The BoldBrush Show

149 Learning & Experimentation — The Foundation of Your Process

• BoldBrush • Season 11 • Episode 149

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For today's episode, we created a compilation of advice from our past guests where we discuss the importance of continuous learning and experimentation and how it becomes the foundation of your ongoing artistic process. Our guests emphasize the importance of reframing challenges as questions, embracing experimentation, and learning from both successes and failures. They also highlight the value of balancing fast and slow approaches to painting, as well as the need to adapt techniques to individual strengths and passions. The artists discuss the pressures of professional art, including deadlines and competitions, and how these can both hinder and inspire creativity. They also explore the significance of focusing on shapes, values, and the abstract qualities of a subject, rather than just its literal representation. Ultimately, this episode is all about encouraging artists to trust their creative journey, remain curious, and continually push themselves to grow and evolve.


In order of appearance:

136 Bill Davidson

131 Todd Casey

132 Keith Bond

128 Sarah Yeoman

129 Brian Bateman 

Bill Davidson:

This is how you learn the fastest. You try it, then you get feedback fairly fast so that you see what you did wrong. Then you retry it, and then you keep that process should repeat over and over again.

Keith Bond:

And I think all of us, there are times when the pressure comes and it causes, you know, a breakthrough in something. You Excel, you know you you reach a milestone or whatever, and then sometimes you fail. And it's that fear of what's going to happen because of this pressure that sometimes we become too cautious because of that.

Laura Arango Baier:

Welcome to the BoldBrush show, where we believe that fortune favors a bold brush. My name is Laura Arango Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques and all sorts of business tips, specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers type the art world, in order to hear their advice and insights. For today's episode, we created a compilation of advice from our past guests, where we discuss the importance of continuous learning and experimentation and how it becomes the foundation of your ongoing artistic process. Our guests emphasize the importance of reframing challenges as questions, embracing experimentation and learning from both successes and failures. They also highlight the value of balancing fast and slow approaches to painting, as well as the need to adapt techniques to individual strengths and passions. The artists discuss the pressures of professional art, including deadlines and competitions, and how these can both hinder and inspire creativity. They also explore the significance of focusing on shapes, values and the abstract qualities of a subject rather than just its literal representation. Ultimately, this episode is all about encouraging artists to trust their creative journey, remain curious and continually push themselves to grow and evolve.

Bill Davidson:

