SOMETHING ELSE
Pam Dempsey
B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2008
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ART STUDIO
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
SPRING
2010
SOMETHING ELSE
A Thesis
by
Pam Dempsey
Approved by:
____________________________________, Committee Chair
Ian Harvey
____________________________________, Second Reader
Robert Ortbal
_____________________
Date
ii
Student: Pam Dempsey
I certify that this student has met the requirements for the format contained in the
University format manual and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the library and
credit is to be awarded for the thesis.
______________________________, Graduate Coordinator
Ian Harvey
Department of Art
iii
___________________
Date
Abstract
of
SOMETHING ELSE
by
Pam Dempsey
There is a transition in art making when the work shifts from visual replication to
something else. Something emerges that is not from the literal; it is from the artist.
There is a possibility of limitlessness and creativity as the academic is suffused with
invention, life experience, intuition, conscience. As the journey delves inward it begins
to expand beyond self to touch universal ideas that are shared in their humanness. A
voice emerges to give access and being to the work. This paper presents the cumulative
process of art making as it moves toward the possibility of something else.
____________________________________, Committee Chair
Ian Harvey
_____________________
Date
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SOMETHING ELSE……………………………………………………………… …… 1
Bibliography…………………..…………………………………………………………11
v
1
SOMETHING ELSE
My paintings materialize from a dialogue that is inspired by nature. It is a
discourse that provides a rich source of shape and form and ideas of contemplation,
sanctuary, and stewardship. I think about nature in two ways. In one sense, nature is
defined as everything, including us, as human, biological, organic beings. We are in this
way connected to nature and a part of something much larger than ourselves; reassured
by continuum and humbled by scale. Another definition of nature is that it is untouched,
unspoiled. This concept of pristine beauty insists on a sense of responsibility in our
modern world. My work provides an experience for the viewer, a moment outside of the
stress of our urban everyday, and an appreciation for nature that will foster awareness and
conservation.
Art and life have always taken a parallel course as my love of art and nature has
fused into a single passion. Even as a very young child pressing tiny hand prints on to a
slick, shiny piece of paper, I knew that I was an artist. It was the tactile seduction of the
paint, the pure joy of mark making, and the gratification of product. It made sense to me
to make art. I could not have known how this tiny mark placed me in the long tradition
of art making from similar marks left in the Chauvet Caves over 25,000 years ago, to
Jackson Pollock’s own hand print as he applied that ancient form of authorship to
Lavender Mist in 1950.
The leafy, botanical shapes that animate my canvases seem to be imprinted on my
heart and mind. I have lived in the country most of my life and have always enjoyed the
sense of freedom and wonder that nature inspires. This is a world I find both visually and
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emotionally appealing, and a world I want to share. A bit displaced and uncomfortable in
the city, I identify closely with that optimistic little weed that pushes up through the crack
in the sidewalk, or the beautiful redwood tree in a neighbor’s front yard. As nature and I
struggle with urban pressures, canvas and paint record a dialogue of refuge and
inspiration.
It was predictable that I would paint flowers, either in a natural environment or in
my garden. Their beauty arrested my attention for many years. Early paintings were an
external effort to accurately record what was in front of me. Concerned most about how
to paint, it became a struggle to suggest believable form, depth, and space. The
discoveries of early Renaissance artists offered resolution to many of these challenges.
These masters left their indelible mark on art; Giotto’s rendering of form, Masaccio’s
dynamic perspective, and the shimmering, golden atmosphere of early Venetian painters.
Their discoveries were avant-garde in their day and have endured as the foundation of
Western art instruction. They provide me not only with information on how to paint;
they also represent the possibility of success in facing the challenges and problems that
arise in painting.
As I learned to accurately render flowers on a visual level, I began to understand
them on a cerebral level. I thought about the fleetingness of a flower, the life force,
photosynthesis, water, capillary action; so much happening and yet so quiet. Again the
question became how to approach these ideas with paint. I studied the painstakingly
accurate representations of the seventeenth century Eastern European floral painters. On
close examination, I discovered something else. Their work was often informed by
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scientific or horticultural manuals, and though each flower was rendered with scientific
accuracy, the lavish bouquets amassed flowers that could not possibly have bloomed at
the same time. I was forced to reconsider my entire understanding of realism and
philosophic ideas about truth, perception, fake, and metaphor. In short, I had to think.
These impossible bouquets called on beautiful flowers to create a dialogue about
abundance, luxury, the fragility of beauty, the fleetingness of life; the human condition.
The work became more about my response to the flower and the way that it
revealed itself to me. The distortion of form and color by the Mannerists and the raw
color of the Fauves opened up the space between actual and expressive. Their use of
exaggeration, unsettled balance, and unlikely composition and color surprised and
intrigued me as a viewer and informed a more intuitive representation in my work. I was
freed from the limitations of exact visual replication. The work became more stylized,
gaining signature, as it opened up a possibility beyond realism; perhaps a deeper realism.
