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| Painting Val in Central Park on a Perfect Day |
We painted Val on a beautiful sunny morning on our little
knoll in Central Park in August of 2004. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect
for painting a model in our plein air studio between the Boathouse Restaurant
and the Conservatory Pond near Fifth Avenue
and 72nd Street.
Val was one of the 21 young women five of us old guys
painted in the park over a period of seven summers, as I described in a previous
post. Some of the girls posed only once,
others several times, for our once-a-week painting sessions, weather permitting. This was Val’s second pose for us. Like most of our other models, she worked
part-time with me in the Visitor Services Department of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art a few blocks north of our painting site.
When we arrived at our "studio" on
this occasion, Val slipped into a very pretty orange dress with a matching
shawl she had recently purchased at one of those budget fashion stores,
and deftly doffed her jeans, exposing her bare legs, about as racy as we ever
got out there in the park with our models.
She instinctively climbed to the top of the
biggest rock on the knoll and took a seated, back-lit pose with an
elegant line that we all agreed was eminently paintable. Being the nominal monitor of these affairs,
and official timekeeper, I delivered my usual announcement, “Gentlemen, start
your engines,” and we commenced our work.
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| Val, Oil on Linen, 24x20" |
I was immediately having a very happy time painting Val in
this urban wooded setting. She held her
elegant pose extremely well, and it was easy to capture its rhythm on my 24 by
20 inch stretched linen canvas in my initial lay-in with thinned-down color
approximating the actual look of the “tout ensemble.”
During these Monday or Tuesday morning Central Park outings,
we worked about 25 minutes at a time on the pose, with five minute breaks,
beginning at 9 a.m. and going to about 12:30
p.m. As the morning wore on
I was making good progress on my painting and really enjoying myself, not
something I’m accustomed to in the other world.
We weren’t bothered much on this particular day by visitors to Central
Park stopping by to ogle, and I could see that my four painting
companions were also having a good time painting Val. Being only five in number, it wasn’t hard
for each of us to get a pretty decent view of the model. We always set up our easels without much
fussing about placement, although I did regret on occasion not being
constitutionally disposed to exercising the traditional monitor’s prerogative of
choosing the first spot.
One of the main reasons I liked
painting with these guys is we all had developed our own ways of working after
many years and we never interfered with each other’s enjoyment of the process
of painting. We all had received
academic training at some level. The
oldest painter, Albert Wasserman, then 83, has been a superior portrait painter
all his life. He began his art studies
at the age of 13 and continues to work and teach at the age of 92. Another painter, Kenneth Wilkinson, had been
Frank Reilly’s illustration class monitor for four years, but swore off the
photographic look years ago and now works in an exciting, paint-heavy style
derived from his love of the Post-Impressionists. We never gratuitously offered any of those
annoying “helpful suggestions” that always destroy your concentration and put
you in a foul mood for the rest of the day.
“Do you mind if I say something.”
“Oh no, go right ahead.” You’re doomed
one way or the other. The psychological
damage has been done. Leave us alone,
already, to sink or swim to the best of our own abilities.
While I’m at it, it’s crazy to see so many earnest artists chasing
after this or that painter’s technique year after year. They watch hours of “how to” videos or attend
expensive “vacation” workshops in the vain hope of becoming “as good a painter
as so and so.” If God had intended for
you to paint like Sargent or Grandma Moses, he would have blessed you with the innate
ability to do so. If you want to be a fairly decent figurative
painter, though, you do have to study painting for a few years to see how the job
is done, there is no other way. It can’t
be learned by reading about it or even just looking at paintings. You have to see how experienced painters mix
paint and apply it to the canvas to achieve the effects that you consider to be
inspirational. But after a few years of getting
used to washing your brushes every day, forget about the techniques of your
contemporaries and paint as well as you can in a style that suits your
personality. You might not sell as many
paintings as those who mimic the unique work of some other painter, but at
least you can hold your head up high, knowing you aren’t just another one of
many inferior clones of a more talented painter. I must add that it was different in the old
days, when figurative painting was a respected profession with high standards that
had to be met or you were shown the door, a direction most of us today would no
doubt have been headed for.
Now back to this particular Monday morning in the park with
Val. It was a happy time for all of
us. The August weather was perfect and
our incomplete masterpieces were progressing nicely.
Then around noontime a group of a dozen or so identically
dressed young girls from a private school in New Jersey
came traipsing by on the path just below our little knoll. They were a noisy, exuberant bunch and I
heard one of them say, “We can’t leave New York
without seeing a celebrity.” I shouted
out, “Well, there she is,” pointing to Val posing prettily at the top the
rock. The girls immediately clambered up
the rock, surrounding Val, who instantly took to her new starring role as a
celebrity, which she certainly was for us already. She had a great time for a few minutes
chatting with the girls and telling them, among other things, about the great
buy she got on her dress. It was so much
fun to watch this sweet little impromptu scene being played out on such a
gorgeous day for painting that we didn’t mind the brief interruption at all.
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| Val, LichtBlick Gallery owner Claudia Bousraou and Me |
Shortly after the girls had clambered down off the rock and
headed merrily on their way, we were paid an unannounced visit by the two women
who were planning an exhibition of our Central Park
paintings at LichtBlick Gallery on Long Island. The gallery owner, Claudia Bousraou, took a great picture of all
of us as we continued painting Val for a few more minutes. And we later had a productive chat with Claudia
and the curator, Pam Koehler, about our upcoming show, with the noonday sun continuing to
spread its hazy, warm glow over our favorite painting spot. I left the park beside myself with
happiness. Nothing in life was better
than this, at least for me. I had
come to the end of a perfect day.
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| Chao-Min Liu's Photo of his Painting and Val in Jeans |
The enchantment was too great to last forever, of
course. Val was one of the few models we
painted twice in the same pose. So we
reassembled at the same spot the following Monday morning to resume work on our
paintings. Almost everything about the
scene was different. It was still a
bright day and the rock hadn’t wandered off, but it was so cold that one of our
boys painted with gloves on, and Val had to wear her jeans under her gown to
keep from freezing her legs off. The background
of green-leafed trees now seemed to be a fractured, illusionary autumnal
orange. I made some adjustments to the
background of my painting, but spoiled the look I had achieved in the first
sitting. And I was unable to successfully
make some subtle changes in my painting of Val that I had been counting on. It’s like Renoir said, you go to nature armed
with theories and nature throws them back in your face. In other words, curses, foiled again.
But the memory of that first glorious day of painting our
lovely Val lingers on. I came away marveling that once in awhile
even I get close to knowing the feeling of complete contentment.