And I think you hit on it, the neuroscience supports all this. So as as a recovering lawyer, I'm a big researcher, so I read neuroscience in the morning to figure out, how can you get better at something faster, and what are the best ways to do it? So we'll be using those. And I would suggest Dr Ellen Langer, she did a podcast without with Huberman, and it's about two hours long, but it's well worth watching. She's one of the lead neuroscientists at Harvard University. So anyway, we extrapolated that and put it in here so that it's interesting to me, because so I came up with what I call my Superman, your superpowers. And so really, the here's what people do. If I'm in a workshop, I'll hear this, oh, I really can't do shapes. Well, oh, I'm not good at my values. You just have to reframe it, and it needs to come in the form of a question, where it goes, How do I get better at shapes? How do I get better at values? That way you're not criticizing yourself and making yourself feel bad. And that's what stops people, because it puts them in a position of fear, and then the fear is what stops everybody from continuing to paint and to push themselves and to enjoy it. So there's actually, if you look at the neuroscience, you'll see that one of the things that there's there's this is how you learn the fastest. You try it, then you get feedback fairly fast, so that you see what you did wrong. Then you retry it, and then you keep that process should repeat over and over again. And then there's another way, and it's called passive learning. So you just sit around and you look at your paintings, and you go to art shows and you do this, and you go to museums, and you start figuring out what you like, those three methods of the way you learn the fastest. So like, I'll do a painting, and then if I do a painting yesterday in the morning with coffee, I'll load it up on procreate and play with the design and everything in the morning on my iPad before I go in and start painting, repainting the painting again, just just to play with it. So and I'll look around and look for other ideas. So it's like Picasso said, don't just borrow, steal. So, I mean, I know that's kind of taking it out of the far way, but it's it, because the process is like this. If you ever Raymond Kinsler, and I love the guy, he was a fabulous artist, he would go, this is how the process. This is how you have to start the process. I will, this will be the greatest painting ever created of this type C. And he goes, you'll be an hour into it. You'll go, well, baby, this will be the greatest painting I ever painted of this type C. And then he's another hour in it, he goes, I hope I can save this damn thing. So that's kind of how the process kind of runs. So you need to take a lot. Of breaks and back up. You don't want to slide into that process, but that's mostly so. If you take your breaks and you go in and you do it the way I do it, a different way for most people, because I felt like we need to learn values and shapes, and most of us were drawn into this for color, especially later in life. So and a great artist, Ned Mueller, told me one time when I was first learning he goes, Bill, if you just did values for two years, you jump way ahead and you and of course, I was in it for color. So I went, I can't do that. So what I've come up with a method where I work on my value in shape first, and I keep color away from it, and then I get to put my color all in it, and it works much faster. Watching people in workshops is way better for so if I was to say something, I would say first, it's your curiosity and your passion that's going to keep you going and make you better. But you do have one superpower. It may it may not be value, it may not be shapes or but so mine would have been color. I can see color fairly well, and that's my passion. That's why I got into it. People call values. There's different words. So words are slippery, so people go well, most people aren't good at drawing. Well, to me, I just turn that into values and shapes, and that's really a drawing that's more palatable for me to present it that way. So you pick your one that you're really good at, and you know that's your superpower, and you spend 80% of your time just playing in that area, and then you find your others that, like for me, shapes are one of the hardest things in the world, and basically that's drawing. And so I'll work on that 15% of the time, but I usually work on that in the beginning. So anyway, it makes it way easier, because what happens is, I found that most people can't see color and value well, so light, light yellow looks lighter, dark blue looks darker. So what I do is I create my design in in a black and white, and I use chromatic black by gambling, because it's transparent. And matter of fact, all my paints are gambling. I say I'm a gambling man. It's because they're very consistent. The tubes don't crack and break. So I like them a lot. But anyway, I'll create it with a mixture of titanium white and a microchromatic black, and I'll mix up three puddles, and I'll start by design, and I do this even in a plain air competition or when I'm outside, and that's how I lay out my design. And I'll use three values about, there's a rule, if you know about the people that do the Disney Studios and those type people that, and it's probably more well known, like, there's a 70% rule. You want to be like 70% something major. And I found that to be very true. So I'll have a medium, a dark and a light value, and I'll make one of the values, what I call dominant. That way people don't get caught up in 70% so that's a design thing. So that's like this. The easiest way to remember it is this, if you have a great room, you're going to want a couch in there. If you don't have a couch, the great room is not going to look good. So I always go in with a 70% rule, or that my dominant value, then I have two values left, which is about 30% one of those values is more dominant than the other would also by about is dominant, so 70% or whatever that lines up by design the way I need it and gives me my big shapes. Now you may go, Well, this what? How does this dominant value thing apply in the smaller things? Well, it does. I learned that I kept watching great people. And if you watch really pros that have been painting their whole life, they just do shapes naturally, and they're very good at it, and they can see their color and their value. But I mean, I was watching people, and I couldn't do it either. So I learned that if I had a pile of rocks, the way to make it bigger or better, much better or clouds, was to put a dominant rock in there or a dominant cloud. Try it. I guarantee you it'll save that rock pile or save that section of clouds so it works on your big design also. And so all you have to do is lay it all out. I've done five videos for streamline, which is the largest, I think, video art, video people, and one of them called landscapes reinvented, and then and then unlock the magic of plein air paintings and other ones. So those two, I really go into in depth. Landscapes reinvented. I really covered this in depth. Left, I go, it's probably six hours. But anyway, I show you how to do it. But as I gotta say this, videos are great. But here's having just come back from pace and teaching workshops. I will say this, there's nothing better than live. The videos are great supplement. And sometimes I can sit there and I can watch a video ago? Well, I think I got it, but then I may go to that person's workshop and go, whoa. I thought I kind of had it, but this is so much more, so much better. So don't just sit in your studio and watch videos. They're great and they're great. They give you the repetition you need. So but I think the workshops and the live things are great for you, but let me go back to this part. So when I start laying out that design, I know that I've got a dominant value shape, and I'm not using color at all yet, because people tend, most of us, can, well, it's neuroscience. You can only think of one thing at a time. So if I've got values and shapes going on, and then I have to throw color in there, that's one more ball. And that would have to make me a professional juggler. You can't do most people can't do it. So, and in the old art schools, you couldn't touch color for a couple of years. So there's some, there's some, actually science that backs this up. So anyway, but that's how I deal with it, and I find it much easier. People learn much faster. And then what I figured out after that is, let's say you don't like to draw, you don't like to do just black and white. It only takes 1520 minutes to set this up, and you can play with it, and you can redesign it and shift it, and you're going to get a better design if you look at like, two or three or four things. And then before you've actually gone into your color, if you want to redesign it, you don't have all that color on there, and have to scrape it off and try to go back to point zero. So having a some type of plan is very important, and it's actually becomes fun. I've turned it into a puzzle. At first, I thought, I don't like shades. I don't like you know, this is the hard part, but I turned it into a puzzle. I go, What if I do that? So I just heard a Disney guy, and I can't remember his name off top my head. He had a great point. He goes, I shoot for impact shapes. So what's your what? Here's the thing that people don't realize. I always thought colors would drew people to the painting. It shapes every gal, every top gallery owner, every top artist, will go, shapes are more important and values are more important. So anyway, as I go into it, I had to figure out a system where it was easier, and so I pulled the color out of it, and that made it a lot easier to deal with. Setting up a design for composition is really easy for me. Now, I may flip it. I could flip my board do it. A lot of people do the little dots on those little things. I prefer to go right to the canvas, because by the time I get my do six, three or four of those others, I have to convert it over to now my my panel, which is a different size, and then I've got to deal with that issue. So I just do it all on there, black and white, and I put it on real thin. And I mean, actually, it's on so thin that I can plein air paint right over it, and it won't mess me up. Okay, here's the other reason for that all colors relative, so if what it used to be before they had chromatic black, I was doing warm tonals with like a transparent red oxide. But I noticed this because the whole panel was so warm and colors so relative, people were afraid to put a cool on there, so they wouldn't get their painting. There wouldn't be enough cools in the paintings, and the painting would have an overall warmth. So by staying in a neutral color, you don't influence the other colors you're getting ready to put on and that's why Richard Schmidt would go like this, if you have a strong color, get it on there earlier. So you because you're going to paint to what color is already on there. Now there's science for that too. If you put yellow it, you can see it real easily. If there's a mountain and you're looking at it, it may look kind of a grayish blue. If you stick that mountain between two yellow aspen trees, that yellow is going to turn that that mountain a little greenish and a little more bluish, and it'll glow in there. So the temperature shifts and the relativity of the color shifts everything. So you won't know it, but you're painting to whatever colors are already on that palette or on that painting. So. Oh, that's why I stay as neutral as I can and start getting my bold color on and knowing it's going to affect everything in the so that's a pretty good bit there. If you have I can go on if you want me to Laura, if you have a question, I'm glad to take it.

