Creative Process

The Salter and Me

2010-11-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

As an artist I am interested in the subtle ways in which ancient patterns of life persist in the present and alter the flavor of experience.

We humans lead a layered existence: part of our consciousness resides in the modern world writing blog posts while another part is still scanning the horizon for prey; the moments when the two realms touch are like tiny stitches linking the opposite sides of a quilt.

One such moment for me is adding salt to a dish: I scoop from a jar, raise my arm so that the salt will distribute evenly, and let the grains sift through my fingers. Salt falls; steam rises. Every time I perform this simple motion I have the fleeting sense that I am performing a sacred ritual in an ancient world; that I have not only salted but blessed the soup. Then I flip on the news, because I have to listen to something while I cook, and I am back in the 21st century.

The Three Cooks

2010-11-17T21:44:00.000-08:00

When I was in school at The Art Students League I painted a different figure every week. That is the League way: your class is assigned a model for the week; the monitor sets a pose; you grab the best spot you can and that is what you paint for the week. Some weeks we had a nude, some weeks a clothed figure and some weeks a portrait but always one figure. Alone. Truth be told, in those days I had my hands full with just one figure - it was hard enough to get the nose in the middle of the face and keep the paint on my palette from turning to mud without having to deal with more than one figure at a time. But after I left school I started to think about how to put figures together: my ideas for figure paintings always seemed to involve a scene: the first ones I did had two or three figures, the next ones had five, then seven and now I've stopped counting. It doesn't matter because no matter how many figures I put in a composition the building blocks are single figures, groups of two or groups of three.

The three cooks are at the heart of this painting and I have spent a lot of time figuring out just how I want them to relate to each other and to the overall composition. I call the figure on the left the Salter because she is sprinkling salt into the soup while glancing at the Taster for guidance. The lifted arm of the salter is the central gesture of the painting; the gateway into its world. Its shape is echoed by the taster's hand as she lifts the wooden spoon to her mouth; together they form a series of archways drawing the viewer deep into the painting. On the right the Sous Chef scrapes carrots (or are they onions?) into the soup with a decisive gesture that brings the viewer back to the center, to the steaming pot of soup.

2010-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest things abut doing a complex figure painting is figuring out what the figures look like, what they are wearing, and how they are holding their arms and hands. Although I have a clear idea of what I want the figures to be doing I still get caught up in a seemingly endless decision process about the angle of a head or the height of an arm. Every slight variation sends the painting in a new direction and it is dizzying to look down the corridor of infinite possibilities and alternate versions.

And then of course there are details, details. I do a lot of the figure work out of my head - models are expensive and I like to be alone in the studio - but it can get tricky to imagine what the little finger looks like when it curls around a knife. My latest idea is to have Tom take photographs of me in the pose and improvise from those photos. Of course I have to change the features or the painting would be completely inhabited with figures that look like me.

The figure on the right of the central group is supposed to be sliding some chopped carrots - or should I make them onions? - into the soup. She changed a little with every preliminary drawing and oil study and so far in the painting itself she has a little bit of all her versions. Stay tuned...

The Big One

2010-06-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

When our story broke off in January of 2008 - is that possible? - I had decided that this would be the new idea for the central group of three cooks. I did a couple of studies and then, and then....and then I did a whole lot of other work including a new turn towards abstraction.

But the Feast kept knocking at my door. Late last summer as the warm days waned Tom and I prepared a 5' x 9' canvas. Preparing a canvas this size is not easy and not cheap. I ordered special stretchers from Canada and a fine heavy linen from Belgium. I also bought two quarts of white lead oil ground - hard to find and precious as gold these days.

The actual process of preparation (stretch the raw linen, apply three coats of rabbit skin glue followed by two coats of white lead ground and a final coat of glue mixed with dry color) was like a scene from a Paul Bunyan story - the one where the pan for Paul Bunyan's pancakes had to be greased by cooks skating around with butter strapped to their feet. At least that's how it felt when I had to stand on a tall ladder to stretch the long side of the canvas and it took 10 minutes for the two of us to rotate the Behemoth Wall Cover for each turn. Finally, the surface was finished and we brought the canvas inside for the winter. And, as I said, there it sat while I hosted a whole new set of ideas about painting.

In early spring my desire to work on the Feast arose once again and the first thing I did was to throw out all the new ideas and go back to the old ones. Think long, think wrong...

