Chapters
by Daniel Stuelpnagel
Chapter Eight
untitled # 182 (2002)
collection of Mark and Kelley Keener (Baltimore)It was around this time that I got my third Olympus digital camera. The technology was advancing quickly and prices were coming down, so I recognized that it would be a great help to have higher-quality digital photographs in order to document my work for portfolios and publications.
In the larger picture, it is perhaps unlikely that I could have emerged and built a career so rapidly ten or twenty years earlier. The computer and related technology available to us in the new millennium has transformed no area of human endeavor more than the world of art.
The web site I built piece by piece not only enabled me to connect with collectors and artists; the capability to document our art and our world through digital photography on the internet made us in a few years part of an interconnected consciousness, enabling the flourish of activity of global expressionism, wherein we are all contributing to one vast collaborative project on a planetary scale, and experiencing the emotional intensity of that greater commitment as never before.
The global network of connected interactivity constitutes a telepathic prosthesis for humanity, reminding us perhaps of our primordial capabilities, and instilling in us a re-emergent sense of those powers, revising our thinking to include a much broader consciousness of our utilitarian unity.
The elegant seascape pictured above was chosen for the invitation to the Parish Gallery show. This is the statement I wrote for that exhibition:
“ I portray the forces we experience in life, and the frameworks in which we interact. We each bring a unique blend of intellect, emotion and intuition to our world, and we contribute to a collective energy, which facilitates constant change.
As a meditative tribute to enduring primordial memories, I paint the confluence of motion and structure, interwoven with a natural rhythm and beauty that lends its voice to human pursuits.”
untitled # 192 (2002)
collection of John and Virginia Stuelpnagel (Baltimore)This is a piece that my parents selected from the exhibition at Parish Gallery. I did thirty paintings in three months, and included half of those in the show. I was working out of the Mount Pleasant Artists’ Studios, where I met and worked closely with artist Michael Ross, who was a tranquil influence in what was otherwise a tumultuous time.
I was most prolific early in the process of preparing for the show, which was schedule to open in mid-January. Then, as the date drew closer, I completed most of the paintings, and devoted some attention to communications, mailing lists, invitations and details of the exhibition opening.
untitled # 194 (2002)
collection of Funk & Bolton, Attorneys (Baltimore)With the apparent division or duality between the seascapes and geometric abstractions, Norman had suggested moving forward in the studio by making an effort to merge the two styles or in some way bring them together.
He seemed confident that he would be able to curate a show from whatever I brought in for delivery at the end of the year.
I painted constantly. I slept on the floor of my studio in a sleeping bag, had a cooler, a toaster oven and the local coffee shop for sustenance, and I was completely immersed.
I developed a texture that had emerged in one of my first pieces in San Francisco a year earlier, a replication of wave forms in the sea and sky, implying waves and clouds in a way that was just representational enough to be intriguing and indicative, but sufficiently subtle as to escape notice when confronted with the holistic image of each painting.
I was working the paint extensively, with feathering brush strokes, blending values in a way typically thought possible only with oil paints, since the drying time for acrylics is usually about twenty to thirty minutes. I did not use any extenders or additives; I worked directly from jars and I worked quickly and actively, brushing the paint from side to side, and applying the final texture in the critical moments before the paint would become unworkable.
The results appear like photographs of ocean waves frozen in time, defying logic, yet limited to a refined layer of impasto no more than two millimeters thick. I was determined never to go into overt or didactic representation, pseudo-surrealism, or fanciful trompe l’oeil.
A few years earlier, interspersed with a string of temp jobs, I had spent several months one summer doing faux finish painting for a small company in Washington, going with a well-equipped crew to various houses in and around the city and creating subtly-textured surfaces with oil glaze, sometimes to match the effect of a linen covering or the look of an aged wall, others simply a pattern or the application of a particular tool or striping technique.
Painting hundreds of square feet a day by hand with heavy full-sized brushes and various tools, observing and perfecting the minute details of textured paint application and control, made returning to the studio and working on canvases feel joyfully easy by comparison. It was a crucial development in the later recognition and fulfillment of this devotion to subtle textures and their power to enhance the functionality of a painted work on canvas.
So the Parish Gallery show incorporated this elemental texture, and a mixed group of seascapes and geometric abstractions leaning towards seascapes. I had somehow stayed away from the geometric squares that had originally gotten Norman interested in my work. Maybe the time in California had taken me in a new direction, or maybe I had not yet had the time to digest and iterate this idea of integrating the different trajectories of my experience.
Keep in mind I had been painting for more than fifteen years at that point, but professionally for just four or five years, and it felt like I was always going back to square one, which I am now convinced is always how it should feel.
If you are an artist, and you decide that you are accomplished and have perfected a particular style, chances are you have moved past your creative peak, and I would not think that anyone would want that, or even could possibly accept that, as a creative direction, even if it seems to be in favor or as a way to make a living.
Like a musician, a farmer, an architect, or an explorer, you must always be breaking new ground.
untitled # 199 (2003)
private collection (New York)That said, I was firmly ensconced in working through the foundational developments I had set up for myself since art school.
I had studied all sorts of conceptual projects, and often found them egregiously didactic and lacking aesthetic durability. Dedicating myself to a traditional approach to painting, and specifically following the work of a dozen or so influential artists, I was delving into the uncharted tributaries that my life path offered.
There is only one way to get through it, and that is through immersion in the process, and to live in both worlds.
The opening at Parish Gallery in January of 2003 was one of the most well-attended events I had been to at the gallery.
Norman and I both pulled out all the stops, inviting our full mailing lists and bringing in more than a hundred people who enthusiastically appreciated the work, the wine, and the weather.
It was about twenty degrees; needless to say there was no outdoor band. But the wine flowed in the gallery, and sales were substantial and immediate; one piece sold before the opening, and I was happy to see the red dots and know that Norman’s risk in showing me solo had paid off.
And also that the friends I had made in my years in Washington had come out to support my efforts, and many of them I think were surprised that it was real, that I had come from a run-down warehouse weekend group show to one of the most prominent galleries in Georgetown in just five years.
Norman priced the paintings from one to three thousand each, and by having good sales in that range I knew that I would not need to go back to selling for cost of materials, that I had begun to make my way onto the curve.
I hosted a lively after-party across 31st street at the Alamo pub, and I will never forget that night, the amazement of my family, the crowd of friends, the winter of my absolute contentment as a result of building my dream piece by piece.
about the artist
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