Success Story

In the early summer of 1996, I was in Sarajevo as part of the NATO peacekeeping forces.  I was at the headquarters and we had pretty much free rein to go around the city.  Actually, we were encouraged to.  Our boss believed that we were there to bring the peace, and that meant doing peaceful things, like going out to restaurants, shopping, and talking with locals.

One of the places I went was the library.  Before the war, this was a big, beautiful building that held irreplaceable documents, books, and artifacts dating back about a thousand years.  But sometime during the war, Serbian forces surrounding the city heard that military forces were using the library's basement, so they shelled the building and set fire to it and everything inside.  A group of us visited it one day and went inside.  It wasn't safe, of course - the building could have collapsed at almost any time.  Years later, I made this painting of the scened from just inside the front door:

Over the years, I've wondered what happened to that building.  I heard that they were trying to restore it, but hadn't heard anything else.  Until today.  Bosnia has completed the restoration of the old library and it is now reopened.  Here is what the library looks like now, from the same viewpoint:

Fantastic.  Just fantastic.

Truthiness in the Republican Debate

You don't listen to a debate of Presidential wannabe's and expect to hear a lot of the truth.  As the old joke goes, "How do you know when a politician is lying?  When he's talking!"  And debates these days are more about macho posturing than honest, substantive discussion.

So last night was the Republican presidential debate.  I didn't watch it as driving nails into my forehead would be less painful.  Political junkies suffered through it, though.  One of the more interesting junkies is Politifact, which fact-checks everybody's statements.  They published a report today that showed the number of statements each candidate made in six categories: True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire.  It was interesting to go through their data.

Being a bit of a geek, I decided to do an analysis of each candidate's answers and find out how they scored on the truthiness continuum.  For each "True" statement, they got 5 points; for each "Mostly True" they got 4 points, and so on, with 0 points awarded for a "Pants On Fire" answer.  Then I added up their points and divided by the number of statements they made.  The result was an average score of how true their statements were.  Here are the results:

Bobby Jindal: 3.44 (ie: about midway between "Mostly True" and "Half True")
John Kasich: 3.28
Jeb Bush: 3.26
Rand Paul: 3.07
Chris Christie: 3.01
Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham: 3.00 (this is the "Half True" level)
Mike Huckabee: 2.65
Scott Walker: 2.62
Carly Fiorina: 2.55
Rick Santorum: 2.34
Ted Cruz: 2.11 (this is about the "Mostly False" level)
Ben Carson: 1.57
Donald Trump: 1.54 (halfway between the "False" and "Mostly False" levels)

Very interesting.  Remember, this is only a measure of how true their statements are.  It doesn't consider whether they actually believe the nonsense coming out of their mouths.  And it doesn't consider a lot of other things that have to be taken into account in choosing our next Supreme Leader.  All it indicates is how true their statements might be at any given moment.

I find it very interesting that three of the top four candidates in the current polls are at the bottom of the truthiness scale.  What they're saying is mostly false, but the Republican base loves them for it.  What can you expect from people who watch Fox News?  They're raised on falsehood, and seem to know quality falsehood when they hear it.

Another interesting thing is that Bobby Jindal is at the top of the list, but he made very few statements (9).  I thought that maybe keeping your mouth shut would be a good way to score well, but then, Ben Carson made even fewer statements (7) and scored only a tick better than the biggest liar, Donald Trump.

So there you have it.  According to Politifact, about half the Republican field scores in the "Half True" or better side, while the other half don't, and three of those are in the "Mostly False" or worse category.  Including most of the leaders.

It will be interesting to do the same analysis for the Democratic candidates, if the national party ever lets them have a debate.

Plein Air Painting

With fall setting in, we have a window of really nice weather, perfect for going outdoors and painting onsite.  Today, I went out to the French Broad River.  This river runs through western North Carolina and into Tennessee, eventually flowing into the Tennessee River and then the Mississippi.  Here in Madison County, the river flows through the Appalachian Mountains, and it can get pretty spectacular.

