The Gilcrease

I have often visited the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa since the 90s. It rarely disappoints. Honestly, Tulsa has some great art. I saw the Moran retrospective there in 1998, which was amazing - tons of watercolors on view - made my head spin. Like I said before the Gilcrease is the best place to study Moran's work with over two-thousand of the artists' works in the collection all purchased from Moran's daughter Ruth's estate in 1948.

Below, me in front of Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, Idaho, 1900, one of Moran's last great pictures.















below, another great picture from 1891, Spectres from the North, Moran's recollection and homage to Frederic Church's 1862, Icebergs, now in the Dallas Museum of Art. I stuck myself in for scale. It is a bit smaller than the Shoshone Falls, which is roughly 6x11', Spectres is only 6x9' very similar in scale to Church's Icebergs which is about 5x9.5'
















Gilcrease made his money in oil and began collecting in 1922. The musuem holds Native American artifacts, western and American history paintings, and American historical objects and documents they tout the only certified hand written copy of the Declaration of Independance. Alexandre Hogue, a Texas painter, who decamped to Oklahoma to teach in Tulsa in 1945, evidently designed the first Gilcrease museum. There are great examples of his work both at the Philbrook and Gilcrease.

They also own this great painting by Hogue, Crucified Land, which speaks to the great Drought Stricken Area, painting here in Dallas.















The Whistler I mentioned from the Gilcrease.

Nocturne, The Solent, 1866, Gilcrease purchased it in 1948. The only great Whistler anywhere near here.












There are also works by Eakins, Sargent, Homer, Bierstadt, Taos school painters, and many more. Unfortunately on this trip they only had a western themed installation so many of the general American Favs were not on view. Tulsa is also known for great architecture, particularly art deco. I will post on that next.

More Moran

Like a broken record...

last weekend, I visited the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK. It was not my first visit, but it is a great place to view art of the American West. They own, arguably, the best collection of works by Thomas Moran anywhere.

Below, a great watercolor of the Cliffs at Green River, WY









This best illustrates Moran's use of toned paper and gouache (pronounced kind of like guawash- opaque white, or Chinese white for highlights). It is an excellent example of the field sketches and how Moran could use these for finished oils back in the studio.

below American Fork Canyon, Utah.















Moran made these sketches like the one above, as general notes on color and form, so that he could recreate the scene back in his studio. I like the sawn logs in the foreground of this watercolor. Ummm, log.
















Anyway... there were about 8 watercolors on view, which is pretty amazing, but should be the obligation of this institution. Thomas Gilcrease bought over 1,000 of Moran's field sketches in 1948 from his daughter Ruth, so eight is still fairly fractional.

I was most excited to see the Garden of the Gods watercolor. I have been looking at it in a book and it is about 3x4" so to see the full 9x12" watercolor in person was amazing.

I guess this was taken from west of the gateway rocks coming down from Glen Eyrie. It is just a guess, if I am wrong.














The Gilcrease has the best painting by J. A. M. Whistler in the region, Nocturne, The Solent, and a great Alexander Hogue, along with many other great works of American art. Unfortunately, they were not on view on this visit.

More LA Affection/Affectation - whiteout

When I first visited LA in my adult life, I hated it. I could not understand why anyone would ever live there. I was there for a week in March of 2000, and it was a pure whiteout week, meaning that everything in the distance was obliterated by water vapor off the coast and fine particulates that are suspended in the air so that visibility is reduced to within a very few miles.

This meant that the basin, the Hollywood Hills, the ocean, was obscured or obliterated from view. What you could see faded away to nothing in the near distance. I thought it was pollution, and I suppose that to some degree it was (is), but it is more about the marine layer, a fog that rolls in off the ocean in the evening and causes the phenomenon. When I interviewed to work our there in 2003, it was January, the clearest time of year. So I knew it was not always white.

I did not try to capture the nothingness of LA whiteout that often, but in the drawing belowI captured a whiteout day from the Getty.



What this whiteout, along with LA weather in general, does is obscure and change the landscape everyday, throughout the day. I was fortunate to watch it change from a high perch... my office window. It had a great view right over Bel Air, across the Hollywood Hills towards the San Gabriels and Mt. Wilson, with the entire LA basin out to my right.

