Oil Painter's Journal

December 2006 (podcast)

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:10:16 PST

Color Mixing Secrets
The Glooming
Michelangelo at the Coffee Shop
Lord of the Flies
The Color of Color
An Untoward Dalliance
By the Light of the Moon
Staring so Hard You Can't See
The Temperature of a Painting
Perpetuating a Might Have Been
A Slow Slide Sideways
Small Heads
Painting Seasons
Head in the Clouds
Sparking Psyche
From Antiquity to Antique
Loosee Leftee, Tightee Rightee
One Thing in Life is Free

November 2006 (podcast)

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:08:06 PST

Oh Sienna
Phtalo Blue and Impuissance
Extra Fresh
Hey, That's My View
Standing in Front of a Painting
Still Life Elements
Morning Light
Painting with Two Colors
Pallid and Pretty
Talented Eye
Heat in the Firehouse
Eye Contact
Center of the Universe
Cape Cod Idyll
Rose Colored Glasses
Keen Sense of the Obvious
Camera Obscura: Light in a Dark Room
Turkey Day
Complexity of Quiet
John Singer Sargent's Palette
Final Rigging
Baby Laps
Fog Induced

October 2006 (podcast)

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:12:52 PST

Welcome
Opening Doors, Outdoors
Traffic Obstacle
Is Somebody Trying to Tell Me Something?
Channeling Angela
How many dabs is a man?
Frodo's Pergola
Roses and a Stone Wall
Taste in Gnats
Plein Air Appurtenances
Look, I'm an Airplane. Wheeee!
Pushing and Pulling
Scribbling on the Tabula Rasa
The Sound of Painting
Diffusion and Halationn
Audience of One
Ferry to the Vineyard
Starting Trouble
A Knife, A Face and a Bit of Color
Eye Candy
Tea for Three

Subscribing to Podcasts

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:29:49 PST

These podcasts that I'm adding are audio versions of journal entries starting with October 2006. To subscribe, click on the "subscribe" link at the right and choose your reader. If you don't have a reader, Itunes is free and easy to use. Download the software at Apple and then come back and subscribe through this journal. If you have Itunes already, just go to the Itunes store and search for Doug Rugh and subscribe that way. As new entries are posted to this journal, audio files will then automatically appear in Itunes or your reader.

Thanks for leaving comments at Itunes.

- Doug Rugh

Osborn & Rugh Gallery

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:18:56 PST

-Doug Rugh

Blink and the World Changes

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:48:50 PST

Studio/Gallery

www.OsbornAndRughGallery.com

I'm fortunate that I have to set my alarm every day. One of my first jobs was drafting for a civil engineering firm and at 5 PM every day, if you happened to stay late, you could look across the rows of empty desks -- the door swung shut only once. We arrived at 8 AM while the head draftsman arrived at 8:10 (his knowledge of drafting iconography made him indispensable). He took the newspaper into the bathroom at 11:30 and stayed until lunch. He talked often on the phone to his wife of many years in sweet hushed tones (his desk was behind mine) and had his satchel packed by 4:45.

My job now is different. I have to set my cell phone alarm so I'll know when to put down my brushes even though I'm never finished when it's time to leave. On those rare occasions when I'm checking the clock to see what time it is, I know I'm on the wrong track with my painting. One thing I've learned as an artist is that if I'm not inspired I'm wasting paint (or priming canvases the sloooow way).

Two months ago, I was sitting at my easel just as I do now, but the light has changed. The studio has also changed and my commute is longer. I was perfectly content and the normalcy of the routine demanded innovation -- a plus -- but we got the call about new studio/gallery space in Falmouth and when we saw the windows we had no choice. So yadda yadda yadda (painting with big brushes, demolition -- thanks Damon, electrician and lighting -- thanks Dave, signage -- thanks Mike, carpet splicing -- oh knees!, dump run -- thanks Tom and Tony, borrowed van -- thanks Molly, alarm, phone, insurance, web site -- click click click) and two months later I'm back at the easel dabbing with familiar brushes. Shades of Vijnana Baihriva (for those who have time to delve into ancient texts.)

