Organization of a Painting

Twenty Books, 30" x 48"

This is the largest painting I've done in some time.  The scale of the books is approximately the same, but I wanted to work with the space around the table to see how it would affect the viewer's perception of 3-dimensionality.  I wanted to play with the textures and the soft earth colours of the books and the side-lighting enabled me to show how different each of the books is with regards to the textures.  

When setting up the composition book by book, I turned the middle stack to create what I think is an interesting dynamic.  I hoped that this would present a sculptural and somewhat monumental quality.  

I've been lately looking again at Avigdor Arikha, the Romanian-born Israeli painter, friend of Samuel Beckett, who just passed on this year, (and it was Andrew Wyeth the year before).  I'm drawn to the simple, unpretentious quality of his work.  He's not a hyper-realist, but has a nice light and brushy quality to his description of objects.  I like his domestic observations and unusual compositions.  He uses a lot of earth tones with the shots of stronger colour, and this is something that I've been conscious of doing, though maybe in a more subtle or muted mode.  

Back in the 1980's, one of my professors, Dave Cantine, introduced me to the work of Arikha, and I've now, 30 years later, realized what a big influence his work is to me.  What is most powerful to me is the way that he conveys, through the medium of paint, the texture of an object, with surprisingly little detail.  

When I was in art school, Dave Cantine brought me back a catalogue of Arikha's from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  I'm pretty sure I didn't seem grateful enough at the time, but have poured over this particular volume for many years.

From, the catalogue, a quotation by Arikha:

"And I notice with time, that as I get closer and closer to what I truly see, the truer the painting becomes, the more logically it organizes itself.  The relationships on the painted surface unfold in an absolutely unpredictable way, and in a logic that I grasp in the course of painting, increasing my state of intensity.  That the painting then organizes itself organically depends entirely on this state of intensity I may be in.  The lack of such a state of intensity will inevitably bring about failure.  Hence the small number of my works."