Occasional thoughts and updates from the Art Garage.
The Art Garage, 6/21
Last Remnants of Summer, 9/21
Fall Comes to the Bosque, 11/21
Cello Etudes, 3/22
Night Butterflies, 9/22
Introducing the Art Garage
On the banks of the Rio Grande, bordered by giant cottonwood trees, is a disused car repair garage. With a lot of cleaning, the removal of some derelict equipment (and one non-functioning car), and a bit of rearranging, it has transformed into the Art Garage – a wonderful place for artistic experimentation and production. It’s large enough to allow for the untidiness of multiple projects and unplanned exploration. The wide overhead doors open to allow fresh air, natural light, and the sounds of nature to enter unhindered (along with a lot of bugs, occasional birds, and the odd unwelcome wildlife.) It’s a bit like being en plein air and inside at the same time. There’s no climate control, so it always feels...seasonal, shall we say. This is where I do most of my painting, and from here I will be sending out missives about work in progress, musings about art and whatnot, and hopefully welcoming some of you to visit to see finished works and work underway.
As of this writing, spring is making its customary annual on-and-off appearance. Thick, heavy snow last week put the greening of spring on pause, but only briefly. The green haze around the tree branches in the bosque will be sharpening into distinct leaves over the next week or so, and the march toward summer heat will be underway. I’ll be out here as often as I can. I have one time-consuming project nearing completion, and a million ideas about what will come next. I look forward to sharing it all with you!
Fall Comes to the Bosque
By: Joel Becktell
I was in New England recently. I arrived just after the peak of fall colors, which was not at all disappointing, as it was still breathtakingly beautiful.
I packed some paints and paper for the trip, and I had a large room in an old barn with lots of windows as a temporary studio. (I took this photo the night before I left, so unfortunately it doesn’t show the effect of all those windows by daylight. But nice space, right?) It was chilly, but I’m used to “seasonal temperatures,” so to speak, when I paint. The obvious and inescapable subject for most of what I did while there was the spectacular beauty of the changing season. Fall always seems poignant to me, and what I’m moved by is not only the visual character of the season, but also the emotional impact of summer’s fecundity transforming brilliantly into the skeletal landscapes of winter. I’m not primarily a hyper-real figurative painter, and my efforts to capture the way autumn feels to me took on various degrees of abstraction.
On my return to NM, my first view of the bosque outside the Art Garage was early in the morning. So, as you can see, this year I get to experience fall twice – and NM fall at its peak. The two experiences have their similarities and their differences. In New England, I felt surrounded by the season; on the banks of the Rio Grande, it’s something I can look at from the edge. And they SMELL different! I love it.
I love exploring ways of reflecting my sensory impressions of place and time through painting. These sketches of early and late fall kind of scratch a persistent itch – fall time is fleeting in ways more obvious than the rest of (fleeting) time. How to make it stop so I can stay with it? There’s no way. But I keep trying.
Cello Etudes
By: Joel Becktell
Music and painting are not the same thing. But they are inextricably linked in the culture of both music and visual art. Countless composers have based works on art or artists: Berlioz, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Puccini – really, I might as well stop there, the list will just keep going until I do. And painters and sculptors have been inspired to translate their musical feelings into two or three dimensions. Chagall comes straight to mind, along with Ansel Adams, Giacometti, Degas, Toulouse Lautrec...and on and on.
Because so much of my professional life is devoted to musical performance, it is inevitable that the subject matter of music and painting will overlap. Recently I began working on a few sets of paintings that I intend to mount together to display as sets, or suites. The project stems from an overlap of vocabulary and practice between music and painting. In both, one often works on technical “studies,” or “etudes.” In music, composer/performers often write etudes for instruction and technical study, and of course painters often execute studies as they prepare to create finished works. In both music and visual art, the etudes often double as finished works of art that merit appreciation in their own right, despite their beginnings as technical aids. Musical etudes are often published in groups of 12, (sometimes 6, most often in some multiple of 3) hence the sets currently underway of “12 Cello Etudes.”
At the top you can see an almost-finished layout of 12 Cello Etudes consisting of 3x4 paintings on artist’s board. Just above you can see an assemblage of larger 8x10 paintings on canvas board that I’m just starting to arrange for eventual mounting.
* Both sets of Cello Etudes are now complete. You can see them mounted and framed under “Custom Sized” in the painting section.
Last Remnants of Summer
By: Joel Becktell
The view from the Art Garage is a peaceful, lovely part of my painting environment all day and all year. The building is not climate controlled, and usually I raise the large overhead door when I’m in there – it’s going to be hot, or cold, or whatever the weather dictates, regardless. For me, the view over a field, across a fence and an irrigation ditch, to the dense wall of trees at the edge of the bosque is grounding, even when it’s not, technically, much of a view at all, i.e. when it’s dark out. Late one night I took a break to stretch my limbs, and walking outside through the wide door, I was struck by the way the sky was patterned by a field of clouds that were illuminated around their edges, with a few stars and planets mixed in. The vibrant colors of daytime had condensed into black and gray shapes. Even in the near-absence of light, the bosque has many appearances, and I stopped what I had been doing to get this impression. It’s fairly large, which allowed for a kinetic approach to recording the mood and appearance. I’m planning a simple black frame for this one, possibly with shadow edges. I’ll put an image of it in the “Custom Sized” section of the website when I get it done.
Night Butterflies
By: Joel Becktell
12 Night Butterflies (Red/Black), framed size: 15.5x16 inches
First, it’s worth pointing out that there really is such a thing as a night butterfly. Probably there are many types. Around here, there is the Night-Flying Hawk Moth (ok, slight distinction, let’s not quibble) that seems to generate spontaneously whenever a datura blossom opens. The air buzzes around them as they fly, and as they appear after dusk, one rarely gets a good, clear look at them.
9 Night Butterflies, framed size: 33.5x27.5 inches
But the Night Butterflies I paint are not, despite occasionally intentionally misleading titles, entomological studies. These Night Butterflies are, in more ways than one, figments of my imagination.
12 Night Butterflies (Blue/Black), framed size: 15.5x16 inches
In the dark of night, in dreams, or in the dim perception of half-slumber, flitting half-thoughts weave in and out of our field of view, never materializing entirely. They leave traces, are usually forgotten by morning. They are hints. They are profound realizations that we fail to grasp. They are guides that we are unable to follow.
12 Night Butterflies (Black/White), framed size: 15.5x16 inches
We are like particle physicists who know there is such a thing as a certain particle, but we can’t see it, and the only proof we have is the effects it has on the things we can see, the traces that can only exist if it has been and gone. We know it because without it, nothing makes sense.
Night Butterflies explore the almost-unseen world of Psyche doing her essential, unheralded work, out of sight, occasionally slipping into our peripheral vision just enough to entrance and mystify us.