The first time I walked in our finished new studio space an image of art school popped in my head: how we used to envy the grad students in the fine art department and their assigned cubicle with a window at one end and an industrial pipe easel slightly askew in the middle of the room holding a large canvas. There were splatters all over the walls and floors. The splatters were important then. That was the dream, having your own space to just paint for hours and I walk into our airy new space with the large windows on both sides and the rugs and the coffee maker in the back -- even better than grad school! That's how real life should be.

-Doug Rugh

Our New Studio/Gallery Space

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:26:48 PDT

My wife Hillary (www.HillaryOsborn.com) and I have just opened our new gallery/working studio in Falmouth, MA. Please come and visit!

More info at: www.OsbornAndRughGallery.com

-Doug Rugh

Documentary Short

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:09:21 PDT

Here is a short film by Kristen Alexander (www.MiddleWayMedia.com) that recently screened at the Woods Hole Film Festival:

-Doug Rugh

Leonardo and Rembrandt Stunned

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:37:15 PDT

View a larger image. Nobska in the Fog, 16" x 24" - oil/canvas
View a satellite map of the location.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I've traded some time with the music muse, putting aside one linear activity to make room for another: just letters for notes.

My friend Bill, an abstract and colorful painter who appreciates the representational (and hence an anomaly), visits on a regular basis and always leaves me thinking and asked, "What if Da Vinci and Rembrandt came into the studio? What would they think?"

I like the exercise of seeing through the eyes of these early mentors of mine and it gave me great pleasure to realize that the masters would be in awe of the work around them. And I don't mean just the art in my studio but any paintings that are a product of the minds of any of our contemporaries, no matter how humble. We are blind to our culture and in the fine arts, especially with our reverence for past masters, forget that progress is forward moving. Museums are filled with work of experimental minds of their time that have found and communicate insights that have nudged forward the state of the art. Displays of virtuosity don't, in themselves, make it to that historical archive.

We have all suckled from the masters who have laid the groundwork and it has enriched our eye. But Da Vinci and Rembrandt lack what we have experienced: Sargent's all-descriptive (and all-deceptive) strokes; Van Gogh's rhythmic marks; Thiebaud's penumbras; Innes's mood; Eakins' photo-copying; Irving Penn's cropping; Wyeth's "reportage"; Shiele's lyricism and brain; Jenny Saville's flesh; Odd Nerdrum's stutter and on and on. Not that our masters are any worse for not having seen it -- we are glad they were specialists -- but as visual artists they would have had a field day visiting with even the less gifted of us. An art therapist will tell you that can't put a simple mark to paper without revealing something about yourself and we are the masters' wise old friends. Even our amateurs are not as limited as they were. Digital photography, fluorescent tube paint and Saatchi's picks have thrown the doors wide open (or so we believe! -- let's revisit in 20 years.)

Describing a UFO visitation is impossible because the details of the event lay beyond personal experience. And, similarly, the brilliance of the pigments, the extravagant paint use (Rembrandt might be happy to see the fruits of his own experiments) and image cropping are unlike any they've seen before. Subject matter and sense of reality speak of an entirely alien subjectivity. As Dr. Seuss said, "All the places we'll go!" Leonardo would see landscapes that are not just afterthoughts fitted into the background but are themselves the main thing ("And the point is...?"). The materials and outfitting of the studio alone would be mind-blowing: the various lights, the ipod and its voices and pulses, french easels and pochade boxes, artificial flowers and framing hardware, printed postcards and art books, the cell phone and its occasional musical performance. Don't reveal the laptop just yet -- better to break them in slowly. Although...hospitality insists that you do nuke them a cup of coffee (if they'll drink it.)

Go ahead: picture Leonardo and Da Vinci sitting in the corner of your studio unblinking. The art world's version of shock and awe.

-Doug Rugh

A Morning Chasing Light (It Got Away)

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:49:45 PST

View a larger image. Bike Path Towards Nobska, 24" x 30" - oil/canvas
View a satellite map of the location.

As I do each morning, I peeked in Hillary's studio to view yesterday's progress and spotted the bright yellow of fresh carnations on the corner table in a vase trailing lemons and tangerines. On the opposite wall was her composition as only she could do it. Artists have a history of consuming their still lifes just before they sour so I had no qualms about, at a minimum, recycling the still life as a subject of my own. Of course, even if I cropped as she did or sat down at her easel, left as perfectly in position as a historical diorama, I wouldn't be able to avoid leaving my own distinguishing imprint. Some paint to find themselves, others to lose themselves and while painting like mentors has value for students, if the picture looks too familiar it's just not fun enough.

