Narrative Painting.

Drawing for the Cure of Folly (after Bosch)  1990

by:  Patrick Mahoney

    What is narrative painting?  In a nutshell, a narrative painting is one that tells a story.  From the beginning of recorded history until the advent of abstract painting, almost any picture that contained images of humans was a narrative.

    The ancient cave paintings of Lascaux are pictures that tell a story of hunting and other practices of that time.  Almost all of the paintings we see in the great churches of Europe are narratives.  In the heyday of the Catholic church when many people were illiterate,  paintings were a way of instructing the faithful.  This practice of narrative painting is alive and well today.

    When we watch TV, we see narrative commercials that are designed to instruct or persuade us by visual means.  But, there are still many artists who work in the narrative style for purely artistic reasons.

    The drawing I have chosen for this post is a good example of a narrative work and here is why.  In this picture, I am telling a story about myself and I am using the figures to do it.  The picture is based on the original "Cure of Folly" by Hieronymus Bosch who lived and worked in the 16th and 17th centuries. You probably know him from his epic painting, "The Garden of Earthly Delights".

    The picture contains four figures arranged around a table.  Who are these people?  Well, the person in the chair is me.  In the original painting, the poor fellow in the chair is being bled to cure him of his folly or improper thoughts.  In this drawing, I am being cured of my folly as well.  The figure in the white gown with peaked head cover is a kind of medical technician who is attempting to extract improper thoughts from my head.  You see, I am the artist and I have creative and often what are considered, subversive thoughts, that do not exactly fit into the political, social and scientific world in which I live.

    The clergyman represents my Catholic upbringing and the guilt and conflict associated with that faith.  The guy in the coonskin cap represents my military experience.  These figures represent major influences in my life and they are all working together to create what they hope will be a harmonious and mutually advantageous environment in which they can maintain their power and continue to prosper.

    As the artist, I am the fly in the ointment and represent a threat to them and their respective institutions.  My habit of independent thinking and questioning of authority irritates them and they see it as a possible danger as I might influence others with my art.  In his time, Galileo was branded a heretic, because He discovered that the earth was not the center of the solar system.  Today, we accept this as scientific truth, but in Galileo's time, it ran contrary to the teachings of the all-powerful Catholic church.

    Just as narrative painting has been used to propagandize and support the theories and laws of major institutions, it has also been a powerful tool to criticize those same entities.  In centuries past, a painter had to be very careful not to be seen as criticizing the church or the aristocracy, because he could lose his head for it.  Today, with the advent of democracy and more free and open societies, artists often criticize and mock the powers that be.

    In my picture, I am exposing and mocking the institutions that I feel have consistently tried to bleed me of any independent or creative thought or action.  What the Catholic church could not do through guilt and threats, the military tried to do with rigid discipline and brainwashing. In this narrative, the church and the military have obviously failed to tame me, so science is attempting to bring me into line by using it's particular methods.

    The medical figure is particularly menacing, because he represents the good science of medicine in the service of those who would corrupt it and use it for control. 

    So, you see, what we have is a story of the artist who is a free spirit and independent thinker who is going to produce art, because it suits him and not to please any institution, government or other power.  The guy in the chair could easily give in an make art to flatter and support the other figures, but he won't, because he is a true artist and part of a tradition going back to the earliest creative endeavors of our species.

    I hope that this simple, humble explanation has given you a better understanding of narrative painting and will improve your enjoyment of the artworks you will see from now on.  As always, I look forward to your comments and suggestions.  Thanks for visiting and stay tuned for more topics.  Patrick Mahoney, AKA Potlick

    A word about the drawing:  I made this and several other charcoal  drawings in preparation for a large painting entitled "The Cure of Folly" after Hieronymus Bosch.  This drawing is about 16" x 16" and is made with vine charcoal on Reeves BFK rag paper.  It is signed, matted with archival materials and framed under glass.

Abstraction.

                                                        

Untitled by:  Patrick Mahoney

35mm Kodachrome transparency, 1984

    Have you ever looked at an abstract work of art and wondered just what in the world the artist was thinking?  If you have, you are not alone.  Today, I am going to use this picture to try and help you understand how some artists see the world abstractly.

