The hat people

The paintings in this exhibit are the result of two years of exploration dealing initially with landscape and then primarily with the figure. Looking back, the challenges were similar regardless of subject: first, how to expand the subject beyond an "objective" reality more or less faithfully represented into a subjective, imagined world of its own; and second, how to achieve an active painted surface wherein the paint itself has a life independent of the illusion. Along the way, the importance of playful use of the imagination became evident.

THE HAT PEOPLE by Patricia Kimball A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Art Department of Art and Art History The University of Utah May 2001 Copyright © Patricia Kimball 2001 All Rights Reserved THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by P a t r i c i a K im b a l l This thesis has been read bv each member o f the following supervisory committee and bv majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. Chairman: P a u l D a v i s / F r a n k Anthoi y ^TSmi th THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS FINAL READING APPROVAL To the Graduate Council o f The University o f Utah: I have read the thesis o f ____________ P a t __K l m b a l l ________________ in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic stvle are consistent and acceptable: (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the Supervisory Committee and is readv for submission to the Graduate School. y " ^ ' _ D a te / ' P a u l D a v i s C h a ir p e r s o n . S u p e r v iso r y C om m itte e Approved for the Major Department {- 'Jp'J ty',u Kaitx Slater C h a ir p e r so n Approved for the Graduate Council ------------------ Phyllis Haskell D e an . C o lle g e o f F in e A rts ABSTRACT The paintings in this exhibit are the result of two years of exploration dealing initially with landscape and then primarily with the figure. Looking back, the challenges were similar regardless of subject: first, how to expand the subject beyond an "objective" reality more or less faithfully represented into a subjective, imagined world of its own; and second, how to achieve an active painted surface wherein the paint itself has a life independent of the illusion. Along the way, the importance of playful use of the imagination became evident. CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................. iv LIST OF FIGURES....................................................................................................................vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..........................................................................................................vii INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................... 1 BACKGROUND...........................................................................................................................2 THE ABSTRACT EXPERIMENT...........................................................................................3 THE ROLE OF PAINT..............................................................................................................5 THE ROLE OF PLAYFUL IMAGINATION................................................................... 24 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................... 30 REFERENCE LIST.....................................................................................................................31 ..7 ..9 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 .20 .21 .22 .23 .27 .28 .29 LIST OF FIGURES Ruby's Commute I I ................................. Cyclist, Nude............................................... Aghast............................................................ The Swimmer.............................................. Dog in the Park........................................ Between Sets................................................ Young Winslow........................................... Madame Chardin....................................... Father Tom.................................................. The Big Fan................................................ Snippy Anne................................................ Outside at the Red Hat Cafe............... Fraulein Schnitzel....................................... Cruising......................................................... Installation view of Hat People series Installation view of Hat People series Installation view of Hat People series ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to the generous individuals who have offered their support and expertise: Paul Davis, Tony Smith, Katherine Coles, Brad Slaugh, John Erickson, Maureen O'Hara-Ure, Tom Kass, and Peggy Batten. I also owe a great debt to my husband, Kim, and my children, Charlie and Mary, without whose support and encouragement this adventure would not have been possible. Lastly, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my enthusiastic companion, Bucko, a truly great dog. INTRODUCTION How to explain coherently an adventure that by its nature is ambiguous? I have spent the last two years in graduate school trying to figure out the basic problem of painting: what to paint and how to paint it. Mostly I felt bewildered and confused and for a while even considered an "agnostic" position as the only defensible place where I could stand. My experience with the process of painting seemed so variable as to preclude any reliable generalization. After some reflection, however, I have been able to come to