Todd Casey:

Yeah, I think every place I've gone to has a strength and a weakness to it. And, you know, my purpose in doing all of these things is to find the strength from them all and pull I don't think any one school is going to give you everything. So illustration allowed me to delve into, kind of the idea of telling stories and being narrative with the work, but also working on the process of it. You know, so animation also did that as well, the idea of, like sketching all the time. You know, if you were to put yourself up against, not you, but if artists were to put themselves up against, like a Disney animator, they can sketch amazing, like, so fast. So one of my teachers at the Academy of Art University was Sherry Sinclair, and she had worked at, I think, as a cleanup artist on Milan, and I was just fascinated at, like, how, how she did this one task, I think, of cleanup for line and just making it beautiful and calligraphic, but the ability to just sketch on demand and quickly. So my whole thing with all of this is just been able to to extract all the good from everywhere that I go, and put them together, and then have a lot of time to reflect and make sure that, you know, I'm on the path that I want to be on, and not that somebody else is kind of, you know, somebody's esthetic taste has been kind of thrown on me to head towards it. It's tough because there's no path for that. That's really a lot of downtime and thinking. But yeah, so I think a lot of, a lot of each aspect. There's also the illustration Academy, which I went to, and that's Mark English, Gary Kelly, Sterling Huntley, Anita Koontz, CF Payne. A lot of, I sorry to just throw names out, but a lot of illustrators that have a whole process before they get into making a painting. And I think ateliers are a little bit more backwards, where sometimes they're just memetic, they're like, working from the model, and then they come up with an idea after and I'm always like, I'm always trying to figure out all the variables of ways to kind of make pictures. And then you have a toolbox that you can kind of pull into.