When I first sat down the static flash of sunlight hitting the side wall bounced off frames and fluoresced the petals and rinds poking into the beam. Chasing the light while negotiating edges with the tip of my brush, I watched it moving back toward the window and slip out. What was left to paint was the remaining cool grays (not that there's anything wrong with that.) But when I did, all was lost and I scraped down my palette. That's when the oft-repeated maxim entered (curses! curses!) my head: It's knowing when to stop that matters. Alas, pictures need to be finished but life depends upon the chase.

-Doug Rugh

Other Eyes

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 04:12:06 PDT

View a larger image. Cranberry Bog at Dusk, 30" x 36" - oil/canvas

View the painting location on a satellite map.

Unilateral Synchronicity
I'm always surprised that the paintings I'm most excited about are not necessarily the ones others have found something in. You walk into someones house and you see them standing in front of the paintings on their walls and they're wearing those same colors. "Don't you just love the colors?" she says and you do. For just a moment. And then you notice that the paintings are all a little cock-eyed and that your host is looking at you...a little sideways too. You're both in sync. Just not with each other unless you're seeing through their eyes.

Maybe having a good day is when circumstance parades all our colors by us one after the other and everything we come across is skewed at our individual angle: the spoon in the teal bowl, the rear-view mirror, the pencil on the blue table. And when it's your day you get to decide how the world looks and we're all wearing olive and orange stripes and everybody talks just one tick louder on the dial. And then I wake up and it's like walking uphill all day long and I realize, Hey, it's not my day it's yours!

That's why I like to hear people talk about the paintings that inspire them because if I couldn't see it before, now I can.

-Doug Rugh

Capturing an Audience

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:46:20 PDT

Stoney Beach Studies
View a satellite map of the location.

A few days ago I was on Stoney Beach in Woods Hole late in the afternoon attempting to paint some of the people on the beach. I didn't get very far but it was worth it. The gestures and poses were perfect, if only for moments. The children played just as I did thirty-some years ago; building dams around the shower to collect run-off, laying towels among the rocks to create enclaves and jumping off Paradise Rock into the dark waters of the deep cold hole on one side (there may be lobsters in there.) I do a double-take when I look at these children of my contemporaries, some the spitting image these many years later emphasizing the cyclical nature of a family beach.

It wasn't long before a crowd of kids was around me -- "He's trying to paint that way!" -- but mostly in front of me. I told them that I just started and if they came back in an hour there would be more to see. A few minutes later they started trickling back. I don't mind an audience (though I don't look for one) but these were my models and I'd prefer them out in position. A little later a girl came up to me in a rare quiet moment and said, "If I sit out there will you paint me?" And I thought, Of course! this is the way to handle it, and so I painted her on the rock at lower left in about five minutes and then the next three in a row that came up to me. I asked the girl under the umbrella in the towel to go back and pose and she was happy to do it.

It's very hard to paint moving people on the beach but it's so much a part of the Cape Cod experience that it's surprising artists here haven't found a way to do it. There may be a maxim: the harder it is to do the more it's worth in the end because in painting in the midst of life each little brush stroke captures so much about the person.

-Doug Rugh

Tickle Imagination Paintings

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:48:56 PDT

View a larger image. Eel Pond, Woods Hole, 9" x 12" - oil/panel
View a satellite map of the location.

I enjoy reading the Internet search strings that lead people to this journal. Most people who have web sites can see limited imformation about the visitors to their sites. If one arrives at the site by clicking on a link, at a search engine or another site, that search becomes visible as part of its' site statistics. Often a country of origin is visible but readers should not worry that any personal information beyond that (or screen name or email) is available because as far as I can tell it's not. Here are some of the search strings that I found amusing (And make me wonder, Who are these people and what are they really looking for?):

