Good Riddance & Happy New Year
December 30, 2009 by Steve

 

West Young Man 30x60 Good Riddance & Happy New Year

"West Young Man" 30"x56" oil paintng by Steve Alpert

How I hate, “year ender” pieces.  Feels like just more disposable junk on TV.  Do I really need to go back to September 11 all over again?   It’s in my body forever.  I don’t ever need to see those smoking towers ever again.  It changed me, and all of us here in the US.  

              I used to work in the news business many moons ago, and this time of year the program execs would always crank up these tired retrospectives that tell us what we already know.  I guess people like to roam down memory lane this time of year.   What is valuable for me this time of year is to know that I am happy to kiss 2009 good-bye.  A bitter year for the most part, but ending up on a very sweet and optimistic note.  Looking to continue that through the dark & chilly January and February here in the Northeast.  

             2009 was certainly rough stuff, for me at least.  My art selling career took a dive off the cliff.  Felt like the floor fell out from under me.  It took me months and months to come to grips with the idea that I had to change my construct in how I viewed my painting business and career.  How would I sell art if the galleries are suffering so?  If you read the trade magazines, gallery owners are bearing up with stiff upper lips and giving good little bites of optimism — showing  courage in trying to figure out their place in the new economic world we are all dwelling in now.  I think they are masking their real feelings.  I hope I am wrong.

            A longtime gallery professional I know said to me recently, “I think the gallery business is over.  And it’s never going back.”  This person has ridden the crest of the gallery wave of success that ran for years and years.  Think about it.  What do you need to open an art gallery?   A lease on a space, hopefully a good location for foot traffic, a beautiful floor and walls, good lighting, a desk, a computer, some storage space.  The art on the walls comes from a constant stream of artists begging to show their work.  The gallery owner takes the work on consignment, opens the doors and start selling!  Of course, what you really need is an understanding and appreciation of what kind of art you are representing and why.  The rest takes care of itself, or at least used to.

         I have sold much work in many galleries all over the US.  Also, I’ve sold lots of work to buyers who don’t go to galleries for many reasons.  They feel, “less than knowledgeable” when they go to a gallery.  How many times have I heard the phrase, “Well, I don’t know art history, so I don’t know what’s good.”  To which my standard reply goes, “Duke Ellington said it best, ‘If it sounds good, it is good.”

            We are in times of sweeping change.  People want to buy things as always, but they want a different buying experience.  Case in point is the Kindle.  People who read a lot and buy a lot of books are taking to the Kindle.  My wife bought one for me for my birthday a month ago.  I love it.  Here’s the buzz from Kindle users; “I love it, I read faster, I read more.”  Is that exactly true?  I don’t know, but I do know that with that kind of perception the bookstore is doomed.  Only a matter of time.  Is same true about art galleries?  I don’t know, but I sat and watched my carefully and painstakingly built art career get swept out to sea in one ugly tsunami.  

            I was catatonic for a long time, but now am back in the game, selling to individuals the way I did before I found my way into the galleries.  People are having Tupperware parties again, jean parties, jewelry parties.  Anyone who has access to product is selling at wholesale prices.  People still want to buy things, but they want to buy them differently.  

            September 11, 2001 changed everything.  The Recession has changed everything, again.  We adapt or die.  If there is anything to learn by looking back is that we must change with the times.  I hate change for the most part.  But here’s the choice; change with the times or die.  Ok, now I’m saying, change is good.  I am totally optimistic about 1020.  Totally aspirational.  

            So, I will once again avoid those tedious, “year enders” in the media, and concentrate on what I have to do now, which is to adapt, be aware, and be flexible.  If you have enjoyed any of the 50+ pieces I’ve published in the last calendar year, I am glad.  Thank you for reading and sticking with me, I will work hard to try and bring you new posts that are provocative, stimulating and inspiring.  Happy New Year to you all.

Always from my heart,

Steve Alpert

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Fertile & Fallow
December 18, 2009 by Steve

 

"Fields of Gold" 24'X36" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Fields of Gold" 24'X36" oil painting by Steve Alpert

Think of your favorite performer, or your favorite athlete performing at their very best.  When they’re at their peak, they are all one small step away from disaster.  Nobody can stay at their peak indefinitely.  Peak performance would not be peak performance without valleys.  Peaks and valleys.  High tide and low tide.  We’ve recently experienced the pain of this in our collective economy.  The peak was fun, but unsustainable.  We’re down in the valley and now beginning to slog up the mountain again.

