Painting Perceptions is again fortunate to have a guest article from Neil Plotkin who has been living in London for the summer. This first post is an brief overview where he looks at a few significant painters coming out of the The Slade School of Art in the UK whose faculty has included some of the world’s greatest painters in perceptual painting such as Frank Auerbach, Euan Uglow, and Lucian Freud.

The Slade School of Art – Part One by Neil Plotkin

As I’ve been looking at galleries and museums during my stay in London, the work that seems to balance drawing and paintings skills with an ability to remain contemporary tends to have a common source — The Slade School of Art. Either through its graduates, teachers or a general influence on artists working here, the work seems to stand out as well balanced and interesting.

William Coldstream – Portrait of Howard Griffin 1968-1969

Located in central London, The Slade School of Art was started in the 1868, with the intent to create a school where fine art could be studied within a liberal arts university. Some of its graduates include Gwen John, Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Euan Uglow, Paula Rego, Cicily Brown, Jenny Saville, Rachel Whiteread, and more recently, Andy Pankhurst, Robert Dukes, Claudia Carr, and Judith Green. Some of the teachers who have taught there are also distinguished: Frank Auerbach, Euan Uglow, Lucian Freud, Paula Rego, Craigie Aitchison, Sir Ernst Gombrich (art history) to name just a few.

I find that the post-war period up through more recent times is particular interesting. The era could be said to have started when William Coldstream joined the faculty in the late 1940s. He had just finished teaching Patrick George at Camberwell College of Art. Euan Uglow followed him from Camberwell College to the Slade. Both Uglow and George went on to develop their work based on his methods and to teach several generations of artists at the Slade School of Art. I am giving this background as a way to show some artists who are unknown or not known enough in the U.S. and to show the tradition within which they are painting.

(ed note: the following artists have links to either their websites, gallery or Wikipedia pages – also many have larger views if clicked)

Euan Uglow Girl Tree 1989-91 Oil on Canvas 47 x 59 inches
(click for larger view)

Patrick George

Frank Auerbach

Andy Pankhurst

Robert Dukes

Claudia Carr

Judith Green

Charlie Millar

Painting Perceptions is again very fortunate to have a guest interview from Neil Plotkin who has been living in London for the summer. In this first of a few articles about perceptual painters in the UK he has interviewed Judith Green, more of whose work can be viewed at her website, www.judigreen.co.uk

Interview with Judith Green by Neil Plotkin

An artist that I found to be interesting here in London is Judith Green who currently lives and works in Cornwall and shows at the Medici Gallery. She was born in London and studied Graphic Design at Kingston School of Art. was an art director at J. Walter Thompson and co-founded a design consultancy in 1984. She started studying painting part time at the Slade School of Art in 1995 and in 2000 decided to focus solely on painting.

Much of the work on her website is from a series about her late father’s experiences in the Normandy Invasion. She has gone to the exact places that her father fought during the war and done paintings based upon what she is seeing now and her experiences of seeing those places.

Living Under Blue Skies, Highgate III, Oil on Canvas, 36cm x 61cm
(click for larger view – same for rest of the images)

Gold Beach ( Diptych ) | Acrylic & Graphite on Linen | 30 x 119.5cm

Gold Beach, Jig Green| Acrylic & Graphite on Linen | 19.5 x 40cm

Gold Beach, Jig Sector | Oil & Graphite on Linen | 50 x 100cm

Essex Wood ( Diptych ) | Oil on Linen Laid on Panel | 25 x 77.5cm

Juaye Mondaye | Oil on Linen | 19.5 x 40cm |

Judith Green has been kind enough to take the time to answer some questions about her working process and gives some insight into her work..

Neil Plotkin: In one of the articles about your current series about your late father’s war experiences, it was stated that you don’t always have time to paint on site yet the paintings themselves have specificity to them. Can you talk about your painting process – do you draw on-sight, photograph, do sketch paintings?

Judith Green: I prefer to work first hand from the landscape, and to have that exposure to the elements of a new environment, still life or the figure as specific location has been crucial to my most recent work. My main focus is on the significance of place and history within the landscape. I spent many months researching at our National Archives and the Imperial War Museum, mapping out the exact locations my father would have traveled in those early days from the D-Day landings on Gold Beach. Visiting Normandy for the first time I began by making sketches on site in graphite and color pastel, pinpointing the locations that I felt a personal connection too. The landscape was Inspiring and beautiful, allowing me patient and persistent study. Photographs were taken as a visual diary, which I have turned into picture books.

Over the past four years, drawings became oil sketches then the foundations of painting for larger works. As I returned many times to the exact same locations, they became so familiar to me, training my eye through contact with nature, my concerns were formal and analytical. Using a limited palette I painted on site ‘plein aire’ for a long as my trip and the weather permitted, smaller works were completed and the larger canvas and linen supports continued back in my studio. They were not picture postcard recordings of any particular vistas, but more a memory of an experience, a culmination of many remembered and hidden elements of the landscape. I used the drawings and photographs to prompt my memory that is all.

My paintings contain a layer of past memory, becoming it’s own, self-dictating, and striving towards a beauty that is right. Emerging patterns of abstract areas, blocks of color and sometimes, bare canvas, which needed to be evaluated and edited for the sake of the overall composition, embodying a sense of place and the struggle to paint nature.

NP: You were awarded a place at the Prince’s Drawing School. I assume that drawing is an important part of your artistic process. What role does drawing play in your day-to-day image making?

JG: The Prince’s Drawing School is one of the only institutions in the world offering in-depth, quality tuition of those who wish to develop their observational drawing skills. The Drawing Year, gave me the opportunity for intensive research and practice in drawing from art, in the studio and ‘plein air’. I place an emphasis on figurative painting and support my paintings with the drawing that lies at the heart of my practice. Drawing and color are not distinct from each other; gradually as one paints, one draws.

Overlord III, Acrylic and Graphite on Gesso, 21cm x 42cm

NP: You were a graphic designer before becoming a full time painter. To me and in the best way possible, some of your paintings are very graphic (Overlord III for example). In what ways do you feel that the experience of graphic design informs your compositions and your work?

JG: Interesting question Neil, and thank you for your support. Since deciding to become a full time painter back in 2000, I have encountered some snobbery towards my past experiences as a graphic designer and art director. When I first went back to study I even began not to mention my previous career as it was in some way seen as a handicap. On a positive note, I have always felt that my design experience is a great asset to my work. To come from a world that is non-elitist, unique enough to evolve with time and have a solid understanding of color, line, and most importantly composition, and communicate an idea in a way that informs, drawing being a means of communication and thinking.

Living Under Blue Skies VII, Looe | Acrylic & Graphite on Board | 16cm x 22cm

NP: Your series about your father’s experiences uses powerful history behind your images. It gives a whole different perspective on beautiful settings. Figurative and realistic painters are often taken to task for not engaging the world in a way that deals with larger issues. Do you feel that as an artist it is necessary to paint images that deal with larger issues and if so in what way do you try to accomplish that?

JG: Up until my Normandy paintings, I would say that I normally have ideas that come about by chance and fate.  My curiosity in my late father’s experiences during WWII gave me the opportunity to explore a new and unique environment. I felt an overwhelming sensation painting in and around the battlefields, time has camouflaged them into sometimes strange and beautiful vistas. I wanted to make them thought provoking and engaging. It has changed the way I work and think. I personally don’t like Ideas that are too contrived or too literal. I have to dig deep. Painting is like duel. As Cezanne said ‘ A work of art that did not begin in emotion is not art’

Banana Uglow | Acrylic & Graphite on Board | 25.5 x 30.5cm

NP: You have a painting on your website called Banana Uglow. As you started at the Slade in 2000 and he died the same year, I assume that you didn’t study under him. Can you talk about that painting and how you see how your paintings fit into the larger English/UK tradition of image making?

JG: I had been studying at the Slade for several years part time from 1995. I loved working there, basking in the history and legacy of some of the great British figurative painters. Euan Uglow was not teaching there any more but his peers and students that had studied under him were. His trail was everywhere. I felt I knew him through all the stories and teachings I received and I used to dream about what it would have been like to have the experience of studying with him, I noticed that many who did suffered deeply.

There was an elite group,’ the chosen ones’, it must have been devastating not to be in that circle. Many suffocated under his methods, and ended up as imitators, only a few broke away in time and forged their own paths.

August 31^st 2000, summer school, I remember the day vividly, Euan had been ill for a long time, the sadness that day at The Slade was intense. Life models weeping, nobody could work, the whole school was brought to absolute stillness. In 2002 I took part in a workshop based at the London College of Fashion Gallery, that was showing a small retrospective of Euan’s work. The lecturers had created still life set ups, identical to those from a book of his work.

I chose to work on the banana, it was the first sustained still life I had ever painted.

My own homage to Euan Uglow, I love this little painting, it is now in the private collection of the comedienne and actress Dawn French. I miss it. On reflection it was a transitional painting for me and I continue to become looser and more abstract.

Unexpected Mrs K | Oil & Graphite on Linen | 38 x 28.2cm

Judith Green was awarded a slot at The Prince’s Drawing School and awarded a residency at Kensington Palace. She has been selected for the The Threadneedle Prize 2009, The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, John Moores 24, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Discerning Eye and at The Royal Academy of Arts. She has work in numerous private collections in the UK, USA and Israel

I’d like to offer a glimpse into my recent trip to Rome for a couple of weeks as well as my 4 weeks at the Certosa
Jerusalem Studio School Summer Art Program in Siena, Italy. Hopefully I will avoid boring anyone by having this post be less of a travelogue and instead offer a few thoughts and images of real interest. I want to keep the focus of this blog be about a wide variety of perceptual painters work and issues but not my own work. However, I thought I would make an exception as it perhaps in the context of this Italian setting might raise some issues of interest to a wider audience of perceptual painters.

(many photos will have larger versions when clicked)
The Master’s Laundry

All of the faculty at the Certosa had many thought provoking ways of teaching that often centered around discussing the painting’s structure, focus and visual clarity in responding to the landscape and perception in general. Perhaps the biggest draw for me in choosing this particular venue was not just the stellar reputations of the faculty members but also their more modern emphasis that is still grounded in the great art of the past. That aspects of the work of such painters as Piero della Francesca, Cezanne or Morandi could be discussed along side of ways to respond to painting rows of grapevines or distant houses.

It was refreshing to get to listen and talk about how great landscape painting isn’t about perfecting some system of technique or how to best paint marketable cliches. I’m planning on a future articles with interviews over the next couple of months about the work and thoughts of all of the faculty including Israel Hershberg, Ken Kewley, Stuart Shils, Amy Weiskopf and Yael Jane Scalia. Also I am working on editing a video about Lennart Anderson’s slide talk there.

Many of the other students were older like myself and have been painting for many years but many of the younger students are higher accomplished as well. Despite the level skill or experience a common problem for many of us often stems from lack of clarity or understanding about the need to make paintings with “Significant Form”. How to translate the visual experience into the language of painting that transcends reportage into poetry. I just read this article, “Art and Significant Form” by Clive Bell From Art, 1913. that takes on this issue in depth. Worth the read it you haven’t yet read it.

Painting from observation is great in how it offers us limitless inspiration of form, color, light and mood but nature also seduces us like Sirens and crash upon the rocks by focusing on the seductive minutia and loosing sight of the bigger forms and design. As Stuart Shils likes to say something like; in the landscape all the trees and other shapes crying out to “paint me, no paint me too” you have to be in control and tell them all to sit down and shut up. The goal of the painter should be in orchestrating a poetic response to the subject, to simplify and edit in such a way to best show the viewer what your focus and intent is behind this painting. That in the large masses you find the essential color and value that best represents the infinite range of nuances or the shape that best sums up the most important gestures and play a clear role in the structure of the painting.

Another pervasive issue was avoiding kitsch and cliche. There was much discussion about the need to be visually innovative and to make the painting first about making a powerful underlying abstract design that is the real subject of the painting. Consciously or not, many of us tend to make images that will impress your gallery dealer, friends or family. If a painting subject and style has worked for us in the past we tend to not stray too far from what we expect will sell or win praise. We sometimes conform to what other people’s notions of what is a proper subject or viewpoint. An artist responding to looking a building or olive grove might be more concerned with making the view be easily recognizable rather than the real subject be the experience of the artist looking carefully and showing the magic of light and form transformed into paint.

Future articles will go into these issues in depth and will take on a much greater importance on this blog in general.

My first two weeks in Italy were mainly in Rome where my wife and I stayed in a hotel near the Colosseum. I then went up to Sienna to the Certosa di Pontignano, a 14th Century monastery that is now owned by the University of Siena.

Here are some choice photos that might give you a glimpse of how special a place it is. I can probably talk better responding to specific questions or thoughts so I’m keeping the words to an minimum here. It is good to be back and I look forward to continuing to make this blog be a great place for perceptual painters to find interesting stuff.

Our hotel terrace in Rome with Colosseum view

A view in the Forum of Palatine Hill. where the word “Palace” comes from. I spent several hours marveling around the Forum and related sites. Perhaps my favorite experience in Rome.

