A site for rumblings and ruminations about traditional oil painting, art, aesthetics, and the wider world of art. And for posting examples of my current and past work too.
If you have an interest purchasing a work, or want to commission a portrait, or if you just want to talk about art, drop me an email at ghoff1946@gmail.com.
All writing and original art on this site is copyright Gary L. Hoff, all rights reserved. All other images are copyright their respective owners.
These last days of February seem to last longer than they are. There are days of grinding cold here in Iowa, punctuated by a day or two of sunny warmth, then more days of gray sky and sweeping wind. Snow sometimes falls heavily. In 2018, snow was disappearing, color was coming into the big bluestem along Druid Hill Creek, and the remainder of the month was seasonable.
February 2019
On the other hand, the following year the snow covered the banks and drifted deep over the frozen creek. Nonetheless, this time of year the light changes and goes a little more golden. Like hope in times of travail. We would need it. The pandemic followed.
February 2020
Then in 2020, at the height of the covid crisis, though the light was warm on the frozen trees and land, the snow was as deep as it had ever been.
This year the pandemic seems to be less a raging fire and more and more an evolving aftermath. The news is more encouraging as case numbers and deaths decline. It's tempting to declare the pandemic finished, but one suspects and fears a return. In the meantime, the light goes more golden and the earth warms. The season creeps forward as do we all.
This week in the Guardian there was a notice of a new exhibition at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford, England, devoted to Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), a neglected member of the Impressionist group that included Monet, Renoir and Degas among other luminaries. Known to his fellow painters as Father Pissarro because he was a decade older (Monet was born in 1840), Camille Pissarro did seem to be a kind of paternal presence for at least some of his contemporaries. Unlike his younger contemporaries, he had abundant life experiences, having been born in the tropics, and lived in South America. After moving the Paris in the 1850s he met Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. He was later tutored by Camille Corot (1796-1875), who inspired him to paint outdoors. Other early influences were Courbet and Millet.
Although he worked and was influenced by a number of the early group and post-impressionist painters too, unlike them he painted out of his interest in the reality of his subjects, without prettifying. That is, he painted subjects that were decidedly noncommercial such as barges, butchers, and sometimes confusing landscapes. He was an idealist and a role model. One of the concepts he espoused to his younger colleagues was to finish the work outdoors, confronting the subject.
"Farm at Montfoucault in Snow," ca.1875
"Pond at Montfoucault," 1874
Mr. Pissarro has most commonly taken a back row seat in the pantheon of his times, but this new exhibition, running February 18 to June 22 of this year, provides a wealth of his work and others. The object is to demonstrate his centrality and influence. In another way, the exhibition gives us a painter whose work reflects that of his friends and peers. In work from the Impressionist period, his work can resemble that of Claude Monet, as in "Pond at Montfoucault" and "Farm at Montfoucault," (above). A decade or so later it is pointillism, and his friendship and studies with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac that as in "The Apple Harvest," and "View from my Window," (below). Both of these are featured in the exhibition and on the Ashmoleon website.
"The Apple Harvest in Eragny," 1887
"View from my Window, Eragny," 1888
Later he would return to a more realistic style, and painted with a more subtle but knowing touch. His work deserves more attention, and this exhibition provides it. Alas, I will not be able to attend. An exhibition catalog has been published.
Here in the upper Midwest we don't count on springtime's arrival until March, but even so, warm days set my fingers itching to be outside painting. December and January were cold, and the first half of February too. But a few days above freezing, some sunshine, and plein air beckons. The last time I managed some time outside was the first day of December. It was cold, and windy, but the air was crystalline and trees along the river were still holding colorful foliage. Th bright sun made them glow.
"North of the Park," oil on panel, 9x12
This particular spot is by the Raccoon River, just north of Gray's Lake. As usual, I toned the panel with a thin wash of burnt sienna, then sketched the composition with the same color. In my experience the best way forward after lay-in is to block big masses of color, then smaller and smaller ones as the picture is refined. In particular I try hard not to focus too closely on minute details in any one place until the time comes for a few tiny strokes at the end.
Antique automobiles are wonderful. Many make us smile simply because they exist. Some are genuine works of art, and you can find them in museums where they are displayed alongside paintings and sculpture. Not quite a year ago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition called Automania, celebrating the automobile in all of its controversial glory. The show exhibited nine cars, including a Volkswagen beetle, a Willys Jeep, and an Airstream travel trailer, among others. Count me among those who missed the show but wishes he could have gone.
Years ago I owned an early Volkswagen--early enough that it had a tiny rear window and the inefficient heater they were known for. Before that I owned a 1950 model DeSoto, and forty years afterward a 1950 Ford pickup truck. Antique cars are wonderful memory machines. Here are a few.
"1957 Hudson Hornet," digital drawing
Although I never owned one, the Hudson Hornet is still a favorite of mine. Back in the day they were sleek, low-slung, and handsome. By my high school years many a young man owned a Hudson, a 1950 Mercury, or perhaps an early Buick Skylark because by then they were widely sold as used cars.
"1954 Buick Skylark," digital drawing
Of course, these two were common assembly line Detroit machines, unlike fancier foreign cars but their design shared the same nod to Art Deco.
Alice Neel (1900-1984) was an American painter who spent decades painting in obscurity in New York City. In recent decades she has been celebrated and exhibited but in the early decades of the 20th century she was clearly out of step with abstraction and the various other movements that gained attention. Instead she pursued her own path, painting landscapes, still life, and mostly people in her individual and distinctive style.