         I love the statement of the great John Wooden, coach of many national championship basketball teams at UCLA in the 1960’s.  Dating myself?   Coach Wooden said, “We don’t get real high after big wins and we don’t get real low after losses.”  All respect due to Coach Wooden, in his peak years he so happened to have collections of players that were simply phenomenal, but he was the grand master maestro who guided them to title after title with an even-handedness that is indeed rare.  Wooden was steady at the tiller, for sure.  

         Take a look at the careers of various artist in their fields.  Very few of them have peak production on a regular basis.  For the most part, now you see ‘em and then you don’t.  The athletes you see performing at their peak are always on the brink of disaster.  The marathon runners who gear themselves to a particular race meticulously plan their training schedule six months in advance so they will peak on race day.  Awesome concept.  The real artists always come back.  The comeback trail is well traveled.

     As a working artist, now working in multiple mediums – oil paint, documentary production and now with a new stage play in development, I am experiencing a run up the mountain.  The economy devastated my art sales more than a year ago, and I was knocked back, really thrown for a loss with no notion of what to do.  In the coming posts I will detail a little more about the steps I have taken to resurrect myself, but clearly it has been a tough year and I am happy to kiss 2009 a big good-bye.  SEE YA!

      And of course, it’s all in nature.  Plow a field every year and eventually you deplete the nutrients.  Let it lie fallow, allow the elements have its’ way and, voilla, it is ready to support a robust new season.  Amazing!

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DIDN’T IT RAIN!
November 14, 2009 by Steve

 

"Rain" 11" x 14" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Rain" 11" x 14" oil painting by Steve Alpert

When the world is quiet I can rest.  I can think.  Not try to do anything, just to be.  To be a human being, not a human doing.  It’s something that is hard to do with so much work to be done.  It’s hard to stop.  Especially with this laptop always within range.

The storm is passed.  It blew like Armageddon yesterday, the classic Nor’easter, swirling winds from the north and east bringing pelting rain and slapping winds.  Trees and tall bushes swaying like a ballroom dance competition.  Took Ray, my big yellow Lab for the morning walk, smells of decaying piles of leaves, the kind of tall piles we used jump into when we were kids.  The sun was working through layers of haze and almost made it before the sky darkened again and low clouds moved in quickly. We got back just before another round of torrential rain dumped it’s load.  It rained as if we were at the bottom of a waterfall for an hour or more. — the back end of the storm heading out to sea but giving us a good reminder who is the boss before leaving.

Spent the afternoon in the studio making new work.  Hadn’t opened some of those tubes of oil paint in weeks and weeks.  Took some small pieces that were not finished.  What I love about paintings is that any painting can be gone back into, if you want.  Of course there are real wrong choices to be made by choosing the wrong one to go back into.  Brought two pieces to life that weren’t really “there” just yet.  One is now completed; the other is well on the way.

Went out into the backyard with Ray.  Heavy mist and getting dark.  Very quiet out. It’s warm, about 63.  Can smell the salt.  The ocean is about three miles as the gull flies.  The roar of the surf is a very loud rumble, carried along the bay and creek waters.  The walkway to the dock is wet and slippery, and the reedy odors of the tall grasses mixed with salt fills my head with a quietness I can’t get anywhere else.  The tall coastal inland grasses are now a faded gold, they line the banks of the narrowing creek that disappear in the grey blue mist.  The bank of tall oak and pine are shrouded   standing above the creek water smooth and dark as granite.   A handful of crickets are still singing their cricket songs in the warm wet air.  A train rumbles by, whistling at the crossing a few hundred yards away, and soundtrack then segues back to the ocean. 

Four thousand miles of ocean ending less than three miles from here.  I always have to remind myself of that.  The seawater always licking at the shore, taking beach, giving it back and on and on and on.  It’s endless.

So, I can take a nap now that I’ve reminded myself of all of this.  It slows me down and lets me…rest…

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HIGH TIDE, LOW TIDE
October 20, 2009 by Steve

 

"The Adventure Begins" 40"x72" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"The Adventure Begins" 40"x72" oil painting by Steve Alpert

Two years ago my wife Dorothy met a woman, a lawyer who worked for the organization that administers the famous aircraft carrier Intrepid, now a museum at Pier in the Hudson River in Manhattan.  Next thing you know, I’m in Dorothy’s friend’s office offering to make a large painting of the Intrepid for their fundraising efforts, and also hoping to put a deal together to sell posters in the on-site museum store.  All sounds so good on paper, yes?