certain conclusions which I hope will explain why my work looks the way it does. The following is my attempt to impose some order on a notoriously slippery subject. BACKGROUND I went to graduate school out of a sense of dissatisfaction. Frankly, I was bored. I had learned to do a particular type of realistic plein-air landscape painting, and though 1 often liked the paintings that resulted, it had begun to feel like a chore to do them. Something was missing. I wanted something more, though at the time I had no clear idea what that something might be. Now I can see that I was bored because I was relying on the objective world, the world "out there" that we all agree on, more or less, to make the painting. I thought my job as a painter was to paint what I saw and to duplicate to the best of my ability whatever nature served up before me. Additionally, as my mimetic skills improved, my brushstrokes tended to become smaller and the painted surface correspondingly smoother. Though I had more closely approximated the seamless reality I observed, I liked the results less and less. Kant defined aesthetic pleasure as the free play of the imagination and the understanding (McCloskey 1987). I was neither playing nor using my imagination. No wonder I felt little pleasure. THE ABSTRACT EXPERIMENT Thinking I would let loose with furiously imaginative, playful subjectivity, my first experiment as a graduate student was to paint abstractly. Though it was fun and therapeutic from a mental health point of view, I found the experience profoundly dissatisfying. When paint can take any form whatsoever, nothing seems to matter. Taken by themselves, without reference to the real world of objects, people, and places, the visual elements of color, value, line, shape, and texture felt woefully inarticulate. Visual elements can be interesting on a purely formal level, perhaps, but in the end, they can only be decorative. Plus, abstract painting by definition isn't necessarily nonobjective, that is, with no reference to the "real world." Reflecting the term's root meaning, "to take from," paintings as dissimilar as those of Willem deKooning and Barnett Newman begin with such references at least as a starting point. As every beginning art student knows, the opposition of abstraction and realism is a false dichotomy. All paintings are to some degree abstractions and theoretically could be placed along a continuum with all-surface, no-illusion minimalism at one end to no-surface, all-illusion photorealism at the other. Though I had no intention of doing so, I found myself interpreting most of my abstractions as landscapes anyway. The viewer too, I believe, cannot help 4 but interpret paint as referring to something real. Paraphrasing the poet Billy Collins, we resist being led down the basement stairs without the light on (Collins 1998). In retrospect, the experiment with abstract painting taught me two things. One is the role of the imagination in creating an image from pieces of paint. The second works the other way: the role of pieces of paint in stimulating the imagination. Painters and viewers do both, and therein, I believe, lies the pleasure of painting. THE ROLE OF PAINT I had also wanted to try abstract painting in order to change the way I applied paint. I wanted to become a more "painterly" painter. I felt my paintings tended to be too smooth, the brushstrokes either too small or too blended to have a life of their own independent of the image. I had lost my surface. Why is surface quality important in a painting? Why does a visible brushstroke enhance a painting's appeal? I think the answer is related to why we as viewers insist on turning abstract marks into something real. First, a visible brushstroke allows the viewer to participate in the same creative activity as the artist. As an artist, I find it absolutely thrilling to be able to build on a flat surface a recognizable image of something three-dimensional. Arriving at such an image feels magical and the simpler the means to achieve that image, the more magical it feels. As a viewer, I get to share in that magic as 1 watch pieces of paint coalesce to reveal an image and then revert to pieces of paint again. This dual nature of paint is why viewers often walk up to paintings to examine them at close range. We marvel at how a seemingly refined, highly finished and detailed painting by Velasquez, Rembrandt, Hals, or Sargent can dissolve into simple patterns of brushstrokes when viewed up close. 6 Second, humans are perhaps evolutionarily compelled to enjoy making sense of visual patterns. Surely the ability to spot camouflaged prey and predator had a survival advantage in our hunting and gathering past. Apart from painting, this universal human compulsion- and pleasure- is still expressed in star- and cloud-gazing and in the enjoyment of puzzles and games in which the goal is to discern a whole from only a few constituent parts. To create an active surface, I initially thought all I needed to do was load up my brush and handle the paint more loosely. This proved to be true when dealing with the landscape (see "Ruby's Commute II," Figure 1), since forms found in the landscape are relatively forgiving of representation, and I was already well acquainted with them. Trees, mountains, or clouds can take a myriad of forms which will pass as the real thing. Such images more easily withstand an onslaught of loosely controlled paint. However, loose paint is more problematic when dealing with the human figure. First of all, the figure allows for less representational