Looking at Artists: Peggy Root and Tamie Beldue

We visited the Blue Spiral 1 art gallery in Asheville today.  It's Asheville's largest gallery and represents a great variety of artists and crafters.  You can tell that they have standards because they don't represent me!  The current exhibition shows new work from a few of their stock artists.  Two of them really caught my eye: Peggy Root, a landscape painter, and Tamie Beldue, a figurative artist.

As discussed in a number of earlier posts, I've been doing a lot more landscapes over the past couple of years.  And I've been largely frustrated and disappointed with my results.  My paintings wind up being overly literal and too specific, with colors that are either too intense or too muted, and values that are either too dark or too light.  The result is too often a clash of things vying for attention rather than a harmonious image where everything pulls together.  So when I see somebody who can really paint a good landscape, I look at how they handle particular passages and compare that to how I might have blundered through it.  And as I saw today, Peggy is a really good painter, and I learned quite a bit just from looking at her works.

Marshes Connecticut

Oil on canvas

Artist: Peggy Root

Here's a sample of her work.  To start with, she has an eye for good composition.  The distant hill and the treeline is in the upper third of the painting, the stream is in the left third, reflecting the trees and sky.  The marsh is a mid-value, muted green area that sets off the dark and light areas.  There is a nice, natural balance to the arrangement.  Everything fits together and contributes to the mood.

Speaking of mood, all of Peggy's paintings that I saw had strong emotional depth to them.  Too many landscape paintings by other artists look like snapshots with all the depth of a Twitter tweet, but Peggy's show real feeling.  It's like she's saying "I was here, and it was beautiful, and I want to share that joy with you."  That's not an easy thing to say with paint.

One of the things that I noticed with her work is that she builds them up in layers.  For example, a tree may start with an ultramarine blue block-in, then have a layer of muted dark green, then a lighter warmer green, and a stronger yellow-green in the lightest areas.  These layers will usually not have hard edges - they'll be blended or scumbled to suggest foliage rather than define it.  That's one area where I typically fall down: I try to define too much.  Compare her painting of marshes (above) to mine (below):

Butler Beach Marsh

Oil on panel, 9"x12"

Peggy's is calm and contemplative, with strong composition, excellent use of light/dark, and colors that naturally go together.  In mine, I got sucked into trying to depicting every weed and matching colors as accurately and literally as possible.  It would have been much better to paint the greens as areas of broken color rather than tons and tons of vertical strokes.  And I should have done better in selecting and painting my lights and darks - the reflected light on the water, for example, should be much brighter than it is.  But that's the way I saw it at the time, so that's what I put down.  And so you see what I mean between Peggy's suggesting and my defining.  

 I saw that Peggy teaches workshops occasionally.  I'm going to try to take one.  You, meanwhile, should go to her website and take a look.  Or, better, go to Blue Spiral or one of her other galleries and see them in person.  They're so much better in real life.

The other artist that made an impression on me was Tamie Beldue.  Tamie teaches drawing at UNC Asheville.  She came long after I'd already graduated, but I've talked with her a time or two.  Blue Spiral is currently featuring a number of large mixed-media drawings, mostly graphite with watercolor, pastel, and encaustic.  Here's one that's typical:

Portrait on a Porch Swing

Graphite, watercolor, and encaustic, 52"x35"

Artist: Tamie Beldue

What I liked about Tamie's work, besides the fact that she can really draw, is her use of soft and lost edges.  She uses sharp edges, strong value contrasts, and colors to draw the eye, with reduced contrasts, soft and lost edges, and muted colors (if used) to suggest the structures in other areas of the work.  In this example, the young woman's eyes are the darkest and sharpest part of the work and are the primary focus.  The secondary focus is on the junction of the hands, and here the values and sharpness are almost, but not quite, as pronounced as around the eyes.  The shirt is depicted to some extent, enough to indicate what she's wearing, but as your eye moves away from her eyes, there's less and less detail, to the point where in some places there's pretty much nothing.  If you don't think it works, imagine this drawing with all the details of the shirt, bench, jeans, and wall included.  It doesn't work, does it?  But how many artists do you know that would include all that stuff?  Most, I imagine.

Like Peggy, Tamie is very good at establishing an emotional connection in her work.  Her figures are real people.  The process of drawing them from life is long, meaning that quiet will necessarily be an important part of the image.  Tamie manages to find the quiet part of her subject's personality and capture that in the image.  I can appreciate that.  In my own figurative drawings, I try to get something of the subject's personality on paper.  I draw in a much more rapid and sketchy manner than Tamie, and that works for me.  But one thing I can take from Tamie and try to apply in my own work is a greater use of soft and lost edges.

So.  Blue Spiral has a good show up right now.  Go see Peggy and Tamie's work.  If you can't make it, at least go online to the Blue Spiral website, or to those of Peggy and Tamie.

Demsteader Follow-Up

In my last post, I wrote about Mark Demsteader and his approach to drawing and painting the figure.  I thought I'd try it out.  So I picked out a drawing from an old session with a model to copy and compare, and gave it a go.  Here's the result:

Both drawings are on the same paper (a light cream Mi-Teintes) and are done with vine charcoal.  The one on the left is descriptive and tentative.  The one on the right is bold and expressive.  I'm not Demsteader, so my drawings are clearly not his.

Oddly enough, I don't know that I could do something like the one on the right in one of our normal life drawing sessions.  When I'm working from the model, it's an exploratory session, a "get to know you" time.  I'm trying to get the model's physical appearance as well as personality captured on paper.  It is, by definition, tentative.  How is her head shaped?  Where do the shadows fall?  Is she strong-willed, bubbly, bored?  How does that show in her face and posture?  This particular model is a confident young woman and I think it comes through in the drawing.

There's nothing tentative about the approach on the right.  The marks are slammed in with confidence.  It's more of an expressive, "I know what I'm doing" approach.  It says more about the artist than the model.  I might be able to do something like this from life if I know the model well and have done enough drawings to know what I want to put the focus on.

Demsteader doesn't do most of his drawings from life.  He works from photos.  I noted that in the articles about him and now I understand it.  When working from photos, there's a greater distance between artist and model.  Rather than working with a living, breathing human being, you're working with an image.  It's easier to be expressive with an image when you're not thinking about the impression that the human presence has.

I noticed that my original drawing, as tentative as it is, has a lot of Kelly's personality.  The new drawing does not.  I can look at it and see that it was not drawn from life.  This figure is a more generic "young woman" and not "Kelly".  For some artists, that's the way they work.  The figures they draw and paint are actors to be manipulated to express whatever the artist wants to express.  For me, it's important that the figures that I draw and paint are specific individuals.  It's more about what I see in them than it is about how I'm using them to express something else.

So what's the bottom line?  I think I have a new tool in my artist toolbox: a different, more bold and dynamic way to draw the figure.  But I need to learn more about how to use it from life and to say something about the individual I'm working with.  It's a challenge.  Sounds like fun!

Looking at Artists: Mark Demsteader

This morning, one of my contacts on Facebook posted a painting by Mark Demsteader.  It's a really stunning image of a woman in a blue dress.  The woman's figure is painted minimally and fairly realistically, but the dress is really a pile of paint.  It's at least two layers, probably more, of thick impasto, dragged across the canvas from a painting knife.  The juxtaposition of the smooth figure and roughly-painted dress is beautiful.

