Spring and hot tea.

I painted this when I was 22 years old. It was early spring and the sun was warm though I still recall the tips of my fingers were chilled by the evaporating turpentine as they clasped my #12 filbert. The canvas was 5' by 4' and I completed it in about 4 hours, chasing the light and aching for the reward of a pot of hot tea. I sold it a month later at a group exhibit on Long Island. Great memories. There was still an element of the experimental in every piece, never quite sure of the outcome, always excited by the end result but perpetually frustrated by the nuances I had failed to capture. Every painting was an opportunity to improve, discover that new twist of color or stumble on how subtle pressures could perfect even my hundredth-thousand brushstroke.

Rosie

Rosie has a pleasing methodical approach to her work, which she executes with intensive, unwavering focus. She has all the makings of an artist, she simply has to devote the time and the recognition that there are no boundaries to her imagination. Once realized, her hand and eye will follow and the range of her potential will unravel exponentially.

Maria

This was painted by one of my students, Columbian beauty and ethereal being Maria Samper. Sadly she has just parted these tropical climes for the Pacific Northwest but I am hopeful she will continue to be inspired by her inner machinations, full of vibrant symbolism and a profound sense of her cultural identity. Viaje con seguridad mi alma emparentada!

A crushing blow

My grandfather used to keep thoroughbreds and had a very good anatomical understanding of horses. In 1940 he was commissioned by Walter Farley to illustrate the first Black Stallion novel (published in 1941), which he did entirely from his memory and imagination, wonderful illustrations full of animation and heart that went on to fuel countless young people in their obsession for horses. He showed me his original illustrations which I studied for hours, marveling at the fluidity of his brush and ink and wishing I had half his talent. A few years later I painted this at the Hampton Classic horseshow on Long Island, and finally felt I understood his verve albeit never quite able to match the magic in his brush. What few people knew is that Keith's right hand was crushed and burned by a vacuum moulding machine when he worked as a designer for children's halloween masks at Topstone Industries in Connecticuit during the 50's. He and my grandmother were living in a basement apartment at the time and the night before the accident he dreamed that something was scratching at the open window above, as he reached to close it something hideous grabbed his hand and chewed at it, he awoke screaming! His hand was rebuilt through numerous operations but never really acquired total functionality. He would laugh at how surgeons had crossed his nerves and that he could feel sensations in his thumb if you pinched his pinky. This always confirmed for me that the art spirit is born in the heart and mind, not in our fingers.

Amnesia

To paint water you must be able to see abstractly. Turn off the literal tendencies of your mind. See it as a mosaic of shapes and patterns that cleverly knit together. Even reflected objects are not recognisably mirrored in anything but the calmest water surface because the tiniest disturbance will distort and play with the forms. Water is excellent to paint because it forces us to really look at our subject - all too often when we paint an object we look at it then turn to our canvas and paint our preconceived idea of that object. Case in point - when we look at a very familiar object like an apple we will then turn away and paint the image of "apple" that is imprinted on our mind since childhood. How many of us really see the object as it is. We have to abandon all preconceptions and view our surroundings as though we have never seen them before, as though we have just arrived from outer space or woken from a coma with amnesia. When you begin to paint, look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time then you will capture it's likeness. Live everyday like this and you will be perpetually in awe at the phenomena's that surround you and which you have long taken for granted.

A new path.

When photography became popular for advertisements in the 1950's many illustrators were robbed of the work they had enjoyed for decades. These were tough times for American commercial artists. Keith turned to portraiture, and being naturally adept he made a good living. He was also very charming and witty - in that true Jimmy Stewart oldschool American way - it's rare to meet people of that caliber any more, we've become homogenized and diluted by TV, fast food and cheap goods. But Keith grew up on the dirt highways of the American West, his father was a half-Iroquois itinerant photographer who documented Indians and settler-life but made bread & butter from photographing weddings and events and the newly successful across the plains. The family would take a train to a town and rent a horse and wagon for a fortnight as they shuttled from homestead to homestead fulfilling photographic commissions. He told me one story where his father had forgotten to remove the plate from the camera after photographing a rancher's herd of cattle, then, going on to photograph the rancher's family. The resulting print showed cattle and family all huddled together with livestock peering over the shoulders of the people, however the rancher loved it and ordered a dozen prints. Keith and his brother barely saw the inside of a classroom but watched America go from dirt roads to space travel over the course of his life. He was in awe over this. Later in life as his eyesight began to fail his painting became increasingly impressionistic and finally almost abstract. When I asked how he felt about this he replied "Good, I rely less on the sight of my eyes and more on the vision of my heart".

