My Chronicle as an Artist

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

∞T.S. Eliot

26: Birds of Paradise

Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Birds of Paradise ©️2020LSAuth — ***Birds of Paradise*** *©️2020LSAuth*

I have never seen the exotic birds named Birds-of-Paradise, native to eastern Australia and Papua New Guinea. But while in Santa Monica, CA, two Januaries ago, I saw the plants by this same name on every street. So many green stalks arced over neighbouring yards and sidewalks like the outstretched necks of cranes and herons. Their flowers were uniquely beautiful: Brilliant yellow-orange petals mimicked feather plumes, vivid blue-violet arrowheads targeted unsuspecting prey, and sword-like variegated bills waited to skewer the fallen victims.

I sketched and painted these plants often that month of January. I found their beauty beguiling because there was a subtle edge of malevolence in their elegant, yet hostile, gestures. I had to stop and stare at them every time I walked outside our building. I soaked up their color and warmth in hopes that it would sustain me for several months when I returned home to the dreary Connecticut winter.

I have been thinking about this place called paradise. I have been there millions of moments in my life. Seeing something beautiful brings me there, even if the experience dissipates quickly. Paradise starts with that beautiful sight or sound, which is usually one in the natural world. And then, often, that initial sensation triggers a memory of another time, another place. Paradise and visual poetry are, for me, one and the same.

Over those few weeks in Santa Monica, the birds of paradise brought me to the endless acres of the green and ripening cornfields of my childhood, when my parents and siblings would take occasional Sunday afternoon drives to the country in our overstuffed station wagon, with all the windows rolled down, while we sang the familiar repertoire of family songs. This freedom of movement along with the heady smells of summer were experienced as pure joy as far back as I can remember.

When I walked those residential streets of Santa Monica, the yellow-crowned floral heads with their limb-like, green stalks walked with me to where my destination always ended — at the beach. There, the gulls screamed with mixed cries of greeting and outrage, depending on whether they felt my presence to be benign or aggressive. The early evening stars twinkled their replies to the lights on the distant pier. When I walked along the water’s edge, the sounds of birds and water melded with ocean spray, salty air and sand — creating a roaring primal music which swept me along with the tides. I was cleansed, uncluttered, and detached from earthly concerns. I was a swirling speck of grit in a timeless universe. Dreaming.

I was in paradise.

18: Walking Back

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

- Albert Camus

All But the Blue Heron ©1985 LSAuth. — ***All But the Blue Heron*** *©1985 LSAuth.*

My Princeton life was somewhat monastic—at least in the first year of 1984. After filing several applications for teaching positions in various local art centers, I set my focus on creating a body of work for an art show which was scheduled to open in Chicago the following year of 1985. It was to be a show of my 3-D figures. I had also received a 6 week artist residency 30 miles north of Chicago which spanned the time of this exhibit. As I looked forward to these events in the ensuing months, I was acutely aware of how much I missed Chicago.

In the Clearing ©1985 LSAuth. — ***In the Clearing*** *©1985 LSAuth.*

In the meantime, nature beckoned outside my studio window. Princeton had these dark & lovely, leaf-lined paths through the Institute Woods, and I walked into them almost every day. This is when I saw my first GreatBlue heron wading in a pond in the clearing, and many songbirds of which I was to learn the names over the next few months. Families of ravens & herds of deer were always indignant over my coming upon their thievery in the fallow corn fields where my woods walk terminated.

Princeton Crows & Corn ©1985 LSAuth. — ***Princeton Crows & Corn*** *©1985 LSAuth.*

Reluctantly, I had to turn around and go back home to work. Often, I would find some treasure that caught my eye lying on the understory: a fragile chrysalis, or a whitened, sere & delicate, animal bone, or a perfectly gnarled tree branch. I would take these gifts home with me — models to draw & paint or to incorporate into my figurative assemblages. Although I was often solitary, I was never lonely.

