Question: Is it cheating to use a grid system to do a drawing?

Before I get started I would like to point out that in my earliest days as a professional artist I did over 300 pastel portraits followed by a couple of thousand ink caricatures, and approximately 30,000 airbrushed t-shirts over about an eight year period, all without any kind of grid or other measuring devices. All freehand, either from memory, imagination, or life. I jumped into this crazy carney world of drawing and painting way before I would finally darken the doors of an art school.

The thing about what I call carney art, particularly how it pertains to portraiture, is that our methods depended on certain visual tropes that we would keep in our “toolbox” as we approached a drawing. In my toolbox was a virtual bag of noses, mouths, eyes and eye brows, hair lines, chin shapes, the list goes on. The longer you worked and the more you produced the greater the contents of your toolbox. We could look at a person sitting in front of us and quickly match the parts with our visual tricks to construct their likeness onto paper with cheap pastels. All done adequately enough to get the customer to like it, and efficiently enough to sell it for an affordable price. Honestly, in these days I learned a lot more about selling myself and my work than I did about art.

One of the compelling features of art done this way in public is that it captures the imagination of onlookers by putting on a show of skills that perpetuate the idea art is some kind of magic act. I can remember painting t-shirts on the boardwalk in Daytona Beach while massive crowds gathered around the window to watch as I painted. I ate up the attention back then and added to the show by painting two shirts simultaneously while ambidextrously using two airbrushes at the same time to ear splitting rock music.

While I do have fond memories of those days the most important role they played for me in my artistic development was that they paid my way through art school. As I began to take art more seriously it became more and more apparent the damage my carney techniques had done. Sure, there were some things that helped me advance along the way, but many more that stood in my way. The constant over simplification of approaching figurative art probably did the most damage. Those quick study, draw-on-the-fly techniques caused me to overlook deeper subtleties, the complexity of structure, the nuance of color, and most of all developing the patience it takes to do things well rather than fast. While those tactics helped me sell myself to the public as an artist they were simultaneously destroying the real artist inside of me.

So, when asked today if I can draw an object or a person with accuracy by simply looking at the subject, the answer is of course I can. I’ve done it more times than I can count and I still practice that way on a routine basis. Should I have to prove that for some silly reason I can, but that takes me to the central point of this essay. Is it cheating to draw from photos, or to use drawing transfer techniques like a grid, measured lines with a divider, spolvero, or even a camera lucida?

Before I give my short answer to that question let me first say, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Albrecht Dürer, Johannes Vermeer, Vincent van Gogh, and yes, Norman Rockwell all used one or more of these techniques. Leonardo Da Vinci himself writes:

“Have a piece of glass as large as a half sheet of royal folio paper and set thus firmly in front of your eyes that is, between your eye and the thing you want to draw; then place yourself at a distance of 2/3 of a breccia from the glass fixing your head with a machine in such a way that you cannot move it at all. Then shut or entirely cover one eye and with a brush or red chalk draw upon the glass that which you see beyond it; then trace it on paper from the glass, afterwards transfer it onto good paper, and paint it if you like, carefully attending to the final perspective.”

—The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, volume 1, section 523.

Da Vinci goes on to instruct in great detail how to build a grid out of threads and how to use a wax pellet to center it on the model, then to lightly draw a proportional grid on your paper. What da Vinci has done here, 300 years before the invention of the camera, is essentially setup the exact process someone would use today to work from a printed reference. He also goes into the process of using a plumb-line to draw a nude figure from nature, which is the basis of the teachings in the École des Beaux Arts of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. A technique used by John Singer Sargent and Thomas Eakins in their developmental years.

Grids were also used to transfer smaller studies to larger works like frescos. Similarly a process called spolvero, which is similar to what modern sign painters use today called pouncing, which entails a large piece of paper that has multiple pin holes punched into that allow the artist to dust colored chalk over it in order to transfer an image to the painting surface.

Albrecht Dürer left us multiple illustrations of grid techniques similar to that of da Vinci, where once again the artist frames out his subject with a net of equal squares that are then drawn on the paper while the artist looks through the net from a fixed position, as seen in this photo.

Engraving of an artist using a grid, Albrecht Dürer, 1525

I mentioned the camera lucida above. The camera lucida, patented in 1806, is a device that uses a glass titled at 45 degrees which allows the artist to look through it and see the subject as a reflection superimposed over a drawing surface allowing the artist to trace the reflection. David Hockney and Charles Falco have even argued that certain masters like Caravaggio, Ingres, and Van Eyck used a similar method in their day, but while their argument is good it is still controversial among some art historians.

While it is generally accepted in academic circles that Johannes Vermeer may have used a camera obscura in his work, as they were in use in Delft during his time, that is not as important as it is to understand what length artists have gone through over history to achieve realism in their work. In fact, new evidence has been found regarding Vermeer’s work where pinholes found in 13 of his paintings indicate he may have used strings pinned to the center of his canvas to establish a vanishing point for perspective.

