The Story Of Diego Rivera and Charisma
I always start my art residences, by giving a lecture on the lives of a few artists. I began one class by talking about the great Mexican muralist, Diego Riviera, partly because the class was mainly made up of Latino students. I needed them to know about the intense and unremitting labor required to create a great work of art. And yet, I also wanted them to know that even a rather over-weight ugly man with bulging eyes could still be charming and successful during his life. He was famous not only for his great work and talent, but also for his charismatic personally. Everyone wanted to be around him and in spite of his appearance many found him irresistible and exciting. As I ended my lecture, one rather over-weight student raised his hand and asked, “Were can I get some charisma?”
The Best Day Of My Life
At the beginning of many of my art residency, I have a color mixing session, as many of my students have never had an art class before so they have no knowledge of mixing colors. After explaining the process, I noticed one student looking quite wide-eyed. As I walked over to his desk I asked, “How are you doing?” He looked up at me sort of bewildered and said in all seriousness, “This is the best day of my life!” I asked, “why?” He answered, “Because its magic. I can make my own colors, the way I want.” This human act changed something in his life. By simply mixing colors, he now knows how to control his own art world, which filled him with awe!
Open Studio
The Open Studio at Hunters Point Ship Yard (www.hunterspointcommunity.com) was a great success. Some 400 people came to the building 116 studio 10 to see my work along with my studio mate Rob Cox. May 2nd and 3rd saw some 150 studios open to the public and even with the rain many people came to see the artist work. I sold three paintings and talked with so many people who came into my studio…it was great!
The recent sales include an abstract painting on paper that I did last year. It was a painting that was slated for a commission that was not chosen but it is still a very good abstract and I was very pleased that it found a good collector to own it 
And I sold a small oil on panel to a collector in Oakland, California and another Pastel to collectors in Pacifica, California.
How I Ran Over My Own Painting
One day while driving outside of Taos, I spotted my next landscape to paint. I parked myself about 10 feet inside the entrance of a dirt road. I quickly unloaded my painting materials and set-up my easel. After sometime, I was approached by a Pueblo police officer that demanded I get off their property. Unbeknown to me, I had wandered into private Pueblo Indian land. I apologized and quickly began to pack up my things.
In my haste to drive away, I forget to pick up my painting and left it near the front tire of my car. I had just started to drive the car when I felt it had run over something. Almost instantly, I remembered that I had not loaded the painting I’d been working on. I jumped out and saw I had indeed run over my own painting. The canvas was face down with the car tire still on it. I quickly moved the car off the painting; amazingly, the painting was still intact. I simply brushed off the dirt and gravel from the surface of the canvas and placed it inside the car. Later, I finished that painting on location but this time outside the private Indian land. I recently sold this painting, which I named “Taos Mountain” because it was a picture with great texture – lots of dirt that was embedded into the paint and power from its ordeal of being created.
The Woman And The Bear
A few years back, I won the Helene Wurlitzer award for painting; the prize was a three-month residency in Taos, New Mexico. One day, I found myself painting just at the edge of town when a heavyset woman sprang out from a house nearby with a shotgun and four little, yapping dogs. Walking towards me, she said that she’d seen a bear around earlier that morning and that I had better watch out. Afterward, she lumbered back towards her ramshackle house trailed by her four little dogs. I quickly finished my painting as fast as I could because I didn’t want to hang around and wait to have either her or the bear come back!
Landscape Painting
I have always found power, energy, and inspiration from the locations that I use as subjects for my paintings. It is the give and take from the view where I stand, the time of day, the temperature, the wind, and the light that fuse my attention and direct how I will interpret that landscape. Many times I will have the image of the landscape in my mind from previous visits to the site. The image has been burned into my psyche and will not let me go until I realize a painting of that place. My mood dictates what palette of colors I prepare on that day. When I arrive I may even start painting without drawing. I want to react to the location emotionally and show how I feel about the spot through the colors. I do not record a place in a way of the Impressionist’s painters; instead I am reacting from within, changing my color use according to how I am experiencing the place and not just how I am seeing it. Within my mind and in the composition I may coax buildings closer to one another or drift a tree, a path, or a body of water further from my view. It feels right when I make these changes, not only for my composition but also for the emotional impact that I want to convey about of the place. Many times I will find myself elevating above the scene in my mind. It’s my consciousness floating from my body over the land and painting it from a different vantage point, literally levitating above it.
