A walk in the woods near Vlaminck’s house
Part 1
Colors, shapes, patterns, movement, is what we see. We have to put all that visual experience together to make what we see meaningful. A retinal image is meaningless without our input from our knowledge, past experience, and the context in which images appear. Sometimes we add some imagination ingredients but that is true for almost anything you might cook up.
It was mid-summer when the two of us put down our paintbrushes and walked along a narrow path in the woods near Vlaminck’s house.
There was a river close by that came briefly into view and then disappeared behind a stand of hardwood trees. The sun was a muted diffuse yellow as it slipped in and out from the grey clouds that drifted slowly across the sky.
Once again for Lisa and I, this was a looking, observing, seeing walk. Creative innards of art are what our minds do to transform visual experiences. Our interpretation and transformation of patterns, colors, lines matter far more than our technical skills. Anyone can learn how long it takes for oil paint to dry, or the structure of a color wheel, or glazing usi9ng watercolors. In science as in art, exercising technical skills without engaging the creative process is boring.
I laughed. “Lisa, should we take notes as we walk? I guess that would be nuts.”
Lisa smiled and responded. “Of course, we can’t take notes and concentrate on what we see at the same time. Here’s a thought. We can compose some notes and associations to what we have seen when we get back to the studio.”
Putting it all into words: Notes and associations
What can we write about our visual walk in the woods. How do we translate colors, forms, into words. How do we communicate what we see in words so that others can experience it.
Try describing in words Monet’s word lilies. Synesthesia here we come while listening to some cool music and keeping warm with some red orange streaks across the canvass. Hold the lemon colored hills. Too tart.
Synesthesia: Cool music, words that are seen as colors, colors that are described as words.
With the right angle, sunlight slipping through the trees falling on lush green leaves, and yet on some of the bushes the leaves glow white as if they were dipped in titanium white. Yet on the same bush, many of the other leaves remain a deep green (Russian green). Almost surreal.
Looking at the nearby river through the trees you see every color imaginable. Near the shore, it is as if the water had been covered by a very dark grey tarp. As we look out from the banks of the river the sunlight creates and an endless blanket of fragmented dazzling streaks of light covering almost the entire spectrum. Some of the slivers of light on the water are so bright that it is as if the color had been drained away. We are left with sparks of light. The impressionists were moved by what light does to landscapes, objects.
On the far shore, we see dark greens and blues floating in large streaks of colored bands just floating, hardly moving.
The light changes everything we see. Thought of Monet’s series of paintings of the Rouen cathedral. Depending on the time of day the shimmering colors on the walls of the cathedral transform an earlier image.
Vlaminck: Now what did he see on this river. Like his other Fauve buddies’ people, especially artists, thought they were nuts in how they used color and created forms that could easily have been the product of a child playing with art supplies for the first time. The colors that Vlaminck and his fellow Fauves used to portray what they saw were almost garish. Nevertheless, their attempts to create a primitive world of colors and shapes certainly got the view to sit up and take notice. Purple trees, orange rivers…. they deliberately expressed a primitive view of nature and its coloration.
Green comes in so many colors. Amazing. We were surrounded by green leaves in the forest. Sure, but which green? Lots of yellow in the green of some of the bushes closest to the river while the bushes nestled along the trail in the forest are a very dark green, almost a melancholy green.
What did that prick Nolde, the German expressionist, see when he painted skies, bogs, landscapes, the sea in such deep dramatic blues and blue-green watercolors. Incredible colors that virtually vibrate of the japan paper he used paper that swallowed layer upon layer of his watercolors. He saw colors that were not of this world. Did he see the sky like a shimmering dark purple drapery?
Mondrian went in a very different direction He squeezed all the color out of his landscapes and left us with a few lines and simple forms on a relatively unbroken white background.
Lisa mentioned once again that it is so hard to just describe what we see without dragging in our interpretations or considering how others might have depicted what we are looking at. Emptying your head and just looking leaving yourself out of the picture is hard to do.
Skies: So, the sky that we saw is nothing like what the classic 17th-century Dutch painters saw and painted. In their paintings, their skies had more grey and steel blue color. After all, a northern European sky is not the same as those in Maryland. Our sky is warmer than theirs with richer blues and maybe more yellows and orange.
The 19th-century American painters depicted mountains, skies, rivers in a dramatic light. They were overwhelmed by the new unexplored west. Their landscapes were almost heroic, majestic
The most extraordinary sky artist was Turner. He turned out dozens of watercolors of clouds in the sky in greys, off white, that are incredible and were an accurate depiction of English skies. He painted what he saw and what he saw was beautiful and dramatic. It was abstract expressionism expressed by nature. When you look up you can almost see what he saw endless changing textured patterns.
Streaks of brown and tan: We walked along the forest floor. Beneath our feet were streaks of off browns, dark greys, a few mushrooms as splashes of white some black streaks, dabs of green from fallen leaves not totally decayed. What would Jackson Pollack have painted if we asked him to create his version of the forest floor?
Talking with lines and colors
Part 2
My friend the child psychologist Eve Nolan asked me to try and experiment with her 9-year-old patient Sara.
“Experiment I asked, on a kid? Are you serious?
She said, ‘not really you=r kind of experiment. Let me explain and I think when I do what I am asking you to do might intrigue you. I have been seeing Sara for about 3 months, once a week. During all that time she has not said a word. Not one. She became totally silent the morning after burglars broke into her home and not only stole all sorts of valuables but terrorized the whole family, father mother and little brother. She continued to go to school, do her homework, didn’t lose her substantial appetite, played with her toys, video games but not a word. She did gesture like nod yes, no.
I thought that as an artist you might engage her in art like work on art together. Maybe she might talk with you with the art she produces. I agreed especially since I had the hots for Eva and she knew it.
I agreed and Eva told me that she would sit in on our sessions and take notes. That is if Sara wouldn’t mind if in fact she would go along with doing art with you.
And so, it began. Sara readily agree to do art with me and didn’t mind having Eve present. Sara was charming and enthusiastic. She got right into it. Maybe she was too excited doing art with me.
We started with finger paints. I told her, “How about we work on a piece of art together. Why don’t I start by putting something down on this paper and then you follow with what you want to add to the painting then it will be my turn and then yours and we can stop anytime you want. All you have to do is to take the art off our table and then I will know you have had enough. Also, I can then ask you if you want to do another finger painting and you can nod yes or no.
She gave me a big smile and we started.
On a large piece of thick white paper, I poured some orang paint and spread it around and make a large bright ball towards the top of the paper like a sun in the sky.
Without hesitation she poured some light blue paint across the paper underneath the orange ball. I wanted to ask her is that the sky but held my tongue (leave it be).
I then poured some green paint at the bottom of the paper and spread it in a wavy pattern imitating what hills might look like.
Sara looked at what we had done so far. She stuck her hand into a jar of red paint and drew something that clearly was a house, a small one in the lower left-hand corner. Clearly that was Sara’s house. Should we ask her about her house?