I recently attended the “juror’s critique” with watercolor artist Stan Kurst, as part of the Watercolor Society of Oregon Spring show. These critiques are part of every WSO show. The way it works is you can submit a painting ahead of time and the juror for the event will look at your painting and share thoughts, feedback, etc. about your painting (and others who submitted a painting) in a group setting, with each painting projected as part of a slide show so everyone can see.
It is my favorite part of the WSO events. The juror’s critique is a chance to hear how the juror thinks, and as an artist and close observer of people I find this fascinating. It is so interesting to see all the other artists’ work, too, and to compare and contrast my own reactions with that of the juror’s.
Stan had the usual things to say, artist wisdom like “diagonal lines make movement” or “I like high horizons.” But perhaps the most interesting thing was what he said at the beginning, something to the effect of, “I question the very idea of doing a critique.” Art is subjective he said, and only you, as the artist, know what you want to say and when you’ve said it. And this felt so powerful and liberating to me. Rather than diminishing the artistic process, this perspective seemed to elevate it. Being an artist isn’t just the skills, but knowing yourself.
After questioning the idea of critique, he proceeded with it, and while he did offer comments about each piece in a mostly traditional way, it felt like he was more interested in hearing what the artist had to say (he did ask each artist to share what they thought about their piece) rather than sharing his own thoughts. The solution to the design problem, the resolution to the thematic conflict, the right hue, the truth of the painting, was there, somewhere in the artist, not in anything he could say. Stan handled the critique with humor, sarcasm, irreverence. The room — a college lecture hall at Linfield mostly filled with elderly WSO members — was electric. Art making spans an emotional range from tedium to joy and Stan definitely encouraged the latter. People responded well to this perspective. Stan was there not to tell us what to do, but to wonder along with us at the process of art making, and perhaps make a joke, too.
Picking a painting for a WSO critique group feels like a bit of a balancing act: I want to share a painting I am struggling with, to a certain extent, but I don’t want to share an absolute disaster of a painting, too. I picked a plein air painting from a few months before, one that that certainly was not a disaster, but did need quite a bit of touch up in the studio after I got home.
When it was my turn to share, I felt I had to forego the usual overthinking that goes with critique — “Maybe this shape is too dark, maybe that line goes in the wrong direction” — etc. “The reason I am sharing this painting,” I told the crowded room, “is that my wife doesn’t like it.” It was true, my wife hadn’t really liked the painting at first, although she warmed to it after the touch ups. I was being a bit irreverent, of course, but it fit the Stan’s theme, too: that maybe sometimes we just like paintings (or don’t) and that is the most important information. My comment was rewarded with a swell of laughter from the gathered artists. “Why doesn’t she like it?” Stan asked. I didn’t have a good answer, funny or not.
“I am not sure,” I said.
Then Stan asked me who my favorite artist was, and then I really felt on the spot. How to answer that in a half-way intelligent way in a room full of artists? I was at a loss for words. Fortunately, Stan took pity on me and the conversation moved on. I did not find Stan’s critique of my painting enlightening, other than, “Looks good to me” in so many words (which of course is valuable in its own way). But the experience did make me think about why I do art, and perhaps this is a more powerful question than a critique of a single painting. It made me think about what I would see in my own art that would make me say “that’s what I was trying to say.”
I think first of all about the joy I find in being alone. I like the quiet, I like the solitude, I like the freedom, even that of being up at night after everyone else has gone to bed. It is possible to have too much of a good thing, of course, and there have been periods of my life when I was too isolated and alone. But I am a person who benefits from significant alone time and part of the joy of art, for me, is to distill the experience of my solitude into something that I can share with others.
But the other part is that my inspiration for art making is always tied to landscapes, to places I go and things I see. Years ago, when I was probably 19 or 20, I hiked on the Rogue River Trail in southern Oregon with a friend. The 40 mile hiking route follows the Rogue through its dramatic canyons, and it is a stunning trail winding through the raw and at times arid landscape that that area is known for. I distinctly remember looking up at a ridge dotted with trees, illuminated by the lengthening rays of the setting sun, and it felt so profound to me, that view, that moment. It was the sort of thing one would feel compelled to take a photograph of, but at the same time, it was the sort of view, or really, the sort of experience, that you can’t take a picture of. The views are broad, the light is subtle. And the experience was as much about the feelings evoked, as it was about the physical things witnessed. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that the proper response to such experiences, for me at least, is to sketch, to draw, to paint.
My perspective on traveling and art really changed when I read a book called Radical Simplicity by Dan Price. I happened to find this book, if memory serves me well, in the public library in Barrington, Rhode Island. In the book, Price discusses his efforts to live a minimalistic life, which, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say, amounted to him living in modestly-appointed hole in the ground in Joseph, Oregon, along with a photocopy machine, which he used to create his zine, Moonlight Chronicles.
As I was a broke 20-something at the time, I certainly admired Price’s commitment to keeping his rent as low as possible. But, alas, I never did construct my own low-budget Hobbit Hole. The thing I found inspiring were his sketches. Simple, immediate, direct. And even more so, I loved the way he combined sketches and text into visual journal-like creations that documented the little things he saw and the places he went. His sketches weren’t elaborate or complex, but that is why I found them so charming and fun.