If you're wondering how a river can cross the mountains, it's because the French Broad is one of the oldest rivers in the world.  It was here before the Appalachians were created 300 million years ago.  When the mountains grew, the river was already cutting its way through them.  That's one hell of an old river.

I went scouting yesterday to find some potential painting locations.  I found quite a few, actually - turnouts along the road where I could get down to the riverside.  Today, I left the dogs at home, loaded up the truck with my painting gear, and headed out to the first one on my list.  It's a gravel turnout only big enough for one car, with a very steep climb down the bank.  At the bottom, there's a flat area where people have built a fire pit and apparently had a couple of parties.  I set up my easel looking downstream and went to work.  After about an hour or so, I had one painting that turned out okay.

Then I turned the easel around so I was looking upstream and painted another.  It turned out okay as well.

I didn't sign either painting.  I need a bit of distance from them to do an impartial evaluation and modify as necessary.  That may happen tomorrow.  Or later - I may go to another spot on the river tomorrow instead!  Gotta take advantage of the great weather while you can, y'know?

Instagram

I recently set up an Instagram account for the studio.  Yes, I'm late to the party, but I'm not an early adopter of anything.  Hell, I still paint, by hand, with oil paints and brushes made from hog's hair.  That was trendy maybe 600 years ago.  Meanwhile, Instagram has only been around for five years.  I've still got another 595 years to go!

I started looking at Instagram after hearing an interesting discussion of it on a podcast.  (Podcast - that's so ... 2000's ...).  Instagram sounded like a great way to find new artists and to get my own work in front of new eyes.  So I jumped in last month, got an account, and starting poking and posting.  Not too much - one post a day is my max.  I found quite a few artists on there that I knew already.  Then I found out about this thing called "hashtags".  That opened the door.  I looked at what other artists were using for hashtags, poked those tags into a search, and started finding a lot of really good stuff.  And a lot of crap.  But hey, that goes with the territory when you're wandering around in a non-curated environment.  (And in a curated environment, too, unless you choose your curator carefully).  Then I started applying appropriate hashtags to my own postings and people started finding me.  Cool!

I'm still trying to figure out what works best for me.  Initially, I posted completed and signed artworks from a variety of series: paintings, life drawings, the "Faces of Afghanistan", and so on.  I've also added a few other things: shots of my palette (who's interested in that?  other artists) and detail snaps of works in progress, for example.  And I'm playing around, seeing what happens if I edit an older post, stuff like that.  So far, I have not yet crashed Instagram.

This system seems like a complement to my web page, studio Facebook page, and blog.  Instagram gets an image out to a wide audience quickly.  My studio's Facebook page is a running collection of artworks, interesting posts that I've found somewhere, and random comments.  My web page is like my professional portfolio.  Think of it as me with a jacket and tie, with a resume and business cards handy.  And this blog is a way for me to record things that I may find interesting and that only three people in the world will actually read.

So if you're interested in seeing my Instagram posts, you can find me at @skiprohde.

Automotive Deep Clean

I'm in the middle of doing a deep clean on my truck.  This is something I do about once a year for each of my vehicles.  It's a long, hard, pain-in-the-ass procedure, but it helps keep the cars looking good.  I got started doing this over 20 years ago and now it's a habit.  Sometimes I have to wonder if there's something everybody else knows that I don't, because in the 15 years we've been in this neighborhood, I've only seen a neighbor washing his car once, and he didn't even bother to wax it.  No, most people just run their cars through the local car wash and hit the "wax" button, if anything, and that's enough for them.

Not for me.  My cars gotta last, and that means they gotta look good and run well.  A good wax job will help the paint last longer, and painting a car is expensive.  You can buy a helluva lot of wax for the price of one paint job.  Since I'm a cheapskate, I figure it's worth my while to spend a little bit of money on the right stuff and then spend the hours necessary to do a decent job.