So, my short answer to the question of whether it is considered cheating to use various devices to block in your drawing is an unequivocal no. In fact, it’s absurd to even make such a qualification. However, there is a caveat to this. If you are a student these tools should really be avoided until you have reached a level of skill that is not reliant on such devises. Drawing from sight only as well as doing blind contours should be studied heavily in order to hone your instincts and hand eye coordination. A grid cannot teach you to draw, and it will quickly betray the untrained hand.

I still very much enjoy drawing from sight alone. It’s one reason I regularly attend life drawing sessions, and despite all my years of drawing I still mess things up on a regular basis. Should I decide to spend the time I can work through any drawing to bring it into extreme accuracy and it can be quite rewarding to do so, however, when I am doing one of my studio paintings I am not on the boardwalk trying to impress onlookers with some magical ability to draw my subject unassisted. Been there, done that. That being said, I do like the freshness of a drawing that is not overly contained by measurements, so most of my paintings are built over a sketch that is freely drawn, while still using some grid marks on my paper or canvas in order to hold my layout together.

I’ll end this by repeating, while the use of a grid, or any other device is not cheating, neither will it make you a better artist. If you don’t draw well a grid won’t be much help. I have seen plenty of terrible drawings where someone used a grid or a projector when they should have been spending their time learning to draw instead.

Happy painting!

Salmon, William. “Plate XV: Portrait Study of Male Bust.” In Polygraphice, 1685

Closing and Opening Doors: A Story of Two Artists

Today we said goodbye to a dear friend. While the Shoals arts community is loaded with many talented artists, few of us can match the glowing presence that Mary Linville brought to our community. As Pam and I walked into Magnolia Church today it was transformed into an incredible gallery of art. For the first time we were able to look at a volume of Mary’s work that truly expressed just how versatile and talented she was. Her long and prolific career transformed the foyer and hallway of Magnolia Church into the grandest art gallery in North Alabama for a day. Now THAT’S what I call a viewing!

All of that aside, Mary’s very presence transcended her paintings. I am so grateful I am able to call Mary a friend, and I was truly hoping this friendship would last for many more years. She always lit up the room in our Artists Guild meetings. She always had something interesting to show us, and we all respected her as the matriarch of the Florence art community. She carried herself with great confidence, but always with a smile and a wink. More than merely a painter, her passion for creativity took on the forms of gardening, cooking, knitting, ceramics, and any other kind of craft she could get her hands on. She was truly a Renaissance Woman in a city appropriately named for the likes of someone such as her. I will miss her more than words can say.

After Mary’s memorial service Pam and I found our way over to the Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts where they are currently exhibiting Artistic Renderings of Youth 2024, artworks from middle-school and high school students from all over the Shoals. In its 32nd year, this is always a great exhibition. The amount of young talent in this area is off the chain! For the second year in a row Best in Show went to a young artist by the name of Lauren Bernard, from Deshler High School in Tuscumbia. On my word, not only as a retired professional artist, but as a lifelong art director who hired and paid professional illustrators over a 35 year period, Lauren has skills above any I have ever seen in a high school student.

I’m telling you right now, she is not just “a really good artist,” she is already at a level that can compete with some of the best illustrators I have ever worked with, and keep in mind I have worked with some of the best illustrators in the world. Lauren swept this year with three entries, and all three took ribbons. She and I have both been invited to exhibit this summer for the Mostly Blues Exhibition coinciding with the WC Handy Music Festival, and I’m really hoping to meet her at the reception. While Lauren will be headed off to university next year I am already beginning to see some rising artists in the 9th and 10th grades, and really look forward to watching them grow over the next few years.

So, on this day we said goodbye to a giant of an artist with a beautiful soul. Then we witnessed the work of future artists filled with hope and promise. I can’t think of a better way to honor Mary, because I know her spirit will live in that gallery forever.

I will sign off with a quote from Mary delivered today by pastor Grant Asbell. When speaking of talent Mary would always say, “You know how to spell talent? H A R D W O R K!”

When Love Screamed in Agony

(A much deeper look into Rick’s artist’s statement)

I once stopped a man from trying to kill his girlfriend with a knife. I was visiting with a fellow artist friend in a sketchy apartment complex west of Atlanta. I heard the screaming upstairs, so ran up there to see what was going on. To this day I don’t know what their backstory was, but all I knew was I needed to get myself between him and his girlfriend. I was unarmed, so once I was between them I needed to deescalate the situation the best I could in order to get him to hand me the knife. He was wild eyed and lost looking. I don’t remember my words. All I remember is that I tried to bring some quiet to the situation and I talked to him gently until he handed me the knife.

I haven’t thought of this story in years, but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about where we are right now as a society. I am deeply concerned. As a person who works very hard to love and respect the dignity of every human I meet I’ve become rather distraught over where I see us heading. For me it is becoming less and less about who wins this argument, but more about where we will find ourselves on the other side, regardless of who wins.