I loved how simple these drawings were and yet at the same time captured such a sense of place and also a sense of the artist at the same time. Dan Price’s sketch art felt so accessible. I could do this too, I thought to myself. I had never taken an official art class, but I saw that I didn’t need to. I could make art just with pen and paper and patience. It seems I wasn’t the only one so inspired: it was interesting to hear artist Danny Gregory describe his own experience of finding out about Dan Price’s drawing habit for the first time.
But I didn’t quite take to sketching right away. This is one of those moments where you look back and your life and say, “But you were so close!” Despite the inspiration, it didn’t quite translate into a sketch habit right away. In 2010 I went on a cross country bicycle trip and wrote about my trip but the only images I used were photos. No sketches yet!
I did make a sketch for the front cover, at least, which was the first sketch I had made in years.
That winter in 2011 I went to Montana and volunteered for the Buffalo Field Campaign. It was then that I finally started sketching. I made a zine inspired, at least loosely, by Dan Price, especially the high contrast black and white sketches that lend themselves to photocopying.
That spring I bicycled from Oregon to Arizona and made a sketch journal. At last I had embraced sketching. It was satisfying to make what I called “Tour de Flagstaff.” Balancing bike riding, with camping, with frequent sketch stops was no easy feat, but the close observation required for sketching made me slow down and observe more closely and the trip was all the more memorable because of it.
I never did adopt that hand-lettering that makes Dan Price’s work so distinctive. But I was sketching and that was the important thing. For this trip I did all my sketches in a hand-made sketch book, but for some reason I used this strange paper that was almost like construction paper, which made the photocopying difficult. I knew next to nothing about sketching or art but I liked it that way.
Later that same year I joined the Peace Corps and spent 27 months in Sierra Leone, West Africa. And that is where I really leaned into the Dan Price style journaling. The constant writing and sketching became a defining part of my experience there. I wrote and sketched about everything from planting a cassava farm
To the routines at the local mosque
To hiking up the tallest mountain in Sierra Leone (and most of West Africa), Mount Bintumani
The version that best balanced text and sketches was this one about going to the beach in Sierra Leone, one called River Number Two. Click below to flip through the whole thing:
This approach I took, I felt, helped me capture what it was like during that time in my life, lots of changes, lots of things happening, lots of new experiences. Documenting in words and pictures gave me a chance to slow down and reflect. Organizing my thoughts thematically, rather than chronologically in the style of a typical journal, gave an additional layer of depth. Eventually I collected all of these zine-style journals into a book, called Along the Mabole.
After years of almost constant travel, from 2010 to 2014, my life slowed down a bit. I lived in Oregon again. I tried to move my art forward but I struggled to. I wanted to re-create the magic that I had felt making the sketch zines. One thing that was missing, I thought, was color. The black and white sketches I was making, these simple contour drawings, seemed to demand to be filled with some sort of color. Watercolor seemed to be one way to take my sketching forward. In spring of 2015, I enrolled in a watercolor class at Lane Community College with Satoko Motouji. In her introduction to watercolor painting, she had us practice still life, figure drawing and, given the beautiful weather, plein air landscape painting.
Plein air painting – I didn’t even know that was a thing that one could do. And Satoko’s own colorfully abstract landscapes, informed by plein air studies, I found deeply inspiring.
At first what I had learned was difficult to put into practice. I tried revisiting some of my previous sketches and just adding color. But that didn’t work. I didn’t think the results were particularly successful, but also, it wasn’t very fun, at least not as fun as making the original sketch had been. Below is an attempt I made to watercolor over a sketch I made of the rock formation called “The Watchman” in Zion National Park, compared to the original black and white one, from the zine. The watercolored one is not bad, but I didn’t love it either. Something was missing.
I think that sketching and painting and observing should be interesting and joyful. And those feelings show up in the painting or sketching. That’s why it was so hard to go back and add watercolor to those sketches afterward: the experience had gone cold, so to speak.
The thing that eventually moved my art forward wasn’t finding new ways to revisit what I had already done. Instead I found new places to go and sketch – and paint – and new experiences. I couldn’t go back and fix or redo what I had done before, but I could put things I learned into practice with new experiences. Art, at least for me, comes from the urge to capture a feeling and an experience in the moment as much as possible.
Returning to Stan Kurst’s challenge, I realize that I know that I have been successful in a painting when I have captured something of what it was like to have been there. And that, of course, is something that only I know. This matches a common experience I have when painting too: some paintings just don’t work out but I still love them because they still captured something of the feeling, the experience I had when I was there.
Yet, there is some distinction between a painting reminding me of a feeling or experience – like a memento or souvenir — and the elements of the paintings itself eliciting that feeling in others who view it. There is much that could be said about how a painting moves from a memento for the artist to something more universal. But I think at its root it is a mystery, and figuring that mystery out is something that keeps me coming back to the easel.