Studio 4.03.13: Ephemera

Sometimes, when I'm in the studio my mind drifts into daydreams about some of the stuff in my working environment. This happens far more often than I can count. In these daydreams, I sometimes ponder the potential usefulness of some of the collected ephemera left over from art-making. Most of what I'm thinking about is how the dust, paint-streaked tape, dried paint and random studio items piled together mark different points in the narrative of recent studio life and then wonder if I can make anything worthwhile out of it.

"What should I do with this?" is the constant mental refrain as I'm removing tape from the sides of completed canvases and panels. Most of the time, the answer is "collage", as in converting the blue painter's tape now covered to varying degrees with paint and mediums that have dripped or been scrapped down the sides of paintings into something that might be considered art. I've already embarked on a series of tape and paint collages with the used left-over tape and paint. Some are successful and others, not so much, but main thing is that I took the chance to give these leftovers a second life. It's either that or get rid of it, because some things are just meant to trashed or recycled.

I also look at studio ephemera as part of the on-going narrative of studio life and nothing more. I'll look at a bit of canvas or see the odd sketch on a random piece of paper and remember what I was working on at a particular time. In those moments, I also remember that this recollection of past actions is only relevant to myself and contributes to a personal history that is being built upon with every moment that passes.

...and there was light...

Spring officially arrived at Studio McFarlane today. The light in the photo wasn't quite as intense as it appears above, but it sure felt like it. It was just warm enough to take the plastic off of the windows and to have them open into the evening...

‘Barkley L. Hendricks: Heart Hands Eyes Mind’ at Jack Shainman Gallery | GalleristNY

‘Barkley L. Hendricks: Heart Hands Eyes Mind’ at Jack Shainman Gallery | GalleristNY

I wish that I'd known a little earlier about Barkley L. Hendricks's show, "Heart, Hands, Eyes, Mind", at Jack Shainman Gallery. It ends on April 6th, but if you're up in NYC over the next week, it looks like a good show to catch. It features both new and old paintings, as well as some of Hendricks's photography.

Dark Condensation II

Dark Condensation II

Studio 3.20.13

Acrylic medium (with paint flow)

Yesterday was an off day in the studio. I knew it was going to be off almost as soon as I arrived. We all have our routines and mine is to come in, change out from my street clothes into my painting clothes, put some music on, and get to work. I did the first two but instead of jumping into what I wanted to work on, I grabbed a chair, sat staring at my painting wall and yawned a good, long, I-need-to-take-a-nap yawn. I needed that nap because I didn't sleep well at all last night. So, I sat there pondering my next move. I took a look at the last completed pieces, collected my thoughts finally got to work. 

I've been scaling up some new ideas from small paintings and wanted to make a more committed effort  with today's canvas. Well, the effort was there, if not any tangible progress. The main issue was with me grappling with some color choices that just did not work at all. I mean, I consider myself fairly adventurous at times with color, but yesterday was NOT my day, not by a long stretch. I'm going to blame it on my brain being addled from insufficient sleep, which was really the case. I could tell that my decision-making process was all kinds of off, but I plowed ahead anyway, as you do. 

All wasn't lost, as I did learn something from this situation, which is something I always try to take away from all of my trials and errors in the studio. What I figured out was that for this new work, I need to be more specific about some of my choices, narrowing the options down until I get a handle on what it is that I'm trying to do and expand from there. 

Trying to write an artist statement...

This video just about sums up the agony/annoyance of attempting to write artist statements...

Waste not, want not

That is a small jar (6 oz?) filled with a mixture of paint and acrylic medium. After stirring those reds and other colors into the mix, I would up with a really nice gray/tannish color. I can't wait to see what it looks like on a work surface. Any time I'm scraping excess paint and medium from a canvas or panel, I always store that excess away for later use. Now that this jar is filled to the brim, I'll probably use it as a base for one of the large pieces that I'll start work on next week.

I have a thing about getting the most out of whatever materials that I use as possible. If I can find a way to repurpose something, I will, as long is the repurposing isn't something that's going to cause problems in a new work. I did the same thing with oil paints when I used them. I'd save oil paint scrapings in a jar of water for later use. Worked like a charm and the chromatic grays I was able to have were fantastic. Much better than just mixing black and white. The best blacks and grays are those that contain mixtures of other colors. I much prefer "dirty" whites to clean whites, as well.

Gerhard Richter: A Life In Painting

Current art reading material.

Locating Tweets IRL

Locating Tweets IRL

"Geolocation" is a fascinating project by photographers Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman who use publicly available metadata in Twitter posts  (hastags,etc...) to approximate the locations of random people's tweets, photograph near the location and post the tweet below the photo. 

It's meant to examine the social media bubble that many people think that they are in, that often, we fall into a fog of thinking that our online musings are not known beyond our own circle of online "friends" or "followers".
Alternatively, sometimes we forget that those disembodied texts, tweets, and status updates originate from a flesh and blood person and physical space (disregarding "bots", of course).