I’m reminded of what it feels like to be a child of a broken family. A child from a family that has no history of domestic violence or abuse, but simply one where the parents have irreconcilable differences. In the eyes of the adults there always seems to be a clear moral high ground, but in the eyes of the child there is nothing but utter confusion and a profound sense of loss. This, in turn, changes the child forever regardless of which parent is “right.” The consequences are such that that child will never have the same sense of stability or security they once took for granted, and likewise they will never know who to trust again. But we grow up and we begin to see the world for the highly complex thing that it is.

The only constant in most of these situations is the child’s love. Despite all of the confusion, pain, and the ugliness of the situation the child’s love for both of their parents never fails. Then, slowly, as we age, we reconcile the events and put them together in little boxes that help us understand and we develop a new compassion for our parents for what they went through. Perhaps this is part of “putting away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)

It’s common for a child to try and figure out what it was they did to make this happen. You, as the child, can play the story over and over again in your head trying to imagine a thousand different outcomes, but at the end of the day nothing changes. Once this division happens the child is faced with trying to love two people equally who can no longer be in the same room together, either physically or emotionally. This makes the child feel like they are perpetually disappointing at least one of their two parents. It also doesn’t matter if the parents feel like they aren’t behaving that way. The child will always feel this way. Perhaps this is because we live in a world that is constantly trying to divide things up in terms of black and white, right and wrong, or left and right.

While these are two things that played a role in my formation as an adult, my formation continues and is still at work today. I have been an artist my entire life and my skills as a creative person have allowed me to live a fruitful life. I am blessed beyond comprehension. My personality is largely built upon three major pillars: My identity as an artist, my love for all people, and my numerous calls to ministry throughout my life. Only now in my later years am I finally beginning to see a way to combine all three of them at once.

I spent too many years assuming “ministry” meant leading a congregation in worship, working as a chaplain, organizing a homeless shelter, working a soup line, the list goes one. While all of those things are wonderful and certainly represent the most visible form of ministry we have all come to recognize, we tend to overlook the single most accessibly ministry each of us have at our fingertips. Indeed, as small as it seems, it is the most powerful of all the aforementioned ministries. The ministry I speak of is the ministry of who we are. A calling to the risky act of making ourselves vulnerable to our fellow humans. The authentic act of trust we are all born with, but somehow lose over time.

In the late fourth century a monk named Telemachus came to Rome from east of Asia Minor. Theodoret of Cyrus writes, “After gazing upon the combat from the amphitheatre, he descended into the arena, and tried to separate the gladiators. The sanguinary spectators, possessed by the demon who delights in the effusion of blood, were irritated at the interruption of their cruel sports, and stoned him who had occasioned the cessation. On being apprised of this circumstance, the admirable emperor numbered him with the victorious martyrs, and abolished these iniquitous spectacles.” (Re: Ecclesiastical History of the Church, pages 326-327)

Over the centuries this story has been told multiple ways, which include the gladiators killing Telemachus themselves, thus bringing an uncomfortable hush over the arena leading everyone to leave in silence. Some versions claim the emperor was present at the event. All we know for sure is it led to the death of Telemachus. Records also seem to indicate that no further gladiatorial events took place after his death.

Now, perhaps this is an extreme example of making oneself vulnerable in order to end violence, but it is highly important that we recognize that the violence didn’t end until someone was willing to give up everything to make it stop. While I’m not saying that we should each take our calling to deadly extremes, I am saying this is the kind of ministry that has the power to remove a knife from the hand of someone who has lost control. So how does this relate to me as an artist?

After “The Bomb” we entered into an existential crisis unlike any in the history of human civilization. Thus began the famous Cold War, and with it everything in our everyday life changed. More than anything we all woke up to the idea that we, ourselves, could be the architects of our own doom. This changed the art world dramatically. If any one thing played a major role in the evolution of mid-century modern art and expressionism it was the shadow cast by our potential for world destruction. Like all things throughout history however, we grew indifferent to all the saber-rattling that followed and by the end of the 20th century we were lulled back into an uncomfortable sleep.

Then came 9/11. Most of us who remember that event still can’t get our heads fully around it. Like the Bomb and the Cold War that followed, the profound and terrifying impact of this tipping point is still unfolding in our society today. Each of us has to process this in our own unique way, but I would like to share some of my observations from my perspective both as an artist and someone who is tragically in love with my fellow humans.

We often see the words “never forget” on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and social media. I often ask myself, “What is it that they want us not to forget?” I can assure you anyone who was alive on September 11th, 2001 will absolutely NEVER forget what happened. So, I ask again, what is it you are really trying to say here?

As for me, I will never forget that for a fleeting breath in time every American, along with most of the western world were joined together in our sorrow over this tragedy. While I will never forget the heroes, more than anything I will never forget the 2,977 victims. People whom I know nearly nothing about, and I feel that “unknowing” might possibly the most important feature of who they are for me. When we wept for the lives lost in the Twin Towers we wept for every type of person there. It didn’t matter what side of any social or political issues those victims were a part of, we all collectively wept for them. Because for that horrible moment in time they were us, and we were them. For me, at least, this has never changed.