Erin in Blue

Oil on canvas, 52"x39"

Artist: Mark Demsteader

So I found Mark's web page and had a look.  I was really impressed by the work.  Mark's drawings and paintings are beautiful.  Most of them feature a young woman in a thin dress.  They are in a strong, direct light that throws heavy shadows across their faces.  Often their eyes are completely, or almost completely, in shadow, giving them a very mysterious air.  Mark almost always focuses on the head and a very limited bit of the body - maybe just the neck or shoulders, while the rest of the figure is indicated only in very rough strokes.

You might call his approach formulaic.  Usually, when all the works from an artist are done the same way, I get bored after about the third one.  I don't get bored with Demsteader's.  They're too good.

Back in 2011, Demsteader did a series of artworks with Emma Watson (the actress from the Harry Potter movies) as the subject.  It was a collaboration, and an interesting one.  You can read about it, and see some of the images from the series, in this Vogue (UK) article.  Watson contacted Demsteader about doing an artwork of her, then Demsteader came up with the idea of doing many artworks and auctioning them off to benefit the charity of her choice.  What a wonderful thing for both of them to do.

Demsteader works in a way that I can relate to.  The model doesn't need much in the way of makeup or nice outfits.  He sets up a single large light to create strong lights and darks and then simplifies the features and clothing.  Here's an example of one of his drawings:

Study for Siren

Pastel and collage, 46"x32"

Artist: Mark Demsteader

Fantastic, isn't it?  I see a lot of things that I want to try.  First, simplify, simplify, simplify.  I tend to get caught up in getting everything recorded as accurately as possible.  That's descriptive, not expressive.  Focus on the important bits (usually the head and face), let things further away be just roughly indicated, and exaggerate value changes.  Mark's values here are black, paper white, and a medium gray.  That's three values.  When I draw, I often try to do too many.  Simplify!

Second, keep the drawing accurate.  I do that already, as much as I can, but need to focus on it.  The young lady's face in the drawing above is extremely accurate, which lets the mark-making be more expressive.  Her shoulder and arm are reduced to just the very basic contour lines, but they work because they're in exactly the right place.  The fact that they're stripped-down only emphasize the expressiveness of the marks around the face, and they work because the face is accurately drawn.  It all has to work together.

Third, in a painting, try the concept of a carefully-rendered figure with an outfit indicated by roughly scumbled paint, from a painting knife if possible.  I'm not going to try to create more "Mark Demsteader" paintings, but just want to see what I can learn out of this exercise.  (Come to think of it, I have some abandoned figure paintings in the studio already (what artist doesn't?) and can try this when I get to the studio tomorrow.

I found an interesting series of photos of one of Mark's demos of a portrait drawing.  It's really interesting to see how he develops the figure.  He doesn't just put a mark down and leave it - he builds on it through multiple layers.  Take a look - you can save the photo and enlarge it on your computer screen if you want.  You'll have to figure out for yourself what he's doing at each stage since there was no narrative to accompany it.

So I'm adding Mark Demsteader to my personal list of really cool artists.  If you like what you've seen here, then visit his site, or Google his name and look at all the images.  There's a ton of stuff online and I was really blown away by it.  I really love finding a great artist that I've never heard of before!

Still Alice

Last night, we watched the movie Still Alice.  In this movie, Julianne Moore is Dr. Alice Howland, a highly respected professor at Columbia who comes down with early-onset Alzheimer's at age 50.  Particularly for someone to whom the intellect is everything, this disease is brutal, as it slowly takes away the memories that defined their capabilities.  The film follows the disease's progression as, step by step, one thing after another is taken away from her.  And it examines, to some extent, the impact of the disease on family members.  Alec Baldwin is her husband, who is supportive but also has to watch out for his own career, since he is now the sole breadwinner.  Her children, played by Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, and Kristin Stewart, have to figure out their own roles in their mother's life, as well as her changing role in theirs.

Julianne Moore won an Academy Award for her role, and it was well deserved.  She really became Alice Howland.  Her gradual transformation from a leading expert in linguistics to somebody who had nothing but a vague idea of who she was, was powerful, unsettling, and not pretty.  A really tremendous performance.

For many of us, the fear of getting Alzheimer's, or something like it, is a reality, especially as we grow older.  Both of my grandmothers, one of my aunts, and my mother-in-law had dementia.  Whether they had Alzheimer's or something else, I don't know, but it doesn't really matter.  It was frightening: they could very easily get out of the house one day and disappear.  It happens all the time - we see Amber Alerts nearly every week here in western North Carolina for just that sort of thing.  Or they could run up tens of thousands of dollars of in bills if an unscrupulous salesperson hits them at the wrong time (something like this happened with my aunt).  If not that, then the bills for adequate care can bankrupt a family.  In the movie, Moore and her husband were pretty affluent and had good insurance, so the story could focus on the disease and its impact.  Money was a concern but not a driving factor.  For most of us, being able to pay for adequate care will be critical concerns.

I've left the age of 60 in the rear-view mirror and the prospect of dementia is now a constant low-level bogeyman.  I'm more forgetful now, but it seems (so far) to be just normal.  Fortunately, the men in my family have all retained their mental facilities to the end.  That's good news for me, but I'm only one half of my household.

Young people watch horror movies for a gratuitous scare.  Still Alice is a horror story for older folks, with the added twist of being a real threat.  Still, it was worth watching.  There is life with Alzheimer's.  You just appreciate it a lot more.

To The Beach

My wife is a San Diego girl.  She grew up with the beaches not far away.  Well, here in the Asheville area, the beaches are very far away.  So to keep the peace, every now and then we head off to someplace that's on the ocean.  We went to St. Augustine, Florida, last fall and really liked it.  So we decided to return to the same little beach house.  And we invited the son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to share the experience.  

Lots of heat.  Family in close quarters.  Sounds like a recipe for a nuclear explosion, doesn't it?

Actually, we all had a lot of fun.  We were together when we wanted to be, we wandered off on our lonesome when we wanted (except the grandson), we ate too well, got too much sun, rode bikes, went shopping, did some sight-seeing, and generally had a good time.  Vacations are supposed to be like that, and this one was.

It almost didn't turn out that way.  The day before we were to leave, our car got a flat tire.  I was out running errands and came out to find the right rear corner sagging to the ground.  Fortunately, we were taking the truck to the beach, rather than the car, so it wasn't a calamity, just a real PITA that I didn't need at the moment.  I changed the wheel right there in the grocery store parking lot and went home to load up the truck.

Then, while getting stuff packed in, the garage door somehow got activated and caught on the truck, then automatically reversed, there was this horrible screech, and the garage door was jammed up and wrenched crooked.  Oh, great!  Something was obviously destroyed in a very expensive way.  So out came the toolbox.  Pretty soon I found that nothing was broken, but that one of the cables supporting the door had come off the pulley.  So with a bit of pulling and prodding, along with a massive dose of cussing, we eventually got the wire back where it was supposed to be.  Whew - disaster averted!

