What books about the process of artmaking are on your shelves?

The Story Begins 26 x 28 mixed media 2007 L Pressman


I am trying to organize my books that are everywhere: the office, the bedroom and the studio.The dust is settling on the pile of philosophy and psychology of art books. I haven't even begun to collect the catalogs and individual artist books. I am looking forward to seeing what is up in my attic.

This week I have been looking through the creative process books ...here are several I have found so far. Always looking for new ones to add.

Have any suggestions?..............Maybe we could start a list of the essential creative process books.
Anais Nin: all the journals
Twyla Tharp: The Creative Habit
The Artists Way: Julia Cameron
The Writing Life :Annie Dillard
Daybook: Anne Truit
May Sarton: The Journals of Solitude ( Marie-this one is yours-I will bring it back)
Centering: M.C. Richards
Spirit Taking Form: Nancy Azara
Trust the Process Shaun Mcniff
Art and Soul: Audrey Flack
Concerning the Spiritual in Art Kandinsky

Reading now or on "the list" to read:

deKooning An American Master Mark Stevens and Annalyn SwanOn Writing Stephen King
The Extreme of the Middle:Writings of Jack Tworkov JackTworkov; Edited by Mira Schor

What are your influences? Lisa Adams

"A Mechanism of Harbingers" 2008, oil on panel, 48 x 72" Lisa Adams

Lisa Adams is a painter and public artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.She is represented in LA by Lawrence Asher Gallery and in San Francisco by Michael Rosenthal Gallery
Check out her work and her influences-I had a blast looking at her choice of artists. It is a west coast view!!


"Next Services 264,458 Miles" 2008, oil on panel, 72 x 48" Lisa Adams

"The long, meandering, and challenging process that brought me to art making involved a never-quite-fulfilled reclamation of my own freedom as a woman living in the world today.

To do so my paintings must ask difficult questions of both me and of the viewer. These questions fuse my personal feelings of joy, sadness, rage, and despair – things I am often afraid to look straight in the face - with larger concerns of spiritualism, pathos, and the strangely complicated and enigmatic discourse between human beings.

The images that appear and reappear in my work stem from a desire to suffuse sources of inchoate matter – the formal elements, the grist of art – with a deeply felt, psychologically-charged world-view, which in turn allows my personal integrity to merge with larger, more universal concerns, cathartic to me, accessible to the viewer

In my most recent work, I create a negotiated reality forged from the world of the imagined—images of a Ground Zero (rather than Edenic) natural world with urban artifacts--to create a largely graffiti-free netherworld, animated by a tension between the unexpected and the predictable. By creating a “safe” space for myself in which to imag­ine, I offer the viewer an opportunity for Koan-like contemplation, a moment not Here nor There but somewhere In-Between."

"Everyone Talks' 2005, oil on panel, 30 x 34 Lisa Adams

Here is her list of 10 influences:

1) Nature--just being out in nature to experience a world of beauty and tragedy beyond my control.

2) Birding--watching birds in their natural habitat. It allows me to sit still and put my attention on silence and minutia, much like a meditation and I just love looking at the colors and hearing the sounds of songbirds specifically.

3) Film--so many films inspire me in different ways depending on mood. Film is my great escape. For me any of the films of Werner Herzog remain the most meaningful and inspiring.

4) Meditation--a dedicated practice of simply following the breath.

5) Travel--having traveled extensively throughout the world alone, there are so many places that have stayed with me but the most profound places are in the Nordic countries, the very top of Norway and Finland where the Sami people reside.

6) Other painters--again there are so many painters I take great inspiration from. Here are a few: Kristen Calabrese. She is a big inspiration and seeing her work in the studio always makes me want to paint better.
Also the work of Lucian Freud, Kiki Smith, Mathew Barney, William Kentridge, John Currin, Susan Rothenberg, Jeff Wall, Robert Gober, Amy Sillman, Llyn Foulkes, David Amico, Tom Wudl, Tomory Dodge, Joshua Aster, Kim Dingle, Samantha Fields, Cole Case, Andre Yi, Marie Thibeault, Joe Biel, Ann Diener and many dead artists such as Max Ernst, Philip Guston, Jay Defeo, Henri Matisse, Van Gogh, William Blake, the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and many more.

