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May Birds

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Dear Reader,

Birds have always been one of my favorite subjects. There’s a tremendous variety if you want to copy them, and infinite inspiration when abstracting or making up your own versions. Every aspect of the study of color is available in their world. There are seven contrasts of color in the Bauhaus system: contrast of hue (the colors), light-dark contrast (value), cold-warm contrast, complementary contrast (opposites), contrast of saturation (purity), contrast of extension (proportion), and simultaneous contrast (afterimage).

I find the simultaneous contrast the most challenging and interesting of all seven contrasts. If you take a large shape of any color and overlay a small dot or square of a complement, and if you stare at it intensely, you will begin to see a halo of color around the small amount. The eye searches to see the step between, or transition, from one hue to another. As an example, the after image of green on red is yellow. If two similar amounts are laid side by side, a glow will appear where they meet. This effect in color is between two precise complements (opposites). Many birds glow with this effect.

Next time you’re in traffic, stare at the red light and when you look away, you will see an afterimage, and a traffic cop wondering what in hell you’re doing and why you aren’t moving. He might ask if you also see bats and bees whirling around in your head, and ask you to please put your hands behind your back and spread your legs. “Do you have any guns, knives, or hand grenades in your pockets, sir?” I know about this stuff because I went to the academy, became a full-fledged LA county deputy sheriff, and worked patrol and other assignments as a reserve deputy for a dollar a year, for 25 years. Perhaps I arrested you in West Hollywood?

Toucans

The Toucans are an example of almost every contrast possible. The colors are pure, dark and light, warm and cool; they are used in varying proportions.

The bodies are large amounts of pure color; the upper, lower, and interior of the beaks are complements of the body colors. The shapes around the eyes, small as they are, make up a color wheel. Everything, except afterimage.

May-birds

Soft breeze, leaves tremble
Like a million hands waving
Anxious birds flutter.

These birds are my fantasy versions of songbirds in an art-nouveau tree limb setting. The colors of the top bird are soft variations of tinted blue green. The bird on the right is a contrast of pure deep blue, red, and red brown. The bottom bird is painted in dark neutrals of greens and reds made by mixing in the complements or adjacent (near) complements. All of them have white breasts that relate to the soft, textured beige of the background. The varying colors of the limbs harmonize with the colors of the birds.

Round and round pell mell
A cat on a carousel
Free rides for songbirds.

That is an after-the-fact analysis of the piece. I did this intuitively and depended on serendipity for my effects. I don’t consciously think about this stuff as I work. I put things in and take things out until it seems to have some element of finish to it. In other words, I abandon it at some point.

Rising Swan

This “Rising Swan” is an early piece that has been owned by an old friend in Las Vegas for nearly 30 years. It was done as a cover for a book on paper sculpture. The swan and grasses are cut from 2-ply Strathmore and mounted on heavy watercolor paper. The texture is roughly sponged-on watercolor paint, making the grasses and the water cool, the swan neutral grey, and the background warm.

The thunder at dawn
Rising swan wakes up the world.
Air, water, and flight. 

When, in the late 80s, I decided to make fine art, this friend was, in large part, responsible for the direction I finally took. After completing three large, very decorative, white-on-white sculptures, I took them to him and asked for a critique. Although not an artist himself, he was attuned to quality work after years as an advertising agency executive, and I trusted his opinion.

He looked at them for a long time. While acknowledging that all three were beautiful examples of the art, he asked, “Where are you in this?” I looked at them for a long time and answered, “I’m not in this. They’re just pretty pieces of decorative crap that have no meaning; it’s just me showing off.” I know how to do pretty, and they were pretty damn shallow. I didn’t want to have them around, so I gave them to him as a gift of nice pieces of decorative art.

I thought about this for about six months, and settled on my childhood in the Black Hills as the only images for which I had strong emotions. I don’t remember if I gave him the swan or if he bought it, but I’m glad it’s his.

So many years have gone by. I’m not sure that I could do the purely decorative stuff as well now.

Design is still there
Brilliant flashes as before.
But my hand is gone.

Thanks for visiting me…

leo

None of the art shown is available.
There is one piece, Birds Over Autumn (not shown), which is now available as a signed giclee at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery. Edition size of 100. $250.

