The Art of Fine Art: Notes, Essays, and Guiding Lights After Fifty Years of Work

Contents

Introduction

Understanding Art

Inspiration

Fundamental Concepts to Understand

The Four Basic Approaches - Overview

Methods, Approaches, and ‘isms’

The Four Approaches

Really Seeing a Painting

Necessary Elements for the Development of a Good Artist

Composition

My Art and (Eastern) Spirituality

Orchestration

Formal Elements that can be Manipulated

The Silent Language

My Painting – Important Concepts

Creativity

The Basic Process

Progression of Basic Process

Consistency

Color

Range and Risk

Naturalness and the Basic Guidelines

Academic Painting and Clone Painting

My Painting - Evolution

The Unbiased Mind

Light

Learning, Instruction, Commercial, and ‘Class’

Fundamental Concepts to Understand

Symbolism

Meaning

Finishing

Background Ideas

The Painting Experience

The Big Stuff

Authenticity

The Spiritual/Magical in Art

Recommendations

Quality

Thoughts

Marks On A Surface

Aside from the deep stuff – or maybe this is the deep stuff – there is for me something completely compelling and intriguing about just making marks on a surface. I just like pushing paint around. The feel of the brush and paint. I don’t know where this comes from. The urge is just there. And it is not about color, as much as I love color. It’s not even about paint, as such – it is just about putting marks on a surface. If I could have a paper and pencil and have the last thing I do on my deathbed be making a few marks, I think I would go out a happy camper. Maybe it’s some kind of primal thing. With baseball players perhaps it’s the feel of the bat hitting the ball. Or maybe the feel of the glove on their hand. With actors, it might be slipping into a character. With farmers maybe it’s putting a seed in the ground. With me it is putting marks on a surface.

— Eo Omwake

About the author

Eo Omwake is an artist and teacher. He was raised in the countryside of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, began painting seriously at about the age of sixteen and has been painting ever since. He went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art school in the United States, then, upon completion of his schooling, he began showing in the art world. Just three years after completing his studies at the Academy of Fine Art, he was hired as an instructor and soon became an instructor/critic, the highest step in the hierarchy of the Academy. Shortly after being made an instructor at the Academy, he was given a position as instructor of art at the Delaware Art Museum, one of the most highly respected small museums in the United States. He has been teaching at the Delaware Art Museum since then.

He received numerous awards and was accepted twice in the famous Whitney Annual, a showcase for the best of American art. He has shown in New York and elsewhere around the United States, as well as internationally.

He taught for 23 years at the Academy, and then, when he moved out of the city, began his own art school, the Chadds Ford Academy of Fine Arts. He has been reviewed and included in numerous articles in the top art magazines including Artforum, Art in America, and Art News. He was assistant curator of a national drawing show at Moore College of art, was a visiting artist at Drexel University and The University of Pennsylvania, and was an ‘artist in residence’ at The University of Texas in Austin.

Introduction

It should be said that I don’t consider myself a master. That is for others and posterity to decide. I’m just someone who has done art for about fifty years, taught a bit, and discovered some stuff. This book is an attempt to share some of what I have discovered. I believe what I have learned is significant for anyone who wants to make art at a high level. This is not for the person who wants to be a commercial artist. (Although they might benefit) This is for those interested in Fine Art – in Art at its deepest levels. And it is for both the artist and the viewer. It is not a ‘how to’ book. It gives some basic ‘how to’ stuff, but it is really a book about insight and inspiration, meaning and process, spirit and magic.

I am not really a very organized person straight out. After all I am an artist. And as everyone knows artists are not organized! But I can organize a little if I need to. In this book I have sought to present a somewhat organized view of art. I’ve tried not to be too organized, just enough, without being overly organized – like life. There is a little method to the madness, as they say. Essentially what I have presented in The Art of Fine Art is a view of what art is, what it means to me, and a kind of analysis and delineation of what goes into making art. I have done this partially to clear my head after forty or so years of teaching, but also, to share what I’ve learned with others.

