Commissions: A Love-Hate Relationship

As long as there have been artists trying to earn a living with their work, there have been collectors and patrons eager to commission art that speaks directly to their own tastes and preferences, and not to the artist's.  For that reason, and because many artists feel a real sense of restriction when dealing with external guidelines outside their own internal  creative processes, we often have a love- hate relationship with commissions.

The first commission I ever had was when I was about 13. The father of children I baby sat for knew I was taking oil painting lessons, and asked me to copy a Modigliani for him. I dutifully did (and began my life-long love affair with Modi!) He in turn actually paid me money, I forget how much, certainly not much, but I was thrilled: it was my very first sale. And in high school, my boyfriend asked me to make him a painting of the woods, with a moose by a stream. And I did, for free because I loved him, and often wonder whatever happened to it after I broke up with him three years later. For my grandfather I did a man fishing in a stream which he loved and I loved making it for him.

In the eighties, when I got seriously back to painting after the kids were in school, I had a very successful solo show in Newark, NJ. An acquaintance, who had bought a 36" square painting of an oversized, abstracted rose at the opening, asked me if I would make a companion for it, in the same colors. I thought about it, and realized it was not something I could do. My large roses were all painted and titled with ee cummings poetry as my muse (see example below), and came from deep within my psyche. I could not paint one to order, and so I lost a sale.

"Palace Intricate"  36 x 36  NFS

 

 

 

And since then, other than portraits, I have avoided commissions as much as I can.   I have done many commissioned portraits, see example left and in earlier postings, which is a slightly different thing, but also a bit restrictive creatively, or perhaps a lot restrictive. I have had a fair amount of success with the portraits, but have grown tired of doing them, although I still will do it because once into them, I do get a certain amount of enjoyment out of the process.)

A few years ago, a very close friend whose summer home we visit every year on Lake George, asked me if I would do a painting of their house which they could have back home in Virginia during the year. I said yes, and then spent the next two years suffering terrible guilt because I could not do it. I tried, over and over again, but working from the photos I took was just not working, and I honestly believe it was because the painting was not coming from inside. I finally finished it this summer, and breathed a deep, deep sigh of relief. The photo below is a bit fuzzy, but it now hangs happily in Virginia.

Malovany Home, Lake George 

I would LIKE to be able to do commissions, because it is a nice way to earn some extra money, AND to make your customers happy. But I find it so difficult, not only emotionally, but while technically attempting the work in the studio. It reminds me of why I did not major in art at Skidmore: I told my mother I did not want art to ever become WORK for me. I wanted to keep my creation of art  forever as a joy. 

I don't know if any of this makes sense to you, but it does to me. And right now I have no company coming, and no commissions due, so inbetween water aerobics, I plan to spend a lot of time in the studio this week!

The Disappearing Month and Disappeared Days from Long Ago.

My readers, all 5 of you, must be wondering what happened to this blogger. Life happened, basically, and I found I had little time to paint, or to blog. The end of August found us, and the two Pulis, off to Lake George to visit old high school friends just the day after our wonderful 10 day Nantucket idyll with our son and family. (I do not have any of the photos from that trip on my computer.) Finally home, we cleaned up the garden, and enjoyed the end of summer, so eloquently captured in this poem.

The Round 

by Stanley Kunitz

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
and still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed..."


I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

And then came Irene, which was a catastrophe here in poor little Vermont. Being high on a hill, and having a reliable generator, personally we were fine, but not our little village. Our neighbors' driveway was in the road, leaving them with a Grand Canyon-esque driveway. Homes were flooded, bridges broken. Here are some shots of our road:

Rt. 132 from Sharon to South Strafford.

We were stranded for a few days, but before long they got one lane open on this country road with a temporary traffic light in operation. We are hoping they can fix it, and the many, many other roads and bridges in town and all over central and southern Vermont which need it before the snow flies. If Eric Cantor has his way, I guess it will not happen.

