In Preparation for "How The Light Gets In" Show

I finished the last official painting for my new show for Gallery MAR two days ago. This has been a many months in the making of my new body of work, one that I started planning for last spring, and one that is now largely done. I’m at the false summit of pushing my rock up the hill - the views are great, but I am tired and also euphoric at the idea of completing this project. Here are pages from my sketchbook (that will be on view the night of the opening) that helped me work through all the ideas and the poetry that gave me the names.

Originally, my inspiration for the show came from a conversation with Maren Mullin from Gallery MAR which made me think about how my paintings feel like they are adding an extra window in their house, and I’ve always loved that idea of an easy to install window - hammer in nail, hang painting, presto! But I thought “Windows” as a show title, well, I thought it was rather boring, and what kept playing over in my head was the line from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem - which to me is a poem, but perhaps is actually a song. The line, How the Light Gets In, comes from the chorus and goes like:

Ring the bells that can still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Now Cohen didn’t always like to explain what his songs meant, but he did give some indication of his meaning, which you can read here. My take on this song - I think it’s about standing up for what you think is right, and about trying to find hope and joy wherever you can. We’re not going to get it perfect, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It applies to everything - the moment we are living in as a nation, the work we do for our jobs, and the life we lead personally, alongside our friends, family, and community.

The light that shines through the cracks shows what needs to be done. So now, go make an effort. Do something, anything.

So to be very literal in the meaning of my show - windows let light in. In a way, they are the “cracks” in a building - they let the light in and let us see out. Windows are portals that transport us, challenge us, and motivate us to action. I mean, how often have I woken up excited to look out the window to see how much snow we got, inspiring me to go outside and ski!

I also like to read a lot of poetry, so all the painting titles come from poems that I felt had similar themes or ideas as to what I was trying to show with the art - live your life, go make what you want to see in the world, don’t be perfect or precious about it, but get out there and try.

Every new painting I make builds upon the last painting I made. Each one is part of a long evolution of learning, experimenting, improving, and changing. I think collectors will see a lot of my history in these paintings, what I am most known for - my atmospheric landscapes of course, but there’s a twist. I’m looking at old ideas from a new angle, perhaps from a different window of the same house.

I’ve also done a number of diptychs and triptychs over the years, but these new groupings are really interesting to me, and I liked playing around with how I could envision windows in a house looking out onto a landscape. I hope to do more like these - ensuring that each panel is it’s own painting that could be viewed on its own, but is part of a larger whole. Also, there’s a fair bit of color, which has been a lot of fun and exciting for me.

The collection is made up of both cold wax and encaustic paintings, just like last year’s show. Perhaps this is strange, two different mediums from the same artist, but it’s what I’m fascinated by and I can’t help but do both - what I know well and what I am learning, but turns out I’m learning a lot with both. As a refresher on the two mediums:

Cold Wax Medium

Cold Wax is beeswax that is melted together with a solvent. When it cools it becomes the texture of lard and can be mixed together with oil paint. There are many things you can do with CW as a medium including layering, collage, mixed media, carving, scraping and mixing it directly with oil paint for an impasto effect. Some oil artists add CW to their paint to beef it up. Cold wax artists add oil to their CW to add color. There are also a lot of similarities between CW and encaustic, but the main difference is cold wax does not use any heat - so no flame, no torch, no hot plate. I apply this cold wax and oil mixture to a hard surface with palette knives, scraping tools, and brushes. The wax and the oil paint then cure together creating a very durable and long lasting painting medium.

Encaustic

Encaustic is made by melting beeswax with damar resin, which I make myself in my studio. I buy beeswax and resin in bulk and melt them together, filtering out organic material and pouring them into bread loafs, where they cool into blocks of encaustic. When I go to make make paintings, I take these blocks and add them to an electric hot pot where the wax becomes fluid at 200 deg F. I use big, 8 inch wide brushes to paint this melted wax onto a hard surface. As the wax cools it hardens, and I use a large scraping tool and a torch to create a super smooth surface. For the mountains and trees, I paint those with casein paint, and the color in the sky comes from a pigment that I rub onto the surface of the wax. When the casein is dry, I add another layer of wax on top and I keep going, creating a three-dimensional space in two dimensions. The wax in my paintings acts the part of atmosphere creating depth. Other encaustic artists have other techniques, but this is mine.

Going back to my theme of windows and how the light gets in, I am using the transparency of the beeswax to let the light in. With a block of encaustic or a jar of cold wax, you can’t see through it, but when you apply it in a thin layer, it’s like a pane of glass, a film, or a veil. This is my favorite thing about the medium, this ability to create a thin, transparent layer while also creating a barrier between said layers, not as a way of separation, but as a way of addition without blurring the layers.

But I have also been playing with the framing, the sizes, and arrangements. I created some unique diptychs and triptychs that aren’t maybe what you’re used to. A few of the arrangements feature panels that are not the same size as each other, creating a window grouping that is not symmetrical or aligned. I don’t even have the words to describe what this is. Asymmetrical diptychs? If you have a name for this, let me know what to call it.

In my previous incarnation as a sustainability and green building consultant and writer, I spent a lot of time looking and thinking about architecture. I’ve always loved the concept that through architecture we can control and direct the viewer’s gaze, which is why it drives me so insane when I go into a home that hasn’t considered the view. Architects who know how to direct the inhabitat to the outside world know what they’re doing. A perfectly framed mountain peak or a beautiful tree through a window - chef’s kiss.

And that’s what I’m doing artificially with my art - framing a view without having to tear into a wall. Art is certainly cheaper than a new window and it keeps your thermal barrier intact. I joke, because that’s not really the purpose of art, but my years as an efficiency expert have not left me yet.

I was really inspired by creating these asymmetrical sets of twos and threes. It really made me think about the view I wanted to create as well as ensuring that each “window” had its own story to tell as if they could be hung separately, they would still remain solid on their own. Through quantum entanglement, the paintings are forever joined showing a scene even if they are split apart. If you enter one portal, you could very easily come out through the other one.

So I’d encourage you to come see the work in person when the show opens on Friday, November 7th at Gallery MAR in Park City. It will be up for a couple weeks or until they sell. We’re having a little party to celebrate from 6-9pm. You’ll probably be out and about for Live PC Give PC that night, so please stop in and say hi.

For more information on the work and to get on the preview list for when the paintings become available, contact the gallery - info@gallerymar.com. You’ll be the first in the know.