Out in the cold
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Richard Woods of Sparks, Nevada wrote, “I’m just heading out painting at…
Browsing: Lawren Harris
Finding spirit
Early in my career I came to know an artist by the name of Lawren Harris. On one of our walks together he told me that he thought paintings came out of themselves. He explained that the painting you are doing right now is the springboard for the next and the next after that. When paintings follow one another, in series or in similar format, they “learn” from one another. A useful technique is to vary the approaches to the development of the series. The whole idea, as I’ve come to understand and apply it, is to better extract the spirit of subjects. Here are a few methods:
Why do you make art?
A subscriber asked us this question for a university thesis: “Why do you make art?” I included it in a previous letter and some responses came in.
I knew we were onto something when another subscriber wrote, “The gift was recognized very early in my life. There were marvellous tools at hand: pencils, crayons, coloured pencils, poster paint, etc. Producing art was an extension of myself on some other plane or level — spiritual.
Levels of complexity
During the last week I’ve been back in the studio preparing for a solo show. I’m in here at about 6 in the morning and generally stick-handle through to about 10 in the evening. Sometimes there’s a short mid-afternoon snooze — almost always there’s a ramble with my dog.
But mostly it’s just easeling along, sorting out problems, taking half-finished works in and out of frames, painting steadily with a fair degree of simultaneity, trying to decide what to do next. As they say, “It’s a wonderful life.” I’m sure the “high” is similar to dope. I can convince myself
Idealism
When I was growing up, my Dad told me stories about walking with his friend and mentor in the forests near Vancouver. It was the 1960s and Lawren Harris (1885–1970) was deep into his last period of pure abstraction, inspired by theosophy and transcendentalism. Germs of remembrance and philosophy have since filtered through Dad’s studio and eventually onto my own easel as assumed knowledge. It seems there was never a time I didn’t believe that paintings come out of themselves — serving as springboards for the next and the next — gaining power as they appear