Oil Painting

Personalities and Temperaments in Art

Hodges Soileau · Jun 10, 2012 · 5 Comments

Street Fiddler (16"x24") by Hodges Soileau OPA

Do Artists’ Personalities and Temperaments dictate the Styles and Subjects they choose to express themselves?

     I usually do not think about things like this question on a daily basis, unless it comes up in a discussion. I am not a big fan of over analyzing and over thinking reasons for painting certain things. I usually prefer to react to the subject and be as honest as I possibly can and let it be what it will be. When I was asked to contribute to this blog, I tossed around a few thoughts and came up with a question that has come up before, and some of this I have skirted around on my own blog.
I have had this conversation with artist friends and particularly students in classes and workshops many times in the past, as well as very recently.   I truly believe that painters, like me, who paint an array of subject matter, and work in a particular manner, do so because of a personality, or temperament need to do so. I also find it interesting that some artists are drawn to a varied , and very eclectic subject matter, while others are perfectly content to explore only one subject…..different temperaments and personalities…..I believe.
I personally choose to paint as directly as I possibly can, because I believe my temperament/personality dictates it. I am by my definition, somewhat impatient….. I guess. I feel as though I want to see things happen very quickly in the beginning of a painting. Then, there seems to be a time to slow it up a bit….. unless I plan to complete the painting in one session…..but always being deliberate and doing my best to avoid time consuming errors, which seem to inevitably occur. Some artists work on a painting over a long period of time. They glaze and layer paint. They do not mind a slower process….. and some even relish this method of working. This is a choice based on temperament or personality. There is no one best way to paint a painting. Beautiful paintings result from a multitude of styles and approaches.   Over the years, I have tried many, and possibly all methods of applying paint to surfaces, and I still remain open to the possibilities in this never ending learning process called painting. I know artists who have painted in a particular way that was easy, or seemed natural for them, and were apparently never happy painting in that manner. They are now making changes, and pursuing a different path with their work. This is in my opinion, a temperament/personality decision. Many artists from my generation, including myself, made their living in the early years as illustrators painting things and solving other’s problems that might not have necessarily been their personal choice of things to paint. Sometimes one does what they have to do at that point in time. Sometimes pressures, be they economics, providing for family, etc., forces one to make concessions and one is forced off of their desired path in art.
This style or manner of working discussion is also important in regards to what is taught in workshops, painting classes, etc. Many workshops and classes on painting teach, or try to teach a style, technique, or manner rather than stressing good principals. I think this might be, in my opinion, a disservice to the student. One size does not fit all in painting. Everyone wants to be an individual, and should.   I believe one’s own style evolves out of practicing good solid principals of painting. Again, addressing the topic issue, one chooses a method that suits one’s own temperament, not that of an instructor. The instructor’s responsibility is to open up the possibilities with choices…..in my opinion.
The eclectic subjects some artists, like myself, choose as opposed to those who paint only one subject and are known for that subject alone is a choice based on ones temperament/personality. I love painting certain subjects possibly more so than others….for instance, I probably would choose the figure over a still life, but I would not want to be limited to just figurative paintings. That is in my opinion, a personality/temperament choice. Eclectic subject can possibly have a consequence. Not sticking with one subject, that an audience can identify an artist with, can make it more difficult to become known broadly for painting that one subject. I personally would find it maddening to have to get up every day and paint the same thing or subject. I can only speak for myself when it comes to this or any matter that has to do with painting. Many artists probably do not feel that way….and that is wonderful. It certainly would be less interesting if everyone had the same attitude towards everything. This again speaks to the topic issue, temperament/personality.
The aspects of an artist’s life that are effected by this issue are far reaching….. another example is how some artists have tidy, neat, everything in it’s place organized studio spaces, while others like me, are borderline slobs, and seem to be able to function, and are reasonably comfortable in messy studios spaces that might not be acceptable to some. I had an artist friend back in the illustration days who would not come past the doorway of my studio. The mess of reference books and files spread across the studio floor that I functioned in was disturbing to his sensibility toward neatness and organization. This is a personality trait of this particular artist. I was perfectly content being on the messy side of it.
I think many artists paint what they are comfortable painting. Most do not go out of their comfort zone regularly. This is also a personality/temperament issue. I like to think that I take some risk, and wish I were even more adventurous, when it comes to trying new things.   One of my favorite contemporary painters, Quang Ho OPAM, is a great example. He is a great painter, and also a fearless experimenter. He not only paints a varied subject, but he takes it further by continuing to experiment with his work, as it relates to paint application and things of that nature. He successfully does this while remaining a traditional, representational painter. I hope that I never lose that desire to shake it up every now and then….. even if it is just a little bit. That is my main reason for not painting only one subject. I think by being interested in a variety of subjects, it possibly keeps one fresh and keeps one from relying to much on tried and proven solutions. To some degree, one must do what they know will get the job done, but one does not want it to become familiar to the point of it being a formula.
Unfortunately, in many cases, the fine art market chooses what subjects some artists paint, and in some cases how they paint. To a great degree, it is subject driven. There will always be those who want to categorize artists by subjects they paint. I still believe and hope that good painting is appreciated by those who recognize it, no matter what the subject or style.
I am honored to have had the opportunity to participate in this Oil Painters of America Blog. This post is my own personal observation of an aspect of painting that I find interesting, and does not reflect that of the OPA, or any universal opinion or idea about this subject. Thanks for reading this blog post and feel free to comment or express your views.
Best regards to all, and paint what you want, not what someone else wants!