As I continued, the inquiry of the flower began to develop into the larger question,
“Where did the flower come from and where is it going?” In response, my attention
shifted from flowers to fallen leaves because they seemed to embrace the idea of
continuum; decomposition, rebirth and renewal, and the ongoing process of nature. So
much about the flower is surface quality; beauty, color, the fragility of thin, transparent
petals, and lively edges. The flowers held the work fast to the surface of the canvas and
their fleetingness seemed to arrest time. I found leaves to be more material, more about
structure and form as they posed a new sense of time in their slow process of
decomposition. Their tendency to fall in layers brought the work deep into the canvas.
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As the leaves served pictorial needs, conceptually they availed the larger order of nature
and expanded the conversation. The work was no longer just flowers or leaves, it was
about something else. All of the study, and painting, and thinking carried me beyond the
simple portrayal of leaves as a love of art and nature merged on canvas. Art theory,
philosophy, looking inward and outward, life experience, and the work of other artists
informed a visual discussion. Remarking on the work of Cubist artists, Picasso
explained, “Our subjects might be different, because we have introduced into painting
objects and forms that used to be ignored. We look at our surroundings with open eyes,
and also open minds.”1
As the possibilities expanded, new imagery began to emerge and I had some
questions about combining abstract and realistic elements in the same painting. I was
aware of the discourse that surrounded the use of pattern and flat shapes, and their
connection to ideas about high and low art, decoration, and wallpaper. The PostImpressionists struggled with these same issues. Paul Gauguin’s Mahana No Atua,
commonly translated Day of the Gods (1894) presents inventive use of color as well as
horizontal bands that shift from realistic landscape to a purely abstract body of water.
This piece is also especially significant to me as Gauguin chose to depict a Tahiti that
existed prior to his arrival, and prior to the arrival of Western missionaries and
colonization. Gauguin’s perfect paradise, primitive Tahiti, inspires thoughts of the
quickly vanishing, unspoiled natural spaces.
This new body of work changed the way that I approached my canvas. I no
longer know what a painting is going to look like when I begin to paint. It is impossible
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to know the outcome of a creative process in advance. I begin by applying color with a
rag or a brush, and allow things to reveal themselves. Images evolve and grow or fade
away, in much the same way that they would in the natural world. It becomes a matter of
discovery, of finding something here or there. The spontaneity of this process invites
randomness and permits creativity to happen. Imagery emerges in various stages of
development or decay as layers begin to touch on the complexity of nature, abundance, or
the passage of time. There is a point at which I step back to assess the work; to look at it
in an analytical way, to question it, and to make decisions. I may step back into it in a
logical mode or in an intuitive one, with control or the lack of it, but it is a question of
allowing the painting to reveal itself.
This approach is informed by the work of Pollock and the action painters. His
expressive, visceral use of chance and the “all over” composition expanded contemporary
dialogue beyond formalist ideas of hierarchical. The humble creation of Pollock’s work
on the studio floor connects it to the working methods of the shamans and a spiritual
quality I associate with nature. Pollock’s example of random process, that paradox of
control and lack of it, translate well in my struggle to find order, or not. Reflecting on a
reviewer’s criticism that his paintings had no beginning or end, Pollock commented, “He
didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was."2
My palette includes the three primary colors and white. In one sense it is a very
limited choice, but the primaries are the source of all colors. The work is unified by hues
that are made of varying amounts of each to create a harmony of color that allows
complexity or disorder to be the job of other elements in the work. I appreciate the work
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of the Fauves and find their use of unnatural or unexpected color to be curious and
visually engaging. I use limited amounts of green as it is so connected to the idea of
leaves, though I sometimes like the way it seems to jar the painting back to reality or
insist on the ordinary. Most of the work is acrylic on canvas with limited amounts of
latex enamel and shellac. Brushes, rags, palette knives, and hand made stencils apply
paint while water, sandpaper, and alcohol remove it. It is a repeated process of working
into the surface of the canvas and back out again.
Large canvases provide an opportunity for the viewer to explore and to linger at
will. This choice of scale was influenced by the Sublime artists and their awesome
panoramas. Their viewer is dwarfed as multiple events unfold to create an environment
that seems to continue beyond the frame. Philosophically, I return often to View from
Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm, more commonly
referred to as The Oxbow, by Thomas Cole. Painted in 1836, it dramatically captures
dark and frightening western space as it collides with the sunny, tame East along an
oxbow in the Connecticut River. I ponder a more recent shift in that dynamic. It is now
man that is untamed and frightening as nature is subdued and threatened by progress and
acquisition. That line between man and nature marked by the river in Cole’s painting,
would more currently take the form of the pavement edge or the signature line of a legal
document as they encroach ever further into the few remaining wild spaces.
There are a number of elements and choices that are consistent in my work. They
are rarely planned but often repeated to form a visual dialogue that has developed over
time. Many of the shapes and forms tend to swirl and convulse as a way to address the
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abundance and tenacity of nature. These forms are lavish and pulsing with life. Some
are fragmented, dripping, and eroded to reference nature’s process and ideas of life and
death, rebirth and renewal. Borders add another layer of complexity to the work and they
can suggest the idea of containment as nature is so often surrounded by cities, pavement,
or artificial or man-made boundaries. The elements often articulate a circular movement
that alludes to their interconnectedness and to the on-going, eternal sense of nature.
