Twenty-six years ago I left what had been the sigularly most important place in my life - your art studio at Whitman. Gladly, I have discovered equally important places in the ensuing years, but I often think about you and your influence fondly.

As your student I was surrounded by many talented and ambitious teenagers, but while it took me many years to achieve what I felt was a successfull painting, your teaching methods early on led me to believe that the day would eventually come.

Can you believe that as an artist now I still struggle with whether or not you would approve of my work?! Neither traditional in imagery or concept, it is nontheless influenced by your teaching. In fact, your “thumnail sketch” became the base for all my mature paintings and sculpture, which is made quickly, left rough, devoid of much color, and is small in scale.

Glad to say that I have had commercial success with much of what I’ve made. I teach now and then too, though not professionally, but always start out with some version of my first lessons with you.

So glad to have come across this site, and to hear about your continuing influence.

Fondly,

Leni

I am happy about your advice that different methods complement one another.

I introduced Karl to drawing 3-D when he was tiny. He was fond of drawing trains driving from the right to the left on his easel. One day, I added a street light in front of his train and Karl had a fit. “Mom, the light cuts through the train”. “No, Karl, the light is in front of the train.” Karl fought hard but then suddenly caught on. It was a special moment. From then on, we drew trains that started in the foreground and became smaller as they disappeared into the distance. Karl continued drawing while I became distracted with other activities.

Never too late to change. Thank you for your offer to stay in touch.

I find it interesting, especially because rooms are angular. I feel the corner deepens the space of a painting and could work with photography as well.

The painting was acrylic and had a kind of magical Rousseu feel to it (very naive, defined, almost cut out forms), with the Smithsonian castles and the brightly colored carousel at the bottom. What I remember is that my colors were really dull and you kept walking around to me (I was sitting on the gravel path) and said to intensify the colors in those reddish brown castles. And I had no fricking idea what you were talking about, because they just looked brown to me, but I dutifully kept re-mixing the color and laying it on. You must have come around 6 times over a period of a couple of days and still were not happy with the intensity. Finally you came over to my palette and mixed some cadmium red and burnt sienna and not much else and painted it on my painting. It took me aback because I was shy and had just started painting and was terribly intimidated by the whole process and didn’t know you. You put some of that red down and then you mixed a bright blue and lay that on the sky area and said “see how those colors sing?” or soemthing like that. And it clicked.

My memories are very vivid of those summers… very spotty but vivid… I recently gave a talk to some students at an exhibit of mine and I tried to tell them how powerful that summer landscape class was and explained “en plein air” to them. They were nonplussed. I consider those experiences to be where I learned to paint, where I learned about color and light in particular.

What were you thinking about that painting?

I have an opportunity to do a show in a space that has a corner that would be just perfect for this. It’s not quite symmetric, one wall is slightly longer than the other. And the walls are fair long. So I am now thinking about, say, seven related photos arranged in the corner, four on one wall, three on the other.

Did you do some experiments along these lines? Any lessons learned?

It seems like an awesome idea.

Yes…it is possible. I live in an area where there are long, wide vistas. I usually work on a canvas that is 24″ x 48″…but to really push the idea, I should probaly work on a 24″ x 96″ canvas, griding the canvas into peripheral sections. Treating each one as a separate painting and visually connecting the as one panoramic view. I would want the center of the painting to feel closer than the outside edges.

I would suggest remembering that there are 4 vanishing points, top to bottom, side to side…

Are you familiar with Hockney’s book, Secret Knowledge? He has a number of photo collages of the figure that might be interest to you.

The artist Rackstraw Downs has worked in a similar way.

Three dimension as an illusion in painting has been it’s “Holy Grail”.. Drawing can help with perspective as long as you concentrate on value over color. Color can be ambiguous, it doesn’t occupy it’s space…In using color, understanding the sculptural properties of color is important…and that is relative…

Holbein was known for experimenting with the illusion of dimensions as in his painting the Ambassadors. Optics were important to the artists of that time period.

Poussin, as many of his collegues, made minature 3 dimensional landscapes to paint from.

