US Highway 50 and a Drawing of Ottawa, Kansas

Street Corner, Ottawa, Kansas, US Highway 50
burnt matchstick and charcoal
9 11/16 x 17 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

 

 

Ottawa, Kansas is the first image to come from a recent trip across the country on US Highway 50. The drawing was made using the tips of burnt matchsticks and charcoal. The carbon closest to the unburnt section of the matchstick is a wonderfully unstable color of brown.

 

I never drew much as child because I was painting.  I thought drawing was an incomplete process and saw no reason to pursue it. When I discovered charcoal in college, I realized that the medium was more painterly than paint could ever hope to be.  A broad wash was as simple as pushing dust with a sponge across paper, and the rub of an eraser made an impact that a single brush stroke seldom achieved.  I worked almost exclusively in charcoal for a while in college and repeated that process for a couple years after graduation.  Because painting had been my background, I treated charcoal as paint. Charcoal consumed the vacancy of paper.  It filled the page.  It was no place for a vignette.  I never saw drawing as an exercise, or a study for something else.  Although I see the value of exercise, I’ve never been able to do it.  I am either fully engaged, or I don’t want to have anything to do with the process and would rather go walking.  

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.

 

Lucas B&B Restaurant and Other Dallas Sites; Charcoal, Paint, Claude Monet, Two-Dimensional Space and Self-Taught Referencing

Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas, Texas
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 1/2 x 15 x 1 5/16 inches including integral frame

Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas, Texas began as an attempt to recapture a way of working in the 80’s where I applied powdered charcoal to paper with a sponge.  Much of drawing was lifting and cutting into the charcoal with and eraser.  The Volkswagen Bus is a good example of that method.   I should have known better.  Competing with my past is far worse than having someone peer over my shoulder; that intrusion is never permanent, but I never can get away from myself.  Because memory has a tender spot for the affirmative, time colors the past with the charcoals that survive.  The failures were pitched; and those that remain have a power that fills me with trepidation.  Although I know many drawings failed, when I glance at the past framed behind glass all I see is continuum, success upon success, an arresting array of fear and frustration.



Volkswagen Bus
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Fear seems to accompany every new endeavor.  When I can, I prefer to work first thing in the morning.  That way I have little time to think about what I have to do.  I hate starting anything new, groundwork can remain groundwork indefinitely and that hardly feels inspiring.  Art only arrives after compiling a certain amount of time in marks that defy description of sky or pavement.  I often use paint as a word for process.  I feel the divide between it and drawing is an artificial one; after all, changing materials doesn’t turn sculpture into something else.  I don’t know why we speak of two kinds of illusions; both occupy two-dimensional space and deal with the limitations in the same way.



Lucas B&B Restaurant, Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas Texas was not a failure; I wasn’t going to throw it away.  It was just not what I intended it to be.  The charcoal was sharper than I desired due to too much tooth, although the rag board felt fairly smooth, the charcoal didn’t flow easily.  I was also filled with apprehension.  Art and writing always rely on adjustments.  While firm and determined to be true to content, there are many avenues by which to grasp the distillation of place.  Many of my paintings demonstrate this idea.  Canvas or panel, divergent brushstrokes describe reality through painting.  As much as I admire Claude Monet and French Impressionism, it puzzles me why the same kinds of strokes are used to describe brush and sky.  The diorama was rooted in painting before I knew anything of Impressionism.  My paintings as a child deciphered a world through brushstrokes that divided earth from sky.  I would have never thought to use similar strokes throughout a painting.  In that sense I guess I never was a painter.  I don’t know how to construct the surface of a rock with a couple of broad brush strokes. 



Grandy's on New Year's Day
mixed media diorama
7 5/16 x 10 1/16 x 1 7/8 inches including integral frame

Woodall Rodgers Freeway and Olive Street, Dallas, Texas (Detail, Right Center Panel)
acrylic
18 x 56 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches including integral frame

Having used color on charcoal before, I introduced color.  Everything has its origins in something else.  Even self-taught artists are not without references.  Dividing artists into groups overemphasizes the significance of college; learning is internal, making everyone self-taught.



