Susan E Budash

As a visual artist I’ve created images in Silkscreen, Intaglio, Lithography, Mixed Media, Watercolor, Acrylics and Oils and in a variety of methods, primarily Direct Painting (Alla Prima) and genre, but I always felt drawn to the visual degree of depth and luminosity present within the magnificent oil painting created by Master Artisans of the Renaissance to the Romantic Periods. The knowledge in creating paintings with similar attributes always eluded me. Little did I know that in order to achieve this luminous depth I had to learn an entirely new method in oil painting and with pigments with which I’d never been familiar with. Regardless of my persistent inquiries, the answers I sought would not be forthcoming for decades and when I learned in 1999 that the key word in opening this ancient volume of knowledge would lie with the word, Indirect Oil Painting.

My first introduction to creating art began at the age of nine and with an emphasis on drawing from life, as well as copying from books featuring paintings in major museums. My instructor, the late Jack Simmerling, a Chicago watercolorist, who gained acclaim for his renderings of historical Chicago landmark architecture, stressed the importance in developing one’s drawing skills. “If you can meet the challenges in perspective, value, composition and spatial relationships, then your paintings will be successful.” His words have lived with me for all 50 plus years I’ve been painting.

In so much that I have enjoyed and successfully rendered paintings created in the painterly Direct, Alla Prima Painting Methods, I have felt this method never fully met what I have been hoping to achieve in my paintings. And unfortunately, Virgil Elliott’s book, Traditional Oil Painting, wasn’t released until 2007, so with my PC I independently researched and was introduced to Eastern and Western European Flemish oil painting artists, who generously shared their knowledge and expertise, along with links to museum conservationists, who further enlightened me to the beneficial and not so beneficial pigments and mediums available. Putting this knowledge into hands-on practice led me through some humorous and not so humorous trial and errors, one of which I will share in the course of this blog. Unbeknownst to me at the onset was that not all oil painting from Renaissance to the 19th Century was created in the Flemish Methods, but that there was a second school within Indirect Painting known as the Venetian School and their methods differed in several ways from that of Flemish artists. The Venetian Method, believed to have been initiated by Giorgione, Titian and other Venetian oil painters, introduced creating their drawings on a mid-tone ground and then followed with an opaque gray layer, known as a Grisaille, creating a gray pallet with Lead-Based White paint, also known as Stack White. When I learned about the artist’s use of Lead White in their pallet, I knew instinctively that Lead White was a key component in their achieving the luminosity within their paintings.

Without a demonstration of the Venetian Methods, initiated with the grisaille, tints and scumbles, I had ventured into uncharted territory and therein I learned by my hits and misses. One such early “miss”, which I share with all my student’s is the humorous and decidedly nonsensical approach in removing the first several excessively oily glazed layers. The pigmented glazes were collecting in patches and not forming a thin layer over the composition. My frustration peaked when I couldn’t remove the under-layers of previously dried oily pigments with a solvent. My solution, purchase Formby’s Finisher Remover. After applying a thin layer of Formby’s, to my relief it removed the upper layers of glazes, but it didn’t stop there, it continued to eat away the grisaille, the under drawing and culminated in eating a hole right through my Belgian linen! I learned the Fat Over Lean premise is one fell swoop!

Since those early self-taught days in painting in Venetian methods, I am by no means 100% spot on, but I am continuing to learn with each still-life or figurative painting I create. This process is not for those who wish to witness immediate results, as a painting can take months to complete. At any one time, I have a dozen or more paintings in various states of completion, thus allowing the natural course of glazes setting-up. Of equal importance is learning which pigments are opaque, semi opaque and scumble worthy and which are considered lean and those that are fat. What and when is critical in the application of pigments.

This educational journey has been so rewarding and while I always loved oil painting, nothing has brought me more satisfaction and joy than painting in the Venetian Methods, especially when it comes time when I can begin the color layer. I call it, “Turning on the Lights” thus witnessing the luminous glow reveal itself in the painting’s final stages.

Not unlike the vast majority of OPA members, I displayed a talent in drawing and painting at a very young age. My earliest training comprised drawing from life, learning perspective, shading (value studies) and composition. All of which were based on fundamental principles necessary for artists who wish to depict the natural world. For almost four decades I painted the natural world in Alla Prima methods, however in the desire to broaden my knowledge and artistic skills, I enrolled at age 40 in a BFA program at the State University of New York. Once I was immersed into the studio program, I recognized that few of my fellow students had any comprehensive art training. More surprising was the realization that there were also art professors who lacked drawing skills and a fundamental ability in drawing from life. Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Photography Departments echoed a familiar instructional refrain, “Be free to express yourself.” Instruction stressed conception, not perception. I modified my work in order to comply with their modern vision for art but the BFA program only served to raise more questions. Namely why Modernism elicited such a strong emotion against academic training and the premise on which this new art movement was inspired.
The answers were forthcoming when I became a Graduate Art History student. The culmination of this two year research program resulted in my thesis. It was entitled “CHILDREN’S ART; an Analysis its Relation to Creative Expression within Twentieth-Century Art”. The following is merely a broad over-view, but it may help to shed light on the logic behind Modern Art and its various movements.
During the centuries preceding the Impressionist Movement young apprentices developed their artistic talents in guilds under the rigorous instruction of a Master Artisan. Academies opened and attracted greater numbers of artistically talented people, primarily men. This mass enrollment resulted in a highly competitive and politically influenced atmosphere.The societal climate during the mid 19th Century was evolving from a two-class system based on monarchies. Those in the church and wealthy landowners comprised the upper class while the masses of the working class poor made up the lower class. The 1848 revolution began with the overthrow of the French monarchy. This eventually resulted in a mindset that the art academies were corrupt and complicit with the suppression of the lower class. Thus the art academies lacked relevance in this new socio- political environment. Furthermore, with the rise of the Industrial Revolution people could earn a living wage and pursue opportunities previously unavailable to them. These opportunities meant that those who desired to pursue a career in the visual arts could do so and without the influence or restrictions of the state, church, or an art academy.
Many factors have provided the stimulus for the various Modern Art Movements. These factors included African Tribal Art, Freud and Jungian Psychoanalysis, Asian Culture, Revolutions, and Wars. For the purpose of this article my focus sheds light on children’s art, specifically from age two until the reasoning age of seven. At the start of the 20th Europe and America, educators were curious and explored the developmental processes of children, specifically why children identify with making marks vertically; due to their upright physical condition. Also why the circle is the first enclosed form they make; it represents a wide range of objects from Century in their environment, i.e. Sun, faces, and bodies.

The Modernists were not intent on copying children’s art. Rather to adopt many of the insights that child psychologists – such as Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist and philosopher – had uncovered in their research. Paul Klee looked to his three year old son’s drawings to influence his paintings. Jean Dubuffet felt it was abnormal for an artist to devote too much time in studying an object for the sole purpose of representing that object in its exact proportions. Studying the drawings of children, he found inspiration for his own art. Mark Rothko taught children’s art classes and found inspiration in their primitive markings, which influenced his own paintings. However, there were much larger catalysts influencing these artists in adopting a child-like style, and those catalysts were the first and second World Wars. Having witnessed firsthand the horrors of these World Wars, early Century Modernists used their art as a protest platform. 20th Not only did their art reflect the horrors of war, but they also drew upon childlike innocence, reminding the human race of the innocence which remains deeply within us all.

The accompanying images were created by a supporting grant towards an exhibition, as well as my written thesis.
Want to know more about me? Please visit
susanbudash.com

A Venetian Methods Oil Painter

An Insight Into the Modernist Movement/Look to Children's Art

Susan E Budash

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