The two views below are just the view straight out to Bel Air.



You can actually see the outline of the San Gabriels in this one.



Other views of LA from the west.



A particularly clear view from the south promontory towards Century City.



The view from the South Terrace, May 27, 2010. It was a rainy day.



I also tend to compact these scenes a bit, but I like this one.

The best thing I saw in LA

Honestly, these images do no justice.




http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/urban_panoramas/

The link will show some of what I saw, but Soo Kim's work was amazing. Maniacal! It was great the effort, and the time involved. I really loved her work and Opie's. I was a breath of fresh air at the Getty.

The best thing I saw in LA.

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/urban_panoramas/

Burchfield and Me

Mark mentioned from my last post about my recent LA work, that he thought I should have seen the recent show of work by Charles Burchfield at the newly expanded or rebuilt Burchfield Penny Art Center at Buffalo State College. I did not, although I would very much like to go to Buffalo. There is much to see there, and not just Niagara and the Yellow Christ.

I have seen a lot of Burchfield though. I saw the 1997-98 retrospective at both the Columbus Museum of Art and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Prior to that, I have seen his work at the Wichita Art Museum, they have five strong watercolors, as well as the works in both the Amon Carter and Dallas Museum of Art (both nice, but not his best, more regionalist). While living in Southern California I got the opportunity to see the great holdings of Burchfield (although small again) at San Diego Museum of Art.

Here is a nice Sultry Night below.



I have always been inspired by Burchfield, and I think about his work often, I just do not seem to have the ability to let go and run into the fantastic. When I look at some Burchfield, I feel he is trying to give us a sense of how he responds to the sensations of the moment, not just how the scene he paints looks, but also how it feels, and what he hears. There are wonderful emanations that move through the works as if everything is alive and growing before our eyes. I was driving home tonight and watching the trees toss about in the wind and thought that must be what Burchfield was going for. Movement, motion, light, life. It sounds a bit new age-y, I know, and I do not think Burchfield would have liked that at all, but he is very attuned to the natural world around him.

Below is the sun shining through by Burchfield (sorry, not sure of the exact title)




Below, my Sun through in the Giant Forest, Sequoia. I know I was thinking of Burchfield when I painted this.



I think a lot about Burchfield in relation to his viewing of celestial bodies. It (painting the night sky) is something I wish I had more opportunity to do, and it is one of the things that makes me want to live away from the city.

below Burchfield, Orion in Winter



My, Orion, March 12, 2010.



Again, Burchfield and I are often nothing alike, but like so many artists, he is often in my thoughts.

LA Affection - Affectation

I have been back from LA for almost a week. It was only my second time back, and it was different. I felt like I had never left. I did not get to some of my favorite places or old haunts. I was three miles from Santa Monica and Venice and was never any closer than Playa del Rey. I did not even attempt the coast at Palisades or Malibu. I could kick myself for the later since juvenile whites were breaching off Will Rogers State Beach while I was there.

I also still didn't feel an earthquake.

I did a number of sketches, but not till the last few days of the trip did I really settle into painting. I made a few nice studies of my old neighborhood, around Ben's and of Eric and Suzan's backyard. I became really interested in line work after I returned from LA. It was too much exposure to Van Gogh drawings at the Getty, along with a lot of interest in Klimt when the Maria Altman paintings were restituted and put on view at LACMA. I was thinking of Klimt a lot as I made these. Then Jaime reminded me of a Klimt postcard I gave her that she had tacked up at her studio. I had forgot.

Below, Klimt, Roses under Trees




Below, Beeches. This is one of the Bloch Bauer paintings restituted in 2006 to her heir, Maria Altman. Before they were sold at auction they were put on display all summer at LACMA.



My works from the trip...

Mar Vista Fence, Jacaranda




Kumquat Tree, Eric and Suzan's Backyard, Silverlake



Hibiscus and Banana Plant Leaves, Ben and Scott's



Honestly, LA would not be so beautiful if it were not for the mountains, ocean, and the abundance of insane vegetation. Anything grows there.