leeway than that found in landscape. Human proportions are much less forgiving, and drawing the figure is more complicated and time-consuming. Second, good drawing in my opinion is precise and representationally accurate. This does not mean photorealistic, however. As in painting, a good drawing allows the viewer to share in the creative process of building an illusion of three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface. Though it may be fashionable to dismiss accurate drawing as retardataire, I agree with E. H. Gombrich, who states, "The 7 Figure 1: Ruby's Commute II, 48" x 5 4 ", 1999, oil on canvas 8 making of any likeness is far from being a trivial achievement" (Gombrich 1969). Indeed, creating a likeness from the fewest possible elements may be the most challenging task an artist faces. Knowing what can be left out in the name of elegant simplicity is as important as what must be left in to achieve a likeness. Unwilling to sacrifice a quality I felt strongly about, I began to look for methods that would lead to an active surface without threatening the drawing. My first solution was inspired by monotype, a printmaking process in which a layer of thin, oily paint is rolled onto a Plexiglas plate and then selectively wiped away to reveal a pattern or image. This is the method I used to establish a precise drawing, substituting a roughly gessoed panel for the Plexiglas plate, which, when rubbed, would produce an active surface. The result was a soft-edged, monochromatic image (see "The Cyclist," Figure 2). However, the surface was still not as active as I wanted, and the color limitations imposed by the monotype technique felt too restrictive. I wanted more. The next solution I found was to establish an active surface using an abstractly painted or collaged pattern of colored shapes as the background on top of which an image employing the monotype technique described above could be established. The results were surprising, in that the contribution of the background could not be predicted. However, if the ground interfered in an ( unacceptable way, it could be obscured with the application of more paint. I later found I could largely control the ground from the beginning by limiting 9 Figure 2: The Cyclist, 18" x 15-1/2", 1999, oil on board 10 the range of value and hue of the underlying shape pattern (see "Aghast," and "The Swimmer," Figures 3 and 4). Though the surface of these paintings was much more active than that of their predecessors, 1 found the monochromatic color scheme unsatisfactory in that it lent itself to a moody, brooding atmosphere that I was loathe to pursue. Plus, if I pursued this direction, I would not move closer to mastering color, one of the most expressive visual elements, and something I wanted to learn to do. It was at this time that I produced two small paintings, "Dog with Ball" and "Dog in the Park" (see Figure 5). They came about totally unplanned, done out of whimsy in leftover acrylic paint on discarded cardboard panels. The high key, loose paint, precise drawing, and arbitrary color resulted in an emotional impact that I enjoyed. I struggled, however, to replicate this impact with the human figure. I was committed to moving away from the monochromatic approach without compromising surface quality or drawing. The "Spectator" series was the next development. These are tonal paintings inspired by a professional tennis tournament. The figures, largely back-lit and silhouetted, are arranged on a grid­like set of bleachers. The landscape beyond is simple: clouds, sky, hillside. I used photographs for the initial painting in this series but, finding them limited as^ drawing aids, I subsequently turned towards working directly from life, establishing the drawing in the monotype technique as before and adding Figure 3: Aghast, 15-1/2" x 18", 2000, mixed media 12 Figure 4: The Swimmer, 17" x 19", 2000, oil on board 13 Figure 5: Dog in the Park, 7" x 6 ", 2000, acrylic on board 14 minimal color afterwards (see "Between Sets," Figure 6). Though I enjoyed the contemplative mood of these paintings suggested by the contrast of small figures against a big sky, I still felt I could arrive at a more painterly conclusion. However, subsequent attempts were not successful, and I concluded that the combination of small, back-lit silhouettes against a tonal background offered too few opportunities to establish the kind of surface I was interested in. It was at this time that I began to work on the "Hat People" (see Figures 7-14), inspired by a series of snapshots of friends having fun trying on hats. As always, the drawing was important, and a likeness was a goal. Once again, I began by using the subtractive, monochromatic, monotype technique described above. Once the drawings felt solid, I added color. Daringly loose (for me) at the beginning, the brushstrokes disappeared for awhile as I went through a tight period feeling precious about them. As the series progressed, however, my skill and confidence in drawing improved, and I was able to paint freely and also precisely. In other words, I knew I could restore the drawing if it should get lost in the paint. I had begun to draw and paint simultaneously. 