Tag Archives: Peter Granucci

Celebrating Humanity?

Posted by Aline on

In the context of the highly publicized current national and international events, humanity may not deserve a ticker-tape parade.  On the macro level, humanity has little to brag about.  But in the micro scale, the artist’s scale, things of beauty can still be found.  Three different nuggets have tumbled together in my brain to form this topic.

Nugget No. 1:  Have you ever stopped to consider what goes into the creation of a magnificent work of music?  I was listening to the broadcast of a Beethoven symphony last week when the enormity of the achievement struck me:  first, humans had to invent and perfect and pass down instruments; then an individual human had to come up with an arrangement of notes to be played on the instruments all together, only to be achieved after many years of practicing and learning and experimenting; then humans had to learn how to play the instruments and then how to play the notes as arranged by the composer,  which required many years of practicing and learning and experimenting; then it all had to be pulled together so that the individual musicians played a complex composition as if they were a single organism.  To bring the glorious sound to me, there’s the recording technology, the broadcasting technology . . . .  My mind boggled.  One symphony is an enormous human achievement–but an achievement by individuals working alone and together, all of the pieces contributing to the magnificent end.

Nugget No. 2:  For marketing purposes, I have lately been mulling over and over a catch phrase to use to describe my own artistic output.  Seeker of beauty?  Finder of beauty?  I was looking for some way to express the idea that I paint stuff that exemplifies beauty of everyday life, perhaps small stuff that ordinarily gets overlooked.  No messages, no “concept” other than beauty.  Sure, I’m an environmentalist, a landscape painter, convinced that we are hurtling toward our own doom by destroying our atmosphere, but I have no urge to paint, say, an oil refinery as a villain.  If I were to paint an oil refinery, it would be to discover the beauty of the shapes, lines, and values to be found there.  I went back to the mission statement offered to me by Cameron Bennett where he used the phrase “preserving humanity”.  I think he means preserving a record of humanity, since I do not know of a way for art to actually keep us safe.  Is there a dark thought inherent in the idea that such record might one day be needed?  No, I rejected such a gloomy interpretation.   Perhaps the combination of “preserving humanity” and “discovering/revealing beauty” could be expressed as “celebrating humanity”?

Nugget No. 3:   last night I attended the reception for a show of works by Peter Granucci.  The show is called “Memorial to Lost Species”.

Peter Granucci, Alone in Grief

Peter Granucci, Alone in Grief

The drama and anguish exhibited in the above image is repeated in perhaps 20 paintings, all with a human figure and many with the skull of a nonhuman creature. Peter created frames for each piece, which extend the grittiness and turbulence of the backgrounds of the paintings.  The captions on the paintings are pointed references to the losses of species, and the grief we, mankind, ought to be experiencing as a result–   humanity grieving for the species destroyed, grieving for the world lost, grieving, ultimately, for its own viability.  Peter certainly had a message, and he wasn’t satisfied with just one painting to convey that message.  Before inspiration took him into this deep dark place, four years ago, he was like me, painting beauty.  He celebrated the beauty of the female form.  His drawings of the female form are simply exquisite.  But when an emotion overtakes an artist, the output has to reflect it.  Think Picasso’s “Guernica”.  Now think Granucci’s “Memorial”.  The show will be up for the rest of December at the Art Gallery in New England College, Henniker, New Hampshire.

So I am a little shaken by Peter’s message.  And the events on the news.  How can I thank about “celebrating” humanity when humanity does so much that is wrong?

Nevertheless, I share with you the last two weeks’ of Monday life painting:

Better than Climbing Trees

Better than Climbing Trees

The title is a reference to the fact that, after modeling for us in the morning, Robbie was off to climb trees in the process of cutting them down.  That was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and that Wednesday we got hit with lots of wet, heavy snow that felled a lot trees over power lines–my family went without a Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Just thinking, a little adumbration perhaps?

