In honor of Franklin's posting some of his works in gouache -- and also because I got a new studio and I'm thinking, between rent and commuting I won't have enough money left over to keep painting on panels with oils so I'd better find a cheaper medium to work in for a while -- I decided to dig out my old tubes of gouache. I gave them up over a decade ago when I quit airbrushing, but I kept the paints in a box in my attic. Some of the tubes, after all, date back to when I was in high school -- some of them still have formaldehyde as an ingredient -- so I didn't want to throw them away. Most of them are still liquid; a few of them will need to be revived when the time comes. (I also found my old Paasche VL with spare needles and a few cups and tools. Nostalgia is a sickness.)
I started with red because that used to be my favorite. Then I pulled out green, which turned out to be kind of dumb, since red and green makes Christmas. But the green captivated me with its pure brightness, so I played with that by itself for a while.
Chris Rywalt, untitled, 2008, gouache on paper, 12x12 inches
Chris Rywalt, untitled, 2008, gouache on paper, 12x12 inches
Chris Rywalt, untitled, 2008, gouache on paper, 12x12 inches
I really have no idea. I don't know where the lines come from or why. I just sort of do them. And that makes me uncomfortable -- I don't understand these drawings so I can't figure out if I like them or not. I certainly like things about them: I find the curves aesthetically pleasing, I guess. I like the balance between ink and ground. And I like the way watercolor lies on paper. I like the various light and dark tones of gouache in this latest one (the Kuretake is so perfectly and consistently black I don't get that effect).
But I can't judge the drawings. My eyes just kind of slide off them. Dawn, who is my eye, who I always ask about anything I do, she says she likes the drawing and would frame it right away if we had a frame for it. But still, I'm not sure. I was working on a small one in my sketchbook, in black ink, in a restaurant, and our waitress said she thought it was very pretty, and it reminded her of plants, the way plants grow. (I left her a page with our check.)
Certainly I know what I'm doing is the antithesis of LeWitt. LeWitt's formulas allowed him to say that anyone could execute the drawing; only the idea is his. I'm saying the exact opposite with these: Anyone can follow my formula, but these lines are mine and mine alone. Only I could do them. In a way, I suppose, each drawing encodes my state of mind at the time I was working on them. Maybe an advanced enough machine could rebuild my brain by interpolating from them.
Anyway. Drawings don't have to mean anything, right? I shouldn't worry because I can't explain their existence. They just exist. Right? But I wish I could put my finger on these, I really do.
You know me, I'm not going to think this through. And, like I've said before, I reserve the right to change my mind. Also, if I had more time, I would write a shorter comment.In the first image, my taste questions the halo of green in the top left. Your marks run parallel to the figure as well as avoid touching the contour. For me, my tension and interest is focused at that tangent that almost happens between the figure's ribcage/breast and the green form in the corner. In fact, the living breathing entity is the green triangle. My question for you, and me of course, is why bother with the figure? It is so loaded and yet, for me ultimately meaningless. That is, it only confuses the matter for most of the audience. You know, "objectification of the female form" and all that. You've been down that road. But what I find interesting is the line quality. In this first one: one nipple is brilliant, and yet the other is a dried-up alphabet noodle. In various contours the paint load devolves into a dry brush that doesn't contribute to the image. I'm only saying this cuz you asked, Maybe try the same thing, but with a brush that is twice the size. Buy a quart of house paint (well chosen color mind you) and cut it with water so that it flows like ink. Then paint the same thing with even fewer marks. Force a bigger brush to say more.In the second image the lines seem much more in control and the "body" of the paint more in tune with the subject. I think it is ok if the lines occasionally touch. In fact, it has forced you out of your routine in a few places. The pattern I see is the brush landing on the paper, dragging through space, and then leaving the paper in a practiced thin-think-thin gesture. This is not easy, and unfortunately, only the beginning of mark making. In this second piece, I find most interesting the mark from the armpit that describes the breast and the one that descends from the lower back to create the callipygian fanny. (But its not about the subject is it?)This is why the third image is so rewarding/challenging. The lines become sensual. You become sensual. You create a groove and develop taste and then force yourself to move to the next measure. It is like music in 4/4 time. Each mark is a note and all four make a chord. You are hammering out trip-hop drone music in the last image. You are establishing muscle control and memory and judgment. As I stare at the last one I can isolate passages of three. I see four marks, followed by four more that respond, and then a final four that complete a cluster of marks begin to take on a bigger picture. That's interesting as three points are the building blocks of a shape, your three clusters start to create a flow, or a leaf, or a tendril. The four marks eventually become one. Their grouping as a set is powerful. I've often said that the average Joe can't perceive anything past four glazes. Maybe there is a years worth of work in four marks clustered together. to be continued. . .