Practicing Art

Ms. Jane Barton · Jun 4, 2012 · 8 Comments

It has always struck me as odd that physicians “practice” medicine. Aren’t they ever done? Of course not–doctors are required to learn new things–they must keep up with the latest science and treatments. With this in mind, I decided to begin or rather, renew, my own art “practice”. My office is my studio, my tools are the obvious ones, and I have begun to write myself prescriptions for regular check ups, (value studies, 1x/day), continuing education (workshops, 1x/year or as needed, constant study in my library and on the internet), and booster shots (at museums and every week with my art friends). You get the idea.
It all began last fall as I was planning a trip with some artist friends to Italy to paint where Edgar Payne captured those marvelous orange-sailed boats in the early 20th century. I was really nervous. I live in the desert. I don’t know a halyard from a square knot and I knew I’d better start “practicing” painting boats. Two months before the trip, at the OPA conference in Idaho, I went to a demo by Ned Mueller and he advised us to get up every morning and, even before that first cup of coffee, head into the studio and paint a small study for exactly 15 minutes. No more, no less. So, I did just that, except I had my coffee in hand, for 64 days before my trip to Italy. Most of the 64 little paintings were done in black and white to help me with the values, but it also helped me to became familiar with the perspective and beautiful curves of the boat and the sails. It helped me so much that I still do it. Ok, sometimes I miss a morning, but it’s become such a habit that I actually feel guilty when I don’t do it. What do I paint now that I’m back on solid sand? Anything I want to paint. It’s just practice, after all. Although I can tell you that those little, 15 minute studies have grown up to become some of my best paintings. Besides being a great way to warm up my painting muscles (both physical and mental) this is a practice that really pays off.

All of this brings me to the point of this blog. As artists we never stop learning, but sometimes it feels like we’re just treading water, going nowhere fast. I tell my students not to throw away their old, rejected paintings, but to date them and keep them for comparison to newer paintings. Sometimes we don’t feel like we’ve made any progress until we can actually see what we were doing 3 months ago. Then we see some movement, however small, that’s enough to encourage us to keep going. This year, I decided to make a conscious effort to take my work to a new level and started to think about how to do that. The 15 minute sketches were the beginning, but I found a few other ways to work on this that I’d like to share with you.
1. I made an effort to find an art “support group.”
I remembered reading Art and Fear, Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland which describes a study about those artists with/without support groups. They studied art students for 20 years and discovered that the ones who had connected with other artists were more likely to still be making art. This connection was more important than talent in the long run.
I think that a good support group, with artists who you trust, is like a marriage that works: when you’re “up” you help them, when you’re down, they help you. Not often in the same place at the same time, but it works. Now I meet with artists at coffee or in one of our studios at least once and usually twice a week. We share show information, frame suppliers, etc., congratulate each other or commiserate and talk about anything that we’re thinking about art-wise over coffee for about 2 hours. We artists, like writers, lead very solitary lives, so this is an incredible way to leave the studio and still feel like we’re “working” and, of course, learning.
2. I rediscovered the joys of getting back to basics
I took a workshop with Skip Whitcomb and he had us working with an extremely limited value palette–white, black and one grey very close to either the white or the grey. Wow. Talk about challenging you to simplify!
Then I did some new color charts with a four color palette I was interested in trying. These exercises really helped me to find new ways of saying what I wanted to say with the paint and reminded me to just enjoy the process of painting, without always having a specific painting or show deadline in mind.
3. I remembered the importance of making mistakes–it’s how we learn.
“You make good work by (among other things) making lots of work that isn’t very good and gradually weeding out the parts that aren’t good, the parts that aren’t yours.” Art & Fear, p26
4. I set some new goals for myself–at least two paintings a week, good or bad!