We were afraid that we were having bad karma and that it might carry over to the trip.  Fortunately, it didn't.  The drive to St. Augustine is long (almost 9 hours, with stops every couple of hours to stretch our legs).  We had no trouble going down or coming home.  Our truck ran like a train all day.  Good stuff.  

I was able to go off and do some painting in St. Augustine.  The most interesting places for me were over on the Matanzas River, which is the inland waterway.  Here are three from that area:

Butler Beach Inlet

Oil on linen panel, 9"x12" 

Fort Matanzas

Oil on linen panel, 9"x12" 

Marsh

Oil on linen panel, 9"x12" 

These were fun little landscapes to do.  I started a portrait of my daughter in law as well.  It needs a lot of work in the studio before anybody will ever see it again, though.

We've been back for a few days and are playing catch-up.  Had to get a new tire for the car, mowed most of the lawn (amazing how weeds can grow so tall with no rain), J has gotten a lot of weeding done, I'm finding out what happened with work, had to replace the lenses in my glasses, gave the dogs their baths, had to take two watches to the repair shop ... you know, the usual stuff.  Getting back to normal.  Gotta get into the studio here pretty soon, though - there are things that need to get painted.

Carolina's Got Art!

Years ago, the Fayetteville Museum of Art had an annual competition for artists from North and South Carolina.  I was fortunate to be juried in several times, and to win awards a couple of times.  Unfortunately, the museum didn't survive the economic downturn of the late "aughts" and had to close.  This year, the Elder Gallery in Charlotte stepped up with a replacement: the "Carolina's Got Art!" competition and exhibit.  One of my paintings, "Returning to Base", was selected for the show.  Last night was the opening, and I went down to Charlotte to take a look.

The Elder Art Gallery is very large, at least for a gallery.  They had a number of sponsors who helped provide the funding to make this show first-rate.  Artwork filled the walls, stood on pedestals, and filled nearly every available space.  I wouldn't say it was salon-style (in which artwork covers every inch of wall space, both vertically and horizontally), because it wasn't, but there was a lot of work.  And what I saw was very, very good.

As you can see, there was quite a turnout for the opening last night.  Seemed like anybody who was anybody in the Charlotte art scene was there.  I saw a lot of artists there as well, which was good.  My painting is way back in one of the nooks, as far back as is possible to go, but what the heck, it's on a gallery wall, so I'm happy.  I saw a number of people taking their time in looking at it.

I also ran into somebody that I hadn't seen in over 16 years.  Julie and her husband were stationed with us in Misawa, Japan, in the late '90's during my last tour in the Navy.  It was good to see her again and spend some time catching up.

Other than Julie, I didn't know a soul there, so I went walking around the gallery, looking at all the art.  There are a lot of really good artists in North and South Carolina and it was great to see such a wide range of styles, subject matter, and visions.  Here are some that caught my eye.

Mark Poteat had one of his "Factory Series" paintings in the show.  It was a really interesting abstraction based on factory shapes: architecture, pipes, cranes, and so on.  He's an art instructor at Western Piedmont Community College.  No web site that I could find, but there are some images on the web.

I'm a sucker for good figurative work, and Pamela Freeman is good.  She had a small, quiet painting of two women in conversation.  Her figures are abstracted a bit, which made them more universal in nature, rather than identifiable people.  And I really liked her paint handling: confident, subtle, nuanced, and beautifully done.

Robert Maniscalco is a portrait artist in Charleston.  He submitted a beautiful painting of an older woman, very strong, well-structured, and well-painted.

John Stennett is an Asheville-based artist.  He had a large, abstract, very atmospheric piece.  Although I'm not an abstract painter, I can greatly appreciate when an abstract is well done.  This one had a calm, quiet, and intriguing presence.

Tyrone Geter's large drawing was, for me, the strongest piece in the show.  It was a mixed-media drawing in charcoal on torn paper, assembled into a striking composition.  Tyrone is really, really good at this.  His figures had immense internal strength and depth.  The torn paper can be a gimmick in other hands, but here it both hid and revealed, which added significantly to the work.  Check out his web site, particularly his drawings, and go see the works in person if you can.

Landscape paintings can be so ... what, overdone, common, bland?  Everybody does them.  However, I was drawn to Joy Moser's landscape.  Really strong and well done, it pulled me in.  And she lives in Weaverville, so I can check out her work around here.

Jeremy Russell is a friend of mine.  He and I studied art at UNCA at the same time.  Jeremy's work spills over with more energy and vibrancy than can possibly be expressed in one sitting.  He had a moderate-sized abstract work that dominated the wall on which it was hung.  And I got a kick out of it: if you know Jeremy, that picture was essentially a self-portrait.

I met the owner of the gallery, Larry Elder.  Very nice guy, very personable.  He and his gallery did a bang-up job with this exhibition.  I'm glad to be a small part of it.

The Rules

I got to spend some time today leading a drawing class at the Warrior's Canvas and Veterans Art Center in Johnson City, TN.  This was my second time leading the class and, like the first time, it was a lot of fun.  The students, all vets from all services, were enthusiastic, game for whatever I threw at them, and highly irreverent.  Everybody in the room was fair game for pointed but good-natured abuse, including me.  I'm looking forward to the next class already.

The Warrior's Canvas is not your typical gallery and art center.  Most art centers seem to cater to hobbyists and are about as edgy as a beach ball.  The kind of place that your Aunt Zelma would think was "nice".  The Canvas, though, was created by and for veterans and their families - people who have been through quite a few wringers in life, have heard every kind of BS you can think of and many more you can't, and who developed appropriate coping skills.  Like the irreverence that I mentioned earlier.

I noticed the Center's rules today, posted on a chalkboard.  A normal art center might have rules that say something like "Please be considerate.  Please remove your trash.  Please do not bring animals into the studio."  Rules that Aunt Zelma would understand.  They don't apply at the Canvas.  Not only were there two dogs present and occasionally participating in the class, the rules were geared toward a very different audience.  Here, then, are the

Rules of the Canvas:

- DO NOT SHOOT ARROWS INSIDE!
- Keep it positive.  If you are negative, you will be removed forcibly to the curb.
- Clean up after yourself.  I am not your mother.
- You have trust and respect until you Bravo Foxtrot us, then you will see my war face!  (Editor's note: don't ask what "Bravo Foxtrot" means.)

Aunt Zelma would not approve of the tone, she'd be horrified at the idea of actually shooting arrows inside, and she'd faint if she knew what Bravo Foxtrot meant.  But veterans?  Vets would read the Rules, nod, say something like "Fuckin' A", and get to work.  And probably go outside to shoot the arrows.  But not always.

There's an understanding that vets have with each other that comes from shared and similar experiences.  We rib each other unmercifully, cut each other a good bit of slack, and jump to each other's aid when needed.  David Shields and Jason Sabbides, the two vets who created the Warrior's Canvas, have built a remarkable veterans' center in Johnson City.  I'm very proud and humbled to be able to participate in this project.

In the Studio

Time for an update on my studio work, isn't it?  A while back, I wrote about a painting in progress.  One of my models also makes her own line of clothes.  This new painting is about her creative process of turning random bits of cloth into a wearable work of art.

