Oil Painting on Gator Board

Study of Native Pine Trees –Coral Gables, Florida

                    There is no sense of life after the mission is completed. There is hardly any life outside the mural. I am far away from home and although my husband and friends told me they would come over, other things got in the way and frankly I couldn’t care less because I need to be painting. But painting is a lonely job. Hours go by and I find myself totally absorbed in this quest to create this large illusion of space on a two dimensional flat form.

                     It’s my journey and I cannot go back. I left the old coast behind and the new land is not in sight. There is no escape. I am curious how the end will look . Every day there is another challenge. One day it is a challenge to get the horizon right, another day it is about the difficulty of painting the palm trees. I have never seen the whole mural as one big and difficult thing to do; I take it one day at a time; very focused indeed to make it all right to the end- both physically and mentally. There are times that I have to leave the mural alone in an ugly state. It is just because it is a step in preparation for the next one and I am tired; I cannot keep performing endlessly until everything is to my liking. I know I have to deal with visitors who are in shock about the look of this intermediate state of affairs. This is how it is to work in the public eye. Comments and remarks cause mental stress in addition to my own judge sitting on my shoulder.

                   There are times I am up all night because there are problems I haven’t foreseen. Although my plan of working is founded in a thorough understanding of the job through experience, I cannot foresee everything. For example there is the sky really high, 20 feet up in the air, that I wanted to make like a smooth sky disappearing into space. Practically speaking, it is also close the air-conditioning vents that blow dry air on the walls with a force you would not like to have at your home. So while working I realized that my idea was not working and I had to come up with another plan. These kinds of things are the challenge of the job.

             We can all do smooth sailing on a lazy summer afternoon with a light breeze in the bay, and a pleasant sun to warm ourselves. Sailing through thunderstorms need a different approach. It needs preparation for basic needs like drinks and food; it needs focus of a compass course to go back to when the heavy wind throw you off balance. It takes flexibility to fix things adequately when they break and then, when everything is under control there is the challenge of loneliness. You would like to share, but you cannot because this is not a job you can ever do frivolously with more people. I have my friend Aviva working with me at times but there are many details that I have to do alone because of the promise of the design.

                Loneliness is surely a challenge and it is wise to deal with all your problems before going on a big trip like this because they will come out at times of boredom. Funny things from the past pop up out of nowhere but also shameful things, questionable practices that you’ve learned from. Staring over the endless sea without any land in sight for another five weeks can freak any person out, despite the contact through satellite and the internet. Any self-doubt, angst or deeper issues concerning life you have to deal with beforehand because this is just not the right time to do it. Once you are able to overcome these challenges it will make you stronger and fearless in a way that is at the same time humbling.

               I thought I solved all my life’s issues before I embarked on this trip, but I did not count on my husbands issues to become a problem for me, since I was far away. A week before the work was completed he visited Miami and caused a huge drama, followed by a flooding of the apartment and a demand for coming home immediately. Nothing of it changed my plan of working as I insist on being a professional who can deliver.

              It felt however that I had to deal with a hurricane close to the harbor. The forces were overwhelming and staying focused became a challenge. Before the sheer pleasure of painting lifted me up but now that had vanished, and I was only surviving. The colors became dark and I could not seem to achieve the same balance in palette as I had before. I already had exhausted all my energy by the work itself, and now I found myself running on empty. There were broken things that caused dangerous situations; the noise of the building had increased due to moving in. Slamming of doors, pounding of nails and yelling people echoed hard through my system and worked on my nerves. I was afraid to lose my balance on the scaffolding because of fatigue.

             By meditating and painting outdoors I connected to higher energy and avoided a nervous breakdown. It is hard to switch from a frantic mode into slow breathing but once achieved it feels like a miracle. I delivered the mural on September 6^th, with a margin to correct error. I am not sure if my marriage will survive this trial but the mural is a fact.

                  Plastic is one of my least favorite materials, not only does it not break down in nature, the thing itself, whatever it is, breaks easily, making the whole thing absolutely useless and most of all- ugly. This tiny piece of plastic that is now broken into two parts makes the whole easel worthless. The effort of thinking up the concept of making an easel, producing the metal parts, shipping it from China, selling it in a store, all that has been in vain. Nothing but some garbage is left. It cannot even serve another purpose.  

