Here’s a little story about me. In high school I was offered the opportunity to take a class at a nearby college to augment my studies. Full of the confidence high school seniors have, I attempted to sign up for a studio art class–only to find they were all full. So I signed up for something I didn’t know existed until then: an art history class. It, unsurprisingly to those of you who suffered through the essays and slide shows of required art survey class, was not filled and I was enrolled. What followed were long sessions in a dark auditorium listening to one of three professors expound on various works of art, their historical significance, and their present importance, along with weekly round tables in a small group where I was once naive enough to take the bait and tell the class exactly why the piece of “mall” art the professor put up for a discussion on what constituted art, wasn’t. While some students caught up on sleep, I caught the bug. I was smitten. Looking at the world through the lens of how others–artists-captured it and put it in their own hand using various materials? Brilliant! This was a world that made sense to me–even when some of the art didn’t. 

Fast forward to today when I find myself a working artist, trying to find time to read up on artists and movements I want to know more about, striving to filter all that the modern world has delivered to our eyes via our fingertips, and focus. I often feel I am losing the battle of focus. Whether this is a symptom of our modern, collective distraction, or my overwhelming hunger for and delight in all things art, I don’t know. But I’ll take the struggle.

Recently, casting about for something to paint (a routine problem when standing in front of a blank canvas, no matter that I am plagued by ideas when I am not), I looked through my recent work, as seeds of future work are often germinating in previous works, and came upon my painting of Staffordshire Dogs. I believe they are Cavalier King Charles spaniels, which put me in mind of Frans Hals’s famous painting, The Laughing Cavalier. Taken back in my mind’s eye to Hals’ eponymous museum, where one is swimming in his work, and feeling afresh the awe and delight I found in his work despite its objectively boring and samey subject matter, I knew I had to put him in a painting. 

I often put little sketches of paintings in the background of my paintings. I like the play of ideas that doing so can offer up. When I copy (loosely) a real painting, I take it as an opportunity to learn about the painter’s style, brushwork, color palette and so on. Painting the Laughing Cavalier was simply joyful. I had reacted to the immediacy, the ease, the splendor of Hals’ work on my trip to Haarlem, and every other time I had come upon his work in museums–even in books, as I was first introduced to him in my art history classes. In a world of burgomasters in black with white lace collars, he found a way to stand out. Copying his piece had a certain freedom and ease–wherein lies just one aspect of his genius: he did not torture his paint. He did not blend, he did not obsess over rendering every inch of canvas–he knew precisely where to focus and where to just let things go. At least that is what I surmised after my time spent with his piece.

A wise man once wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. This can be a crippling sentiment to a creative soul, precisely because of its truth. My daughter, a budding writer, laments that all her seemingly original ideas, have already been written. And often when I stand at my easel, looking at a vase of flowers I am about to paint, that nasty specter, doubt, whispers: What is the point? It has all been done before. 

But Hals has something to say about that. 400 years ago he painted these portraits that we are still talking about. He invigorated his subjects in a way wholly different from his contemporaries, who, in turn, did the same in their own ways. Like handwriting, no one goes about it the same way; we each leave our slant on the things we do, and generally, we aren’t the best  judge as to how worthwhile it is, or how it will land with others. Hals was by no means considered the best at what he did in his lifetime, or even in ours. But he had something to say and I for one am glad he shared it. 

So take this as an encouragement: Be you. Embrace with who you are, honing your proclivities and strengths and insights along the way. If all the artists we now study spent their days trying to conform, trying to look like the guy at the top, my art history classes would have been very short, and very boring. We all have something to say, and a different way to say it, and that, my friends, is what gives color to life. 

 

The first piece below, which isn't quite finished, pairs Hals' Cavalier with a parrot tulip in a Roemer vase--both items referencing a moment in art history. Hals was alive when Holland became crazed to the point of speculating on various tulip hybrids. The phenomenon of Tulipomania has fascinated me for years and shows we humans are the same as we ever were. The green Roemer glass figures prominently in much of the Dutch Golden Age art and I was pleased to find one on a visit to Amsterdam. I love gleaning the art historical records for fresh takes on old subjects.

 

Still Life with Laughing Cavalier, work in progress, 10x8 inches

This piece pairs a little corner of a painting by Pierre Bonnard showing a Parisian street festooned with flags for Bastille Day. The little round fan in the upper right corner of my piece captured my fancy in a shop in Paris and I bought it, the whole time thinking it was frivolous. But I just had to have it. Its colors were the inspiration for this whole piece, which plays on the colors in Bonnard's work through traditional elements of still life. It gives a little more to ponder combining seemingly random objects, don't you think?

Le Quatorze Juillet, 12x24 inches

(Pierre Bonnard’s, “Paris, Rue de Parme, Bastille Day”

 

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