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About Pat
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I recently rediscovered a lost medium - painting with fire and smoke. Late one night I was so unhappy with a print of red fire ants I decided to burn it. When it flared up, I flipped it over on to the kitchen counter and whacked it with a spatula. I couldn't help notice that the burnt, beaten image on the back of the paper was much more interesting than the original print. I tried scorching more and more paper and ended up doing these landscapes. They are painted with the smoke and fire from wooden matches. The challenge is to use the flame to smoke and scorch the paper without setting it or my house ablaze.
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I create these by drawing with Sumi ink on melted wax. Sometimes, I will drop in a tea bag or two. I move everything by melting the wax with a propane torch. The process is nearly impossible to control as the ink, wax, paper and fire attract and repel each other unpredictably. |
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Heaven Haven
A nun takes the veil
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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I find you in all small and lovely things.
Winifred Holtby to Vera Brittain
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I studied figure drawing with Rebecca Alzofon who tried to teach me how to draw in the style and manner of Pierre -Paul Prud'hon. Figure drawing remains the core of my practice. My wife and I host a life drawing potluck every month. We draw for three hours. Then we have a great meal and end with a show and tell. We often invite dancers to pose for us and we draw them while they are moving. Exhausting and exciting.
This discus thrower is my cross-fit instructor. |
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Sandy and I like to travel. I always take along a sketchbook and watercolor set. |
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Did I deserve no more than a fool's head?
Shakespeare |
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I find myself drawn to Goya's dark vision. |
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But, who is that on the other side of you?
T.S. Eliot
Shakespeare |
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I keep trying to work more abstractly, but it's hard. |
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When called by a panther,
don't anther.
Ogden Nash |
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Dear Friends,
Yesterday was Lambert’s last day. We knew he was showing his age more each day, but we thought we still had time. The end came very quickly. In the morning, he couldn’t get up, and his breathing was labored. He watched us carefully with his intense brown eyes and seemed comforted when we lay down by him. The vet found a soft tumor under his neck that must have developed in the last week since our last visit. The tumor was causing his breathing problems. His temperature was very high. Any intervention would have required days in the hospital on an IV, away from us and his home with a dim chance of his survival. The choice was clear in the end. Our vet, Terri McGinnis, was not in yesterday afternoon, but another vet and her assistant at Albany Veterinary Hospital were wonderful to us and to Lambert. We couldn’t have asked for a better end.
The house seems empty yet we feel his presence everywhere. Part of what made him such a special dog was the love he gave and received from not only us but so many of you as well. We remember his years in the travel agency where he loved to sit on or drape himself over the clients’ chairs or make himself comfortable as a part of our window display watching the passing scene. We ask ourselves was he born mature, calm, content and sure of himself, or did he develop his amazing demeanor from the love and attention he received. We remember how we always put out an extra chair at our lunches so he could get up and be a part of the group. In the last years he had to give up his chair gymnastics. Recently our late afternoon walks became his favorite part of the day. By 4:30 pm it was impossible for either of us to sit down at the computer or try to work. He would knock our arm with his head until we got up and got out the door. More recently the addition of a ramp for our car made our walks and excursions easier for him. The back of our Suburu was his second home. One thing though was that he never lost his looks. On our walking trail Pat called him a “chick magnet,” but it seemed that the chorus of “what a handsome dog” never went to his head.
We took our last walk together on Tuesday afternoon.
Pat and Sandy
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In 2013, my wife, Sandy, and I were invited by the US State Department's Art in the Embassies program to give master classes on how to create smoke paintings in Kyrgyzstan. I had carefully prepared a step-by-step demonstration on how to use the smoke from a candle to block out big shapes, how to control tone and how to sculpt a few edges with Q-tips and kneaded eraser to create the illusion of realism. The students listened politely and then promptly ignored everything I said and proceeded to create wonderful "smoke & fire" paintings.
I was not surprised that they did fine work although they had never tried this strange medium before. The faculty were all Russian-trained and their students were extremely well trained in the fundamentals of drawing and painting. I visited many classes and was greatly impressed by the skill and creativity of the students.
The ambassador, Pamela Spratlen, held a reception in Sandy's and my honor at her residence. She invited several artists, professors, journalists and heads of cultural foundations. The Kyrgyz artists invited me to go with them to mountain villages and paint with them en plein air. They said that I could easily pass as an ethnic Kyrgyz except I smiled too much.
Sandy and I had a wonderful time. We had wide-ranging discussions on such topics as increasing income disparity around the world, the rise of fundamentalism and ways we might use art to promote world peace. Two young high school students showed us a large painting they had created showing Martin Luther King releasing the doves of peace.
I was recently invited again by the Art in the Embassies program to display my smoke paintings in Uzbekistan. |
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