i’m hungry, music or audiobook or music or audiobook or music or audiobook…) i finally just jumped in and knocked purple shirt’s head out. I was uncertain how if felt about the result, but snapped a pic after and called it a night. The next morning i returned to my studio and while i knew the section would require further work, i exclaimed “It doesn’t suck!”.
It’s moments like that keep me working.
And once again, the moral of the story is to just step up and face your fears and just get working.
Goddamnit. There goes that excuse.