So, if you ask me, “What will you never forget, Rick?” I will tell you that I’ll never forget during that darkest hour our love for complete strangers screamed out together in agony. It’s the love I’ll never forget. I choose to remember the love. The kind of love willing to stand naked between two opposing forces and die if it has to in the name of peace.

My paintings are the agents of my ministry. They are my attempt to remind us of who we are. I encourage each of us to see ourselves as the stranger, and if you identify as a Christian, to see the face of Christ in every stranger. I want us to see the heroic nature of everyday life. It is my hope that we can recognize something in ourselves in each story I capture in my artwork. There are no “others” in my universe. Life is fragile, and at any given moment we can be the victim and at any other moment we can be the crack where the light gets in. I am an artist, and that is my ministry.

Regardless of which side I perceive to be right or wrong I am like a child trying my best to love both parents. Today I find myself standing between two forces in our society and they are both brandishing knives in a zero-sum game, full of vitriol that seems to seek no quarter for the other side. There comes a time when you have to stand between two gladiators. When fear no longer has a hold on you because continued violence is much more terrifying than death. Wherever you may find yourself in this story I implore you, for the sake of our children, drop your knife.

“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be ‘tikkun olam,’ repairers of creation.”

Fred Rogers

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[IMAGE: “St. Joesph Holding Christ as a Child” en plein-aire watercolor from the garden of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Georgia, 2003]

[Credit: Leonard Cohen, Anthem, 1992 for the line “the crack where the light gets in”]

Loose Does Not Mean Unimportant

One consistently common mistake I see in the artwork of students and amateur painters is what happens when they “loosen up” certain areas of their painting as they move away from the central subject. Someone might paint a pretty decent central section of their work and as they move away to the outer edges, particularly if they are fading off with a vignette, the brushwork or their sensitivity to the composition falls apart.

I first learned this from an award winning professional illustrator when I was in art school. After submitting a full-bodied self portrait that included great detail in the upper body my lines trailed off as they went down to form the legs. It was one of those things I couldn’t see until it was pointed out. Then it became impossible not to see. It looked as if I had stopped caring and just copped out.

Likewise, when I was a department head and instructor at the same school years later I had a young illustration student from Romania approach me for advice on an illustration she was preparing for an end of semester critique. In the process I noticed some bad lines in a different section of her painting that I felt needed addressing. This was not a subjective call, there were obvious mistakes in the lines. As she was not prepared for that extra observation she asked me if I thought it really mattered, and if I felt the critique panel would really notice that. 

My answer to her was twofold. First, I said, “I noticed it.” Second, I told her now she knew it was there too. I went on to explain that the difference between professionals and amateurs is for professionals it isn’t about if someone might notice or not. It is our job to be our own most strict critic, and we fix the mistake not based on whether it will be seen, but because we know it’s there. 

Like this student’s illustration our own work can hold together or fall apart over some element that isn’t even part of the main subject of the painting. It’s very unfortunate when I see this on a painting where it is clear to me the artist actually had the skillset to do better, but didn’t. As always, the biggest contributor to this type of oversight usually comes from lack of patience, not ability.

So, when you get to those outer edges of your work, even if they are broad stokes that fall off to the white of the paper, treat them with the same level of care as you did the most important central element of the painting. Painting loosely gestured objects in the background have a serious level of importance to play within the whole of the composition. Loose does not mean unimportant, and painting loose needs just as much attention as painting tightly.

Stallions

Stallions: Watercolor on Arches paper, 14 x 20 inches

This is a painting I did not intentionally set out to do. I was at the North Alabama State Fair in Muscle Shoals looking for subjects to paint when these young lads approached me. The third guy, second from the right, insisted that I get a picture of them. I explained what I was doing and told them I wouldn’t know what to do with their picture. He told me to post it on social media and tag it with a line I quickly forgot.

I pretty much pushed this aside for awhile, but weeks later I was going through my references and suddenly this image hit me in a whole new way. It dawned on me that they embodied a certain timeless spirit that fit perfectly in my painting series. In fact, as I was painting these guys it began to feel like I knew them. Because, in some ways I truly did. These guys were me and my friends in the 1970s, or at least like friends I knew during those years. Even their outfits would have fit in 47 years ago in any high school across America.

I determined at least three or four of them ran track based on their running bracelets. The fourth guy is wearing a Colbert Heights High School hoodie, so at one point I considered naming this painting Wildcats, but their body language projects so much confidence I had to call this painting “Stallions.” Four young men in the dawn of their summer years, ready to take on the world. 

Let the Artist Dream

Rick, as an artist at Six Flags, circa 1980

I was 16 years old when I got my first job as a portrait artist at Six Flags Over Georgia. I had all the usual aspirations of any young artist. At this point my education in art was mostly self-taught, helped along by a couple of key teachers from seventh to tenth grade. 