7) Imagined Apocalyptic Events-- mostly these come to me in dreams though I do have conscious anxiety about apocalyptic events. Perhaps this is the result of being the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Though these events frighten me they also give me energy and provides me with one extreme scenario against which I can weigh the other extreme of beauty, stillness and feelings of well-being.
8) Natural Disasters — love watching floods, fires, earthquakes, Tsunamis, etc I think it’s the out-of-control aspect of these events that capture my imagination.

9) Surrealism— my first love in painting was surrealism. At age ten I saw a reproduction of Dali’s painting “The Persistence Of Memory” and a knew I would be an artist, though I didn’t know what that really meant at age ten. As I later came to learn, it was the notion of the subconscious that drew me in.

10) Psychotherapy— having had many years of psychotherapy, it’s clear that this investigation has had a profound influence on my life and my work. The realm of subconscious material, unlocked memories and childhood trauma have tacitly informed my work and offered both and personal associations to my audience.

________________________________________

The Eye Doctor

Tink 12 x 12 oil 2006 LPressman

Chapter 4 24 x 18 2007 LPressman

I have been wearing glasses since I was five. A while ago, I went to the eye doctor. He is an older guy, in his seventies, and he asked me as he was looking at my prescription, "what do you do?" I told him I am a painter. He said: " What do you paint?" I said: "I am an abstract painter."

He said "I can absolutely see why you paint abstractly." He went on to tell me it is related to my eyesight. I have severe astigmatism/near/far and now the bifocal thing ....whatever....it is bad.
Time Piece 30 x30 encaustic 2007 LPressman

It was an Ah ha moment- the idea that the ophthalmologist could understand what I paint through my prescription was something that had never occurred to me. He then preceded to tell me about being at a conference where he and other ophthalmologists visited a museum to look at Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas and others and diagnosed their eye conditions.

Interesting articles on the subject here at the Science Geek Girl blog and here.

I retold this story recently-taking off my glasses. When I put them back on, it occurred to me that my original vision is one of blurred distorted shapes, colors, values, shadows light.......


Time Travel 38 x 41 encaustic L Pressman



and the correction by my glasses creates a focused magnified view.

Another ah ha moment!

I flip back and forth between the two when making art- Welcome to my Macro/ Micro world!


The Microscope 16 x16 encaustic 2007



Linking 3 24 x 24 encaustic 2009 LPressman

Who are your influences? Steven Alexander

I am familiar with Steven Alexander's work from his blog, website and the show at Denise Bibro Platform, New York City, "Blogpix" (Curated by Joanne Mattera) He is represented by Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Houston. He lives and works in eastern Pennsylvania.

I love his color.



Lonely Fire 56 x 36 acrylic on canvas Steven Alexander

My work is an exploration of relations that reside in the constant flux of pure sensory events. I am interested in the interaction between the painting and the viewer's imagination and experience; in the painting's catalytic potency - it's potential to generate unspecified mobile meaning.
Color operates in this work and in the world as a kind of pure energy, dynamic, capricious, evocative. The surfaces emphasize the sensual rather than analytical nature of the painting process, and attest to the pervasive presence of time. Within the structures of the work, archetypal relations of male/female, earth/sky, internal/external are inevitably implied; not as opposing forces, but as interdependent aspects of an animate whole. In this sense, the paintings might be regarded as open-ended cosmologies, or as chunks of raw reality, unencumbered.
I am trying to build, out of color and substance, a place for the viewer's consciousness - where unexpected associations and resonances may occur, where past and future merge with the present moment, and the stuff of life, love and desire has corporeal presence - states of being, embodied in paint.
Steven Alexander 2009

Calypso #4 24 x 24 acrylic on canvas Steven Alexander


Steven writes:
This is really hard!

