High

 

There's a certain kind of playfulness I've learned to respect, and court. It's best to stumble about, humming, poking your nose into interesting places....

 

...and it can be so contradictory, because while you have to learn, and have models of excellence to guide you at times, you can't Aim for that model....there is simply not enough adventure in that....it's about way more than learning skill....you have to find some useful guiding principles underneath everything....

 

I take much guidance from the elements and principles of art....and I always need those in any specific analysis.....but all that is a given and relatively easy for me to deal with these days. I can count on my ability to analyze and come up with solutions in each case. But beyond that, I look for an ease, a very simple movement from one thing to the next, a kind of absentness in myself, a lack of self-consciousness, that lets the thing made continually surprise me.

 

...there are very many things that can get in the way of this.....and they can be slippery, hard to nail down...but I try to watch for them....

 

....the picture is a relationship of elements....an arrangement of things coming together. There Always is a way for the things in this picture to come together....easily. The picture doesn't have to look any particular way...but it has to click together. While there should be craft....there should be no artifice. There's nothing to show off...all the pieces have to fit together.....or none of them fit...

 

www.harrystooshinoff.com

September Pasture

(Sold)......Using the collage also helps me deal with the initial impact of the scene (the reason why I chose it). It forces simplification and concentration on the essentials. Without the collage, there is a tendency to complicate.....the eye sees many things and wants to record 'as is'...but the mind is more selective and leaves a lot of things out.....as if you say 'this is the thing that affected me...this is the more important part!"

www.harrystooshinoff.com    

8 Inches Square

This is about all I know....
Never mind the style, everything you've learned, the degree of finish.....the world around you is moving and alive......the picture will reference the world but it has to be kept to that general statement, not more specific than that......and the picture has to have a pulse, give the illusion of being alive as well......just that.....let the picture have a pulse.

..on 8 inch gessoed thin Masonite panels, some done right on location, some in studio with collage in the first stage...

www.harrystooshinoff 

Stylistic Range....

(top image, sold) I seem to have 3 types of pictures that I alternate between. One type is a straight observational record, with plenty of abstraction and design underlying the construction....but it attends to a strong desire to set down what presents itself to the eye (this type is not shown in these slides, but you see examples in the post previous). The second still follows observation but also asks for more 'bending' (emotion and interpretation also informs everything seen)....and the last type is based on memory of location but does not necessarily conform to the experienced visual layout. I need all these 3 types to account for my experience of this wonderful place I'm living in.....

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Sling

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Sling (Sold)
....calm, beautiful evenings.....big sky over harvested wheat. Acrylic collage painting on heavy archival paper 9.5 x 13 inches, image size 8.75 x 11 inches.

The method here is bit different from some of my others. I stand in front of the scene with full intention of making a picture of this specific view, and I commit a few things to memory....the few important things that I feel create the impact in the first place. THEN...no further reference is used to make the picture. The REASON for doing it this way is so that, in the process of painting, ONLY the paint, shape, colour, line, etc...are considered. The reference is internal, so the making of the painting is a bit more seamless. When I employ these different methods, the paintings work out somewhat differently in each case....

Interview with Harry Stooshinoff, by Camilla Cannon, The New School of Art, UK

The New School of Art, UK, with Harry Stooshinoff


Thank you, Camilla, for the great work you've done on this! There are many great interviews on the blog, and it's well worth spending time on the site, looking and reading carefully, all that you've assembled!

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

May, On Crocus Hill

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...

May, On Crocus Hill
...I would climb the stoney hills all afternoon, armed with the little hammer my brother made in metal-shop class, and pretend I was a geologist. Acrylic collage on heavy archival paper 11 x 14 inches, images size 9.75 x 9.75 inches.

I've made so many things over the years. I made some things similar to this even as an undergrad. Those early paintings still inform everything I do in that the work is based on shape, colour and edge interaction. Colour is more or less applied flatly, and interaction of colour is paramount. There's no such thing as detail...something is either essential, or you can do without it.

And of all the things I've tried, I don't think I really discarded anything. Although I've left many styles behind, parts of my process or method resurface later. And many things coexist. This happened yesterday,....and today I made a more representational view....
 

Interview with Harry Stooshinoff, In the Artist Studio

Interview with Harry Stooshinoff, In the Artist Studio

Thank you to Kelley Sandford and Kim Van Der Hoek for their great work on this site and this interview! Please click on the link above.

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

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

Thinking Place

 

...A place I walk to every day, to sort through things, or just to say hello.

 

...if you know how to do it, you won't want to do it. This idea shows up almost every painting. This sky was repainted a few times, and you never know what you're going to get. You get so watchful to every little nuance, and somehow you find your way to a bit of fascination worth keeping. It's always a bit scary......

www.harrystooshinoff.com

Climb at Dusk

Climb at Dusk
...just as the light of day starts to disappear. Acrylic collage painting on thin birch panel 5.75 x 9 inches.