2008-01-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

2008-01-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

This is the new idea for the three cooks. A few weeks ago I was invited to a wassail/house- warming party by a friend who loves to cook. Her new kitchen has a cooktop on an island and she had a big pot of wassail brewing when I arrived. Pay dirt. I spent the evening watching her stir the pot and chat while everybody at the party tasted and made suggestions. The next day I knocked out the little scribble on the bottom; a few days later I took the idea further with the sketch below. The new composition feels right; this is the one.

2007-11-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

I'm back. Thanks to the miracle of my new studio (photos over at On the Easel) I am working on the Feast again. I find if I drink a cup of coffee at 9:00 I can work on drawings in the studio at night for a couple of hours even if I have been painting all day; afterwards I am tired enough to sleep despite the caffeine.

I tacked up 5 or six sheets of paper on the big wall in a continuous line. I wanted to start sketching out ideas for the whole Feast - not just Soup, which is what this blog has primarily covered - but also the transition into Baking; I am beginning to see the outlines of Chopping. Almost immediately I went off the rails of Grand Design and started delving into the particular sections and ended up using the lay out as a place to think instead of as a scroll. Work plans are made to be broken; I don't honestly think I have ever adhered to one.

The important thing is that I started to think about the Chopping section which I believe to be at the very heart of this piece. There are so many layers to it: violence, creativity - blood and death - and also the Zen (I think) idea of the slap of awakening, reality vs. illusion...these associations flood me every time I cut up a chicken; they are the driving force behind this painting, the knock that must be answered.

2006-03-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

This the beginning of the next painting in the series. No title yet, but it will have a lot to do with baking. At first I thought this series would consist of three paintings: one making soup, one baking and one the feast itself, but the more the whole idea takes hold of me the bigger and more complex it gets. I don't know how big the series will be but at the moment it seems that this piece will be about batter: eggs, butter, flour and whipping it all together; I want to do another just about bread, one on cake - and that is just baking. After that there must be a section on meat, knives and blood.

As readers of this blog know, the first painting, making soup, is barely sketched out so it may seem odd to be starting the second, but I needed to do it as the ideas were tormenting me. These two pages of sketches are the product of three or four days in the studio with a mirror and some costumes and props.

In case anyone is wondering why this entire project seems to be going so slowly for the last few months, the answer is simple: I have a show coming up in September at Tilting at Windmills gallery where I show in Vermont and this means I have to produce work that might sell as opposed to spending my days moving figures from one side of a composition to another. I agonized a bit over whether or not to do the show as I was deeply involved with this piece and hated to drop it, but common sense won out. If you are living on your painting sales you just can't turn down a show at a good gallery and although my figure compositions sell extremely well I still can not afford to drop everything and just work on this project for the next three years, which is about what I think it will take to complete it. I'm not too unhappy though: I'm excited about the work I'm doing for my show (which can be seen on my other blog On The Easel) and I'm keeping this project going by working on the sketches intermittently. Come the fall I'll treat myself to a few months of uninterrupted work on it.

2006-01-12T16:27:00.000-08:00

2005-10-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

2005-10-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

I think I'm pretty much finished with this study for now. There are still things I could do to it: I need to tone down the thalo green with some red washes and I'm not quite happy with the woman on the right. In the previous state she had a little hitch in her left hip that I loved as it gave the whole figure a subtle sexy swing. I lost it when I tried to develop the figure more. Arrgh. Thank God for this blog: at least I have a record of it and with any luck I can get it back in the next study.

2005-10-06T05:16:00.000-07:00

2005-10-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

I set up some carrots with a cutting board and knife in the studio and it really helped me to advance the painting. In fact I thought I was just about finished with this sketch until I noticed that the head of the figure on the right was much too small. By that time it was too late in the day to make a major correction so I just blocked in the new shape with a green underwash and I'll finish it tomorrow - I hope!

2005-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

I spent my first hour of work today putting in the arm of the woman tasting the soup - not the one you can see but the one hidden in the shadows. Even though you hardly see that arm, I think it is very important to the painting. For one thing it expresses the unconscious mind of the woman tasting the soup. It is the part of her body she is not aware of: she is thinking about the soup and her interaction with the salter but the level of tension in that hidden arm and hand and its subtle gesture can either reinforce or contradict what she is saying with the attitude of the head which adds alot to the lifelike quality of the figure. Not that I achieved all that today. In fact, what I mostly did was struggle with the foreshortening and the incredibly close and subtle values - and then I wiped out most of it anyway.