This was a year after I had completed the large painting, Legacy, I’ve written about in past posts.  Legacy still lives in my storage cubby after much talk from lots of folks who wanted to utilize Legacy.  Being the habitual dreamer/fool that I am, I had high hopes for a large painting of the Intrepid, and thought it would be lots of fun to make.  Fun, that’s the key that opens the door to commitment to make a painting no one is paying for, up front at least.  Artists are the ultimate entrepreneurs.

The Intrepid is a large subject, just physically sitting there at the pier, it’s beyond huge, a monster.  At that time, Intrepid had been moved to Staten Island for installation of new exhibits.  I was granted access.  All I needed was an idea of what the painting would be.

I began research in the library but found nothing particularly interesting.  I requested permission to board the great ship.  March of 2008, on a day as cold and gray as the Intrepid itself, I was shown around by Exhibit Director, Chris Malanson, a bright and creative professional who was going to make magic in this unique museum experience.  Chris told me much of the ship’s fascinating history.  I took lots of photos.  When I got back to the studio, my mind was as blank as that large canvas staring me in the face.  I went back to the ship a second time.  This time I wandered around on my own through narrow rabbit warren compartments in the bow section.  Imagining what it was like in the Pacific, Japanese fighter jets buzzing and bombing, the chaos, the loss of life, the months and years of war and peacetime,  thinking about the life of the ship and all the men who served and endured.

What would the painting be?  Still clueless.  I’m talking about nothing, nada.  I hit the bookstore looking for picture books of WWII aircraft carriers.  One book had an image of the USS Enterprise, another carrier of the era and the image was a dark and beautiful painting.  This was it – I would model my painting after this one.  I needed to latch onto something and I was taking it and running with it. 

Then I did something that was really weird and uncharacteristic.  I hired another artist to render the image of the big ship onto this big 40”x72” canvas.  It was an odd choice for me, and one that would prove to keep me away from working on the painting for one year.  For a while I felt I was cheating, that the image wasn’t mine, that I was, “producing” the painting.  But there it was, and Sarah did a fine job complete with figures of sailors I would later obliterate.  In Sarah’s rendering the Intrepid was tied up and being boarded by her voluminous crew.  It felt static to me, maybe the choice of image was wrong.  I didn’t know but the whole project became stuck in the mud.

Intrepid felt like inert, a gargantuan hunk of steel looming above a pier.  There was nothing exciting to me about it at all.  I hated it.  The canvas went into the storage cubby sitting next to Legacy.  Let them lean against each other and talk about nothing.  

Then, the economy tanked and my art selling business came to a grinding halt.  There was no reason to continue making paintings although my new dealer, Alan Blazar had spread my paintings around galleries all over the east coast.  Nothing was selling.  Not only was the Intrepid docked, so was my painting career.

For four months I didn’t go into the studio.  Never turned the lights on.  After eight years of continual development, putting in my ten thousand hours in front of hundreds of canvases, it was time to put the brushes down.  I was angry and disgusted at nobody in particular, just the world that pulled the rug out from under me.  I knew I was not alone, there were many others suffering a hell of a lot worse.  Time to hunker down, let it go, do other things, work in video or whatever I could.  The painting career would be put on ice until the thaw, whenever that would be.  Life is like the tides, they come in and they go out.  In time, things would change, but Americans were in for a long winter…so was I.

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IN SEARCH OF THE ART HEART
October 16, 2009 by Steve

 

"At the Watering Hole" 16"x20" watercolor by Steve Alpert

"At the Watering Hole" 16"x20" watercolor by Steve Alpert

A close friend, we’ll call him DC, was describing his dilemma.  A dilemma of his own creation– aren’t they mostly always?  DC is an accomplished executive producer and administrator of creative work at a major corporation.  A most talented professional, DC is in the business of  communicating ideas and concepts for clients, assigning the creative team, and sending them out to do it.  When the creatives come back with something for DC to see, he suggests, tweaks and cajoles, always making the product better, ultimately making the client happy.  Nothing better than a happy client and this is DC’s stock-in-trade.

