Richard’s Page

This time, however, although painting them was still a pleasure, the little lovelies from our garden conspired to challenge me as never before. Actually, for some time I have been challenging myself to paint them (and everything else) in a way I had not often done previously. Allow me to explain. Lately, perhaps because I’m older, I seem to be seeing things in my subjects I had been in the habit of overlooking (or things I had noticed but dismissed as unworthy for inclusion in my pictures), in this case, for example, the extraordinary colors and forms in wilted or dead flowers and leaves, or the apparent irregularity of the way things grow.

In other words, I am more sensitive now to all of the things in nature, the qualities and elements which taken together (pleasing to me or not), make things look like what we call “natural.” As a result, I resist any temptation to “clean things up” or prettify my subject. At the same time, I make no willful attempt to make things “ugly” or try to show that “ugly” is actually “beautiful.” Nature is neither; it simply is what it is, and that’s what I’m after. We attach the evaluation labels of “pleasing” or not. (And there you have part of my current philosophy of aesthetics in a nutshell).

So—all of this means a new test each time I set out to paint—how to render the subtleties awaiting me in a convincing and interesting way. In the course of trying to accomplish that I am constantly made strongly aware of the vital importance of simple patience in my efforts. I know about patience, of course, but like many other human requirements, it is a discipline that needs frequent reinforcement. Too often I take things for granted (a negative side effect of successful paintings in the past). I tend to relax, forgetting that each new subject is unique, and that a procedure that worked before will not necessarily always work.

Another complication is that I must frequently work other than the way I was initially trained to paint. Bill Mosby, my most influential teacher, was a big fan of the loose broad-brush styles of Sargent, Sorolla, and Zorn; an ideal technique I too came to revere and emulate. Such a way of applying paint is marvelous of course and I love doing it, but as I discovered, it is by no means the only way to achieve results. In the course of fifty years of experimenting, I found that other more complex and cautiously demanding styles were required to achieve the effects I was after. The way I work now often calls for time consuming, highly intricate, almost nit-picking brushwork—just the opposite of the way I was taught—but my vision of my subject demands it. Thank God, somehow it still gives me the lavish results I want—but believe me, much of that cannot be done without a lot of patience.