More Like Me Than I Am

 The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney said, upon seeing a portrait of himself, "It's more like me than I am."  This might be the case of most of my self-portraits, which nevertheless continue as a useful exercise in the time of the plague.  Painting the same landscape under different circumstances, like Monet's grain stacks, can a be beneficial for the artist.  The same goes for a head or a face.  For this portrait, I took my inspiration from Bonnard's self-portraits where he seems to be looking into a bathroom mirror, though whether he actually painted them in the bathroom, is unknown.  He tended to paint from imagination most of the time.  This one I painted in front of the bathroom mirror.  12x9 inches, oil on linen.

Table(au)

A 12x9 pastel and charcoal drawing of a table in the studio.  Clive Bell wrote that for Bonnard 'table' equalled 'tableau'.  But this one is not so flat in appearance.   Nothing is going to roll onto the floor.

This picture is also an accidental 'memento mori'.  There's a plastic skull on the table.  I didn't change anything on the table to make the drawing.  There's always a natural architecture available when composing a drawing or painting,  as evidenced by the position of table and chairs.  The rest just falls into place.

Monhegan and Bonheur

A 9x12 Monhegan seascape in oil.

John Elderfield in his essay,  Seeing Bonnard, in the 1998 Sarah Whitfield catalog Bonnard answers the question I posed yesterday.  He writes that Bonnard felt that "a painting is thought to remember a momentary perception.  Bonnard needed to remember the original 'seductive vision' - or the 'original thought' or the 'initial idea' - of the object, he said, lest 'the inconsistent fleeting world of the object' take over and swamp him in the mere appearances of things 'just as they are'."  The only way to 'remember' is to paint the remembrance.  

Interestingly, Elderfield writes about focus and peripheral vision, and how Bonnard composed by placing things at the edges, and having things sink into the background, but he doesn't pursue the idea that memory itself is never very sharp.  Bonnard painted from memory, and so it makes visual sense that his paintings will be like thoughts one is trying to remember: things are not quite clear, they fade in and out, something is at the edge, just about to appear,  some things just cannot be grasped.

Bonnard's name is similar to 'bonheur' but while his paintings are joyous,  they are also extremely sad: a dream that is powerfully suggestive but always elusive.

Winter and Bonnard's Comment

Winter is starting to fade away, so I'll try to get a few winter paintings done as quickly as possible.  The above is a 9x12 pastel of the view at the top of Stratton Road looking towards the Taconics.

I have been puzzling over Bonnard's comment that everyone would be a painter if they knew how to look and see.  I'm not sure that I agree with that.  If one sees, how does one go from that to feeling compelled to paint?

Harsh Coast and Bonnard

A more severe coast scene,  9x12 oil on mdf panel.

From an essay by Sarah Whitfield on Bonnard, "In a conversation Bonnard had towards the end of his life with some friends who were visiting him at Le Cannet, one of them quoted Balzac: 'A curse on the man who keeps silent in the middle of the desert, believing that there is no one to listen to him.'  Bonnard, asking him to repeat his sentence, paused for a long time before replying, 'Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking.  But who looks? If people could see, and see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters.  And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.'"

Classon

A street in Brooklyn, Classon toward Dean.  9x12 oil.

Reading the catalogue Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late, I came across Bonnard's words, "Drawing represents feeling: color, judgment".  I'd like to have both...

Two Pencils

Instead of taking my own advice, I started to work with two pencils, the dark carbon, and the lighter ebony. Smudging happens. The above is a 9x12 drawing for a painting of the same size that I will complete tomorrow. I have been using the two pencils in my sketching walks. The results are more vibrant than could be attained with just one pencil.

One writer described Bonnard's paintings as "happy." I would say that they contain a deep joyousness, which is tempered by a sadness. Just look at Bonnard's self-portraits where he reveals the sadness. However, his colors and, even more, his compositions, reveal someone who deeply cared.

