Everything and the Kitchen Sink

This past weekend I decided to paint a simple everyday still life, inspired by my new friend, Charles Hawthorne, whose book, as mentioned before, has really been helping me focus on some fundamental ideas. I'm trying to get back to seeing things as spots of color and how one spot of color relates to those around it. But the real challenge is seeing the big spots, and not all the details.

 

Something I love about what Hawthorne taught his students is how to look at the world, especially how to look at something ordinary and see it as beautiful... not pretty, but truly beautiful.

 

(Click to view a higher resolution image in Picasa... includes a cool zoom tool)

Kitchen Sink Still Life I

"We must teach ourselves to see the beauty of the ugly, to see the beauty of the commonplace. It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much - better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one."

 

Here's a critique of a student's painting:

"Try to do ugly things so that you make them beautiful - these are too pretty for words, one expects to see fairy dancers. I'd like to glaze them with mud to get a little of every day dirt in them.  Get away from the preciousness - that's cheap ideal. Get a little human beauty in them. The more delicate the thing is in nature the more one must look for the solemn [I read that as "true" and "authentic," but even more so] note. Color in nature is never pretty, it's beautiful."

 

I think I could memorize the entire book. It's just good, good stuff. Makes me wonder about all the things I'm missing out there, if that makes any sense. We go about our days, doing and seeing so much the same things, and right under our noses, without going anywhere different or changing the scenery, there's this whole beautiful world we're missing.