A Lovely Nude

A Lovely Nude

We think this new model might be the answer to Rebecca’s “retirement” (have you missed Becky?).  Interesting how she and Robbie are in almost identical poses, leaning against the wall.

If you remember my very large painting of a cat awakening from a nap (“Nap, Interrupted”) that I started last summer but shied away from finishing because I was afraid of the whiskers . . .

Nap, Interrupted

Nap, Interrupted

here she is with whiskers.  I had to finish her because I promised her to the Currier Museum for the month of December.  Here is how she looks on the wall of the Museum’s Community Gallery, on the lower level where the classrooms and auditorium are:

IMG_0153

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the New London Inn in New London; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers). And at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester NH.

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

 

Two Works Progressing

Posted by Aline on

I painted a second layer on my Oscar Night piece entitled “Illustrating Heroic Effort”.  I tackled it intending only to tinker with the background, but the figure jumped under my brush.  Also, I thought I should let you know a little secret:   that painting does not come in the horizontal shape that I shared with you last week.  My composition required that horizontal format, but I didn’t want to use a large, expensive, stretched canvases for this short-term-gratification project, and I didn’t want to buy a custom frame for it.  My solution was to center the action on a 12×16 canvas and paint black voids at top and bottom so that the illustrated part looks as if it is coming to you via TV, where the wide-screen movies are presented with black bands top and bottom.

Oscar Night phase 2

Oscar Night phase 2

Here, for the sake of comparison, is phase 1:

Illustrating Heroic Effort

Illustrating Heroic Effort

The biggest change that I have made to Version 2 is the darkened background.  Peter Granucci has taught me that every well-designed painting is either mostly light, or mostly dark.  I was having trouble deciding which way I wanted to go with this one.  Version 1 is the mostly light version, with the dark accents (also necessary) being the shadow side of the figure.  This version 2 is a mostly dark version, with the highlights (again necessary) being the lit side of the figure.  However, the sky and ocean are also light.  Too much light perhaps, for a mostly dark painting.  I’m leaning toward returning to mostly light.  I think the black voids on top and bottom go better with the higher key value scheme.

After painting this layer, I received belated but good advice from Cameron Bennett, who, as an illustrator himself (which I had forgotten because all the courses I took with him were for doing portraits), took an interest in my ruminations re illustration vs. Fine Art.

Oops!  That term “Fine Art” beacons me down a detour that I eschewed last week but can no longer suppress (what?  you never mixed a metaphor?):  so many terms used in the field of art are terms that sound generalized  but that have come down to us with meanings very specific.  Fine Art is not art that is lovely or “fine” but something that is created to be sold in an art gallery or be exhibited in an art museum.  A lot of it is not lovely.  “Genre”  usually would mean a “kind” or “category” of painting; instead, it refers to a specific subject matter (ordinary people and places, daily life) for painting.  “Modern Art” doesn’t mean art that is modern, in the sense of being made today–not even in the sense of breaking away from classical traditions; Modern Art refers to a specific collection of nonrepresentational art made between 1900 and 1950, give or take.  (“Nonrepresentational” means, at least as I am using it here, without attempt or desire to accurately represent reality.)  “Contemporary Art” used to mean art that is made by living artists, but now it excludes representational art and includes dead artists, and is working its way toward meaning the nonrepresentational art of the period between 1950 and . . . ?    I wonder if this sort of morphing of general terms into terms of art (pun slightly intended) occurs in other fields as well.  I can’t think of any in the field of law.

Anyway, Cameron gave me some specific suggestions that I hope to implement before my annual Florida trip (next week).  Mainly, the hands are not sufficiently suggestive of motion.  It just looks like I can’t paint hands.  (Maybe I should insert well-painted hands in a box in the corner so as to squelch that impression.)  Version 2 might be a little better in this regard.  The increased blurriness just happened when I painted the new background over the hands.

