At work on a new piece based on a series of photographs that Val took during the White Linen on Julie Street in New Orleans last August. I took some of my favorite characters from the street that night and compiled them together into a new image. It was a very strange night with torrential floods having impacted large sections of the city earlier in the day. The background is nearly complete in the image below and I am ready to start in on the underpainting of the figures. Tentatively titled Shades of White, it is a sort of companion piece to my Shades of Red done the previous year. I like the idea of a massed crowd in similar attire from an aesthetic standpoint. It is easier on the eye and also reduces the friction and gaudiness prevalent in many crowd images. I decided to challenge myself and add a bit of greenery such as the tree canopy and distant vegetation. I like the result and will incorporate more down the line in another work.
Still enthralled with the defining artists from the American Regionalism movement. I recently read a lengthy tome on Thomas Hart Benton. The book- Thomas Hart Benton A Life by Justin Wolff was insightful.The politics he inserted into his art simply make my eyes glaze over. I labored over that minutiae to get to the meat of the art. Some might argue that his populism was the meat of his art (including the artist himself) but as a viewer of the work I disagree. Those paintings and murals are so very enjoyable even if one is completely ignorant of the frequent political intent, as I was when I first stumbled upon works such as Persephone or even The Twist. It is the style, the technique, the unadulterated visual impact that elevates me or leave me cold. There is quite a bit of art in our current era that seems to be heavily bolstered up with the spirit of popular political sentiment. Indeed without the heady moralistic descriptors the work stands without merit and has all but a passing interest. I prefer art to stand alone sans politics or anything else to muddy the waters. The work should exist via it’s own innate merits, those that it was birthed with and without explanation or the undue burden of self-righteous proclamation.