Writing for the Arts

Writing for the Arts was the name of a class I took at California State University, Los Angeles in the late 1980s when I was finishing up my Bachelors degree in Art. I learned a lot in the class, and the professor (Sandy B.) was adamant about NOT writing in the "Artspeak" manner so typical of most art reviewers and critics. If you've ever tried to read that stuff, you know how utterly nonsensical and useless it is.

I was grateful that Sandy introduced us to a writing style that emphasized descriptive language -- wording that would form images in the reader's minds, using lots of adverbs, some adjectives and "good" verbs. As much as possible, I continue to try to write that way in what I would consider my "serious" writing (posts on Facebook are NOT included in that group!) One example of my "serious" writing appears on my website -- my Bio page (aka "Why Does Mark Paint the Desert?!?" -- you can see it HERE).

In addition, the following was an assignment for the class, talking about some early experiences (1970s) with selling my surrealist paintings at an outdoor art fair.

Weekend

“Geez, that’s weird!” he said, pausing briefly, then turning away into the art fair’s forest of canvases, tinkling windchimes and seashell animals. The April sun gently warmed the barely-clothed bodies meandering down the narrow pathways.

“Really different. By far the best work in the show.” I looked up. The man, perhaps in his sixties, smiled, nodded and continued on his way.

A breeze softly lifted a lock of her long, reddish-brown hair as her mouth and eyes opened into perfect circles. “A surrealist! How neat!” She gazed at my paintings in wonder. “I’d love to buy one. Will you be here next week?”

“Probably,” I said.

She smiled. “Great! I’ll probably see you then.” I knew I would never see her again.

The flow of people seemed to stop momentarily, so I ambled over to my neighbor. “They never buy here. They only look,” he commented with the air of wisdom that comes only with long, hard years of experience.

“I think you’re right,” I answered. “I’ve gotten lots of nice comments, but you can’t pay the bills with nice comments.” He agreed.

An older couple appeared and looked at my paintings. I quickly turned, but they left before I could take a step. An older, bearded intellectual type stopped, thoughtfully puffed on his pipe, and spoke slowly.

“A Rod Serling of the brush” he said, continuing with a discourse on the meaning of my work. He told me things about my artwork that even I didn’t know. I couldn’t resist.

“Wanna buy it?”

“No, no,” he laughed as he walked away.

I had hoped to sell publishing rights to the story to The Artist magazine, but they wanted writing that showed the positive side of the artists' lives. Well, I'll admit my story isn't very hopeful, but it IS accurate!

Oh, well. At least my writing skills are still intact. I doubt I'll ever write a novel, but I can see trying my luck with writing some short stories. Author Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors, and he wrote some short stories that used some of this descriptive language in powerful ways. So -- maybe some day... ☺

Three Things I've Learned About Painting

I've been painting for what seems like forever. Like many other activities, one usually gets better with years of practice.

Making art has been like that. Some of it is just about learning how to get the paint on the canvas and to make the finished item look the way you want it to.

But I've learned three distinct principles that the Old Masters apparently knew that add so much to the power of a painting.

• The Golden Mean. Briefly, the Golden Mean is a proportional tool that, in two-dimensional art, is a focal point of intersecting lines at given distances from the edges of the work. The eye is drawn to these point locations and automatically makes you look at them (or it). Four of them potentially exist at once, but the artist chooses one that works the best for the image s/he wants to use. It's a similar concept that photographers use known as the Rule of Thirds; only, the Golden Mean places the point of interest closer to the center: 0.382 distance from the length and width, unlike the Rule of Third's 0.333.

Each of the four points near the center represents the rectangle's Golden Mean. Any of these are the best places to locate the most important feature or subject of a painting.

• Selective Focus. Friend and amazing artist Virgil Elliot pointed out this principle --  the area of interest (probably located at the Golden Mean) should have sharp edges, and the other edges should be softened. Again, this tends to make you look at the important area and more closely resembles how we actually see things -- what we stare at is sharp, and the rest of the world appears more blurry to us. (To see Virgil's website, click here).

• Contrast. The eye likes contrast -- very light against very dark. Painters can use this to their advantage -- make the important area contrasty -- even white next to black -- and soften the contrast on the rest of the painting.

That's my three-point message. Using one of my own paintings to illustrate all this, let's examine the piece in light of these principles:

On Waves of Sand   20" x 24"

The Golden Mean point I used is to the lower left of center. The sharpest spot (hard to see in this small reproduction) is the creosote bush with a blowing sand cloud behind it. And the area of highest contrast is the bush and the sand cloud. (The white on the mountain peak is brighter than the blowing sand, but I kept the contrast up there low, so it doesn't grab your attention as the bush does.

After I learned these things -- one years ago, some quite recently -- I then noticed how painters of previous centuries did this stuff. The nice thing about being taught traditional approaches to art is -- one doesn't have to reinvent the wheel.

There is a lot more involved to making great art than just the above three fundamentals. But, in my opinion, learning about them helped me enormously as an artist. Next time you go to an art museum or even a gallery that carries some really good work -- look for these qualities in the paintings. The great paintings of the past and present have them. These are some of the characteristics one looks for in evaluating and judging art -- and separating the wheat from the chaff!

 

I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life

I've had the old Mac Davis song, Roll and Roll (I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life) on my mind a lot lately. With a few word changes, the song could be about me as I pursued a career making fine art. So much of the art world has changed over the years, even since I started making and selling art.

To make matters "worse," my pictorial interests are in the art of the past, especially the 19th century. I know traditional art still supposedly sells in this country, but the obsession with impressionism, digital art, fantasy, animé et al leave me feeling like I don't belong in this century. In southern California, the avant garde seems to be what people are looking at for their homes and offices. Stuff that I don't do. Art world --  "I was always just one step behind you."