I need to write about American Stories, and other art I saw while running around So Cal. More soon.

Other Connections

I am currently in a show in Houston, Terra Infirma. The title refers to a group of watery landscapes by Dixie Friend Gay and swampy landscapes by Ruben Coy. My landscapes are bombscapes.

The co-director of the gallery wrote the following about my recent work for the press release for the show.

"Scott Winterrowd makes atmospheric watercolors of atomic bomb test sites. These drawings explode with color. Winterrowd’s drawings are like Turner’s, that is if Turner was plagued by the thought that the world could go up in smoke at any moment due to nuclear fallout."

I found it funny that although Volker and I had not actually met or talked that he picked up on the Turner influence in my work. Actually I have never been a great Turner fan, although there are certain works that speak to me. I was fortunate to see the large Turner exhibition, and there were a number of great watercolors. I have always marveled at how Ruskin called Turner's abstract atmospheric paintings "True to Nature."

My influence from Turner comes via Moran. Below one of Moran's many Cliffs on the Green River paintings, and below that Turner's Burning of the Houses of Parliament.





Even more than Moran, Frederic Church has been a major influence, plus I have spent a lot of time with one of Church's great pictures, Icebergs, at the Dallas Museum of Art. Church was hailed as the American Turner after the display of his first great picture, Niagara, in London in 1857, the same year it was completed.



This work is 5 x 7 feet, and it hangs in the Corcoran Gallery in DC today. I tend to think that Church and his reference for the sublime in nature was a factor in my paintings of Nuclear tests. I was not thinking consciously about it, but there are some definite parallels.

A nice Church and Turner paring below. Top Cotopaxi, 1862, with Turner's, The Fighting Temeraire, 1838.






And then there are my bombs...



Mohawk Test, watercolor and ink on paper



and Licorne Test, watercolor and gouache on paper

More Moran and Me

Back to my work and personal motivations. Below are some different images of the Gateway Rocks at GOGs. I have paired them Moran's images, his small oil which is now in a private collection, and the print below, which was most likely used in a tourist guide to lure people to visit the Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs area, the Saratoga of the West.

This is a hand colored engraving, I am sure it is a book plate print.

My view through the rocks.

Moran's oil again.

My view of the gateway rocks with the whiterock formations in the foreground. I particularly enjoy Moran's work. If we think about it, he established for us the views in many of the major parks such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon that have become so famous and visited today.

I alos have great respect for him, as he would trek out many summers on army expeditions for months at a time into wilderness areas, sleeping out under the stars (or in a tent) in what must have been (and would still be) pretty cold elevations even in June and July.

I thought of him often when backpacking in the Sierras. I will have to add some images form those trips soon, and talk about past adventures and art.

My one regret while in Colorado Springs was that we did not make it to Manitou Springs. I have always wanted to visit this site.

These are the manitou Cliff Dwellings, created at the beginning of the 20th century from the remains of a collapsed ruin in the Four Corners region. The structures are created to mimick buildings in major Mesa Verde sites. I love the idea of creating fake archaeological sites for the tourist trade.

Even more of my favorite stuff

In the show at the Carter there is an amazing drawing by Mark Tobey, I think it is called Broadway Afternoon. Below is not it, I could not find an image, but this is a similar drawing. I really enjoy the maniacal line work in Tobey's work. There are a couple of great Tobey's at the DMA and one in the Carter collection now. He learned Japanese calligraphy, and created his own visual language based in frenetic line work. Compositions such as this one are full of energy and movement. There are also these embedded faces, as in the drawing at the Carter right now. There are numerous smaller faces in the drawing from the Wadsworth, emerging from the patterns of line, as if they are faces of people you might pass in a bustling crowd.



If I could take one drawing home with me, it would be the Tobey.