wow, not sure I want to follow Steven's comment, which I pretty much agree with, by the way.Anyway, I am stuck on your first sentence "I got a new studio"More info please!
I'll probably post something with more detail when I get photos and things, but the short version of the story is I'm renting part of a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, along with five other guys, mostly comic book artists. I moved in partly last week, bought an air conditioner this week, and will be heading out tomorrow to finish setting up. I'm very excited.
Thank you for your remarks, Steve, particularly on the last drawing, which is really the one I'm worried about. The others weren't anything but fooling around, not intended for anything but trying out the paint.The third drawing is really the one I'm thinking about. These squiggles have been coming out of me but, as I wrote, I can't really see them. Your thoughts make me think they're a good thing to keep playing with.Another reason I'm unsure of them is that I'm not supposed to be an abstract painter. And I know the argument against that, which is, what does "supposed" mean? Who says? It's just my own dopey preconception! Stop thinking about it so much!But I try to think of these drawings like a critic would. Like, what would I think if I saw ten or fifteen of them in a gallery? And I'm not sure I'd like them. I can't tell. My figurative paintings, when they're good, I like them. I just do. But these...I can't tell. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know.You seem to think they're good, Steve, and my wife does, too, and Tracy, and that's enough to make me feel better about them. So we'll see if more come out.
Couldn't we argue that they are not abstract at all, but in fact quite real. No illusion. The marks represent nothing, and yet allude to much. . . like good allegories. Bark, water, armies, muscles, fish, macro/micro markers, ritual, on and on. you are the first audience.
That is one way to look at them. But isn't that what abstract art is? Or am I mixing things up?In a way they're not abstract at all: The marks are themselves. The drawings are drawings of themselves. They are what they are.I sound like an Abstract Expressionist. I wonder if I can find any other outmoded schools to belong to. Maybe I should try to be a Pre-Raphaelite, too.
Because...I can't explain it. That's part of the problem. I can't explain these squiggles at all.I think that the best pieces that I have done have been what I can't explain. Pure instinct, feeling, little if any conscious thought, and a reliance on past technical training.I think you should pursue the no thinking thing a bit. While I have always thought your lines are really nice, and I like the simplicity of your figures, the abstract piece here really has it going on (it gives me a bit of a twangy feeling if you know what I mean:)). Do a hundred more and let's see what happens.Ooh, and I am very excited that you have a studio!
Twangy feelings are good.
Yes, they are.
Now I've got some.
Hi Chris,These new works are an encounter with an inexorable pressure. I think they show a lot of the qualities that your drawings do, with the line quality and confidence in mark making.I understand what you mean by not wanting to hang abstract on these. They don't seem at all narrative and a lot of abstract work is derived from real world imagery.Congratulations on the studio! And by the way, kudos on working with gouache. I've always found that a difficult medium.
Susan, you've got a lot more words for this than I do. Maybe I should hire you to write a statement for me!Gouache can be touchy but not the way I'm using it here. What I'm finding I like about it is I can take breaks and come back to it a day later without having to wash my brush or clean up the paint; everything's dried out, but just add water and you're back in business.This was a difficult gouache piece.
OMG! That must have been extreme!!!!I'll write yours if you write mine...