Ms. Neel was born in Pennsylvania in 1900, a time when women were expected to marry, bear children, and maintain a home, but her ambition in life was always art. After high school, she worked as a civil service clerk fo several years to assist her parents, but in 1921 she enrolled in the Philadelphia School of Design for Women where she was an apt student and was influenced by Robert Henri, who taught there. During her student years she met Carlos Enriquez, a Cuban painter, whom she married in 1925
"Well Baby Clinic," 1929
after graduation. The couple soon moved to Havana, where she bore a daughter, Santillana. She and Carlos returned to New York within the year, where her daughter died of diphtheria. A second daughter, Isabella (called Isabetta) was born in 1928. Influenced by the Cuban avant-garde as well as the death of her first child, Ms. Neel's work thereafter was infused with themes of loss, fear, motherhood and a deep abiding interest in individuals. Her horrific view of hospitals is evident in "Well Baby Clinic," based on the birth of Isabetta. In 1930 Carlos returned to Cuba with the stated intention of obtaining sufficient money from his parents to move the family to Paris. He took Isabetta with him but did not return and instead settled in Cuba. It would be several years before he returned with Isabetta and then only for a short period. In reaction Ms. Neel had a serious psychiatric issues requiring hospitalization. After almost a year she left the hospital and after staying briefly with her parents and others she returned to New York City.
In New York she worked hard painting individuals of all kinds and became an artist for the Works Progress Administration, a public works program instituted to provide work for many of the millions of unemployed (they built bridges, roads, and public buildings, to name a few), and it was during that period that she gained a bit of recognition for her work. Unfortunately, much of that work was destroyed by a disgruntled lover.
"Portrait of Ethel Ashton," 1930
During the 1930s Ms. Neel began painting female nudes with the idea that the female body had been idealized and sexualized by the male gaze, to the detriment of women. Instead of strictly realistic paintings she began to rely of vibrant color, expressive gesture, and a psychologic penetration she felt were missing from the male gaze. One of the first such works is a nude of Ethel Ashton, a fellow painter and school friend. In it, she employed an unusual viewpoint and a dull, nearly monochrome palette. The sitter seems abashed, vulnerable, and afraid, her body cascading downward. When it was exhibited more than four decades afterward it was roundly criticized for departing from the "standards" of female nudes. Nonetheless, Ms. Neel continued to paint with the same penetrating insight and style for the remainder of her career. But it was more than twenty years afterward before she received much public recognition. In the interim, she lived in penury while painting continuously.
Portrait of Frank O'Hara, 1960
It was only in the 1960s that her work gained wider acceptance. Her interest in character was clear in two portraits of a New York poet named Frank O'Hara. The first (now in the National Portrait Gallery) is a good likeness in profile, with his prominent nose and forehead well-drawn. The second, though, is considerably less flattering, if more penetrating. Both gained her notice in print during the decade, and appreciation of her work began to increase. During her latter years, Ms. Neel painted many people from her neighborhood but also famous sitters. She also painted nudes of pregnant women, seeking, she said, to show a part of life that had been ignored, calling others who had avoided the subject "sissies."
"Pregnant Maria," 1964
For the rest of her career, Ms. Neel worked hard to show what she called "the basic facts of life," unblushing and straightforward. In her 1970 unflinching portrait of Andy Warhol (below) she depicted the by-then mega-famous artist nude from the waist up, complete with his surgical scars from a gunshot wound of several years earlier and the corset he had to wear for the remainder of his life.
"Andy Warhol," 1970
If you aren't familiar with her work, I urge you to take time to see it now, and also take time to view the video below. She was certainly not a sissie.
This week my new solo show Town and Countryside opens at the Oskaloosa Art Center. The Center is not only a public gallery but also offers classes in various media, studio spaces, and a public performance venue. The show comprises more than twenty of my new oil paintings, both cityscapes and landscapes. A majority of the landscape paintings were executed outdoors at various locales in Iowa and elsewhere.
"The Bike Path," oil on panel, 9x12
"At Grays Lake," oil on panel, 9x12
Cityscapes in the show, likewise, include Des Moines but also feature scenes of other cities including Boston and New York.
The show runs until March 15, but you can see these new paintings and others on my website, www.garyhoff.com. Drop over and take a look.
Once in a while when trying out new materials--paper, canvas, paints and so on--my practice is to make studies to understand the physical properties involved. Late last year while working with a new kind of coated, heavy drawing paper, it occurred to me that perhaps it would be useful for watercolor. Light papers tend to winkle, or "cockle" when wet, but Legion Coated Cover paper felt heavy enough to tolerate the wetness. As a test, I made the small watercolor below and found it reasonably useful. To make the painting I used a reference shot of a city street but made it into an imaginary country road.
The reference photo (right) is considerably different, although the basic composition is almost the same. In the reference the street is rain-slick and the sky is dark, for instance. But in the painting I made the hill steeper, eliminated houses and driveways, and turned the street into a gravel road. So although the painting looks as if it was done on the spot outdoors, it's actually a studio experiment.
A lot of my work over the last couple of years has been traditional landscape, quite a bit of it outdoors. Some of my plein air work has been on city streets, though. Like many cities ours has a kind of entertainment and bar district with an eclectic assortment of cafes, performance venues and watering holes, and I spend some of my outdoor time there, sketching.
"Positively 4th Street," oil on panel, 16x24
Outdoor work has led to a number of cityscapes, including "Positively 4th Street,' showing the facade of a well-known coffeehouse (above), and "The Mews," showing a performance venue just next door (below).
"Vaudeville Mews," oil on panel, 16x20
The first is from late afternoon, when the street is in open shade while the second is a view of the same street in morning light. Both of these occupy space in the same late Victorian building.
