Signs of recovery?

The post-COVID world is uncharted territory. Navigating it successfully will require local knowledge and lots of common sense.

Blueberry Barrens, 24X36, oil on canvas, Carol L. Douglas

Easter Sunday was the anniversary of my arrival back from our ill-starred trip to Argentina. I left one America and returned to another. It was a nation largely without toilet paper. A year later, the phrase ā€˜flatten the curveā€™ is mostly forgotten. We still donā€™t know how weā€™re going to reintegrate our society, but the possibility seems to be there.

My mother was a fan of investment guru Peter Lynch He was famous for the phrase, ā€œinvest in what you know.ā€ Lynch believed in the street-smarts of Average Joe. He thought individual investors were potentially more capable stock-pickers than fund managers, because they could see the impact of new products on their day-to-day lives. (On the other hand, he famously bought Dunkinā€™ Donuts stock because he liked their coffee, so he wasnā€™t always right.)

Bridle path, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas

Any small gallery or artist in business after a year of COVID is navigating uncharted waters. Our local knowledge and our street smarts are going to stand us in good stead, if we listen to that inner voice called ā€˜common sense.ā€™

I started teaching virtually on April 28 with the coaching and encouragement of my friend Mary Byrom. The following month, I bought an annual subscription to Zoom. Itā€™s had a tremendous return on investment. For most of the past year, my two classes have been waitlist-only.

Best buds, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, available.

Lynchā€™s worldview was, in fact, borne out in a small way in this tiny niche business. Long before the big art publishers realized the market for virtual learning, teachers like Mary and me were teaching on Zoom.

As I approach the one-year anniversary of my virtual classes, Iā€™m seeing a slight softening of demand. My street smarts are tingling again.

  • Is this the beginning of a return to normal, where we take classes in real life?
  • Have bigger vendors vacuumed up the demand for virtual instruction?
  • Does the approach of good weather mean people would rather paint outside?
In a slippery landscape, we must tread carefully. We should understand why thereā€™s a shift before we start reacting (if indeed any response is necessary). But Iā€™m cautiously hopeful that this is a tiny step toward normalcy, where we can go to school, church, and each otherā€™sā€™ homes with the free-and-easy nonchalance of the past.

By the way, there are two openings in Monday nightā€™s session starting next week. If youā€™re interested thereā€™s more information here.

Monday Morning Art School: designing value masses

How could I have even taken a photo this bad, let alone make a painting out of it?

Early November: North Greenland, 1932, Rockwell Kent, courtesy the Hermitage.

The focal points of a painting are not necessarily the subject. In Rockwell Kentā€™s Early November: North Greenland, above, our eyes go first to the iceberg in the foreground. Kent has made it the most luminous, warmest part of the scene, and set it off against the briny depths. Next, we look at the hillside behind, which is almost as bright as the iceberg. Only after that does our eye travel to the human activity at the bottom. Here weā€™re arrested by an ageless story: man wrestling against the vast power of nature for his very survival. We spend a long time looking at these tiny fishermen, which we wouldnā€™t have done had they been what we noticed first.

Kent has borrowed a technique beloved of Pieter Bruegel the Elder four hundred years earlier. In his Census at Bethlehem, all the bustle and contrast of the midfield drive our eyes down to the least important part of the painting, the lower left corner. We nearly miss the Holy Family and their donkey, in the center bottom. Just as in the Bible story, the critical event happens in an unimportant place.

The painter must get used to thinking in terms of composition instead of subjects. Every representational painting has (we hope) a subject, but if we just drop that subject in the center of the canvas, there will be no drama or order to the painting.

Why did we read Rockwell Kentā€™s painting in that order? Because the light and dark masses drove our eyes inexorably through the painting in a planned way.

Often the beginning painter is fixated on the details, but itā€™s the value masses that will ultimately carry the painting. Start by figuring out a way to stop seeing detail. Iā€™m slightly nearsighted; I take off my glasses and detail dissolves. Those of you blessed with better eyesight have to squint. But if you do so, youā€™ll realize that you can easily fool the brain into seeing big shapes rather than detail. Minor differences in values disappear.

A really bad photo of a cypress swamp near Marion, Alabama, taken by yours truly.

Itā€™s a little more difficult when working with reference photos, where the detail is always there, teasing you. Above, Iā€™ve posted a snapshot I took in a swamp in Alabama. In terms of subject matter, it interests me; Iā€™m from the north where we donā€™t have trees with knees. In terms of composition, itā€™s awful. How could I have even taken a photo this bad, let alone make a painting out of it?