    The picture you are seeing here is actually a photograph of an actual scene in nature.  Anyone who had been there when the picture was taken would have seen the same thing.

    At first glance, we see a pleasing combination of shapes and colors and some recognizable objects such as trees and plants the blue of the sky.  But, are we looking up or down and just where are these shapes in actual space. 

    What you are seeing here is a shallow stream with a smooth, flat bottom in which very clear water is flowing.  This water is so smooth that it acts like a mirror reflecting the trees and sky above and the shadow of the iris plants on the bank.

    If the picture included more of the scene, we would immediately interpret the image as a stream in a Japanese garden and our brains would but all of the elements in their places.  The difference is in the artist's selection of a part of the overall scene.

    When I made this photograph, I saw the abstract quality of just this portion of the overall scene, because it produced a beautiful abstract pattern that was pleasing to my eye and seemed to need no explanation.

    Artists often learn to see the world abstractly as a way of distilling a complex scene into a manageable picture.  If I tried to paint every leaf on every tree in a scene, I could never succeed, but I can paint the trees in a kind of short hand and leave out much of the busy detail and still make them look like trees.

    All paintings are abstract to some degree otherwise, they would look just like photographs.  So the process of abstraction is a distillation or simplifying of the image.

    In this photograph, the distillation is in the framing and not in the simplifying of the image.  I have chosen a small part of the overall scene that presents a pleasing combination of shapes and colors and presents enough space to draw our attention.

    By explaining this photograph, I may be spoiling your enjoyment of the overall effect, but in this case, I am using it as an example to help you, the viewer, understand abstract images.

    I hope that I have succeeded in increasing your understanding and enjoyment of art with this brief explanation of one of my photographs and I welcome your feedback.  In a future post, I will address the concept of space in abstract painting.  Thanks again for reading and keep in touch.  Patrick "Potlick" Mahoney

    

"Heavy Feather".

   Untitled.  1983.  Mineral pigment, sumi, paper and playing cards on washi.

    At the most recent First Thursday Night on Main Street, I came upon a display of images taken from Japanese woodblock prints.  Having studied in Japan, I was intrigued and struck up a conversation with R. Chambers LeHeup.  It turns out that he is credited with writing a kind of haiku comic book entitled  "Heavy Feather Falls".  The excellent manga-like drawings are by Sammy and Dre.  Together, they are the Piensa Art Company. 

    The images in the comic are of Japanese warriors fighting to the death in and around a stream.  While all this commotion is taking place, a delicate white feather floats in and around the battlefield.  The text is written in the form of a haiku.  It is this juxtaposition of violence and beauty that permeates so much of Japanese art from the 15th century to the present. Seeing these images reminded me of one of my own paintings from my period of study in Japan.

    While living in New York City in the 70's, I became enamored of Japanese samurai films from the 50's and 60's.  Once a week, I would walk to the West Village to see a double feature and many times, the director would be present to talk about the picture.  The films were all black and white and very graphic both in imagery and content.  

    As with the Heavy Feather Falls, there would be points of heavenly beauty interspersed with bloody swordplay.  Most of us know the image of the brave Samurai warrior admiring the cherry blossoms just before going into battle

    The picture I have shown above was inspired by all of these things.  Samurai movies, woodblock prints and tales of courtly love.  In the center of this picture, we see a very angry Samurai about to draw his sword.  The landscape is foreboding with its black sky and boiling land punctuated by jagged lightening, but at the top we see a series of very delicate and beautiful flags with origami cranes.  These would have been the battle flags of the competing armies, but in this case, they are beautiful floating objects in contrast to the violence below.

    On either side of the Samurai, we see the beautiful and fashionable nobility.  In this case, a woman on the left and a man on the right.  They are lovers and written above them are their passionate love poems.  Perhaps these images are the dreams of the Samurai.  Perhaps he is a jealous lover about to dispatch his rival.  In any case, the picture illustrates this constant push and pull, give and take between sublime beauty and the brutal and violent realities of this world.

