Painting from Studio Tubes

Recently as I was going through some old Art News, Art Forum and Art in America magazines I’d shelved in my studio and forgotten about, I ran across some especially fine articles and reproductions of Helen Frankenthaler’s work which sent me reeling back to days when I studied art at The University of Oklahoma, ending up with two master’s degrees in art by the mid-seventies. I was a busy little art beaver back then.

One of my art profs at the time—I think it was John Hadley—told us undergrads that some of our paintings looked like they’d come out of a “studio tube mentality.” I had to smile as I looked at the photographs of Frankenthaler stretched out over canvases as big as the floor, brushes as large as those used in house painting with a bucket of paint by her side, whole gallons lined up in the background. Sometimes Frankenthaler used driveway and windshield squeegees to push the paint across areas as large as quarter to half a good-sized room. Hadley’s little quip has stayed with me down through the years which, I could say, I’ve extended into my whole philosophy of life. What I took him to be telling us was that we were playing safe, not willing to open and make the big gestures. And there’s certainly great value in details and focus but when those narrow our vision to the point of losing sight of possibilities, it’s time to step back and take another look.

        But I’m besieged by questions and doubts about what working and living “beyond the tube-sized mentality” really means. It’s has to be more than buying up gallons of paint instead of oil sets in primary colors from Holbein or Rembrandt, Incorporated.

        Sometime during my late graduate studio years at the university, I made a canvas something like three or four feet by ten and worked on it for weeks and weeks. I’m talking about every day, going to work in the studio like one goes to a job, nine to five, sometimes with overtime. John Hadley, as I remember, came into my space, pausing to look at this canvas off and on for those weeks, expressionless most of the time, simply staring at it and then turning and walking off without a word.

On the day of his appointed critique with me, he entered my studio, sat on a stool, and I waited quite some time for his comments or questions. He walked up to a long undulating line on the edge of shapes running somewhat diagonally across the huge canvas. He said, “Isn’t this the profile of President Johnson?” He didn’t look at me, just walked out of the room, and I stared at Johnson’s face as I listen to Hadley’s footsteps recede down the steps and out of earshot. I turned and looked at the buckets of paints on the floor behind me, kick one of them and walk out of the room, with some of the grad students clapping and smiling as I went. They’d had Hadley’s critiques too. They knew his truths when they heard them.

The next morning on my way to my studio work, I noticed from afar a huge stiff banner hanging from the windows of the upper story of the art building. As I got closer, I realized that it was my three by ten foot painting, stamped like a new ten dollar bill with Johnson’s portrait on it against the school’s outside brick wall.  It was an awful painting, no doubt about it. And an awful portrait of the president, despite the likeness. As I walked toward my studio, I realized all the upstairs windows had been left open, the fresh morning air filling the room. The message was clear. Fresh air. Fresh start.

I don’t remember how we got the painting back inside—I did need help— probably by the same method (in reverse) that my fellow students had used to get it out there, by cutting the supporting frame and snapping on braces while some held it aloft before securing it by wires against the outside wall. Hundreds of hours had gone into its creation, and they understood by the end of this venture, as did I, that sheer effort and intention plus large amounts of paint, does not a good work of art make.

Some years after I graduated with my Master’s in Fine Arts, I heard that John Hadley wrote a song recorded by Burt Reynolds about some nail in a shoe and had headed for Nashville, but I never followed whether it was true or not. Then recently I googled his name and discovered that he’d moved back to Norman, had an art exhibition in November, 2011, after having written “almost 1,000 songs” and having “18 million of his songs sold worldwide,” sung over the years by the likes of Garth Brooks, Linda Ronstadt, Dean Martin, well, the list went on and on—buckets and buckets of songs and celebs. So long studio tube mentality!

           

I’ve had a lot of loss in my life these past couple of decades or so—I’ve lost all the members of my original family (four) except my sister who lives on the West Coast (we correspond often and have a great friendship), and I’ve lost a relationship I was in for twenty-one years, married for five. I’ve lost eleven pets over those years, two in one week just before I began living alone. I found myself closing off, withdrawing. My creative work was suffering, and I felt stuck and miserable. I have written several novels, two collections of short stories and read my work publicly, even on the radio and television, locally. Now I have a publisher (Oghma Creative Media) and my first novel was just released September 25th. But I haven’t worked in art to any degree for years.

Then I discovered Frankenthaler again, was reminded of Hadley’s pithy little saying, and I’ve decided to get back into the larger picture of my life. I’m in studio after a lot of years of absence, making gestures as clean and clear as I can right now. Kind of a risky, on-the-edge venture but, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? Who knows what might turn up on my bucket list.