PAINTING AS REAL ESTATE
Beyond the Photo

An essay by Steve Metzger
April 15, 2009

I have been painting for around forty-five years now and have seen a lot of changes in the art world. Through it all I have emulated different artists and styles that have come along , so, overall, my work might seem to lack continuity. Maybe it does, but so does our culture.

 Once , the only way to depict something was to draw or paint it. Now there's digital images...you can capture an image with a cell phone and send it around the world. Why bother painting anything? Especially, a copy of a photo. Chances are, the painting will be lacking in the detail the camera can capture anyway.

Partially for this reason, abstract art was invented, and the host of "isms" that filled the 20th century...Why be a "slave to the photo", as John Baldessari says?  Might as well move into performance art, or something more conceptual. At least, the creative artist should invent his or her own style, characters, images, paint their dreams, or do anything but the mindless copying of photographs.

So why do I do it?

The bottom line is, I enjoy painting from photographs (and digital images).  I like looking at the painting when it's in progress and when it's done. I like the details in photos, and the way the camera crops the image, camera distortion, the monocular view thru the lens. I enjoy using the projected image to create compositions and block in territories quickly. I think of photography, digital technology, and the projected image as  contemporary tools available for artists to use freely to create paintings.

I like working in different formats, trying to capture the look of different surfaces, getting the proportions right, zooming in on details, layering glazes and seeing where that takes me. I like working for months on a single painting, capturing the quality of light, the life in the image beyond the photo. 

I wonder what kind of a painting I could make if I took it a little bit further, if I used a different medium for the glazes, how that color would look next to that one, the thousands of decisions in each painting, the feel of the right brush, the difference between canvas or panel,

Occasionally, I'll set up a still-life in the studio and paint it traditionally, or I'll go to various locations and paint "plein-air" paintings, but I would probably never participate in a "paint off" because I feel the only competition I have is with myself.

 I am always glancing at my paintings to see them in different light. I see the world that way too. I love certain times of day, the way the light triggers a memory, a shadow on a wall, the light shining through a leaf.



For me, it's not about making an important "statement", illustrating a concept, working on a project, or hiring artists to make my paintings. It's just about painting.  It's always evolving. And that has to be enough.

When a painting is finished it's a movable piece of real-estate, it affects the space around it. I enjoy that aspect of my painting also... The perception of the finished work. It's slow, it changes each day. Sometimes the light rakes across the surface and the painting dies...but sometimes I feel pretty good about. Looking at a painting, living with it, is so different than watching TV. 

I recently came across some videos on Robert Bechtle on line from his retrospective at the San Francisco Art Museum in 2005. In these informative videos, he describes his process and the origins and evolution of his work.

He chose cars as his subject matter in his early work like previous artists chose oranges for their still-lifes. it wasn't about the type of car, or anything connected with car culture, it was just a still-life subject that later became a part of the landscape as his subject evolved towards painting streets.

In the videos, he talks about his painting as a reaction to the abstract expressionist painting of the time, but, he always remained closer to the painting process than the illustration of subject matter.

It seems to me that this conflict of subject (or concept ) verses process has probably been going on since the dawn of time. There are always skilled craftsmen who mechanically crank out a product. There are idea people who hire the craftsmen to create their concepts for them. There are business people who hire idea people and crafts people to produce a product. And, then, there are artists, who make art for themselves and are more involved with the formal aspects of their art than with the business of art.

I am definitely one of the latter, I would love to sell my paintings, but not at the expense of the love of painting, or sacrificing too much time to the business of art. If what I have accomplished in a lifetime of art means anything, someone else might someday sort it out...in the meantime, I'll be working on the next painting.




 

BLUE HIGHWAY