I have to address three questions:

  1. Where does the visual strength in these cypress knees lie? Thereā€™s power in almost any image, although you sometimes have to dig for it.
  2. How can the picture plane be broken into light and dark passages?
  3. How will I crop my picture to strengthen the composition?
Shapes that I can base a painting on.
I identified two things in this cypress swamp that are powerful: repetition and reflection. I based my sketch on them, but I could just have easily emphasized the diagonal shadows. The photo is peripheral in this design phase; it was there primarily to give me a source for shapes and motifs. My initial drawing looks more like a Clyfford Still painting than anything ā€˜realā€™, and thatā€™s a good thing, since it means my focus was on design, not facts. Get that right and itā€™s a relatively simple matter to apply realism to the stronger abstract masses.
Looking at this on the computer, I really wish I hadn’t chosen the crop I did. I’m blaming the lack of coffee and the dog, who’s begging for a walk.

Will it paint? Not with that crop, but it’s an easy enough fix when I’m still at the sketch stage.
Give me back that breathing space! (And sorry about the terrible photography.)

Itā€™s Easter Monday, or Dyngus Day, as we observe in Buffalo, NY. The dog is pestering me, and I have things to do and places to go. But for now, I have a pattern of lights and darks upon which I can hang a painting.

Courage, friends

If you have a fear-hangover from COVID, perhaps Easter is the season in which you should make a conscious choice to drop it.

Working together, our best intentions can yield some astoundingly damaging results. That, in so many ways, defines the past year. With largely good intentions, weā€™ve managed to significantly dent the worldā€™s economy, infringe on personal liberties, isolate the elderly and marginalizedā€¦ and still COVID marches on.

Itā€™s been rotten for the body religious, which was already hurting. Here in America, we reached a grim milestone in 2021: fewer than half of Americans consider themselves to be members of a church, synagogue, or mosque. Thatā€™s shocking for the nation widely considered to be the most religious in the western world.

I learned this week that St. Thomasā€™ Episcopal Church in Rochesterwill remain shuttered for the second Easter in a row. As I wrote about galleries last week, I doubt that many institutions will survive two years of closure.

In summer, 1999, I was asked to do a set of Stations of the Cross for St. Thomasā€™. By that September Iā€™d been diagnosed with colon cancer. I had four kids, ages 11 to 3. My primary goal was to stay alive long enough to see them raised.

Finishing an art project seemed frivolous, and darned near impossible. I was especially disinterested in one that dealt with the violence leading up to the crucifixion. The following year was a late Easter, so by the time Holy Week arrived, I had a rough version finished.

I drew in my hospital bed, from my couch, during chemotherapy. I wasnā€™t at all engaged or enthused. When I was well enough, I arranged a massive photoshoot and took reference photos. The final drawings were finished two years later. They werenā€™t my best work, but at least they were done.

And yet, theyā€™ve been in use for two decades. Every Holy Week, I got notes from a parishioner telling me how much they appreciated them. Iā€™ve certainly gotten more meaningful mail about them than any other work of art Iā€™ve ever done.

Except last year. Last Easter, the churches of America were closed. Their people observed the rites from afar. That was appropriate then, but weā€™ve lived out our penance for a year now. Itā€™s almost unbelievable that the faithful among us donā€™t see the urgent necessity of gathering together to celebrate the risen Lord, this year of all years.

But thatā€™s getting ahead of ourselves. Today is Good Friday. It commemorates Jesus taking the punishment intended for all mankindā€™s sin onto his own, all-too-human, body. It culminates in death and hopelessness. Thatā€™s what the Stations of the Cross are about, whether theyā€™re in the Catholic, Episcopal or any other tradition.

Are you still afraid to go to church on Sunday? Itā€™s hard to reconcile that with the promise of eternal life that Easter represents.

Iā€™ve traveled as much this year as any year. Iā€™ve taken sensible precautions, including at least a dozen COVID tests, all of which were negative. Although I have the same fears and griefs as anyone else, thereā€™s a part of me thatā€™s simply not afraid. I respect death; heaven knows Iā€™ve seen enough of it. I have lost people I love to COVID. But I choose life.

Fear is a prison, a mighty weight, and the brake that stops all forward motion. If youā€™ve been left with a fear-hangover from COVID, perhaps Easter is the season in which you should make a conscious choice to drop it.

The Stations can be walked virtually here:

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Set 5