Loop

New painting:

Loop

2020, oil on linen, 13" x 13"

Courtesy of Adelson Galleries

This painting is closely related to another, Subway Loops.

Subway Loops,

2009, oil on linen, 40" x 50"

Collection of the Wen Long Foundation, Taiwan

When I first started painting Subway Loops in 2008, the composition was smaller, 30" x 32", with two rows of seated figures and three figures holding the loops.

After finishing the heads of two figures, I decided to rework the composition, increasing the size to 40" x 50", and adding another row of seats and one more figure holding a fourth loop. A new canvas was stretched and the first version was abandoned.

However, I liked the two faces I'd painted on that first version, and cut them out of the canvas, saving the two pieces and restretching them. One - Woman Wearing a Red Hat - was finished in 2014. This second unfinished canvas, Loop, remained hanging on a wall in my studio until a few weeks ago when it finally returned to the easel and the red dress, the loop, and the background were painted. 

Subway Loops, drawing #9

2008,  pencil on paper with pastel tone on reverse, 30" x 32"

Courtesy of Adelson Galleries

Above: the final drawing for the first version of the composition. 

Below: the expanded composition for Subway Loops. 

Subway Loops, drawing #11

2009, pencil on paper with pastel tone on reverse, 40" x 50"

Collection of the Wen Long Foundation, Taiwan

Here's the other figure that was saved and finished a few years ago: 

Woman Wearing a Red Hat

2014, oil on linen, 16" x 10"

Courtesy of Adelson Galleries

______________________________

May - June 2020

An Online Exhibition
About the Artist: Andrew Stevovich

Adelson Galleries
New York      Palm Beach

click to view the online exhibition

The Fuller Building
595 Madison Avenue, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 439-6800

318 Worth Avenue
Palm Beach, FL 33480
(561) 720-2079

www.adelsongalleries.com

______________________________

Man Wearing a Grey Hat

I've neglected this blog since my exhibition opened in New York ... which has just two more weeks to run - until April 25th. The opening was very well attended, a lot of great positive energy, and the Adelsons have presented the work beautifully, as they always do. A very memorable evening.

Below is a photo of the last painting that was finished in time to be in the exhibition: 

Man Wearing a Grey Hat

4 3/4" x 4 1/4"     oil on linen      2014

Private Collection, Missouri

I tried to keep the color harmony limited, with a range of grey tones that surround the pale warmth of the skin tones. This composition has been on my mind for quite awhile - ever since it first appeared ten years ago in the painting below - on the back wall in a small poster. 

Movie Lobby

15" x 15"     oil on linen     2005

Private Collection, London

Woman with a Grey Cat

I'll be opening an exhibition at the Adelson Galleries Boston this Friday, February 6th. The reception will be 6 to 8 pm - all are welcome - and the exhibition will run until March 15th.  After, it will travel to the Adelson Galleries in New York, opening there on March 24th and running until April 25th.

Here's a link to the e-catalog:  AVS Exhibition

At the end of December, I finished another in my series of cat paintings:

Woman with a Grey Cat

11 1/2" x 9 1/2"     oil on linen     2014     

Private Collection, California

This composition sets the energy of bright red and green complementary colors against the balancing dark notes of the sky, skirt, and cat, while the underlying structure plays the diagonal of the figure against the counterpoint of the second smaller diagonal of the skirt and cat. All looks simple enough, but it was an interesting image to paint.

The idea came from a quick sketch done in November:

Woman with a Grey Cat, initial sketch 

ca. 5" x 4 1/2" pen on paper 2014

Woman with a Grey Cat, drawing #2

6 1/2" x 5 1/2" pencil on graph paper 2014

Dragonfly

After finishing a very large painting like Movie, I usually follow with a small painting.

Dragonfly

6 1/2" x 3 1/4"     oil on linen     2014

Private Collection, Florida

This painting of an encounter with a dragonfly is based on real experience; there's a small brook by my studio and in the summer the yard is graced with these beautiful insects, darting and hovering. 

Compositions that appear simple on the surface, with only a few elements, are often more challenging to paint than one would think, and this one proved very interesting - balancing the weight of the woman's figure with the lightness of the dragonfly. The color arrangement is a harmony of complementary hues: the warm notes of the woman's face, hair, and hand set against the cool blues and greens of the sky, water, and her dress. That hopefully creates luminosity while another relationship - the triangle of her eyes, lips, and the dragonfly - creates energy.  

Movie

The large painting is finished and I've decided on a new title: Movie.

Movie

45" x 75"     oil on linen     2014

Miami Project

The big 'movie' painting is close to completion and hopefully it will be finished by this time next week. All the figures are done and during the last three weeks I've been painting the stripes on the walls. Once the walls are done, I'll go into the final phase: adjusting some colors, glazing, pulling everything together.

lower left quadrant, stripes behind figures in progress
area ca. 26" x 36"

I've also decided that Only You is not a good title for this painting. During a recent conversation with a visitor to the studio, I realized that the title readily conjured up the famous song by the Platters. A lovely song, but that was not my intention. Usually I like my titles to be minimal, basically just tags for identification, and in this case, I didn't want viewers thinking that the narrative had some connection to the song. 