Initially, I was looking at one of my favorite artists, Jerome Witkin, for inspiration on how to put this painting together.  Witkin is a fabulous story-teller and you really can't go wrong in borrowing ideas from a master like him.  So I started working on ideas for the composition.  For a painting of this type, my routine is to do a lot of drawings, cut them apart, recombine them in different ways, take things out, and add things in, until something starts to happen.  This one had maybe 15 different drawings, and parts of drawings, taped together to create one image.  Then I put tracing paper over it, traced the lines to create a smooth version, and then filled in more details.  Here's what it looked like:

The next step is to do a color study.  I transferred the drawing to a 20"x16" panel and painted it in oil.  Here's the first stage, a warm grisaille; I later went over it with brighter colors:

As soon as it was done, I realized that this particular composition wasn't going to work.  It looked too jammed-in, the light was coming from the wrong direction, the workbench wasn't the right height, the ironing board in the background was too confusing, and the stuff in the foreground was just clutter.  Further, it was too literal - there was nothing to suggest the larger theme of creativity.  I had to come up with something different.

Although Witkin is one of my favorite artists of all time, I have a hard time using him as an inspiration.  Witkin's works are beautiful little stage settings.  "Stage" is the applicable word as most of his works are constructions within the very small area of his canvas, just like stage settings are constructions within a very small area in an auditorium.  I have a hard time with that idea, for some reason, and my efforts to create a stage setting looked like a high school effort, when what I'm shooting for is something more natural.

So I shifted the source of my inspiration from Witkin to Vermeer.  Vermeer's works are probably much closer to my nature.  They're quiet (Witkin's most decidedly are not), carefully constructed, narrative, and take place in a natural interior setting.  They also have a strong metaphorical character, as well, which is often only apparent after considerable study.  So after another session with the drawing paper, scissors, and tape, here's the compositional study that I came up with:

 The light is coming from the left side and shining on the dress.  The young lady's face is in shadow - this painting is not about her as a person, but about the idea of the hard work of creating something, so her particular identity is not important.  The workbench is now an appropriate height and the ironing board is now in the foreground, providing a bit of a visual block between the viewer and the dress.  Then I worked it up into a color study on gessoed paper:

This version made me realize that the composition needs even more work.  It still has a bit of a jammed-in feeling.  So I extended the painting to the left and down (I taped another piece of gessoed paper on the bottom).  This had the effect of pushing the viewer back a bit and giving the seamstress a little more breathing room.  I can also use the window and light/shadow to define her work area and frame the composition.  I've also increased the light/dark differences so make it have a bit more of a dramatic presence.  This would make more sense if I had a photo of the current version, but I don't right now, so use your imagination!

But there's still a lot to be done.  I need to decide what's going to be on the wall.  I have a few ideas, none of which have really grabbed me as the "right" one.  There are some things I need to do around the window.  The fabric on the workbench isn't right yet.

But it's getting there.  Meanwhile, I have a 48"x48" canvas stretched and primed and ready to go.  I'm looking forward to getting to work on it!

Farewell, Margaret

I learned today that a dear friend of ours, Margaret, passed away yesterday.  Her death was a shock as she was still fairly young (in her 50's, which is still young these days), vibrant, active, and enjoying life.  As it turned out, she died from choking on some food.  Something that could happen to anybody, including you or me, at any time.  Margaret was alone at home and had nobody to help her out.

I met Margaret through art.  She worked in a style that resembled German Expressionism, only with a gentle, warmly humorous, and loving manner.  It was far more sophisticated than most people understood.  Margaret loved the people, places, and things in her life and showed it in her artworks.  We have one of her paintings of a horse.  This wasn't just any old horse, it was a particular one that had a funny way of looking at her that made her laugh.  So she painted a portrait of it.  In the same way, she painted the people in her rural area - country people that could easily have been the butt of jokes from somebody else, but whom Margaret treated with warmth and appreciation.

Horse

Margaret Katz Nodine

Oil on panel, 16"x20"

More importantly, Margaret was a wonderful person to be around.  She was outgoing and genuinely interested in other people.  She had a large circle of friends and delighted in them.  I never heard her say a bad word about anybody.  Anybody.  She took great pleasure in digging in her garden, despite allergies that should have knocked her down, and she absolutely loved her dogs.  Anytime we saw her, she was all laughter and stories and enjoying whatever she was doing.

And now she's gone.  Just like that.  One bite that went down the wrong way and a vibrant life is cut too short.  Unexpected deaths have a way of making you re-examine your priorities, don't they?  They make me realize that life is a gift and we should do our best to enjoy what we have.  It's so easy to get caught up in life's minutiae, or in the things that "have" to get done, and forget about the daily joys that we're presented with.  So this afternoon, I sat outside, watching the light shimmering off our birch tree, listening to the birds chirping their songs to each other, scratching my dog's ears, and feeling the light breeze flowing through the valley.  Appreciate what you have.

If Margaret was able to comment on her own death, I bet that she'd have something to say that was ironic, funny, and absolutely on-point.  Something like, "Some people get to go out like heroes, saving somebody from a burning house or whatever.  Me, I get done in by a sandwich.  Oy!"  And she'd have a huge laugh over it.

We miss you already, Margaret.  Sleep well, my friend.

PS - A late correction.  We learned later that Margaret died of a massive heart attack, not from choking as was originally thought.  Either way, we have lost a wonderful woman.

Abandoning our Friends

Fuck you US embassy dick suckers

Fuck US States department
You guys are fucking playing games with our feeling son of bitches.

                                       - Najeeb Ahmadzi

That came from somebody who has earned the right to rant: one of the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who put their lives on the line for the American efforts in their countries.  Men and women who served as interpreters, advisors, office staff, engineers, expediters, and the hundred and one other positions of trust that could only be done by locals.  These were people who believed in what we were doing, who supported our efforts, who often defied threats, family ostracism, extreme danger, and poor treatment, in order to do their jobs.  All they asked in return was that we hold up our end of the bargain.  Many of those bargains included the promise of special immigrant visas (SIV's), which allowed them to resettle in the United States when their service was over and their lives were in danger.  

Our country, unfortunately, is breaking its promises.

Ahmadzi is hardly alone.  There are literally thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who have had their SIV applications denied or indefinitely delayed for any multitude of reasons.  My own interpreter from Afghanistan has been trying for three years to get his promised SIV.  His application has been denied three times, with no explanation as to why.  He is somewhat fortunate, in that he has a support team made up of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP, an organization working to help Iraqi and Afghans with their visas and other issues) as well as those of us who worked with him in Kandahar.  After a lot of investigating, and with no help at all from the US State Department, we eventually learned the reason.  And it's not something that will change easily.

A bit of context first.  I worked for the State Department in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  My experience was not very positive.  I found it to be an extremely bureaucratic organization whose culture was based on avoiding decisions and responsibility.  As a retired military guy, from a culture in which making decisions and taking responsibility were valued, I found this to be jarring.  Individual people in the State Department were often wonderful, but the culture of the organization as a whole was dangerous and disturbing.

When the SIV program was first proposed, our then-Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was against it.  He thought it would drain Afghanistan of its best and brightest.  Unstated in his emails, but certainly an issue in the background, was the idea that helping Afghans leave the country would be the equivalent of admitting that our efforts at building the country had failed.  Despite his objections, Congress approved the program and ordered the State Department to implement it.