ego massage is a pleasant pastime
awareness of the air by cavemen
single +likes painting
paintings=looking out of window
oil paint tube, undo cap
fairy houses squirrel island
ducks as omens in indian mythology
lights in the sky from magnetism
painting of man with clouds for head
gluing things on oil paintings
oil expands muscle
"the depressionists"
To know somebody which worth the oil color painting hand.
trying to put vellum paper behind the panes of antique window frame
Tickle imagination paintings.
summer journal props
the glooming of trouble
oil painting signature disappears under black light
On May 19, 07 two people, one in Saudi Arabia and the other in
Mexico, typed "sleeping daughter" into Google and were led to this
journal.
"paid attention to the choice"
amoeba shape pergola
en plein air at night
journal effect layout office to mood works
The Imagined Studios of Rembrandt and Vermeer
paint color for dark hallway with limited lighting
dawn of caveman time
dark gloom
palette knife paintings hermit house
left \ right brained babies and their relation with colors
fishtail paintings
mirrors reflect orange sunlight movie
can i see same example how attraction flyer in orange colour?
odd nerdrum student application
infants skin pale in color when sleeping
just undo it

-Doug Rugh

Hidden Corner at Nobska Beach

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:49:45 PDT

Hidden Corner, 11" x 14" - oil/canvas

View a satellite map of the location.

Yesterday fits of light rain were inevitable but I always get excited about stormy weather (if you don't: see Winslow Homer) as long as my palette doesn't get too wet and turn my oils into emulsions. The overcast skies, tent-lighting to photographers, bring out the intensity of colors and I've been waiting for a chance to paint the pink rosa ragosa flowers that are out early in the summer.

There is a pond out in the open in Woods Hole that goes unnoticed because it lies parallel to Nobska Beach. And like the pond, I was also upstaged by the view of the Sound as the few people who pulled up to the parking area didn't notice me painting a few feet away on the wrong side of the street. Wherever the Magician directs your attention look the other way or you will miss the trick. And so in the corner of this pond I found my sand flowers against a tapestry of many-hued greens. And whoever says about landscape painting, "Argh! Green green green!" is like the person whispering in your ear that there are mirrors involved when this time it really is magic.

I was careful to sit far enough away from the poison ivy so the wind wouldn't brush the plant against my back if I leaned back for a head-tilt but placed my french easel right in the stuff because you just can't paint outdoors on a canvas unless it's back lit. Half-way into the painting something scurried across the path under my stool, probably a chipmunk or a mouse, and I wondered how long he had been watching before he made a break for it or whether he didn't notice me at all as sometimes happens when you're sitting still for periods of time outdoors.

Then I remembered that a family friend had recently become seriously ill from a minuscule deer tick's bite and only hundreds of yards away from this very spot where I sit exposed and I realized that, yes, I too have a little itch in my sock. And another on the back of my neck. And it reminded me of the time in my portrait painting group when I noticed (during the break) that I had the bull's eye rash on my knee, the tell-tale sign of the dreaded Lyme's disease. The mark inspired much concern from my fellow painters until we resumed the pose and I realized the red spot was the result of the pressure of a non-toxic crossed leg. But eventually the mind stops wandering even if the wind doesn't and the hours quickly pass.

-Doug Rugh

Edward Hopper

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:28:53 PDT

Exhibition site. Hotel Room, 60" x 65" - by Edward Hopper

Peter Schjeldahl, a reviewer for The New Yorker, is one of the few art critics that I enjoy reading and always offers insights. In the May 21st issue he says so aptly about Edward Hopper that he bets everything on composition so that seeing the work in person doesn't add anything to the experience. I wouldn't have made the trip to see the paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston but by circumstance found myself walking quickly through the exhibit. I can't look at a handful of the works (my fault I know) because I can't get past the clumsiness of some of the figures (adding, of course, to his powerful sense of isolation), but I was surprised to find two aspects that took the paintings to a new level of enjoyment for me: surface and scale.

I've always loved dark darks ever since I was student at the Schuler School of Fine Arts, an atelier inspired studio, when I looked down at a pile of Prussian blue pigment that I had just poured out on to the marble one morning to mull with oil and under the natural light of the skylight it was as if I was looking into a black hole. No light bounced off the particles and the softness of the powder and it's deep color made it impossible to see any form. Once you've seen the void you're lost: you'll wish away clarity and Hopper puts black where he means vague. The variations in surface between lost areas and visible texture, between brushed thin paint and scumbled opaque paint is just enough to make the canvas push into three-dimensional life ahead of it's two-dimensional facsimile.

I've been working on large paintings in my studio all winter. The scale is an indulgence that pulls the viewer into the composition -- bigger demands more even if it is just color or cotton. I stopped in front of the large open Hotel Room (image above), a painting I had seen many times before as a little picture in books, and stood motionless along with others next to this woman on her bed.

