The Masking Tape Wizard
"At college everyone was painting big
flat canvases and becoming wizards with masking tape. To my discredit, I joined
the geometric sheep, when all I really wanted to do was become a cross between
Leonardo and Rembrandt." These words are penned by Nick Bantock in his
inspirationally beautiful book
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary
Correspondence.
The thoughts are expressed by Griffin, a character living in England. He and Sabine correspond with each other through letters and postcards. Griffin could have been writing about my own personal feelings.
During the early '60s when I was studying art in college the rage was certainly "hard edge" painting featuring an emphasis on color and shape. Masking tape was indispensable as we created our images. I added a personal dimension by first creating the shapes in plaster on masonite board before painting soft, muted color schemes.
But this is not where my relationship with art began, nor was it where I would have ever believed I would have arrived from my first formal training.
During my childhood the door-to-door salesman was quite popular. I am talking about the era B.T., before television. Even after television, it took several decades before home shopping networks made their appearance.
In that long ago era, my mother had a gentleman who called each week, regular as clockwork, to seek his home wares from the L. B. Price Company. Mr. Elsey was a salesman's salesman. He was outgoing, full of humor and goodwill, and always closing his sale. I doubt i he missed many a week without convincing my mother to purchase an item that she didn't even know she wanted, let along needed. (Nothing has changed on the home shopping network, as it?) But he had more than sales on his mind. He was very interested in my scribbles in art. For over a year he tried to get Mother to allow me to take lessons from his wife who was an accomplished artist.
Finally, after much talk, he convinced my mother to allow me to take painting lessons. Certainly part of the decision was grounded in the fact that at that time art as not taught in public school. Art was considered frivolous and money was not spent hiring an art teacher. The public sphere did not grasp the importance of creativity and how it impacts our life all through each day. Without art in school, my parents sensed that I was missing something important in my life.
When I was twelve I began taking lessons once a week after school. My lesson was supposed to last about an hour, but I usually ended the lesson with dinner with the Elsey family. For only a dollar a lesson I learned about composition and color relationships as Mrs. Elsey taught me the rudiments of oil painting. Just last week we were going through a large antique trunk and I came across one of my first oil paintings entitled The First Communion. This was done from a book of studies by Stella Mackey. I still feel the brush in my hand and the smell of the oils. I remember the ease of doing some parts of the painting and the difficulty of accomplishing others.
Today the strengths can still be seen and so can the weaknesses. Eventually the weaknesses were turned into strengths. That took many years before I finally learned what I did not know at the age of twelve, and what Mrs. Elsey did not know how to teach me.
My lessons continued until I was fifteen. With my junior year in high school an art teacher finally appeared and my private lessons ceased. At school realistic drawing and painting was still the mode and I deeply loved drawing the world about me as I saw it, in all of its detail.
Arriving in the art department at college brought me into contact with the exciting things that were taking place in the visual arts. For the first time I experienced what was then called simply abstract or nonobjective art. Today it is termed formalism. It has no subject matter; it focuses primarily on shape, line, color, and value. That explanation is too simplistic as formalism is really about more than that, but space does not permit that lesson here.
I'm glad I was introduced to formalism. I still have many pieces of art n this genre, but for the most part my work at present is done realistically. Realism is today classed as imitationalism, as it imitates nature and the world about us. (I prefer to call my work representational--I don't believe I imitate my world. I simply attempt to represent in the drawing or painting what I see.)
You never know, however, what you can gain when you are open to new ideas. My masking tape period helped me to understand more about creativity, to understand more about how our world is composed and how interrelated our relationships are. As each element, color, and shape depends upon and influences all others which share the canvas with it, so also, we humans are totally dependent upon one another on the world canvas which we share.
The thoughts are expressed by Griffin, a character living in England. He and Sabine correspond with each other through letters and postcards. Griffin could have been writing about my own personal feelings.
During the early '60s when I was studying art in college the rage was certainly "hard edge" painting featuring an emphasis on color and shape. Masking tape was indispensable as we created our images. I added a personal dimension by first creating the shapes in plaster on masonite board before painting soft, muted color schemes.
But this is not where my relationship with art began, nor was it where I would have ever believed I would have arrived from my first formal training.
During my childhood the door-to-door salesman was quite popular. I am talking about the era B.T., before television. Even after television, it took several decades before home shopping networks made their appearance.
In that long ago era, my mother had a gentleman who called each week, regular as clockwork, to seek his home wares from the L. B. Price Company. Mr. Elsey was a salesman's salesman. He was outgoing, full of humor and goodwill, and always closing his sale. I doubt i he missed many a week without convincing my mother to purchase an item that she didn't even know she wanted, let along needed. (Nothing has changed on the home shopping network, as it?) But he had more than sales on his mind. He was very interested in my scribbles in art. For over a year he tried to get Mother to allow me to take lessons from his wife who was an accomplished artist.
Finally, after much talk, he convinced my mother to allow me to take painting lessons. Certainly part of the decision was grounded in the fact that at that time art as not taught in public school. Art was considered frivolous and money was not spent hiring an art teacher. The public sphere did not grasp the importance of creativity and how it impacts our life all through each day. Without art in school, my parents sensed that I was missing something important in my life.
When I was twelve I began taking lessons once a week after school. My lesson was supposed to last about an hour, but I usually ended the lesson with dinner with the Elsey family. For only a dollar a lesson I learned about composition and color relationships as Mrs. Elsey taught me the rudiments of oil painting. Just last week we were going through a large antique trunk and I came across one of my first oil paintings entitled The First Communion. This was done from a book of studies by Stella Mackey. I still feel the brush in my hand and the smell of the oils. I remember the ease of doing some parts of the painting and the difficulty of accomplishing others.
Today the strengths can still be seen and so can the weaknesses. Eventually the weaknesses were turned into strengths. That took many years before I finally learned what I did not know at the age of twelve, and what Mrs. Elsey did not know how to teach me.
My lessons continued until I was fifteen. With my junior year in high school an art teacher finally appeared and my private lessons ceased. At school realistic drawing and painting was still the mode and I deeply loved drawing the world about me as I saw it, in all of its detail.
Arriving in the art department at college brought me into contact with the exciting things that were taking place in the visual arts. For the first time I experienced what was then called simply abstract or nonobjective art. Today it is termed formalism. It has no subject matter; it focuses primarily on shape, line, color, and value. That explanation is too simplistic as formalism is really about more than that, but space does not permit that lesson here.
I'm glad I was introduced to formalism. I still have many pieces of art n this genre, but for the most part my work at present is done realistically. Realism is today classed as imitationalism, as it imitates nature and the world about us. (I prefer to call my work representational--I don't believe I imitate my world. I simply attempt to represent in the drawing or painting what I see.)
You never know, however, what you can gain when you are open to new ideas. My masking tape period helped me to understand more about creativity, to understand more about how our world is composed and how interrelated our relationships are. As each element, color, and shape depends upon and influences all others which share the canvas with it, so also, we humans are totally dependent upon one another on the world canvas which we share.
(January 2000)
Posted: Mon - August 9, 2004 at 10:02 AM
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Reflection
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"Art arises from basic needs-a strong need to express and celebrate our everyday events.
In a museum most people spend less than twenty seconds looking at a work of art."
"Art arises from basic needs-a strong need to express and celebrate our everyday events.
In a museum most people spend less than twenty seconds looking at a work of art."
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Published On: Feb 03, 2006 11:02 PM
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Published On: Feb 03, 2006 11:02 PM