As I slowly added the color of water soluble crayon, the drawing acquired a presence I really liked.  I am not sure what others mean when they use the word presence, but for me it means the respiration of atmospheric light.  Presence as a sound spells diffusion; two-dimensional constraints cannot contain the life of painting.  Pleased with the results, Blackburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas followed.  When I got to Tillery Avenue Psychic, Dallas, Texas; I flipped things around by starting with acrylic and covering everything over with charcoal and the residue of burnt matchsticks.  That may sound strange, but no matter how diligently a surface is covered up, the previous layers of paint always remain influential.  That is why I treat painting as watercolor.  The arrangements are mapped out ahead of time.  Oil and acrylic are more like watercolor than people realize.  Once the light of white is covered up, it can never entirely be retrieved.  That means that the acrylic would shine through even when covered in charcoal.  A mystery of charcoal is why carbon traces on paper so easily reveal a feeling of an atmospheric clarity often missing within the layering of paint.

Blackburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 5/8 x 28 7/8 x 1 3/8 inches including integral frame

Tillery Avenue Psychic, Dallas, Texas
acrylic, charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 9/16 x 15 9/16 x 1 1/2 inches including integral frame

Drawing US Highway 50 Historical Site Hazen, Nevada: A Southern Pacific Railroad House, Lynching, Fire, a For Sale Sign, and the Unexpected Chiming in of Dungarees



Far Right Side Detail: Hazen, Nevada; US Highway 50 ( The Loneliest Road in America)

Left Side Detail



Right Side Detail

HAZEN WAS NAMED FOR WILLIAM BABCOCK HAZEN, WHO SERVED UNDER GENERAL SHERMAN IN HIS “MARCH TO THE SEA.” THE TOWN, ESTABLISHED IN 1903 TO HOUSE LABORERS WORKING ON THE NEWLANDS IRRIGATION PROJECT SOUTH OF HERE, INCLUDED HOTELS, SALOONS, BROTHELS, CHURCHES, AND SCHOOLS.

IN 1905 THE FIRST TRAIN CAME THROUGH ON THE NEW ROUTING TO TONOPAH. IN 1906 THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD BUILT A LARGE ROUNDHOUSE HERE AS WELL AS A FINE DEPOT.

IN 1908 HAZEN WAS NEARLY DESTROYED BY FIRE.



AS A TOUGH TOWN, IT HAD NO PEER IN THE STATE. NEVADA’S LAST LYNCHING OCCURRED IN HAZEN WHEN “RED” WOOD WAS TAKEN FROM THE WOODEN JAIL AND HANGED ON FEBRUARY 28, 1905.

I saw no reason to rewrite this statement.  What I know, you just read, and it comes from Historical Marker No. 178 and the Nevada State Park System.  Anything added is from memories of a small town, a railroad crossing, and a journey into darkness.

Hazen was the first town after the interstate.  When we left, the sun was low.  The land flattened out in advancing shadows, a thunderous freight train beside the highway churned past the last bit of daylight.  In the evening mist, every little insect seemed to hit the windshield, sweet smelling alfalfa whistled through open vents and windows.  Cool twilight unfurled a canopy of stars, and although others rode inside the car, darkness was my only companion.

I always like the H for Hazen on Black Butte.  Although the drawing is a depiction of heat, travel from Reno across the state often began late, Friday after work was the first chance to get away.  Hazen on a slight rise divides alkali from alkali.  Nevada is an array of drainage basins that never link up to the ocean.  Rivers like the Carson, Humboldt, Walker and Truckee die in isolation.  By the time trails were blazed for what became current day U.S. Highway 50, The Loneliest Road in America, it was known that none of the rivers of the Great Basin, lead the way to the San Francisco Bay.  Gravity frequently failed to take creeks and streams even as far as the next valley.  The landscape is a place of names dedicated to ancient lakes like Bonneville and Lahontan.  Springtime sometimes tries to fill the remains of vanquished lakes, now an ethereal ice age of sage assaulted by hail and rain, and the rage of thunder and lightening.  Here along much of this paved and rolling highway, the Pony Express made its way to the next station.

It had been years since I worked in charcoal.  Shopping for a sponge to cut up and dip in a new jar of powdered charcoal was fun.  Sitting at a table with familiar materials at hand was bit like slipping into a pair of old dungarees.  Although I never use the word, I thought I heard dungarees in the sound of musical phrasing and jotted it down.  It was like striking a match and I struck many of those while making this drawing, only I don’t know what to do with the words lyrically.  Perhaps the previous sentences should be scrubbed, edited, erased, but I think I will leave them in anyway.  The burnt end of a matchstick leaves a nice trail, a warm residue when pressed to paper.  Drawing can be thought of as a collection of pressure marks.  Defining a trailer house, gravel and weeds as a matter of record is just hand adjustments made with charcoal and an eraser.  Although I love listening to lyrics, I don’t know how to compose words into song.  Charcoal more fluid than paint is well acquainted with the atmospheric light that pigment often denies by relying too heavily on texture, the pasty state of style.  By the way, the charcoal and carbon rich matchstick scratching was enhanced a bit with color from water soluble crayons and a damp brush.