Inside the Colosseum. It’s hard to fathom what people are capable of – such great feats and such great depravity. Reading about what went on here is truly frightening.

Perhaps one of the earliest landscape and still-life painting in existence. Frescos from the Villa of Livia reinstalled at the Palazzo Massimo

Here is a link to more photos of the Garden Frescoes at the Villa di Livia – … worth a look.

Here is an ancient Roman mosaic I admired also from the Palazzo Massimo in Rome.

We visited the Pantheon the ultimate temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome and now a Roman Catholic church. The day we visited we were able to appreciate a very rare event I should imagine.

It took a minute or two before it suddenly dawned on people, hey what’s a naked guy doing in the Pantheon! This gentleman clearly wanted to make a point about something – exactly what we never did figure out but it seemed to have to do with Raphael as he lied down here next to Raphael’s tomb.

Pagan performance art?

After about 10 or 15 minutes some men dressed up like Roman Centurions came with the police to literally drag him outside the building. Very surreal to say the least.

I believe this was a original Greek Bronze of Hercules – This sculpture was truly amazing, seemed timeless. I forget which Museum in Rome it was from.

Not sure what the story is here.

I also saw some more contemporary artists such as the big Philip Guston show of his “Roma Series” with over 40 works, oils on paper, painted by Philip Guston between 1970 and 1971, when he was a Resident at the American Academy in Rome. at the Museo Carlo Bilotti There was also a very good catalog of the show Philip Guston: Roma which I didn’t get yet but soon will be available from Amazon (see link to book).

There was also a wonderful show of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres drawings and a few paintings along with drawings and paintings by Ellsworth Kelly at the French Academy at the Villa Medici, Rome. Ingres was once the director of Villa Medici as was the painter Balthus much later.

Perhaps my most memorable experience was much later when I visited Bologna to see the Morandi Museum.

Giorgio Morandi Landscape, 1962 Oil on canvas; 11 7/8 x 13 3/4 in.

The Museo Morandi had a large selection of paintings over 60 I think as well as many drawings and prints that made a very big impression on me. I also saw several terrific landscapes and still-lifes by him at the Vatican Museum but this museum was a life changing event. If you missed the major show of his paintings at the Metropolitan Museum like I sadly did – you can get a very good catalog of the show from this link to Amazon – Giorgio Morandi 1890-1964: Nothing Is More Abstract Than Reality.

Also, much of Janet Abramowicz’s book; Giorgio Morandi: the art of silence is available free online via Google Books. Janet Abramowicz was a teacher’s assistant to Morandi and was a friend to his sisters as well. There are a number of excellent photos and much information. If you wish to order the whole book you can also buy this book from Amazon here. Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence

During the program of study at the Certosa I was fortunate to go on the group outings to Florence, Siena and the very special Piero della Francesca tour where we went to Sansepolcro, Arezzo and Urbino.

Detail from the Legend of the True Cross 1452-66 Fresco Cycle in the Cappella Maggiore of San Francesco in Arezzo

I found this great link that goes into explaining the iconography and story behind this Fresco Cycle by Piero della Francesca.

Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection (1463) Palazzo Communale of Borgo, Sansepolcro

Flagellation. c. 1470. Mixed technique on panel. 58.4 x 81.5 cm. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, Italy.

Ken and Stuart leaning on an Urbino wall

Israel Hershberg with reflections of Urbino

Israel Hershberg’s photo of a marvelous, very rare ancient portrait made from etched glass and silvery gold leaf that he encouraged us all to see. My photo wasn’t remotely as good as the one he took.

Urbino was a spectacular city.

Here are some views from Siena

Finally, here are some more photos of the Certosa which was just outside of Siena.

Ken using a collage of brick and tile fragments, stones and other elements to discussed thoughts on color and painting

Here is a close up photo (taken by Mark Weber) of his demonstration collage

Finally, here are some of my painting – most are oil on paper and a few oil on linen all are relatively small – nothing much bigger than 14 by 18 inches I think.
Most are one sitting and a couple two sittings.

Lennart Anderson pointing out another approach to consider

Cherry Pile 2c 42 x 54 inches Oil on mylar 2008

Neil Plotkin’s still lifes are a fresh take of a familiar theme, fruit and vegetables on a table. The emphasis is more on pictorial organization and expression than simply making an inventory of visual components that make fruit look familiar. The cliche of fruit on a table is further removed by the graphic tribute to Philip Guston’s late work, especially the still life paintings of cherries. These new paintings are a significant departure from his earlier cityscapes. I’m curious to see how far he will go in this new direction.

