Saturday, November 16, 2013

The Paintings of William Vaughn Howard Made it Easy for Me to Remain a Painter

William Vaughn Howard
Title Unknown
acrylic and charcoal
27 1/2 x 22

This is a painting by my college professor William Vaughn Howard.  When I entered his classroom, I was finished with painting.  I remained an art student because I didn’t know what else to do.  Although, I had found a place in drawing, an activity seldom practiced as a child because I painted.  In my view there was no need for drawing; painting was the statement I wanted to make, and since I worked from photographs there was no need for planning.  There was no advantage to a sketch, painting was drawing with a brush.  For some odd reason, the next drawing class never fit into my schedule and I was forced to take painting.  If I had had my way, I would have focused on drawing and printmaking.

The reason for being disillusioned was a simple one.  Painting in practice separated observation from believing that sight was decisive.  The theology of paint stated that the visual experience of day to day living could not engage without making changes to the nature of place.  This approach prefers staged arrangements over happenstance.  It is hard to image the staged as a comprehensive encounter when happenstance colors every situation.  A tea kettle whistles burner aglow.  A phone rings into the sound of hello.  A child screams out an enormous so are you!  A blue hued television seeps through panes of glass to catch a flash of passing light.  Rivulets rain weight into a sagging black hammock.  A puddle of a parking lot is a long shot from the warmer quarters of a dry café, the betrayal of a thoroughly wasted day started by the startle of an alarm clock set for another occasion.  The menu reads like faded paper, a half-life of gazing print, the compensating squint of a man that cannot stand reading glasses.  How can the staged ever manage to capture the meager sights of life, the true test of living?

Because art claimed to be more compelling than life, I gravitated to drawing.  Drawing wasn’t as lifelike anyway.  We don’t see a world of black and white.  Without color, drawing was all about abstraction.  There wasn’t the same kind of tension.  The decision had already been made for me; I wouldn’t have to worry about making what I saw fit the demands of art, an idea I truly detested.    

When I saw my professor’s abstractions, I thought I saw a poetry of place.  Although nothing could be directly linked, I thought I saw landscapes veiled within paint.  I found another place to be and began to paint again.

It is hard to know what to say about a painting.  Paint here represents paint.  Content is a collection of movements, changes made many times to a rime of indecision until not knowing becomes a knowing that says this is it.  Broken into many facets, this is a beautiful looking glass of abstraction.

 

1 comment:

  1. Wow--great writing!:

    It is hard to image the staged as a comprehensive encounter when happenstance colors every situation. A tea kettle whistles burner aglow. A phone rings into the sound of hello. A child screams out an enormous so are you! A blue hued television seeps through panes of glass to catch a flash of passing light. Rivulets rain weight into a sagging black hammock. A puddle of a parking lot is a long shot from the warmer quarters of a dry café, the betrayal of a thoroughly wasted day started by the startle of an alarm clock set for another occasion. The menu reads like faded paper, a half-life of gazing print, the compensating squint of a man that cannot stand reading glasses. How can the staged ever manage to capture the meager sights of life, the true test of living?

    I think when you become a strong enough visual artist, you become a writer along with it, almost automatically, because both are about seeing.

    ReplyDelete