On Painting by Denis Webb - Entries of the page 12

Impressionism was the Day before Yesterday

Originally posted on February, 18, 2008

I believe that most people who read are aware of the anti-intellectual bias. That was written about periodically throughout the twentieth century. Recently, it was written about one more time by an American author, Susan Jacoby. Her decision to write this book was based on a real life experience that took place, I believe, in a New York bar on the day of 11 September 2001. She overheard a conversation between two young men. One of them said to the other that it was like Pearl Harbor. The other asked: “what is Pearl Harbor?? The response was that it was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs on a harbor and started the Vietnam War. Overhearing this conversation was the jolt that prompted her to write yet another book about the intellectual health of our culture. A major book on this subject had already been written. Richard Hostadter covered this theme with his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1963 book, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life?. We are today being informed that in the US two out of three students in their last year of high school cannot read beyond a remedial level. While Europe is in much better shape, the trend is not good.

What does this have to do with art and painting? To adequately address this question would require a much longer article than I have the time to write. Nonetheless, I will continue.

Read the rest of "Impressionism was the Day before Yesterday"

Posted in Art, Painting | Comment

Freedom from Content

Originally posted on January, 7, 2008

On the main page in the gallery section of my website there is a short introduction: “Somehow I have recently gained a certain distance and freedom from the content of painting…? I have just recently acquired this sense of distance. The paintings I am now doing speak to me of it. Understanding is slowly following.

Since the dawn of modernism almost all of the critical writing has been concerned with the question of decadence. Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? As long as this state of affairs continues the health of our culture is compromised. There are many more important things to talk about. And where are all the people who used to appreciate painting? For the artist painter today, he has the additional challenge of working in a vacuum. These things come to mind because if as an artist painter we are to have any freedom from the content of our paintings they are important considerations.

Recently, I have been reviewing some of my older painting. I’ve selected a number of paintings done over the last ten twelve years to put on the web site. In the course of doing this I thought quite a bit about content. Paintings done close to 10 years ago were a turning point for me. Before that time I had been struggling with the act of painting. Learning “how”? to paint is one thing. This is something different. For some reason you just begin to relax and enjoy the process of painting. The relationship with the tools, the paint and so forth changes. And choosing what to paint becomes much easier. Everything becomes easier. There is freedom from the content 10 years later. The questions of questions: could this sense of freedom happen at any time? Do we all have to convince ourselves that we deserve it? I certainly hope not.

Denis

Published in french as Liberté vis-à-vis du contenu

Posted in Artist-Art, Painting | Comment

Beyond How to do Watercolor

Originally posted on December, 17, 2007

The logical question following how to paint watercolor is what to paint. Bearing both questions in mind at the beginning helps accelerate the learning curve. I’ve given these questions of the budding artist painter more than just a little reflection. Advice has been asked by many other the years. Subsequently, there were many days and hours of talking with them about becoming a painter as well as much painting together. In the end teaching and learning become indistinguishable and I fondly remember these encounters.

Hopefully, if you can bear my rambling, I can offer some thoughts that may help. Recently, on the post Painting the Universe, there was a painting titled “Man and Nature? (See also the older paintings). This was painted 10 years ago at a time I was still very much fixated on watercolor. I had reached several years earlier the understanding I must concentrate on learning the materials (pigments, papers, brushes, etc.) in order to become free from them. We all have to experience in our own terms this inner necessity to learn the materials. The artist, as it is said is a person in love with his tools.

Back to the painting: this painting and others of this period were for me pivotal. I was experiencing some freedom and was fully conscious what was taking place. I’m an intuitive, so a conscious understanding of the process does not come easily. To become lost in the process and to then, literally, to find yourself is what it is all about. Some months ago I wrote about learning to paint watercolor. The advice about materials was broadly given. There have been so many good books and magazines devoted to this that I did not see the point of adding to them. But if I can help encourage you to absorb them and move past this concern… then I’ve done something.

I will answer e-mails from anyone engaged in the work of doing this.

Keep your brushes wet,

Denis.

Published in french as Dépasser le comment faire pour peindre à l’aquarelle

Posted in Teaching, Watercolor | Comment

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