Being accepted by the company to be an artist in the park was an extremely big deal to me, and it was my first time being surrounded by other working artists, mostly older than me. I still remember one conversation with an artist named Gail. Gail was a college student, so I looked up to her as if she were an old sage, and therefore hung onto every word she said.

One evening when the park was closing she and I were walking through the park on our way out. Somewhere along the way I made it known to her I aspired to be a “famous artist” one day. I’ll never forget how quickly she turned to me and admonished me to get that out of my head. She went on the tell me it was the wrong way to think about my future as an artist. That I needed to accept there was no more room at the table for so called famous artists. I might have well aspired to be a rock and roll star, so it seemed. I remember thinking even then, who is Gail to tell me where my limits are? Her words laid heavily upon me nonetheless, because, you know, sage college girl and all that. Those words stayed with me too, because here I am writing about them 48 years later! 

A few years went by and I continued to do artwork out at the park and other places like fairs and art events, one which eventually led me to art school. A recruiter saw me doing caricatures at a festival and handed me a brochure to the Portfolio Center School for Art, Design and Photography. I got off to a great start at the school for a few quarters, but things began to change for both me and the school. I left after a year because I was only interested in becoming an illustrator and the head of the school wanted me to change my major to art direction.

During my year away I worked as an art director in a screen printing company running a small art department. After a year I calmed down and decided to return to school and acquiesce to my teacher’s desire for me to enter the art direction program. It was here that I began to come across the next level of toxic teaching. In one of my first classes our instructor, Ken, opened up the class telling us that most of us would end up selling shoes for a living. Seriously, he said that. He reminded us that in the creative industry only the smallest percentage of aspirants actually make it. This was repeated through the course of my time there, not only by him, but a few other instructors as well.

Most of us students accepted those odds, but over time I came to describe this type of “instruction” as one that forces motivation using anxiety and humiliation. Sure, some people survive that gauntlet, but often they find themselves on the other side believing that codswallop works. While it may be true that only those with focused determination can make it into the business, this method of lording a sense of fear of failure over students generally creates broken humans that become miserable work colleagues at the end of the day.

Pam and I were talking about a particular professor a mutual friend of ours had in the Fine Arts program at Auburn back in the early eighties. During critiques, when students would hang their work in front of the classroom for input, he would walk up to pieces, rip them down and toss them onto the floor. In my opinion, this melodramatic twist of the knife does absolutely nothing to help a student improve. Once again, it enforces this idea that we as artists should all be on pins and needles full of anxiety just waiting for the shoe of criticism to fall. I’ve heard it said a thousand times by people who think this is okay that the teachers are just training you to take criticism and toughen you up. I swear to God, does that not sound like the excuses people use for domestic violence, or what? 

I repeat myself, not one person’s skill levels will improve because you humiliated them in front of their peers. Neither will they become a better student because you’ve convinced them their dreams are a waste of time. It’s startling to me how many teachers in the creative industry somehow think shocking arrogance can actually motivate people. I chalk it up to the statistics we see in people with a history of domestic violence, where violence typically begets more violence. It’s the old, “If I was abused and I made it, then you too need to feel this abuse if you think you can be as good as me.” Again, I say that is utter codswallop.

Back in 2011 I took the position of the art direction department head at my old school. Over the years the school had evolved from a portfolio based art school at its inception into a world-class advertising creative school. Now in the latter days of my career as an art director and creative director it was my turn to have an impact on young people who were hoping to make it in the business. It is my sincere hope that I never made a student feel like the doors of greatness were closed to them. I’ve never forgotten Gail’s words, and I always swore I would never tell anyone they couldn’t become the best in their field, or even, dare I say, famous. As for my old instructor, Ken, I ended up having a much more illustrious career than him, so I will just leave it at that.

To this day, when I see the work of young artists I get chills of excitement. For me each and every one of them might just be famous one day.

[Header Image: Rick painting a hat at the North Georgia State Fair in 1981]

Vive la Mort

Vive la Mort, oil on canvas, 150 x 87,5 cm, Jan van Beers, 1873

Last Saturday I was attending a group put together by Tim Stevenson at Martha Carpenter’s studio in Tuscumbia. For my friends from outside of this area Tim and Martha are two well established artists here in the Shoals area. Because I am an art nerd I kind of consider both of them celebrities in my universe, and I am always honored to just be in the same room with them.

Anyway, twice a month Tim has a roundtable discussion with a group of artists, many of whom are there for his instruction that follows these talks. I affectionately refer to them as “Tim Talks.” Last Saturday Tim mentioned his practice of always finding at least one thing during his day that he can take with him to contemplate on at the end of the day. In this context he mentioned how he does this in every art museum he visits as well, and encourages young people to do the same.