Reynard

This is an illustration done by my grandfather - Keith Ward - for a children's book entitled Reynard the Fox by Harry J. Owens. Published in 1945 some claim the illustrations were inspiration for Disney's Robin Hood, I'm inclined to agree. He was one of the most versatile artists, a true rennaissance man, and my teacher and Sifu. His versatility and range denied him public fame because he couldn't be pigeon-holed like other illustrators of his era, but he was a very modest man and would not have cared for too much adulation. His love was his art. He told me once that if he lived for a million years he doubted he would ever stop learning. All I learned as an artist I essentially learned from him. Art school was a waste, I can admit that now. What I didn't acquire from his instruction directly I absorbed through osmosis. What I know subsequently came from the application of his wisdom and years of experimentation and hard work. If you want to learn how to paint find the best illustrator out there and beg them to let you sit in the corner as they work, gently cajole them to throw you the odd tidbit as it comes to mind, to vocalize thoughts as they arise...this is how you'll learn. Illustrators are the best technicians, you will learn all you need to know about painting from the tiniest vocalized morsels emanating from amidst the extraordinarily noisy workings of their brilliant minds.

D15.Gunner Girl.

To create a monoprint paint on glass with thick syrupy oils, lay on paper and use a large brayer to release the image. The outcome is always a surprise. For some reason in never resembles what you originally painted, like a negative or the backing off a polaroid.

Play.

When we play we discover. This is why a child's healthy development pivots upon a proper childhood full of playtime. Similarly, this is how a painter discovers their individuality. Most people who decide they want to paint think they have to take classes to learn, this is only partially correct. A few well-taught lessons can teach a lot about technique but nothing about spirit and identity. The art spirit is uncovered through playful abandon, alone, in your corner with your materials, doodling, losing yourself in experimental self indulgence. If we do not play we will never be a painter, it's that simple. How long should we play? The longer the better, at least an hour but best if all day, then reward yourself with a cup o' joe and a cigarette and ponder your day's discoveries. Apply those discoveries the following day. A year of that, or one hundred paintings later, and you're permitted to call yourself a painter.

When I was 21 I up-sticks from a wee town in NE Scotland called Lundie (it had 12 houses) and went to NY to study painting at Pratt. I met with the Dean over dinner (a meeting graciously arranged by a friend of my late father's). She pored through my folio without a word and after a deep sigh said, you don't need art school, you're better than half of our professors, just paint. So I took a job mucking stables at a horse barn in Amagansett NY. The house owners gave me a two-car garage for a studio and left for Spain. Months passed and they failed to return, I felt like Conradin of Saki's Sredni Vashtar. Every afternoon after shoveling dung I would retire there to beat at canvases. Their elderly Irish housekeeper would call me for tea and cakes at 4, then again for dinner at 7. It was seventh heaven. On weekends the housekeeper would hold bridge parties and drag her buddies down to the garage for private viewings, invariably cajoling them into buying sometimes wet unfinished canvases. At first this upset me but as the money started to pay for long-weekend misadventures in Manhattan I found it harder and harder to complain. One day whilst painting a corn field by the side of the road an elderly and very notable artist wandered along and stood behind me, pondering, grunting. I knew who he was but could not imagine what he was thinking throughout his long grumbling consideration. Finally he spoke the greatest compliment any artist could wish for, especially one so young, he said, "I have driven past this view a thousand times and never once did I think to stop and paint it. You make the ordinary extraordinary." My heart soared like a hawk. He walked away. We became friends. Sadly he's dead now but his words ring eternal in my memory's ear.

D12. Trailertrashed.

Airstreams are my favorite dwellings. Nothing epitomizes simplicity of living like these masterpieces of aestheticism. They are hermitages for modern sages, sanctuaries for the contemporary contemplative, palaces for the penurious, spaceships for creative children and the choicest pad around for trailertrash like yours truly.

D11. Rice harvest in aquarelle.

This is my neighbours rice field and the view across the road from my garden. They plant and harvest twice a year. It's such a nice scene to gaze upon, and to listen to the cutters chatting and laughing as they work. But they work surprisingly quickly so you have to paint fast. Aquarelle is good for that, and you can work on your lap so it's a little more discreet. Always paint from life, or from your head. Leave photographs for photographers.