More of my Favorite Stuff

In the show at the Carter, there are a number of great works by John Marin. There is an incredible graphite drawing from 1913-14 (my favorite) and a number of nice, if not typical, watercolors. The one below is a standout, From the Bridge, NYC, 1933. It is one of a few made that depict a similar scene. If you notice, the lower left left shows a horse and cart depicted in a cubo-futurist manner- meaning kind of cubist, but it also shows motion, as if we are seeing multiple views of the horse and cart as it passes us by. This is contrasted with the modern, the skyscrapers. The black lines steaming from the left are not Futurist force-lines, but the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, which by this time was about 50 years old. Not so modern really, but Marin was responding to the sprouting skyscrapers across New York City between 1913 with the construction of the Woolworth (which he painted-a lot), and into the 30s with the Chrysler and Empire State.




This was also a subject that Marin may have adapted from his friend, Alfred Stieglitz. below is Old and New New York, by the famed photographer.



I think, as I look at this in reproduction, that Marin is showing us in the grean field at right the girder scaffolding of new buildings, and the towers of lower Manhattan from the bridge. What makes the work so exciting is the use of collage. Not pasted discarded papers, but of different drawings on different sheets of watercolor paper, with scenes pieced together.



The white areas around the horse and cart are torn, heavy, watercolor paper. The buildings, girders, and some of the lines of the cables are made by scraping the paper with a sharp blade (shaving through the painted colors to the paper). There seems to be about three different sheets pieced together to make this work.

It is really a complex and interesting watercolor.

Unintentionally, I seem to have some affinity with Marin, who is not always my favorite watercolorist (he did make oils, but they do not hold a candle to his watercolors).

A lot of my field sketches, have a Marin kind of feel, kind of cubistic.

These are two from my trip sketching in Bandelier, New Mexico in August 2009. It is Frijoles Falls and Frijoles Canyon respectively.







Marin painted in New Mexico in 1929 and 1930 only, but made a number of watercolors while out there both summers. He worked mostly in and around Taos.

Here are a couple:Taos Canyon and the sacred Taos Mountain.

Stuff I Really Like

I recently saw the drawing show at the Amon Carter Museum again. I have always loved the Carter for it's collection of American art, and it's riches in 20th century modernism. The show is drawn from the works on paper collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum and in terms of some of my favorite painters, it is amazing. All 20th century.

Take for example:
Arthur Dove



This work is in the show, and it has always been a favorite. The larger oil and wax emulsion version is in the collection at Yale University Art Gallery. This work is great, sorry for the bad web image, but the bleeding and the use of textured white paper is a knockout.

There are also a lot of small 4 x5 " sketches that Dove made in his late career for larger finshed oils. They are phenomenal. There is a small sketch for his painting Flight, that is now in the Phillips collection in DC.

Here is a sample of one of Dove's small sketches, not in the exhibition.



These are so tiny, and made from oil, casein, gasoline, wax, among other things. He was very experimental in the materials he used.

My favorite work by Dove is a collage titled, Rain, from 1924. It is a collage of a metal sheet, a little paint, rubber cement, and twigs. It is the most amazing work and it lives at the National Gallery in DC. It was O'Keeffe's, and she kept it to the end of her life. I cannot find an image at present, but I will.

The Demuth's in the show are very nice as well. Here is one.



I think this work is a bit faded, and unfortunately there are better Charles Demuth still-life paintings. The best Demuth's in the show are Eight O'Clock (Evening and Morning). It was my first time to see them in person.

The show ends May 30 so get over to see it. The Carter is Free. I will post more of my favorites from the show later.

Moran and Me

At top is my rendition of the gateway Rocks and Pikes Peak, and below is Thomas Moran's, Pikes Peak through the Gateway Rocks, ca. 1881. Moran is known to literally move mountians in his compositions in order to heighten the drama of the scene. I suppose I do as well, I tend to compress the images upward. When compared to the photograph of the actual site (below and taken from a slightly different vantage point), you can see that Moran has greatly diminished the central rock in the "gateway" and emphasized the white outcropping in the foreground. Scale is also an issue, with the tiny figures on the path dwarfed by the towering formations.
Moran made pencil and watercolor skethches when working in the field and then transformed them into finished oils back at his studio in New Jersey.

From the view I was working from, you cannot see the white stone formation, it is hidden behind the hill.