-Doug Rugh

Taking the Fork in the Road

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Mon, 28 May 2007 11:51:58 PDT

Studio paintings in progress.

Lately I've been playing around with spots of pure broken color and how a little dab stains a whole area. (Most of this new work from the Winter and Spring hasn't yet been uploaded.) I've also been introducing saturated color as a way to emphasize to the viewer what it is that I'm excited about. Taking an intuitive rather than naturalist's approach. Because if we're intrigued by the way a tree's shadow side becomes blue when lit from behind by the sky and don't make the effect obvious, instead of seeing through the artist's eyes the viewer will just see another tree against another sky and turn away stifling a yawn. Plus I like to push the limits of pigment, granules which are so meager against life.

So naturally I was intrigued by a friend's painting at a portrait session in which he had used most of the same high chroma colors but pulled off a mud-head using the grays from the center of the color wheel. The panel could have been painted with two pigments harvested straight from the ground. I'm in Paris and he's never left the farm. I had been spending time on the periphery dazzled by the bright lights and I come back and he's just sitting under the tree with Ferdinand smelling the flowers.

-Doug Rugh

Flying at Night

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Sat, 19 May 2007 03:25:59 PDT

View a larger image. Inner Harbor, 9" x 12" - oil/panel

An artist can't put a mark on canvas without it saying something about its' maker and viewers can't look at an oil painting without seeing reflections of themselves. It is surprising, then, that an inspired painter breeds an inspired audience. We live in parallel but separate universes that overlap briefly for peak experiences and the challenge for artists and connoisseurs is simply to enjoy oneself while in the company of art. This is what I'm after:

When I was a kid I lived on my bike in our little summer village of Woods Hole. I knew the quickest routes through parking lots and down what seemed like a steep gorge in the woods risking wipe out rather than slow down for a corner. Speed heightened the senses and the instincts. Years of near misses with stuff flying towards me built confidence that I could maneuver safely at a moment's notice. And I always did. A bike travels through space in three dimensions. It's a rolling hinge that leans like a top as it turns and avoiding obstacles is less about a line from point A to point B and more about the rhythm of the handlebars pumping from side to side counter to the pedals. It's a dance where you place the beats in empty spaces. I felt in total control and would shift at the last minute to avoid a parked car or fishtail into sand blown up on the roads to smooth the turn or just for the fun of it. If I went around the Eel Pond up by the school house I could build up enough speed coming down the hill with hands on my knees that I was around the corner and sailing down Millfield in seconds. It was a time when nobody locked their bikes and you knew where your friends were by the piles of them dropped around town.

When I was older I'd sneak out at night and trace the same routes that I knew so well under black skies with the added challenge of not being able to see. The stakes were greater -- remembering intuitively the spots where there was a gap in the curb and when it had to be jumped or where to avoid an unreliable surface. In a fraction of a second if the bike needed to exit the sidewalk, the skills were there. Feet worked in sync with the hands and all remained in balance. The focused mind performed effortless stunts for what seemed equal to an opening scene of the next James Bond movie. You get a better experience of rubber on asphalt, grass and sand when you can't see and you're guiding yourself by the opening in the trees above and can feel the terrain in your seat. Nothing will compare to zipping around under the stars on a sturdy old three-speed on a warm summer night. It's the closest thing to flying.

First there are the skills (muscle memory of the body and mind) combined with the mental space to expand -- an endless black sky -- and then the challenge of discovering a super sensory experience that has value in an intuitive sense and, if we're lucky, becomes a quantifiable byproduct (pretty picture.) Bliss comes from a synchronicity of mind and body manifesting itself in that feeling of both being in control -- from knowing the bike and the routes -- and reaching and letting go -- from trusting that the wind in my face would not turn into concrete. Painting at its' best is reaching for visual knowledge and at its' worst is repeating what everybody already knows. The earth is out from under you and you hope you find something good when you land.

-Doug Rugh

There's No There There

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:28 PDT

View a larger image. Blueberries and Cream, 9" x 12" - oil/panel

It's impossible to be impressed with oneself.