DC is an undisputed master at what he does, more talented and intuitive than anyone I have ever worked with, and I’ve worked with scores of ‘em.   My dear DC suddenly is harboring an inner desire to know himself better  through his own individual artistic eye.  We’re talking photography.  DC wants to explore himself as an artist with a camera.

DC decided to take a Sunday jaunt, solo with his camera.  He climbs into the car, but then all the negative thoughts download into his consciousness.  “What am I doing here, I don’t know what I want to shoot, I don’t know…” and so forth.  All that thick mental junk us artists have to wade through, especially in the beginning.  He had an idea, a little spark telling him to drive down to the docks.  As a child his father would take him down to docks in a different city, just to be there, walk around smell the air, change it up.

DC began the short trip.  All the “stupid balloons” like cartoon character  dialogue appeared over his head, “What’s the purpose of this, this is stupid…”  DC got to the docks.  Walked around, squeezing off a series of shots.  Was there any great revelation or epiphany on that Sunday down at the docks?  No.  But, it was a beginning.

I suggested to DC that Sundays could be his time for his solo adventures, at least for now.  Take a few hours for yourself, just you, to be with your camera.  Let the clock tick.  Allow something to happen.  Keep at it and allow free will to guide you – by far the greatest benefit of being an artist.  Eventually, when you least expect it, you will find something, or really more to the point, something will find you.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

The tool and materials;  paint, film, lenses, pen and ink, shutter speeds, apertures, clay, whatever.  We all love the gear, the smell of oil paint, how a certain camera feels in the hands, the satisfying click of the shutter. But, materials are immaterial as this is the hunt for what’s inside the heart of the artist.  

It  all begins as play, doesn’t it?  Play, as in tinkering, being open, breathing, slowing it down, allowing your life experience to idle in neutral.  Allowing yourself to play as you did before the school system screwed everything up into rigid, linear work.   I remember playing with clay in art class back in second or third grade.  I had this handful of clay that suddenly appeared to me like a rhinoceros.  Once I saw it as a rhinoceros, I made a few more squeezes here and there, then glazed it.  When it came back from kiln and brought it home, it got my mother’s attention.  She was a classically trained fine artist, so her praise got my attention, but even more than that, I recognized that it was damn good.  I wasn’t trying to make a rhino, making a rhino never occurred to me but that rhino found itself in the clay.  All I did was identify it and then encourage it a little bit more.  Some fifty years later I never consciously planned to make all the military images in oil paint that continues as I write this, but all those images found me.  I didn’t even know what these military images meant for me, until very  recently, which I will deal with in a future post.

DC is very impatient to learn all the tools of photography.  That’s good, his fire is lit and knowing your tools is important.  But, the glowing jewels of the art heart lay beyond tech specs and gear — in the soul.  I think the way to get to the heart and soul is through regular exercise.  So, I wish DC well in his Sunday jaunts in discovering his big heart and kind soul I have known for a long time.  Sounds like DC is ready to exercise his considerable creative mind to seek the silent riches within and in doing so, make the world a better place.  I’m excited for him!  Bon Chance!

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“THAT’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.”
October 9, 2009 by Steve

 

"Reverie" 12"x16" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Reverie" 12"x16" oil painting by Steve Alpert

 

Somewhere along the line there came a prevailing attitude that it is somehow undignified for an artist, any artist to self promote.  Know what I say to that?

Sure, fine, but it’s okay to HIRE somebody and do it for you, that’s ok, right?  Wake up for Pete’s sake (who the heck is Pete?).   There was an open forum on a local public radio station about the arts in the new economy. After the panel finished their discussion, it was open mike time.  I got up and began to talk about artists needing to re-invent themselves all the time, doing this and trying that.  After a few minutes some of the folks in the back of the auditorium began to yell to me to sit down.  Imagine that, anarchistic artists actually uniting on something.  I didn’t want to further inflame my fellow artists and I thanked the panel and sat down.  Two older women sitting in front of me, one turns to the other and says with attitude, “Such self-promotion!”   The second lady responds, “That’s what you have to do.”  Precisely, Ma’am.  Thank you.