                 People made money of it to feed their kids or buy an easel that now lays useless on the floor, broken. This is really the saddest part of our existence today. Wasting time, energy and money on ill performed jobs, products and buildings. I have nothing against spending money, nor on buying things. I love beautiful things. I love beautiful things that are sturdy enough to withstand time. 

                My friend Michiko explains that in Japan they have a word for these things. (I love having other cultures surrounding me in my daily life, like real Colombian Coffee and Japanese Habits) Wabi Sabi is a name for weathered objects. Old material like a leather chair of 400 years old has wabi sabi. The wood has nicks and dents and some parts are slightly lighter on the higher elevations. It might even be that the varnish is gone altogether. The grease and the dirt in the corners gives this piece of wood an extra dimension being darker and bringing out the engravings.  The chair is not broken. It hardly will break ever.

The design has to be solid and classic. (How about all the modern designers that need to feed their kids too? And the boring bad designs? What about them?) This can be for buildings, furniture, clothes, vehicles, suitcases and what not. The stuff shows years of experience with wind, water, sun and humans. Old Italian villas have this beautiful weathered paint on the outside done by centuries of wind, water and sun exposure. My friend John Adams would say, this brings “soul into the thing.” It has added value because it withstood time.

Nothing that is produced today has the capability of withstanding time because of the power of Economists. These guys studied years to figure out that if we produce things that break easy we will buy more, and  we can feed our kids…(????)  It opens the floodgates for ugly poorly not- well- thought-out things made by smart people but not very conscientious citizens. Nothing that leaves the factory today will be seen by our grandkids, not even durable goods. There are no durable goods any more. China is even worse in producing non-durable goods.

                Thinking about what Michiko said I thought I would break the cycle myself wherever I can to not buy into the system anymore. Instead of buying without thinking about the immediate use of the product I will change my habits.  I will look for the label made in China, than inspect its weakest part, leave it on the shelf and see if I can find a more expensive better product somewhere else.

              In case of the easel, sorry but I will find some wood and make myself a fine folding easel. My father made my very first easel out of driftwood he found on the beach. It was very heavy so I sold it to a fellow student at a time I was hungry but I did not forget how it was made, simple and sturdy, with separate materials that could be replaced. I will make it a special class for my students so they will never forget it either. Maybe the easel will last for centuries to come. It will be a real Wabi Sabi easel that was in Florida, Domburg, and Indianapolis and withstood extreme heat in the Botanical Gardens and terrible freezing cold at Williams Creek. I wonder if Wabi Sabi also was meant for people.

           I started with the most difficult approach and ruined the most expensive canvas I ever bought. I had purchased pure Belgium linen and stretchers sized 52 inches by 78. My old heavy foldable easel barely fitt in my car. I carried a heavy wooden box with acrylics. It all seems so silly now……. What was I thinking?     

              The size of the painting drew attention. Some idiot with a huge canvas was trying to make a painting, or was it an actress for a comic movie who was waiting for the camera man? I barely had time to concentrate on painting because everybody wanted to know what the heck I was doing. I wanted to be polite and talked patiently to passers-bye about their nephew who was in Art school or their sister in law who was an accomplished painter.

           As soon as I could focus, the evening breeze picked up and the wind got part of the game. The monstrous canvas flew in my face, wet paint and all. I couldn’t handle it. With ultramarine paint stuck in my hair I managed to hold the painting with one hand and dip my brushes into paint with the other when I realized the subject was wrong and the paint was drying too fast.

            The building was the most difficult subject I could dream up. The hotel was orange, lit up by an intense evening sun while I would stand in the shade surrounded by blue green foliage. Creating depth with colors seemed to be an impossible task since the blue tones should be in the background and the warm tones in front. It’s a simple rule I had read somewhere which was easy to remember but hard to achieve. In this case the color of my subject was the furthest away but orange. If I mixed blue and white with it, as I should for receding colors, it became a muddy grey.