I am a contemporary artist to be sure. But what does that mean? I am conservative in that believe in classic painting. Yet, I also believe in pushing the boundaries of what art can be. After all, I have done non-representational fake-fur paintings. I paint with glitter. I do realism. I mix it all together. Why not? What is there to lose? I think all approaches are valid – that art is totally free when it comes to style. Realism, Abstraction – it is all the same. It is what you say that is important, not so much the approach – the style. It’s the feeling and magic you evoke. Yet there are some things that can be done that will help our artwork to be good. There are certain criteria that will help with this. We, as artists, are free to follow these ideas or not follow them. In the final analysis the only thing we need to do is make good paintings, to express ourselves. I don’t believe that ‘skill’ or ‘technique’ is the most important part of art. Art is much more than that. Skill is just the vehicle that we use to make art. Skill helps us communicate the art ‘stuff’ – the content – the real stuff.

Art is about expression and The Art of Fine Art is, if nothing else, about that. It is thoughts I have had, essays I have written, and quotes by famous artists. All of this hodge-podged together in a way that might affect a deeper understanding of what ‘world-class’ art is.

Any answers offered should not be considered final. They are simply my ways of seeing things. I believe some of what I have presented is universal and true from an objective point of view. In other words, there are some things here that are not simply my opinion, but are things that hold true generally and can be taken as truths about art.

One more thing. Basically I hold to the thesis that it is more important to raise questions than offer final answers. With this book I hope to do this – and as well to inspire and to inform. To give a few answers but more importantly to raise questions, to make us think and feel.

—Eo Omwake

Contradiction is Impossible.

This is that.

To make art:

Fake It and Fix It.

Understanding Art

A great man once said, People all say what we are seeking is a meaning for life. But what we are really seeking is an experience of being alive. There is a wonderful story that gets at this. It comes from the Zen tradition:

There was an early morning gathering at a Zen monastery deep in the mist-shrouded mountains of a far off land. A sage master of Zen was giving a talk to his acolytes. He came out and stood before the group. It was a crisp, cool morning, yet the morning light was soft and enfolding. The acolytes were on the edges of their seats. Instead of speaking, as usual, the sage master simply held up a flower. All the acolytes sat in puzzlement, except one. This acolyte simply smiled. There was a knowing look to his smile. The Zen master called the young acolyte forward and bowed to him saying, Only this young fledgling understands.

This story points the way to a certain understanding. It points to something very significant about life. That there are some places words can’t go. There’s something similar in art. Art is not simply making charming pictures; it is much more than that. Art is asking questions, making statements, and expressing individual’s vantage points. Of course you get what your level of understanding allows. But art at the highest levels doesn’t stop at charming. There are messages there about the deepest aspects of life, about life itself. Art comes out of an elite experience; a noble experience. The serious first-class artist is a carrier of that experience and passes it on through painting. It is not on the surface.

The philosopher Huston Smith, who studied religions on a world scale and wrote Religions of the World, described art as a ‘spiritual technology’. I think this is a good description. He also said, Art makes easy what otherwise might be difficult.

Most people would agree that art is about communication. Yet that is not all it is. Consider a person marooned on an island. Would that person make paintings? Would they decorate things? What would their creative impulses be? Would their creative impulses include making paintings? Fine art is about communication, but it goes further. It is also about embellishing the environment. It might be described as ‘feng shui" for the spirit: changing the environment in order to help raise our spirit to higher levels. If it is about embellishing the environment that is decoration, isn’t it? But fine art painting is always more than simple decoration: it is decoration with meaning, decoration that elevates the soul upward and out of the mundane. Fine art contains more than its simple utilitarian, decorative aspect would lead one to believe.

Of course art is also expression. Most people would agree about this as well. But, with fine art, it’s at least two kinds. It is individual personal expression and an expression of the culture it comes from. It carries the stamp of the artist who made it, and if successful, it can carry the stamp of the culture and times it came from.

Art is also self-investigation – for the artist who does it and sometimes for the viewer who sees it. When artists make paintings they are thinking and feeling who they are deep within and plumbing the depths of what the world is. When people are viewing good fine art – and good to me means achieving the highest level of aesthetic expression – they, like the artist, may be inspired to reflect back on their own lives, consider who they are, and what the world is about.

Art is complex and it is simple. It is rich and it is surfacy. It can be full of wild energy or it can be simple and quiet. Art is a reflection of life, a reflection of the human spirit. In the long run defining it too much limits it. It is better to just let it be and feel it. It is through feeling that art attains what it attains. It can give much, if one is open to its messages.

Picasso said,

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and brain can conceive beyond any canon.