I am so incredibly impressed by the way Vermnonters rallied together to help each other in a million ways. We relied on a town internet site and a hastily established Facebook site to find out what was going on, what roads were open, who needed help where, etc. The big excitement was when government helicopters arrived with emergency food and water for stranded Straffordites. Seeing the normally bucolic, lazy brooks, streams and the Ompoponoosuc River in a frenzied rage was astonishing. We felt as if we were living in the middle of a newsreel... and in fact, we were.


And September was a blur. We were away until the 12th, mostly at Long Beach Island, Barnegat Light to be specific, where we have gone for the last five or six years. Going to LBI has become an homage to my past --  it is the island where I spent part of every summer from the time I was 10 until we moved to Vermont when the family oceanfront home in Loveladies was sold. Some of the best memories from my childhood and  adulthood are of family times at Loveladies.

I was an only child, and spending time with my cousins at the shore every summer was pure joy. That's me in the center, in 1952, chin on the old rubber raft, squinting into the sun.

My uncles' first and second houses spoke of home to me more than anywhere else in my adult years, because I could not go to any of my other childhood homes. This one still existed, exactly as it had always been,  until I was 55.

The vintage 50's house had pink asbestos shingles and a gleaming white roof, built after my Uncle had been to Bermuda. It was filled with the Heywood Wakefield furniture that was so popular at that time, and would be worth a fortune today. Back then, there were almost no other houses on the beach. Circa 1952.

 When my Uncle Ben died and the house which he had built in front of the Pink House in 1972 was sold (and eventually torn down) my heart broke and it was years before I could bear to go back to LBI. But eventually the pull was too strong, and we found a funny little house right on the ocean to rent in Barnegat, the northernmost town on the island, and the one least spoiled by the "tear-down and build-up-a-McMansion-beach-house" mentality. Since my daughter and family always join us for at least some of the time, I guess we are building some new memories, although rather than a long meandering summer, we have only a week.

Our little grand boy and empty beach, early September.

 There is no sand like the soft white sand on LBI, and nowhere else smells as good. When our grandson Nate, age 5, first got out of the car he exclaimed "I smell the ocean!" and he had to go there IMMEDIATELY. I know the feeling, oh I know the feeling.

This year, one day I took some photos with my i-phone of the patterns and textures on the water's edge for future abstracted paintings of just that which I can take to Nantucket next year. (I have been unable to locate a really good gallery on LBI.) 

So summer, is over. I knew it the last day on the beach, with some drifting mist and a hint of coolness in the air, and the sanderlings and other peeps rushing back and forth by water's edge. The gulls were reclaiming the beach, and I knew it was time to go home, time to get back to work.

 I have a lot to do this fall and winter in the studio--- Sedona, Italy, and Beach works. Stay tuned.

But as the season shifts up here, and my Vermont landscape views out the window and off the decks are magically colorized, I am sure I will be doing some October work as well. I took the painting below done in another October to a show in Lyme this month.

"October Mists"  oil on canvas currently at Long River Gallery in Lyme, NH     $900

Nantucket Work

This week has been been a busy one, as I prepare some new work to take up to East End Gallery in Nantucket. Each August I bring home some which have not sold, and hand off some new work to the gallery owner. I can't say I sell a lot up there, because she only does solo shows for Nantucket residents, and these shows take up most of the space in the small gallery during the summer. But she shows my work in the spring, early summer and fall into December, and I have made some nice sales during those times.

Besides the "Shallowing Waves" painting in my last post, and "In the Language of Blue and Gold" which can be seen in the right hand sidebar of this blog, I will be taking up an addition to my successful "Water's Edge series:

"Water's Edge # 10"  oil on clayboard  10" x 10"

"Blue Shore of Silence"

 and above, which I did earlier this summer and posted in the blog I believe.

And this new one, "Storm Abating" which is not quite as free form as "Shallowing Waves," but hopefully presents a mood and a feeling.