            Then there was the enormous amount of detail, not even talking about the architectural challenge itself. The Biltmore Hotel has many small windows and a nick in the building itself so the perspective was difficult. Even now, as an experienced plain air painter I would not go back to the scene because it has more challenges than I am willing to deal with.

            The rather poor choice of it all was my ignorance of how to be a painter. Doing everything wrong is one way of learning. The danger is that one would give up, and never discover the satisfaction of expressing oneself through paint.

           I made a fool of myself and my ego got damaged. The disappointment hit me quite deeply. Many people had encouraged me to become a painter because I was so talented. I did not know that it meant I had to learn and suffer an awful lot. Talent might help a little bit but everybody has to put beginner’s effort into something to be rewarded. I thought I would wake up one morning and just automatically paint anything to satisfaction because that was what I was supposed to do. I felt silly.

             Finally, after many years of hard work I narrowed the art down of travelling light with an easel to the absolute necessities. I have been bitten by mosquitoes, burnt my neck by the blistering sun, threw my acrylics away, left all the big canvasses in the studio, got myself some wide brim hats and a small metal folding easel. Now I only have a tiny shoebox made from wood filled with oil paints, brushes and a palette, which fit in my backpack together with a small fishing stool, turpentine, a roll of paper towels, bug spray, suntan lotion and water. I can walk with this for miles if I have to. Lately I even manage to paint horses on the beach in Holland with a fierce wind in my face without any problem. For fieldtrips I like to work on prepared gatorboard which is light weight and strong. My field easel is easy to carry with the boards which are no bigger than 18×24 inches. I love the outdoors, feel the wind through my hair and see the sun hit my landscape. There is definitely something sacred in the act itself.

Five hundred years after Michelangelo was perfecting his technique with lime, pigments and water I have my pick of many different paints to use. In 2010 there are paint stores for house painters and there are arts and craft stores that all present us with numerous amounts of materials. I personally get a little overwhelmed by seeing all that is offered. In the regular house paint stores you can find high and low quality brands for in door and outdoor use, there is latex which is pigments mixed in with water and there are oil based enamels which are pigments mixed with oil and solvents. In the art stores there are acrylics which are water based highly pigmented paints and oil paints for use on canvas. There is gouache which is a chalk-like opaque paint and tempera which is a little bit the same.

              I had to narrow it down in order to use the best of each in what I want to achieve in my mural. The mural has not only an outrageous perspective by depicting people in life size reality but also on the same surface an aerial perspective. No single human eye can see this perspective in reality. Simply impossible. To achieve this depth requires different means in order to create this feeling of spaciousness. The wall is flat after all and it will stay flat. A photograph is flat; two dimensional. This is also because of the use of the same material through out the surface. With print you can already achieve a slight sense of depth by using a flat opaque ink and a transparent glossy ink on top. In paint you can give the illusion of depth in different ways. It is still an illusion but I think you can only do it in paint.

              Artists throughout the ages realized by looking intensely at nature how to create depth in a painting. When there is a little fog you can feel a heightened sense of depth. The blue and white in the far distance creates this. Also the lack of contrast far away, a slightly blurry vision is required to let the viewer’s eye roll over details far away and focus on the foreground. The foreground needs to have everything the far distance does not have. It needs energy and movement, composed from bright colors, reds, oranges, vivid images in high contrast. Sharp edges will make the eye focus on whatever is happening there. The biggest difference between dark and light is in the foreground.

               That all said it seems easy to achieve this. It is just a simple trick and when you follow the rules you will achieve your goal. There is more to it though. The distance is well suited with opaque paints. Using acrylics for the whole mural would be frustrating because they stay transparent and the brushstrokes visible. White in every kind of artistic paint has a tendency to make any color opaque. Mix white in it and the surface becomes flat. The colors mixed with white give this sense of quiet surrender and it creates a beautiful balance with other more vivid parts.

