My friend Bix reminded me that before I admired Marc Taro Holmes's painting (in my last post), I had been exposed to those of Keiko Tanabe and Eugen Chisnicean (both of whom I discovered through Bix). They, too, have the facility of looking at a village on a hill—usually one of those picturesque ones in France, Italy, or maybe Moldova (Eugen)—and squinting their eyes to include all the essentials and none of the pesky details. I don't know how they do it, and just studying their artwork doesn't put me much further ahead; perhaps watching them paint about a dozen of them apiece would do it? Or perhaps painting about 100 of them myself?
Keiko is an interesting case: She worked in intercultural communication, first for a law firm and then for a Japanese government trade organization, for many years, but always wanted to paint. In 2003, she made the commitment to become an artist and, after taking basic drawing and watercolor classes at a community college, embarked on a mostly self-taught regime of painting. She began exhibiting two years later, in 2005. She is one of the most intensely serious painters I have ever encountered; she tells stories about herself such as "I realized I was afraid to paint water, so I painted a picture with water in it every day for a year." She primarily paints
en plein air, fast and fresh. She teaches workshops and paints for about 50 weeks a year, and in her "spare" time juries art shows and gives demonstrations. Here is one of hers that is evocative of what I admired about Marc's:
Eugen is, as far as I am concerned, a baby genius. He's 36 years old and, although he has studied art since the age of 11, he didn't really take up watercolor until 2007. He paints, teaches, and exhibits all over the world. He, like Keiko, is primarily a plein air painter.
Perhaps, if I dedicated 10 hours a day, 350 days a year, then I, too, would be painting this way.... When I took a workshop from Keiko and she said the Jeep I had painted looked more like a Yugo, I joked with her that I would have to spend all my lunch hours at the library sitting in the parking lot drawing the staff cars until I could differentiate. She said, very seriously, "Yes, that's a good idea, if you do that for about six months you will have it down."
My cars still look like Yugos.
Working with both Keiko and Eugen i found their techniques fascinating to watch. And were awestruck that they would do one subject in the morning and invariably a other in the afternoon. But yes if you were to paint every day the way they do of course you would move forwArd but to have their agenda i would need another level of energy. Bx
ReplyDelete