Neil also is a frequent contributor to Painting Perceptions and is traveling in Great Britain this summer and may be writing another article for us as his time permits.

Brink 30 x 15 inches Oil on mylar 2009 (Click for larger view)

Neil Plotkin said in his artist statement on his website:

“He has been exhibited nationally and internationally, both in solo shows and, by invitation, in shows such as the National Academy Museum’s Invitational Show in New York , and the “Take Home a Nude” auctions by Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury. His work has been featured in publications such as Artinfo.com and Artist Magazine’s “20 artists under 40”.

Neil holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Michigan.

You can see more of Neil Plotkin’s painting on his website. And he also has a blog Larger versions can be seen on most of these by clicking the image.

Crab Apples Oil on mylar 2009 42 x 30 inches

Line 1 v2 Oil on mylar 2010 54 x 21 inchee

Brink Oil on mylar 2010 30 x 15 inches

First Plums Oil on mylar 2009 42 x 30 inches

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Cherry pile 2 Oil on mylar 2008 42 x 30 inches 2008

Rot 42 x 54 inches

Leah’s 2007 Oil on mylar 16.5 x 12.5 inches 2008

Taxis on 37th Street 10″ x 10″

Brooklyn Bridge 2005 oil on linen 28 x 40 inches

Tug Boat 2005 oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches

Three cupcakes by Blue Wall 2005 26 x 26 inches oil on linen

5 Sour Cherries 2006 5 x 5 inches oil on wood

Erin Raedeke’s still lifes of domestic detritus bring to mind the cliche of when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Of course, having a child is an event to be celebrated but all too often it can slow or halt the work of even the best of painters. Rather than letting it limit her Erin seems to make child rearing central to both her painting and her life. Reminds me of how another painter, Katy Schneider did a similar thing using her children and family life as her main subject matter. However, Erin likes to paint what might sit still for a bit and we don’t yet see the children themselves. Instead we see are like a flurry of afterimages, where the child was just playing before moving on to the next thrill. We get to watch Mom carefully picking up each item and considering where to put it, how to best put it away.

For now she celebrates the exuberant colors of birthday candles, plastic toys, chocolate bunnys, half eaten sandwiches, piles of laundry or children’s drawings – wherever there might be new delightfully inventive discoveries of color arrangements that capture her formal interest. Erin states she paints from observation and in an email she told me “I’ve been focusing on the still life for the past couple of years – I have a three year old daughter and the still life fits into my schedule a little more easily than the landscape, although I do hope to get back to the landscape in the future.”

Erin is in two shows coming up this July, one at the Gross McCleaf gallery in Philly and another one at the Washington Art Association in Washington Depot, Connecticut

Laundry (Click for larger view)

Erin Raedeke said in her artist statement on her website:

” I paint in a turn of the century house where I live with my husband. We live a couple hours drive from Washington and Baltimore. The town is simple, no frills. I am interested in the routes and landmarks I encounter during my weekly routines and the pathways my mind has taken throughout my life. Always painting from observation, I use paint to help me find my location physically within an architectural space, the hours of the day, or a particular time of year and emotionally within a family, a community, and the long tradition of painting”

Erin recieved her BFA at the Indiana University in Bloomington, IN and also Studied the figure and landscape
under Mark Karnes at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
You can see more of Erin Raedeke’s painting on her website. Here are a number of her more recent paintings and a select few of her past works (in no particular order) Larger versions can be seen on most of these by clicking the image.

Still life with marbles oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches

Still Life with Animals oil on board 2010 12 x 16inches

Still life with chocolate bunny oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches

Still Life with Elsa’s Drawing oil on board 2010 12 x 16 inches

still life with plastic egg

studio view with snow 40 x 38 inches

still life with marshmallows oil on canvas 2010 18 x 22 inches

View from Martinsburg Train Station 2007 oil on board 14 x 25 inches

Birthday 2008 oil on linen 35 x 32 inches

Breakfast 2009 oil on board 12 x 12 inches

Interior with Fake Flowers 2007 oil on canvas 50 x 46 inches

Elizabeth O’Reilly, Rock Crusher and Canal 2009 Watercolor and Collage, 11½ x 15½ inches

Elizabeth O’Reilly is an Irish-American painter making watercolor and collage paintings of industrial areas such as the Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn. She cuts out shapes with an x-acto knife from her palette of tinted watercolor papers that she uses to simplify and respond to the architectural forms such as bridges and industrial buildings. Her distillation of complex forms into into delightful abstract color events seem bright and optimistic but not too sweet as she retains the forlorn industrial nature and sense of place. These pictures are not only engaging formal constructions but also shows an emotional connection evolving from her close study of this subject as she has long painted these scenes in oils from observation.