Some of the forms can be recognized and some may be unfamiliar or artificial. I
think of that moment when I discover something in nature that I have never seen before.
Ambiguous, imagined, or abstract shapes arouse curiosity and a sense of investigation.
They are my own brand of science fiction as if, in nature’s ability to adapt and change,
perhaps they just are not recognized yet! I do not impose a horizon line or any particular
logic on the work. The strange, the fragmented, the irrational confront the viewer with
their own need to make sense of it all. The work can shift from representation to abstract,
formal to graphic, and imagined to literal. I paint a curious and slightly unstable world; a
world that will invite a sense of adventure and require some reckoning.
Some elements, such as elegant compound curves, are appropriated from
traditions within the history of art; Baroque, Rococo, and Art Nouveau. These forms
were originally inspired by nature and I appreciate the sense of tradition and the
movement they bring to the work. They are like readymades in my curvilinear world, but
there is also an idea of wealth that rides on them. At first, I dismissed the idea as a byproduct of borrowed shapes until I could no longer deny the regularity in which they
turned up in the work. I began to think about the conflicting values that are assigned to
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nature. This world that I paint has value as something to be cherished, something dear. It
is worthy of the time I lavish on it in the painting and worthy of the time the viewer will
lavish on it in the looking. As the natural world is challenged, the quality of human
existence is compromised. There is a value to nature in terms of the human psyche, the
human experience, and the quality of life as well as the opposing monetary value of
nature as resource or commodity. It parallels the conflicting ideas in the way art is
valued.
Flat shapes associated with graphic art act as a foil to form and their static
condition emphasizes the movement or rhythm of the work. I like that sense of odd or
fake they bring to my natural world while being more innately truthful as they do not
require painterly illusion. They hug the surface of the canvas, forcing the viewer to move
past them to engage the painting. They require the viewer to enter the work in a more
vested way as he or she must push beyond these little barriers. Scroll work, appropriated
from graphic design, often travels down the side of my paintings. It is inspired by the
characters that occupy a similar placement in traditional Eastern art. It does not matter
that I cannot read Chinese or Japanese characters and do not understand their meaning; it
is the intent of communication that I find appealing. Graphic art is so preoccupied with
communication that it seems a natural association to me. I appreciate the virtuoso
draftsmanship of graphic artists such as Albert Durer, Maxwell Perish, and Alphonse
Mucha as I consider that aspect of nature that is so perfectly choreographed. Their
flowing, curvilinear graphic works touch on the romantic or the emotional in flawlessly
resolved, “print ready” images. Artists of the 1960’s, including Gerhard Richter and
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Andy Warhol also inform the work as their investigation of photographic and graphic
imagery questioned formal ideas and challenged traditional boundaries between high and
low art.
Beauty is a consistent element in my work. Aware of the contemporary discourse
that surrounds the question of beauty, I feel it is validated in the very essence of nature
and embraced by us as human beings. Every element, every tree or bit of fallen leaf,
plays an essential role in a continuum of perfect design. What is visually beautiful to us
is actually styled by purpose and function to perform in a reciprocal relationship to the
larger order. It is a beauty that is in place and complete and my work and my spirit
respond directly to it. Barbara Rogers, a contemporary artist and teacher speaks of
beauty as she states, “Making something beautiful is a necessary act of ritual for many
people in the world. This act, in and of itself, has function and meaning.”3
As I continue to paint, I have no idea where the journey will lead. Current work
sometimes references water and has inspired thought about water as an essential element
or source. I ponder the oceans as the least explored areas on earth and the connecting of
continents and ideas. There is a human history of exploration, trade, colonialism, and
contemporary ideas on the effects of global warming. In terms of craft, it seems the “how
to” question will always be. I am currently investigating pictorial space and looking at
the work of Clifford Still. I am also exploring different methods of paint application and
how they affect a different kind of expression. I am intrigued by the transparency and
fragility of collage and encaustic and will likely work with these techniques in the future.
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Painting is always new experience. Each painting is a fresh invention with unique
demands and opportunities. The subject may reveal itself in a new way, a thought may
open up, or it may be an event of the material, but there are those magic moments of
possibility, the unexpected, as something else surfaces. The painting and the dialogue
continually challenge each other. As one leaps forward, the other must catch up. They
are informed by all that an artist can possibly be. My rural past and art making have
given me identity, design, and purpose. A remote life style has equipped me for the
many reclusive hours in the studio and provided a rich source of imagery and energy. As
painting reconnects me to my rural roots, I invite the viewer to engage in their own
relationship with nature.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Charles Moffat, “Pablo Picasso.” The Art History Archive - Biography & Artworks,
The Lilith eZine, 10 Mar. 2010 <http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/cubism/
Pablo-Picasso.html>.
2. “Quotes from Jackson Pollock(1912-1956),” About.com 2008, The New York Times,
1 Oct. 2008 <http://painting.about.com/library/biographies/blartistquotespollock.htm>.
3. Barbara Rogers, “Artist Statement – Transcending the Ordinary,” Barbara
Rogers.com, 10 Oct. 2008 <http://www.barbararogersart.com/aboutTheArtist/>.