The State Department leaders handled it in the perfectly bureaucratic manner that they have mastered when told to do something they don’t want to do.  First, they had their lawyers review every word and punctuation mark that Congress had provided.  Then they drafted their own interpretations of what the laws said and devised a byzantine process to follow these interpretations.  Finally, they hired a non-US contractor to implement the program.  This allowed the State Department to create a process that was guaranteed to fail, while at the same time providing cover and deniability for those responsible.  And they were brilliantly successful.  In 2011, the State Department issued three SIV visas.  That's all: three.  In the course of the whole year.  In 2012, that rose to 63.  Public outcry resulted in pressure on Secretary of State John Kerry to review the process, and in 2014 they processed 3,441.  Still, there are over 6,000 applicants in various stages of the process in Afghanistan.  In Iraq, there are over 57,000.  

So here’s what the State Department’s application process entails:

1.  File an application online.  This includes the DS157 form, copy of a national ID card, copy of a passport, proof of employment (including both an employment verification letter from any contractors, badges used on bases, and so on), a letter of recommendation from a direct supervisor, and a statement of any dangers being faced.  If you’re missing any of those things, for instance if you don’t know how to get in touch with your former supervisor, you’re out of luck: no visa for you.

2.  If the first step is successful, the applicant has to file an application for a visa.  It requires much of the same information for the applicant and every member of the family.  The applicant also has to get a physical.  There is only one clinic in Afghanistan authorized to do the physicals, and they cost $500 for each individual, including the kids.  The physicals are only good for a period of time, so if the Embassy drags its heels on approval (which it usually does), then they have to get the physicals done again, at the same cost of $500 per person.  The visa process is completely separate from the SIV application process, and there are many cases of a person getting approved for an SIV and then having the actual visa denied based on the same information.

3.  If the applicant gets through the first two stages, he or she gets an interview at the U.S. Embassy.  This includes a polygraph test and a background investigation.  Ever taken a polygraph test?  There’s a reason that poly’s are not admissible in court: they’re error-prone.  They do not detect whether a person is lying, they just detect whether a person has an involuntary reaction to a question, and they have a very high number of false alarms.  If the interviewer doesn’t like your answers, or if you react on the poly, you’re out of luck.

At the same time, there are many hidden traps that the Embassy does not tell you about.  For example, the State Department’s original instructions said that the program applied to those people who had been employed “by, or on behalf of, the US Government”, for a period of at least 12 months.  My interpreter had spent 27 months working exclusively with US Special Forces, US Army units, and the State Department.  Sounds like a slam dunk, right?  No.  The State Department refused to recognize all but four of those months.  They never once explained why, despite repeated requests from both my interpreter, myself, and IRAP.  We eventually discovered that the company my interpreter worked with was paid on an ISAF contract.  Since that wasn’t a US contract, his time there didn’t count.  Despite minor changes to the program since then, his time there still doesn’t count.

Another trap is that the Embassy has set up a special, anonymous hotline, where people can phone in allegations against anybody working for the US, past or present.  That will derail an application.  The Taliban knows this and makes use of it.  So, in effect, the State Department has to have the Taliban’s approval before issuing an SIV.  If the Taliban wants the individual to stay in Afghanistan so they can be killed, they just have to call in an allegation and the State Department is happy to oblige.  

Another trap is that of any bureaucracy: slow-rolling the process.  This delays applications until the program expires, when they don’t have to worry about it anymore.  The State Department did this in Iraq, resulting (as noted above) in over 57,000 applications being stalled in the pipeline when the deadline passed.  That’s 57,000 decisions the State Department didn’t have to make.  Except, thanks to a lawsuit filed by IRAP on behalf of some of those Iraqis, the State Department was forced to re-open the pipeline.  But as we’ve seen, having the pipeline open, and actually getting people through it, are two very different things.

There have been many articles this month about the fall of Saigon 40 years ago.  Many focused on “Operation Frequent Wind”, in which over 7,000 people were evacuated in two days, and “Operation Babylift”, in which over 3,300 young children were evacuated in three weeks.  The differences between those two programs and the State Department  processes in Iraq and Afghanistan are immense.  The Vietnam operations were run by the military.  Under chaotic conditions, young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines evacuated more people in three weeks than the State Department has processed in four years.  Unlike the State Department, they didn’t demand that application forms be filled out, proof of citizenship be provided, physicals taken, or polygraphs be passed.  No, they saw people in immediate danger and did their best to get them to safety.  

The State Department, though, couldn’t care less.    

But the Taliban does.  They have a pretty good idea of who worked for the US and they’re picking them off at the rate of about one every 36 hours.  My interpreter has been attacked twice.  The first time, they shot him off his motorcycle and left him for dead in Kandahar City.  The second time, they missed him, but blew his mother’s brains all over the back seat of his car.  His best friend, also an interpreter, was recently killed.  He and his family are now in hiding.  They have to move frequently and change phone numbers because the Taliban keep finding out where they are.  His family has disowned him because of the danger brought on them.  There are literally thousands of others in the exact same situation.

Lest you think that these are just the rants of one crazy old man, here are a few sample articles on the problem that have appeared recently.  Google “Afghan interpreters”, “Iraqi interpreters”, “interpreters killed”, or similar topics, or go to the Iraq Refugee Assistance Project and read more.

False Promises: How We Are Failing Our Afghan Allies

(Huffington Post, Apr 8, 2015)

No One Left Behind

(Kennedy School Review, Harvard)

The Horrifying Story Of What Is Happening To Former US Interpreters In Afghanistan

(Business Insider)

So what can you do?  Contact your Senators and Congressman and urge them to do two things.  First, hold hearings and force the State Department to own up to their abysmal performance.  Second, urge them to revise the language of the laws governing the program to make it easier to understand, more transparent, more responsive, and much, much faster.  Lives depend on it.

Until it’s fixed, thousands of people who were our friends and allies will be saying the same things that Ahmadzi said:

Fuck you US embassy dick suckers

Fuck US States department
You guys are fucking playing games with our feeling son of bitches.

Working on a Painting

I've been working on a new painting lately.  One of my favorite models has a clothing design business.  I thought it might be fun to do a painting of her creating an outfit.  She thought so, too, when I asked her, so we set a date for the studio.  She brought over a bunch of her own stuff, including a manikin and a sewing machine, and we set stuff up, moved it around, did a lot of sketching, tried a lot of poses, took a lot of photos, and gradually something started coming together.

Some artists like to create stuff as it comes out of their heads.  I don't.  I like to work with my subjects and get their ideas about what to include or leave out, how they should dress, and how they should pose.  My artworks are usually about specific people, so they have to tell me, and show me, what's important.  For me, it's very much a process of discovery.  They will constantly surprise me with things I'd never have thought of.  This even goes to life drawing sessions.  You'd think that there wouldn't be too many surprises when the subject is literally stripped down to bare skin, but not so.  I generally let my models find their own poses and have found that their personalities are always there in the pose.  Anytime I get too specific with direction, the result is always - always - blah.  I don't have to worry about that with this model - she's a firecracker, full of energy, and always coming up with something interesting.  Which is why I asked her to work with me on this project.  She came through in spades.