I have been working with a terrific self-publishing company, mypublisher.com, for years now.  I’ve made a number of small booklets for my galleries, and in the last year and a half been making coffee-table size books. The quality is impeccable and the price and service are just as good.  The books are great ambassadors for me, and have sold lots of paintings to lots of people.  I received an email two months ago asking if I would allow mypublisher.com to include one of my books on their website under, “Inspiration.”  So here it is, check it out, a little self-promotion (“That’s what you have to do…”).  Open the book.  It’s a book I made about two years ago. These books have been invaluable for my on-going shameless self promotion campaign.

mypublisher.com/inspiration/other2#

So, all you out there who think it is somehow improper for an artist to self-promote, I say, “Jeezey Pete, that’s what you have to do.”

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LOVE ‘EM AND LEAVE ‘EM
September 25, 2009 by Steve

 

"On The Other Side" 48"x60" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"On The Other Side" 48"x60" oil painting by Steve Alpert

Love the one you’re with.  Dating myself with that Stephen Stills reference?  Ah, well…words to live by nonetheless.

We know the artist’s control is in the making of the art.  After that, we’re talking Hand of Destiny.  You can try anything you want to try and sell your art.  Dancing under the Moon with a dried squash would work as well as anything.  All you can do is get as many people as possible to see your work, increase your chances of selling.  One day someone comes along and buys the orphan painting you were sure  no one would ever want.  

So consider the odyssey of one large painting titled, “On The Other Side.”

Was painted in the bedroom-turned-studio.  A big-un, 48”x60,”  “On The Other Side” was kind of a breakthrough painting at the time, it was the first I felt I was able to manage such a large canvas space with a cohesive image.    Nicked up the walls a few times hauling it up and down the stairs, this baby was hauled out to Montauk and back in a truck, Shelter Island and back in a truck, Water Mill and back in a truck and a couple of other places, too.  I finally gave up on it.  Maybe there’s something not right with it, I thought, although there was a person who always was admiring it but not buying.  The hell with it, I thought and I stuck it in my son Matt’s room.  Matt was off to college.  It hung there over the headboard opposite a mirror.  So, for four years that painting sat there looking at itself in the mirror.  

One interesting comment came from a friend of an artist I shared a show with in Montauk.  He said he used to work oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and he had seen this scene many times.  That’s cool.  That’s original. 

I’m in love with a painting while I’m working on it.  I’m thinking about it consciously and unconsciously.  Checking it out in the morning with fresh eyes, need to darken that corner, extend the line of light on the field right here, move that tree way back into the distance—playing God with paint until it looks and feels…just right.  Once it is done, I’m done with it.  I may have some residual feelings for the piece, but long as I know it is, “whole,”  I’m ready to call my man Gary Mamay to come over and shoot his beautiful images of the new batch of paintings.  The thing of it is, the circle of the painting is not complete until someone pays money for it.

After a piece is done and drying, I want to understand how it fits in the continuum of paintings, one after another like stones in a path.  Each painting, like chapters in a book, is a progression of the artist’s body of work.  I want to know how each painting relates to the painting(s) that came before, which paintings it might especially be related to, what other painters I may have borrowed or stolen from.  I want to know roots and origins, it helps me understand my progression of image making – the essence of who I am as an artist — this is what I am after.  Truth to tell, most of the time I am not conscious of what I am doing, it is more like I’m a medium myself.   Almost as if I am “channeling” an image, the image coming through me, from my arm, hand, fingers, brush, paint, to canvas.  The art comes through the artist, not necessarily born within the artist all by itself, but from a universal sourcing of ideas and creativity.  Does that make any sense?  

Ok, painting’s finished.  Sign it, title it.  Drives me absolutely insane to go into a gallery and see, “Untitled.”  Or worse, “Untitled #2.”  Don’t waste my time with such nonsense.  An artist is a storyteller.  What story has no title?  What story is not about something?  So, all you “Untitled” artists out there, quit being so damned pretentious and wake up to yourself and tell us something about who you are, and stop wasting our precious time with your “Untitled” drivel.  You hear people whisper to each other in galleries ”What do you think that means?”  Who cares!   Even a mess of a painting I saw a long time ago, messy globs of paint all over the canvas — no image no form — at least it had a title, “Lower Manhattan at Sunset from the New Jersey Side.”  Ok, at least we got something to go on.

One day a dealer comes to visit the studio.  After choosing new pieces for a gallery in Key West selling my work he says, “What else have you got?” 

“Come with me…”  We tromp up the stairs.

“This one.  It’s called, “On the Other Side.”