Years ago I completed a painting of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Mill, in Pittsburh, Pa. It had a long vista of train tracks. To paint it, I realized that I would have to go beyond my peripheral vision. I decided to try and capture 3 dimension by painting two canvases and displaying them as a dyptic in the corner of a room instead of on a flat wall as is the traditional presentation. So the painting was in the shape of a “V”. I thought that after I completed the painting, I would continue to work exploring that idea, because of the ideas uniqueness. I felt I was explaining the feeling of three dimension. Unfortunately,I sold the painting, before I ever displayed it, and haven’t explored the concept since then.

I would be interested in hearing of your ideas and your experiments.

I grew up at a bay of the North Sea, unknowingly, spending a lot of time training my eyes looking over wide areas. Now, I live near the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan, another fascinating 3-dimensional landscape. My plan is to draw every day to learn to capture 3-dimensionality and then learn how to paint.

My question is whether you think that in portraying space 3-dimensionally I could learn to use subtle distortions to bring wider area into view and still have it look plausible.

Why paint? Photography is a very descriptive art form. Does it have the potential and power to superceed painting?

I don’t believe it does, but many people do.

Painting and Photography …They are both valuable art forms. Like my sketch book, I carry my Fugi S2 with me every where I go. My Fugi is a great idea tool, like my sketch book….but it is different. Perhaps a little distant, a little remote and less personal to me. I prefer ideas from my own hand. As Picasso said, Do you want to know what is in an artist’s mind, watch the artist’s hand. In Drawing & Painting, I can feel the measurement of a line or two colors. I know it’s distance, it’s temperature…. I don’t in Photography.

For me visual rythmn, the dance of the eye is important. It is all about the dance and how the eye acquires information and the mind defines and interprets it. That is where Painting and Photography are different for me.

Photography is a very basic principle, it is light imprinted on film. It is like a footprint in the snow. It isn’t the foot… There is something some what unatural about the photo. I don’t feel I see the kind of image represented in a photograph. That is why I paint.

Your question is why I choose not to use the photograph. I believe in personal interpretation and personal experience, feeling the cold…Funny, my camera doesn’t work in the cold.

To argue that one artform is more important than the other, is not important. Every artform expresses something that makes it unique. If I felt that the photo was the most accurate form for expressing my way of seeing, I would employ it as my primary artform.

In guiding students, I knew through personal experience that they needed to value their unique vision. I as the validator (teacher), encouraged them and you, to not rely on the photographic image because it was too confining, and at their age it would limit their ability to see beyond the image.

Life’s experiences are a great teacher,I can share my own experience as a commercial artist. My very first client brought me a job to draw an airplane unlike any that could be recognized as being built by a specific company. I drew the image from my imagination and was applauded for my creative ability. I did not rely on any outside sources.

Then I was introduced by the art director to the morgue file (photographic ideas) and I never again produced anything that I felt came close to relying on my own imagination.

This is one of the reasons I left my job as a commercial artist and went into teaching art.

I realize that many artists today rely on the photographic image and they use it in a variety of ways. It isn’t a problem for me when students who are working with me ask why I don’t encourage working from the photographic image. I just tell them that I value their ideas more, when they are confident to express things the way they see them.

I always would tell them, “You can’t take a picture of what is in your mind”

Here’s a question for you that I have had for awhile (and Karl inspired me to ask based on his recent posts “Why Paint?”):

I feel like you steered your students away from painting/drawing from photgraphs in an adamant, almost religious way, that to work from photos was somehow untruthful. And part of me totally gets that approach because photos do flatten things out and they are pre-composed images, taking away a lot of the looking and thought process (in particular if the artist did not take the photo). And when beginning to learn to draw, I absolutely believe in working from life only.

I read with interest that you consider your students to be involved in a contemporary movement of some kind - “The work I assigned was based on contemporary movements. I felt my students were a part of that movement and had something to add. ”

I finally shook my apprehension of painting from photos a few years ago and found it opened up huge possibilities for my work, both in subject matter, intimacy of points of view, catching ephemeral images, etc… And looking at how much digital culture has influenced how we see and contemporary approaches to painting, what are your beliefs about using photography/video now? How can we be truly contemporary without acknowledging (and perhaps working from) the photographic/digitally generated image? Obviously for your work, you still beleive strongly in direct observation with little or no mediation. Do you react to it by believing even more strongly in the handmade, directly observed art? And how do you approach that with students now? And are there any contemporary artists whose work is obviously influenced by digital media that interests you?

Ok, that was several questions, but I am really curious so I hope you can answer them…

Your fan, Leslie

Thanks for the great tips. Solid gold.