My other Work in Progress is actually no longer in progress, but I have the in-progress photo to show you where I was with it at midpoint.  This was a  two-session pose, so I chose a larger canvas (20×16) for it.

Soft Treatment wip

Soft Treatment wip

At this point, I was intending to paint the pattern on the coverlet and was also prepared to fuss quite a bit with the yellow drape.

Formalism with Becky

Formalism with Becky

By the following week, I had lost interest in the coverlet and had become more concerned with unifying the color scheme.  So I slashed ruthlessly at the drapings.

I never did get around to painting the left side of the (unstretched) canvas.  I can cut away those two inches, but if I do, I’ll have to saw down a panel to mount it on and order a custom-sized frame for it.  I’m not sure it’s worthy of that much respect.  If only the facial expression hadn’t turned out to be so snarky!

Here’s how it would look as a 12×16:

Cropped Version

Cropped Version

Strangely, I find I miss that slashed coverlet treatment, which probably demonstrates how schizoid I am between classical representation and modernistic suggestion-of-reality representation.

Thank you for listening to me work this all out.  I see now that what I need to do is fix that snarky expression and then reevaluate the amount of respect due this painting.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH);  at the Gallery at 100 Market Street in Portsmouth;  at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter;   and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page.  If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using this feedback form.

Hello, Again

Posted by Aline on

To those of you who noticed and cared that I did not post anything last week, I apologize.  To those who never noticed or cared, I don’t know what to say.  Really?  Your lives did not seem emptier?  Mine seemed peculiar.  I am so used to the follow up discussion among my friends that it was as if we had lost a piece of our conversation template.  Perhaps I have gotten spoiled, so it was a good thing to experience a little deprivation for a short time.  I have no excuse for missing a week, if that’s what you are waiting to hear.  I suddenly realized on Tuesday that I had never posted the Monday blog, or indeed even taken the photographs with which to illustrate it.  Instead of bending myself into a pretzel getting a late entry out, I decided to lie back and wait for complaints, if any.  Too few complaints were received.  Oh, well.

The upside is all the extra material I have for this week.  The headline news is progress on the painting that I started a year ago of bikers racing to the top of Mount Washington.  Here is a link to what it looked like last  year.  I brought it out to work on March 23 because of Peter Granucci.  He invited us to his studio in Gilsum (where?–middle of nowhere but close to Vermont) for a workshop on stalled projects.  I had the perfect candidate in the Mt. Washington painting.  He forced me to do exercises of value studies for the painting, six of them, and claimed that each was better than the one before, and only then was I allowed to apply those principles to my big canvas.  So annoying to have to apply real rules when all you want to do is follow your instinct.  But my instinct had dried up, I guess, and that’s why the canvas had seen stashed away for a whole year.  So now Phase 2, which will I hope lead to 3 sooner than a year from now:

Phase 2 of Mt Painting

Phase 2 of Mt Painting

Another feature from Figure Fridays with Peter Clive is this 2-session study of Fletch reclining on the ubiquitous brown leather sofa.   I had two hours remaining when I finished the figure study, so I started a portrait too.

Reclining Male on Brown Sofa

Reclining Male on Brown Sofa

Portrait Fletch Mar 2013

Portrait Fletch Mar 2013

Compare the new portrait to this one from last month.  Am I getting better?

Fletch portrait on darker bkgrd

Fletch portrait on darker bkgrd

The Saturday group is back in business after two weeks off.  Here is the pick of that session.

Reading from back

Reading (Nook) from back

Finally perhaps my favorite of the group is this portrait of Grace.  I think I am finally getting the hang of something–the color of the skin, the modeling of the shoulder, and the light touch for the mouth.  I’m really fond of this one!

Portrait Grace Mar 2013

Portrait Grace Mar 2013

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at Stella Blu American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Studies, Ending, Beginning

Posted by Aline on

This is the last study for my large Mt. Washington Bike Race painting.  I numbered it “4” but in fact it is 5 if you count the two portraits in the series.  I have started on the big canvas, but the drawing is so rudimentary that I am saving it for a future post, when I hope I will have something of interest to display.