It was a very exciting day though. After I gave up (for the moment) on the struggle with the hand I started working on the carrots (yes, that's what they are) and the figure on the right. A characteristic thing happened. As I worked on the front of the painting the depth from front to back began to open up. I saw a big conical volume with a circle uniting the salter's hand and the carrots as its base and the little negative space under the taster's raised arm as the apex. A moving volume, a vortex of energy, it brought a big compositional rhythm into the depths of the painting. I got so excited I couldn't paint and took a break; by the time I came back the vision had cooled and I couldn't get it down the way I wanted to. I still see it though and I think I'll be able to develop the idea as I continue this study. Meanwhile the other big rhythms are beginning to come in. I always put the most recent state of this study on my computer desktop and I keep seeing new possibilities emerging.

2005-09-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

An insane day today with a million distractions: umpteen phone calls in the morning about my friend's care, then a big wind storm knocked the power out for almost seven hours. I live in the country and we get our water from a well. The pump needs electricity; when the power goes out so does the water, yuck. I can't get a cup of tea and there is no music in the studio. Music and tea are essential to my concentration. Did I mention that there was so much water in the air my brushes lost their spring and the paint was all gummy? But somehow I painted well. It was a miracle.

I feel a little more comfortable with the salter today. The new costume makes her look more modern and less like a character from the Sound of Music. I like the stance better too. One of the reasons I soured on that figure was a remark made by a visitor to my studio. Looking at this sketch she said she thought the salter looked "European" and wondered what the significance of that was in relation to the ethnicity of the other figures. I was completely taken aback. I don't think like that. I don't get my figures out of neatly labeled boxes. I live in a diverse world and that is what is natural to me to paint. So I felt awful: suddenly my happy group of gals jabbering away and making their soup together looked like a bunch of painted porcelain figurines - especially the "European" salter.

I think I'm getting over that horrible feeling now, but my new rule is that no one (except Tom of course) is allowed to see these sketches in the studio until I am finished with the big painting. That was always my rule with figure compositions (I wouldn't even discuss what I was doing with anyone) until I started this blog. But then I thought: I'm posting this for the world to see, how can I keep people out of the studio? Well, I've thought about it now and it makes perfect sense. Showing this work to you, gentle viewers, is completely different. We are not face to face. I never see your lifted eyebrows. It is true I check my stat counter once a day (okay, twenty times a day, but who's counting) but all it can tell me is how many of you stop by, the location of your servers (which may have little to do with your actual location) and how long you stay. It is as if I have hung my pictures in a gallery and, through a two-way mirror, I watch the people come in. Some turn right around and walk out; some pause and look at a picture. I never see anyone's face, all I see are shadows. Sometimes one of the shadows has a shape I think I recognize and I say "That's Gabrielle" or "There's Karen" but it is only a guess and I am probably wrong. I love it this way. I like it that people are seeing my work, but I don't want to know everything they think about it. And the life of an artist is very isolated; it is nice to have some quiet company. Thanks for coming.

2005-09-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

I changed the headgear of the salter again. The scene in the studio today was pretty amusing: I donned the costume and painted using a mirror. But that figure still bothers me. No matter what I do to it or how much I (seemingly) improve it, I'm just not happy. I can think of two reasons for this. One is that I used myself as the model and, frankly, I think I have a fairly uninteresting face. Secondly, I think the expression is too cheerful: it shows only one emotion; there is no cross current. To fix the expression is almost impossible: this painting is just too small to model the features with more subtlety. Not to mention the time it would take. At some point I'm going to have stop working on this and paint something I can sell - unless someone out there in the blogosphere would like to fund an artist's endless fiddling with one small figure in one little study for what will be a large and profound work.

Tomorrow I think I will just draw. I need a good study of the shirt and apron on the salter. They looked incredible in the studio light. The sleeve swirling around the raised arm was like something out of Caravaggio and the white apron's stiff skirt and wide cinched waist made a silhouette like the line of a Japanese print.

2005-09-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm cheating a bit here: this post shows two days' work. The one on top is what I did today and the one on the bottom is yesterday's.

I had to quit early today. A friend of mine is in the hospital with a broken ankle and it took me two hours on the phone to straighten out what her home care will be when she gets out. Tomorrow will be more phoning and a trip to the hospital, which is 45 minutes away. I care very much for her; she needs me. There is no question in my mind but that I'll do whatever I have to do to help her as she is somewhat dependent on me at this point. But there is a big part of me that is in tears over the disruption of my work. It has always been that way for me: since I was thirteen (and I'm now forty-six) I just could not bear to let anything come between me and my time painting. Actually, I think it quite a sign of maturity (or am I just losing my edge?) that I am able now to sacrifice painting time for someone else.

