My Art Process: What You Might Like to Know (7 minute read)
Figuring out what I wanted to paint about, and how I wanted to paint it, was a long process––a multi-year journey of discovering those visual things that were important to me and of eliminating from my artwork those that were not. Specifically, I needed to discover how I wanted to portray people, what kind of environment I wanted to put them in, and, as importantly, how I wanted to organize the shapes, lines and colors (composition) of my paintings. The giclée (zhee-KLAY, ink jet) prints that I share with you today are the culmination of this step-by-step process over many years. And this is how it all came about . . .
Becoming fascinated with abstract art in college taught me how to organize shapes, lines and colors into a unified whole––to create a cohesive, balanced composition––to make each shape, color, line and texture fit the entire picture. Striving to compose a picture well is still my primary objective today (and is more challenging than making a painting look realistic). In college art classes, critiquing one another's artwork taught me how to evaluate the quality of a piece of art––to see what's good and keep it, and to see what's inferior, or doesn't fit the composition, and fix it. Thanks to what I learned from a great teacher, this artistic judgment is my most prized possession from my formal art studies. It is the north star that guides my many aesthetic decisions when creating these giclées. And developing this artistic judgment continues to be a life-long endeavor.
Though making abstract paintings was satisfying in many ways, it was missing a deeper emotional and psychological component. Shifting away from abstraction, I began drawing people. This was emotionally satisfying, and it had the added long-term benefit of enhancing my drawing skills. But, again, something was missing. Drawing people who were posing seemed a little stilted or unnatural to me. I wanted something that was truer to life––that was psychologically more real and natural.
I unexpectedly ran into the solution in Tokyo. I saw a major exhibition of internationally-known, realist artists. One piece in particular was an eye opener! It was a compelling painting from a photo of people in an everyday setting. I realized that using a camera would allow me to capture people in unposed, genuine moments. And a camera could record people in their natural surroundings––even in places where it would be impossible to paint. So a camera would instantly expand the range of my subject matter. Photographs also had the added benefit of being readily "believed" by most people––we unconsciously think that photos are "real," so they could add a certain conviction to my artwork. So, with a camera full of photos, I could go back to my studio and freely paint from a rich store of "believable" information.
This launched a major transformation in my art, impacting not only what I painted but also how I painted it. Before this, it was possible to paint landscapes on location. But I couldn't paint the people who might be naturally present in those landscapes––for their gestures, expressions and responses came and went in an instant. But with the camera, that all changed! Having lived in Japan for many years, I started taking candid photos of people in various settings around Tokyo. After getting the photographs printed, choosing the best photos from a given scene, and tracing the best parts of those photos with pencil, I combined them into a pencil sketch for a painting. Taking a slide of this sketch, I projected it onto a small panel and traced it for an oil study––or traced it directly onto a larger canvas for an oil painting (or onto a large piece of paper for a pastel painting). Then, using the photographs as a source, the challenge began of portraying people responding naturally in their natural environments.
So painting from photos was immensely enabling and liberating. But photographs have characteristics which run directly counter to my aims in art. I want to create space that has depth, and I want to paint people and objects that look 3-dimensional. I hope this causes my viewers to "feel" as though they can "enter" into the space of my pictures. But photographs, which we assume are "real," actually flatten space, making it look shallow. That is because a camera has only one "eye" unlike our two eyes that give us depth perception. Photos also flatten
3-dimensional objects. They flatten objects by obscuring the details in the dark, shadow areas as well as in the light, highlighted areas––thus making both the very dark and very light areas in a photo appear flat. So, when painting, I must reinterpret what I see in the photograph in order to create space with depth and objects or people with volume. As a result, my goal in painting is not to duplicate the photograph but to use it as a valuable source of visual information that I interpret as necessary. Many years of drawing people and landscapes from life have taught me what space and volume and people actually look like––which is a great asset in striving to overcome the inherent limitations of photographs.
When personal computers came out, I said to myself, "I'm an artist. I'll never need a computer." But in 1994 I needed a job––and graphic design seemed like a reasonable option. So I bought a computer and Photoshop (the powerful image-editing software). As I began to learn Photoshop, it amazed me! Anything I could imagine doing to an image, I could do with this software. And, now, it is Photoshop that allows me to create the giclée prints that I am presenting to you today.
Using Photoshop enables me to accomplish three of my main goals in art:
First, is to rework my paintings as much as is necessary to create the highest quality art that I can––to strive to make the whole composition hold tightly together, and to make each part visually significant, whether it is a shape in the background or a central object in the foreground. I can take pastel or oil paintings that I have done in the past, digitally photograph them, bring them into Photoshop, and adjust, delete, add, move, realign and refine them until I am satisfied. At this stage, the original photographs are no longer a part of the process, but changes are made based on the aesthetic needs of the giclée prints themselves.
Second, Photoshop has a hand-controlled tool that lets me "paint" significant changes to a picture while preserving the look of the brush strokes (or pastel strokes) of the source painting. So my original giclées maintain the look of paintings, not computer generated art.
Third, my desire is to make my art readily accessible to all of you who kindly show appreciation for my work. I know no better way to do this than by recreating these images in Photoshop, printing them on an Epson art printer, and offering them as original, reasonably priced, giclée prints. Thank you so very much for your interest in my art. I hope that these few thoughts will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of my work.
Loren Friesen