D10. Andy.

Andy, a quiet brooding soul and a new painter finding his groove, smothered a simple composition in deep translucent glazes to create a naive poignancy and depth. A man worth watching. Be careful of he who says little.

D9. Get real.

Students often ask me when painting from nature, "how do I get it to look real?" Truth is, we don't. Never. Even photorealism is inherently surreal in it's effort to exactly replicate the subject matter. I tell them if they want precise take a photo. It's not possible to better or even match something that is already perfect. Nature has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and combines functional flawlessness with beauty exactness to guarantee its individual survival and a relative sex-appeal that perpetuates it's species' longevity. Even if asymmetrical it boasts a faultless irregularity. No artist's hand can do it justice. But what we can do is capture the overall spirit of what we witness via our own personal interpretation. Such was the magic of the impressionists, at first ridiculed by the Salon in Paris but ultimately winning the hearts and minds of the public because they opened viewer's eyes to a new, dynamic way of seeing. People were awed and exclaimed "it looks so real" not because it was an exact copy but because it engaged the viewer by allowing them to fill in the blanks with their imagination, see mixed hues from juxtaposing primary colours, conceive moving figures in the single fluid brushstrokes. Find your personal interpretation deep from within and execute it fearlessly - there you will find your "real".

D8. Living in your painting

This Moroccan man dwells within his canvas. His surroundings are spartan but aesthetically pleasing. He has only the basics but funnily his posture is that of a king, on his thrown, in his castle, within his domain. The air in the Atlas mountains is clean and invigorating. His mind is probably clear. Art surrounds him. As artists we must do the same. If it does not reach every corner of your life then you are not an artist. If you are not obsessed and insomniac and probably viewed by others as insane then you're likely not there. I don't mean you should contrive a facade, I mean dive so deep you are lost to the perceptions of others, perpetually functioning in a creative state, living in your painting. Once we've been there we know there is no other better way to exist.

D7. Last stand in a 22 second line.

How can line be at once so brief yet so provocative. Is the time taken to execute an issue? Does it matter that 22 seconds is all it took? So few understand that every drawing, every painting is the conclusion of a lifetime of study, the momentary summary of decades of obsession and self-criticism. Every work is in fact the artist's last stand, every time. Death itself can occur in a moment yet that does not invalidate the years we lived, rather it frames and extols them.

D6. Eilat

Eilat...estudiante, amiga y confidente. This girl is so intense you could incinerate under her stare. She paints feverishly, rampaging around her canvas like a brush fire...then all of a sudden she's done! Spent. And like a spawned salmon she washes up on the couch with a cup of coffee. What a painter.

D5. Shy

This by one of my students - albeit done before I knew her - the gorgeous, talented Shy Miin. Shy is cerebral, hyper-intelligent, methodical, tenacious and mildly bipolar. To her marrow she is an artist, she simply needs to free the lock and let the monster out.

D4. Breakfast

When a person paints from the gut there is no such thing as style, we're not impressionists or expressionists or cartoonists or illustrators or fauvists or cubists or pubists, we just go! We study technique for years so we can forget it in the creative act. When we are children we learn the alphabet, form words, structure grammatically correct sentences, all of which we forget in adulthood when we are compelled to express a thought. Art is the original pictorial alphabet, colours are words, paint is grammar, composition the anecdote.

D3. Vampire Slayer.

I watched this dragon for an hour, mostly posing his wow against the jade lotus leaves, occasionally crisscrossing the ponds surface to snatch unsuspecting bloodsuckers trying their luck to spawn. I never met one this colour before. He possessed every hue attributable to rubies...I imagined he was pigmented by his prey, who in turn had fed on the blood of the countless. I salute this crimson Neak, he's the gunship of the garden.

Day 2. Gothic view from Skid Row

I've little to say today, I like pictures, a thousand words and all that.

Musings from Hap Hazard's Savant Atelier, Skid Row, Phnom Penh. Launch date 5-28-10.

The human form is the artists sustenance. It is the landscape, the still life, the self portrait, the heart and the soul of what we are. It challenges us like no other subject, aggravates us like no lover we ever had, delights us like no other pleasure. How we paint it mirrors the workings of our psyche.