Only You is now titled Movie Theater.

Only You (in progress)

I finished the faces of the couple on the "movie screen":

size of detail: approx. 38" x 33"

I've always felt that to move forward, to break new ground, it's often necessary to take on challenges that give me a lot of trepidation, and this is especially true with the bigger paintings. In this composition, the couple on the screen was one of those challenges. While the composition worked well in the drawing, drawings are forgiving and I was worried whether it would still work when actually painted. I've juxtaposed large and small faces before, but never at such an extreme size difference. It's a big relief to have them done and to finally be able to get a full sense of the scale and how the composition is coming together.

Only You, in progress, 45" x 75"

Only You (in progress)

I'm now six weeks into this painting and here's the progress so far:

Only You, in progress, 45" x 75"

Painters looking at this photo will realize that I paint backwards. I always do the faces first, and then work out the colors of the clothing and environment. A more traditional and time-honored method is to work from back to front, from thinly painted translucent shadows to thicker opaque high-lights - as in a classic Rembrandt.

Self-Portrait with Beret
Rembrandt van Rijn
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Another traditional approach is under-painting - blocking in some colors at the beginning to help establish the tone and direction of the piece. In my work, however, I prefer to leave the linen surface as white as possible because I believe it gives the overlaying layer of color more luminosity and clarity. If I apply the paint layer to an under-painted surface, I find the color is duller, flatter, because what's underneath influences what's on top - much in the same way that when repainting a room, it will take more coats to successfully hide a darker tone.

The next step for me will be to paint the two large heads on the "movie screen" that fills the right third of the painting. After that, I will begin on the walls which will be varying tones of red.

Below are three photos of details:

detail of upper left, approx. 26" x 35"

detail of lower left-center, approx. 28" x 50"

popcorn, approx. 14" x 11"

Only You

Twelve days ago, I began work on a large oil painting of people watching a movie in a theater. It will be titled for an imaginary film of my invention: Only You.

Below is a photo of the next-to-final drawing. The composition has been pretty well worked out and the final drawing is the same, but enlarged to 45" x 75" for transferring the image to canvas. Since it will take me several months to complete this picture, I will be posting 'in progress' photos to this blog.

Only You, next to final drawing

24" x 40"     pencil on paper     2014

I'm very glad to finally have this composition on the easel; have wanted to paint the subject for a long time. 

Over the years, I've made numerous paintings on the movie theme, but they've always been set around ticket booths or theater lobbies or concession stands - never within the theater itself with a film being shown. I've done numerous sketches, but two problems always held me back: first, if the view of the screen is frontal, then the audience would be seen from behind, or barely in profile, and second, movie audiences are shadowy figures seated in darkness. These two problems seemed an unsolvable conundrum because I wanted to show the faces of the audience and I didn't want to fill 80% of a large canvas with dark and gloomy tones.

An early Renaissance artist that I greatly admire, Duccio di Buoninsegna, came to my rescue. One evening a few months ago, I was looking at a book about his work, and not thinking about the movie painting at all. The book was filled with photos of the Maestà, his major altarpiece, and the beautiful panels from the back - all now separated from the altarpiece and scattered in museums. While I was looking at several panels where Christ and Pilate are together with a group of onlookers to one side, I realized that I should just go ahead and paint my composition as I wanted, with luminous light and color - that I didn't need to have the faces of the audience lined up in correct perspective and in dark shadows to make the picture work. The conundrum was solved, at least for me.

Christ Accused by the Pharisees
Duccio di Buoninsegna
Siena, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

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Sleeping Cat

Sleeping Cat

6 1/2" x 4"    oil on linen    2014
Private Collection, California

I've wanted to paint this image for some time, making several drawings on the subject since June. The composition is a simple complementary harmony of the figure's warm golds and reds juxtaposed with the cool blue and green outside the window, and all built upon the darker notes of her skirt and the cat.

Below are photos of three of the drawings, in reverse chronology.

Sleeping Cat, drawing #5

6 1/2" x 4"     pencil on graph paper w/pastel tone on back     2014

Sleeping Cat, drawing #4

6 1/2" x 4"     pencil on graph paper      2014

Sleeping Cat, drawing #3

6 3/4" x 5 1/4"      pencil on paper     2014

Private Collection,  Massachusetts

Heidi's Birdhouse

Heidi's Birdhouse

18" x 15"     oil on linen      2014

The narrative of this painting is based on a birdhouse that hangs in the garden - a gift from a dear friend named Heidi - and the composition came about because of a watercolor I made last April. Watercolor is an infrequent medium for me; have probably finished less than twenty over the years, and they are usually done for a special occasion and a specific person.

