It's Just a Name

To this day I don’t know what happened. I zigged when I should have zagged, or the earth shifted to the left, or maybe my studio is haunted. At any rate, 2 entire trays of pastel sticks leapt off the table and crashed to the floor. That would be maybe 250 pieces of pigment ranging from palest to darkest in blues, greens and violets.

Pre-earthquake

  Y’know those times when you are so stunned all you can do is gape like a fish?

As luck would have it, a friend had recently sold me the last of her high-quality stash of pastels, and I knew that someday, somehow they would be integrated into my already full trays. What better time than the moment I am ankle deep – literally – in sticks already strewn hither and yon?

Four days later…

I ask you: what color is “wode”? Where does “heliotrope” fit on the color wheel? Is “aerial yellow” yellow-er than “atmosphere”?  And what about “#106”? Is it warmer than, say, “B712”?

I'm an equal-opportunity pastel purchaser. Great American, Diane Townsend, Art Spectrum - if its the right color, I'll buy it.

Oil paints are mostly labeled according to a historical system using clarifying words like ultramarine blue. This is a warm blue, always a warmer than prussian blue, which is always a very cool blue. Always. Cadmium red is an established color that varies only slightly from brand to brand. It is red. 

Pastel sticks are numbered and named according to whomever owns the label. Is “dead head” warmer than “sinopia”?  P12 lighter than 782.10? Compare 106 to orange, please.

Would you buy a painting if you knew it were splattered with “dragon’s blood”?

Same color, different value. Or is it? 

Is it warmer than "purange"? For those of you who keep up with my meanderings, as it turns out, purange is most likely dead head. Or sinopia. Caput mortuum, maybe. One of those. 

At any rate, re-configuring several hundreds of sticks of color has opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities.  Two weeks ago my hand would have grabbed a color out of habit. Now I scan new hues, intensities and combinations, (regardless of their name). 

2016 Patricia Scarborough Coming and Going  9.5x9.5 pastel

What started out as disaster has actually given me a bump in a new direction, and I like it. 

Still, would Ray Charles's masterpiece sound the same if it were "Am I Wode?" 

Lessons From A Master

Handsome Husband and I are just home from a field trip of sorts to Kansas City, Mo.

Our trip took us across northern Kansas on Highway 36, a beautiful strip of highway cutting through wheat fields and rolling pastures dimming into blue hills far into the distance.  Those who claim Kansas is flat need only travel this area to see how beautiful this part of the country is.

Our field trip was inspired by the Nelson-Atkins ArtCenter’s exhibition of Claude Monet’s Agapanthus Triptych, painted from 1915 to 1926. (Interestingly, the agapanthus of the title was painted over sometime during the 11 years Monet worked on this painting.)  Doubling the pleasure of the weekend was the opportunity to visit the southern branch of the Handsome Husband family tree and go to a cool jazz gig featuring our trombone playing nephew, Brian.  The only way the weekend could have been better was if Santa Claus himself was there.

Our first stop was the Nelson-Atkins.  I approached “The Monet” as if I were in a church; quietly, reverently, waiting for angels to proclaim the moment. I will even admit that I was prepared to fall to my knees in awe. 

Claude Monet  Water Lilies Series  Agapanthus Tryptich panel three 1915-1926

The painting itself is beautiful without a doubt.  Virtually abstract, the swirls of pigment moving from green to pink to blue in short dashes of color, accentuated by thick white figure-eight shapes captured my attention immediately.  What I didn’t expect was the muscular surface (it’s the only way I can think of to describe it).  Monet thought “out loud” with pigment and brush.  He painted, considered, scraped off, painted more, painted over, changed his mind and did the whole thing over again and again.  Rather that claiming the painting ‘finis!’, it is believed he simply ran out of time, dying before it was done.  The surface shows this thought process; it is heavily textured in places, harsh marks show where he scraped and re-worked, and layers of paint hide groups of lilies painted in previous sessions.  There are areas of paste-y pigment, not unpleasant but not entirely expected either from a master of painting.  My college professors would have raised an eyebrow.

My knees didn’t buckle, nor did I hear angels sing.

It’ll be awhile before I have the experience completely evaluated.  I'm not hard-hearted; the painting is beautiful. I am awed by Monet’s obsessive struggle to translate the physics of light into pigment.  That awe includes the appreciation of the plain hard work that goes into this type of creative exploration.  It is a lesson taken to heart.

©2010 Patricia Scarborough New Day  12 x 18 pastel

Monet spent decades discovering what his water garden had to offer, right up until his passing from this earthly world. For me, as an artist exploring new territory there may be no moment of arrival, but simply, delightedly, perhaps painfully, the awareness of yet another step in the process until the work is declared complete - or the clock runs out.  

2011 Patricia Scarborough  Early Morning Spring  6 x 9 pastel

Tick tick tick tick . . .