Now in progress. I have to admit that painting on this scale isn’t as difficult as I had feared. The techniques that I use on smaller pieces scale up pretty nicely, with some small adaptations. I have to walk on my tip-toes to work at the top of the canvas, but I had initially thought I would have to use some sort of scaffold to manage the top.

I’m at that point where the interplay between the banding and the all-over glazes has started: back-and-forth each time I work on it. The next trick will be knowing when to stop.

In progress… watercolor on paper.

This current body of work is all in greys, but they are mixed greys. Some are warmer, some are cooler, none are perfectly neutral. The combination of the pigments gives the grey some life — more like the greys observed in nature:

This shot was taken by Chris McMasters at Agate Beach in Newport Oregon. We all spent a day on the beach after a friend’s wedding, and it was typical Oregon beach weather.

Shown below is a shot of my palette the other morning. I’m preparing a glaze that includes:

Raw Umber
Pthalo Blue (green shade)
Pyrrole Orange
Zinc White

Mixed together and spread on the canvas in a glaze, the resulting color looks sometimes bluish, sometimes greenish, sometimes brownish, but never like a flat neutral grey mixed with black and an opaque white.

BTW, this glaze is going on the giant canvas I showed earlier… the seal has been broken, and I will post images of the work in progress soon.

If you’re not familiar with the Slow Food movement, it’s an organization started in Italy to counter the proliferation of fast food. From the website:

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

Here’s an excerpt from their philosophical statement:

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

What would the equivalent movement look like in the art world? (I hesitate to use the word movement — a loaded word if there ever was one in the art world.) Let me ask it another way: what would this kind of philosophical overlay do to the art world? I would argue that a lot of contemporary art is equivalent to fast food, with the exception of the pricing. A quick fix, easily ingested, but which ultimately leaves you wanting. In the art magazines and in galleries, I see a lot of art that could easily be described as “one-liner” art. Once you “get” it, the fun is over. But fast art is not cheap — often it’s the stuff going for stratospheric prices.

Without, for the time being, getting into the eco-disaster that is art materials — another day, another post for that — and without getting into fair compensation, I wonder what is art that tastes good?

I think a key differentiator is whether the work takes time to unfold as you view it — that is, you can’t comprehend everything that’s there within a few seconds — and whether an ongoing experience of the work is expansive. If, living with the work, you continue to discover new subtleties and it continues to spur thought — that might start to indicate a slow art.

My great white whale…

It’s a lot like writer’s block… but the paper is 49 square feet. This thing has been staring me down for weeks. It finally got to the point where I couldn’t really work on the surface anymore — it’s perfectly smooth. It’s ready to go, but I can’t bring myself to start in with color.