Whether I'm outdoors painting or in the studio people always say, "I wish I could paint." A few of us thought we could. We admired artwork that seemed beyond human ability and we sat down to draw and saw accidental moments where renderings came alive. Always reaching, if there were enough of those moments we continued, our head in our sketch pads, each time a special nuance revealing itself just beyond our capacity. The fact is you never arrive. Once an optical quality is mastered it no longer holds an unattainable mystique. Sure, it's satisfying to create with it but it's no longer, "I wish I could do that," because you can. And it's on to the next thing. Levels of mastery in painting are endless and as we develop our eye we become more efficient at reaching and enjoy more time inspired.

I've found the same principals work across disciplines: developing as a painter takes the same resourcefulness -- and a combination of mind and body -- as learning classical guitar or even playing a sport. There is an obvious hierarchy in local tennis: it's all here here. Unlike painting, at the end of the day you can win and bring a trophy home to your wife and say, "See!" A good match is when you play well just above your skill level but the guys that are there are reaching somewhere else. They don't want to play down and when you finally get to play them and do well you think well I guess they weren't as good as I thought they were. You don't notice the newcomer watching from the sidelines because you're busy reaching again. And like art there's always more to be discovered.

-Doug Rugh

Apprentice

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:28 PDT

Man, 8" x 5" - oil/panel

The goal is to disappear.

Then reappear.

The apprentice coddles the sable over raised brushstrokes (cursing away Style's tempts), corrects a skewed perspective and steps aside, humbly, in front of the seamless Illusion. Later he winces at overlooked edges and gasps at unsubtle hues. He turns away from a lopsided horizon to stare out the window. Defeated, he oils down the surface once last time for what he hopes will be a finer layer with all traces of the hand removed. He is channeling John Singleton Copley and Franz Hals hiccups. A thousand squints later and smears of pigment start to become forms disappearing into the ether.

At some point individuality returns as the peculiarities of creative brilliance replace the anonymity of technical mastery. The artist's idiosyncrasies and subjective taste manifest themselves in brushstrokes -- eloquent ticks -- and a body of work representing a personal vision rather than an affected style (still imitators miss the heart and focus on the cliche.) While alive we want the artist to get out of the way of the art. When gone it is traces of the personality that we want to see.

The musician sits for the lesson, wipes a bead of sweat from the brow, and searches for the intoxicating solos that reverberated off tiled walls so willingly at first light and finds instead awkward cadences squawking from his unchosen instrument: the unabashed crescendos now falling flat at his feet. The first public performance and he forgot to dress. Later the music will play itself.

The lilting off-time rhythms of the maestro improve on the metronome. Moving from perfect to bewitching.

-Doug Rugh

De-limbed Statues

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:28 PDT

When he said he'd come back tomorrow for the statues I knew what he meant. He absent-mindedly used the arborist's vernacular to describe the 15 foot high stumps now standing like monuments in the center of the yard. 95 foot high white pines 75 years old or more no longer hover over the roof. My first daughter was born 28 months ago the day of the Asian Tsunami and when we were all settled into the maternity ward I raced home through our own Cape blizzard to let the dog have a moment outside. The driveway was blocked with snow but also with a large limb from what we realize now was our favorite of the trees. The trees shed branches in storms and we are always the cause of tremendous fireworks as branches brush up against the high power line sending showers of sparks along the road. It usually ends in a pop! from the transformer as the neighborhood goes into blackout. This last storm we took our little girls elsewhere and let the neighbors watch the trees sway 20 in each direction as the worst hit just before daybreak.

At this moment, 20 feet in front of our picture window, our favorite stands proud as the same two squirrels spiral up it as they've done so many times before only to be surprised to reach the top so quickly. Now we have the sky but yesterday we still had the long reaching branches swinging in the wind and silhouetting the moon and we had all the activity that came with them: our own nature channel. A pair of cooper's hawks built a nest in one of the trees with a straight view to the row of bird feeders. At night we occasionally hear the spirited hoot of an owl up in our high canopy but through the day we have the melodic singing of so many birds and the staccato movement of various wood peckers as they hop along the straight shafts.

Yesterday as the tree surgeon cut his way up the tree he exposed a large squirrel nest and it reminded me of a time, sitting on a friend's porch, when we watched a squirrel move from the tree in front of us along the wire and up another tree farther away taking exactly the same route three times each with a little squirrel's tail hanging from her mouth. So my wife worried about the nest but I didn't. Shortly after the men left the squirrel appeared as expected with the little fluff hanging from her grip but arrived instead from the adjacent tree which the new family must have waited in during all the noise of chainsaws and heavy machinery. So now all the little ones are safe again. The waves of the tsunami are still being felt.