Art shouldn’t be viewed through requirements or dogmas. Its strength is its freedom. ‘Must be’s’ and ‘has to’s’ are best left out of it. Art stands on the shoulders of the masters of the past certainly, but each era has its own accomplishments. The art of a new era should be viewed for what it is. Each new art brings its own techniques and approaches – its own triumphs. Art doesn’t have to look like the art of the past. Each era will have its own look and feel. See what it is about directly, experience it for what it is; in it’s own right, in its own time.

The Life Force

The world is one big life force, flowing, circling – coursing its way here and there. It is a seemingly chaotic, constantly changing, becoming and un-becoming complex of energies. Things are forever forming and separating, coalescing and dividing. Energy is constantly manifesting in new forms and new combinations, becoming things like trees, people, oceans, planets, and solar systems. The creative life force that is doing this is sometimes positive from the human point of view, sometimes negative. It affects us while at the same time it transcends us.

This cosmic, and sometimes not so cosmic, ‘life force’ caters to no one, fulfills no person’s whim. It has its own dictates and doesn’t answer to fantasy, hope, or vain quest. It has no final name or absolute definition, though human beings, since the beginning of time, have tried to find definitions. They have called it Brahman, God, Zeus, Great Spirit, Allah, The One, Godhead, Buddha, the Tao, and more. The names go on and on, just as the life force does.

This life force creates manifestations that are sometimes called beautiful, sometimes called ugly. People speak in these ways. We define our existence in terms of these summary conclusions. And this is one of the areas in which art comes into play. People say art should be beautiful not ugly, yet, on a visual level, stripped of content, what is known as beautiful and what is called ugliness are non-existent. In external reality, objects just are. Reality is ruthless. It doesn’t know what beautiful and ugly are. It doesn’t have these ideas, these concepts. These are human-made views. Things are captured by the eye and named according to the perspective of the beholder.

Yet, it is the vision and vocation of the artist to see and to take from this big life force and to give back. The true artist brings this big life force into focus in some way. Such an artist crystallizes and condenses the life force, trying to make something tangible and lasting, and presents it to the world as his or her statement. The manner of this statement is called by various names, names related to the approach used by the artist: Painting, sculpture, literature, film, dance, music, etc.

The kinds of approaches, which visual artists take, are also further categorized by different names. These names are given when enough individual artists are drawn to similar concepts and techniques. Names such as Baroque, Romanticism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Op, and Minimal are invented to define what artists do. These classifications do serve a purpose, less for the artist, more for the viewing public, critics, and historians. The classifications and categories create a kind of order from what artists do. So what they do can be rationally understood. And rationality is always fundamentally clear, even if the artists didn’t mean what they did in exactly the way rationality suggests.

If enough artists approach their paintings in the same way, it becomes a style, a manner, or a movement. It becomes art history. And artists look at these attempts to clarify and rationalize what they have done with a sort of tolerance. After all, artists don’t always know what they have done, and often don’t care. They tend to come from a place that is essentially non-rational; a place many people don’t understand fully – because it is non-rational. But if viewers are lucky, they get it in another way – whether they know it or not. It reaches them through the more intuitive world of feeling. And seeing that all this is all about the life force can help keep things in perspective. It is, at least, a vantage point that might help us see the wholeness of the thing – and that all artists are in it together. We are all working with the life force.

To me, the field of art is about using the life force and to make or view art with an open mind is important. If we want to plumb the depths of art, one of the first things to grasp is that art is about expression, the expression of a personal spirit – and the expression of the thing we might call the spirit of life. Of course, it is also about concepts and emotions – which, in the long run, are simply parts of a person’s spirit and the spirit of life. Art certainly involves skill and technique but these are at the service of expression. It is important to understand this. Too many people hold the mistaken belief that art is about technique. No, it is about expression. Those who think art is technique will often miss the real meaning and importance of art and will end up in the long run lost and deluded. They can become overly fascinated with physical skill rather than inner thoughts and feelings. All you have to do is look at the history of art to see the truth of this. Art is about expression.

The notion that the most important thing about art is technique probably comes from an attitude that believes realism is the basis of all art. This mistaken idea probably derives from a Euro-centric attitude – an attitude that sees Renaissance art as the foundation for all art. But there has been art created all over the globe, on every continent and in every culture. And none of it has been the kind of strict realism created during the Renaissance. In fact, the strict realism of the Renaissance was the ‘avante-garde’ art of its day. It was a renegade approach – something new. There has been North American art, South American art, African art, Asian art, Mediterranean art, South Seas art; much of it predated the European Renaissance. And none of it was the kind of realism created in Renaissance Europe. Many people in the West simply see the Renaissance as the foundation because it is the foundation for their culture.

