“watercolor/gouache paintings 2011″ Stan Berning
Prayer Flag
(sold)
The monsoons are upon us. In the sky yesterday stood our first clouds in months. I spent my 4th of July in the studio with the doors open to the trees and the monsoon clouds passing overhead. The sunset was biblical.
With the fires raging we’ve all been praying for rain. In the studio, set up now for watercolors, I’ve been doing my own little rain-dance. In the last few weeks I’ve begun a new series of watercolor/gouache paintings. I’m hoping they are filled with as much potential as I think.
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Tempestuous Noon
A big hot summer wind.
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A Desert In Shards
(sold)
Last week I went with a friend to see the Grand Canyon. We drove east across the high desert floor, squinting into a bright noonday light. Here is another watercolor.
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Light – Bird – Ether
These paintings, many of which appear so light, translucent, and gaseous (at times almost effervescent) are actually dense, torn, and worried. A watercolor can take an instant to complete, but these are taking longer. Often days of painting end in erasure and the finished image becomes a matter of resolving the shadows and ghosts of what’s been removed. Discovering that resolve before the paper fails to be scrubbed even one more time is a challenge. But what’s left is an image that feels to the eye sculptural.
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Tiered Green
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Bouguet Garni
This painting was a revelation. The revelation that came with this painting is how very closely the process of erasure, in regards specifically to this series of watercolors, is a direct result of my years of experience with the monotype. The monotype involves a lot of applying then removal of ink. This subtractive process is uncommon in the realm of watercolor and, though I began exploring soaking and reworking watercolor pages a long long time ago, I would never have come to this series – or this particular watercolor painting which is all about afterimage – without first seeing the ghost images of so many monotypes. I’m constantly surprised by these cross-pollinations that happen and, though my healthy subconscious works overtime and always seems to make the connections, my conscious mind is forever surprised when it finally catches up.
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White Interstices
This last painting has moved me in surprising ways. Last night, as I fell asleep, the memory of its dusty yellows and oranges, and buttery whites stood before my closed eyes like a slippery window of layered light….. I dreamed I was in my kitchen and through the door came myself, unaware of the first self sitting observing. He/I walked about the room oblivious to the first-person ‘I’ sitting and watching with surprise. It dawned on me that this second ‘I’ was a very realistic after-image of myself a few minutes before. ”So he cannot sense me here and he is not real.” I thought and put my hands on his waist to prove it, expecting my hands to pass right through him. But his body was as real as mine and I leaped back thinking he would surely realize that I was there. He went on about his business, unaware. A woman was in the room with me. ”You can’t see him?” I asked. “But he’s right there. Watch. Soon he’ll go into the bedroom to sleep and then he’ll catch up with me. He’ll no longer be behind.” This as he closed the bedroom door behind him. It was as if time and space itself had become slippery and layered. This is what the painting has done to me.
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Restless Arc
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Trumpet’s Prelude
At work last night I became furious. It was about the 3PM run, my 2 month long 4AM ordeal, and now having to be thankful for finding a place on another mediocre run while my 3PM run is given to Wayne. I can’t go on erupting in anger like this. The push of adrenaline through my body is not physically healthy. In this time of world turmoil I have a job that keeps me afloat, offers medical benefits, and allows me the time and psychic space to paint. There is much to be thankful for. I went to bed exhausted, nervously trying to recover from my angry loss of emotional control, and slept restlessly. I awoke this morning remembering a few childhood moments when dread first placed its stamp on my forehead and thought, “I have always been nervous, fearful, anxious. I am now 60 years old. What an awfully long time to be always anxious. What a toll it must be taking on my body and spirit.”
I played around on the computer for and hour or two. The world, as seen through my computer, has become filled with images. I am now often overwhelmed by the volume and speed with which the world of art can be viewed. An hour took me from the cave paintings of Lascaux, through the Renaissance, Post Modernism, and back again. I came upon some photos of Joan Mitchell’s newest paintings. Having seen them before and been truly moved, this morning I flipping through them quickly, feeling unmoved. I found myself thinking this disparaging thought: ”It is purely aesthetics. It has always been nothing more than aesthetic sensibility. Why, as a young student, did no one tell me this? I may not have wasted this life!” In my funk I did not stop to acknowledge that these art-objects – not their photos but the works themselves – embrace and encompass all that is of the human experience. Instead I became anxious to an extreme. Fearfully I leaped out of my seat thinking, “I don’t want to see any more. All these images, all these paintings throughout the centuries, overwhelm me. I can’t, I don’t want to look at them!” Five minutes later I was in my new winter studio, now flooded with morning light, finding the most beautiful orange line as I reproduced a nude drawing onto a sheet of watercolor paper already drenched in yellow. My spirit relaxed and suddenly all my faith, which moments before had abandoned me, returned.
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A Third Gesture
After 2 weeks I’ve finished another watercolor. This one is titled “A Third Gesture”. Several times I had brought it to a place which left it ‘finished’ but emotionally unsatisfying. It did not want to be solidly rendered with large graphic divisions. I did not want to be easily resolved. It most definitely did not want to be Yellow! It’s end result is similar to gestures sketched in space by the hands – one, two, three. So many of these paintings now have come to be an exploration of the nature of memory.
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