It is a strange thing, but once you feel the irresistable compulsion to paint you feel like the whole universe is designed to stop you from doing so. More on this later.

2005-09-26T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today I was finally able to move away from my fixation on the head on the left and start digging into the rest of the composition; it feels great! The bottom image is what I had at the beginning of the day and the one on top is where I ended.

When I was working on the drawing for the head of the salter (the one I did using three mirrors and myself as the model) I had an amazing experience: I was just looking in the mirror, studying the way the light fell on my head and figure, when I put my hand up to approximate where the light would fall on the second figure (the one tasting the soup). I wanted to see how much shadow the first figure would cast and get some idea of the way the light would move on the second figure. As I moved my hand in and out of the cast shadow I had a sudden vision of the space in my studio as a volume of light. I saw the room of light as if it were a block of transparent, luminous marble and I saw that composing my painting was like carving a block of light.

I've pondered this way of seeing for a few days now. I didn't write about it earlier because it wasn't relevent to my struggles with the head. I usually rely heavily on rhythm for composition; I use the light to illustrate the rhythm, to organize the painting and for dramatic effect (to see my other figure compositions, click on Elizabeth Torak Web Site in the links and look for "The Fates", "The French Fry Eaters", "The Maenads" and "The Beat Goes On") Though I've always loved form and depth and would be the first to tell you that light gives a sense of form, I've never experienced the sculptural power of light until now, never felt it kick me in the gut before. I'm quite curious to see how this changes my work.

2005-09-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

I got back to work again today after four days without painting.

I hate to be away from my work. When I'm compelled by necessity (or exhaustion) to leave off I can't wait to get back. I miss my studio's pool of quiet light; I'm haunted by unfinished thoughts. In bed at night I see just which subtle stroke would make my budding picture bloom; in dreams my fingers close around a brush. But sadly, inevitably, when I do return nothing is as I imagined it would be: there is awkwardness. I can't quite concentrate; I can't get comfortable. I start and stop and wipe out, get a cup of tea, take a nap, and feel dissatisfied. If I'm lucky, at the very end of the day the magic finally happens. With the last wisp of light I make the connection and the energy flows. From me to my work or the other way around? I don't know, but I find the link again and am happy - which is to say I'm miserable in the usual delightful way.

Today I worked on the head on the left - again. I've posted before and after pictures here. This time I was trying to correct the size of it, make it a little larger. Tom suggested moving the right eye up and out a bit and pointed out that the bottom of the head seemed fine: it was the top that was too small. I did that and it was miraculous: without changing the outline the head appeared larger. Note to my fellow artists: if something seems too small, try changing the width, not the length. This is essentially what I did.

Eventually the light died and I was forced to abandon ship. Initially I was pleased with what I did, but now I'm not so sure. The size is fine, but I don't know if I'm happy with the expression. I can't keep painting this one head over and over for the rest of my life - or can I ?

2005-09-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

I worked on this again yesterday, using the drawing as a guide, and I think it is much better - although obviously I need to adjust the color. Also I'm concerned that the head of the salter is just a tad too small. I need to decide whether to completely repaint it or try to live with it the way it is since this is just a study. I don't know yet and I won't have time to paint again until Tuesday at the earliest. (Sadness. I hate leaving my work.)

2005-09-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

The oil is a detail of the figure on the left from the study of three women I've been working on- I think I'll start calling her "the salter". I worked on this figure yesterday and after working for hours, painting and repainting the head this is where I ended up. As you can see I pretty much wiped out, or, to use a euphemism, "remassed it". I posted this image last night and then took it down because I was so unhappy about it.

So today, instead of spending another day in frustration trying to paint the features out of my imagination, I decided to do a study on paper using myself as a model. Modeling involved setting up three mirrors so that I could draw myself without having the eyes looking straight out at the canvas. It wasn't easy to set up the mirrors; I would have given up in frustration if Tom, my husband and fellow artist, hadn't come along and helped. Also, looking at myself in a raking light, with no makeup and my hair pulled back in an unflattering way was a shock to the system. But I put those dreary thoughts aside, drew for four or five hours and was pretty happy with the result. In fact I forgot all about my looks so happy was I to be drawing in a good light with a model I didn't have to chat with- or pay!

2005-09-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

This is what I did today. Yesterday's work is lost: I made a mistake in photographing it and now I've painted over what I had. It is too bad because I am really enjoying watching the evolution of a painting now that I have this blog. It is the first time I have ever photographed each day's work and really looked at it and seen the changes. It is rather unnerving. I feel like I lose as much as I gain with each stroke of the brush: what I gain in clarity, I lose in mystery. But I know from past experience that to leave a painting in a sketchy state is ultimately unsatisfying too. Paintings that are too sketchy don't hold my interest very long; after they hang on the wall for a few years they stop looking fresh and inspired and just start looking thin and unfinished. Not unlike people who try to stretch free-wheeling youth into their fifties.