“What are you doing with that?”

“Nothing!  It’s just sitting there looking at itself in that mirror…for years.” 

“Let’s ship it to Key West.”

Eight months later, “On the Other Side” sells for an all-time high price at the time, to a couple from Germany.  I had given it up for dead, touching it up many times from all the moving around, and four years later it sells for a very high price (for me)!

How does all this work?  Who can know these things?  Now, back to the studio and the paintings I’m working on, thinking about them, evaluating them, working to make them whole, and giving them a title that gives them a point of reference, a place, a feeling, a mood.  And then, letting them go.  And falling in love with a new crop. Another turn of the wheel and the wheel keeps spinning…

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CONTROL
September 22, 2009 by Steve

 

"Within You and Without You" 44x60 oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Within You and Without You" 44x60 oil painting by Steve Alpert

PICASSO, now there’s someone we should not talk about.  A total anomaly.  Had a stranglehold on the art world for thirty years, maybe forty?  Look at the work of the Abstract Expressionists in the late 1940’s and 1950’s.  It was all derivative of the wild Spaniard.  No one could break loose, until Jackson Pollack came along, but that’s another story.  Picasso was in such control of his product that he would write checks to pay for dinner at restaurants, knowing full well that no one was cashing a check with the signature of Pablo Picasso on it. 

So, here we go from macro to micro – to that first summer of selling paintings at the outdoor craft shows on the East End of Long Island, New York.  Lots of work packing up the canvases, the heavy and unwieldy display rack small pieces hang from, and the folded easels that hold the large pieces.  And everything in-between.  Because of the large pieces required a rental van, I got to know the rental agents pretty well that summer.  Hour and a half to set-up and then get out the folding chair and the real work begins.  Sitting.  People watching.  Passing by.  Hoping someone will buy something.  All this work in getting here and not wanting to take it all home.

I had forgotten how difficult this part is.  I had my share of outdoor shows, in Eugene Or, and in Miami, places I lived before getting back to New York.  It didn’t take long to remember about the sitting and waiting part.  Healthy doses of quiet rejection, as people look at your work and keep walking by, avoiding eye contact with you.  Someone  invariably comes by and maybe buys something. 

Weather is friend and foe.  Wind is the enemy.  Rain, fuggetaboutit!  Heat and humidity keep browsers and buyers away.  You sit and sweat and don’t sell.  Been there, done that.  Bottom line was I sold enough that summer to keep going.  Most of the 65 pieces I painted were gone by the end of the year.  So far so good.

I was learning something valuable but did not fully know it then.  After years of hard won experience making films, producing live theatre, and selling hundreds of paintings, here it is…something I know for sure.  A thing that is the one constant, the one thing an artist CAN control, but only this one thing.  Ready?   Took me a long time to get this, so I ‘m not not giving it up so easily, the pain of rejection, the lack of control, of what happens to your product once it is completed and out there in the world for others to judge, enjoy, reject, pay for, ignore.  The one thing an artist has – the ONLY thing an artist has… you ready?  Are you guessing what it is?  Ok, here it is, for you…the sum total of anything I might be sure of in this life besides knowing I love my wife and son and friends and family of choice, my dogs, books, and nature…

AN ARTIST CAN ONLY CONTROL THE CREATION OF THE PRODUCT.  That’s it.  Once it’s out, off the easel, on the stage, on the screen, that’s it.  You’re really done.  It’s in the domain of the world, the critics, the users, the viewers,  They will do what they want with it, they will choose it’s path of success or failure.   That’s the dirty low-down.  Oh, yes, you can try and shape the marketing campaign, create strategic alliances, but the public will tell you what they think.

Read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point,” that will explain this in eye-opening detail.

Years ago a friend wrote a Broadway show.  The young author was twenty-something.  A major star was in the title role.  Show opens.  Big party après show.  TV reviewers pummel the show on the local news while the party was still going.  The author and his writing were particularly brutalized.  By 11:30 the big fun party emptied out like no one had ever been there.  Show closed the next day.  One performance.  It took years and years for my friend to recover.  Actually, I don’t think he ever recovered.  Washed up before he was thirty.  You wanted him to follow up with another, just to show those crickets he was made of sterner stuff.  But, he wasn’t.  One personal American Dream terminated.  That’s show biz.