Keepers of the Corn ©1985 LSAuth. — ***Keepers of the Corn*** *©1985 LSAuth.*

17: A Brief Flight to the Present

***StarlingNight ©2018 LSAuth. 36” x 48” oil.***

One of the motivations for starting this blog was to go back and organize years of my work so that I could reflect on the themes that have remained constant over time. It also gave me the opportunity to post old work as a visual backdrop for viewers to see how I arrived at my present.

I think StarlingNight has been in the making all my life. The image of the starling has significance to me on so many levels starting with my childhood. Even as an 8-year-old, I knew many people detested this flock bird, and my father was no exception. He loved the cardinals that frequented the feeders he so faithfully filled. The starlings would swarm in occasionally, chasing the polite & lovely songbirds away. My brothers were instructed to shoot at "the black devils" with their BB guns. Before they could set their sights I would run outside and scare them away.

I always thought starlings were beautiful—not really black but magically iridescent, with sprinkles of turquoise, ochre, and alizarin crimson, like holiday cookie decorations. And in the winter, the markings became white polka dots like heavy snow flakes and distant stars.

WinterStarling ©2015 LSAuth. — ***WinterStarling*** *©2015 LSAuth.*

Later at age 20, in a summery 3000 mile drive across the country, I witnessed my first murmuration somewhere in the Midwest. I was transfixed — I thought I was seeing a tornado, only the darkness lifted off the ground and swarmed in magnetized clouds of swirling designs. It was as if the sky had become an immense Wooly Willy backdrop and some invisible force was holding the magnetic wand. These formations were in continuous movement which never repeated in design until it floated away out of my field of vision. It still ranks as one of the most spectacular natural wonders that I have ever experienced.

When I realized that this is what starlings do, I felt even more validated for loving them for their beautiful plumage. Why murmurations occur and how they perform in such seamless perfection is still not precisely understood by scientists. It remains a mystery. Even when the why of this event is fully known, it will remain magical.

Murmurations ©2015 LSAuth. — ***Murmurations*** *©2015 LSAuth.*

In StarlingNight, the 14 starlings are iconic of my parents, my 11 siblings, and me. Even as a child I felt very protective of them — of the starlings, as well as my family. We were like a flock of starlings — noisy, noticeable, & numerous.

I wanted the landscape setting to be suggestive of the present walk I take almost every evening, even though it is generalized to represent all the tree-lined streets I hold in my memory. Past & present, birds and setting, are interwoven by the network of dabs & strokes of opacity & transparency. This painting was difficult for me to say: You are finished, release me.

I have often thought that my life can be measured by the number of miles I have walked, especially in the moonlight. I have never ceased to marvel at the everyday natural world and its fragile & sometimes, malevolent, balance. There is so much beauty in the ordinary, and the continuous movement of all living things sweeps me along in the knowledge that I must keep moving & changing also. In the process of living, I often lose hope & inspiration which I need desperately in order to be productive. But then, sometimes, I discover something serendipitously— like seeing that a black starling is full of color & light—or that on a fortuitous, star-filled walk, all my feeling for life can be distilled into one smoky & luminous night.

TransitionStarling ©2015 LSAuth. — ***TransitionStarling*** *©2015 LSAuth.*

14: Interiors

So it is now 1982. I have my master’s degree. I taught a life drawing class & am now teaching a painting class. I also have a part-time job working for a dentist pouring plaster models in his lab. I am painting every day but the days are never long enough. My beloved studio companions, a parakeet & 4 canaries, are often my models — and when they are, I travel inward, to a quiet but endlessly expansive world.

I kept numerous sketchbooks at this time. I knew that my days remaining in Chicago were probably numbered — Michael was finishing his doctorate and would soon be interviewing for academic positions at universities all over the country. I wanted to document my neighborhood surroundings as much as possible, from inside & outside. I was to have 2 years in this home & studio after leaving art school, and I wanted to take note of every day before saying goodbye to my beloved Chicago.

13: Unglamorous but real...

