New Watercolor

Every year I enter a piece in the Historic Albany Foundation's Built: Architecture Through Artist's Eyes exhibition. They threw a great party last weekend, and my painting Madison Avenue, Albany took home the Nancy Hyatt Liddle Best in Show award.

Demonstrations

I've been looking back through old portfolios and came across a few demonstrations from a while back. The best thing about my job is that I get to paint most days. Even in the classroom I can help my students by refining a contour or adjusting a hue... but I have to stop myself or I'll end up painting too much on their canvases. It's just so much fun. Every now and then I'll do something from scratch, start to finish, so that they can ask questions. These are examples.

After Sorolla, Katria in Valencian Dress

Had a lot of fun last Saturday when I completed this painting in front of a live audience. I focussed on her hair, and the lighter tone in the background and on her dress. It was great to work with The Musicians of Ma'alwyck and to get of glimpse of their creative process. I was pretty clueless as to the careful finesse required to play in an ensemble. Hopefully we'll have a chance to collaborate in the future. I'm pleased to share this painting with you.

If you missed it, here's a link to Joseph Dalton's article about the concert that ran in the Times Union last week

Press

This last weekend, a preview of Saturday's concert appeared in the Times Union. A second story ran in the Schenectady Daily Gazette today. Tomorrow Ann-Marie Barker Schwartz and I will be stopping by the WAMC studios for a segment of the Roundtable.

You can check it out the print media through the link below. I'll update when an audio file of the roundtable is available.

Iberian Immersion by Joseph Dalton

Musicians of Ma’alwyck Plan Spanish Concert with Artist by Geraldine Freedman

WAMC Roundtable with Joe Donahue


The Matador's Prayer: A Celebration of Spanish Music & Culture
Saturday, September 13th, 3pm
8 North Church Street
Schenectady, NY 12305
(518) 377-3623
Price: $25 adults; $10 students

On with the Show

We're about half-way through the rehearsals. The painting is looking great. It'll be exciting to finish it soon. I won't have to wait much longer. On Saturday September 3rd, at 3pm at the First Reformed Church in Schenectady, I'll be completing the painting as part of a concert performance with the Musicians of Ma'alwyck. At the performance we'll also play video footage recorded during the creation of the painting. The above clip is a sample of that video. Tickets are available on the Musicians' website. Details are below.

The Matador's Prayer: A Celebration of Spanish Music and Culture
8 North Church Street
Schenectady, NY 12305
518/377-3623
Price: $25 adults; $10 students


An incredible afternoon of Spanish chamber music including works of de Falla (Ritual Fire Dance in the composer's own chamber transcription), Turina (L'Oracion del Torero), Rodrigo and Granados. In between works will be readings of poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca by the new music director of Albany Pro Musica, Jose-Daniel Flores Caraballo. A highlight of the concert will be the completion of a painting, during the performance, by artist Scott Nelson Foster, who was recently commissioned to create two portraits of the patroness of the St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish.  Scott is modeling his painting on the work of artist Joaquin Sorolla.

A New Direction

I ended up taking an unexpected detour with the composition for this painting. I was happy with the previous study, but on Thursday I had a few free hours and decided to try something different. Unfortunately I was out of prepared canvasses, so I did the study on some scrap boards I found in the trash bin of the theatre's woodshop. None of the corners are true, and it was painted with metallic silver latex paint. Even after a quick imprimatura with burnt sienna the iridescence comes through.

Despite these material irregularities, I liked the result, so I spent the rest of the day re-grounding, re-composing, and re-drawing. I think it'll be a big improvement. The new pose, with my model in profile, feels more candid and lively than the previous pose.

Head Studies

It's taken a few more studies to arrive at something with which I'm confident about proceeding. That's that breaks though. Sometimes it looks like it'll work so well in my head, but on the canvas it falls flat. However, I must say that even a bad day painting is still a day spent painting.

The Spanish Manner

© Metropolitan Museum of Art

I've always had an affinity for Spanish painters. My student's are probably getting tired of hearing about Velázquez. I never visit the Met without stopping to pay my respects and view his painting of Juan de Pareja. It is disappointing to see it under glass. The natural quality of the paint is lost, as well as some of the volume. But next to this painting hangs a smaller portrait, once thought to be a portrait of Velázquez himself. In this piece it is possible to see the everything that it great about Velázquez: The restrained hand through the darks, coupled with bold assertive lights that establish the shape and volume of the head. The coloring is minimal, austere even. It is the value contrast that conveys the steady confidence of the sitter.

I had initially thought to paint something reminiscent of Velázquez for this project, but after hearing the planned music, I realized I'd need something bolder, and from a later time period. I settled on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, a Spanish painter who lived and worked during the late 19^th and early 20^th century. His boldly painted landscapes, portraits and genre scenes capture the vibrancy and excitement of Spain. In the later half of his career, his early, tightly controlled manner gave way to a swashbuckling looseness of the brush well suited to the dappled light and seascapes he came to favor. After his death in 1923 the dominance of the abstract avant-garde in Europe caused Sorolla’s work to fall out of fashion. Since the Franco regime extolled Sorolla’s virtues, his work, to many in the later half of the twentieth century, is difficult to disassociate with the fascist interpretation of Spanish Nationalism. Yet when we look at Sorolla’s work, notably his Vision of Spain and related works such as Maria dressed as a Valencian Girl, we see not the monolithic and unitary vision of the Nationalists, but a celebration of the cultural diversity of the Iberian peninsula.

Paint Like a Spaniard

This September I'll be collaborating with the Musicians of Ma'alwyck of their concert The Bullfighter's Dream. I'll be inviting the audience into my studio through a series of videos, and a live performance with the musicians, during which I will complete the painting.

Up until this point I've been planning my composition, and rehearsing the painting. I've made at least 20 sketches and studies, with more to go. A cellist isn't expected to come up with an original composition for each concert. But each musician brings something of their own creative interpretation to each piece they perform. As I thought about this, I decided to reinterpret a painting by one of my favorite Spanish painters, Joaquín Sorolla. The detail above was taken from a painting in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum. This is the sort bold brushwork I'm hoping to emulate.

Over the next few weeks leading up to the performance, I'll post sketches and details.