Wrestling With Art (56)

When Zach was a little boy, he inherited a bunch of wrestling dolls from Seth. Zach was literally weaned on wrestling. Our baby nurse sat on the couch with Norman and our newborn baby, and they all watched wrestling on television together. The comfortable and chunky chest of our nurse pillowed Zach for the first few days of his life. Then the nurse got tossed out with the dirty diapers way before the week was over. I could sit on the couch with my baby just as easily, not that I watched wrestling. I wanted us to be a family and I wanted to take care of him myself. 32 years later, Zach still goes to wrestling matches with his friends and we have bins of his figures in the basement. One day, I am sure his sons will play with his sacred collection of Hulk Hogan figures and plastic wrestling rings.

The wrestlers from Seth's collection were special because they were made of rubber and the arms could be pulled out in opposite directions. But then wrestlers are freaky people, so I guess that makes sense. This freaky oppositional extension of these freaky dolls was a strange memory to pop into my head this morning. I suppose it was because we attended a gallery talk last night in the Monmouth Museum. Norman and I watched an artist give a demonstration of her work. Most things the artist rambled on about brought oppositional thoughts to my head. I even sat there at times with my arms crossed, as if to say, "Really? Is that really what you think? Hmph!" Then, every once in a while she would mention something intriguing and inspiring. I guess it was like having my arms pulled in different directions at the same time and I'm glad for the experience. It made me think and grow as an artist.

Heather Lynn Gibson was the painting artist for the gallery talk. She set up her easel, huge photography lights to shine on the canvas, paints, brushes, a computer screen, and the same palette I just discovered this summer. I love that palette. I also like her very large Mac computer screen she brought to show the photograph she is working from. I use an iPad for the same purpose, but that monitor is really nice. Her inspiring message was all about complementary colors. As I traveled the perimeter of the room and perused her work, there was something so bright and cheerful about the paintings. A touch of orange or red peeked through in the most unexpected ways and brightened her scenes. It was lovely. She is a good artist, especially with color.

Her message was to underpaint the scene in complementary colors. So if something is blue, she would first apply orange paint (its opposite on the color wheel). At this point in the demonstration, her canvas began to look like a negative of the photograph. For anyone not knowing what I mean by a negative, I have to go way back in time, just like that journal book I found in Barnes and Nobles, "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet." A negative is a light-sensitive roll of film we all used back in the day to capture an image in our old-time film loading cameras. The negative recorded the image in reverse, dark areas as light areas, and colors in their complementary shade. All that got reversed back to normal in the prints we used to wait over a week for at the local CVS. My dad would magically do the same thing with a bunch of chemicals and his enlarger in our basement. Very, very cool process. There is an art to science. Anyway, I digress. I am not sure if Heather even gets the pure genius of her application here. She plays around with color theory to create vibrating and beautiful moments in her otherwise staid, realistic scenes. But as she only works from a photograph, starting the image as a negative was pure serendipity, and the irony of it was not lost on this old timer.  

The struggles artists face when we rely on photographs is that our paintings are in danger of appearing as flat as the flattened image on Heather's beautiful Mac monitor. There is a sense of atmosphere and depth to life that a photograph may not convey. Heather brings intrigue to her flat images through hints of color and that does make her art worth admiring. I also work from a photograph. It would be insane to have Murray sit on the couch and pose for hours at a time. I try my best to bring my photographic dogs back to life on my canvas. I am never sure I succeed, but every so often I can feel life in my furry friends. A creative wrestling match is not so horrible, at least not a silly as a real wrestling match (sorry, Zach). It's always exciting to be pulled in a new direction and always fun to figure it out.