As I sat listening it occurred to me that I have often done the same in most museums I’ve visited, even if only subconsciously. There was one museum visit for me, however, that planted an image in my mind I have not been able to shake for the last 26 years. In May of 1998 I was in Brussels, Belgium. I spent an entire day at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. While there are amazing paintings by all the greatest masters within its walls my main focus was to see “La Mort de Marat” by Jacques-Louis David, but that would not be the image that followed me home all the way back to America that still haunts me to this day.

As I casually turned a corner in another part of the museum I was met by one of the most startling paintings I’ve ever seen. A life-sized image of a woman’s severed head hanging by her hair from a knife stuck into a wooden wall with large words written manically above it that read, “Vive la Mort.” Below was written, “A mon ami Fernand Nauts, Jan van Beers, 1873.” As I stood there in shock a woman and her daughter walked up next to me. Equally shocked, the woman grabbed the cross around her neck and kissed it, then crossed herself. 

This is not a famous painting, and Jan van Beers is not a particularly famous artist outside of Brussels or an art school classroom, so trying to find out more about this work wasn’t very easy. The best I have been able to figure out is there was an artist named Fernand Khnopff, who was a contemporary of Beers in Brussels at that time. Although more known for his paintings Khnopff was also a writer and critic who mentions Beers in some of his writings. In one place he seems to cast some shade on van Beers by referring to him as a “Parisianised Belgian artist.” ^[1]

In another article he writes, “Just at this time Jan van Beers, the wayward painter of ultra-Parisian whimsicalities, and J. Lambeaux, the powerful sculptor of Flemish grossièretés, simultaneously terminated their studies at the Antwerp Academy. Jan van Beers was already attracting attention by his exuberant independence of spirit and by eccentricities that had become notorious. He made great friends with Struys, whom he persuaded to join him in a studio he had taken in the heart of Antwerp. In 1871, while still attending the higher classes at the Academy, Struys had exhibited A Young Girl returning from School in the Salon at Ghent; in Jan van Beers’ studio he painted a series of humorous pictures, facile and ordinary in character, which obtained no greater success with the public than did the extravagances which his friend invented in order to attract the notice of buyers.” ^[2] 

He goes on to rake van Beers and his friend over the coals for the rest of this article, and while these things were written in 1901 and 1907 respectively, I can’t help but wonder if some amount of animosity had always existed between Khnopff and Beers.

Is it possible that this painting was directed as an attack at Khnopff? I can’t confirm that, and I wish I could find a scholar that could, but it seems plausible to me. The painting was donated to the museum in 1986 by a Mme E. Nauts-Collart from Uccle, Brussels. As we can see in the painting the person whom Beers addresses as his “friend” is Fernand Nauts, so we can assume Mme Nauts-Collart is a descendant. Given the slight similarity in the pronunciation of both Khnopff and Nauts I can’t help but to wonder if they are connected. Then again, Fernand Nauts may be a completely different person, and if so I would really like to know the story behind this painting and van Beers’ relationship to his “mon ami!” Whether this was meant as an insult or just a humorous jab the words are dripping with sarcasm no matter how you sort them out.

So, here I am 26 years later thinking about one obscure painting I ran into, or should I say ran into me. So next time you walk through a museum be on the lookout for that meaningful moment. Maybe it will be a painting or a sculpture, or maybe it will be a mom chasing after a three year old walking towards a 400 year old masterpiece with peanut butter all over his hands! In my world everything is a painting.

REFERENCES:
[1] Khnopff, Fernand, “Belgian Pen-Drawings,” The Studio, special winter number 1900- 1901, 176-183.
[2] Khnopff, Fernand, “Alexandre Struys, a Belgian Painter,” The Studio, 41, 174 (September 1907), 283-289.

Drawing is Hard!

Self-Portrait While Looking in Mirror, pencil on paper, circa 1990

I recently posted to Facebook that drawing is hard. I’d like to elaborate on that just a bit to clear up my intentions with that remark. As I also said in that post, one of the first steps in learning to draw is to understand that drawing is difficult. This doesn’t mean, however, that drawing can’t or shouldn’t be fun. The point of understanding, or even embracing the difficulty is so you don’t become disheartened with impatience. 

Often times experienced artists can make the drawing process look easy, especially in public places. In my early days I did hundreds of portraits in a theme park, and thousands of caricatures. Often done rapidly with the appearance of great ease. I will let you in on a little secret, in the world of live caricature sketching we use a formulaic system of devices that we adapt to each sitter in order to knock these things out in as little as two minutes. In all honesty I believe using that system set me back considerably in my early days as an artist. It took me years to exorcise those little tricks out of my system in order to improve my drawing skills.

The idea that artists can draw so effortlessly is a lie that can squash a beginner’s enthusiasm and cause them to walk away, or stop trying. If you understand that drawing is still work for even the most experienced artist then you will be able to make more sense out of the difficulty. Yes, of course it’s easy to draw silly little doodles and fun little abstractions, but I’m obviously talking about learning to draw in the classical form of realism. I will say however, that many very successful cartoonists create art that is easily as difficult if not more difficult than realism. So, if you want to be good at drawing you have to cross that threshold of difficulty regardless of your end game.