So what's involved in an automotive deep clean?  For me, five long steps.  First is a good wash.  Then there's the cleaning.  Then the polishing,  Then the wax.  Finally, the ancillary stuff: windows, windshield, tires, and interior.

The first step is a good wash.  You can do this at your coin-operated car wash, but I always do it in my own driveway with a hose and a bucket of automotive-spec cleaner.  That way, I go over the whole car and get a good idea of what needs attention.  

But this only gets the surface dirt.  It doesn't get the bugs off the front, doesn't get the tar and tree sap off the sides, nor the water burns off the top and hood.  If you run your hand over the finish, you'll feel lots of little bumps.  All that stuff should come off.  To do this, I use an abrasive cleaner that I get from an automotive paint store.  It's not as abrasive as rubbing compound, but it does have some grit to it.  Professional detailers will use this stuff with a high-speed buffer, but I don't.  It's too easy to burn through the paint.  Instead, I use a small terrycloth towel and go over all the paint by hand.  Rub it on like wax, and rub the tar and tree sap and other imperfections until they go away, and then buff the surface with another terrycloth towel.  I do this on the chrome as well.  At the end, it should be squeaky clean.  What you've just done is remove all the old wax, tar, and everything else from the surface of the paint.  

The next step is to polish it.  Many people think wax makes the car shiny, but it doesn't really.  The shine comes from a very smooth paint surface.  However, the surface of a car that's been on the road for a while isn't really smooth.  It's actually got high and low spots, tiny abrasions, and other nearly invisible imperfections.  That's why it squeaks when it's squeaky clean.  When we use a polishing compound, it is specially made to fill those tiny imperfections, so when it's buffed down, the surface of the paint is as smooth as it can be.  Again, the pros use buffers, but I use terrycloth towels to apply the polishing compound by hand and then buff it down.  I only do this on the paint, not the chrome.  At the end, the surface is very smooth and not squeaky at all.

The next stage is the wax.  This is really to provide a protective coating for the paint surface.  Use a carnauba paste wax and apply it with a damp application pad, then buff it down with yet another terrycloth towel.  I wax the windows (not the windshield) and the chrome as well - all that stuff is shiny and needs something to keep the bugs and tar from sticking.  

Finally, there's the other stuff.  I scrub down the tires and wheels to get rid of all that brake dust.  If the tires have raised white letters, I'll go over them with a scrubber.  Then the tires get a spray-on tire treatment that makes them a shiny black.  The shine doesn't last long, but the treatment puts some silicone on the tires to protect them from the sun and weather.  As for the windshield, I use Rain-X.  It makes rain bead up and run off, to the point where you don't need the wipers on the highway.  Wax does, too, but Rain-X lasts longer under the wipers.  On the interior, I wipe it down with Armor All cleaner, but not the "protectant" as it leaves a slick silicone feel that, to me, is just slimy.

And there you have it.  Way too much work (maybe 8 hours total per car), but it keeps my cars looking pretty good.

A Missed Opportunity

Back in June, an opportunity for a commission came up.  I won't say who it was with, except that it was a large organization with a lot of money.  They put out the word that they wanted seven large artworks, two of them 48"x60" and five of them 36"x54".  In addition, they wanted very specific themes for each artwork.  And they were actually going to pay for them.  What an unusual concept!  I could relate very well to their subject and themes.  So after a bit of a back-and-forth with the contact, I submitted a proposal in early July.  They were on a tight timeline and had said they'd make their decision by the middle of the month.

Which came and went with no word.  More weeks passed.  Still no word, even after I sent them notes.  It got to the point where I couldn't have completed the paintings in the time remaining, anyway, so I wrote it off.  But then they contacted me, asking about purchasing one of the paintings that I had submitted as a sample of my work.  Okay, well, if I can't get the commission, then maybe I can at least sell them one of my existing paintings.  So I gave them a discounted price for the painting, plus my costs for framing and shipping.  As it turned out, they only had enough in their budget for the framing, shipping, and my cost of materials, but then asked if I would do it anyway.