There are also connections to the familiar pathos of feeling alone in a crowd of people, that your particular set of worries, anger, happiness, etc... is unique and that no one else around us physically could possibly understand since we don't have any known connection with them. The photo/tweet combination seems to serve as a great reminder of how differently we interact with each other and how we see others through their musings online and through our devices.

Two paintings...

(photo courtesy of the Bridgette Mayer Gallery)

Here are two small paintings of mine that are currently in the racks at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. These were completed last summer, sometime in June. They are unique in that they lie outside of other bodies of work that I've made recently. They are outgrowths of my interest in patterns-accumulative/chaotic and more regimented-sharing the same space, distinct in appearances, but creating dialogues across their outward boundaries nonetheless. 

Left: "Nosios", 2012, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12"

Right: "Cossia", 2012, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12"

On art and social media-an evolution of personal proportions

So, for those of you who may have been wondering, yes, I'm still hard at work in the studio, as usual. Regular visitors to this blog (or my other social media outlets) may have noticed that I haven't posted any photos of newer work in the studio in the past few months. At some point during this past summer, I made the choice to pull back from posting so many images of works-in-progress and newer pieces because I've needed to change some things about my social media interaction as it relates to my studio practice.

I photo-document a LOT and enjoy sharing images of my work and studio with those who don't live near me and a studio visit might be out of the question. However, a lot of that sharing began to muddle things for me. The sharing of works-in-progress began to feel like over-sharing. I felt a real desire to return to the mindset that I had before having a presence on the 'net became almost mandatory for artists and others to gain an audience; just me in the studio working out whatever issues that I might be having with the work and inviting people into the studio once in a while to discuss what I'm working on and so forth.

 It's tricky for creative people because we often like to have our work validated in some way and social media is a great way to have your peers (and others) weigh in on what you are doing, even if they are miles or countries away. I know that I enjoy getting a peek into what other artists are working on. The dialogues that can happen are wonderful and can be creatively invigorating. However, I found that after a while, the self-imposed "need" to post began to over take more serious considerations with the work in the studio. For a long time, I thought about how having a laptop or tablet in the studio would enable me to make constant updates from the studio. I resisted that idea and am glad that I did.

It has been a few months since I began to change the relationship between my art and social media, but the differences that it has made in how I relate to my work recently undeniably positive. Much like having painted over years of marks and drips on the wall , resisting the urge to post every movement that I make in the studio has cleared pathways for new things to happen in ways that the world doesn't need to be privy to, at least while they are happening. All of the outside stimuli has an effect on you, no matter how small. Over time, it all builds up and one day, you are wondering how you got so far away from your original intent. The proliferation of marks on my working wall wound up preventing me from "seeing" my work and made me expend precious mental energy on attempting to block out the distracting colors and patterns surrounding works-in-progress. The same thing happened with how I used social media in relation to my art. There got to be too much other "stuff" to consider and I unconsciously created mental filters that began to alter my perceptions of my work and took me away from an honest dialogue and evaluation of it, at times.

I'm much more comfortable with where I stand now with my art and social media. I post whatever articles or links that I feel might be interesting to followers here, and on Facebook, Twitter, and G+ with a focus on art-related items, but I have released myself from feeling obligated to constantly post my own newer work or works-in-progress.  I will probably return to some form of sharing studio documentation in the nearish future, but for now, it's just me, the work, and a few cups of tea to keep warm while I figure out whether to leave this painting as is, or whether I should sand it down and start over...

*beeeeep*

"We're sorry, but the end of all that is has been postponed. Please try again in a few years..."

Sean Scully At PMA 12.12.12

Sean Scully after the talk. 

Two of the "Iona" paintings from my seat.

Four of the twelve "Mirror" paintings. These are oil on copper and 12 x 12 inches each. 

All three panels of "Iona"

Last night, I had the chance to hear and later, talk with one of my favorite contemporary painters, Sean Scully. He was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a talk/conversation with Michael Auping, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. They discussed some of Scully's background as an artist, his studio practices, and the works on display at the PMA.

Scully was straightforward about his work, life, and views and didn't mince words. It was interesting to learn that he doesn't like Barnett Newman's work, nor the "lack of variation" in Philip Guston's colors, that he uses the "same greens and reds...". He did acknowledge owning a Guston that's above his television.

In the discussion about his work with abstraction, Scully made an analogy that resonated with me. He said that (I'm paraphrasing here) "abstraction is like music without words and can be very difficult to get along with, while realism is like music with words and is very easy to digest". I can certainly vouch for the truth in the first part of that statement, considering the aesthetic and ideological challenges that I constantly find myself up against in the studio. Although, those challenges often result in hard-won rewards in the end. Combine the in-studio challenges with how difficult many viewers find abstraction, then you can have an almost perfect storm of issues to deal with. I should also add that Scully's work heavily influenced a number of paintings of mine that I did about 15 years ago. Some of those works formed the basis for my first exhibition at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in 2002.