-Doug Rugh

Tickle and Hit the Road

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:28 PDT

View a larger image. Road to the Beach, 18" x 12" - oil/canvas
This road leads to Alfie's beach, a few yards of coast bought with sculpture, and a summer gathering spot where artists sit around bonfires.

Thresholds are places of creativity which liberate the brain from its' rounded walls. Neither inside or out, these moments of potential sometimes bring joy and sometimes bring fear but always bring progress. I relish the time up in a plane where all the demands of a place just lived in, now only dots on a highway rushing to get home and relax, vaporize to make way for a lofty and fluffier perspective. The ideal is always just ahead, uncomplicated. It's the same with dawn and dusk -- temporary alleviations from the limitless blue dome and the figments of encroaching darkness -- that allows for a heightened rest. Or at least a pause between inhaling and exhaling.

And as the seasons change the painter of nature paces in front of the window stopping to stick his stockinged toe out a back door to measure the temperature. Is it time yet? Fresh canvases multiply in anticipation along with the beginnings of buds barely visible on close inspection (but absent at painting distance.) The models who inhabit the studio will change to an even tan -- their skin literally refusing to cooperate with the portrait artist -- and insist on gazing out the tiny window wishing for anything, perhaps a butterfly to flit by and rescue them to less-dim surroundings. The first reaches of sunlight illuminate coffee cups filled with walnut and linseed oil soaked calico rags littering the floor. Quiet time of research in the studio will be replaced by the welcome art enthusiast crowding out the clouds over the shoulder (one quiet the other trying to be) and their positive attitudes a reminder (Social skills! Social skills!) to quit cursing the wretched canvas every time it wins in the struggle to maintain its' lifeless nature. The artist is saved, through an act of grace for all his suffering be it good weather or foul, an allowance to jabber or mutter to Self provided the gesticulation is kept to a minimum. It's expected.

Art by definition is about avoiding the routine and constantly searching for fresh ways of seeing. By luck a Cape Cod artist is forced to make changes (and grow or deviate) bi-annually in and out and along with our two seasons: summer and not-summer. With my new attitude that arrived with our first balmy day I won't mention and refuse to rant about year-round indoor Cape Cod photo-copiers (the painters that is -- not the machines) and anyway the aforementioned doesn't apply to them.

So here we are again and many exciting plans for winter projects are only half-finished but we're on to new ideas for how to attack painting the summer that have appeared along with the realization that much of the hard work in the coming season entails sitting in a pretty place and paying special attention to it while the easily impressed look on. The best part, though, is when a dab goes on and it's just right and the whole canvas comes alive. Regardless of whether anyone sees it or not it's why we paint. And we keep tickling that perfect color, admiring it until it's gone. And then it's on to another.

-Doug Rugh

The Right Brain at Work and Play

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:28 PDT

View a larger image. Cloud Shadows, Back River, 30" x 48" - oil/canvas

In the off-season I work on large studio paintings that are based on studies done in the field. The plein air sketches are painted quickly (as the environment is changing) in a process of reacting to and mimicking what is arrayed ahead. Ironically, while the eye is darting back and forth between the palette and the subject there's no time to stop and look at the canvas. It feels like painting blind. If you ever pose for a group of portrait artists it will be immediately clear whose paintings are based on looking -- their eyes in a trance and mainly on you -- but many will have their heads in their Job Lot special (odd-size custom-only framable) canvas boards.

The knife and brush are used to create a variety of marks that represent textural and rhythmic attributes in the landscape. It would be impossible to paint each blade or each leaf so instead the artist translates the impression into a language reminiscent of the scene. Each aesthete represents elements with unique strokes no less peculiar than their right-brained utterances (as charged: guilty!) But the beauty in these studies is the honest immediacy and a palpable sense of being there on that day. Just like the owner of a Rembrandt who can feel the ghost of the master through his tactile handwork, paintings done on location -- even those poorly executed -- can transport outdoors where the wind tickles the chin or a whiff of a cloud flashes by.