She showed up in a funky outfit of black and muted colors with a leather carpenter's toolbelt filled with sewing stuff, including a Sponge Bob pincushion.  She played around with some various bits of cloth I had lying around, and the next thing I knew, a raggedy old scarf was well on its way to becoming a classy evening gown.  She set up her antique sewing machine and had it looking like it was hard at work.  Sewing samples, sketches, and magazine ads went up on the wall behind her.  And in the middle of it all was this ball of fire who created a believable dressmaker's studio in an area the size of a closet.

After the session was over, we left everything set up.  I did some more drawings over the next few days and tried a lot of different combinations of poses, compositions, adding and subtracting stuff, until I had something to work with.  Then I refined it into one rather detailed drawing.  Today I transferred the drawing to a panel and began an oil study.  At each step, I'm learning what works, what doesn't, and getting a better understanding of how to put it all together.  This approach seems really slow, doesn't it?  Well, it is.  I'm following the advice of the painter Jerome Witkin, with whom I studied once, and who told me to draw and draw and draw before ever putting paint to canvas.  The reason is to work out as many basic issues as possible beforehand, so you have a good understanding of how the painting wants to come together.  Jumping into the painting too early is like doing a play without rehearsing.

So here's the drawing, as it sits right now, next to my easel:

A Particular Type of Mortality

Yesterday was Easter.  The Christian world was largely focused on the thought of rising from the dead.  My thoughts, though, were on it's polar opposite: the decision to deliberately end one's life.  No, not mine.  The 18-year-old son of a dear friend of ours made the decision last week to end his young life.  A great many of us are wondering why.  And trying to provide love and support to his mother.

I have not had much experience with suicide in my life, fortunately for me.  When I was about 20 years old, I carried the torch for a lovely and lively young lady.  She, however, carried a torch for some other guy who treated her like dirt.  Sometime before I met her, she had tried to commit suicide.  By the time we connected, she seemed to have recovered and was living a normal life.  "Seemed" is the important word here.  There were large areas in her life that were walled off from me and, I suspect, most other people.  So although we dated for quite some time, had a lot of fun, and were close, she kept a major part of herself locked away and hidden.  Eventually, she left town to be with the other guy, he treated her like dirt again, and she again tried to commit suicide.  I saw her a few times after that.  As before, she seemed to be normal, but the wall was still there.  I've often wondered how her life turned out, whether she made it past whatever demons drove her to attempt suicide twice, or whether the demons won.

Many years later, while I was the Executive Officer at a Navy command in Misawa, Japan, we had two suicide cases.  One was a young enlisted woman.  Her incident was clearly a cry for help rather than a serious attempt to end her life.  We arranged for psychological help for her, and engaged her supervisors, division officer, and friends in providing her with support, and generally tried to help her deal with her issues.  I'm afraid that we weren't very successful.  She had a couple of other, very different incidents later on that (fortunately) didn't involve suicide attempts, and we eventually had to give her a medical discharge.

The other individual who attempted suicide was very different.  The young man was hospitalized after his attempt.  The CO and I went to see him in the hospital and talked with the doctor, who told us that this was a very serious try and that, if not for somebody finding him in time, he would have died.  We then went in to talk with him and it was, in a word, chilling.  The young man was emotionally dead.  There was no interest, no spark, nothing.  I babbled some things about his shipmates pulling for him, and that we wanted him back at work, and it was like talking to a wall.  He wasn't unresponsive - he talked with us, answered our questions, but was pretty clear that there was no reason for him to live.  There was nothing about life that had any hold on him any more.  It really shook me up.  I had never had a conversation with a dead man before.  I'm not saying that to be funny: it really was like talking with somebody who was already dead.

And now my friend's son has ended his life.  It was, apparently, a complete shock, not only to his immediate family, but also to his friends.  He had a lot of friends.  It seems that none of them had any idea that he was considering ending it all.  But he did.  It's not a question of it being an accident, it was quite clearly a deliberate, well-thought-out act.

Suicides sometimes run in families, and that's the case here.  This young man's father committed suicide about 11 years ago.  Two uncles did as well.  Is it genetic?  Maybe one suicide leads others to consider it as a viable way to end their troubles?  I don't know.  Pain sometimes begets pain, in any number of ways.

Meanwhile, his family and friends are left with picking up the pieces of their lives and, eventually, continuing on.  Only there will be this huge hole where he used to be.  His mother has a large circle of very supportive friends who are doing everything they can to help her through this time.  I don't quite know what to say to her, but we're going to see her Thursday, so we'll try to do whatever is appropriate.  We don't have answers, just support.

Artworks

I haven't made very many posts about my art lately, dammit.  The fact is, I haven't been making much art for the past few months.  My consulting business got really busy and there was too little time for the studio.  I'm trying to turn that around now, though, and have been in the studio more in the past week than in the whole previous month.  So here are a few recent paintings and drawings:

Underpass

Oil on panel, 16"x20"

This is my newest painting.  I wanted to do an urban landscape with an empty feeling.  This one seems to be successful.  I usually have to live with a painting for a while before understanding it, but it seems to hit the right notes for me.

 Amy F. #4

Graphite on paper, 12"x9"

I go to life drawing or life painting sessions when I can.  There's a session on Monday nights in Asheville with very short, 1-5 minute poses.  This sketch is from one of those sessions.  Short poses are a lot of fun because you have to work fast and you either get it or you don't.  This young lady was hanging onto a bar mounted on the wall, giving her a very dynamic flow to her body.

Evie May and Liam

Oil on canvas, 7"x9 1/2"

Some neighbors have these two great kids and we had a lot of fun with them over the past couple of years.  Unfortunately, they recently moved out of state.  Janis was missing the kids, so I did this oil sketch for her.

Kelly #1

Charcoal on toned paper, 16"x12"

This was from another of our life drawing sessions, one with the more usual 20-minute poses.  I'd been away from the sessions for a bit and didn't know how the drawings might turn out.  This one turned out okay but others from that night went right into the trash can.  That's just the way it goes sometimes.

A Taste of Spring

After a wicked six weeks or so of winter, we finally had a beautiful spring-like day today.  It was bright and clear, with temperatures in the 60's.  Hallelujah!  So we decided to go ride our bikes at the Biltmore estate.  I pulled the bikes out of their winter storage in the garage, pumped up the tires, gave them a first-rate pre-flight check ("yep, they still have handlebars ..."), loaded them onto the bike rack, and off we went.

And joined about half the population of Asheville at the Biltmore.  Turns out that our bright idea was the same bright idea everybody else had.  The paths were full of bikers, hikers, strollers, dogs, kids, and every imaginable combination thereof.  So it was slow going.  But still, it was good to get out again.  We puttered along, really just getting the feel of the bikes, getting our legs adjusted to pedaling, trying to pick up where we left off last fall, and enjoying the day.  Everybody was in a good mood, too.  Don't you love it when everybody is smiling and happy just to be there?

The Biltmore is a pretty good place to ride bikes.  The trails are smooth and easy, both when they're paved, when they're gravel, and even when they're just dirt.  Since the biking/hiking trails are separate from the roads, you don't have to worry about cars running you down.  We stayed on the flat land.  There are some trails that go up into the hills, but this is our first ride of the year, so we avoided the steeper trails.  We'll try them later.