So, go to yoga, take ab classes, do sit-ups.  Toughen up.  You need a strong stomach to compete and take the hits that will come your way.

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A Fox on a Ridge in the Mist
August 31, 2009 by Steve

 

"Hazard" 8"x24" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Hazard" 8"x24" oil painting by Steve Alpert

BEEN TO ALL FIFTY STATES, at least twice save for the one trip to Alaska.  Those who have traveled America share with me the incomprehensible beauty and variety of stunning landscapes within our borders.  I have a lot of friends who have been all over the world but are clueless to the beauty in their own backyard.  What’s up with that?

My restlessness and wanderlust defined my early adult years.  A high enough lottery number, 197, kept me from being drafted into the Vietnam War maelstrom.  I took to the roads to discover America, and myself.

Summer of 1972.  I hitchhiked across America. When you stick your thumb out on the road, you take the rides offered, face-to-face with the spectrum of humanity; San Quentin ex-cons on a joy ride, Miss Oregon’s hairdresser sporting a Mustang Fastback blaring Perry Como love songs on her 8-track, a crazed shaved head Vietnam Vet ranting about re-upping, “…gotta get back to Da Nang, man!” and the dynamic duo of Jake and Grover.  Jake, the single earringed Boston Southie carpenter who faked a suicide to be section-eighted out of the Army and his majestic black lab, Grover, who could jump in and out of pick-up trucks, and smarter than all of us.  Fifty-pound pack on my back thumbing and camping out, all on a budget of $200.  Heading west on I-80 clear across the Midwestern flats to Colorado, south to New Mexico, west to the Grand Canyon  (a major life epiphany occurring at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; see, “Naked at the Canyon;” myartheart.com/2009/07/19/naked-at-the-canyon).  Across the Mojave to LA, up the coast to Oregon, Washington, Vancouver BC.  Back east through the Canadian Rockies to Banff in the back of a packed to the gills pick-up, hopping a train at Banff across the endless plains of Canada. 

Back at Ithaca College for senior year I took a two semester painting course with master artist, Alan Atwell.  Twelve hand-picked students met for three hours, once a month. Everybody put their work from that month on the walls.  Atwell, tall, wispy, soft-spoken had been artist-in-residence with Timothy Leary and his crew at Cornell and beyond.  Atwell was different.  He lived downtown, and you would see his tall figure walking along the steep and narrow road up and down the hill to work, never driving even in the worst weather.  In 1972 nobody walked — that behavior alone earned him a reputation.  Atwell traveled extensively in India, rolling through the India backcountry along ancient roads unchanged since the Eight Century in a cart pulled by an ox, listening to the bell around it’s neck.  

Atwell floated around the room occasionally glancing at the paintings on the walls, but never referring to any of them, except one.  He spoke pointedly about art and life, how an artist perceives and assimilates worldly experience, transforming that experience into art.   How Michelangelo must have felt about love when he painted that beautiful woman standing in the giant clam shell.  About painting the spaces between the leaves of a tree instead of painting the leaves.  I still ruminate on that one.  He turned on my lights, filling my tank for a lifetime of art making.  Alan Atwell is clearly the reason I am an artist, today.  

I still work in the method he espoused.  Atwell taught what is called, “non-objective” painting, meaning you don’t have a particular goal or finished image, you go where the paint takes you until you know you’ve arrived.  This is the fun, fascination and adventure.  You start with a wash of color, or a line, anything, just get something on the canvas and get it going…keep working until you begin to recognize what is happening in the paint on the surface.  It’s total improvisation.  Keep working and developing the image, an image uniquely yours. 

The only painting Atwell every referred to in that entire year, in those 27 hours of class over a nine month period, was a stunning image made by an artist named, Charlie.  Can’t pull up his last name.  It was an image of a fox on a ridge in the mist.  It was as if you were walking in deep woods suddenly coming upon this wild creature, a fox.  The fox doesn’t sense you.  You are witness to this perfect moment of peace and repose in nature.  The mist gently pushes everything back just a little — casting a bluish haze on the evergreens towering behind the fox.  A moment of pure serenity, as if given to you as a gift.

Charlie’s magnificent painting is the only image I remember from that class.  Charlie was in touch with the natural world.  He lived in a large room in an old brick Victorian building that had once been the old downtown Ithaca College dorm before the college moved up to the South Hill.  In Charlie’s room there was a tangle of large tree branches that went up to the top of the twenty foot ceiling.  Perched on a limb was a large black bird, Charlie’s companion.  A mattress on the floor and some clothing strewn around.  That was pretty much it.  In life , Charlie was really out there, his artwork was way beyond anyone in our midst — approaching the Divine.  