Science Meets Art
The studio works start with this reportage and turn them into pictures. By nature of the studio process, the artist must get creative when refashioning the work into a larger composition. Personal preferences, or style, drive decision-making rather than a need to emulate the organic and atmospheric. It is the painting itself that is now studied and prodded and shaken and with the studio door closed in the wee hours of the morning: coaxed into life. It is a painting of a place where the artist wants to go.

-Doug Rugh

Chiaroscuro

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:29 PDT

View a larger image. Mending The Sails, 35" x 35" - oil/canvas

This is a large still-life using sail maker's tools; the sewing palm, needle, awl and knife all illuminated by a lantern on deck. I try to let fabric fall as naturally as possible but there is always some adjustment necessary to get an interesting rhythm.

There is nothing more formally satisfying than painting white objects or cloth. A colorless chameleon, white takes on the colors of the environment and in a still life it becomes the temperature of the light that is directed towards or bounced at or enveloping the set up. I've always been interested in representing opposites: exterior through an interior; warm against cool; objects in space. On a philosophical level I get excited when paradox is the only answer to what appears incongruous so I was intrigued to find that the root words of chiaroscuro -- light lifting the tonal veil of darkness -- are both clear and obscure. Folds become beautiful when a little mystery (and shadow) is added.

The real challenge of this piece was not only portraying an interior and exterior at the same time -- something unmanipulated photographs can't do because of differing aperture settings -- but limiting both to the same type of light: in this case direct warm light in a diffused cool field. The illusion of brightness depends on the depths of the darkness it is contrasted with and in this case I was left only with dark accents and optical tricks for creating a sense of light. When I got to the sun and the lantern at lower right there wasn't much left in the pigment to draw from. What was left was halation, transparency (with opaque paint) and appearance of warmth in the folds. Since I chose to imply that the whole thing existed under a bright sky I filled what would have been darks with reflected blue light which, against the warm light, provided contrapuntal interest.

The yellow orange light at lower right in the ficticious background mimics the arrangement of light in the foreground: artificial/natural; direct/indirect; and hot/cold. I was pleased when someone asked (since they knew I didn't use photos) how I managed to set up the still life outside.

-Doug Rugh

Gone Postal

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:29 PDT

One day when I was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design I found a confusing card in my mailbox. Fitted through punched holes along the left side were varied thicknesses and lengths of natural looking yarns and neatly hand-written next to each sample was the color name. Words like: alfalfa sprouts, tofu, granola, spirulina, tahini. If something out of the ordinary happens at an art school the first assumption is that an art event is taking place but on the other hand I felt this was a personal message to me. Did I recognize any of the hues as colors that I might wear? The other students had a more current sense of couture and perhaps someone was trying to let me know that I was projecting the not-so-chic tones of the health-food store. It remained a conundrum until months later.

Another time someone was kind enough to leave a note with this advice written in small letters:

I was sitting next to you in class and I couldn't help noticing that your ears needed cleaning. Just thought you'd like to know.

A fresh Q-tip was taped to the card. I say kind because the note was unsigned allowing the Samaritan to give helpful guidance while avoiding the embarrassment of a whispered take-aside. I quietly slipped the Q-tip into my bag and walked out of the busy hall. Maybe it was the guy at the library's front desk who I mistakenly passed unshaven one day who put his hands on his hips and said, "There's such a thing as personal hygiene you know!"

It wasn't until later when I was sitting with some people in the textile department that someone described getting the same note with the Q-tip. The guy we were with said, "I put hundreds of those in people's boxes. I got bored sitting in the mail room all day." I realized instantly that the crunchy-granola color samples were probably just an old weaving project that he had done and rather than discarding his trash he could disseminate it and give it new life. Nobody gets letters anymore.

-Doug Rugh

Neither Then Nor Later

info@osbornandrughgallery.com (Doug Rugh) — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:22:29 PDT

View a larger image. Dories, 6" x 9" - oil/panel

I always feel a productive restlessness when the sun lights the sky and need to keep busy working with my hands. And later there will be something about lambent stars and that hovering hole in the heavens that will stir the mind and quiet the body. But my favorite times of the day are the thresholds of dawn and dusk that free the thinking and the doing: a perfect place of art.

Late in the afternoon contented souls pass the Woods Hole Yacht Club along with the sun as it burns one last time behind Penzance Point. But not before leaning for a few moments with a home-made dory on the beach.

-Doug Rugh