I saw lots of places that I'd like to come back to and paint.  It's much easier to spot them on a bike than from a car, since you're right there and going slow.  And when you find a place, you can just stop.  In a car, you have to find a place to park, and it may be a long way away.  One of the things I'm going to have to take a look at is how to carry my French easel and painting stuff on the bike.

So that was it.  A really nice day outside.  My legs are feeling the unfamiliar exercise already, which is a good thing (for now, anyway - I may be singing a different tune tomorrow morning).  Looks like we're going to have a wet week, but we'll have highs in the upper 50's, which is ABOUT FRICKIN' TIME!  

American Sniper

We finally got to see American Sniper today.  I was really looking forward to it after hearing and reading so much about the movie.  Some things lived up to the hype but other things did not.  

First, the good.  Bradley Cooper is phenomenal.  Cooper is a bit of a pretty-boy with delicate features, but for this movie, he bulked up 40 pounds of pure muscle and became a beast of a man.  He learned to speak with a true Texas accent.  Most importantly, he brought depth to the role.  Even his silences, or the way he would throw a glance, told volumes.  He became Chris Kyle.  Cooper showed how Kyle got to be the way he was, he showed you the stress that being a sniper can put on a man, and he made you understand the difficulty that warriors can have in adjusting to normal, everyday civilian life again.  This was world-class work.

Sienna Miller did an excellent job Taya, his wife.  Her role in the movie was to bring out the stress in adjusting to civilian life.  I thought that Sienna did very well with what she had to work with.

Unfortunately, I thought the script didn’t do the story much justice.  Granted, this was a biopic that covered many years (with a focus on 11 years, from Sep 11 to the day he died), so it required a lot of things to be addressed.  But the result was a movie that was a mile wide and an inch deep.  Cooper brought a lot of depth to Chris, Sienna brought some depth to Taya, but everybody else was just a 2-dimensional figure, a stereotype of “SEAL officer”, “Iraqi woman”, “kid”,  “random friend”, and so on.  Chris would have an emotional reaction to people getting shot in combat, or saying something important at home, but as a viewer, I had no emotional connection to those other people at all.

There was a lot of hype about how everybody involved in the movie wanted to get the details right.  Bad news: they didn’t.  There were quite a few eye-rolling moments for me.  Even things as simple as driving a HumVee around a base were obviously Hollywood ideas of how HumVees move.  Helicopters don’t fly around bases in real life like they do in the movie.  Soldiers don’t do mission briefs that way.  Failures like that are distracting.

Finally, the script created an insurgent sniper as a foil to Chris.  In reality, there was no comparable sniper.  Yes, there were insurgent snipers and they killed a lot of good people, but the idea of a master sniper in conflict with Chris was a storytelling creation.  And, for me, it didn’t work.  The real conflicts provided enough combat drama for dozens of Iraq War movies.

I thought the movie really missed a golden opportunity in addressing the difficulties that warriors have in re-adjusting to civilian life.  They touched on it enough to show that Chris had a hard time.  Normal events like a van coming up behind him in California, or the rip of a pneumatic drill, or even a blank TV screen, could take Chris back to the battlefield.  And the viewer will understand why that is.  But they did it just enough to say “Chris had a hard time adjusting at home” and then quickly moved on.  I think that a whole movie could be built around this concept.  In fact, it should.  

We’ve seen three other war-related movies this year: Fury,The Imitation Game, and Korengal.  All were better films than American Sniper.  The first two stripped their story down to the important bits and let their characters develop to where I cared about them.  The real-world story of Chris Kyle, the real-world story of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real-world stories of veterans trying to adjust to peacetime American society, are more important stories than that of a fictitious tank crew or a genius fighting bureaucracy, but this movie didn't tell them very well.  Korengal is a documentary that explores the men who fought at a remote outpost in Afghanistan.  Not only is Korengal’s story equal in importance to American Sniper, but it makes you really understand the effect that war has on men.  Particularly the young men who bear the brunt of the fighting.  

So I was a bit disappointed in American Sniper.  It was a good movie, but not nearly as good as it could have been.  For me, the best war movie of the year was Korengal, then Fury, then The Imitation Game, and finally American Sniper.

But I really, really want to see a well-done film that explores the difficulty of readjusting to civilian life.

20 Feet from Stardom

The other night, we watched the movie "20 Feet from Stardom".  This is an Oscar-winning documentary film that focuses on background singers who stand, literally, 20 feet from the star of the show.  It features a few legendary singers like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, the Waters family, and Lisa Fischer, as well as the emerging artist, Judith Hill.  It's a powerful discussion of the music industry, artists clawing their way to the top, and what their definition of "the top" is.  I recommend the New York Times review for an in-depth discussion of the film.

Although the focus is on singers, the discussion is really about finding success.  And in this way, it is directly applicable to theater, visual art, and many other fields of endeavor.  It presents us with several women with phenomenal voices.  They live to sing, and the things they can do with their voices will bring tears to your eyes: the power, spirit, joy, and pain are unbelievably rich, sometimes raw, sometimes both.  They are incredibly powerful artists who can sing better than many (most?) big-name stars.  Yet none of them became a music star in her own right.

So you have to wonder, why is that?  How can somebody who can sing like that not be a star?  Part of it, I think, is the music industry, part is our culture, part is luck, and a big part is the individual artist's personal character.  And there's another question: does success always require being a star?  Or is there another way to define success?  Let me ramble on those thoughts for a few moments.

It's well-known that the music industry is cut-throat.  There was a bit of discussion in the film about Phil Spector's handling of Darlene Love and others back in the '60's, in which Darlene and others recorded songs that were then released under other groups' names.  Actions like this weren't uncommon and were cold marketing decisions.  Unstated in the film, but certainly true then and now, is that we expect our star singers to be really good-looking.  A singer may have a phenomenal voice, but if he or she is a bit pudgy or plain-looking, they don't get the attention.  (Adele is the current exception that proves the rule).  The music industry makes decisions on artists that will be promoted, get the press, get on late-night TV, and so on, based on what their money-making potential is perceived to be, and singing is only part of it.  I used the impersonal term "the music industry" deliberately, because it is an impersonal process.  Yes, there are people in it who are passionate about particular artists, but the the process as a whole is impersonal.

And it's not unique to music.  Think about baseball, for instance.  Every baseball player wants to get to the major leagues.  Few do.  For every major-league short stop, there are dozens in the minor leagues, and hundreds of good college players who didn't make the transition.  Why?  Well, some of the things discussed in this movie are the same things happening in baseball, just described with different words.

I mentioned culture earlier.  We live in a culture that is constantly bombarding us with things demanding our attention.  We can't possibly listen to every musician out there.  So we ignore most of them and listen to those we know we like.  Your iPod will probably show you that you listen to the same few artists, songs, and albums a lot more than you listen to most of the stuff that's on there.  So even though Darlene Love and the rest have pipes that can blow you out of your car, you're not going to listen to them if you don't know their names.

A comparison might be restaurants.  Say you're rolling down the interstate and getting hungry.  You get off at the next exit and there are two places to eat: one named Joe's and the other a McDonald's.  Which one will you go to?  You go to the one you know.

