Speaking of Art Blog

I realized something this week that hit me, stopped me in my tracks, and made me smack my forehead with the exclamation, “Of course, that’s it, I need to rebrand myself.”

I must backtrack to about a week ago in order to explain.  I was just getting started with this pastel painting.

Scarlet Tanager, pastel, 9x12" 

The red and black were giving me fits.  The red in my reference photo kept shouting at me, which is the effect I wanted because that’s what a Scarlet Tanager’s red coloring does, it’s LOUD RED when you look at it.  The black wings and tail gave me fits for a totally different reason.  There was so much detail which I wanted to include that was INSIDE that wing, but how would I do that?  The solution for the believable red came when I started to play around with lots of shades of super neon red all layered together.  For the black wing I followed a hunch which turned out to be the best answer.  I worked on small successive sections by first defining the details with a hard charcoal pencil, then a medium charcoal pencil, then a navy-blue pastel pencil, and then finally a black pastel pencil.  Leaving any of those steps out caused the effect to come up short.  I wanted fluffy looking detailed black feathers.  Bingo, I got it.

While I was working on this painting, I was mulling over a recent comment made by a fellow realistic styled artist friend of mine.  They identified themselves as a hyperrealist.  Hmm, what is hyperrealism and how is it different from photorealism?  Is there a difference?  If so, what style of artwork is mine, hyperrealism or photorealism?

I can’t tell you how many times in recent years onlookers have studied my artwork and exclaimed, “Wow, that looks like a photograph!”  I’ve actually always considered that a compliment.  Yes, that is my goal, to make it look so real that it’s practically indistinguishable from a photo.  And yet, there is one big difference between my work and a photo.  My artwork does not look like the photograph I started with; it just doesn’t.  It goes beyond the photo.  I want to capture my subject’s essence, its core, its reality, that hard-to-describe element that makes it look so 3-dimensional that it looks like it’s going to come right off the paper.  Does a photo look like that?  Not quite.  Even when I use my really good Nikon camera with shots in perfect lighting, my darks are a little too dark, my lights are a little too bleached out, and the details in some crucial spots are non-existent.  And those empty places are where I fill in the blanks when I do a pastel painting. I tweak and add to and refine those areas to tell the complete story, the whole real-life picture.

So today I did some research online to find out if there is a difference between hyperrealism and photorealism.  Yes, there is a difference.  Photorealism is more descriptive.  It includes all the details you see in a photo, while hyperrealism imitates reality.  Description is not the only goal of hyperrealism; instead, capturing something’s essence is more important.  Aha, epiphany time.  I’m a hyperrealist, not a photorealist.  That’s why I took the time to figure out what shades of red were in that Scarlet Tanager and then I used ALL OF THEM.  That’s why I was determined to successfully create a very detailed yet totally black wing that juts forward from the bird's body.  I was after the bird’s 3-D essence and my photo came up short in some spots.  As usual, I had to go online and study a ton of pics of Scarlet Tanagers to fill in the missing puzzle pieces.  (Google is amazing.  I don’t know how I would do without it.)

Wow, time to rebrand myself.  My style is hyperrealism.  And in the future if someone tells me that my painting “looks like a photograph”, I will still thank them for the compliment, but then I will be sure to add that my goal is to go beyond the photo.  My goal is hyperrealism, capturing my subject’s real-life essence.  Or as my husband usually says as he holds my reference photo in his hand and glances at my finished painting, “Dang, that’s way better than the photo.  It looks so real.”  Music to my ears.

Mama Turkey, charcoal, 2.5x3"

One of my requirements as Artist-in-Residence for the Indiana Dunes National Park this year is for me to hand write several entries into a communal AIR journal.  I have already written 8 entries since mid-May because I love to write almost as much as I love to create art.  I am really enjoying it.

My 8^th entry came after I visited the Great Marsh a little over a week ago.  I saw lots of birds, summer wildflowers, and even a few butterflies.  But one thing stood out that I wrote about in the journal: “Walking back to the car along the trail, I encountered 3-4 tiny fluffy chicks of some sort waddling on the trail and then heading into some grasses.  Turned out to be baby turkeys (poults) with their mama nearby in the ditch, softly calling to them.  She really started fussing when I got close to the ditch (which was my only way back to my car), so I snapped one pic of the mama from a distance, and then hurried past to give them all space.  It’s their home, not mine.  I’m just a visitor.”  I included this tiny sketch at the bottom of the journal page.

Yes, we Americans own our US national parks which are truly a national treasure, but we don’t live in them; we only visit them.  In contrast, many wildlife call our parks their home.  We must respect that.  I see too much garbage on our beaches these days at the Indiana Dunes and it makes me sad.  We humans are the caretakers of our parks and our care, or lack thereof, directly affects the wildlife and plants in our parks.  I am finding the biodiversity of the teeming life inside the Indiana Dunes to be mind boggling and our park rangers are such fantastic stewards of our park.  But they cannot take care of the park all by themselves.  We must all do our part by viewing wildlife from a safe distance when we visit, stay on the trails and don’t trample on plants, and clean up after ourselves before we depart for our homes.

I know I am only one person, but I want to use some of my time as Artist-in-Residence to raise awareness of the fragility of our national parks and of the Indiana Dunes in particular.  If we all do our part in helping to protect them, then mama turkeys like this one will continue to thrive and live happy lives in our wondrous treasures, our US National Parks.

Descent, pastel, 16x12"

“You’ve got to jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.” –Ray Bradbury

I love this quote.  I thought of it often while I created this hawk painting.  I purposely left the bird hanging in air right in the moment before its talons touch the branch below.  This creates a delicious sense of movement, anticipation, and slight tension.

In some ways I feel like a feathered creature myself every time I start a painting.  I have no idea whether I’ll reach my goal when I begin, and thus every single painting is a new “cliff”.  Wait, what?  But I’ve created tons of bird paintings, so how can it be new to me?  Yes, I’ve rendered lots of birds, but I’ve never created a Red-tailed hawk in mid-air with its wings up and its talons just about ready to touch a branch.  That was my new cliff challenge facing me at my easel.

Creativity is not for sissies.  It takes real bravado and a sort of wild abandonment of safety nets and boring comfort.  What would happen if I leave the background completely white, devoid of all context save a suggestion of a sturdy branch in the lower left corner?  Will that be enough context?  I don’t know, but I’ll try it.  So, I hold my breath and I jump.

The experience of jumping and creating as I fall can be both frightening and exhilarating, but oh so satisfying when my feet reach that branch.  Each success makes me that much more excited to jump off the next cliff.  And that’s why creativity for me is a process, a journey, a freefall, with ever steeper cliffs on the horizon.  I just hope that the wings I build each time are as adept at a steady landing as this hawk’s magnificent feathered parachute.