Douglas Witmer
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
sktchbk : train of thought
(click individual images to enlarge each)
Handwriting reads:
I want to make monochromes
but I want to also make "lateral compositions"
I want to make multi panel pieces
I want to make things large, but have logistical challenges
^sometimes
I want to make stair steps again
but I don't want to paint them as "pictures"
I think of each bar as being perhaps an individually stetched canvas...or maybe they'll be painted tapes.
Here are a few related images from the past
Whirlpool, 2002
Acrylic on canvas
56 x 71 inches
Refrain, 2002
Acrylic on linen
two panels, 51 x 88 inches overall
(installation view at The Philadelphia Cathedral)
31.5.06 
8 Comments:
Excellent! They look so good altogether like this. The "revelation" here is that it looks like you're drawing the floor in each, which really puts these on a "wall," which gives them a gargantuan scale, and which also provides some clues about how you'd install many of these things: way down low just above the baseboard. The strange thing is that I could accept these as shaped paintings, or I could easily accept these as rectangles defined by the framing three edges of the paper (left, right, top) and where the floor begins.
By 
, at
5/31/2006
Hi douglas,
I notice often statements like "I don't want them to be paintings" . Could you talk more about your work and why you don't "want them to be paintings".
Thanks!
By 
richard kooyman, at
6/03/2006
Hi Richard--
Nice to be in touch again with you again...I'll respond very briefly here and perhaps we can chat more on this. I can't think of when I ever said that I don't want my works to be paintings. Quite the opposite. I see myself as completely involved with painting, with great reverence for the tradition across all cultures. Where my jargon might get tricky is getting into the idea of painting pictures. This is something in which I personally have no interest at this time. So in the case of these sketches, I'm thinking about the possibly making real painted things. The specifics of these painted things...just many rectangles grouped together...may begin to form other kinds of associations. For me in particular with these I'm interested in the illusion of perspectival space...the age old painting problem. But unlike the earlier works pictured below, I see these as being independent of any kind of outer edge or "framing" device. The idea of the edges of the painting as a window into which we look is removed.
I guess you could say I'm interested in many ways that a painting can "be."
Let's say I painted seven blue bars each 6 inches by 6 feet long, stacked with 2 inches in between, on a canvas with a white ground that was 4 x 7 feet. The canvas was stretched on deep stretchers that come out about 2 inches from the wall. The first of the seven blue bars was anchored to the bottom edge of the canvas. This canvas would then be hung so the bottom edge was six inches up from the floor.
Then let's say I painted seven canvases, each 6 inches by 6 feet long, with the exact same color blue as before. I hung these canvases so that the bottom one was six inches up from the floor, and stacked the rest with 2 inches in between.
The resulting images would be nearly identical. Except that I can only assume the feeling/meaning changes because of the physical specifics of the way each piece is handled.
This is the kind of territory I'm exploring all the time with my paintings.
By the way, I think this is a pretty great painting!
By Douglas Witmer, at
6/03/2006
Thanks for the comment on my painting. I do love that little guy. So..help me understand here...would you say you painitngs on canvas are "pictures" that you have painted and your not interested in that any more or are you saying 'Pictures" are somehting else. I guess I'm asking what you mean about 'painting pictures".
I see these new large scale pieces your explaining to be in one sense sculpture. Its an exciting time today with the bounderys of painting and sculpture so transparent. And yet on the other hand since they are on the wall, and on canvas,and painted they are still, in fact, paintings and the room or wall itself becomes the confining frame.
By richard kooyman, at
6/03/2006
Would you say you painitngs on canvas are "pictures" that you have painted and your not interested in that any more or are you saying 'Pictures" are somehting else. I guess I'm asking what you mean about 'painting pictures".
When I make a painting on a surface that is hung on the wall, I don't think of it as a picture. To me it is a painted object...a very shallow rectangular box on the wall. And then, as you suggest, does one consider it sculpture?...I suppose you could, but I don't. But I am interested in the "reality" of that box on the wall...the shape & depth of the support, the type of surface material, the physicality of the paint. Over the years I've done various things on the sides of the stretcher as a way of exploring and/or highlighting this reality. Currently in my studio you will find many paintings on canvas where the paint does not wrap around the sides. I suppose you could say that, after some years of exploration, I've decided to be comfortable accepting one of the basic "conventions" of painting...to put the paint on the front surface of the canvas.