Here are some influences -- in no particular order:

12th century Tantric paintings
Duccio
Giorgione
Henri Matisse
Piet Mondrian
Pierre Bonnard
Mark Rothko
Giorgio Morandi
Agnes Martin
Jasper Johns
Brice Marden
Blinky Palermo
John Cage
James Brown check out this video- (or maybe you meant the painter?)
Ornette ColemanA few days later I received an email from Steven:
"Twombly!!!.....I forgot Twombly".
(I found a great "undercover" video of Twombly's opening)



Shift #5 12 x 144 acrylic on canvas Steven Alexander

How do you title your paintings? A conversation about titles....

I can't tell you how many times I have googled "ideas on how to title paintings" with very disappointing results. So, it was with great interest that I participated in a conversation about titling paintings with artists Debra Ramsay, Cora Jane Glasser, Nancy Natale, Pam Farrell and Jane Allen Nodine.

My feelings on titles, particularly for my own work is that they are crucial- not only for the viewer but also for myself. They are a suggestion, a signifier, an open door, a thread, the light: to a way to approach the image.
My titles usually come after the work is done and I am sitting with a series of paintings in the studio. For me, titling paintings is the time for reflection and observation of where my work is and where it it is going.

It is a ritual- I get out the dictionary, the thesaurus, The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale, the I Ching, the Lakota Indian cards, the Runes, Animal cards, my books on haiku, Man and his symbols by Carl Jung , old journals and my ongoing "Ideas for Titles" book. I sit with my work and cipher through my stuff until I find a word, an idea, a phrase that connects to the images in front of me.
I also love to invite the professional story teller up the street or my poet friend to come hang out with the work-they are a great resource for titles!
When I look at art out in the world, I always look at the work first and then go to the titles and then go back to look again-I want a title.

Threshold 48 x 38 oil on panel L Pressman

Cora writes:

"I have to say I really don't have trouble coming up with titles these days. Either they are tied to a specific source material that inspired the painting (e.g., "MoMa Under Construction"), by the form the painting ultimately takes (e.g., "Top of the Line") or by the visual concept I set out to convey (e.g. "Tension"). I've gotten over the idea that I am somehow giving away a secret that should be held or that it would be embarrassing or difficult to explain the title. If it is, it's the wrong title. Your titles can be reductive or minimal if they fit your paintings and I agree that they can be in series. If the shoe fits.... Ultimately it is an opportunity for the artist to say what she means instead of leaving it up to everyone else. I have found this does not stop viewers from taking what they may from the artwork."


Top of the Line Cora Glasser
Encaustic & Ink on Homasote - 49 1/2 x 33 1/2 (as shown)
Installation of 16 Panels

Debra Ramsey says:

"I am now more aware, in our fast paced world, it's safe to assume that the viewer expects at least some information right up front.. the title can lead the viewer into something, and can be used to broaden the "readership" of the work."


Horizon Line 1 encaustic eggshell on birch panel 40 x 40 inches 2008
Debra Ramsay

Nancy Natale offers:

"Miles Conrad had a different take on titling. He agreed that work should be titled, but as an artist he recognizes that giving every work a title becomes a little meaningless when there is a long series. He thinks that titling a series as you do, Debra, is perfectly fine. For myself, I keep a list of titles that I cull from evocative word combinations in magazines or books. (Or driving with the radio on NPR also seems to give me lots of ideas. The problem is that it's too hard to write when driving.) When a work is completed, I look down my list and see if something rings a bell for me. If not, I resort to my thesaurus. Apparently the online visual thesaurus is very useful for this method; I haven't used it yet but intend to. Alternatively, sometimes I get an idea for a title and make a work that seems to fit it. This is more rare but does happen."