"Storm Abating"  oil on canvas  20" x 20"

I look forward to arriving on the island for a 10 day vacation with our son and his family. There’s a reason families summer in Nantucket generation after generation: There is a sense of history, of the unchanged there in the villages and outlying roads, because after the whaling industry, which made Nantucket so affluent, tanked in the mid 1800's when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, no one could afford to build or rebuild for over 100 years, leaving Nantucket Island and its delightful cottages and buildings and cobble-stoned thoroughfare much as it was. (This is in spite of the continued growth of abundant and wonderful, albeit expensive, restaurants, shopping, and art galleries in recent decades.) 

Ocean and bay are wonderfully swimmable, thanks to the Gulf Stream, and the open beaches, some of the most beautiful in the world, are varied and available to all --- all who can afford to be there that is. You can tell that my only negative about this magical place is the sense of entitlement about it --- it is not a place where you can own or even rent a house without money. There may be a few too many docksiders, Vineyard Vines clothing, whale pants and dyed-in-the-wool Republicans for my sensibilities, but given all the natural beauty, it is easy to ignore. I can be a hypocrite for a few weeks in order to enjoy beauty and relaxation!

"Squantum House"

My son found a wonderful old true grey-shingled BEACH house (not winterized, not yuppified) about 10 years ago to rent. Everyone would not love it, because of the small, old kitchen, ancient (but I think charming!) bathrooms, time scarred natural wood wainscotted walls, and simple furnishings. It is a house where a family raised six kids, located out on Wauwinet Road where there are very few houses, very few folks on the beach, and situated right on the ocean with bay views to the other side. My family all love it, because of its location and because the house is perfect for kids, (my grandkids think of it as a second home.) Because of our Italy extravaganza in June, they are only going for 2 weeks this year, (but logged into more next year I believe) and John and I  will be there for 10 days of it. (Not because, I suspect, they are dying to spend another vacation with the grandparents, but because you have to split the cost of the house: otherwise it becomes undo-able!) My daughter-in-law's parents and brother and family rent another house just down the road for one of the weeks, which makes it even more fun.

I look forward to doing some water aerobics in the ocean, communing with seagulls and my son, daughter-in-law and grandkids on the beach, sunsets over the bay on the deck, endless games of Monopoly, seafood feasts cooked on the beach, some good beach reading ... all of which makes for a perfect vacation.

Everyone makes fun of my beach chair with a roof, but it seems to be a popular place to sit--- this is my grandson Aidan, 9 here, now 10.

Granddaughter Eloise on the deck with fudgecicle at age 7, last summer

Granddaughter Lily on "our" beach post shower, pre dinner, at age 5

View from deck at cocktail hour

Hence they may be no blogging until we get home, after which we take off again for 3 days to Lake George!

Creating Something New from the Familiar: Bait for Viewers

These lovely summer days, when I sit down at the easel, I find myself creating paintings which are more abstract than any of my work since about 1985, when I was for a few years working in an abstract expressionist mode. An example of that era of work can be seen below.

"Fragments of Actuality"  36" x 36"  oil and pear paper on canvas

 From there I evolved into a "you know what it is but it is done very differently" frame of mind ...  see poor photo of painting of wild horse below ...

 

"Wild Stallion"  36" x 36"  oil on canvas   (sold, long ago)

...and then somehow I became much more of a realist for many years. But recently,I have once again started reaching towards a more abstracted approach.

My current work, as with the horse, revolves around my efforts to interpret a realistic subject in a completely individual way; my approach is very intuitive and organic, usually starting with thin washes on a blank canvas, often with underlayed areas of soft, crinkled pear paper which I love. The process then evolves into the use of painting knives, paper towels, my fingers and other objects, as well as brushes, to apply the paint -- layering and layering, and then finding out what is underneath! I also am bringing with me a hardfought (and not always successful) ability to keep my mind open to what the process will reveal.

