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Susan Weinberg - Emeritus "Plein Aire" watercolor class - Winter, 2006

My idea for critiques.

As I have said many times before I am sure, painting is a peculiar thing. We start with paint and paper, a site, and ourselves. I have found that my painting always is a mirror to how I am feeling at the time, what the circumstances of my life are at the moment, and a hundred other subtle thoughts and feelings.

Without getting too far into the psychology of Being, let me address a problem we all have. We begin to paint paintings, and, somewhere, along the line, we lose interest. Maybe we do not know how to make this one into a winner, or we cannot find enough in the image to engage our attention, or we make a mistake and cannot work around it, or we don't know what to do next, or we don't like the colors, or we are cold and uncomfortable or hot and buggy, or the time is up and we don't want to address this one again, or we wish we could finish it but just don't have the strength, and so on - and on - and on...

And so we are left with a stack of paintings, too good to throw out, not good enough to give away or sell, and so they sit there, waiting for attention from us. And we can't do it.

This happens to me all of the time. I paint beautiful paintings, but they do not hold my interest completely - I cannot find enough in them to justify their existence. What a problem.

I have been looking for a solution to this one for years. What I used to do in art school was this - in drawing class I would go as far as I could go, and then my friend and I would switch paintings, I would draw on hers, and she would draw on mine. This would always either open up new possibilities for the piece, or would finish the piece - one or the other.

Another thing I would often do is this - I would take a stack of life drawings, or sketches that I didn't want or need, and start to tear them up, cut them up, paint wildly and abstractly over some of them, not really caring what it looked like, but getting my feelings out.

In doing this, new forms would appear out of the mess. I remember one group that I hated so much - I tore in medium sized longish pieces, and started gluing them together. Pretty soon the piece was bigger than my table, so I started going up - getting 3 dimensional, overlapping, leaving spaces, hollows, folded edges, torn edges. Then I started painting on them, to unify them.

And do you know what? I sold all of those pieces at the student art show. They were different, exciting - nobody had ever seen anything quite like them before - and they were beautiful because the paper and paint was beautiful and much of the painting I had done was beautiful, but the originals just didn't hold together as finished pieces.

I understand. It's hard to get a winner. And it's hard to want to continue and just not be able to do it. I am wrestling with that one now on the double big painting I am doing of the Pier.

I think at the root of the problem is the idea of "preciousness". We hate to destroy something that we have put so much time into.

So - I would like to put some attention on this matter. There are many ways to go. One obvious way is this: When you want a critique, bring in a few pieces where you have reached a block. Let' look at the work as a group, and see if we can come up with some ideas.

Right now I have a group of Eleanor's work, and last week I had a group of Tomi's work. It is interesting looking at a group, because I have a new approach to them that the artist does not have. I am looking at a group of paintings right now, and the first thing that comes to my mind is - simply take a very fine, waterproof fine-point pen, and do some beautiful pen line, pointing out detail, caressing edges. - or take a watercolor pen and do the same, and then wet some of the line, not all of it.

Very often just one touch is all you need. - something with a different color, a different instrument, a different paint, a metallic pen line of various widths, a splash of paint, an overlay, an outline, a dark shape, a stencil addition, a scrape with a blade, sanding of an area, and on and on.

I don't know if you have any interest in this idea - but -if you do - it could have a practical ending. These paintings are too good to ruin, but if we don't want them - how about donating them to a children's hospital, to a city art-bank, to a government office that has so many blank walls. When I go into the art council's office, I am always happy to see the Merry-go-round horse by Rico LeBrun, one of my art idols.

I have always thought that all of the businesses in a town should have art on the walls. We could begin to do this in Santa Monica, seeing as Emeritus is in Santa Monica, and seeing as Santa Monica wants to become an "art city" again. Many of you live in other cities and you could do the same thing in your own city, but let's start right here.

Think about all of this. I know - some of you just want to come out to a beautiful spot, and sit and paint and enjoy the day. Of course, we will do this. But for those of you who are having problems with one thing or another, perhaps the group can help to guide you to a different way of seeing.

I always leave my work in progress - up and out - so that when people come in, I can see their reactions. I am looking for the paintings that draw people to them, for one reason or another. If something is out and nobody says anything or even looks at it, I know there is nothing much going on in that piece. What can I do? So I ask people, and very often they will give me a good idea.

On another note - I went to the Brewery last year in the Allied Artists Gallery, and was immediately drawn to one painting in the room. I went over to see what drew me. It was color - bright vermilion mixed with some orange - but the thing that made it so appealing was that only that red was put on with a palette knife - very different from the rest of the painting. In a way, it's like putting on the finishing touches when you get dressed to go out - that last piece of jewelry, or the right shoes.

So - the finishing touches. That is what we are all looking for.

www.susanweinberg.com

You will notice that there is a space for student activities, and news. Please feel free to give me material for the site, things you would like to show the class, or things you would like to say. This will be an interactive site.

Sincerely,

Susan Weinberg

310 392-5042

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