My Christmas Paintings
In the year 2000, I made a painting on Christmas Eve. After doing it, I decided to continue making paintings on that day, as a present for my family. This one, Silent Night, is an image of Mitchell’s Butte in Monument Valley by moonlight.
I have painted plein air at night before, but it was too dark on this occasion. Instead, I pulled out my camera, an old Nikon D70, set it up on a tripod, and took a very long exposure photo to use as reference. I think I had to leave the shutter open for 20-30 minutes to get what I needed, and it was still dark. This is where being an artist comes in handy. I knew approximately what the shapes were, but had to augment the color considerably to get it to look right. Painting the stars was more difficult than I expected. They might just be colored dots, but I made them the right color and put them where they belonged.
This is my first Christmas Eve painting. My goal was to hike to the peak of Mt. Whitney, over 14,000 feet above sea leavel, and make a painting there. However, I hadn’t gotten very far when I saw this view and decided to paint it instead. The shadows on the mountain told me that by the time I reached the summit, it would be too dark to paint. I hate to admit it, but I never got much closer to the summit than I did for this painting. I kept trying to get there on other occasions, but every single time I’d see a painting opportunity long before I got to the summit. By the time the paintings were done, there wasn’t enough time to finish the hike.
Someday, I hope to revisit these locations with my new and beautiful medium format camera (a Phase One) so that I can finally reach the destination before I start making images. Taking a good photo can take quite a lot of time as well, but I plan to be more disciplined the next time.
Mount Whitney again, this time on an enormous about three by five foot sheet of paper. It was bolted to a large sheet of three eigths inch thick plexiglass to keep it flat and protect it from the wind. It was well below freezing that day, which caused the paint to freeze. This isn’t a good thing with watercolor. The water in my water jar had a crust of ice about half an inch thick, the paint on my brushes sometimes froze before I got it to the paper, and I could see the paint going down in shiny, icy trails of color.
To fight the ice, I used more water than usual, so that my brush could get from water jar to paper before it was totally frozen. More water means more ice. After I finished, I put it in my van, whereupon the ice began to melt. This is where the more water strategy was the opposite of good. I turned my heat on full blast and grabbed a roll of paper towels to sop up the pools of water forming around my brushstrokes.
An interesting characterictic of this painting is that in many places, the color formed into patterns that mimicked the crystalline structure of the ice.
This painting is less finished than I wanted for a reason: midges. The ground I stood on was infested with them. They crawled up my ankles and had a party right there. I didn’t notice at first. Then my legs started to itch. After a little longer, the bites became fantastically painful. I soldiered on, wanting to finish the painting, but eventually couldn’t take it anymore, signed the canvas, and got out of there as fast as I could. It was as done as it was going to get.
By the time I got home, the skin around my ankles was purple, inflamed, and searing with pain. It took several days before they felt normal again.
This one isn’t an official Christmas painting. I made it for Passover, but made it in the weeks leading up to and including Christmas. For that reason, it gets an honorary mention. At the time, I had run out of money for art supplies, so I used whatever supplies I already had. For this, it meant it was painted on watercolor paper instead of canvas. It is also one of the last paintings I made before I pretty much stopped painting.
If they had sold better, I’d probably still be painting, but they didn’t. Instead, I became a teacher, researcher, and occasional writer. I miss painting, so I still make one every once in a while, but those occasions are rare.
I was 21 when I made this. It is the first time I made a painting as a Christmas gift. This image is a tiny Christmas tree that my girlfriend (who I married the following year) had bought for the apartment we shared in Manhattan. It was a studio owned by her grandfather, on the fifteenth floor of an East 72nd Street high rise. After I made the painting, Kitty decorated it with a strand of Christmas lights and some tiny ornaments. It was my first Christmas away from home.
It looks like I forgot to sign and date this one, possibly because I hadn’t decided if I liked it or not. The reason is that it was cold enough that day to freeze my paint. That makes it difficult to see what the painting actually looks like until it’s dried. By then, the paints are all put away and it’s inconvenient to get them out again just to sign a picture.
You can see some ice-related patterns in the brushstrokes. The effects of melted ice are also visible, unfortunately. Regardless, looking at it now, I think it captures the cold and the mood just fine.
And, the research continues. My eyes ache today because I was up until 4:30 this morning finishing a report. One thing I am ever more convinced of: the state of voter registration databases across the country is so hopelessly corrupted that they cannot fulfill their purpose.
Better times are coming. Dream Big! And Merry Christmas!
Wow. Your art is stunning. I cannot believe people did not want to pay for it. I would.
Great stuff, Andrew.