Cast a tender beauty

I'm looking at Turner's lecture notes on linear perspective. Did you know that the Tate has his sketchbooks on line? 

These are amazing and I once thought that everybody MUST learn this shit.  How can people even see if they don't understand linear perspective? 

Ever since Alberti's De Pictura, (or was it Kirby's cover art?) I have approached drawing and painting more-or-less as a window.  At least when I am in my "representational" mode.

 From page 69 of Practical Perspective:  Being a Course of Lessons, Exhibiting Easy and Concise Rules for Drawing Justly All Sorts of Objects, by Henry Clarke:

"I think. . . it would be no bad method if our capital landscape painters. . . were to write down on the back of the canvas, the height of the centre, and the distance of the perspective plane.  For then the picture might be placed to advantage. . . [and] would appear to the eye exactly agreeable to the painter's intention."

But now I want my audience to be sucked in until their noses are pressed against the surface and simultaneously repelled so that the painting can only be taken in from a distance. Multiple distances. I suppose I was doing something like that in 1994. Interesting surfaces disrupted by planes that other painters would turn to me and say "How did you do that?" while stroking the background. Philistines would like them because they could sense space. Win win.

Steven LaRose, The Insect that Deceives, 1994
Acrylic on wood, 12 x12 inches

 But it was still a window. Now I want to add a side-to-side step to the pulsing in-out dance.

I am painting too big for the web.

Steven LaRose, Over the Teacup and in the Square, 2012
Paint on wood, 32 x 48 inches

Single Point of View

 

I played with this painting for too long.  It started as an exercise in sight-size but my internal chaos generator kept interfering.  I even became outraged that the painting required the viewer to stand in a specific and static location for the painting to work.  Isn't it weird that the crux of the gag is rooted in that old Italian Renaissance notion of a stationary view point?  Weird in that it is supposed to be a grand moment right?  The viewer is empowered.  It is all about the individual and now with movable type and the printing press we are in charge of our own opinion because the bible can be carried around by anyone and we can read it for ourselves and we aren't being told what the bible says by some yahoo at a pulpit.  Power to the people, as long as you stand exactly on that spot I've marked on the floor.  

 

I don't want to make paintings like that.

Against the undoctored incident, That actually occurred?

Steven LaRose, Art Class (109), 2012
acrylic on wood, 48 x 32 inches

You can see the slowly growing suite here.

Pencilove Requests

All drawings are six inch square and drawn with pencils. The titles/subjects are suggested from facebook friends.

Steven LaRose, Hematite Waterfall, 2012 (Brian Cypher)

Steven LaRose, Less Sorry Than I Was Yesterday, 2012 (Dean Terry)

Steven LaRose, Looking Forward to Seeing, 2012 (Constance Avery)

Steven LaRose, Origin, 2012 (Wolfen Moondaughter)

Steven LaRose, Rachel With Head Scarf, 2012 (This was from a drawing session last night)

Steven LaRose, Thoughtful Eyes, 2012 (Saione Penn)

Steven LaRose, Thrift, 2012 (Carla Knopp)

In a perfect Atelier, the sink would have a straight-shot view of the piece you are working on.

My day started with a cock-a-doodle dooooo. 

Seriously.

I am looking out my window, but I first thought he was on my nightstand.

Soon, my day became a mundane task that always reveals extraordinary insights.

This exercise is the catalyst for every conversation you would ever want to have about Art.

Yellow may feel like a frail color, but it is the nervous system for the rest of the hues. - Atelier Apothegm #3

The day ended with a fizzle.

In Progress

It has been twenty years since I've done a load of laundry at a laundry mat.  It wasn't as romantic as it was when I was living in a log cabin in Topsfield MA.  I think it was the time spent that started to bug me.  A book was impossible to read with Journey and Rush squealing out of the tiny speakers.  It is already noon and I finally made it to the atelier.  Three 48 x 32 surfaces in progress and one hand-painted blade sign ready to mount have been calling to me.

I suppose one good thing that came of my laundry-moment was this thought:
Color is subordinate to light and shade. - Atelier Apothegm #1 (I am going to start collecting these so the number represents quantity, not quality).
Now I can erase this off the white board:
Depressing or inspirational, it is up to you. - Atelier Apothegm #2

Atelier: the history and set of facts and factors all chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest.

Yesterday I completely moved out of the place I was living in for the past eight months.  It was an okay place as far as an impulse-necessity-post-divorce platter goes.  I'm going to miss the wood stove for sure, but the new place is four hundred dollars cheaper. Miso is going to miss Bocci, her buddy from across the street. 

My new place, The Cottage, has some nice things going for it however.  Paramount of which is that The Cottage is dog friendly.

Also, the last thing Zaida said to me before she fell asleep last night was "This place is peaceful".

Miso was throwin' out her hip doing the organic-smell-boogie all day. 

 Jack is the Great Pyrenees who lives here.  Along with a whomping willow.

It is a smaller place, but that is exactly what I needed to balance all the artsy-fartsy noise of the atelier. 

It even has a barn with a hay loft.

The other dog Sophie is a little more "high-strung" but she can negotiate steep barn stair/ladders better than the other dogs.

Meanwhile, back at Atelier LaRose and The Steven LaRose Figure Studies division, a painter friend of mine, Chris Peters, just bought these two images.

It is always grand when another painter purchases your work with their hard earned money.  Chris went to the San Francisco Art Institute, but he has always been an equally hardcore orchard guru.  Which I find particularly serendipitous as he bought the two paintings the same week I moved into The Cottage which butts up against one of the Bear Creek Orchards.