Category: Ann Clowe

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The viewer wants to know

Which is more important, narrative or design? The answer is yes.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, 16X20, oil on gessoboard, $1623 unframed.

Thomaston, ME, is a community of lovely, large Victorian homes that somehow maintain a whiff of the 19th century. It’s a little off the beaten path and the streets are quiet. I try to teach there at least once a season, focusing on perspective and architecture.

Ann Clowe and Cassie Sano had elected to paint the same house on Knox Street, an 1851 Cape that’s dwarfed by its attached barn (in the Maine way). It’s a strange shade of red that looks warm in some places and cool in others. Ann had painted it unsuccessfully three times before. She refused my suggestion that she look at other houses on the street. She was making her stand; she was going to defeat those red walls.

Victoria Street, 14X18, oil on linen, $1275 unframed.

One of the most common questions students ask me about architecture is whether they should include that door, that window, or that bit of moulding. The answer depends on the design and focal point of the painting. If one is focused on the house, the details are important. If the house is an incidental part of the landscape, it’s possible to reduce it to a mere silhouette.

Every painting—even stark hyperrealism—has some extraneous detail edited out. One of the great virtues of painting over photography is that we can eliminate the telephone lines, gas grill and other impedimenta of modern life. We do this both for design reasons and to make the narrative stronger.

Fishing shacks, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, $869 unframed.

Cassie, in asking me whether she should include a door, said, “but the viewer wants to know how these people get in to their house.” She’d answered her own question, and created a good test for whether to include something:

  • If it’s an important part of the narrative, leave it in.
  • If it’s not, make your choice based solely on design criteria.

In the 20th century, narrative became a bit player in painting; abstract design was key. Only the reactionary Wyeth family and a few others were still telling stories in their paintings. That impulse hasn’t totally died, but it’s a trend, not an eternal verity. Storytelling appeals to something so primary in our psyche that we’ll never eliminate it entirely from painting.

Three Chimneys, 12X16, oil on canvasboard, $1159 unframed.

Storytelling ought to include telling the unvarnished truth about our current reality. That sometimes includes gas grills, cars, and telephone poles. As Cassie joked, “the viewers might want to know how they get their mail.”

The red house has a handicapped-access ramp running to the side door. It made a brilliant diagonal slash of light in the painting, but it was hardly in keeping with the house’s original design. It also told a story that’s achingly familiar to many of us. If it had been my painting, I would have included the ramp, and even focused on it. It says something laudable about our moment in history: we want to keep the elderly in their own homes as long as possible.

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Speed and confidence

They’re a feedback loop—speed creates confidence, and confidence in turn generates speed. Once you enter that loop, your painting will change very fast.

From behind Rockefellar Hall, by student Carrie O’Brien (all photos courtesy of Jennifer Johnson, and I apologize for the color; they were taken indoors).

The ferocious winds yesterday kicked the surf up and blew the last remaining clouds out to sea. Unfortunately, it also blew the last warmth away. It’s a chilly 42° out there this morning. However, the beauty of autumn is cold nights and warm days, and it will be sweater weather by the time we lift our brushes.

From Frazer Point, by student Rebecca Bense.

I have a location in mind for each day’s lesson; yesterday’s was to be the Mark Island overlook. This gives us a beautiful view of the Winter Harbor Lighthouse and the islands of Mount Desert Narrows. Unfortunately, it’s on the west side of the peninsula, backed by a mountain. The winds were roaring in from the northwest. Becky and Jean, who got there first, told us it was an untenable situation; something or someone was bound to be blown down the rocks.

From Blueberry Hill, by student Ann Clowe.

Instead, we sheltered in the leeward side of Rockefeller Hall, which is a massive faux-Tudor pile that houses Schoodic Institute’s offices. That gave us a shimmer of water through a screen of trees—a classic Canadian Group of Seven subject, and one that is ripe for personal interpretation. Lesser artists might look at that deceptively-simple screen of trees and lawn and decide there was nothing there. My students embraced the idea that they were certain timeless forms waiting to be rearranged in any order they chose.

Surf by student Linda DeLorey.

The greatest impediment to good, clean painting is flailing around—not having a well-thought-out plan, or not sticking to it. A consistent painting process not only gives you a bright, clean result, it also allows you to paint a good field sketch in three hours. That’s not important because you can churn out more paintings, but because the freshness of alla primapainting lies in its immediacy. I have several students in this class who are at that point already, and the rest are getting close.

From Frazer Point, by student Beth Carr.

Speed and confidence are a feedback loop—speed creates confidence, and confidence in turn generates speed. Once a student enters that feedback loop, his painting will change very fast. It is more important to concentrate on painting a lot than on painting perfectly, a point drilled home by David Bayles and Ted Orland in their classic Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking.

From Blueberry Hill, by student Jean Cole.

Because these students have embraced process so avidly, we’ve been able to move beyond questions of paint application to more advanced issues like pictorial distance and the lost-and-found line. We’ve spent a lot of time working on clean traps and edges and avoiding mush. Today, we’ll be painting boats, which are the maritime equivalent of architecture.

And like that—boom!—another week at Schoodic is done. Dang.

Jack pines by student Jennifer Johnson.

After this, there’s Find Your Authentic Voice in Plein Air in Tallahassee, Florida, in early November. Today’s the deadline to register, but Natalia Andreevais painting in Apalachicola and has no signal, so you’ve got the weekend. After that, I have a few more plein air classes in Rockport, ME. From there on in, it’s all Zoom, Zoom, Zoom until the snow stops flying. For a year when nothing was happening, time has sure flown by.