Away From Home

In July 2011 I was a part of an artists’ residency program, Arthouse Garana, in Garana-Wolfsberg, Romania. Wolfsberg is the old German name. Garana is a tiny village up in the mountains in the Western part of the country. Here is a map:

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We were asked to let ourselves be inspired by the landscape while working at the residency. The landscape was green green green. Here’s a picture of the village from a hilltop a short hike away from the studio:

The village of Garana

Something about all that green was very intimidating. A bit of it made its way into this painting, but mostly the blues and the yellows won out. I think this is ok. While it is true that Garana is surrounded by beautiful landscape, to define the place by its landscape alone would be folly. Now I don’t try to say I think a lot about allegory while I paint, I mostly just shove paint around until it looks right, but when I look at this painting I do see a troubled landscape. Garana has what I would call a troubled history, including genetic defects in the population due to an insufficiently large gene pool in a geographically isolated location, political and economic suppression under the rule of the communist party, a mass exodus leaving most of the buildings vacant and unused, and too this day the village suffers regular power and water outages. But things are changing. A creative economy is starting to take root, thanks in part to the work of Elisabeth Ochsenfeld, the woman who runs the residency, a Romanian ex-patriot living in Germany. There is also a nice, three day Jazz Festival near the village (though the international definition of “jazz” is I think a bit different than what I was expecting, hardly any horns involved, I think I’d call it a Jam festival like I think the band Phish would have fit right in if they were less well known) which draws people from around the world and brings a good deal of tourists into the village.

So I would say the village is starting to find its new identity. It’s no Provincetown; there are no gift shops, in fact there is just one shop and if you put your arms out you can touch both the shelves. There are a couple places to eat. There are no sidewalks. You tend to see almost as many cows and dogs running loose on the streets as people. It’s got real charm. And a sense of isolation. And the wine flowed freely.

I was not sure what to expect in terms of materials available at the residency studio. Turned out to be a large number of small canvases. These two are 50cm x 50cm, or about 20″x20″. I like to work larger than that, so I tended to work on diptychs and triptychs, though I’ve got a number of smaller pieces in the queue as well. I couldn’t figure out a good way to put these on an easel so I worked on the floor or on a table. This completely changes the way wet paint moves. You won’t see a lot of drips in these paintings. In later paintings you’ll notice more marbling like effects as I learned how to manipulate pools of wet and watery paint. My last painting I made at the residency took about 30 hours to dry to the point where we could hang it – the night before our group show.

I’m going to try to put these up at a rate of one or two per week. I realize the site has been a bit dry as of late. It’s not because I haven’t been working. It’s because I’ve been working so much that I haven’t been able to find the time to do all the things to get the paintings up. But I do want to show them all to you. There is some good stuff on its way!

This painting is on two 20″ x 20″ (50cm x 50cm) canvases. The black borders are photoshopped in and are not part of the actual painting. If you are the lucky devil who ends up buying this piece and you choose to not have it framed you will receive two ready to hang canvases. If you opt to have it framed it will end up looking more or less like what is pictured above, with the two canvases in a single frame which puts about a half inch (about 1.5cm) of black wood around and between the canvases, and the whole thing will hang as a single piece.