Later, during the question and answer session, someone asked about Scully's choice of oil paints and mediums. He said that he likes to use the best materials that he can, adding that "you get what you pay for". He noted that he had a lot of problems with some of his works from the 80's because of economics. He has had to re-paint some of the works from that period due to various issues with paint and support materials that he used during that time. He also attributed some of the problems to having hired his brother, whom Scully described as a "geezer" who could give "fuck-all", to stretch some of his paintings.

Once the Q & A was done, I took the opportunity to meet Scully personally and asked him about his fairly recent choice of using aluminum and copper as supports and how he feels about the archival possibilities of using such slick surfaces to paint on. He said that metal surfaces are ground down to create a "tooth" which helps the oil paints adhere to the surfaces. He said that he thinks that they will probably last a thousand years. He surmised that it probably won't matter, anyway because we will be heading out to the stars and won't be taking big, bulky paintings with us. Instead, he said that "we'll just have the images available in our glasses or something while the physical works will be back here on Earth". Well, Mr. Scully, the future is now.

"Notations: Sean Scully" is comprised of the three "Iona" paintings, the "Mirror" paintings, as well as two works from the "Wall of Light" series.

"Notations: Sean Scully" is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until February 23, 2013

See Sean Scully's website for a more comprehensive view of the scope of his work: Sean Scully-Body of Work

Recent photography

DL (checks)

DL (pile #2-color)

DL (pile #2-B/w)

DL (bright corner)

Something happened in the studio the other day...

Well, something is usually happening when I'm in there, but this time was different. Put simply, I painted my working wall. Not usually something worth devoting a blog post to, but it was a special occasion, nonetheless. I allowed a pretty dense field of stray paint marks to build up over time and was a point of pride at one time. It wasn't enough that I made the work, I had to let the history of the previous work done in there remain, as well. 

That wasn't a big deal at first, but over time, it became difficult to really see what I was working on, regardless of how hard I tried to mentally block out those stray marks. I finally realized what a detriment the wall had become and did what I probably should have done a good while ago. Of course, I had to document this somewhat momentous occasion...

Before

During

Done!

Yes, that is a very self-satisfied smirk on my face. Fun time is over, now it's back to the real work...

DL (pile)

"DL (pile)", from an on-going series of light studies.

Work

I intended to go to the studio today, but didn't. I had a pretty intense day in there yesterday and probably needed some time to let things settle a bit. It was one of those sessions where I could see the beginnings of new ideas coalescing into a possible body of work and feeling a little grounded after being in a period of extensive experimentation. Experimentation in the sense of going outside of my usual mode of working, letting things fall where they may and leaving them in that unsettled state. Leaving some works in a state of being raw and unresolved are really useful later. There was a time when I'd automatically discard such things (I still do, but I give it more thought these days) and begin anew. 

This year, something has changed in how I look at and relate to new works. I've made more of an effort to not throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. I'm much more liable to let certain marks or passages in working paintings that I'm unsure of remain visible longer and give them more thought than in the past. Over the past few years, I had begun to be much more mercenary about what I thought wouldn't work for a particular piece and either remove the offending mark(s) right away or just do away with the work altogether. I've learned that when I have a day like yesterday, where I had a feeling for what I wanted and it wasn't turning out, that it might be better to not dive right back in the next day; that it may be better to take that next day, do something else and return the day after with fresher eyes.  I'm at my most critical and less patient with my work and progress when I'm feeling less than optimal mentally because of lack of sleep, as I was today. It's days like this that it's better for me to take care of errands or chores at home and go in tomorrow with a fresher eye, hopefully.  

Some Help for Artists, Galleries, Private Collections and Museums Impacted by Hurricane Sandy

Some Help for Artists, Galleries, Private Collections and Museums Impacted by Hurricane Sandy
(via Hyperallergic)

Day one brought out a lot of art lovers, with a few faces that I hadn't seen in a while and I made some new acquaintances. It looks like the weather is going to be great again today so let's get it started! (as soon as I finish my cereal and get dressed...)

Tim McFarlane-Philadelphia Open Studio Tours

POST 2012

The Futility of Finding a Spotless Inch in an Artist's Studio

(limited edition prints available)

This weekend, I will once again open my studio as a part of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours. I will have a selection of paintings and works on paper on view. If you happen to be in the Old City section of Philadelphia, feel free to stop by. 

Here's what you need to know:

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2012

Tim McFarlane Studio

16-A North 3rd Street, 4th Floor**

(3rd Street, just north of Market)

Saturday and Sunday, October 20-21, 2012

12pm-6pm, both days

 **Please note that this is a 4th Floor walk-up with no elevator

While you're in Old City, visit some of the other POST participants in the area:

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours-Old City