No.

Something like this is really frustrating for me as an artist.  First, it's obvious that they didn't do any homework before advertising that they wanted seven very large paintings with specific sizes, subjects, and themes.  A little bit of research, even just ten minutes on Google, would have given them something of an idea of the cost.  Had they talked with a couple of artists, they might have had an even better idea of the cost as well as the time required.  But they didn't.  As a result, I spent a lot of time preparing a professional-quality proposal, carefully discussing how my paintings would meet their requirements, how the process would benefit their target audience, what would go into the effort, and what the cost would be.  And it's apparent that the proposal was dead in the water before I even printed it out, because the shipping costs alone for the seven paintings were twice as much as their entire budget.

The second thing that's frustrating is how little value is placed on an artist's time and effort.  This organization was typical of so many in that they willingly pay professional-level fees for architects, engineers, and even day labor.  Yet when it comes to artists, they expect us to work for minimum wage or less.  Or, as in this case, to essentially give them the artwork.  Why is that?  Is it because they don't consider art work to be real work?  If so, how do we turn that around?

When I was in the River Arts District, I participated in the semi-annual Studio Strolls, in which we opened our studios to the public.  I spent a lot of time talking with people about my paintings and how they came to be.  Most people had some appreciation for what goes into the process.  More than once, though, I had somebody say something like "Oh, it must be so relaxing to be an artist!"  Yes, ma'am, it's about as relaxing as it is to be a defense lawyer or high-stakes stock trader, except it doesn't pay as well.

Unfortunately, very few people ever see the inside of an artist's studio and understand what it takes to make art.  It's a very private process - we don't work in large bustling offices where lots of people see what we do.  And, for artists like me who make two-dimensional art (paintings, drawings, prints, and so on), the end result is a still image.  These images tend to get lost in, and significantly devalued by, our culture's constant flood of advertising, posters, TV, billboards, movies, YouTube videos, and magazines.  Everybody's got a camera, and anybody can take a picture to WalMart and have it printed out at any size they want for next to nothing.  For many, a print from a cellphone snapshot and a painting from an artist's studio aren't fundamentally different - they're a nice design of colors and shapes in a particular spot on the wall.  So there's no need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for a painting when Little Ronnie's photo can be printed at Target for just a few bucks.

I want to make it clear that I'm not complaining.  I'm frustrated, yes, but about the larger issue of the value of an artist's work in our current culture.  I don't see that changing any time soon.  Still, I learned a few things during this event.  For one, now I have a good structure for a proposal the next time an opportunity comes up.  There are a couple of things that I would do differently in future proposals as well.  And the next time somebody wants to talk about having me do an art project, I'll make sure we have an understanding of the ballpark range for the costs before I spend a lot of time putting together a proposal.

Landscape Follow-Up

In yesterday's post, I wrote about some lessons learned from looking at landscape paintings by Peggy Root and figure drawings by Tamie Beldue.  Well, lessons learned are not worth a hoot if you don't put them into practice.  So today I tried some out.  Yesterday's post had an image of a crappy landscape that I did in Florida a while back.  Here 'tis:

Butler Beach Marsh

And here is today's effort:

Butler Beach Marsh, the Remix

I think this one is much better.  Instead of trying to depict too much, I made the marsh grasses into areas of greens with soft edges.  I also pumped up the value contrasts in the water and made the reflections better, both of the sky and grasses.  And the treelines in the distance are bluer.  The composition is no better, but that was intentional: I wanted to see the effect that this very different painting approach would have on the image.  So the lesson learned is one that all the good landscape instructors have been telling me forever: get the big shapes, don't try to paint everything, and mind your edges.

I'm a slow learner ...

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.