“Tryst’ is an homage to Charlie’s fox, although true to form I did not set out with that in mind.  I guess I could call it, “An Alligator on the Beach Under the Moon.”  Tryst began without the gator. The painting moved around my studio for more than a year, I was not knowing how to finish it, but I knew there was something about it.  There was an intrigue to the feeling of the place, with the outsized moon and gradated light source.  The little spit of beach in the foreground was inviting.  Something wild needed to be there.  Playing golf with friends last winter in Florida, we met Gus the alligator who liked to hang out near the 16th green.  Made a few paintings of Gus as gifts for our friends, and realized Gus would complete the “Tryst” painting.  Gus is waiting for his mate or her mate, or simply enjoying the quiet of the place.  Either way, “Tryst” seemed appropriate.   A fan of the French Impressionist Henri Rousseau, “Tryst” resonates with Rousseau’s work.  Most of all, this painting came to be because of Alan Atwell and the vision of the Fox on a Ridge in the Mist still fresh in my mind after thirty-six years.

 

"Tryst" 30"x40" oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Tryst" 30"x40" oil painting by Steve Alpert

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Hiccups to Heroics
August 20, 2009 by Steve

 

"Night Flight to Maui" 18x24 oil painting by Steve Alpert

"Night Flight to Maui" 18x24 oil painting by Steve Alpert

 

 

THE SCOURGE FOR ALL ARTISTS is the damaging of a work while transporting it across the studio, or across the country.   @#$@%!$%@*!!!  Yeah, I hear the epithets, mine and yours.  It’s disheartening to say the least, but as we all know, entropy happens, so now it’s decision time.  Is the piece trashed, able to be restored, or do we go to Adventure Land, essentially changing the painting?  You’ve heard the adages — silk purse out of a sow’s ear, play hurt, when you’re handed lemons make lemonade…. HEY!  Here’s the deal — it’s not the cards you were dealt, it’s how you play the cards.  As in, everybody had a difficult childhood, but are you still blaming your parents for something you don’t like in your present reality?  Get over it, friend.  We’ve all had our minds messed with, canvases scratched, stretcher bars warped. We’ve got work to do, a problem to solve, let’s deal with the here and now.  

It happened to me with two paintings I particularly like, no, love.  Here’s the story of the first one, “Night Flight to Maui.”  It was after a trip to Hawaii, had a late night flight in a tiny six seater from Kona to Maui.  Like flying on the back of a mosquito.  Moonlit, surreal, breathtaking!  Traveling alone and feeling like it was all especially rigged up for me.  I was on a trip to gather images for an upcoming show in Lahaina, Maui.  Back in the studio, had some blue left over on the palette after a work session, took a canvas and started spreading it around.  The image appeared and I recognized it as such.  This creative process never ceases to amaze me!

The show was a spectacular flop, the gallery gave my stuff all of three weeks of wall space, nothing sells, and they ship all the paintings back in two huge crates.  Insult to injury I had to pay a little more than a grand to have them sent back to me!  O-o-o-h that smarts! Unpacked ‘em and somewhere between moving them into the studio or around the studio a major scratch was added to the sky portion of the “Night Flight” piece.  My stomach flipped and there was an outpouring of invective audible in a two hundred foot radius.  No one was around except a few rabbits in the yard and they got the heck out of there in a hurry.  The painting was either ruined, or… maybe what we have here is the makings of a shooting star???   The composition seemed spot-on!  With a dense slash of white along the line of the scratch, even lengthened it a little, the shooting star is now the dominant element in the painting and brings an appropriate metaphysical feeling.  A deft piece of supreme fudgery, if I do say myself.   The shooting star makes the painting a much better piece, in my opinion.  

“Night Flight” now lives in our home, not for sale.  It is a glowing memory of a wonderful trip to a magical place on the planet that is Hawaii.  Failure in that show could never take away the wonder I enjoyed on that exquisite place on earth.  So, after you ding up your favorite painting and you’re done cursing and stomping around, figure a way to make your piece even better than it was before!    

How do you make lemonade from the lemons handed you in life?

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