Laura Arango Baier:

So, yeah, and the, it's really interesting, you know, especially what you mentioned about speed also, because it is really awesome that, you know, especially, you know, in illustration, right, there's that speed one, because, you know, you're producing something for a client, and it's, it's more from like, a business standpoint, of like, okay, well, I have a deadline. But with like the Atelier system, especially with my experience, it is such a slow process. At least, you know, in the ateliers that I've studied in, there is an emphasis on taking your time, which, when one of our instructors, Michael, John Angel, mentioned it, he was like, these works are unsellable because it takes so, so much time that, if you had to account for, like, your rent, the cost of schooling, the cost of materials and the cost of labor for these paintings, it's unsellable. It's 1000s of dollars, unless you have, you know, a collector in the future really, really wants your student work, which is, it's pretty rare that that happens, if at all, it's just gonna sit there and it's a fun exercise. It's still, you know, useful. And I hear a lot of you know people who have gone to academies who later on say, Man, I wish I would have enjoyed, you know my cast a little bit more, because it is actually fun to slow down. But of course, that doesn't, it's, it's that balance of like, well, you can't really slow down that much if you're going to live as a painter, unless you have a day job, or unless you have another means of income. Because that's that delicate balance that comes in, which is really interesting to me, because it's, you know, once you're out of the academy, it's like, Okay, I gotta, I gotta make money now or have some sort of job while I try to figure out the process that I want to have for my work. Because, like you said, you know, there is a lot of like, just working from the model and then doing something with it after, if you're someone who wants more narrative stuff, or you want to do something a little bit more fun, fantastical, or just totally different from the academies, that takes a lot of unlearning or a lot of exploration, a lot of experimentation, which unfortunately, those are some things that the academies don't necessarily. They promote in their students is the experimentation side. So, you know, like, for example, like, if someone wanted to improve their technique, right? What would you suggest to them?

Todd Casey:

Yeah, I guess I would, technique of what?

Laura Arango Baier:

Well, in, you know, just learning to paint better.

Todd Casey:

No, paint better. Yeah, I would just say it's all over the place, because, you know, it depends on where they want to go with it. You know, if you want to, like, I could see like value or utility and doing like daily paintings, like, if you've, if you've never, if you've never painted, why not jump right in, right? So my whole thing always was like, learn how to go really fast and then really slow, and find the two poles, and then figure out in the middle what overlaps with you, right? And that's where, like, Jacob was a slow painter, even though he can paint fast, and then Max was a very fast painter who could paint slow. And I was like, I'm going to paint with two of these. And I remember when I went to Jacob, and I said, I you know Max Ginsburg? He said, Of course I do. And he said, I'm going to, I'm going to paint with Max. He said, You shouldn't, because you'll probably get confused. And he was completely right. However, I still did it. I just didn't tell Jacob. And Max was like, I would go to the Art Students League, and we would just do, like, three hour portraits every Saturday, and then over at Water Street, we would do 70 hour cast drawing or whatever, three months, that kind of stuff. But for me, I was like, I didn't bridge a gap between how to go really fast and really slow, yet it was like also trying to master the materials and understand color and how to make tonal progressions. And there's just too many variables, you know, where, like, we can totally overthink it at the beginning, but why not jump in and then assess and then figure out which way I want to go? But I was always, let's get these two skill sets so I can go really fast and really slow. It harks back into when I was an animator. So animation was all about fast, fast, fast. And we would go to Sketch nights. The Academy of Art. University provides free models you can do like three different workshops every night. Some of them were 22nd sketches. Some of them were anatomy workshops. Some of them were like, 40 minute poses. 40 minute poses for them was super, super long, right? So, so I was, I just remember, I was in a class one day, and somebody was like, Are you going to sketch tonight? And I, and I didn't know anything about these workshops yet, and I said, what do you what do you mean? And in our one of our goals was to fill a sketchbook in a semester. And I said, What do you mean? Where are you going to sketch? And I walked in the room with him that night, because I was, like, interested, and realized I was late to that party because there was already like, 50 people there sketching. And I was like, How do I not know about this? And then I just used that as fuel, and then went every single night to at least one of these, submerging myself and getting really fast at gesture and working with a pen so that I couldn't erase, like, to articulate it right? And it's the same way in which I do it with paint now, which is like, you know, learn how to go really slow, learn how to go really fast, and then you can be economical when you need to. And then the other thing is, I get asked a lot like, how do you how do you loosen up? And it's like, well, there's the quote by, I think it's William Merritt Chase, and he says it takes two artists to paint, one to stand behind with an ax, to cut the arm off before the artist destroys it. And you would watch somebody like Max paint from an abstraction into naturalistic painting, but Jacobs was a little bit more linear, where you would actually see it progressing. And I thought, I want to have a whole toolbox to just pull from at all times. And if I can do that, then the world's just my oyster to play with.