The days of strict realism being the foundation of all art has had a good run, but this is no longer the case. We live in a global culture now, and it is time to update our attitudes about art. When we do, we will truly have a world-class attitude, and one that comes closer to the truth. Accept all kinds of art and your experience of art and life will be broader and more enriched. All styles are equally compelling and equally important. There is no style of art that is better than any other. All approaches are good. Artists have complete freedom when it comes to style. All artists have to do is make their art ‘good’.

Kinds of Art

To understand art, it is important to realize that there are the several kinds of art – certain approaches that have been done over time. The approaches essentially show cultural mindsets. They are kinds of art that come from mental attitudes. These approaches are seen mainly in Eastern art, Far Eastern art, and Western art. In African and South American art we see mainly art having to do with ritual: masks, temples, costumes, and the like. Such art could be seen as art done to be part of living life. The kind of art that is its own thing – that is meant to take place within its own sphere, to transcend everyday life, is different. And the arts of the East (India), the Far East (China, Japan, Thailand, etc.), and the West (Europe, Mid-East, North America) are arts that are of this kind.

In India we have an art that is the arrangement of forms indicating a spiritual attitude. There is a fascination with spiritual involvement. It is not about personalness – personal individuality, like Western art. It is about the mysticism, so to speak, or spirituality, seen through idealized divinities – divinities that are not personalized, but generalized to express certain ideals concerning spirituality. The Indian ideas of psychology and spirituality are expressed through images of Gods and Goddesses and through stories about spirituality. Even their extraordinary temples are expressions of the spiritual dimension. They burst into the landscape, seeming to be from another realm – a realm that is mystical. Most East Indian paintings and sculptures depict divinities and sages, like Vishnu, Shiva, Maya, and Buddha. Vishnu, Shiva, and Maya being expressions of mythic figures, while Buddha was a real person who achieved enlightenment. Indian art’s whole involvement is with expression of spiritual ideals.

The art of China and Japan – the East – have this tradition as well. There are paintings and sculptures of the Buddha, but they also have another kind of art. And this other kind, particularly in China, is less an involvement with transcending the world, but with transcending the ego. It is more earthly. It is about spiritual ideals right here in the mundane world. In the world, as they say, of the ‘ten-thousand things’. It uses landscapes and individuals to depict its ideals of ego transcendence and connection nature. It is not so much about the individual but about an ideal people can embody. The art of China seeks to express their philosophy of the ‘Tao’, or Way – the non-anthropomorphic principle that runs everything – the Way of the world; the Way of Nature. This is often expressed through images depicting Yin and Yang, the universal and complimentary dualities of life: light and dark, full and empty, male and female, and such. It is not the battle of light and dark, good and evil that we see so often in the Western tradition, but the complimentary, mutually supporting energies of life. The Chinese see these complimentary energies as the balanced aspects upon which the world rests. Another side of Far Eastern art incorporates naturalness, not just in doing images of nature, but in the way the paintings are executed. The idea of ‘wu-wei’, or the ‘action of no action’, is an important ideal to here. This is how nature works – an expression of nature. Nature doesn’t force, but all gets done. This is the notion of the world happening through spontaneity of its own, which is the spontaneity of nature. So the artist seeks to use ‘wu-wei’ in the making of paintings. It has to do with spontaneity of the brush and consciousness. Nothing programmed, no formulas. Spontaneity in the service of order, in the service of art. And all this honors and expresses their philosophy of life, which concerns the Tao, the large thing – not individuality.

In the West we have another approach. Beginning mainly with some Greek and Roman art, but finding fruition in the Renaissance, there is the introduction of personal individuality. In Greek and Roman art there was clearly art of Gods and Goddesses. There was art that depicted their emperors, who where individuals; divinely graced individuals as they saw it, not just the normal person on the street. As the Renaissance flowered, Western artists began to depict normal people, not ideals or divinities. This was the beginning of the kind of art we find throughout the Western tradition. Western art is not about some spiritual ideal or philosophy generally. It is about people. Characters. Humanity. The depiction of humanity is elevated to the status of art worthy subject matter. When it began this was completely new. Monumentally new. And, as art in the West evolved, an emphasis on personal expression began, not only with the depiction of non-divine everyday individuals, but also with the expression, through style, of the artists themselves. This tradition is quite different than Eastern approaches. The East concerns itself with the mystical through divinities, sages, or the guiding principle of life. The West has come to be about individuality and the mundane world. Occasionally individuality, or the mundane world, is used to speak about larger things, but individuality has come to be the prime focus of Western art.