I am in the Weaverville Art Safari open studios tour May 12-13.
Go to the website for information. www.weavervilleartsafari.com

Spinning Fish

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Dear Reader,

As an illustrator, I did many fish, and fishing-related assignments. I have a series of horned and antlered fish underway, hopefully enough for a thin slice of baloney we know as the humorous fishing gift book. I searched through my color wheel images and nothing seemed to fit this category, so I cut this new one. It isn’t a traditional wheel, but it seemed like a cool idea to me.

Spinning Fish

This “spinning fish” image (took awhile to cut the damn thing) gave me the opportunity to paint the full spectrum with one fish in warm hues and the other in cool. The colors start at the top fish with yellow and go through yellow orange, orange, red orange, red, and red violet. That last color transitions into the tail of the second fish, which starts as violet, then goes to blue violet, blue, blue green, green, and yellow green. That last color transitions into the yellow of the first fish. Skeletal and scale structure simplify the image.

In the late 80’s I began making paper sculpture fishing flies. I showed the first one at the Peppertree Art Show in the Santa Ynez Valley in California. It was 30 x 40” with three flies, each about 30” long. Big, big, really big flies.

The show was Western Americana. One old guy didn’t think that the flies were Western art and kept coming by, scowling and muttering. It wasn’t a cowboy with a horse and dog near a campfire, so it just wasn’t art.

He came up and snarled, “What kind of fish do you catch with those?” I didn’t miss a beat and replied, “Suckers!” I just couldn’t help myself. He loved the humor, but he still didn’t like the art.

Several years ago, the Museum of Idaho asked if I could make 30 flies, in 60 days, for an outdoor sports exhibition. No. Not just no, but absolutely NO! Then make as many as you can, they said, and in 60 days I made 20 flies and wrote 20 traditional, 17-syllable haiku poems to go with them. I’ve been writing haiku for about 45 years. Here are two of the flies with the poems:

Lost Sinner

Riffles and ripples
Clear creek cradles dancing leaf.
Good fishing, no bites. 

The Big Liar

Trout awake hung
And hear the glacier move.
Unlucky May fly.

These flies weren’t made for this blog, so the color analysis is after the fact.The top fly is made up of hot reds, pinks, yellow and rust, with a small amount of blues as subordinate accents. Those accents harmonize with the background’s variation of blues and greens, from dark to medium value and from intense (bright) to neutral shades.

Triple Flies

Snow months I tie flies
I dream about them at night.
Three left on my hat.

On a mottled neutral green background, I staged three similar flies with blue as the dominant hue and hot reds and white, in subordinate proportions, as the accents. This piece is 20 x 40.” My flies are abstract art with a hook on it. Everything is cut from white paper, even the hooks, and painted and assembled.

Oddly enough, my best customers for the flies are women, who buy them for their
fly-fishing husbands or boyfriends. That way they don’t get something the guys already have, or buy the wrong thing. When you gift fly-fishing gear, too often you hear, “What in hell did you buy that thing for?” Play it safe, select one of my flies. They’re probably cheaper than anything in fly-fishing stores.

In 1937, we were in the depths of the Great Depression. I was going to be five in two weeks. The family was spending Christmas with my grandparents and my Uncle Bud and Aunt Alberta, in Keystone, near Mount Rushmore. Money was scarce and so were the gifts. Uncle Bud was a fly-fisher, and there was a trout stream running through their back yard. Aunt Alberta traded house cleaning for six hand-tied flies from a neighbor down the crick.

She laid them on a cotton pad in a small box, which she gift-wrapped, and lovingly gave to Uncle Bud. He was delighted to say the least, and he showed them to me and said that they were for fish. Later in the day, he was looking for the flies and asked me if I had seen them. I said that I had given them to the fish. He asked what I meant. I told him that I had gone out on the foot-bridge, and tossed them into the crick, one at a time. I was his only nephew so he didn’t kill me. But I kept out of Alberta’s way for a while.

Thanks for visiting me…

leo

“Spinning Fish,” a color wheel, is available at $1,000.  20 x 20”
“Triple Flies” is available at $3,000. 20 x 40” (plexiglas shadow box)
Other flies are available.  Thanks for your interest.

I am in the Weaverville Art Safari open studios tour on May 12 & 13.
See the website at http://weavervilleartsafari.com/ for information.