Two years ago, I was invited by the captain of a commercial fishing boat down to the docks, to watch the “packout” of his boat. The dock hands and fishermen unloaded scores of huge fish, and then came the final moment-one five hundred pound tuna. All eyes were on the gaping hole that led to the hull. And as the crane lowered into the hull, the massive tuna slowly emerged. Once on land, it was loaded onto a forklift, cut up, packed on ice, and shipped off to various sushi restaurants across the eastern seaboard..
I hope that I’m not being critical, or fatalistic, to say that in America, there seems to be so little that people are proud of these days. Peter Thiel, the creator of PayPal, said that the downfall of America doesn’t consist of our students lagging behind in science or math, nor is it the lack of higher education. In fact, he said that higher education and universities have stymied and crushed the innovative human spirit, and robbed the workforce of young, talented entrepreneurs that will work hard and proceed in spite of risk. Thiel says that the current downward trend in America comes from our inability to dream, and tied to the loss of dreaming is our loss of pride in our product, perhaps because of our fear of risk. Thiel went on to lament the passing of the pride in bygone eras, times in which Americans prided themselves in well made wooden clocks, Ford motors, races to the moon.
I suppose I’m so taken by commercial fishermen, because they are one of the few workers that still retain this sense of pride; to see the way that they glowed with satisfaction when the crane hoisted the giant, hulking tuna out of their boat.
I am taking a new approach to painting, for my larger compositions. I was taught to only paint from life, but after extensive studies after my heroes in painting, I can see that they worked up elaborate charcoal, chalk, or sanguine drawings, and then pieced together the painting, between the studio and real life. Sorolla, Sargent, and Vojtěch Hynais are superb examples of artists that worked in this drawing-to-painting manner, for large paintings.
And so, pardon the crudeness of the first moments in this painting, as I’m showing you a work in progress. As I paint from drawings, join me on my new venture, the new approach that I’m taking for large canvases. Here is the first couple hours of my first painting, executed not from life, but from sanguine drawing.