    A note on the painting.  This picture was made using traditional Japanese materials.  The support is  what is known as a Mashi Board - washi stretched over a board and glued only on the back.  this allows the washi (what westerners call rice paper) to expand and contract as it is being painted.  When the painting is wet, the paper is slack and sometimes wrinkles, but when dry, it is very tight and flat.

    The black is sumi ink - made from the soot produced by burning rapeseed oil.  The gold color is powdered mica with added colors.  The six flag-like shapes are actually hand-made decorative paper which have been glued to the painting with rice paste.  the images of the woman and man are two of a set of educational playing cards designed to teach "The Tale of Genji", Genji-Mono-Gatari.  The warior in the middle is actually a kind of postcard detail of a woodblock print.  All were glued to the painting with rice paste.

    I hope you enjoyed this post and encourage you to comment.  Stay tuned for more.  Patrick, AKA Potlick

Homage to Nicholas Roerich.

                       Homage to Nicholas Roerich.  2009.  Prismacolor and shell gold on sanded paper.

    I made this picture and frame based on a vision I had in 2009.  I don't remember exactly what I was doing at the time, but all of a sudden, I had a very clear vision of a red cube-like house on a hill surrounded by a large, heavy, dark frame.  

    For this picture, I wanted a luminosity similar to Japanese Mineral Pigment, but wanted to achieve it in another way.  My solution was to use colored pencil, Prismacolor, on sanded paper.  Sanded paper has a coarse texture that lends itself very nicely to pastel and colored pencil.  By using a sanded surface, I can apply many layers of pencil and achieve color effects not possible with ordinary smooth stock.

    The vision was of a glowing red structure on a high, dark hill with a brilliant, limitless sky behind.  In my vision, the structure had a golden door reflecting the light of the sun.  To achieve this effect, I used something called shell gold.

    Shell gold is a watercolor made with genuine powdered gold mixed with gum arabic.  It comes in what are known as half pans and has quite a dramatic effect when used sparingly in painting.

    For the frame, I chose various pieces of wood from my shop and combined them to achieve the desired effect.  For a finish, I attempted to duplicate something I had often seen in the Orient - a very dark, almost black color with deep red overtones.  I achieved this by first painting the frame black, then applying a layer of dark red followed by another thin layer of black.  Once everything had dried, I used steel wool to very carefully sand through the black to reveal areas of red.  This ancient-looking heavy frame became the perfect support for my new painting.

    Once the painting was finished, I hung it on the wall so that I could take a good long look at it, but the more I looked at it, the more I wondered;  Where did this come from?  I looked at this piece everyday for more than a year and still could not understand it's origins.  Then one day, just like the original vision, it came to me in  flash -  Nicholas Roerich!

    In 1991, I had a show of my paintings in the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City.  During the month long show, I spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about the many Roerich paintings there.  Roerich was a Russian Painter, Philosopher, explorer and peace activist who later in his life moved to the Kullu Valley in india between the Lower Himalayan and Great Himalayan ranges.  It is one of the most picturesque places on the earth with verdant valleys surrounded by magnificent snow-capped mountains.  What really sets the place off is the quality of the light from that limitless brilliant sky.

    Roerich painted a great many images of the area and all of them are suffused with this wonderful brilliant light.  Anyone who has been to the desert or to very high mountain peaks will understand the quality of this light.  My picture was an homage to Nicholas Roerich delayed by almost 30 years.

    Somehow, my experience of looking at the Roerich paintings just popped out after all this time, but now that I understand the origins, it is easy for me to see that the picture is all about that high mountain light and the red structure is something akin to a temple dedicated to the spirit of such places.  As an artist, I am influenced by everything that I see in this world and it comes out in my paintings.  In this case, it came out many years after the fact, but now I have a picture I call "Homage to Nicholas Roerich."

    If you would like to see works by Mr. Roerich, you can Google Nicholas Roerich Museum.  Once there you can read his biography and browse the collection.  Thanks for listening.  Patrick, AKA Potlick

Japanese Mineral Pigments.

Welcome back.
    As I promised last time, I am going to talk a little about Japanese mineral pigments (Iwa-enogu).  Unlike western pigment which is very finely ground and meant to be held in suspension by a medium such as oil or acrylic, Japanese mineral pigments are coarsely ground and are held in place by glue.

