Search

Some woman at a dinner party last week, after I tell her I paint figurative work, she says "oh but abstract is so much easier, right? You don't have to worry about it looking like anything." I did not say what I wanted to say. I said "no, abstraction is its own discipline" like a polite robot. But what I wanted to say is: try painting a hand that looks like a hand and then come talk to me about what's easy. The disrespect is so casual. As if centuries of craft, of learning to see, of mixing a flesh tone that actually breathes, as if that's just the tedious part you get through before you're allowed to make real art. Anyway I came home and scraped a canvas I'd been working on for weeks. Not because of her. But also a little because of her.

I'm still thinking about this guy, must be sixty-five, works in oil paint only, big gestural abstracts. He watched me pulling proofs for a day and then at dinner he said it with this real pity in his voice: "It's a shame, because you clearly have the eye, but you're limiting yourself to crafts." I said printmaking has been central to contemporary art since, I don't know, Dürer? And he said Dürer was a painter who also did prints. Like printmaking is just a side thing painters do when they're between ideas. The thing that gets me is the hierarchy. Oil painting = serious. Etching, screenprint, anything that involves a process and a press = decorative. It's so nineteenth century. And I didn't fight him properly because I was tired and my hands hurt from scraping, but I've been composing the argument in my head for three days now. You know when the perfect retort arrives too late?

There's this late Byzantine panel from the Church of the Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki, Christ Pantokrator, standard stuff, and I copied it by hand for a conservation module back in 2004. Six weeks on my knees, matching every tessera, and I got it so close my professor kept it as a teaching example. The joke is that piece ruined me. I can't look at a face in mosaic anymore without measuring the eye spacing against that Pantokrator. Last week I finished a portrait commission, contemporary, abstracted, not even trying to be realistic, and I spent an hour staring at it thinking the left eye is two millimeters too far out. Client won't see it. Nobody will see it. But I know it's there because of a dead Byzantine emperor's face I memorized twenty years ago. Anyone else carry a reference piece in their head like a splinter? Something you studied so hard it rewired your eye permanently.

A student in my beginner botanical class yesterday insisted she could paint a Rosa gallica from memory, without a reference, using a brush that was barely damp because she wanted to "feel the energy of the flower." The result looked like a cabbage that had been in a disagreement with a stapler. I try very hard not to be prescriptive. I believe there is room for many approaches. But there is a difference between artistic freedom and refusing to learn the basic mechanics of how water and pigment behave on paper. You cannot will a wash into existence through sheer self-expression. The water has to be there. The pigment has to be mixed. These are not negotiable. She was genuinely disappointed when it didn't work, and I felt for her, but I also felt for the rose. They are not symbolic abstractions. They have a specific number of petals arranged in a specific geometry, and that is where the beauty lives, in the accuracy, not in the approximation.

went to a friend's opening last night and this man I've never met walks up to a piece I have in the show, it's this big mixed-media thing I worked on for months, central image is this dead elm against a gray sky, torn paper and charcoal and some old family photos collaged into the roots, and he goes "love the texture but you're burying the lede, that tree is a downer, crop it to just the bottom third and you've got something people would actually buy" i just stood there holding my wine. didn't say anything useful. just nodded like a malfunctioning toy. and now i'm lying in bed at 7am still replaying it and thinking about all the things i should have said. the tree is the whole point my guy. the tree is doing the work. you want me to make you a nice little abstract of some roots? go buy a print at homegoods.

a girl in my studio's open session last night asked me to take a look at her piece. big abstract thing, mostly palette knife, lots of texture. i actually liked the bones of it. told her the composition was fighting itself in the lower left quadrant, too much heavy color pulling the eye down and nothing anchoring the top right to balance it. suggested she either pull some of that weight up or knock the bottom back with a glaze. she goes "i disagree, i think the tension is the point." okay. sure. then why'd you ask? i don't mind someone having a vision. i mind someone asking for help and then treating it like a debate. like i'm not trying to boss you around, i'm just telling you what my eye does when it lands on your canvas. you can take it or leave it, but don't make me defend my own visual cortex lol. i told her "fair enough, it's your painting" and walked off. felt rude but also i'm not gonna stand there and argue about why i see what i see. anyway this happens more than i'd expect and i'm curious how other people handle it. i used to dig in and try to explain myself but lately i just shrug and let them figure it out. saves my energy.

found a palette from 2021 in my closet today. dried paint all cracked and layered, colors i don't even buy anymore. genuinely prettier than anything i painted that year. i have like six of these lying around. they're useless but i can't throw them out because they look like little abstract paintings that someone else made and i'm jealous of them lol