Anatomy of Painting : "Simmering"
"First Kiss" to "Simmering" studies and revelations on work from the studio
A question that has been playing out for me in the studio in recent months (ok, for almost a year now) is…
Can I produce artwork that is spare and full of electric energy simultaneously? How can I pull back the color in a distinct manner, allowing space on the canvas to just "be." Not every inch has to be spoken for.
Why do I even care to do this? Why does it matter to have marks laced with excitement pared down with the simplicity of drawn lines?
Space. Is it about space? My need for it?
The work of Martha Jungwirth keeps swirling in my head.
We'd first seen a big piece of hers in 2021 in France. The morning we arrived in Paris, we were seriously jet-lagged and waiting for our hotel room to become available. I wanted the one with the balcony, please, and yes, we will wait for it. After stopping at a cafe, Michael and I hopped into a cab and headed to Art Paris, which was situated in what feels like the seat of the Eiffel Tower. I was exhausted, and I fell soundly asleep on Michael's shoulder on the drive to The Grand Palais. So much for strong French coffee.
Is this the entrance? Yes.
Will they take our U.S. vaccination cards? Yes.
Is there a bathroom inside? Yes.
Oh, the romance of travel.
As I entered the fair, this piece stopped me in my tracks.
The first thing I thought was this artist is brave.
And then, this artist is free.
The work had breathing room, and we had spent so much time in masks, struggling to breathe.
I had been struggling to breathe in so many areas of my life.
It was the breathing room I craved.
Michael realized she had a solo show of her work happening at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais, and a couple of days later, with a fair amount of navigating, we found it.
Are there bathrooms inside? Non!
I really need to reconsider my frequent stops for coffee.
It wasn't until months after seeing Marta's works that I began to consider how I could incorporate my emotional reaction to her work into my own.
Interestingly, she is a petite woman in her 80's, who created this work in isolation during Covid. I just found this video of her discussing this work for this post and am pleasantly shocked at how much I connected with it.
"This alternation between large and small formats allows for a fluid painting process because you are not always fully connected when you are working in a large format."
“I don’t want any fillers. So it remains as it is, in the emptiness.”
Back to the art at hand, over a year later… yes, you read that right. Over a year later, I started permitting myself to leave space in my work. Incubation can take a long time.
It started with the white space on watercolor paper. I returned to a medium I had put aside and relegated to commercial work. It was familiar to me. The widely accepted use of white paper as negative space felt like a good “way in.”
First, I'd pull back my regular full-throttle use of color on canvas and edit the marks. I began making watercolor after watercolor.
Now how to graduate from that?
Could I take this larger and change the medium? Could I maintain the delicate feel of my watercolors and still allow it to take up space by having a real presence?
This has turned out to be a more significant task than I realized. I have had successes and some misses that have been sanded back.
I would capture the space, the breathing room, and then, in moments of haste, I would lose it.
Are what I was considering misses really telling me something that I needed to hear?
How much delicacy did I need in my marks when I often felt a ferocity inside?
After all, what does freedom look like?
These questions grew more robust when I looked at the watercolor and the smaller study pictured on my bulletin board above.
These young Hibiscus buds were taking on a life of their own. I loved the almost sea-like creature feeling of them. They felt full of potential, slightly odd and beautiful all at once.
"Simmering" turned out to be much more sensuous and complicated than I intended. Although, truthfully, I painted the final piece during a very complicated (but good) two weeks in my life, did that enter into this painting? How much peace (or possibly inactivity) do I need to harness in my daily life to create work I am interested in making?
If I think about it, Marta's work is complicated and has a beautiful tension, yet simultaneously contains a palpable freedom.
Yes. That's "Simmering."
Thank you so much for this post... I was “letting intuition/serendipity lead” when I found your substack, and when I read this it was like you’d put words to that niggling feeling! And it is exactly what I needed to hear, and provides me a next step in my own art process and practice! I am immensely grateful! May I say, too, that your work is beautiful! You have accomplished that balance between delicacy and power, presence and “absence” - well done!