                                   A box of assorted mineral pigments.
   
    Western pigments are meant to be blended to form other colors.  For example, mixing blue with yellow will produce green.  With mineral pigments, there is no mixing.  Because the colors are coarse and heavy, they will not mix smoothly.  In the picture above we see a variety of colors.  An artist working in this medium, must have a great many colors in order to produce even a modest work.
    In order to work in this medium, the artist must literally make his own paints.  First, a pot of hot animal glue is prepared.  The glue is similar to the hide glue used in period furniture and is made from various parts of animals.  the artist dissolves a solid stick of glue in hot water making sure that the mixture is just right - not too sticky and not too weak.  The glue is meant to hold the pigment to the support without obscuring it.

                                     A small amount of the precious mineral pigment ready for mixing.


    A small porcelain dish is used for mixing the color.  A small amount of pigment is poured into the dish, and then a little of the hot glue is spooned into the dish.  This is then mixed together with a paint brush.  Once the mixture is prepared, the artist then dabs it onto the painting.  Only small amounts of color are prepared at any one time, because it has to be used quickly before the glue cools and sets.  Working in this way, the artist dabs small amounts of different colors all over the support until a picture emerges.
    Since colors cannot be directly blended, the artist must create what is generally known as local color.  Local color is a phenomenon that occurs when two colors placed adjacent to one another create the illusion of a third color.   The impressionists were experimenting with this technique, but it was a Frenchman named Georges Seurat who created a style that became known as Pointillism.  In the 1880's, he painted scenes using only tiny dots of different colors to give the illusion of shapes, colors and space.  Most of us are familiar with his painting, Bathers.
    in the 1980's, I studied traditional Japanese painting in Japan with an old master.  He taught me to use mineral pigments and a variety of other traditional materials.  The pigments themselves were not readily available even in Japan, so my teacher had to tell me where I could find them.  Often times, I would be given an address which turned out to be a tiny shop in some run-down part of the old town.  There, in that shop, the proprietor would have shelves and cabinets overflowing with mineral pigments.
    As they are actual minerals, they can be quite expensive and some of them are toxic.  It is very important to understand the material with which you are working and take precautions.
    Because of the undiluted brilliance and coarse texture of mineral pigments, the pictures that are produced have a luminosity and intensity of color not found in Western painting and the texture gives them a unique appearance as well.  I made several dozen mineral pigment paintings during my study in Japan and back in California afterwards, and they were eagerly snapped up by collectors.  I don't know of anyone working in this medium here in the United States, and I have yet to find a source for the material outside Japan, but if you are working with this material, I would love to hear from you.  If you have questions or comments, please contact me at:  potlicksblog@earthlink.net or use the comment feature of this blog.
    I enjoyed sharing this information today.  Stay tuned for more topics.  Thanks, Patrick, AKA Potlick

Abstract painting

Welcome back.  Today I would like to talk a little about abstract painting.

                                   Ancient Garden 1983.  Mineral pigment and sumi on washi.
   
    The image you see here is entitled "Ancient Garden".  The subject is a very old Japanese garden with rocks and a plum tree.  In this picture, the white represents the rocks, the red is the plum blossoms and the green is the moss growing on the old tree branches.  for those familiar with Japanese gardens, the image may be easy to decipher, but others may see nothing but colors.
    Abstract pictures such as this contain plenty of space  and tangible objects, but can also be read as just a pleasing combination of shapes and colors.  Other abstract pictures are deliberately flat.  The abstract paintings of DeKooning, are rich with solid objects and believable space.  Most of us have seen those pictures that appear to be nothing but an abstract pattern, but if we stare into them long enough, we see a marvelous 3-D image.  Well, a lot of abstract painting is like that.
    When we look at a nice landscape picture, we have no trouble understanding it.  We see the sky above, the earth below and all the other elements that make up our everyday visual world.  In an abstract picture, we are seeing the same world, but through the particular vision of the artist.  some see the world as flat shapes, others as objects in space while some see only colors.  regardless of the approach, if the picture is well made we, the viewer, will be pleased by it.
    I like to think that my painting is pleasing to the eye regardless of the subject matter or level of abstraction.  I could have painted the garden just as I saw it and it would probably be just as pleasing, but I wanted to go beyond pictorial reality and explore the visual experience.  Painting abstractly like this allows me to get closer to the randomness and haphazard patterns of nature.  There is order in nature to be sure, but when we look at the way moss grows on a tree branch, there is no particular order or pattern to it.  Scientists call this chaos theory.
    are you confused by all this?  If you follow this blog, I will be talking more about abstraction and hopefully will make it easier to understand.  As you begin to understand abstract pictures better, your enjoyment of them will increase proportionally.
    A note about the materials in this painting.  This picture is made using traditional Japanese materials known in the west as mineral pigments.  Mineral pigments are just that - ground minerals.  The minerals are mixed with hot glue and dabbed on the picture and not brushed on as one would with conventional paint.  Mineral pigments give a brilliant deep color and texture similar to Navajo sand paintings, but I will save all this for my next post.  Stay tuned to learn about mineral pigments.  Thanks for listening,  Patrick, AKA Potlick

