April Breeze

April Breeze (Sold)
...April is moody and erratic, but I love her anyway. Acrylic collage painting on heavy archival paper, 11 x 15 inches, image size 9.25 x 11 inches.

 

In these collages I prefer to use old papers. I saved some papers from my teaching years. I'd often ask my students to prepare idea lists and preparatory drawings at the start of projects. These idea pages would be stapled together and kept on shelves in the studio for their reference the next class. Few students ever claimed these prep things at the end of the year, and in June there would be piles of things to throw out. When I started making these collages I'd sometimes save the used 8.5 x 11 inch papers in stacks. I still have a bit of this left. I'm often very charmed by the things I see on these pages.....little bits of history that are both insignificant and endearing when put into a different context. Our days are fleeting...and it's sweet if some little hint of our time here can survive. In this piece, at extreme left by the horizon, you see a star/asterisk entered in ballpoint pen. That was where a Grade 9 student wrote her name, and a punctuating symbol afterward. I don't know why that charms me....but it does to no end. Little hints that we were here....left behind...but largely invisible....

You'd be surprised how the stacks of old paper mount up after years of teaching....piles of old photocopied project sheets, assignment sheets....I left a lot of that behind and have used up much of what I've saved for collage papers....

www.harrystooshinoff.com

November Stand (Sold)

 ....little stands of trees in the empty fields and even November light. Acrylic collage painting on gessoed thin birch panel 7.5 x 12 inches.

 

At the start of each session, my direction to myself is 'suggest more, describe less'. It is not easy to find the suggestions that satisfy, so there is always a tendency to describe instead. While some description is necessary, it is critical not to say too much.

 

www.harrystooshinoff.com   

Trout Spot

Acrylic collage painting on Somerset paper 7.5 x 11 inches.

I'll take a moment to briefly explain why these pictures range from fairly representational, even realist in some cases....to fairly abstract and even nonrepresentational in other instances. Here is an example of a piece that is not very realistic.

Sometimes the intention is to record how the world looks. There are many reasons for this, and there is much that is endlessly fascinating in the way the world arranges its visual effects on a minute-to-minute basis....there is Never a shortage of wonders to look at in the world, and one does Not need to go far to prove this. Look at the corner of your desk, look outside your window, look at the ground, go for a walk and point your face into any little bit of visual complexity. You will not run out of ideas based on visual observation in your entire lifetime as a painter, and to paint the appearance of the world is a laudable goal for an artist.

But.....just as one writer said of Monet, "...he is just an eye, but what an eye!" At times an artist will turn to a Different intention.....so there are times when I sit down to paint and do Not wish to record only what I see. Sometimes there are memories, images in the mind's eye, that ask to surface as well. Sometimes there may be only a sensation, a feeling, a reaction to some event, that asks if a visual equivalent is possible, in relation to itself. So abstraction and semi abstraction are useful directions to deal with these impulses. As well, recognize that there is a great deal of historical convention on which all of this rests. While there Is inventiveness in each piece, there is also much to borrow from. But whatever the painting ends up looking like, in my case, it is always About something in my life and world.....it is not without associations.

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

September Ends (both images Sold)

Both are acrylics on umprimed Whatman paper 10 x 13.75 inches.....final light during the last few days of September.

Visit me on FB if you have any curiousity about my painting. People often ask interesting questions about my work on FB....I post everything I list there and often stay a while to make comments. The following was one of my responses to a question posted today:

...I know that I need the painting to make a certain surprising design logic that is compelling,.....and I know that I need the work to reflect my world in some direct way. That gives me a large area to move in, and all sorts of invention can take place within those parameters....but I don't try to be original. I just try to make a strong picture that deserves to exist, at least for a little while. But certain kinds of originality will happen as a result of wrestling with that basic problem....that's inevitable.

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

August Ends.....

There are small things that catch my attention.....there are not really names for these things, but they remain important regardless, and they become the basis of the pictures. Tonight it was the look and feel of the dusk, just as the temperature started to drop. I liked the sound of the distant tractor and baler, the sound of cars and their tires on the asphalt, I can hear the crickets and the frogs in the wetlands and fields around me...I can hear gentle house sounds, things winding down at the end of the day...the horses make gentle noises. But this might be for tomorrow....

In the 2 paintings here, the sensation was of the evening sunlight on the fresh green of cedars at the trout ponds....so I looked into the foliage in different places on my walk that evening. I make only one painting a day, so these are from 2 separate days...there may be more coming, I can never tell, nor do I wish to plan the work in advance.

On the making of pictures, it pays to risk everything. If you already have a picture like the one you made, best to follow your hunches, if you have any, and chances are good that you do....because you are after that fresh, excited feeling in yourself, and you won't get it if you repeat, in essence, a picture you already have. You've made that picture, so you can move on, and each new work calls for a new, but small push forward. This just means that in the process  of making each new work, there will come a moment, and likely more than one, where you have to say, well I'll try this even if it upsets the apple cart, and it likely will. But gradually the picture you are working on will find its balance as well, and then you can stop.  It could mean that you have to take out a portion of the picture and try again....now the other thing doesn't belong, and you have to try something else, but the thing is not dead, so you and it move along in some way, change after change, seeking a new, pleasing balance that you haven't quite seen before, but that you welcome.  But you have to listen to your hunches to do this. And this is what makes it all an adventure, and exciting.

www.harrystooshinoff.com

Dusk on Chickabiddy Line (Sold)

Summer moves so quickly.....there is always a change of mood in early August that seems partly a response to the change in land, air, and light. The crops are mature, or getting there, it darkens earlier, the smells are a bit different. Acrylic collage painting on archival paper 7.5 x 11 inches, signed lightly in pencil.