15 Figure 6: Between Sets, 2 4 " x 2 4 ", 2001, oil on panel 16 Figure 7: Young Winslow, from the Hat People series 17 Figure 8: Madame Chardin, from the Hat People series 18 Figure 9: Father Tom, from the Hat People series 19 Figure 10: The Big Fan, from the Hat People series 20 Figure 11: Snippy Anne, from the Hat People series 21 Figure 12: Outside at the Red Hat Cafe, from the Hat People series ■ 1 22 Figure 13: Fraulein Schnitzel, from the Hat People series 23 Figure 14: Cruising, from the Hat People series THE ROLE OF PLAYFUL IMAGINATION Visual "truth" does not by itself "make a picture into a work of art," says Gombrich (Gombrich 1969). While simultaneously working to establish an active surface without undermining the drawing, I was also trying to rely less on objective reality and work out of my memory and imagination. The result was two paintings, "Ruby's Commute I" and "Ruby's Commute II" (see Figure 1), which depict an imaginary place inspired by "Power Line," a painting by Wolf Kahn; Lombardy poplars; and the then-dreary weather of early winter. With regard to the figure, my commitment to good drawing precluded working from memory or the imagination or even from photographs, at least at the beginning. Yet if I wanted to do more than merely record the objective world in front of me, I would have to place the figure in some sort of context that would take the viewer beyond the studio set-up. I felt this was important for two reasons. First, as enjoyable as figure studies can be, I was interested in learning how to communicate something about the world beyond the studio. Second, I wanted to touch the emotions via suggested narrative, perhaps, or at least by creating a mood evocative of the outside world. Remembering Kant's definition of aesthetic pleasure as the free play of the imagination and the understanding, I realized that my time in the studio was 25 most enjoyable when I allowed myself the pleasures of imaginative play. What happened when 1 "played"-the abstract paintings, the dogs, and then the Hat People-was often surprising, sometimes successful, and, most importantly for me, fun. There were times, however, when my imagination took a darker turn. The monotype technique produced dark, monochromatic or near-monochromatic paintings which tended to evoke feelings of melancholy. Was this what I wanted to experience while painting? Was this what I wanted to communicate to the viewer? I decided: No. There are plenty of daily reminders of how trying life can be. The contemporary art world itself is full of the shockingly sensational and dark ironies of life. Why not focus on life's joys? The danger here, I suppose, is falling prey to lightweight and sentimental banality. Yet there is plenty of recent art celebrating life-the work of Fairfield Porter, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, or Beth van Hoesen (van Hoesen 1972) comes to mind-which manage to avoid this pitfall. Rejecting the prevailing dark ideology of the art world may even be the most revolutionary, difficult, and courageous thing an artist can do. Because of the narrative potential of hats and a conscious choice of higher key color, the Hat People paintings from the beginning leaned towards humorous and playful leaps of the imagination. After completing the drawing and painting of the figures, I placed them in an imaginary context suggested by the hat, the facial expression, the gesture if present, and the color composition. 26 Often, this context was some sort of landscape which could include poplars, bleachers, and flying pennants found in earlier paintings. As a series of related paintings, the Hat People vary only slightly in scale, spatial divisions, light source, and perspective. These parameters allowed me the luxury of experimenting with only a few variables at a time. Keeping these visual elements relatively consistent created a thematic unity to the series which I feel encourages an interpretation of the characters depicted as related individuals, each with a particular story to tell but somehow linked one with another. Perhaps they are all in the cast of a play or movie. Maybe they work together in the same office. Maybe they are customers who come through the drive-up window at a bank on any one particular day. The eventual installation of the paintings in the gallery in three separate groupings of three rows each encouraged this fictional interpretation, a serendipitous result that I had not foreseen (see Figures 15-17). 27 Figure 15: Installation view of Hat People series Figure 16: Installation view of Hat People series 29 Figure 17: Installation view of Hat People series CONCLUSION In many ways, these paintings are just beginnings. As I did them, I realized that they were most interesting and pleasurable to the degree that they engaged the imagination of both painter and viewer. In my mind, this means a surface which can alternate back and forth between pieces of paint and illusion. It also involves constructing an image that touches the emotions via a suggestion of narrative or poetic mood. In addition, I feel a successful partnership of illusion and painterly surface depends on skilled drawing. Pieces of paint must be arranged economically, in a precise and meaningful pattern, in order to deliver their maximum impact. Finally, I discovered I have a choice, as we all do, as to what sort of reality I elect to spend my time in. Will it be brooding and melancholy? Contemplative? Playful? Humorous? It can be what each of us, consciously or not, decides it will be. REFERENCE LIST Collins, Billy. 1998. Picnic, lightning. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Gombrich, E.H. 1969. Art and illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McCloskey, Mary A. 1987. Kant's aesthetic. Albany: State University of New York Press. Van Hoesen, Beth. 1972. A collection of wonderful things. San Francisco: Scrimshaw.