Keith Bond:

And it's interesting. I did it myself, and I see a lot of my students do the same thing. They spend way too long on a planar piece at the beginning, and by the time they're done with it, the light has changed three or four times. The scene is completely different. Fact, there are some students, it kind of boggles my mind. We start in the morning, do you know, start working on a plein air piece, and then we break for lunch, and they come back, and in the afternoon, they're working on the same piece, and the light's completely different. You know? I try to talk to him and say, well, the light's different. Why don't we start a new piece? Well, I've got to finish this first. I'm almost done. Yeah, but it, you know, but it's a learning process when you you know, I spent so much time early on when I would try to finish a painting, and, you know, plein air is hard. It's really hard with all of the everything changing all the time. Yeah, and the percentage of paintings that actually turned out and were good was fairly low. You know, that's just the way it is. You know, as you as you progress, hopefully that number goes up. But I don't know, I go out. In fact, I went out a few days ago with some friends, and, yeah, I probably did five plein air paintings, six plein air paintings, and maybe only two of them I'm happy with the other four. I mean, I've got the color notes so, you know, I can do something with them. But as far as how, just in and of itself, what I was able to capture at that given time. Now, only two of them I'm very happy with. So, you know, the batting average is still low even I guess maybe partially that's because the standards get higher as you progress as an artist. So, you know, I said a few minutes ago that I only, I never finished my plein air paintings. You know, I still bring them far enough along to know whether I've got something good. I guess that's what I was trying to say with that. And occasionally, sometimes I do get a finished painting that I think could be frameable and sellable, but I will seldom sell them anyway, because I want that reference to refer to in the studio,

Laura Arango Baier:

right, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, I think that's one of the realities that a lot of people who are very much at the beginning of being an artist don't realize, because, of course, it comes with experience, which is that not every painting is going to turn out, and that's fine, right? Like you have to make peace with the fact that in order to get better, you will make mistakes. It is necessary. If you have a lot of wins, that's awesome. But at the same time, you don't learn much from winning. You learn more, much more from from those failures, or from those, you know, things that just didn't work out, because they show you where you need growth,

Unknown:

right? Yeah,

Laura Arango Baier:

it's, it's an interesting, interesting little tidbit that I think a lot of people miss out on,

Keith Bond:

and, you know, to expound on that. So when I'm outside, if I don't have the idea that I have to get a finished painting, it takes the pressure off, and I'm a lot freer to just capture the essence of what I what I want to try to capture in that scene, and not worry about, is it a successful painting? Can I sell it? Can I win the award at the plein air event? You know?

Laura Arango Baier:

So, yeah, yeah. I think artists also at any at any stage, I think there's always like that lingering pressure, if there's, like you just said, an event, or some sort of competition or something, if you, if you put that as the priority, instead of making just a painting, just letting the painting flow. Like you said, it might add that unnecessary pressure. Some people might thrive with pressure. I don't. I personally don't. I'm sure there are a lot of other artists who also have a love, hate relationship with pressure. You know, pressure can be good, but also pressure can it can make things difficult or make make you make rash decisions in the moments that if you had allowed yourself the time and space, and, you know, the release of pressure to be able to work through those things, it would have had a different result. Right? So it's a balance.

Keith Bond:

It is, it is, and I think all of us, there are times when the pressure comes and it causes, you know, a breakthrough in something. You Excel, you know, you you reach a milestone or whatever, and then sometimes you fail. And it's that fear of what's going to happen because of this pressure that sometimes we become too cautious because of that. But just a quick story, there were years and years and years ago. There was a show coming up, and I knew about it. I had, like, six months that I could have prepared, but I wasn't really going to enter anything into the show, because I didn't have any ideas for it that I was excited about I couldn't come up with an idea. I mean, it wasn't just a painted landscape, it was a little bit more themed of a show. The day before the deadline, I finally had an idea. Well, my wife said, Are you ever are you going to do anything for that show? When's the deadline? It's like the deadline is tomorrow. I haven't thought of anything. I don't think I'm going to enter. And then that day, I came up with an idea. So I stayed up all night painting it, and submitted it, and ended up becoming a purchase award. I got a purchase award for it. So, you know, there are times when you know that pressure at the very end and it. Something that I had never done before. I mean, it was way out of my wheelhouse, but it was really, you know, when that inspiration hits, and it was a good idea. Once I finally got it, I tried it, but I knew if it didn't succeed, I don't have to turn it in, I don't have to submit it. So I just gave it a shot, and I tried it. You know, I'm getting ready to take a bunch of paintings to a gallery for a group show next week, and I've had one canvas that was like, Okay, this is my last one. I only have a week to get it done, but I want it drawn early enough that it can actually dry. So do I go with? I have like, two or three ideas, and I'm trying to figure out, Okay, which one can I actually pull off in this amount of time? And so that's kind of been a little bit of that fear working in there. You know, do I go with the one that I feel a little bit more confident in, or the one that's a little bit more of a stretch of my abilities, and I actually still haven't decided, and I have a week, so no pressure. I don't know, I don't know what I'll end up choosing. But anyway, Oh man, that's tough, no matter where we are in our in our career, I think there's always a little bit of that that comes into play. One smile, the pressure of the having to perform, and can I do it? I don't know.