Wrigley's Best 2009 Nancy Natale

Pam says:

"My titles come from many sources. In addition to using various thesauri (thesauruses?), dictionaries, snippets of conversation, I access music song titles and lyrics.

I am very often listening to music when I'm working, and if a song title or lyric strikes me, I'll write it down, usually on the wall so I don't lose it. Last summer I painted a series of oil on canvas. They all had some relationship to bodies of water (loosely). My favorite was titled "Seasick Sailor" which I heard in a Beck song, Nausea: “I'm a seasick sailor on a ship of noise/I got my maps all backwards and my instincts poisoned.” The timing was just perfect because I heard this song while I was painting and thinking about titles, and the lyric really jumped out at me.As I continued to work and listen, it occurred to me that the lyric Seasick Sailor sounded familiar. After that I kind of got fixated on it and couldn't stop thinking about where I'd heard it before. With a bit of searching on the internet I found that it was a lyric from It's All Over Now Baby Blue , a Bob Dylan song(a tremendous song, and one that is perfect in its simplicity): "All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home. All your empty-handed armies are all going home." Anyway, each set of lyrics, while different, are amazingly evocative and led me back to the emotional place I was interested in with this painting--a sense of loss and longing."


Seasick Sailor Pam Farrell

Jane responds:

"Titling has been something I have both managed and struggled with for the almost 40 years I have been producing art for exhibition. In my career I have worked in various styles including objective, non-objective, abstraction and probably some things that can’t be defined. When I was in grad school in the late 70’s I was working non-objectively using materials and processes that had been influenced by minimalism/conceptualism/process-materials, and I was looking at artists such as Michelle Stuart, Dorthea Rockburne, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, etc. I was studying in an atmosphere of “non-emotion” so titling was expected to be rather clinical and documentary. i.e. “untitled paper and tape # 14”. I was also concerned about applying titles that led or directed the audience, when I wanted the works themselves to perform that task. As my career developed, I began to pull away from the sterility of “untitled”, and I tried to identify some element that was significant to the work, without stifling the viewer into a “holding pattern” of a single direction or idea. The dictionary and thesaurus have always been my main source for developing titles, and for years I have kept lists of words, their meanings, and related words. So I usually go to those lists and begin making thoughtful decisions for title choices. On a side note-and influences-I direct a study abroad program in Italy and I have been trying to learn Italian for nearly ten years. About five years ago I began to introduce Italian terms and words into my titles. Such as a series of little girls slips I was working on became "sotto vestigia", relating to under garment. I typically title a series, or a tightly related body of work, such as “integument” series,” lamellate” series or “traces” series. Within each series, an individual work will/may get a more specific title such as “laminated integument 6 “ or “venetian integument 3”. While I use titles that reveal information about the work, I also seek words and phrases that can veil or obscure. I seek titles that support work, but I also seek words and terms that challenge or engage the viewer. I tend to be most satisfied when a title has a bit of mystique or tension. Interestingly, I find that as a work is coming to conclusion, and I know it is almost finished, title ideas tend to flow forth. I write down these ideas and impressions, and then go rather methodically through a decision making process until I am satisfied with asolution. My current work involves a non-objective body that is concerned with the trace of the hand and the mark of a tool/substance, and another body/series of work that combines collage-like images in odd or diverse juxtapositions, leading to, or insinuating narrative material. For the non-objective group I am currently naming them “trace.001”, “trace.002”, and so on. It is about the trace or residue, and the numbers are sequential giving some indication of when or which works were created prior to others. It also relates to my digital background and the Industry’s obsession with rushing to develop a new version of Adobe 4.0 something or other. In the image-based works, such as the pieces that include irons and shirts, I have been using the word “seared” in most of the titles. The burn mark is a “seared” mark, but images and words can be searingly painful and I anticipate the viewer will respond to the term “seared” in a different manner than if I use the term “burn”."