In her artist statement on her gallery, George Billis Gallery in NYC she said:

“A long-time on-site painter of the Gowanus Canal area of Brooklyn, O’Reilly has moved indoors – taking her subject with her – to further her exploration of the subject in collage with watercolor-tinted paper. Trading the brush for an x-acto knife, O’Reilly reduces the forms with the simplest of means to imbue the work with a flush of modernity.

Attracted as always by the vivid color of industry against the muted colors of nature, O’Reilly pares down the body of her composition. Taking the best of what watercolor can offer in terms of transparency and light, O’Reilly eliminates the soft edges expected in this medium and substitutes a decisive, unpredictable edge. Clouds are flattened with a wash of color and come to an unexpected stop with the hard edge of the knife. Water – which we think of as fluid and soft – becomes an irrevocable shape, and complex architectural structures are reduced to colors and shapes. The economy of the cutting motion simplifies the description of a form.

While the paintings came from more than a decade of standing and painting in the same spots, the coming to a slow understanding and knowing of a place, the constraints of the medium of collage allows the expression of the repeating rhythm of the forms. The focus moves away from the place, and on to an interplay of color and shape.”

Barges 2009 Watercolor and Collage 8¼” x 7¾”

Blue Bridge 2007 Watercolor and Collage 8″ x 8″

Containers and Water, 3rd St. 2009 Watercolor and Collage 11¾” x 15″

The art critic John Gooodrich said in An Sionnach
A Journal of Literature, Culture, and the Arts Spring, 2008
Elizabeth O’Reilly: Paintings and Collages

In terms of plastic modeling, collage inherently lacks the sensuous flexibility of oils and the svelteness of pure watercolor. This doesn’t hamper O’Reilly, however, whose small images of street scenes and harbor views seem at once jewel-like and gritty. In them, the chunky shapes of streets and bridges, muscularly arrayed in space, are illuminated by delicate tints and powdery granulations of pigments. These collages seem simultaneously awkward, delicate, and trenchant. Despite the technical restrictions of the medium – or just possibly because of them – they amplify the most intriguing qualities of O’Reilly’s work, which for me lie not so much in rich atmosphere and graceful surface pattern but in the rhythmic momentum of forms.

In one collage, a thin wedge-shaped scrap of paper, tint blue-green, drives forcibly up past the design’s center before arresting the eye at a quieter zone of layered purples-grays and pale lime-greens. A few notes of darker green model its volume, explaining it’s real-world identity: a metal railing, separating pavement from water as it plunges into space and to, eventually, a gentle unfolding of hills and houses. The poignancy of this little image lies in the independent vitality of its forms. O’Reilly has located these object’s characters, rather than merely enumerating them. Their personalities emerge, moreover, not from technical facility – from picturesque brushwork, say – but from the simplest, most irreducible formal means.

Blue Bridge #2 2007 Watercolor and Collage 8″ x 8″

Below 3rd St. Bridge 2009 Watercolor and Collage 11″ x 6″

Cars Under Expressway 2008 Watercolor and Collage 8″ x 8″

Green Cloud 2009 Watercolor and Collage 11½” x 12″

Elizabeth O’Reilly received her MFA in 1992 from Brooklyn College, New York, and her B.Ed from the National University of Ireland. She has participated in residencies at the Ballinglen Foundation, Ireland and has recieved numerous awards, including a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant. According to a review by David Cohen in the New York Sun her mentors include Lois Dodd and George Nick. She shows at the George Billis Gallery in NYC.