                                   

I stopped and read a sign

About a lynching in 1905

Instead of crying,

People seem to sing

Poor Red Wood,

Imagine the irony

Taller than any tree

Strung up and hung

From the lowly bough

Of a drought ravaged elm.



Standing in the sun,

I imagine dusty men

In old dungarees

Sipping chicken brothel soup

No longer offended

After crashing the wooden jail

Haling a man free

From justice and a judge

To twist in the middle of a crowd,

A lynchpin righteous with delight



I take history in with a smile

And leave with a breeze.

Poor Red Wood

Imagine the irony

Taller than any tree

Strung up and hung

From the lowly bough

Of a drought ravaged elm.









Hazen, Nevada; US Highway 50 (The Loneliest Road in America)
charcoal, burnt matchstick, drawing pencil, water soluble crayon
9 1/4 x 52 1/16 x 1 5/16 inches including integral frame

Dallas, Texas on Arrival: Painting, Drawing, Photography, Monet and French Impressionism



Downtown Construction
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Although made in the 1983 when I was just out of college, I still admire these drawings.  Having just finished the Master Workshop at Southampton College, Southampton, New York, I moved from Reno, Nevada to Dallas, Texas.  I was an abstract painter out of money and paint.  Believing I should work even if I had nothing to work with, I made drawings on the back of mailers that showed me sitting in front of one of my large paintings.  The charcoal images came from snapshots my younger brother Steve had taken.  I had no plans of leaving abstraction.  I was just killing time that otherwise would have been wasted waiting to windup in a better place financially.

Parked Car
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

The charcoals demonstrate the kind of imagery I would soon pursue.  Without even knowing it, the reality of my surroundings began to settle in.  I was no longer in or around the mountains of the West that characterized the paintings I made as a child.  I was now around buildings and traffic, which by the way was a pretty good fit.  Much of what we know of the city has been dressed in black and white.  The drawings have a bit of a patina for me; I mean they have a stature that makes it difficult for me to ever tackle drawing in the same way.  Some of that comes from the gloss of photography.  The black and white nature of the print signifies the past; our knowledge of urban life was recorded by photography that also includes TV, movies and newspapers.  Information primarily came in shades of gray.  This is just a thought, but perhaps Impressionism and the movements that followed were reacting to a world increasingly seen through technologies that captured life in black and white.

Volkswagen Bus
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

The drawings were made with stick and powered charcoal and an eraser.  The process was all about simplification.  This can be seen particularly well in the drawing of a Volkswagen bus.  Nearly the entire street scene takes place in shadow.  Definition is defined by slight shifts awash in the gray tailings of a charcoal filled sponge.  A little shove with a charcoal stick here and an eraser rub over there assail abstraction in representational rendering.  The foreground is bound by a single mark separating street and curb from blind whiteness.  Even to this day, I do not know how I made this drawing.  Although, I know the process, I am afraid I would fail if I tried it again.  This is due to its simplicity.  Whereas the complexity of painting provides endless opportunities to get it right.  Painting a manifestation of patience is not reliant on luck.

Cars
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches

Ever since the onsite spontaneity of French Impressionism there has been high praise for the painterly.  Just out of college, I was well aware of that position and never really questioned it.  A great attribute of charcoal is its ability to move.  There is nothing quite like it in the realm of paint.  Watercolor may come to mind, but there’s always a danger of harsh and unwanted waterlines.  Providing that the compressed charcoal is left for last, the application of charcoal remains fluid through the process of editing.  Here charcoal easily becomes a car and the refraction of light in tight spaces that jam downtown.  It is difficult to sweep layers of paint across canvas and maintain the atmospheric light Monet caked onto countryside.  Few do it in fact.  Paint became celebrity, gone were the days when content drove painters outside to spontaneously grasp at the sight of changing light.  These days about all that remains is paint, the commodity of meaning, few see that thickness can be a bit thick.  Vigorous painterly paint may not be that bold.  Meeting preconceived notions of what greatness entails avails painters a pass.  Real scrutiny only goes to those doing the unexpected.  We seldom evaluate the known stances and practices that define the climate of our times.  

Hotel
charcoal
4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches