Robert Francis James

Attention is the beginning of devotion. — Mary Oliver Oil paint was made for depicting flesh. — Willem DeKooning Compared to, say, watching a fireworks display, painting is a decidedly jumbled way of perceiving. Watching fireworks is just that— watching. Eyeballing a show, a spectacle, a rebus (from the Latin non verbis sed rebus , a presentation “not by words, but by things”). Painting, on the other hand, is a carnal affair. Painting palpably immerses the artist in what French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty called “the flesh of the visible.” Unlike merely spectating, painting touches “the very pulp of the sensible.” Painting is up-to-your-elbows a mess, plunging the painter into what I’d call the “thick stuff.” Many artists I know like to paint from observation (as opposed to photographs); but there’s really no such thing, once you get going. Once you get going, you become too immersed in the very pulp of the sensible to call what you’re doing “observati...

It is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious. — Vincent Van Gogh It’s juvenile to think so, but a fortune cookie has provided my new mantra. I paint for the most part alla prima in oil, a technique and medium that suit me because they let me approach every painting as a single experiment, one whose outcome—moment to moment to moment—remains sketchy. I never know whether the next dab, jab or stab will sharpen the painting or spoil it; whether a thin wash or thick gob will help or hinder; or whether the addition of, say, violet is luscious or ludicrous. But I know I can’t be timid or let worry stand in my way, because worry—rooted in fear of others’ harsh judgments—leads to self-doubt and discouragement. If I’m to survive as an artist, whenever I go to the easel I need to remind myself: don’t worry , this painting’s an experiment; there’ll be another . Were the painting anything else, I’d freeze. In 19...

Humanity is not produced by the way our eyes are implanted in us. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty Writing in The New Yorker this week, art critic Peter Schjeldahl says of Cezanne, “He revolutionized visual art, changing a practice of rendering illusions to one of aggregating marks that cohere in the mind rather than in the eye of a viewer.” I am striving to exaggerate my marks, too, in hopes they cohere. A palette knife and a spatula are helping me do so . But, to get technical, I think Peter Schjedahl has the locus of the impact—of the coherence—that Cezanne’s exaggerated marks achieve backwards . Eye knows before mind. Before we see it, the eye magically compiles our world. The mind is last to “get the memo.” Seeing itself is clairvoyance , as the Existentialist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty so eloquently said. We don’t see the world. We inhabit it via an “ intertwining ” [ entrelacs ]. Our humanity, our being-in-the-world , begins and ends at the point where the visible and ...

A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen. — Paul Valéry Every painter—even realists—spends years training to “abstract” scenes; to cease to see only objects and begin to see only lines, shapes, contours, and shadows. Ceasing to see only objects is not an innate skill. (The caveman who paused to admire the shape of the sabretooth’s cast shadow probably became dinner.) The training pays off when the painter’s work allows viewers to see constructions, rather than things. In 2006, University of Oslo psychologist Stine Vogt compared the eye-movements of nine artists to those of nine “artistically untrained” subjects after showing them 16 pictures. She discovered “the artistically untrained participants showed preference for viewing human features and objects, while the artists spent more time scanning structural and abstract features.” Vogt concluded that while people convert scenes into concepts, artists reduce them to their geometric elements. She called that...

Painting is the only art in which the intuitive qualities of the artistic may be more valuable than actual knowledge or intelligence. — Lucian Freud In his History of Art , Pliny the Elder recounts how a well-meaning art critic, a shoemaker by trade, told the Ancient Greek painter Apelles that he’d omitted a string in his picture of a sandal. Apelles thanked the shoemaker and added the missing string. The shoemaker then dinged Apelles’ rendering of the human leg. The artist replied, “Sutor, ne ultra crepidam.” Shoemaker, stick to shoes. The advice became a Roman proverb. While I’m open to a candid “crit,” sometimes I want to stifle the shoemakers—the critics who focus on minutiae. I guess that makes me thin skinned. (Painter Lisa Yuskavage compares the crit to standing on a scale in the nude in public. I’d hate that.) Painting accurately—achieving verisimilitude—isn’t the same thing as illustrating minutiae. The shoemaker is within his rights to ding my rendition of a ...

  Paintings are to teach man to see the glory of human existence. — Henry Hensche Why are there paintings? That’s not a vexed question. Paintings uncover truths. They do so by making visible what was invisible. Just as surely as a scientific observation does, that act of revelation increases humankind’s storehouse of knowledge. As Martin Heidegger said in “ The Origin of the Work of Art ,” a painting allows the subjects it depicts to “step out into unconcealedness.” “In the work, if there happens an opening up of beings into what and how they are , a happening of truth is at work,” he said. In N.C. Wyeth’s The Call of the Spring , the boy and his grandfather don’t merely trudge toward the fishing hole; they march, as soldiers do into battle. The old man shoulders his pole, proving his claim to the mastery of the veteran angler—a mastery the boy can only aspire to. The boy is still in his spring; the old man is in his winter. Where they are heading is a mystery, but we c...

Do not just pick up the brushes you used yesterday because they are there. Put those back and then choose your weapon, like a certain type of gun or sword. You are going into battle and you want the best weapon for the job. — Richard Schmid I am learning to incorporate a new tool into my painting: the spatula. So far, it’s a trial only; but already I’m hooked. Using the spatula’s bellicose cousin, the palette knife, has never felt altogether comfortable to me. I’ve watched other, better artists use a palette knife with a surgeon’s dexterity; but, in my hands, the results don’t match theirs. In fact, they’re fairly awful. I think that’s because the palette knife—literally—adds a factor to my gesture that feels foreign to the paint. Oil paint feels buttery to me and the introduction of the steel palette knife into the paint interrupts—more accurately, violates—that velvety feel. As I use a palette knife, I feel like I’m troweling the paint onto the canvas, like an untrained brick...