It is strange to consider the history behind how I make things now. Sometimes when people ask how this is done, I see almost exactly how I got to this point, and am only mystified it took so long to do such a simple thing. In a small praire town I looked at a lot of skies, enjoyed rambling over any bit of wild land I could find, went searching for it in many places, played hooky in middle school to go sit in the snow by the river, carve sticks and stare at the landscape just to feel the wonder of things. And I remember trying to figure out how to put things together in a picture....always interested in that from perhaps aged 12 forward. I had Mr. Egenschweiller (sp) order every book on art through interlibrary loans I could find (bless your kind, sweet heart). I remember standing in the stationary store down by railway street, smelling that wonderful odour of oiled wood floors and the green granular cleaner they used to sprinkle on and then sweep up. In that store I remember looking at the 'how to paint' books and would marvel at the skill (seems déclassé now, but any instruction helps). And I was eager, and excited, wanted to learn....I'd draw horrible pencil drawings of trees and landscapes. Years of art school takes you through many styles and influences, your tastes change, many things are sampled before you seem to settle, all kinds of techniques are tried. These pieces now are a distillation of many things absorbed through the years....art history from French realism, Corot, Barbizon, to the impressionists, fauves, post impressionists, expressionists, and all manner of isms, including various forms of abstraction and non-representation in the 20th century. In all this, there is belief in the hand....your hand can do much...let it make things! Let it find out how to make things....I still have that naïve belief in picture magic of the 12 year old boy standing in that stationary school by railway street.

www.harrystooshinoff.com

Saturday Morning Route

 

Acrylic collage painting on matte board, 7.75 x 9.75 inches, signed lightly in pencil. They never turn out how I expect....they turn out some other way instead, but that said, there is always a balance achieved and they stop in some interesting place.

 

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

August Beach

Birdsall Beach on Rice Lake......a beautiful August day. Something that takes no effort, or little effort, will often appear very fresh and lovely in a painting. Collage will do that...the effort was made previously, and it was an easy, joyous effort at that. Lack of ease can be discouraging, disheartening.....so what gives the impression of ease in a painting? Lots of things will do it....and lots of things will prevent it. To some degree, these works are about this issue. How to keep the image fresh, alive, surprising, mysterious....in every stroke.

www.harrystooshinoff.com 

July End.....

 

Acrylic collage paintings on single ply archival matte, 7.75 x 9.75 inches, signed lightly in pencil....the hot, final days of July, clouds flying by and coming together in all kinds of formations....

 

The paintings are often a combination of what is known/sensed/understood...and what is seen. While I love a lot of plein air painting, and I do make work based directly on observation....for me it is seldom a problem of simply recording what is seen. I know that if the work is more of an inevitablity than a surprise, I am less likely to make things....therefore the problem is always how to find surprise.

 

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

 

Moon at Dusk, July 27

 I set out a little later than usual because it was so hot all day....a calm, beautiful evening....the moon hanging in the south sky.....acrylic and pencil on single ply archival matte 7.75 x 10 inches.

 

Although these pictures look very representational, even realistic, on any given day this could have turned out to be something relatively abstract, or fully abstract....just as easily. The only thing that does stay consistent is the idea that something in the world is being thought about as the work is being made......

 

www.harrystooshinoff.com

How To Make a Collage!

How to make a collage....

 -dig around for a piece of painted paper, but don't dig too long or you'll drive yourself crazy
-cut or tear the paper.....put big pieces down first....the first 2 pieces cover the whole image size
-paint on the glue, apply immediately to the surface, place typing paper on top and rub, quickly turn typing paper over and rub again, so that you rub out any glue that squeezed out....don't let your hand touch the collage....much
-put your hand in the water bucket every so often, and dry off with gnarly old towel (old is good!), so that you don't stick to your coffee cup
-proceed until you are happy with your collage.....and always be happy.
-stare at your finished collage until you suck the life out of it....at this point you have to make something else....and repeat, forever....
-save the bigger pieces of cut up leftover collage paper, but the smaller pieces have to go in the garbage.....or you will surely drive yourself crazy! (but those smaller leftover pieces also look soooo nice....)
-always clean up after every session (things can get very STRANGE very quickly)

Morning Light, 2 versions

Sometimes they are a bit more abstract, sometimes a bit more realistic, or closely matching a visual reality....it matters not. It's all part of the same thing. You live and you receive sensations...you notice things.....so many in a day....and in some ways these sensations ARE the day. The picture making is one way to reference something that has gone on that seems worth noting. The picture is not a record, or an equivalent, but there is a relationship between the experience and the making. It seems important to not say too much and box yourself in......or at least it is an advantage to be able to get out of your own box. The process loses its charm if there isn't constant reinvention.

The sketch on the bottom was left purposely vague, to reference only the sensation noted here...the light on the road and the coolness of the shadow in the trees....the freshness of the summer sky. I made 2 painted versions.....This short series might continue today.