Drawing with Bonnard

The three soft, dark pencils that I purchased are the Prismacolor Ebony, the General's Carbon Sketch, and the Derwent 9B Graphic. The top image was done with the Ebony, the middle with the General, and the bottom with the 9B Graphic. The General is the softest and darkest, but it smudges badly requiring fixing. I usually only want to carry a pencil, a tiny sharpener, and pad when I go walking. The 9B Graphic is soft but not very dark. A lot depends upon the paper, I know. For this series, I am using a small Strathmore 400 series Sketch pad. The Ebony is dark and doesn't smudge. I will try just the Prismacolor Ebony for now. I just have to avoid the temptation to keep adding tonal values.

In the catalog for the Bonnard exhibition at Giverny, Bonnard in Normandy, Laurie Hurwitz writes, "Filled with doubts, the artist confronted his uncertainties by concentrating on drawings. 'I draw incessantly,' he wrote 'and after drawing comes composition which must act as a balance. A well-composed painting is half finished.'"

Berkshire Pond

These two images represent a much smaller domestic pond instead of the Mediterranean. I will be bouncing back and forth between here and there. Planning on doing more pencil drawings, I just acquired some soft, dark pencils. The above drawing was done with a 6B pencil, which is not dark enough. Every morning, and some evenings I have been walking and drawing, filling up sketchbooks with quick and not so quick drawings.

Around 1913 Bonnard underwent some kind of artistic crisis. He responded by drawing a lot for the next several years besides painting. He apparently felt that he had been overemphasizing color over form. He wrote, "I wanted to forget everything I knew, I sought to learn what I didn't know..." In any case, instead of waiting for a crisis, I am learning that drawing a lot just opens up new ways and ideas. I don't think I am forgetting too much, but I am learning what I don't know.

Wandering in Another Place

Another view of Nice. 9x12 pastel.

In the catalog Bonnard and His Environment James Elliot wrote, "Sometimes, having mixed one of his burning hues, vermilion or magenta or violet blue or peacock blue, and applied it to the work in progress, he would wander around the house from canvas to canvas, finding little places where he could insert what he had left over."

View of Nice

This is a 9x12 pastel of a view of Nice from Saint-Jean Cap-Ferrat, a peninsula that juts into the Mediterranean.

When I wrote earlier about Bonnard's drawing, I didn't mean to imply that he prepared specific drawings for specific paintings. Apparently he drew, and then composed paintings from many drawings. He would pin canvas to a wall, and then paint on the canvas. If his composition required expansion, he could easily make it larger. Sometimes, he would work on more than one painting on the pinned canvas. Later he would cut out the painting and mount it to a stretcher. He always painted his landscapes in the studio, never working outside, except for drawing.

Marais Park, Bonnard and Fairfield Porter

It may take me a couple days to get back on track. Here is another pencil drawing from the sketchbook. At Giverny, I saw a large Bonnard exhibition which had many landscapes and drawings, which one does not usually see. I learned that Bonnard routinely did preliminary drawings for his paintings.

Another fascinating thing I saw firsthand: Fairfield Porter said that he learned his ultimate direction in painting from seeing late Vallotton and Vuillard paintings in Paris. At the Musee D'Orsay, I saw some paintings that validate that statement. I mention this only because I have not seen these paintings before, and was amazed at how directly Porter evolved out of Vallotton and Vuillard, something that no one seems to have expanded upon. I think there's a future exhibition there for some curator.

A Humble Pastel

The exhibition catalog Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late contains a small illustration of a painting by Bonnard called "Pays du Midi, Soleil Couchant (Le Cannet)," ca. 1910, depicting the sides of two houses and the space between them, which is a long view.   Of course, the two houses could be two trees, or the sides of a window, or... 

Early Morning View at the End of the Street

This is a more extended variation on the pastel sketch I did yesterday: placing the background in the foreground, and the foreground in the background.  The low rising sun strikes the other side of Delaware River in Pennsylvania first, giving the background the warm glow so it comes forward, leaving the New Jersey side, the foreground, in the cooler shadows, so it recedes.  It's more obvious if you view the image with your monitor upside down.  (Just kidding.)  I found this concept in a book on Bonnard, and realized I was looking at it at the end of the street.  So I wanted to try it.