5. I went back to my art library.
I revisited old “friends”: some books are more dog eared than others–you know which are your favorites. I also made myself reach for the books that I’d never really spent any time with–I wanted to try new ideas on for size, taking the lessons of other artists and trying them for myself
6. I started to thumb through my old workshop notes.
I wondered, “Why do I keep writing down the same things?” I paid to attention to that and decided to work on those areas. In some cases when I revisited the lessons, lightbulbs went off! I was in a better place to understand some of the ideas now and actually put them to use in my work.
The short version of this is: keep practicing and find artist friends, even if they’re only in blogs! And, as my friend (and fellow artist) Joan Larue always says, “keep your brushes wet!” I’m reminded of the old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!” Just substitute “How do you get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art” and you’ll get my point.
Thanks so much for listening and please let me know how it goes for you!

How deep is your space?

Charles Movalli OPAM · May 28, 2012 · 8 Comments

At one of my always stimulating dinners with my late friend Zyg Jankowski, he said to me that the first decision a painter has to make about his work is a spacial one: how “deep” do you want to make the picture? John Carlson felt that every foot into nature counted; Ed Whiney had no interest in such realistic depth and recommended a student plan the composition on-site but walk around a corner to paint it. Over the years, I’ve been schizophrenic about the question. Under Emile Gruppe’s tutelage, I naturally followed Carlson’s path. Later, I experimented with a flatter approach , one which, carried to an extreme, can make the subject disappear in a series of flat planes.

I rather enjoyed the broken, lively look of such surfaces. but felt that, after awhile, my pictures all began to look alike. They lacked mood. Now moderns like Hans Hoffmann despised the idea of mood; in fact, he called it a “swindle”– an easy way to make a pictorial statement at the cost of the more important and thoughtful thing: composition. My flat pictures, on the other hand, were all composition. I wandered back to a more “realistic” approach under the influence of artists like Sargent–who has undergone a publishing boom in the last twenty years–Sorolla, and the slew of recently discovered Russians.

I also encountered a Timkov at the old Fleisher Museum which astonished me, since it had both mood and a selective flatness in its approach. Indeed, all the artists I’ve mentioned knew when to go flat and when to add modeling. Gruppe, for example, would make fun of still-lifes whose pots and bottles were so roundly-modeled that you got “dizzy” looking at them. I also had an important lesson from him early in my career. I’d done a rocky hillside with trees against the sky and bushes in the foreground. He came along with a big brush, eliminated a distracting silhouette by pushing the trees out of the top of the frame and mushed the foreground bushes into insignificance. He then drew a few dark lines in the rocks, emphasizing their structure.

Done! That night, I jotted down his criticism: “In full light, you saw only the masses–as the sun went down, you saw the details and put them all in.” Of course, it took a while for this lesson to sink in! Sargent’s famous Lake Louise painting consists of similar flat smudges, and huge, dark-and-light compositional planes, all set off by a minimum of modeling in the foreground water. Such magic is possible when you give up any attempt to copy a subject photographically and instead focus on the large, simple masses that give the scene its visual interest . Once these planes are defined, very little modeling is need to bring “realism” to the subject. That’s why I don’t feel that the time I spent on my “flat period” was wasted: on the contrary, it made me even more aware of the importance of simple planes. It taught me how to summarize what I saw, how to make a precis of it–after which, I could put in as much “detail” as I wanted. In short, by adding very little, I could see how much I could get away. When entering a museum, I’m always anxious to see how this sort of slight-of-hand is practiced by the Masters. Not their manual skill, you understand; not, for example, how well they’ve painted the wings of a fly on a flower. But rather, how they’ve summarized that flower, reduced it to a few basic planes — and then brought it all to life by an edge or two and a few subtle shifts in value.
Note: for a further discussion of these points, check out YouTube:

My Method and Attitude Toward Art

Ms. Patsy Ledbetter · May 21, 2012 · 4 Comments

It has been said that art is subjective to the viewer. I certainly agree with that statement. I can look at a work of art and be astounded by the way it speaks to me. Someone else may just glance at the same piece of work and not be affected at all. I have decided to not worry about what others think of my work or the subject matter I choose to paint, but paint only to please myself.
I was once with a publishing company in New York. As with most illustrative work, I was told what to paint. I didn’t enjoy that part of my career. I finally gave it up.
I love painting landscapes, still life, and portraits. I usually have several paintings going at one time so I can go from one painting that’s too wet to continue, then pick up another painting that’s dry and continue painting on it. The second painting may be an entirely different subject matter so I’m always doing something different. Working this way helps keep me in a fresh state of mind.
I have my own studio apart from the house and am found there almost every day. I get such a sense of peace when surrounded by my art materials, my books and the smell of oil paint. If I’m not in a mood to paint, I get in the mood when I open the door. The outside world disappears. The light comes through the windows and doors and creates a warm glow on the knotty pine floor and I’m in my world. I have a CD player that keeps me company with Audio books checked out from the local libraries. My two faithful companions, Buddy-the Pomeranian mix, and Daisy-the Besinju, are always outside the door keeping watch.
My method of painting is done in layers. I start with a rough mono-chromatic under painting, keeping the paint thin and loose by adding turpentine to the paint. Being thin, it dries fast. I can then start adding thin layers of color. (I’m not a fast painter.) I am constantly correcting the painting as it progresses so I keep the paint thin until I get close to finishing it. I can then add thicker paint as needed.

"Faye's Painting" by Patsy Ledbetter OPA

I sometimes feel like I’m doing the opposite of sculpting. There’s the front, the sides and back of each object or person represented, but instead of chipping away or building with clay, I’m building the objects with paint.
In addition to painting as often as I can, I teach an all day Oil Painting Class once a month. Teaching is a great learning tool for me. I have to keep my skills honed in order to convey technique and theory to my students.
Life sometimes interrupts my painting time, but I don’t resent it. I love my family and friends and being constantly secluded in my studio would not be healthy for me and my spirit would suffer. Life first, art second.

Preserving My Dreams

Wanda Choate · May 7, 2012 · 2 Comments

Ola! What a great idea, and how much I enjoy and grow and am empowered by reading the thoughts, musings, and experiences of these real and great painters.
Reading Alan Wolton’s post (once I drove from Nashville to an obscure barn way outside of Chicago to see this extraordinary collection of his water lilies)what a great blessing to see inside his mind a little about layering in those transparent washes, and then to preserve them – discipline. This struck a chord in me (finally?).
About the same time I was going through Architectural Digest – and there was this painting on a bedroom wall (Brooke Shields) of a woman’s head study, all in black, and white, basically a beautiful value study. She wasn’t framed, looked half finished and is exquisite.

I had the privilege last January of going to the Prado and Sorolla’s home. Go, hitch hike if you have to. What struck me about Sorolla’s things was; First. The great, unfinished, quality of his work. It looked like over and over, unless it was a formal portrait, that he would get about 2/3’s done and go onto the next one. Good enough. Next. Also, he has hundreds of those tiny paintings, 5 x 7 or smaller done with 7 or 12 thick brush strokes. Next…Nothing was too precious. He stayed inspired. He painted gorgeous fruit garlands and portraits of his daughters “on the walls” for himself. He painted for joy. Please, Dear Lord, let this be my process shifting. Anyhow, this was where I was when I began “Music Man”. Ah, to be as Sorolla, and still be on that great plane of hope, magic, inspiration, the great challenge to capture something so elusive – when I finish a painting as when I began.
I think that the key for me, the only hope is in being present, moment by moment, choice by choice, focus, discipline. To decide truthfully as I see it. What is my darkest dark, my lightest light, and focus; remain focused on the goal of preserving that value scale.

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” – Emerson

Frank Loyd Wright has inscribed on the beams of his studio, “What a man does, he has”.

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. – Proverbs 23:7

What I’m thinking about when I’m painting is what I’m going to create.
This discipline, sustained focus for me, is the key to producing not only work I love but a life I want to live.
I’ve worked out with a trainer (I must be forced) for most of the last 7 years. I want to be strong, but mainly I go for the discipline. I know that if while doing the plank, or attempting push-ups, if I ALLOW myself the luxury of a negative thought I will drop. My strength truly drops 30% because of what I’m thinking. So, whether it’s dieting, exercising, being kind to our mates and small animals, not eating that bowl of cereal at 11p.m, or holding onto that brilliant, childlike elusive transparent under-painting…
I’ve got to stay focused and hold onto the reality of what I think about, I bring about.

Oil Painting

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