Meanwhile I would like to share with you a minor triumph–well, sort of a triumph and certainly a very minor one.  Last Summer (can’t believe it has been that long ago) in the Portraits course I was taking with Cameron Bennett, he crushed me with the observation that an eye was too low on a copy of a Serov portrait that he had assigned us as homework.  Here is a link to my report on that last effort.  Last week I finally got around to correcting that flaw.  I used a ruler.  I laid the ruler under the eyes of the original, then under the eyes of my copy.  I couldn’t find any discrepancy, yet I had to agree the there was something fishy about my eye.  Of course, the color was wrong, but could that obvious flaw have create the misimpression that the eye was too high or low?

Original, by Valentin Serov      

My copy of Serov portrait (A)

My copy, after retouching eye

Original Portrait by Valentin Serov

Finally, one more workshop piece, from our (NH Plein Air artists) most recent meeting of the Peter Granucci workshop series, which ironically, requires indoor practice from photographs.  The subject this month was snow.

 

Snow Shadows

At Last! A Good Plein Air Day

Posted by Aline on

Last week, I told you about the Eight Days of Weeks, National Forest celebration, that we NH Plein Air artists turned out for. This week, on Saturday, our numbers at the Flume hub were reduced to just Sharon and me but we celebrated the Weeks Centennial with personal highs–two paintings each that we were happy with. Above is the covered bridge over the Pemigewasset River on the grounds of The Flume. We got a lot of traffic going by, and it was fun interacting with the visitors. By the time we got hungry, the paintings were done. I took this photograph while we were packing up, just in case the painting got bought at the wet painting sale, but of course, no one showed up for the wet painting sale. Late last night in my studio, I took photographs of my entire week’s worth of artworks; I use articifial “full-sprectrum” light that I thought produced images that are good enough. However, the images of the bridge were not nearly as good as the one I took in the field. Makes me think I should stop trying to photograph my painting indoors.

After hanging around for the wet painting sale that wasn’t, Sharon and I headed farther north to enjoy the late afternoon light on Profile Lake, which lies below Cannon Mountain, right in Franconia Notch.

That high point, Sharon tells me, is something called “Eagle Cliff”, but I couldn’t see the eagle in it. Perhaps it has lost crucial parts. Sharon could still see an eagle, but Sharon sees images in just about anything–a habit somewhat annoying to artists whose clouds and rocks are the subject of her scrutiny.

Sunday we found ourselves together again at a Peter Granucci workshop in Londonderry at the studio of Elaine Farmer. The subject of this workshop was wet-surface reflections, including sand and pavements. We also got into the combination of reflection over what might be visible underneath the water.

This is my copy of a detail from a painting by Alfred Thompson Bricher, a White Mountain painter born in Portsmouth, NH. The painting that we copied is called “Time and Tide.”

This one was painted from a photograph. My photograph here is pretty awful–colors are off, but I think you get the idea.

Last Thursday was my last class with Cameron Bennett for a while. He had read my blogs and seemed much less critical of my efforts, but that may be my imagination–as I progress to becoming more critical myself, it may seem to me that he is overlooking egregious errors. Here is Rebecca again, from the other side:

This too was painted in the direct painting method that I used for the homework as described in last week’s blog.

And here is my final effort on that Valentin Serov copy (I erred last week when I identified the Russian portrait artist as “Kerov”):

I worked on this even after the last class last week, trying to get the right eye placed correctly. I had already put hours and hours into that eye, and considered devoting the whole blog this week to the Mystery of the Traveling Eye. I might revisit this topic when I have a better handle on it. If that ever happens! Right now I am so disgusted that I ‘m not even giving you a chance to compare my final (for now) copy to the original.

So it has been a full week for me, and thus wonderful.