Unknown:

So,

Laura Arango Baier:

yeah, yeah. And again, it's that balance, you know, if, yeah, if you, if you can make a breakthrough with, you know, that pressure, then it's worth it. But then, at the same time, I feel like the difference with like the other competition, right? The competition that you painted it the night before, you had nothing to lose, whereas this is like an exhibition, right? So it's a little bit more of like a well, I mean, I want to be able to present the best of my work, so it's that valid point. Yeah, yeah. So it's that, should I take a risk, even though I'm not quite sure, or should I do something I know for sure would fit in. And, of course, your discretion,

Keith Bond:

yeah, and even though I feel more confident in some of the other ideas, I still don't know for sure, right, whether it will turn out. I mean, there are paintings that I've done that it was a subject that I was quite confident in, and thought, yeah, this will be something that I can pull off. And they failed. Every painting is a new beast. Every painting is unique. And no matter how much you think you might have things figured out, you run into things that it's painting is hard. It's not and it doesn't get easier with more practice. I mean, I guess that sounds pessimistic, doesn't it? I'm supposed to encourage everybody and say, You can do this. You're going to get better. You're gonna get great. It's just that my standard, you know, the more I progress, it's, you know, like the dangling carrot out in front of you. It doesn't get easier for me. In fact, I look back at some of the my earlier paintings and think, How did I do that? That was good. I can't do that anymore, so I don't know it's you learn, you grow, you change, you evolve. And it's never stagnant, or it shouldn't be. If it becomes stagnant, stagnant, then I think there's a problem, and it will show in the work.

Laura Arango Baier:

So, totally, totally, yeah, and, I mean, it's organic, right? It's kind of like how I was saying not every painting is going to pan out. And oftentimes we think that technique is this kind of, like, up right. Like, like a line that just, you know, goes up right, right. Like, perfect line that just goes diagonally up, and we get better over time. But it's a little bit more like the general trend is up. But maybe you have like in the chart. You have like points that go a little higher than the line, a little lower, a little higher, little lower, and right their average, I guess, is that you improve over time. But the reality is, you get a little better. Maybe it's not so great. I get a little better. Maybe it's not so great, and that's and,

Keith Bond:

you know, sometimes it feels like an artist that it's not necessarily, you know that going up, it's more like you're wandering all over the place sometimes. But I guess maybe that's in part, my tendency to want to experiment and try new things, and I don't know how readily it is available, or I don't know how obvious it is, rather, to people looking at my work from the outside to see because my subject matter hasn't changed. Do. And my, you know, my, what I want to express about the landscape hasn't really changed, but in trying to make marks and trying to to make a beautiful surface, a beautiful painting, you know, I want the paint itself to be beautiful beyond just the scene that it's trying to represent. And so in trying to come up with ways to apply the paint and make beautiful marks, I experiment a lot, and I play with a lot of different tools and techniques, but I don't know if the outside observer notices that you know the layman.

Laura Arango Baier:

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Sarah Yeoman:

we're all I think we're all vessels for I think we're born with that innate curiosity and that ability to translate our world that way. I think that it just is not encouraged enough when we're young, or we have experiences that, where we're told that we're not good enough to try that or so, I feel very fortunate that I was able to pursue that and continue to pursue it, and and then also be able to maybe open the door for my students and people that paint with me, to sort of open the door enough so that they feel comfortable to to create, because everybody's so afraid of making a mistake and afraid that they don't have something to say. But given the right circumstance, I think anybody can be creative, anybody can really paint, anybody can write. It's just giving yourself the time and the place and the and the solitude, and that's what it takes sometimes, really is that, is that lack of everything else around you, you really have to learn to sit with yourself and open up to what, to what comes and then also get out and experience things that that make you feel something. You know, I'm out in the woods. I well, I try to hike every day. There's not a lot here in Delaware for hiking, but, you know, I walk a couple miles a day, but it's always about light and shadow everything. And it's funny, because I'm always, I have a friend that, you know, we room together when we were in our 20s and and years later, she said, You know, I always wondered, did you have something wrong with your eyes? And I'm like, No, I'm just squinting because it helps me see the shadows, the light in the shadows, and let go of what the thing is and really focus on that. You. Beautiful Design shape. You know that, again, that beautiful abstract that lies beneath anything that that is a good composition. And Andrew Wyeth always talked about that too, is that there's, there's a strong abstract under any of his paintings. So that's what I'm that's what I'm always sort of looking for it's we're not. I'm not painting the thing, the name thing. I'm painting the light and the shadow that create it, you know, gradually revealing form by finding the light in the shadow and not always saying it directly, but hinting at it, you know, just just enough that maybe it can be visualized by the by the audience, by someone that's looking at it. So that's, that's the place that I like to explore is, is right on that edge of being real and abstract. So that's, that's my inspiration. That's what I'm not, what I'm looking for. And it can be something simple, you know, it doesn't have to be a complicated subject. It's, it's really just about light and shadow and shape,