It is important to recognize what you want, and to try to get that quality in a painting. There are lots of times when you won't know what you want....let's leave all that alone for just a minute. When you DO know what you want, try to get that, rather than settling for something that is approximate. Oftentimes you'll be able to get quite close to what you want. If you match up 1, 2, 3, 4....just a few things in a painting to your want...you'll be surprised by how strongly the result affects you. A simple example: here the desire was to get a particular relationship between the 3 stark things...the sky colour, the tree masses, and the vivid white foreground. I started by collaging the sky colour in....it was close but that didn't seem quite right, but I didn't recognize that till later, so I collaged the sky in again afterwards with a heavier grey that suited better. Many times I would have left that sky colour and fiddled with something else. Not addressing that desire would be a mistake and it needs to be recognized as such.

It helps to just ask yourself WHAT YOU WANT and try to deliver that.

A lot of times you won't know what you want....but we'll leave that for another time....

www.harrystooshinoff.com    

Snow Sky

Acrylic on gessoed thin birch panel, 5.75 x 9.5 inches. Although all of these are small, it remains very important to have variations within the sizes. I knew, for example, that this one should not be 9 x 12. I am most free when it feels like I'm mumbling to myself, and the small size somehow allows that to be the case.

These is something about the small scale that makes this all seem like a secret world. I know that may sound silly, especially when I often photograph and list them the same day they are made. Sometimes they are mailed out the very next day, or they sit here for a time, but it all feels like a silent, peaceful writing in a hidden journal....

www.harrystooshinoff.com  

Garden Hill, Indian Summer (Sold)

 

9 x 12 inches, acrylic on gessoed, thin birch panel. I like small panels, but I must like paper a lot better because almost everything I do is on paper. I like panels for encaustic painting, which I've also been meaning to get back to. I like that panels can be displayed easily....they can be more simply framed, or just leaned up on a shelf. I also loved doing a previous series in which I laminated paper onto panel first, and then gessoed the whole thing. The surfaces of those were beautiful to paint on, but there was a fair amount of work that went into the preparation of each panel.

I always love watching the mark making that happens all through each piece. More and more, I tell myself that the sequence of little decisions, how each mark fits into the thing beside it, how the paint sits, how the colour creates interactions with neighbours, is really what the whole thing is about. There are no extras. Each part fits. And of course, understand that every mark made is like a mark made in the dark.....I really don't know how it will fit in advance. What I try to see and do is believe in each mark....closely watch it happen as the picture is made. This is just a way of saying that marks can't be made randomly and carelessly. Every 'touch' made will add up to a picture....so every 'touch' is important.....as important as every other....

Don't feel you have to figure everything out in advance. Figure some things out in advance, but a lot of things will be figured out in the process of making....

This is a view of Garden Hill, 15 minutes north of Port Hope.....a view that I pass very often.

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Trout Pond, Overcast

 

.... a little sanctuary near the village, public land with 2 trout ponds, forests, hills, and streams,....I enjoyed all my time there through the years. Acrylic collage painting on archival paper 9.5 x 13.75 inches, image size 7.75 x 10.25 inches.

These collages often start with one piece of paper, or sometimes 2 colours together that start to create a mood that was pervasive at the site. In this case, those 2 piece were the grey of the sky and the not quite fully dark green/black of the trees. I was hoping from the start that I wouldn't need to cover up too much of the grey, and am glad I was able to keep most of it. You never really know what will remain in the picture. In the attempt to get everything working together in a beautiful balance, anything might have to be sacrificed....

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  

Thanksgiving Collages

 

Acrylic collage paintings on archival paper 7.5 x 11 inches. The paintings feel much different and are done differently than the collages. When I start a work one of the first questions is 'should this be a collage or a painting'. As well, sometimes there is much paint added after the pieces are glued, and sometimes there is nothing added. Those ideas are there at the start. The collages also tend to be a little smaller. One of the key beliefs in the collages is that it should be possible to create all that is necessary through the interaction of 5-10 colours and shapes. So it follows that there should be no extras in the work...only essentials. Both the collage and painting processes allow and encourage both adding and subtracting. The final arrangement can be discovered either through putting on, or taking away.

 

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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

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

Whisper Road (SOLD)

If you go for an hour walk and look around you will see hundreds of things of note. So many that it doesn't even seem possible to comment on them all or reference them in paintings.  You look at something, and the image combines with another thought or sentiment running through your head, and the whole mood and meaning of what you are seeing changes. You look at the sky and note a motif....walk 10 paces forward, look again in a slightly different direction and something equally interesting presents itself,...and so it seems that very few things are actually noticed, and very few things are actually painted. There are a million more things to be done with landscape in painting.