How I start... art

A few years ago I attended an art panel at the Armory Art Show on pier 94. The artist Alex Katz was one of three speakers sitting in the center of a vast and empty stage. The two other artists, in their 40s, were half Katz’s age. Their answers to the moderator’s questions were long and animated, full of MFA adjectives. Katz’s—direct, down to earth—were the ones that caught my attention.

At the end of the talk, an audience member asked all three artists, “How do you start your work each day?”

Alex Katz answered, “I sweep the floor.”

The audience laughed — he was serious. After a pause, he added, “And when I grow bored of sweeping, I wash the brushes. When I can’t wash brushes any longer, I organize my tools. And when my tools are in order, I paint.”

Katz in his Soho studio — Stephanie Sinclair, 2009

I’ve thought a lot about this answer in the years since while developing my own practice. I don’t start my work by jumping right into a painting, either. Every time I return to the canvas (even if it’s only been a few hours away from it) it takes time to get my head back in the game, to remember a fleeting thought.

It’s almost always a slog. I start by standing near my work, forcing myself to be physically present while awkwardly fumbling a coffee mug and shuffling around, avoiding eye contact with the piece I’m working on. My mind and hands need to warm up. I take attendance of my tools and materials: brushes, palette knife, mediums, paints. I may pick up a pad of newsprint or an old bill envelope and move a pencil around for a bit. If I feel lost or stale, I will thumb through a book or pore over piles of reference images. Eventually, I find myself looking at my palette, remembering what I was mixing last.

On the best of days, I come to with a stiffness in my back, my eyes blurry from staring at a single depth of field. I look at my watch and six hours have passed.

Most often, however, painting is a push-and-pull. It’s hard work between breaks. It’s bushwhacking onward, hoping that the path will reveal itself.

This newsletter is, ultimately, about that process.

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These days…

I’m looking at:

The illustrative work of N.C. Wyeth. A few weeks ago, I was stuck to the point of giving up. I visited the nearby Brandywine River Museum as a last-ditch effort for some inspiration, and I spent most of my time focusing on his use of color and texture on The Mysterious Island’s cover illustration.

I’m listening to:

Brown Noise: Similar to white noise but with lower tones, brown noise is shown to help with focus. (It’s similar to heavy rainfall). I’m experimenting with listening to brown noise when I need to get an extra boost. It takes a minute to get used to, but I turn the volume down enough that it becomes a steady background noise and get to work. You can find long (12 hour) loops of brown noise wherever you listen to music.

Here’s a Spotify link. Here’s a YouTube link.

I’m working on:

Yesterday I started a 24”x24” painting of a steeplechase race horse clearing a hedge jump. The painting is for a show this Thursday in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Willowdale Steeplechase. I’m already providing a landscape to the show but I woke up yesterday with this image in my head. I jumped out of bed and ran to the barn to find my role of Classens 66, double oil-primed Belgian linen (the good stuff). I stretched it, sketched it and after getting lucky with a few materials issues, I was able to get pretty far yesterday. Let’s see if I can finish this today…

Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading. My hope is to use this newsletter to work through my painting process, and to maybe help you with yours? If you know someone who might like this newsletter too, you can share it here.

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