Studio Update:  

Giving it all up.

After months of serious and calm deliberation I decided to give up art. My first exhibition was when I was 17, 33 years ago--that is a long time. Since then, the more I learn the more I bang my head against the wall of indifference: passionless people; soulless critics with disintegrated methodologies; crass and manipulative art dealers; and museum directors that would rather give space to the retarded than to talent.

I virtually spent all my time alone, I have no savings, no home. I think it is time I spent more time with family and friends. I have always loved teaching and I like working with children. Perhaps, open a small art school in a place like Colorado.

But it is clear to me that the dedication required to make my art is not shared--and it really is too difficult to do without a knowledgeable and supportive audience.

Michael Newberry
New York, April 1, 2007

April Fools!!!

No, a long time ago I let the artist reign--and have never regretted a second of it.

Okay. The real update:

I hate multi-tasking. Like the rest of you I can do it if I must, but there is no substitute for clearing a path of time for one work. Now that Artemis is behind me, I have one work left that I had begun while I lived in Greece, Venus.

I love the feeling of arriving at a destination--like at the beach, or boarding a ship, or entering an airport. I feel a surging excitement, a confidence, a kind of energy that, summed up in words, might be: "I am on top of the world." It's not a competitive feeling, or a superior feeling--nothing like that at all. It's simply a great feeling of being alive with a slight, introspective awareness of that feeling. My idea of Venus is that she has arrived, fully formed, in all her beauty, as if she had always existed that way. No doubts, no show--just her internal splendor being magnified by her body, the setting, and the light.

I do have a small doubt about showing work unfinished, for the simple reason that there are problems yet to be solved--and, like da Vinci said, almost everyone can see the problems--and that can be annoying!

I finally feel the end in sight. I have juggled color and tones relentlessly, and they feel like they have locked in--like a jigsaw puzzle. The work now is to finish off the detailing (which is no small feat). For example, here are two studies I did for her face:

One is for color nuances, the other for fine details.

In any case I will be focused on her for the next two weeks.

Last week I gave a small class and did this during it:

I am using it as a color and light study for Himalayan Flight.  I am working with two different light sources: a hot pink one, coming in from the left, and a cool light, coming in as if from behind our right shoulder.

Last month I worked on this intensely for a couple of weeks. It's 3x4', oil. This is the underpainting stage. I want to develop it further, then do more pastel color studies.

Often, the casual observer doesn't really understand why something may take a long time to complete. I wish that they could talk with the artists in my mentor program! There are several key points I need to nail down to be happy with my work, one of which is getting all of the spatial relationships of the objects working properly. No amount of detail solves a spatial relationship. Though details give the illusion that something is finished, if it ain't got the space right it's dead.

When I am done with Venus, I will go back to this, turn it upside down, sideways, look at in a mirror--and keep tweaking the space and form of the objects until I am totally jazzed.

Well, that's it for this April's update.

Cheers,

Michael