The enjoyment can come from the problem solving, and the small successes we have each time we advance our skills to the next level, and like I’ve said before, it is not about talent. Talent is also a lie. There is no such thing as this mythical barrier too many people believe stands between you and the ability to draw. If you want it bad enough, and you understand it takes work the only thing you need is patience, and maybe a little tenacity. Talent is real, but it is only a distinguishing characteristic between artists, not some genetic meta-human trait that allows us to walk through the walls of self doubt. Because trust me, those walls are thick, especially for us artists!

I’m attaching a self-portrait I drew right here in Florence some 35 years ago while looking in a mirror. This is the face of determination, tenacity, and self-doubt.

The above image is a self-portrait I drew in Florence, Alabama some 34 years ago while looking in a mirror. This is the face of determination, tenacity, and self-doubt.

Fanfare for the Common Man

Sitting with Melvin: Gouache on Arches paper, 11 x 15 inches

I can still recall the silent skies in the first days after 9/11, while we were all still in shock just trying to figure out how to get our heads around what happened. You could stand in your yard looking up for hours and the sky stood empty. The mute sky highlighted our dashed hopes of a more innocent world, and while that world may have never truly existed, we never felt its absence more in those days immediately after the towers fell. Perhaps quiet skies aren’t so unusual for some people in remote places, but when you live in Atlanta the sky is always filled with air traffic in both sound and vision. 

After about a week, when programming was slowly going back to its regular schedule, I was driving to work. My favorite morning show finally came back on the radio for the first time since the morning of 9/11. I was listening to Second Cup, hosted by Lois Reitzes on our local NPR station. There was a moment of silence, then slowly as if rising out of the fog came the powerful percussive beats of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Never in my life have I felt a piece of music cut so quickly into the depth of what it means to be human. Never before had it ever become so apparent to me how miraculous even the most ordinary life can be. To this very day the opening stanzas of that symphony literally bring me to tears.

I have always loved people, even before the events of 9/11, but after emerging on other side of that terrible crucible I fear too many of us are forgetting what we all briefly understood, at least for a fleeting moment. That is how absolutely precious life is, and not just the lives of ourselves and our loved ones, but of the complete stranger. We have allowed ourselves to get swept up with the rage of time, current events, and social media that are systematically pulling us apart. When we wept for the lives lost in the Twin Towers we wept for every type of person there. It didn’t matter what side of any social or political issues those victims were a part of, we all collectively wept for them. Because for that horrible moment in time they were us, and we were them. For me, at least, this has never changed.

My friend Jim and I were talking on the phone earlier today and Jim asked me what my motivation was behind my current series of paintings. Interestingly, Pam and I had the same conversation only an hour before that. While I’ve never had a formal explanation prepared for that question, I’ll try and take this opportunity to break it down. First and foremost, I am not interested in what sells. I’m not interested in what people want to hang on their walls, and I’m not interested in painting postcards. I spent a long career developing advertising campaigns designed around what people like, or what the client wants them to buy. I am absolutely done with that kind of thinking.

What I’m doing today with my art is my attempt to find the truest expression of myself. Some people love cats, some love horses, some love landscapes, seascapes, abstracts, all sorts of things. To those artists I say paint what you love. Plain and simply, I love people. The more regular and “ordinary guy” a person is the more interesting they are to me. Every single person you meet. Every fucking one of them is a miracle. That is what I want to paint. My love for people and the human condition is both my joy and my heartbreak. Consequently, these current times of division we are seeing in society are absolutely ripping my heart out.

So what does all of this have to do with these two paintings I did of Melvin’s On the Spot Car Wash here in East Florence? It has EVERYTHING to do with them. When I began this article I was going to write about my decision to paint these paintings like I do for most of my blog entries, but in the process these deeper thoughts bubbled to the surface, so I felt they needed to be said. Forgive me if my words seemed a bit exuberant, but I’ll talk about the paintings now.

Melvin’s catchphrase is “If It Don’t Shine, It Ain’t Mine!” Which is where the nickname for one of these paintings comes from. The official name for the painting seen below is “Composition in Red and Grey,” but I affectionately refer to it as “Makin’ It Shine.” In the painting one of Melvin’s employees puts the finishing touches on a Mercedes SUV. I’m hoping Melvin will tell me his name when I go to deliver some signed prints to him soon.

Arrangement of red and grey.

The unique thing about this painting is it is almost completely an arrangement of only red and grey. Elements of red completely encircle the main figure almost like a halo, beginning with the Coke sign at the top moving clockwise to the Coke machine, to the vacuum cleaner, the spray bottle, the taillight on the car, the reflection of the Coke sign in the car, and back to the Coke sign. Everything else in the painting is some variation of grey, from the main figure’s shirt, the cinder block walls that fill the frame, the car itself and the warm grey concrete parking lot. Only his bluejeans shorts, the bluish grey metal phone number sign, the rag on top of the Coke machine and the little bottle icons on its display add the slightest touch of color outside of the red and grey scheme.