Laura Arango Baier:

yeah, yeah. And those are all really important points, because I love that you mentioned the trying to hold on to that abstract light shadow, yeah. And because that really it's so easy for us to get caught up in the logical brain that tells you this is a cup, or this is a tree and it has this. But when you really dig into this, the more creative side of your brain, right, which people refer to as the right and left sides of the brain. When you when you dig into that right side of the brain that focuses on abstract, it's so much more real when you produce something from the perspective of I'm going to allow this object to come to life, instead of me telling it what it is, right, right?

Sarah Yeoman:

Yes, yeah. Like the, like a sculptor, the, you know, saying the form actually exists within the marble. My job is just to find it. So that's having been a sculptor working with metal when I was in college, I love a three dimensional form. I mean, I love to just create shape. So that's what I try to do with my watercolors on a two dimensional surface. I feel that the forms exist within that page, and my job is to, is to sort of carve away at it and bring it forth so and that's how, you know, that's how my brain works when I'm an often when I'm doing micro that way to my crow series, that that's very often how I'm thinking when, when I'm working on those crows, is, is that They do exist within the space already, and I'm just, you know, carving them out and looking for those edges, Lost and Found edges, excuse me,

Laura Arango Baier:

yeah, yeah, totally. And I think the other really interesting thing about the that abstract search, that carving is also there, and something that I think we also discussed last time, which is labels right, the moment you label something, you are boxing it into the only possible thing it could be, whereas if you allow for that box to open up, right, maybe that tree that you're painting or the crow that you're painting has More Life because it's no longer being forced to exist within this tiny label of a box, right? And I totally see that in your

Sarah Yeoman:

work, too, right? Not the not the left brain language interpretation, but the right brain, shape and form and edge and light and dark and hard and soft and lost and found, and all of those other words that you can use to describe things, name things.

Laura Arango Baier:

Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's and I think that's the beautiful part about painting as well, is that the visual language of something goes so far beyond words that that's what makes it so important to Yes, I recognize that this is a tree, but I'm not going to allow that to prevent myself from from painting its essence, because

Sarah Yeoman:

what you FEEL, and that's what I say to my students, we're not painting the Tree, we're painting. What we feel about the tree? Like, how do you feel? What does it move in you? And you know, so often people want to when we say tree, you know, our eight year old brain is like, Oh, I'm going to show you. I'm going to paint you a tree. And of course, you start with all the lines and the. Details, as opposed to saying, what does this shape look like? What does the shape look like? But what also does the negative shape around the form look like? Because so often the negative shape is just as important as the positive shape. And when I design my crows, I'm always thinking about that. Well, even with all my Adirondack work and my florals, you know, you always have to think about the shape around the shape, if that makes sense, because that's, that's part of the design. You know, when you're if you have a square, you're working in a square format or a vertical or horizontal, the four most important parts of the design are those, are those four outside edges. You have to literally design every one of those edges as you're laying in your tree or your crows or your boat people or something. So you're always you have to You're not just putting an object onto a flat piece of paper. You are placing it in there and then finding the way for it to best sit in there and speak about what you're what you're feeling.

Laura Arango Baier:

So, yeah, totally, totally. And to your point about the negative, positive shape, right? I feel like that's also such an interesting repetition of also the idea of light and shadow, right? Because, obviously, everything in the world exists with light and shadow, and I think if you really think about it in a philosophical way as well, right, we have to accept an entire image as it is, or an entire like the world as it is with its light and shadow, in order to be able to see it more clearly, right? Without that that left brain language coming in and imposing itself on things, whereas we want the visual things to impose themselves on our canvas or and through, you know, our our brain and out our hands, right? Which is, think it's very poetic.