Trace.oo2 Jane Nodine



Two Websites to Checkouthttp://www.visualthesaurus.com/
http://www.onelook.com/index.php3?e=1

What artists have influenced you ? Deborah T. Colter

Deborah T. Colter is an artist I have come across in my travels with twitter, facebook and just plain internet research. She is a mixed media artist and has two exhibitions coming up: featured artist at the Cousen Rose Gallery, Martha's Vineyard and a group show at Water Street Gallery , Douglas, Michigan.





"Mapping Out Bliss" 40" x 48" work on canvas

"I think of my paintings as un-still lives, at once frozen and in motion. I focus on the concept of capturing a moment of thought, purely through my visual language. I strive to capture the fleeting memories and images that travel rapidly through the mind and represent these thoughts in the layers of color, texture and repeating marks within the work. My language is an abstract collection of marks, textures and color, repeating shapes and forms, with which I seek to find a balance of chaos and harmony. Often these marks will reflect architectural landscapes, roads, maps, repeated patterns, or colors as if seen from above or as recalled from within, a sort of visual record book of the mind."

Robert Rauschenberg - for his continual work with collage and paint
Richard Diebenkorn - for his use of space and line structures
Mark Rothko - for his use of color
Pablo Picasso - for everything he created
VanGogh for living, color, line, passion, energy, emotion
Jackson Pollack - for his desperate joy
Henri Matisse for his spirit and color
Amedeo Modigliani - his odd quirky portraits

"Ordinary Spectacle" 36" x 48" work on canvas

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec his oils and lithographs
Alberto Giacometti - his sculptures of walkers
Paul Klee for his whimsy and composition
Tony Magar - the space paintings for his depth of color, texture and energy
Sharon Booma - love her use of color & balance
Glen Ossiander - for his freedom, emotion & joy in the work
Paul Baumer - especially the cityscapes for his whimsy and color
Doug Trump - for his incorporation of line, color and composition




"Pieces of Imagination" 30" x 30" work on canvas

What artists have influenced you ? Marie Vickerella

"Outside" 42" x 42" oil

The first person I met when I got to the graduate program at Bard was Marie. She was there for painting and I was there for sculpture. We had neighboring studios for three summers. I remember the smell of her oil paint, hearing the swishing from the brushes on her canvases, our conversations, breakfast every morning at the diner and of course, her wonderful paintings. She is one of the reasons I am a painter.

You can see her work at the Chace- Randall Gallery in Andes, NY. The gallery has a new blog that you see here. She will be having a show at the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago, ll. this September.



"Cloister" 32" x 28" oil


"Space Between" 60" x 42" oil

Paint, graphite, wax, and fabric all materials I use to create. Make a mark and cover it up, wipe away and retrieve part of it back. An on going process, helped along by the materials I use, what I see and think on a daily basis. How I allow myself to find the simplest way to put what I see into visual form.


With a minimal amount of shape and line, allowing each, to work off the other to create a sense of tension, or place, at times a sense of suggestion and metaphor. Allowing my daily experience to seep into each painting, just as a viewer looking at a painting, will bring to each painting all the experience from their lives and see the painting from their own perspective.


Painting runs along a parallel line with life. Every mark put down, rubbed away and brought back to create a painting, are similar to events that happen in our lives, which are
put into our memory, add up and are brought back to the surface to create who we are.
It’s a simple process, which when you can rid yourself of the noise and clutter that is attached to life, becomes quite remarkable.

Here are Marie's influences:

1. Giorgio Morandi
2. Richard Tuttle
3. Brice Marden
4. Paul Rotterdam
5. Susan Rothenberg
6. Eva Hesse
7. Vija Clemins
8. Agnes Martin
9. Richard Serra
10. Cy Twombly
11. Giotto
12. Michal Rovner

"Silence the fence around wisdom" 42" x 42" oil