Grace in Profile, Oil on wood panel 21 x 26 inches
(Click for larger view)
Larry Groff:
Your recent DVD Drawing Closer to Life(link to his DVD website) documenting an approach to drawing is a terrific production. I found it very informative and engaging throughout. Your eclectic approach to materials, the intensity of observation, and making it all seem like great fun has inspired me to do more drawing.
One thing that particularly stood out for me was your continually reinforcing the need to keep the drawing open, to change, and that the drawing itself is mainly a process of constant revision and correction as you gradually move from the larger forms to the smallest details.
Can you say more about your approach to drawing and tell us more about why we would want to get your DVD? Or anything about your DVD?
David Kassan:
Oh, no, I don’t want this to be like an ad for the DVD.
Larry Groff:
No, no.
David Kassan:
My idea for the DVD was, to conceptualize the process and I named it Drawing Closer to Life because I feel like—and I don’t think I describe this, actually, in the video, in what got, it might be on the cutting room floor actually, which I should have totally included—was this concept of getting to know somebody within a drawing for me. I idea that you don’t know very much about this person, really, if it’s not a family member or someone you are close to, that you’re drawing. It’s somebody that you’ve just met for the first time.
So you see them from a mile away. And they’re all blurry. And you get that kind of cerebral haze… Everything’s atmospheric and everything’s a haze because you don’t actually know them… I’m trying to think, intellectually you don’t know anything about this person. You don’t know anything about their life. And that’s the stuff I feel is really important within just trying to catch them in a drawing… their personality, expression and emotion.
So intellectually and also visually, you don’t really know much about them. So this concept of drawing for me is almost like researching and trying to find out about the person. So, the idea is that they’re a mile away, they’re completely blurry, and that if it takes fifteen hours for that person to walk that mile, closer to you, each time they take a step closer, they come more into focus, and you learn more about that person and about their life, and that kind of filters into what you’re doing on the paper.
And drawing for me is, and painting, actually … I don’t know. I mean, I’m concerned a little bit about with the product, I guess, or how the drawing comes out, but for me, in life in general, is I just want to be observant of my time here, you know? Of just being around and having a record of everything I see and observe and what I find interesting.
And having this person in the studio that you’re learning about, when I draw, I want it to be started out very hazy, very broad, very blurry and then it starts coming into focus again as they walk closer and as I learn more about the person. So it’s always kept open. You kind of have to have that time period with the person to understand them and to research things.
And even if that’s just learning the shapes… of how mundane things like the angles of how the mouth go or … That’s why I use the binoculars, to zoom in on these large masses to find out where they actually meet, how the angles are, and how to actually see things correctly and clearly. Because the seeing is the most important part to developing an understanding of this person in front of us, and kind of understanding how we see is real interesting to me… being awake and constantly engaging with the world around us.
About the DVD though is it’s … I didn’t … It was really hard to keep it down to three hours and I really tried to make a resource for people where they could understand exactly what I’m thinking about, no matter how dumb stupid and funny and goofy the thoughts are while I’m drawing.
So I’m always constantly engaged with the person when I’m drawing and within the drawing, to be where I’m asking myself, really, just simple questions, such as… is this longer or shorter? Is this lighter or darker? and while I’m looking for the answers to these questions that the model has, usually the person in the studio is talking back with me.
So this is kind of weird, is to actually have him be quiet while I draw him, which is … it was kind of odd, actually. I don’t think I did the best drawing because of that. I think I would have liked to learn more about him as I was drawing. Since then, I’ve drawn Henry a lot of more times and I’ve learned a lot more about him …
Larry Groff:
He seemed like a great model.
(Click for larger view)
David Kassan:
He’s really awesome.
Larry Groff:
He sat so still, and it was so interesting.
David Kassan:
Yeah. No. I think in the credits, I guess, or the DVD, it’s thanking him for his stillness. No, he was really an awesome model, and he has that like kind of Rembrandt look to him. Like he could have stepped out of a Rembrandt painting. And his facial features and expressions were intriguing to me. He really wears the experience of his life on his face. And that’s really something that just makes you like want to learn more about that person.
Larry Groff:
I was curious to hear what he might have said about the drawing when he saw it, when it was finished.
David Kassan:
I don’t know. I didn’t even think to even ask, actually. I don’t know. I think he liked it, I hope he liked it.
I’m always really worried about locking anything in within a drawing, because I feel like if you lock in something too early, it kind of gets static and less organic, and it almost turns into like a formula. And I mean, I don’t want this DVD to be a formula for anybody. I want people to kind of learn from the DVD a la carte, like just take parts that you can grow from, areas of it that speak to you. I don’t want people copying this method exactly. I’m definitely not dogmatic in anyway with my teaching and my philosophy on art, I want to leave things open, open for growth and evolution.
Larry Groff:
Good.
David Kassan:
So, when I first came up with the title, my approach to drawing the figure or something like that. I had to change it to an approach instead of my approach, because I thought, this is not my approach. There’s tons of people who can draw way better than I do and I have had teachers of mine that have imparted so many different philosophies to me that I follow. Such as the Drawing Closer to Life philosophy of seeing something far away is really adapted from what Sharon Sprung http://sharonsprung.com who teaches at the Art Student’s League and I’ve really learned so much from and how she thought about painting, as well. So, she’s probably been one of my strongest teachers. And it’s that I owe her for this idea and concept. So it’s an approach, not my approach.