Sarah Yeoman:

Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. And, and trusting, you know, as an artist working in the creative process, trusting yourself on that journey, and not being attached to what the outcome may be, because that will stop you right in your tracks from trying something new. And really the way I paint, and I think the way a lot of artists work, is you don't always know the outcome. You're, you're on a journey. You're You're it's a it's a path. You're working towards something, but you don't know what the end is. And if you already have, if you already have a plan what kind of frame you're going to put it in, you're really not present to the process, and the process itself is, I think what is most important, it's very easy to forget that, especially as a professional artist, who's you know, you got to make money, you have deadlines. And sometimes I paint because I have to have this many paintings to go to this gallery on this day. And it's sometimes. It's a lot of times it's not my best work. The best work really comes when I'm painting for myself, for nothing else but myself and and trying to answer a question, trying to pushing myself to paint something I have not painted before. You know, discovering something, stepping over a line that might be a little bit scary, a little bit new. You know, maybe one in 10 paintings i i Take a risk that takes me someplace new. And that's the best feeling when you are able to cross into a different place creatively and paint something you have not painted. And I think that's why I have such a such an array of different subjects, that I do because I'm so curious about so many things. I having a formula for me is really difficult. I can't paint the same thing over and over, because I get I get really bored, and I lose my I lose my inspiration. So I like to do things in series, maybe a series of three crows, you know, let them speak, and then move on to some of my Adirondack work, or some florals. And then I have the teaching that I do a lot as well, so that kind of will interrupt that that cycle a little bit, which can be good for me as an artist, because it's completely different to be a teacher than it is to paint for yourself. People so often think it's the exact same thing, and it's a completely different experience. You know, teaching a room of 20 people in person, or 90 people on a zoom class. Then Then having two weeks in my studio where I don't have to talk to anybody, where I can just really be present to what something that might have been churning inside. That I might want to say, and I'm not even sure what that is. So some days it's just put paint to paper, just keep touching the page, keep drawing, keep keep the energy moving. And that's often when you get those little sparks, is when you're not expecting something to happen, but you're just exploring

Brian Bateman:

as you come up through the ranks, you emulate other artists that you that you admire, and you want to paint like them for a while. To learn it's okay to do that. It's okay to take a take a red wall and paint like that for a while. Or take an Anton Western art or Matt Smith and paint like that for a while, because you're learning different things about how they go about it. But in the end, you have to do your thing. You have to, like you said, take all that information and funnel it and do what's best for you. You can take all the workshops you want in the world, you can watch all the videos you want to in the end, you have to funnel it out and do what's best for you, what works for you. There's different ways of attacking a campus. There's different ways of painting, as long as the end result is professional and looks the way you want it to look, and you're proud of it and you learn from it. That's all you need to do. But that's not that's easier said than done, because I will still have noise in my head that I have to get that out of there and do what I should be doing. And my style now has become much more loose. It's much more splatter. It's much more free. I got a painting that I did called resolution that is very, very loosely based. It's splatter and kind of building up from thin to thick, like we all should do, but I I do a lot of thinner paint now, because I'm getting this very cool effect, I'm always experimenting. You don't want to get stagnant. You want to keep pushing and learning and growing and experimenting. Use a rag. Wipe it off, put some thinner on there and see what it does. Put a medium or something on there to see what happens. And just enjoy the process. Enjoy what you're doing now. In the end, we're supposed to make a living at it, and hopefully we do. It's cyclical, you know, bless my wife, you know, she, she, she puts up with a lot like any other artist, significant other has to have that certain mindset to put up with that, because that's not easy to put up with sometimes, you know, get the highs and lows. You get a big paycheck, and then you don't get something for a month or two or three, and you know, you've got to budget yourself. The one of the smartest things that one of my contemporaries told me Bill Anton when I visited his studio, is after I got over the shock of being invited into the studio and looking at his work, which was absolutely just phenomenal. And he he was very gracious, he was very kind, and he sat me down, and my wife was there. He sat us both down, and he told us, never live beyond your means. And I'm looking at his work, and he's, you know, 120,000 a painting your way. He just, you know, doing crypto. Bill's doing well, but Bill has worked his butt off a long time to get to where he is, and but that always stuck with me. Never live beyond your means because you don't know what's going to happen in the artwork. You could be popular as all get out for a year or two or three, and then you can't find work, or nobody will buy your buy your work. And so that resonated with me, that no matter who you are, how big you get, and there's some of them that are out there, very, very prosperous and very, very big in the art world, you have to be careful, because it could all go away. And I'm not trying to be negative, but you have to be kind of realistic, and that's why I believe in experimentation and kind of reinventing yourself and kind of keeping things fresh, and kind of keeping things driven within your mind. Attack it you.