After moving my work space out of the Institute into my apartment, I managed to complete two 10-foot long paintings by tacking them onto the available wall space in my home studio. These canvases completed the body of work I created during my first 5 years in Chicago. These years were the foundation upon which I built my convictions about how to keep learning what I needed to learn—what I needed to keep, what I needed to change or reject, what I needed to seek out. Besides learning from visual artists, both the living and the dead, it was the poets who gave words to my feelings back then --and now.

“…With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate—but there is no competition—

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

T. S. Eliot. “Collected Poems, 1909-1962.

As my new work environment changed from an urban & more public space to my more private living space, my vocabulary of images grew to incorporate recognizable objects— wax bird statues on my worktable, rooftops from my studio windows, trees at the end of my street. I became more aware of particular interior spaces, and specific places & objects in my more local surroundings. These images became my sources of inspiration for my next body of work. For practical reasons, my paintings became more moderately sized ( 4-5 ft as longest dimension). Here are Anchored Spirits, Portal, Birds of a Feather, and Nests of Waves.

10: ...and Larger.

I had to use the full length of my wall space. BreakingThrough is roughly 9 feet long and BlueWave is over 10 feet.

9: Painting...large.

My first paintings were small—often not more than 14" wide. I was working in a variety of mediums with prints, drawings, and paintings, so I chose a smaller format as a constant — it was a practical way to create a larger body of work.

When I started to paint exclusively, I moved upstairs to the painting department and had my own 12 foot square studio space. One of my mentors said "why don’t you scale these up in size — you might not get another chance to paint this large for a long time…"

For the remainder of my time at the Institute, I did just that. The tools of my trade were large brushes, lots of oil paints, and a step stool to stand on. I built my own stretchers in the wood shop. I stretched, primed, & gessoed my own canvas. I learned so much from my colleagues and reading Ralph Mayer’s The Artist’s Handbook (the bible). I also had to work totally differently— I could no longer sit but had to stand and walk back & forth just to see. And as my working method changed, my imagery evolved.

These, BeverlyRevisited ( 4’ x 6’), and Firefly ( 90" square) were a couple of my first smaller, large canvases.

8: Painting

I started my artist life thinking that I wanted to be a printmaker. This idea took root as an art history undergraduate, writing a research paper on 2 Picasso etchings, which I just loved( The Frugal Repast & The Dance of Salomé). My professor suggested that I take the one & only studio class in printmaking (at that time) so that I could more fully understand Picasso’s works from the artist’s point of view. Her suggestion was life-changing. From that first studio class on, I dropped the idea of becoming an art historian in order to devote full time to making art.

I loved learning the magical technical processes of revealing and building an image. As I mentioned previously, printmaking felt so analogous to my tailoring and needlework projects. But the technical process didn’t sync well with my visual needs, which were still at an incipient stage. I knew that I needed to start with more open ended chaos and then find my way to a unified ending. For me, it always felt more natural to start a work with an idea which developed intuitively throughout the entire time of its making. In printmaking studios, I felt increasingly frustrated because my technical skills were more orderly, & more linear, than my rather circuitous creative process. I envied some of my colleagues who started their etchings or silkscreens with a finished prototype, the color and tonal issues fully worked out, and then went on to complete their editions perfectly, just like their original model. I tried working like this, more methodically, but most of the time I ended up dissatisfied with the end point. Too often, I could not arrive at the right balance between technique & finished image. Although I began my Chicago studies in both printmaking & painting, I gave myself permission to let go of becoming the MasterPrintmaker.

4: Going to Byzantium....from Chicago

3: Chicago...

The immense and vibrant city of Chicago and the close-knit, secluded life of art school were the two poles of my world for the next 7 years. Each had an immeasurable influence on my work. My map drawings, like those shown in the previous post, developed from colored pencil & conte materials into oil paintings. I thought of these as internal travel logs and I developed a personal vocabulary of mark making which became a legend for all the landscape maps I was to create for the next body of work. The natural landscape that I left behind on the East coast combined with the architectural footprints of my new city life.