The importance of draftsmanship.

    Today I would like to talk about draftsmanship.  What do Willem DeKooning, one of the most famous abstract expressionist, Degas, Arshile gorky, another abstract expressionist and Jackson Pollock have in common?  If you said they were all master draftsmen then you would be correct.
    Drawing is the key to good painting and nearly all great painters throughout history have been great draftsmen.  We know that draftsmanship was important to the Old Masters, but we might be persuaded that drawing is not important to artists who work abstractly.  I make the case that no matter how you paint, drawing is the key to good work.
    You might say that Pollock simply dripped paint onto a canvas, but if you look at his early work, you will see that he was classically trained in the fine arts and that means lots of drawing from life.  He studied with Thomas Hart Benton who was himself and excellent draftsman and painter.
   DeKooning was an exquisite draftsman and his early drawings are as precise as jewels.

 
     Here is a drawing of my paternal grandmother I made in preparation for her portrait in oil on canvas.  I made the drawing from life in pencil and then added pen and ink.  By drawing the subject as precisely as possible, I gain and understanding of the features and personality of the subject.  By studying the subject, I am better prepared to work in color on a canvas, because I know where things go so to speak.
    You may say why do I need to be good a drawing to paint abstractly or do and abstract sculpture or throw a pot?  Well, the answer is simply eye-hand coordination.  Drawing trains the hand and the eye to work together so that when you want to make a mark in a certain way, you can do it.  Once you have mastered drawing, you may then go on to do anything you want with confidence as you will have exquisite control of your brush, chisel, pencil or whatever you are using.

 
     I use drawing as a way of exploring and studying.  I made this ink and watercolor copy of a Japanese print when I was a student.  At the time, I was fascinated by the way in which the Japanese rendered space.  My way of understanding that was to draw and draw and draw.  I'll leave space in Japanese pictures for another time, but I hope that I am making my point about the importance of drawing.
    Drawing becomes critically important if you are making representative paintings be they figures, landscapes or architecture, because things have to appear as we see them and they must be in their proper places within the picture.

    Here is one more example that will illustrate my point about objects being in their proper places.  I drew this self portrait in pen and ink one night as I sat in my favorite easy chair.  I placed a mirror against a chair so that I would be looking down at it .  In this picture, I am sitting in the chair and there is a wall behind me and all of these things exist in a believable relationship to each other.  You can see that I am not sitting on top of the chair, but rather down in it.  I occupy a space just as the chair and the room do.
    One of the most common things children do when drawing and painting is to make an object in the middle of the paper with nothing else around it.  Well, I say that objects do not exist in a vacuum.  We do not exist in a vacuum.  In the picture above, you can see that I have drawn myself in a defined space and it looks natural. Were I to simply draw my figure on a blank page, no matter how well I drew it, it would still appear strange, because there would be no space around me.
    It is this rendering of space and form that makes drawing so important and it is the skill of drawing that makes the artist.  Most of us like Salvador Dali, but take another look at his melting clocks picture and you will see that he was a master draftsman.
    I welcome your comments on this subject.  Stay tuned for other topics.  Patrick, AKA Potlick