We'll see what happens during the rest of 2016. After that, if I haven't moved forward, painting may become a hobby, possibly with occasional sales only. Maybe.

First Light -- Yosemite Valley     24" x 36"

Roll and Roll (I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life)

Oh, I can still remember
When I bought my first guitar
Remember walking from the shop
To put it proudly in my car

And my family listened fifty times
To my two song repertoire
I told my mom her only son
Was gonna be a star

Well, I bought all the Beatles records
Sounded just like Paul
I bought all the old Chuck Berrys
78s and all

And I sat by my record player
Playing every note they played
I watched them all on tv
And copied every move they made

Aw, rock and roll, I gave you all
The best years of my life
All the dreamy sunny Sundays
All the moonlit summer nights

I was so busy in the backroom
Writing love songs to you
While you were changing your direction
And you never even knew
That I was always just one step behind you

Well, '66 seemed like the year
I was really going somewhere
I was living in San Francisco
Wearing flowers in my hair

Singing songs of kindness
So the world would understand
The guys and me thought we were more
Than just another band

Aw, rock and roll, I gave you all
The best years of my life
All the crazy, lazy, young days
All the magic moon at nights

I was so busy on the road
Singing love songs to you
While you were changing your direction
And you never even knew
That I was always just one step behind you

Well, '71, I was all alone
When I met Sarah Jan
I was trying to go it solo
With someone elses band

And she came up to me softly
And she took me by the hand
She listened to my problems
And she seemed to understand

And she followed me to London
To a hundred hotel rooms
Through a hundred record companies
Who didn't like my tunes

She followed me back to Tennessee
Where she finally made me see
I'm just a plain old country boy
That's all I'll ever be

Aw, rock and roll, I gave you
All the best years of my life
All the dreamy, sunny Sundays
All the moonlit summer nights

And though I never knew
The magic of making it with you
I'm getting along with my country songs
Doing what I was born to do
But I was always just one step behind you

Aw, rock and roll, I gave you
All the best years of my life
All the dreamy, sunny Sundays...

The Giver of Life

The Giver of Life is the title of my latest painting. The title refers to the rains that grace our desert area every so often -- and with the rain comes life.

Giver of Life                           30" x 40"

The view is of Mount San Jacinto (west of Palms Springs, CA) as seen from across the Banning Pass in an area called the Devil's Garden, so named for containing a forest of barrel and cholla cactus. (Many of the cacti are gone -- in the 1920s, Los Angeles people came, dug out many of the barrels and transplanted them in their yards, only to die soon thereafter; plus, wildfires have destroyed many specimens).

I have seen the mountain look just like this after a storm, except the peak was often obscured by clouds. I exposed the peak, highlighting the brilliant white snow at the top.

To the left, we see a red tail hawk on the wing, coming out after the rains and looking for tasty goodies to eat.

The desert can be a spectacular place to be if you are there at the right time. My goal is to capture those special times.

(By the way, my website URLs are SouthwestSpaces.com and MarkJunge.com). ☺
 

The Lady and the Horses

My latest painting, Jan with Candy and Mango, is a commission that features a long-time friend and two of her equine pals -- a pony named Candy, and Mango the half-Arabian horse.

The horse owner Jan is dressed in 1930s-era attire and is posing with one each of her ponies and horses. I saw a picture she had taken, and it already had a dreamy look to it. So I wanted to capture that look, make Jan the star of the painting, and render the horses as accurately as possible. I "zoomed-in" on the original image, giving the subjects what photographers call a "telephoto perspective." So we don't see the normal foreshortening of the lady's or horses' features.

I worked mostly from a rather pixelized digital photo, but I was able to supplement that image with additional pictures I was able to obtain. Some items I had to do a little educated guesswork -- thankfully, I had additional pictures of all three critters☺, and I've been around horses enough in the past so I remembered sufficient detail about horsie anatomy and tack.

Best of all, the horse owner has seen MY digital images of the finished painting, and SHE seems pretty pleased with the result! I'm in the process of varnishing the piece now, and I expect to be able to deliver it to Jan next week.

Show at Old Town Gallery & Gifts, Yucca Valley, CA

I have a show going on at Old Town Gallery & Gifts in Yucca Valley, CA. (Their website is here).

The reception was on Sunday, April 17th. The show ends on May13th -- just a few weeks from now! So, this would be a good time to run over there and see what you may want to add to your art collection!
 

This is a view of my paintings as one would face to the east. Mostly desert subjects, but not all of them.







  

And this is the view looking toward the west...or northwest, actually.









The three "Under $300" paintings. (They're 11" x 14" and are priced at $175 each).

So -- this is my first local showing in years. A lot depends on how well things go at Old Town Gallery & Gifts before I decide about future shows, although I already have something lined up for June, 2016 in the nearby town of Joshua Tree.

Let's hope!!

Wildflowers in the Desert

April has been a busy month for me. Unfortunately, I've gotten little painting done because of all of the other things that have fallen this month -- doctors, dentists (both which remind me of how old and dilapidated I'm getting) and other stuff.

BUT -- a couple of worthwhile things happened that needed to fit into the schedule. One was my gallery reception -- I'll save that post for next time when I get more pictures.

The other was going out looking for wildflowers outside of Joshua Tree National Park (I may have to go there pretty soon, too).

Unfortunately, the rainfall was less than hoped for, and what rain there was appears to have been quite sporadic. But The Wiffee and I did locate a few places that showed some unexpected splendor.

Near the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve, Sawtooth Mountains in the background

Beavertail Cactus in Bloom

Closeup, Desert Mallow

Yucca Valley, CA

We were lucky to have a warm, beautiful day to see these gems. Of course, they look better in real life -- for some reason, photos don't quite capture it. I hope my paintings of these places will.