So far, I've been ruminating about great paintings that have influenced me, and I've touched upon the subjects of Nature, of layering and change, and on Light. The subject of light is a dominant one in my artistic life--After all, I chose to work with glass, and glass, probably more than most other media just loves light. I think it would be safe to say that most glass needs light to really "shine." My dichroic glass pieces are at their best in sunlight, or in strong direct light like halogen light. {It's interesting to note that these are the same lights that seem to be the most flattering for gemstones, as well}. As I mentioned in an earlier post, an early goal of mine was to become a "connoiseur of light."
So it comes as no surprise that one of my favorite painters is Claude Monet. Most people are familiar with his giant water lily scenes, but in the Impressionist gallery at the Art Institute are a series of paintings of a single subject, haystacks. He calls them "wheat stacks" and they look a little different from the rolled or rounded piles we are familiar with in the American farmscape. These look a bit like muffins with sloping tops--not a glorious subject, but that wasn't the point.
What Monet was trying to do in his paintings was exactly capture on canvas the light on these piles of hay at a particular time of day, in a particular type of weather, during a particular season. Considering that he also had to capture the light in the sky, the way the light fell on the grasses of the haystacks and was reflected off them, as well as the colors of the shadows--well, let's say it made for some furious efforts while painting, because, of course, the light was constantly changing. I remember someone told me about Monet shouting with frustration that it changed so fast he had a hard time keeping up. (To see some poor reproductions---not a criticism, really, it's just so hard for a computer image to convey the beauty and impact of the real thing--click here ).
What a ballsy thing to do! Unlike my life in the city, where in winter I came to work in the dark and went home in the dark, here in Arizona I spend a lot of time noticing the sun move across the sky, and the light change over the course of a day. I usually get to see both a sunrise and a sunset every day, plus the view from my studio goes twenty miles across a valley. I can tell what time it is pretty well without a watch--I'm usually not more than ten minutes off, and I've developed a pretty good weather sense. But to take a bunch of oil paints in tubes and use them to perfectly capture late afternoon twilight in winter, or the light just before dawn in spring---lights that hold their maximum impact for often less than ten minutes before grading into something else, to try and capture that on canvas, well, that takes true courage. more on this tomorrow...
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