I used for an optimum in depth illusion of the edge of the world an inexpensive Sherwin Williams Ceiling paint. This chalky paint gives the surface a dull look, almost like suede. On top of it in the sky I used pure pigment powder mixed with water and binder. The middle ground is fully painted with the Pittsburgh which I bought in bright colors so I am able to mix them at my convenience. On top of this paint I will add very thin layers of acrylic to make the transition between the foreground and the distance. Close-up will have either an eggshell or shiny acrylic paint on a super flat surface. The surface needs to be doubly prepared without any flaws: drippings, cracks or other irregularities.

People ask me about varnish. We are used to varnishing pieces of art to preserve them for eternity. If it were an outdoor piece I would do this to protect the painting from mildew and ultraviolet rays. The mural at the Alumni Building will not have a coat of varnish higher than the life size images. That layer of varnish will protect it from sticky fingers and coincidental bumps. The rest will stay as is because the dull quality of the paint in the distance serves to add to the illusion of depth. If the rules were not too strict I would add some high quality oil paint to the people in the foreground because oil provides such brilliant colors that simply aren’t the same with acrylics. Water based paint on top of oil paint would allow the painting to easily chip, and take with it the characters I have tried so hard to capture.

Five hundred years ago Michelangelo painted his Sistine Chapel in Italy . Although he was known in his time as being an excellent craftsman, he was not as famous as he is today. The word artist and artisan had almost the same meaning, and both were doing the same things, one being more talented or advanced than the other. Unlike today where the meaning of the word artist seems to represent someone who makes ugly and hard to understand visual things, and artisan is someone who makes quilts. I think I am both.

              I still use the same materials as Michelangelo; the whole process is really not that far away from what he had been doing to make a mural. That is where I see myself as an artisan. The work drawings are also in scale and divided into one inch squares. The squares represent one foot squares on the wall. In Michelangelo’s time they would first make large templates on paper with one foot squares. Copying carefully every figure in line on paper, with the squares as a guide a new drawing would evolve. One or more assistants would make holes on the lines with a sharp pin (icepick), then with charcoal powder wrapped in cheesecloth they made a ball on a stick. With this stick they pounded the black powder through the holes onto the wall.

              Today I skip the templates because I have the help of electric projectors. I still use charcoal, a very old form of drawing tool, to draw my projections onto the wall. Once drawn on the wall with the squares still visible, it looks the same as a phase of Michelangelo’s wall. I then use a new odorless, eco-friendly Pittsburg latex paint to make the under painting in a warm terra cotta. The glow of this color will eventually shine through and give the mural a warm feeling.

                In the old days they would use burnt sienna for this step. I contemplated using this as a pigment but decided not to do it because I would have to grind it and make it every time on the spot and it would not have a good consistency. I have many one pound paper bags with pigments bought in Holland and Colombia . (It caused trouble in security at the airports; we live in a modern world after all. The white and the red, I learned, resemble cocaine and gunpowder respectively )

                 To make the paint with the Gold Ochre pigment I grind the pigment on a glass plate with distilled water. This brings out the color. If I would use it like this it would become powder again and fall off the wall so I need a binder to make it stick. In the old days that could have been rabbit skin glue, like wall paper glue, but today I just buy acrylic binder. I don’t pride myself in using only old school methods. I use the earth tones of raw pigment because of its beauty.

               After years and years practicing on many walls in Miami Dade County I mastered this technique which gives a natural wavy look that I cannot seem to achieve other wise. If you leave the paint like this it will release color through oxidation and stay brilliant for years to come. Much like leather, the older the pigment gets the more beautiful it will become. Michelangelo used to buy his pigments at special markets and the blue, made of Lapis Lazuli was one of the most expensive ones. He used a lot of it because his patrons wanted to show how wealthy they were. I only use the earth tones because they are the most pure and not made of chemicals.

                  For the final painting I will use high quality latex paint and eventually acrylics with a slow drying medium mixed in. To achieve a realistic look I need slow drying time to blend in the different tones. Normally I would do this with oil paint which can be applied on top of an acrylic base, but since we want to have a “green” building I will not do this. Today we have other means.

          The mural at the University of Miami is small compared to Michelangelo’s job and I am not nearly as advanced in the skills as he is but at least I know I am in good company.