Another part of making it to the "star" level is luck.  Pure and simple: being in the right place at the right time, with the right sound, and being heard by the right person, is critical.  All the big stars, if they're honest, will tell you that.  And most of them are a bit nervous, because they know that there are lots of people out there with equal or better talent that have not been discovered yet, and they could be dethroned by the Next Big Thing.

But the major factor in whether an artist makes it to the top is the individual artist's character.  Talent and ability is the foundation, of course: if you don't have the pipes, you're not going to be a singer.  Having the will and the drive is the difference between the club singer and the star.  In the film, more than one person mentioned the "killer instinct" - that ability to go for the jugular when necessary, and putting the goal of being a star singer above all other goals.  But being the star means making lots of tradeoffs.  I've seen that first-hand in other career fields when people put their career first.  Families and relationships often pay the price.

One of the things that made "20 Feet to Stardom" so powerful was the exploration of what being a success was all about.  Most of the singers wanted the spotlight for themselves and thought of backup singing as second-tier.  One singer, though, thinks differently.  Lisa Fischer has a voice so powerful that she tours with the Rolling Stones to sing "Gimme Shelter".  She has a world-class voice.  Yet Lisa isn't interested in pursuing the solo dream.  She loves singing for itself, she loves singing with others, and loves building something beautiful on stage.  Other singers in the film said that Lisa doesn't have the killer instinct.  And Lisa will agree with that.  She found a niche that she loves.  She found her own definition of success and, with that, found her own happiness.  Lisa's not chasing a dream that somebody else defined for her.

And this translates directly to my own experience with art.  I've got a pretty good set of artistic pipes with my ability to paint and draw.  I've got things that I want (need) to say with those skills.  I tried pursuing the "successful artist" standard - which is generally defined as selling your work through lots of galleries, making lots of money doing it, and so on.  Turned out it wasn't for me.  The things I wanted to paint didn't sell, and the things that sold, I didn't want to paint.  I was like a folk singer being told that I had to record pop songs if I wanted to be a "success".  So, like Lisa, I redefined what success meant to me.  I'm never going to have a retrospective exhibit at the Met and none of my works will ever sell at a Sotheby's auction.  I'll be the painter's equivalent of a backup singer.  And I'm really cool with that.  

Creativity in Different Forms

Shortly after my last post, back at the end of December, my consulting business had a major project come in.  It wound up requiring a 7-day-a-week effort that is just now coming to completion.  I wasn't able to even go to the studio for a month.  One day, when I was a bit frustrated over the lack of time for making art, I saw a Facebook post from a friend that helped put it in perspective.  It was a quote from an anonymous source:

"I think everything in life is art.  What you do.  How you dress.  The way you love someone, and how you talk.  Your smile and your personality.  What you believe in, and all your dreams.  The way you drink your tea.  How you decorate your home.  Your grocery list.  The food you make.  How your writing looks.  And the way you feel.  Life is art."

Things have a way of slapping you in the face when you're ready for them, and I was ready for this bit of wisdom at that particular moment.  I realized that all my work on this project was, in fact, art.  And more than that, it was going to directly affect the lives of a great many people over the next five years, and many more indirectly for many more years in the future.

Okay, to back up a little and set the stage.  In my consulting work, I'm helping a couple of client companies put together contract proposals.  This particular proposal was in response to a call by a US government agency for companies who could provide specific services in developing nations around the world over the next five years.  One of my client companies is pretty well-positioned to do much of what was needed.  We brought in two other companies to fill in the capabilities that they lacked.  I wound up driving the effort to put the proposal together.

This was no small task.  The proposal had very specific requirements for what had to be addressed, which forms had to be filled out, what typeface and font size had to be used, the maximum number of pages, and so on.  Some of the requirements were contradictory: one form could not be filled out using the typeface and font size specified, for example.  And, since we were working with two other companies, I had to take their inputs and edit them into the required format and structure.

So how is this art?  Well, when I'm working in the studio on a "serious" painting, I've got something specific in mind regarding what I want the artwork to say.  Everything is crafted around that goal: the composition, things depicted, their relationships to each other, the play of light and dark, color choices, and on and on.  Everything is constantly being compared to everything else and tweaked to make the whole painting sing one harmonious song.  I'm not an impulsive painter, never have been, and cannot work that way, although I have great admiration for artists who can do it well.  I'm a linear thinker in the first place, and that trait was honed over 20 years in the Navy.

My proposal writing uses the same approach.  I had something very specific in mind, along with some given limitations of what I could and couldn't do.  Everything was crafted around the story that our team could do a fantastic job with any tasks that the government agency might need.  I built an outline (like building the composition in a painting), started filling in the major areas, added details, deleted less-valuable stuff to give more emphasis to more-important stuff, and in general made it as strong as I possibly could.  Then I sent it off to the client and partners for review.  When I'm creating a painting, I'll often ask a few people (my wife, for one) for their thoughts on the work-in-progress as I want to see if it says what I want it to.  In this case, it was very important that the experts in the client company and the two partners ensure that the proposal was (a) accurate and (b) compelling.  Then it went through revision after revision.  Again, this is something I do in a painting - there are many works where every square inch has been repainted multiple times.

So now we're down to the final few changes.  When it gets down to very minor wordsmithing, you know it's done.  And this one is very strong.  I'm extremely confident that we're going to get it.

I came to the realization a number of years ago that my goal in life is not necessarily to make a lot of paintings, but to create things that make a positive change in the world.  If I can do that through paint, wonderful, but it's not the only way.  This proposal we're finishing up will make a huge difference to the people who will actually do the work.  They're going to get the opportunities to work in places they've never worked before, and they'll be helping people who really need their services.  Even after the contract is over, the results of those services will be making a positive impact.  And this wouldn't happen if I did a crappy job with that proposal.

So I'm happy with the results of my work for the past month.  It was creative and it will have an impact.  But now I want to spend some make-up time in the studio!

Last Painting of the Year

Abdul Mahmood

Oil on linen panel, 16"x12"

Here's my last painting of 2014.  Obviously, it's not done from life - I based it on one of my "Faces of Afghanistan" drawings fleshed out with stuff pulled from a raggedy photo.  It captures the feeling of a real farmer that I knew in Afghanistan.

I did this as an experiment.  A few days ago, I saw some really powerful portraits from another artist.  I noticed some techniques he used that made the paintings so effective and wanted to try them out.  That artist was also a caricaturist.  As I've said before, doing caricatures is a great way to learn how to do portraits, because you zero in on the things that make each individual unique.  Caricatures greatly exaggerate those features, of course, but if the features are only slightly exaggerated, the result could be a really good portrait.

This farmer has a very narrow face in real life.  I played up the narrowness a little bit, and lengthened it just a smidge, and the result turned out pretty well.  I also paid a lot of attention to the colors, planes, and folds of his face.  These details seem to obscure the fact that the structure of the face is slightly exaggerated.

There were some other techniques that the other artist used that I tried to do, but couldn't.  They worked very well for him, but just felt wrong to me.  I've had that experience many times.  Copying another artist's work, or imitating his style, is a great way to add new tools to your painting toolkit.  But if the tool doesn't work for you, don't use it.

I hope you have a great New Year's!