I start my drawings with pan pastels, which are amazing because it’s almost like painting. I want painting and drawing actually to be as similar as possible. And a lot of my students kind of notice that when I paint and draw, it’s the same kind of hatch mark and it’s the same kind of small tools and everything. It’s just what I’m comfortable with. And the idea of having that hatch in my painting and when I draw, is about having just these multi levels of layers and strata, kind of stacked on top of each other, being transparent with one another. Kind of like when you look at your hand, you have millions of broken color in there, warms and cools intermixed. It’s not just like a fleshy hand, or just flesh-colored. You know what I mean? Like there are greens and blues and pinks and all these interactions of colors going on and I build that up in a lot hatch and foundation when I paint, so that I can attempt to get luminously in my skin tones.
So I’ll get to that in the painting DVD.
Larry Groff:
Wow.
David Kassan:
If I have enough energy to get to it.
Painting Perceptions was started in 2009 by Larry Groff to promote the ideas, practice and experience of painters working from observation in a modernist vein from around the world through interviews, essays, videos and community. It later evolved to include imagination-based and abstract painting as well.
Thanks Larry…another artist I’ll have to hunt down here in Brooklyn. I really enjoy seeing his interest in the graffiti/urban patterns in the backgrounds, or just as a singular focus for a painting. Seems like work that has to be seen in person to fully appreciate. Very funny hearing him talk about meeting Lopez Garcia…must have been a life changing experience…good stuff.
Thanks for this, Larry. I’ve been admiring his work for a while now. Good to hear his thoughts on it and his process.
You raised an interesting question in the interview that I’ve been thinking about lately but am having trouble getting some feedback on. What is the difference between photo-realism and super tight realism done (mostly) from life if a viewer thinks the painting is a photo? The mechanical goals of capturing exacting detail and hiding the hand of the artist seem similar to me.
Most artists treat photo-realism like a red headed step child so it just seems weird to me that there is such a resurgence of tight, classical style rendering. Is this similar to your comparison of Rackstraw Downes to Kevin Macpherson where Macpherson is selling a skill set? Is the power of David Kassan (and many other rising stars) that so many artists want to draw and paint like him so they take his classes and buy his DVD?
Interesting Comment Hank.
Of course photo-realism and other highly rendered realistic painting all have one thing in common – they are made by individuals. So I’m not sure we can easily apply blanket statements to explain the motivations. That said I think there is often a considerable difference in paintings done with the primary goal of accurately copying a photograph (or a range of photos) and paintings with a goal to capture an observed situation accurately. Photorealist paintings often emphasize features commonly seen in photographs like flatness and airlessness. The highly rendered details and smooth surface appeals to many for its apparent high level of skill and complexity and perhaps also its cool detachment and lack of overt emotional expression. Realist works like David’s may look similar as they are also highly rendered with extreme detail and even incorporate the use of photos as David does – but I think there is a difference in the treatment, the surface, and the overall tone of the painting. Some of David’s work does seem closer to photo realism when viewed online but when you see it in person it takes on a whole new experience when you see these life size and the surface. I’ve only seen a few of his paintings but as I recall the form and tonal clarity of these figures are very striking and very different that what you usually see in photorealism.
David is young and unlike many other painters is very savvy with the web’s social media and actively promotes his work and name online. I’m sure a few people may raise their eyebrows over this but I think it’s one good way to try to make a decent living as a painter. I guess you raise a valid issue that it is like Macphersons selling a skill set. I do think there are inherent dangers in pushing the whole self-marketing thing too far. He could risk people in the artworld not taking him seriously but does the artworld take any realist seriously these days? I admire his taking it all head on by himself – getting his work seen and building a large following and getting lots of attention in many of the art magazines like American Artist.
He made a very good production with his DVD. I seen a number of DVD trainings for painters, and most I’ve found either really boring, really dumb or pretentious. His dvd was actually interesting and I only found myself nodding off in a couple of places (which is saying a lot – I almost always fall asleep watching artist dvds!) Now, I’m not interested in drawing like him and probably couldn’t draw that way if I wanted to. But I found a number of things I could relate to my own type of work and it actually inspired me to do more drawing. I’m personally not interested in tight and more classical type realism and academic art really bothers me. There are quite a few painters like him selling their DVDs, workshops, demos and the like. I get so much crap like that in my email and on facebook that it makes me sick and I wind up putting a lot of it in my spam folder. The overriding emphasis on making a buck has a corrupting influence.
Of course, I am not without my criticism of his work. I like many, but not all. I’ve made a policy (up until now anyway – this may change in the future) of not really giving real art criticism here. (the Macpearson article was an earlier one when I was more open to that) I mainly have been wanting to simply showcase or review the wide variety of paintings that are being done from observation (mostly) from very tight realists like David to almost completely abstract. I’ve been thinking that maybe by the end of the year I may change this and go back to having more real criticism – but that is another story.
Thank you Larry.
What really caught my eye is this interview was actually right in the beginning when Kassan talks about the lack of expressive brushstrokes in his work. When I initially think of the statement “lack of brushstrokes”, I automatically think the absence of the artist’s hand however, I don’t believe this is what Kassan is trying to say. While he doesn’t push the bold strokes in his work, due to the fear of distracting the viewer, it is more about building textures through layers and creating a quiet-like weight to his work. This happy medium in his paintings and the way he goes on about it is very thought provoking. I really enjoyed this interview. Thanks for posting it!!
Ally- good observation. I think that many times the brushstroke is seen as the presence of the artist, but Kassan achieves presence differently. I think it’s great that Kassan is able to work directly from observation. As a student, I can attest to the difficulty of finding willing models. I really love that he becomes more involved with his model and that it shows in his paintings- he focuses on bringing out the essence of the model through his layers and removing himself so that the viewer has a direct line to the subject. All of these things combined give the work authority and make it thought provoking. I definitely think that there’s a marked difference between Kassan’s paintings and photographs and I think it comes from his process and concepts about painting/