My work is still firmly rooted in, and inspired by, landscape, seascape and buildings, but I find myself departing from the college-taught theories and formalities of representational art which have guided me in the past.  I guess I am trying to create something new from the familiar. My work this week takes the sea and its environs as my subject because I need to take some new work up to the Nantucket gallery which represents me. With these recent seascapes, I am trying to continue and enlarge upon my “Water’s Edge” series of the past few years, and to transcend typical seascape representation. I pick my composition, often from photographs, often from memory, and try to reach the heart and soul of each particular scene or dream. I work until I feel I have a work that is absorbing, reflective, and also makes the viewer think a bit. Unlike some abstract artists, I am not really looking to disturb: I still aim for painterly interest and some kind of beauty in my work. Here is one of the very recent seascapes. I was all over the studio with this one, flinging paint about, and getting myself and the studio into very much of a mess.The glow of the sun does not show up in this photo.

"Shallowing Breakers"  20" x 20" oil and pear paper on canvas

When speaking about his earlier work, Eric Aho was described as “ .. at first glance, … a most accomplished landscapist, but in reality he is an abstract-expressionist using farm buildings and turbulent skies as bait for viewers. His latest oil paintings, suavely brushed and knowingly layered, are in reality artworks about art.” This is where I am trying to go.

As an aside, and not exactly on point with the above discussion, I am also working on the Italian village street scenes. The one I put in this blog earlier in its initial configuration is now looking like this, and I have several more underway. 

"Montefioralle #1"  6" x 6"  oil and tissue paper on canvas

SO I am not abandoning the representational altogether, when it affords opportunity for wonderful colors, light, and texture such as these.

Back in the Saddle

I have not been in the studio for quite a while, but as well as starting a time-consuming water aerobics class this week, I also got back to work.

"Where All the Houses are Grey:  18 x 18, oil on canvas

This painting, almost done alla prima, is where my head is going right now. Layered and simple, an abstracted view of bayside Nantucket ... but in my mind, it could almost be Venice as well if I eliminated the grey on the horizon and added a few suggested cupolas of Domes.

And I am beginning a series of Montefioralle street scenes, as predicted. I thought it might be of interest to see a painting with just it's first few layers. It is nowhere near completed, just in the initial stages.

Stage 1 of a Montefioralle painting, oil on canvas covered with tissue underlay,  6" x 6"

 A woman who saw and liked my work at the Morrill show, and who is an art critic up here, has asked to come to my studio so she can write a review of my work for VermontArtzine, and  on line publication.  

La Dolce Vita in Tuscany

Door to villa

View from my bedroom window of pool and area

To continue our Italian adventure, the next whole week we, with our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren, situated ourselves at a marvelous Tuscan villa in the midst of the Chianti countryside. I have always wanted to stay in a small Tuscan town, and after reading Francis Mayes’ books, this desire became an obsession. We finally did it, and it did not disappoint.

Grandson Nate walking towards back of our villa. Loggia and patios visable. Photo by his Dad, son-in-law Bob Buzas. Below, right, loggia and patios

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Entry Courtyard

It was such a joy spending time there that we almost hated to go off on day trips, but we did--- we selected this villa partially because it was so close to Siena, Florence, Pisa, many of the famed medieval fortified hill towns, and vineyards. We managed to see bits of it all.

 When it comes to travel, we all have our preferences. Some of us like to rough it, others like to stay in the most luxurious places they can afford. Some of us like to plan EVERY DETAIL to the nth degree, others like to wing it and just find adventures around every corner. Some like to be busy from sun up to sun down, others like to stop to smell the flowers along the way.  This trip confirmed something I have been learning about myself in recent years: that as I am growing older, I am less and less enticed by cities, and more and more happy and comfortable being in the countryside.

At this point in my life, when I arrive at the airport terminal, I like to head straight for the rural – wherever I am going, even when abroad. I have been to Paris often, but love Burgundy more and hope to get to Provence. I have loved spending time in London, but far prefer being in the Cotswolds, the moors of Yorkshire, the gardens of Sussex. I find the air sweeter, the people friendlier, the food fresher and local, and the pace of life slower. 

I also like to centrally locate myself in one place, and then move out for day trips. We draw a circle around where we are staying, and visit what there is to see in that circle--- always a lot!  And I am very happy to settle myself into a location, often in a rented cottage or villa, immersing myself in the area daily life,  without rushing to every possible famous tourist attraction before closing time.