With the "stair step" type of images in the sketches, a pictorial illusion of space is created so quickly...almost instantly. It feels like they almost don't need the framing device of the canvas edges. I'm interested in how these images might feel "floating free" on the wall. (Also, working in multi-piece components would give me a way to increase their scale WAY WAY beyond what I can do in my studio.)
For more on this issue as it relates to my work, I posted this essay that was written for an exhibition of mine several years ago.
http://www.douglaswitmer.com/documents/Essay_Walz_RealityCheck.htm
I think it expresses well the place that I was with my work at that time. I was working the edges of illusionism...both as an idea or concept, but also retinally with the paintings. I'm thinking about that again in these sketches, but also doing things in other directions. I would say the "crises of belief" noted in this essay are not so pointed for me as they were then. I think of the paintings from this time as having a little more of an agenda than I would want one of my paintings to have today.
So, Richard, I'm interested in how all this strikes you in relation to what you do, if you'd like to respond.
By Douglas Witmer, at
6/04/2006
Douglas,
I have a long history of working in the fine craft world. It was all about three dimensional building and exploration. Now that I have left that world and become a painter I'm totally comfortable and actually welcome the simplicity of a painting being a painting, a canvas with paint applied to its surface. ( actually I feel their is a lot of craft in art and a lot of art in craft but thats another topic.)
Personally I feel that the idea of useing a canvas and exploring ways to challenge the idea of a canvas being a canvas has been explored pretty rigourously. Thats not a judgement, just a preference. I love the idea of the act of painting. Oh sure there have been some interesting people who have jumbled things around expanded definitions of what is painting but I get the most thrill out of the personal nature of applying paint to a format.Thats what its all about for me. I've read and studied art criticism and enjoy the dialogue of ideas but when push comes to shove its the basic idea of living a life as a painter that I enjoy. So for me its about the paint, the painter, and the ideas in their heads that turn me on. Not so much the surface, or which surface, or the illusion of the surface, or the breakdown of the surface, or the revolutionary surface, or the.....
By richard kooyman, at
6/04/2006
Richard, I'm right with you when you say "the idea of useing a canvas and exploring ways to challenge the idea of a canvas being a canvas has been explored pretty rigourously." And even more with you when you say you "get the most thrill out of the personal nature of applying paint to a format. Thats what its all about."
In the beginning, and in the end, that IS what it's all about, isn't it?
By Douglas Witmer, at
6/04/2006
I think the drawings are great!
I understand Douglas's thinking, I think.
I often think thoughts this way myself, though never agree with them.
I wouldn't call this a cleavage, or a divorce, but an awareness.
If I may add some:
Richard's points are good. They are about 'givens'. Any aspect of a given can be agreed upon, or left, to hurdle down terrain.
At the same time 'the given' can be explored, as it has, rigorously, and thoroughly, throughout painting's history.
Thoroughly, and rigorously are two words that suggest that the terrain has already been exhausted. Douglas's questioning, and thinking out loud, the juxtaposition of two givens within the history of painting, especially the more abstract kind, is important, not for its dualism, not for the awareness of the given, but for and from the personal perspective, questioning and observing possibility of choice that is not divorce from, in this case, painting, but clicks on.
A painting on canvas, or any support, even on the thinnest support, scale, has depth-- has a quality intrinsic to the material and size. It's a thing! And as a thing it can be explored in a variety of ways. From this thing-differring-points-of-views a painting urges us toward another thing that is less tangible from a distance, though, as Richard points out, is a tangible thing closer up--hobbled together by the talent or talentless.
A Painting on any support, unless directly on the wall, is a thing. As a thing it behaves like all things do in the light--throws a shadow. Even directly on the wall the light that informs throws a shadow, the architecture particularizes and convenes in certain parts of the wall ,ceiling, and floor, as dictated by the organizing light.
Painting is a thing, first and foremost. But it is many things. That's its happiness.
When painting paints in a shadow the nature of it as thing is negated convincingly enough that we are left thinking we are looking at a painting.
When we notice that painting exists in our irregular world of light, and form, and distance, not to mention stance--this world, emotional and structural, full of focuses, in-the-roads and awareness, confines, explorations, tighten and release as does the student in the eye of the givens--unless another name is used.
By brent hallard, at
6/07/2006