Heidi's Birdhouse

7 1/2" x 5 1/2"     watercolor on paper     2014

Private collection, New York

Here are the five drawings that were made in the course of developing this composition, from the initial sketch to the final version:

Heidi's Birdhouse, drawing #1
7" x 5"     pencil on paper     2014

Heidi's Birdhouse, drawing #2

7 1/2" x 5 1/2"     pencil on paper w/ pastel tone on reverse     2014

Private collection, New York

Heidi's Birdhouse, drawing #3

8" x 8"     pencil on graph paper     2014

Heidi's Birdhouse, drawing #4

18" x 15" pencil on paper     2014

Heidi's Birdhouse, drawing #5

18" x 15"     pencil on paper with pastel tone on reverse     2014

Lola Too

New painting:

Lola Too

7" x 7 1/2"     oil on linen     2014

I like the abstract possibilities and the narrative of this composition, and have used it twice before in recent paintings: first as the central panel of a triptych and then again in Popcorn, a large painting on the theme of a movie lobby. 

Lola
triptych, 20” x 11”, 20” x 18”, 20” x 11”     oil on linen     2005     

Popcorn

40" x 50"     oil on linen     2008

Private Collection, Florida

This couple will also play a significant part in my next large painting; a composition involving people watching a movie - a companion to Popcorn. I'm presently still in the drawing and composing stage, but hope to have it on the easel soon. Below is a work study, done two days ago; I'm getting close to resolving the composition, but am not quite there yet.

work study

18" x 29 1/4"     pencil on paper     2014
Private collection, New York

Woman Wearing a Red Hat

New painting:

Woman Wearing a Red Hat

16" x 10"     oil on linen     2014

Subway Riders

Subway Riders

30" x 40"     2014     oil on linen

Subway Riders is finished, framed, and now at the Adelson Galleries in New York. This painting - and Mr. Epps - will be in the inaugural exhibition celebrating the gallery's new location at the Crown Building, 730 Fifth Avenue. The opening reception is next Tuesday, May 20th, 5:30 to 8. 

As I worked on this painting, it quickly became an exploration in complementary colors, starting with the bright green and red of the woman's jacket and blouse. Those colors are counterpointed by the complementary yellows and blues of the men's jackets on either side of her; this is then set against the complements of the muted blues and yellows that echo in the background. Meanwhile the dark notes hopefully work to keep the eye moving.

Subway Riders, in progress

I've been working on a 30" x 40" painting of a subway scene: two riders and a driver, with a third passenger visible as a reflection in a window.

The final drawing of the composition:

Subway Riders, drawing #5

30" x 40"    19 -21 January 2014      pencil on paper w/ pastel tone on reverse
Private Collection, Massachusetts

I use the final drawings to transfer the image to the canvas, so putting pastel on the back is purely utilitarian.  I lay the drawing over the canvas, trace the lines, and the pastel acts like carbon paper. When finished and the drawing is removed, I'll lightly pencil over the pastel lines left behind. This allows me to keep the amount of pencil work on the actual canvas to a minimum.

Here is how the painting looked two weeks ago:

Subway Riders, in progress on 26 March 2014 

And a week ago:

Subway Riders, in progress on 3 April 2014

I try to keep unfinished areas clean and white, and never underpaint or block in colors beforehand. I want my colors to be as luminous as possible - as if the light source was from within and behind the image - and I think working this way contributes to that end.

The desire to leave unpainted areas of the canvas as white as possible is also one of the reasons I don't like to draw directly on the canvas beyond what is minimally necessary.

Mr. Epps

I've finished a painting of a woman with a black cat. The colors are an analogous harmony of blues that are enlivened by the warm notes of the woman's face, her hands, and the cat treats on the napkin.

Mr. Epps

16" x 12"     2014     oil on linen

This composition worked out surprisingly quick with only two drawings: the initial quick sketch and then the final.

Mr. Epps, initial sketch

3" x 3"     ink on paper     28  September 2013

Mr. Epps, final drawing

16" x 12"      2 January 2014      pencil on paper

The red, green, and yellow lines visible in the above drawing delineate various sections that I find useful and always put into at least one of the drawings for a particular composition. The red divides the picture into halves with their related diagonals, the green into thirds, and the yellow marks out the "golden sections" and their diagonals. While I don't adhere religiously to any mathematical system, I find the last one especially interesting.

The "golden section" is based on a ratio that was first described ca. 300 BC by Euclid. It has been found in nature and has been used by many artists and architects in a search for harmony and balance. The same ratio exists between successive Fibonacci numbers. Now commonly called PHI (φ), the ratio is 1.618. In the drawing above, the horizontal yellow line just below the woman's lips is placed at .618th of the height and it gave me two diagonals. When I was looking to place the woman's arm, it seemed to work best when its angle followed one of the diagonals. I'm amused by how often lines and placements in a composition feel right when there is a relationship to φ.

Once I began work on this painting, there were only a few changes to the image. The woman's hair was shortened. The cat changed from the grey tabby that I usually paint, to a black cat I knew a very long time ago, named Mr. Epps.  All in all, it's not very often that I go from start to finish with so few drawings and changes along the way. Got lucky this time.

Below are two older cat paintings with the grey tabby, Mookie.

Woman with Grey Cat

6 1/2" x 5"     2013     oil on linen

Private Collection, Massachusetts

Woman with Cat

9" x 7"     2001     oil on linen

Private Collection