Street Lights from 3rd St 2009 Watercolor and Collage 8¼” x 12″

Red Hook Park with Snow 2009 Watercolor and Collage 11¾” x 15″

Red Trucks at Canal 2008 Watercolor and Collage 8″ x 8″

Latham Farms 2007 Oil on Panel 11” X 19

Green Trailer 2007 Oil on Panel 15” X 16″

Red Container 2007 Oil on Panel 17” X 18″

David Kassan, Self Portrait in Motion Oil/Panel, 40 x 28 inches

David Jon Kassan (Born 1977) is a contemporary realist painter best known for his life-size realist portraits. The paintings combine figurative subjects with abstract background textures he says are inspired by such painters as Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg. Kassan says, “my effort to constantly learn to document reality with a naturalistic, representational painting technique allows for pieces to be inherent contradictions; paintings that are both real and abstract.” (from his wiki page)

I met David in person a couple of times a few years ago and we have keep in touch online. He agreed to do an interview with me to talk about his work, his approach to painting, his new drawing DVD and his recently getting to meet with Antonio Lopez Garcia in Madrid. At the end of the article I’ve also embeded a you tube video interview done with him a year ago and another video showing him giving a demo in Portugal. The audio recording that we made of our skype call was of poor quality for technical reasons and I decided to omit posting the audio version of the interview.

David Kassan currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches painting classes and workshops at various institutions around the world. He received his B.F.A. in 1999 from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY where he studied with Jerome Witkin. He continued his studies at The National Academy, and the Art Students League of New York, both in Manhattan. He is currently represented by Gallery Henoch in New York His work has received widespread attention and acclaim and a number of articles and reviews has been written about him, many can be read from this link.

The Artist’s Mother
(Click for larger view)

Larry Groff:

David Kassan. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview and to share some of your thoughts about your painting and your drawing and your new DVD.

David Kassan:

Thanks.

Larry Groff:

What does working from observation offer you that other sources don’t? I understand that you primarily work from observation, I understand, right?

David Kassan:

Not completely. It all depends on the availability of the models. Actually I’ve been learning how both photography and observation can help a painting, in a lot of aspects. Within photography you can actually see the subtlety that you will tend to exaggerate or miss with observation alone.

What is important about observation is that you get that connection with the model, where you actually can understand who this person in front of you is, With a lot of my sessions I end up talking to the model way too much so that I can learn about them. I really want that interaction, so I try to figure out as much as I can about their life, it’s important to me that the paintings are about that person and not about being a painting.

I strive to make the technique disappear, so you are thinking more about the model’s expression and emotion rather than the movement of a brushstroke… You have the viewer and you have the subject of the piece, and I want nothing in between that connection. I don’t want paint to get in the way of that. I want the paint to prop up this person to be seen, so you can feel their emotion more tangibly and they are in your space.

So, that’s kind of the main goal of my work. And I don’t think I would get that if I just took a photograph of a person and painted it.

Now, I’ll have a lot of sessions, sometimes, if I can’t get a person to pose throughout the entire piece. I would have three hours, six hours to just draw them, understand who they are, and I’ll carry that forward with photography. So it fills in the gaps.

Larry Groff:

The next question leads into that. You sort of beat me to the punch. Many painters working from life tend to show the hand of the artist in their brushstrokes or painterly texture of the surface. Like many photo-realists, you seem to de-emphasize the presence of the artist in your painting. Maybe you can continue on the vein you were just talking about, and we’ll sort of join those two questions together, about the virtues of observation, and why do you de-emphasize it. What’s so bad about expressive brushwork?

David Kassan:

I don’t think there’s anything bad about it. There are actually, really, good contemporary artists that paint in the tradition of Velasquez, Zorn and Sargent. A number of my friends paint very painterly. And they’re about being painters. And they add to that rich tradition. I’m in awe of their work on a daily basis, but its just not where my head is right now

And I don’t really think of myself as a photo-realist, either. I’m not trying to make my work look like photographs, we’re all artist, we all kinda of take offense to that, in a way, when people tell you that your piece looks like a photograph, and you know that they mean it as a compliment, they are comparing what they know as their example of 2 dimensional reality.

And I don’t really think of myself as a photo-realist, either. I’m not trying to make photographs, we’re all painters, we kind of take offense to that, in a way, when people tell you that your piece looks like a photograph, and you’re like…

And I’ll show people an image of my work, and they’ll be like, “Well, that’s a photograph. It looks like a photograph.”

I’m like, “Well, it is a photograph, a photograph of my painting.” You know? So it’s hard to really feel the tactile surface of a real painting. And that’s what I really want in my pieces, I want to make them more real than a photograph, more real than almost even a painting, because I try to build up the surfaces and textures and the background to kind of mimic what is in real life. The unfortunate thing that we deal with today is that everything is viewed on either the internet or in reproduction and few people will really see a painting of mine in real life. And I want these works to be art objects. I see Rauschenberg as a realist artist.

Rauschenberg would actually take things off the street, almost in an Arte Povera kind of sense and just bring it into an art gallery, that was, he was a realist. You know what I mean?