Life at the villa was good. Below are my grandkids having a pasta making lesson from the chef hired by their parents to provide a fabulous birthday dinner for us.

 

I

The children loved eating the pasta they made by themselves--tagliatelle and ravioli.

The family relaxing at the villa.

I left the suburbs in New Jersey to move to Vermont 13 1/2 years ago, and in Vermont, I live among fields, farms, forests, animals and country lanes, unpretentious and rock solid folks. I like to explore these same things in foreign lands. Whenever possible on vacation from here on in, I want to try to avoid long lines, traffic, tourists, loud noise, exhaust, pollution and stress --  all part of the city scene.

That’s not to say I don’t find myself enjoying what cities have to offer  on occasion. I do want to sample the atmosphere, foods, cultural attractions and tourist attractions which are offered by cities now and again. Obviously I was not going to spend two weeks in Italy and not visit the Ufizzi, see the famous piazzas and squares, stand on the beautiful city bridges and take in the river landscapes -- so I did make the effort to see Siena, Florence – both wonderful -- and ended up in Rome for our last four days as my husband had never been there. (But we opted to stay in the quieter neighborhoods of Trastevere). 

But along with all the wonderful family interaction, the time I spent in our little Tuscan village of Panzano, the day trips we made to a few of the medieval hill towns and to a very peaceful monastery at Badia a Coltibuono, were the highlights of my trip. This is what I shall hold in my heart, and hopefully, transfer to my canvasses. 

Below are some of my favorite shots from the medieval, walled hill town Montefioralle for future use. This was my favorite town of those we visited because it seems relatively undiscovered by tourists (San Gimignano is wonderful, but crowded with people and shops). Montefioralle is full of Kodak moments, a perfect setting for a wedding, has one good restaurant, but that is about all. No tourist spots. And it seems to be a village still lived in by normal people living normal lives. I almost felt intrusive as I wandered around the lovely little streets.

 I cannot wait to paint the light in these streets..

Venice: A Work of Art Unto Itself

Photo by Bob Buzas (son-in-law)

The start of our two week trip to Italy to celebrate my husband’s and my 70^th birthdays was our two days in Venice, undeniably one of the world’s most glorious cities. I had not been to Venice since 1962, and it was my husband’s first trip to the magical city -- with it's glorious blend of water, art and romance situated so close to the Adriatic Sea. Created more than 1,000 years ago by men who thumbed their noses at the sea, and built their splendid Venetian Gothic palaces and churches on mud banks in a swampy and treacherous lagoon, it’s a true treasure of architecture, art and atmosphere. We reveled in the unique atmosphere of the canals and boats, the panoply of museums, bridges, churches and sunlit squares and everywhere, flowers. 

Photo by Bob Buzas

 The whole city is an extraordinary architectural masterpiece in which even the smallest building contains works by some of the world's greatest artists such as Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and others.

 With only two days there, and with four grandchildren between the ages of 5 and 10 in our group, we obviously did not see and do everything. While the others climbed the Basilica di San Marco, John and I took the slow vaporetto #1 down the length of the Grand Canal enjoying long, extended view of the major waterway of the city, and took in the wonderful ambiance of Venetian life unfolding on the Grand Canal.

We stopped off at the Accademia Gallery which houses the most magnificent collection of Venetian art in the world. Over the centuries, the great masters of Venetian painting adorned the city with wonderful works imbued with light and color, a quality that has distinguished the Venetian school of painting since its origins, I am sure because the city itself is so light splashed and luminous. The collection at the Accademia Gallery illustrates the evolution and characteristics of Venetian art, including the fourteenth century Byzantine-style Madonnas and the great canvasses by Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio that record fifteenth century Venice.  As my 10 year old grandson later remarked when in one of the Italian art museums, “…there are a lot of Marys and Jesuses there.”

