The little things in life

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Most artists will tell you they love working big. We love making statement pieces that grab all eyes when people enter the room. These feel ā€˜important.ā€™ The bigger you go, the easier it is to keep the brushwork free. Yet, practically speaking, we paint many smaller pieces.

Iā€™ve been updating my website by adding still lives from a 6x8 show I did many years ago. My kids were of an age to chase the momentā€™s crazes, like Baby Monkey Riding on a Pig. Whatever idiotic thing they chattered about, I painted.

Some are dated, like the woman who fell into the fountain texting. The shoes could pass, but the cell phone is so 2011. In some cases, I canā€™t even remember the meme. What prompted me to paint a stuffed animal in a bowl, wrapped in plastic?

Falling into a Fountain While Texting, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

The power of small paintings

Today I almost never paint this small. Iā€™m not alone in that; itā€™s tough to love a tiny canvas. But by always going bigger, we ignore the power of small paintings. How many times are we in a museum and gallery and grabbed by a little gem in a corner? A small painting, artfully placed, can have the same impact as a monumental painting above the mantel.

Crista Pisano has made a career of painting jewel-like plein air miniatures, which is practical as well as aesthetically-pleasing. She doesnā€™t have to carry big, bulky frames to events.

From the consumerā€™s side, small paintings are a practical way to ease into art-buying. They seldom run more than a few hundred dollars.

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Why donā€™t painters tell more jokes in their work?

Painting can take itself way too seriously. I was reminded of this recently as I flipped through one of my sketchbooks with another small beingā€”my grandson Jake. At eight, heā€™s unimpressed that I can model rocks and sea accurately. What heā€™s interested in is Action! Humor! Dragons!

ā€œWhat have you painted recently that tells a story?ā€ I asked myself. Well, Ravening Wolves, and In Control (Grace and her Unicorn). But for the last decade or so, itā€™s been mostly straight-up landscape with the occasional figure or portrait commission thrown in. Recently, as Iā€™ve written, Iā€™ve realized this isnā€™t enough.

Baby Monkey Riding on a Pig, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Iā€™ll never be another Francisco Goya (whose Disasters of War should be required viewing for every voter) or KƤthe Kollwitz. Iā€™ve been spared firsthand experience with war, thank God. As a result, Iā€™m simply not that deep, or that dark.

Iā€™m sort of the Bertie Wooster of oil paintingā€”trivial, amiable, wooly-headed, and somehow always bobbing along into events that are bigger than me. That realization is what got me thinking about these old still lives. Thereā€™s something about the triviality of modern internet culture being taken as seriously as a portrait of the president that still makes me laugh.

Small paintings are a place to explore our odd ideas. I need more of that.