As with many of my paintings I have rearranged certain items compared to where they are in the real world. In this case I had to move the vending machine closer to the window and slide the main sign above the window over to the right in order to get the reds to fall where they do in the final composition to bring balance to the entire layout. If you were to drive by Melvin’s right now you might not even recognize the difference unless you held the painting up for comparison.

The other painting (seen above), “Sitting with Melvin” is where you will typically find him in the afternoon supervising his staff and keeping the cars on schedule. Melvin is in the chair on the right holding the clipboard. While you can’t see it clearly in the painting, he always keeps a sidearm on his hip during working hours. Melvin is an institution here in Florence and is a superb representation of the story I want to tell. After you’re done touring the music studios over in Muscle Shoals, visiting Pope’s Tavern, wandering out to Forks of Cypress and taking your pictures of O’Neal Bridge and Wilson Dam, what you have left here is a fascinating, vibrant community of real people doing real things. And who knows? After working on Coca-Cola for 20 years, causing me to find a peculiar amount of joy in painting the Coke machine and sign at Melvin’s, maybe Coca-Cola was right about one thing. In the scope of my project Melvin is indeed the Real Thing.

“You can’t second guess your taste for what someone else is going to like. It won’t be good. We’re not smart enough to know what someone else is going to like. Do what’s personal to you, take it as far as you can go, really push the boundaries, and people will resonate with it if they’re supposed to resonate with it.”

Rick Rubin

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Composition in Red and Grey — Makin’ It Shine: Gouache on Arches, 14 x 20 inches

Ring Toss

Ring Toss: Watercolor on Arches paper, 14 x 20 inches

This painting has a very special connection to my universe. I thought of a handful of titles like “25¢ a Ring,” “Jointee and the Marks,” or “Just One More Try,” but I decided to simply call it what it is, “Ring Toss.” This is at the North Alabama State Fair in Muscle Shoals, just across the river from Florence. Fairs and carnivals have always been a big part of my life. Growing up in southwest Atlanta we often went to Fun Town when I was a kid. I loved that place so much I would have dreams about it all the time. I had my birthday party there with all my pals in the first grade.

Fun Town was a permanent amusement park back in the days before the big theme parks like Six Flags came onto the scene. It had all the crazy games and breakdown style carny rides just like traveling fairs. My favorite ride back then was The Scrambler, which you can still find at nearly every traveling carnival. By the time I was 16 years old I got a job selling balloons on the midway of the Great Southeastern Fair. This fair was a big deal in the Atlanta area. It had old permanent buildings that are now used by production companies in the movie industry. It was massive, and many folks might even recognize its old roller coaster that was blown up during the filming of Smokey and the Bandit II. My great grandfather T.E. Robinson worked there five years in a row back in the 1930s.

I worked there again the following year as a caricature artist on the midway, for the same company I sold balloons for the year before. It was also around that time I began working at Six Flags Over Georgia as a portrait artist, and then a caricature artist. Over the next eight years I worked there and at fairs all over Georgia where I blew glass, carved leather, carved wooden signs, and eventually painted airbrush t-shirts. I also worked the North Georgia State Fair two years in a row. I painted hundreds of t-shirts the first year. The next year I worked for the carny company painting the sides of arcade games. I worked fairs in Barnesville, Soperton, Marietta, Dahlonega, and eventually ended up painting t-shirts for Big Daddy Rat on the boardwalk in Daytona Beach.

While I may have stopped working carnivals once I changed careers I never stopped going to them. Anywhere I find one I have to go, especially the big ones. Besides Georgia and Alabama, I’ve been to large fairs in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, and more small ones than I can count. When I walk down the midway the smells of candy apples, popcorn, corn dogs, and funnel cakes take me back on a magical journey into my past. 

Carneys live in an interesting universe, and they largely get a bad rap. Although, I admit my old boss at the Southeastern Fair taught me how to double talk a mark in order to pull some extra scratch out of a deal. Today things are less stereotypical. The age of the great traveling carnival is slowly slipping away. These people have to do whatever they can to hold onto their livelihood, and part of that is being a safer more welcoming event for everyone. When I walk through the fair I feel a great bit of empathy for the workers. I often make eye contact with them and give them a nod. They are the denizens of the world of wonder that made up one of the most romantically colorful periods of my life. I know deep down I am still a carny at heart. 

In this painting the main part that drew me in was the face of the carny, or jointee as some might say in the business. I watched this entire transaction between him and the young couple in the painting. His body language as he interacted with them exuded years of working the midway, and yet I felt I saw a kindness in his disposition. His face is the reason I painted this story. These folks might be a hardened group of travelers, but they are humans like the rest of us, just trying to make a living in a space that seems so temporary and otherworldly to the customers they encounter. This is why I decided to simply call the painting “Ring Toss,” because that’s all it is, a game where ordinary people can escape their doldrums and try to win a big giant green plush monster, or whatever those big old stuffed critters are.