Then think of abstraction. But everyone … How can you get more real than bringing something off the street and putting it into the gallery? And then painting into that? You really can’t.

So I kind of like to take that kind of concept, but actually paint it and create it by hand, so that it feels like that tactile surface that is actually its inspiration; where you could run the finger down the side of a painting and you would have those, little pock marks in the painting and texture and be able to scratch at it. And you see this kind of history of the marks and layers that are involved in the surface. I really want my paintings to have weight to them.

And it just looks like it’s been worked and weathered and kind of destroyed and then brought back to life. I want that same kind of feeling with the figures as well. And it’s just a lot of careful handling, as opposed to something quick. And I want the experience of these people infused into the piece, rather than having a brushstroke that distracts.

I don’t want to be negative towards painterly paintings in any way, shape or form. It’s just like a conceptual thing for what I want in my work.

Larry Groff:

Right.

Constance LaPalombara is a New Haven, Connecticut based painter making urban landscapes, landscapes and still-life. A Sept 2009 Artist’s Magazine article about Constance LaPalombara urban landscapes titled “Everytown, USA” by Tamera Lenz Muentei said:

“While she paints scenes of New Haven, Connecticut, the absence of anecdotal details and the metaphysical quality of light universalizes her work. Rather than depicting a specific town, LaPalombara’s cityscapes resonate as Everytown. Her artistic journey began with a year spent in Italy, which prompted LaPalombara to take up painting. She now returns annually, continuing to find inspiration in the Italian countryside and architecture.”

Orange Street, Oil 20 x 36 inches (Click for larger view)

Constance LaPalombara’s best cityscape painting, such as her Orange Street painting, reveal a quiet attention to the architecture of the city as well as meditative observations on specific qualities of light. Her anonymous views of the middle-aged New England city are carefully drawn and and each element seems considered and important to the integrity of the whole. Her expressive use of light on the geometric divisions of the canvas have a sumptuous appeal. In particular I’m drawn to the rhymes of repeating rectangular shapes such as the movement of light over chimneys and windows. Most of all I enjoy how she uses the power of paint to transform her selection of rather commonplace and unremarkable scenes into memorable events.

Ninth Square Oil 36 x 42 inches

“I love the geometry of light on buildings,” says Constance LaPalombara. “I find the way shadows work on the architecture visually satisfying.” She paints what she loves to look at and is captivated by the way buildings appear at varying times of day. “I start with something that excites my eye,” she says, “but by the time the painting is finished, it’s taken on a life of its own.”

Café oil, 10 x 14 inches

“My favorite subjects are those that involve the process of discovery,” says LaPalombara. This is why I think I’m so partial to landscape. You may be walking, driving, looking out a window when, for any number of reasons, something captures your attention: the way a shadow is cast, the shape of a tree, a change in light.” If discovery is the fi rst step of her creative process, the second is visualizing how that discovery can make a good painting. Through the use of light, shadow, color, spatial relationships and interlocking forms, she acts upon what she describes as “the impulse to transfer the excitement I have towards the motif onto the canvas in front of me.”

She often captures these first ideas while working directly from her subject and usually finishes small paintings en plein air. For larger paintings, she makes small studies from life and takes photographs to use as notes that help her complete the work in her studio.

( above quotes from the Sept 2009 Artist’s Magazine “Everytown, USA” article by Tamera Lenz Muentei )

Constance started painting somewhat later in life after first studying political science and working for several years. Her husband’s career often took her to Rome where she was first smitten with a desire to become a painter. Eventually she approached Yale University School of Art professor and renowned realist painter William Bailey to let her sit in on a graduate figure painting class and then went on to take drawing courses with Lester Johnson, another Yale professor. Later she applied to the Tyler School of Art, which has a master of fine arts program in Rome. The Artist Magazine article quotes her saying that after graduate school “I never looked back, It’s hard to believe I’d spent so many years not painting.”

You can see more of Constance LaPalombara’s painting on her website. She has shown in a wide variety of exhibitions and group shows in the New England and New York area, see her website for details. Here are a few more examples of her work, including scenes of Italy and a still-life watercolor.

View from the Badia Oil 11.75 x 9.75 inches

Isola Tiburtina Oil 38 x 11.75 inches

Lucignano Oil 13.5 x 17.75 inches

Brewery oil, 14 x 20 inches

Gridlock oil, 20 x 22 inches

Red Glass watercolor, 6½ x 10 inches