Feast in the House of Levi by Paolo Veronese

One of the most interesting works of arts at the Accedemia is Veronese’s painting which is now known as the Feast in the House of Levi, completed originally for the rear wall of the refectory of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo in 1573. The painting was originally intended as a depiction of The Last Supper, and was titled thusly, designed to replace a canvas by Titian that had been lost in a fire. It measured more than five meters high and over twelve meters wide (at 42 feet long, one of the largest canvases of the 16th century), and was a culmination of Veronese's banquet scenes, which this time included not only the standard characters of The Last Supper, but also German soldiers, comic dwarves, and a variety of animals. 

When Paolo Veronese unveiled this enormous painting, it was shocking not only for its size, but also for its rather raunchy depiction of the Savior and his pals. But as Veronese's use of color attained greater intensity and luminosity, also his attention to a narrative interplay and emotion among his beautifully rendered figures was becoming tantamount to his creations. And here, the artist had portrayed one of the holiest of moments in the bible as a drunken banquet that conjured up, to some, paintings of Roman orgies!

So, because the subject, and title, of this rather racy painting was The Last Supper, it was noticed by the increasingly Puritanistic powers-that-be in the Inquisition which was exerting its influence in Venice at this time. Quite simply, they had a fit over the painting, and very speedily in July of 1573, Veronese was summoned to explain the inclusion of “extraneous and indecorous details” in the painting. The church charged the painter with irreverence—and threatened to indict him on the very serious charge of heresy. Veronese explained that "we painters take the same liberties as poets and madmen."House of Levi". 

The inquisitors suggested several changes to the painting, probably relating to the removal of Germans and buffoons etc, but in the end nothing at all was changed and a very Italian solution was negotiated - the work was retitled The Feast at the House of Levi. The scene still had Jesus in it, but a Jesus surrounded by guests who were free to engage in acts of secular glee and gluttony—and the mollified censors let it pass!

We also, all ten of us, visited the Doges Palace, or Palazzo Ducale, an extravagant Gothic Renaissance palace that symbolizes the glory days of Venice.  The Doge’s Palace, created of white limestone and pink marble, was softened by porticos, finely wrought loggias, a crenellated roof and a series of balconies by Pier Paolo and Jacobello Dalle Masegne,  was the seat of the government of Venice for centuries. It looks like dessert! The system of elected doges was as singular as everything else about this very singular city, and lasted for 1000 years. As well as being the home of the Doge (the elected ruler of Venice) it was the venue for its law courts, its civil administration and bureaucracy and — until its relocation across the Bridge of Sighs — the city jail. In spite of the heat, we marveled at the Golden Staircase and ornately decorated walls and ceilings covered by works of great artists including the world’s largest oil painting, the 23x75 foot Paradise by Jacopo Tintoretto.

Upstairs we walked through the doge’s private rooms to the Anticollegio, where the doge and council would meet foreign dignitaries. The Anticollegio is decorated with four Tintorettos; his work and Titian’s  dominate the walls, although the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci has works by our old friend the almost-heretic, Veronese; and the Sala dell’Armamento has the remains of Guariento’s fresco, Paradise, wrecked in the fire.

The kids loved walking out over the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs, constructed 1602) to the city’s ‘new’ prison. 

My grandchildren looking out over The Bridge of Sighs--- their father who took the photo says : "We need one of these at home!"

 Before it was built, prisoners were kept in the eaves of the doge’s palace, (the Piombi or ‘leads’) or in the cellars (the Pozzi or ‘wells). Wherever, it must have been horrible, and the kids loved hearing about it.

The rest of our short time in Venice, we fed the pigeons in San Marco Square, walked over the picturesque bridges, had a drink at water’s edge, and took our grandchildren for a gondola ride down the back lagoons and canals of the city, which everyone enjoyed. John and I enjoyed an elegant dinner at the Hotel Danieli, but otherwise we ate the delicious food in everyday places.

Eloise with the pigeons, Photo by Bob Buzas

View from Gondola, photo by John Reese

Grandson Aidan wearing Gondolier's hat. Photo, John Reese

          If ever a city itself was a work of art, this is it.

Arrivi Derci Venezia! GranddaughtersLily and Eloise carting their suitcases to the water taxi, causing quite a stir wearing their souvenir masks. Photo, Michael Reese