‘Objectitis’ and Skill

Another thing to understand about art is that it is not always about objects – or realistic atmosphere. The ongoing flow of art history shows us this. I call the approach of ‘wanting objects’ objectitis. This approach can be very powerful, but can also be limiting. The artist who would be taken seriously is more about making paintings than making the objects in the paintings. The emphasis is on the painting itself, not the objects in the painting. Someone else or nature made the object. Our goal as artists, when using objects, is to go for more than just the ‘object’.

To me, the kind of art that is just about objects is all too often simply nostalgia, sentimentality – or a version of showing off, perhaps possessiveness. When it is showing off, it is frequently based on skill, and can often become ‘skill-bound’ – or limited by skill – rather than augmented or set free by skill. The ‘showing off’ quality is like a ‘pas-de deux’ in ballet: the skill without the ballet. Of course in ballet, skill, as in art, is important. It has its place. It is part of the whole. But the skill has to disappear. In painting, skill is not so good when it is saying ‘look at me, look how skillful I am’. It should be in support of expressing something. If it isn’t, it is egotism, and, in my mind, a lesser form of art.

James Joyce, the famous writer, called this ‘object’ focused kind approach ‘pornographic’. And I think he was right. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not against skill. It is just that when skill takes over from meaning and expression, it’s a dead end – and isn’t art at the highest level. The ‘skill’ of an artwork should not overshadow the conceptual or emotional content .

Skill is not a pat set of techniques that are applied, and you have art. The proper ‘kind’ of skill must be found that fits. Skill is pertinent to the style – and the idea the artist is after. One searches for the technique that expresses the idea, and then, uses skill to implement the technique. The technique and skill must be found that best expresses the idea, the vision. And the ‘vision’ is the artists’ idea combined with the style. The synthesis is the ‘vision’.

Many fledgling artists ask if you should have the whole painting in mind before you begin. And, I think it happens many ways. Sometimes you have a clear picture in your mind of the painting; sometimes you find the image after much work; sometimes it is a combination of the two. How it happens is less important than the idea that the paint should look as though it just jumped on the canvas and found its perfect spot. It should look natural and easy. This really what true skill is all about.

Contemporary Art

The twentieth century’s most radical artistic movements tended to overturn one another in rapid succession. The revolution that was twentieth century art, which I call ‘the second renaissance, took various names as it proceeded: Cubism, Futurism Suprematism, Constructivism, German Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Op, Minimalism, Photo-Realism, Neo Expressionism, etc. Contemporary artists seem to always challenge the traditions handed to them from the previous status quos of history. They love to disregard accepted ideas of beauty, dissolve existing distinctions and categories, and refute established reason at every turn.

A large percentage of artists have consistently rebelled against cultural ‘certainty’ and dogma. They love to rail against the historical precedent. Such rebellion happens not just in painting, but in traditions of all types. In spiritual traditions, the Taoists rebelled against the Confucians, the Buddha rebelled against the traditional norms of wisdom in India, Jesus rebelled against the Romans, Romantics rebelled against the age of Reason – the list can go on and on. Rebellion and the questioning of established norms is as old as our two brains. Without skepticism many of the advances in science, medicine, and technology would never have taken place.

Twentieth century artists have often made statements against things: against militarism, against mechanicalism, against commercialism, against just about everything – and also for just about everything. Artistic protests and rebellions have ranged from Goya’s famous firing line painting May 3 1808 protesting injustice to Picasso’s monumental protest painting Guernica to Jimmy Hendrix’s screaming electric guitar version of the U.S. national anthem. Two, female performance artists tied themselves together with a twelve foot rope for an entire year as an artistic expression of protest against the Vietnam war. Expressing how you feel about present issues is part of contemporary art.

Many artists have confronted the rapidly moving twentieth century head-on, attempting to be heard above the bombs of war, the political hypocrisy, the cold war gamesmanship, and the dehumanization by technology and commercialization. They have sought to point out the flaws in what we are and how we act.

Contemporary artists have also sought to find new languages and new styles that can be pertinent to their own lives. They have had to find new approaches and new realities over and over again. They have turned to pure color for