What?
Reworking an older painting.
The thing is, I really loved the portrait in the original painting. It was done, in fact, as a sample of a dog portrait for sales purposes. And it is of my own little dog, Brownie, aka Lady Bronwen Marbella McGee, at her favorite place, South Milton Sands beach.
As it happens, Delacroix repainted the background of his 1824 painting, Massacre de Scio, after seeing how Constable painted backgrounds. Fair enough.
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| Massacre de Scio, Delacroix,1824 (Wikipedia) |
And, I have repainted the background of Brownie, because I have decided the painting was a perfect candidate to morph into a naif.
I have liked naifs since I first saw a great number of them in Paris eons ago. But with all the art training I've had, it seemed silly to me not to use the techniques and knowledge imparted to me by the modern masters who taught at The Art Students League of New York, where I studied, and which I also picked up by modeling for Silvermine Guild in Connecticut and The New School's art classes in NYC.
But I came to a conclusion recently: Unless one is doing angry paintings, perhaps all other paintings--except portraits--are too ephemeral in today's world to be meaningful. In a world where anyone can Photoshop any assortment of elements into something else and call it art. But naifs--primitives--are a bit different. They are more honestly the reaction of an artist to a place, person, event or even idea than most things, I think. And a reaction, to be valid, must simply BE, it need not be expressed in a particular manner.
That having been said, primitives are, indeed, very mannerist. They would have to be, as the artist is not only expressing his or her reaction, but is also expressing it in a way completely individual to that person, simply because that person has not been trained, taught to think of line in a particular way, or of colour in a particular way, or composition, or anything.
Even trained artists will express as themselves. My nude drawings are nothing like the turgid, Renaissance-like work of my first tutor, Gustave Rehberger. (I had an abortive first attempt at studying at the Art Students League. I unwittingly signed up for Rehberger's class, and was so terrified of him that I dropped out in less than a month. Truly, his raw power distressed my soul and even years later, when I would happen to pass him while walking on 57th Street, I would quake inside myself and cross the street.)
Nor are they like the precise anatomical work of Robert Beverly Hale. Nor yet like the more commercial style of D'Alessio...or any of my other teachers.
They are like me.
BUT they do depend on what I learned at the Art Students League and elsewhere.
The primitives I have painted require that I forget all that and simply go to the subject itself, choose colors along the lines of what pleases me or what I think might make the painting please viewers or both. And, as it happens, viewers who can't spend multiple thousands for artwork for their homes, it seems to me, are generally not interested in difficult works, or works that one needs to have read all of Germany's modern authors to understand, or that will only look well in a Philip Johnson-designed minimalist house.
They are interested in colourful work that makes them happy, reminds them of good times, nice places, swell food, cute doggies, happy children.
I decided, first and foremost, that after 40 years working mainly as a journalist--and even now, penning rants about current political conditions in the US and the EU because although it's a dirty job, someone has to do it--I needed more HAPPY in my life.
I'm not going to disavow my education and cease doing work in other genres. But I think the way to get happy is by painting some primitives. With luck, others will like them, too.
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| Brownie's Excellent Beach Adventure, copyright Laura Harrison McBride 2013 |
Copyright Laura Harrison McBride 2013
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