2005-09-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

I finally got back to work on this today after many interruptions e.g. Labor Day, other work ( to see the other work click on On The Easel in the links roll on the left)

Scroll down to see this sketch in an earlier state. I've been working on the figure on the left. At the moment it is something of a self-portrait, but that could change as I go on.

2005-08-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

The difference between what I have here and the way it looked in the previous post took me about three hours- and I don't suppose many people can tell the difference between the two! I spent a lot of time reworking the right hand of the figure on the left and trying to get just the right slouch.

2005-08-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

I worked on this yesterday, developing the figure on the left.

2005-08-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

This is an unfinished study of one of the still lifes on the ground plane in the front of the painting. I bought a huge (and expensive) pile of vegetables and set up the still life on the floor of my studio. It was very weird to paint somthing so far below eye level. It's difficult to paint a still life with fresh produce. The beet greens, which looked incredibly exciting when I first set them up, wilted in about two minutes; I had to keep spraying water on the turnips to keep the color from fading and after about two days they started to sprout. It took me a week to do this much and by then everything but the broccoli and potatoes had wilted. I started teaching a landscape class, but kept the still life set up hoping I would get back to it. When even the broccoli turned yellow I took it down and marked where it had been with masking tape (still life R.I.P.) so I could try to set it up again later. I like what I have though: it has the right movement and flow and the turnips look like firm breasts.

2005-08-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

This is the oil study for the composition. I wish I had started this blog 3 months ago when I started this study and recorded all of its stages. It began with just colorful abstract washes, then I put in the the soup ladies. I keep adding to it as I work out various sections of the composition through drawings and oil studies.

My friend Gabrielle posed for this study.

2005-08-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

2005-08-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

I hired someone I know to pose for this study of one of the figures peeling potatoes.

2005-08-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about the rest of the painting, what other groups of figures I want.

2005-08-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

This is the first oil sketch. It is unfinished; the green wash is part of the underpainting.

2005-08-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

I decided to focus first on the group of three women working on soup, since this idea captured my imagination the most powerfully.

I work from my imagination and, with the aid of a mirror, often use myself as a model. The mirror is particularly useful when I need to study the position of a hand or the details of a pose.

In The Beginning...The Feast of Venus

2005-08-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

When people ask where I get my ideas the answer I generally give is that they just come. Some ideas arrive all at once; others seem to push slowly -yet relentlessly - into my awareness. This idea was one of the latter.

For a long time I have wanted to do a painting that captured the poetry of cooking. Cooking for me is an activity that makes me simultaneously alert and relaxed. To use a hackneyed term -“centered” I'm surprised not to see “cooking meditation” listed with “sitting meditation” and “walking meditation” on websites offering spiritual guidance.

As an artist I find cooking loaded with metaphor and poetically resonant moments. Sprinkling salt into a large kettle of boiling water, for example. The gesture feels like the performance of an ancient blessing - steam rising like a prayer.

Many acts of cooking have poetic force: to carve architectural shapes out of raw vegetable matter is to make art out of life. When I dice carrots or slice celery into a series of translucent arches I always think of Vermeer’s “Lace-maker"and how, under the guise a simple domestic scene, he reveals a mystical geometry.

And then there is cutting meat and sharpening knives: violence and change and blood.

And baking, well, there is a lot to say about that; baking is the subject of the second painting in this series, so more on that later. For the curious, the third painting in the series will be the feast itself.

But cooking and its metaphors are only one of the motivations for this piece, or series of pieces. I like to update mythological themes so I thought I would do a modern Feast of Venus which would be a celebration of women, women of all kinds, shapes, and ages, doing what women love to do, which is to talk to each other. And I also wanted it to be about women and food; I imagined how women would eat if they were free of all their inhibitions and restrictions and obsessions with food: what would genuine enjoyment look like?

Eventually I put the two ideas together and decided that before the feast there must be cooking; with that the idea came to be about how women create themselves: a “history painting” about women’s history and also about creativity itself.

The sketches on this post were the first ones I did when I began on the idea. This stage of a painting is quite difficult: it is as if you can hear music playing very faintly and far in the distance. You want to transcribe it and strain every muscle to listen; at first you can only catch fragments of phrases.