Though Vincent Van Gogh’s attacks of the canvas with jabs and punches of color and force have inspired how I apply my paint, I do differ from him in the end results. I want the viewers of my paintings to be surprised and shocked at my choices of colors so they are seeing a landscape that cannot be real but somehow exists on the canvas. Armed with my brushes, palette and favorite palette knife, I use thin layers of paint to begin to build the image. Different types of brush strokes rise from my body to take on forms that attract me. Some times I paint very fast, then slowly – the tempo varying according the varying emotions of the composition. I am always amazed at what I am looking at: the colors, forms and light vie for my attention, screaming to be included in my composition to convey my emotions. I use a multitude of brushes, not wanting to stop working to clean them, the unexpected colors surprise and stir me. And when I finally stop, I have spent my paint and feel drained of excitement and my inner vision is completed so I no longer feel I just have to paint that place.
More thoughts on teaching
I find gratification in the moments of joy and pride that emerge from the students when they discover something new from their work. I like to unlock their creativity so it becomes a tangible work of art from which it can be shared and learned. The fact that I facilitate in this discovery process and witness these students become creative always brings me back to teaching. Further, their growing enthusiasm and sense of wonder propel me in my own creative work.
The John Swett School administration (San Francisco School District) wanted a mural about California’s history permanently painted on the schools’ exterior walls. When I told my students, a mixture of predominantly African American and Asian kids from low-income families, of this, I did not get a single response. Instead I just saw blank stares. These students were different from my own background and upbringing; I needed their help in finding out what would excite them to be creative. I asked, “What do you want to draw?” After a moment of silence, one student in the back of the room finally shouted, “ I want to draw cars!” Then all the other students joined, “Cars!” Cars would not have been my choice for the mural but the students explained to me that cars were important to them – cars were critical parts of their neighborhood. I knew that it was important for them to be supported by me in their choice so they could be creative. Every single student knew actually what he or she wanted to express and they held back nothing. For the first time, these students were creatively inspired and felt a connection with the mural – a sense of pride and meaning as a group. I was proud of their achievement and fought with the school to accept and understand why the mural fits their intent. After awhile, they too saw the relevance of this beautiful mural.
I strive to make a positive difference in my students’ lives by helping them to expand, and discover their own creativity. This can affect their lives in so many ways. In one school, I was doing a color mixing class when I noticed a student looking quite wide-eyed. As I walked over to him, I asked, “How are you doing?” He looked up at me and said in all seriousness, “This is the best day of my life!” I asked, “Why?” He answered, “Because its magic. I can make my own colors, the way I want.”
Notes on a Residency
One of my most successful residencies came recently at a school in Novato. The PTA had funded my residency and also bought 36 – 4’x 8 feet wooden panels for a huge mural project. The Principal wanted all the students at the school to be involved in this project. At the first planning meeting I attended, it became apparent that not everyone was interested in participating in this mural project. I saw some very tired and overwhelmed teachers. Half the teachers voiced concerns about the size and hard work of the project and the other half looked quite bored and not engaged. Also the teachers had absolutely no concept of what could be done as far as subject matter for their grade level.
So I separately meet with the teachers as a group from each grade level to work out their subject matter for the mural. Then I meet individually with each of them to work out further details for their own class needs and curriculum integration. My goal was to engage each teacher and to have them take ownership and pride in the project.
One by one the teachers got excited as the mural took on a life of its own. Full of passionate intensity, the students drew and painted huge images on the panels. Slowly each panel began to take shape with distinctive and versatile forms. A couple of weeks into the project, something extraordinary happened – some of the teachers began painting along with their students. It was a striking image of pure fun!
As the mural project hummed along, the mood of the whole school began to change. Each time I walked through the halls of the school, I would pass a giant painted panel placed outside each classroom, so everyone could see the creative development. Then I had each teacher put a call out for parent volunteers. This was a natural step, because each day the students would bring in their parents to see the progress of each panel. Several parents came to each session to help out. Some classes put together four panels horizontally to make one very huge image. Others placed their panels vertically to make another image. I witnessed everyone working together like a full rhymed sonnet. Everyone felt joy and astonishment at there own work! The change of the whole school was dramatic! Within nine weeks of my residency everything was different about the school. It was now on the map as a “school of art.”
Thoughts on Teaching Art – pt. 2
I have seen directly what art and creativity can do for a student. Often the students I teach have never had art lessons so their first introduction to art is discovery in visual wonderment and awe. Combining different art techniques such as; color mixing, textures, and line drawing helps students understand their way of seeing is unique and that everyone sees the world differently.
Learning visually also changes how a person sees his/her environment and how he/she relates to it. When a student does a drawing using perspective he/she learns proportions, distance, and form. Furthermore, as a student paints he/she is engaging a different part of the brain, enhancing visual acuity, hand eye motor functions, and complementing other skills by broadening a total visual awareness. This transformation makes a significant impact on the student’s life by changing the way the student perceives the world. I have witnessed this change many times and it is the main reason why I teach. I became an artist because I embraced my own creative transformation at a young age. Now I want to share this creative spark with everyone with whom I come in contact with.