Hands in Art

Featured here are random hands within different paintings in the permanent collection at the Legion of Honor Museum. Since I live nearby, and have become so familiar with many of the paintings there over the years, I sometimes place my focus on a chosen theme. For example, drapery, sky, water and this time, hands. I enjoy drawing and painting hands and the museum acts as an informal workshop through observation. My favorite are the El Greco hands sixth from the top. I feel moved by the pose and loose painterly rendering. Somehow his hands stand out from the rest for me.

method

One of my palettes, pictured here, is a small glass mixing area that's easy to clean with a scraper and sits upon a set of drawers on wheels. This palette features the intuitive method of paint arranging. Feeling instead of thinking takes over in this particular approach. It's a less is more approach, more or less with less technique and more expression. It looks good on the glass anyway so maybe...

details

Here I've edited out as much as possible from a larger composition. The intent was to distill the essence of a field labor scene without losing the integrity of the whole. This also gave me the opportunity to practice focusing my vision on a smaller scale. The painting is 20" x 24" oil on canvas.

how it begins...

This is not how it begins. Sketching, drawing and painting are the result of my time spent outside the studio experiencing the world. To discover a fragment of life and be moved by it is how it begins. The time spent noticing, seeing, gazing, looking, and observing is pivotal. What is paramount is trusting the feeling and intuitive pull that takes me somewhere and to something and to ultimately follow through with my expression in an effort to discover why.

ritual

Above are random recent images from my daily drawing ritual. I usually sit at one of the handful of cafes between my home and studio although not always. It doesn't matter where I perch or what I scribble just as long as I do it. Expanding my list of locales crosses my mind, and occasionally I do, but mostly I don't. I like a table and chair to sit at since I write too. The cafe across from Lincoln Park on Clement has pulled me in recently. It's funky inside with an old piano sitting unused like a prop and a backyard patio that is quiet. Quiet is something I have been savoring. There are very few places to go where music isn't constantly playing and crowding out the sound of silence. Maybe I'll try the museum today for a sketch and the Picasso exhibit.

Playing with Panorama

I've been using the application Photosynth to shoot panoramas. The pics serve as a visual connection for me to my workspace. Something to look at when I'm not there. What I enjoy most are the unplanned hallucinatory overlaps and blurs that occur. These tend to give my studio a dose of magic realism. And offer a subtle suggestion for my paintings perhaps in a place where anything is possible.

I Need Your Help

Sometimes I'm asked why artists paint what they paint. The answer can be quite varied and complex. I believe the truth is much simpler. We paint what moves us. An experience, observation or epiphany that is compelling and powerful can easily find its way into a piece of choreography, a poem or painting. What moves us might be as mundane as a dancing tree casting shadows against a wall on a windy sunny day, or as riveting as war. Theodore Gericault was moved by the story of a shipwreck and then committed to painting his 1819 masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa. It's a tremendous mural-sized monument to his vision of the event, which has outlived the original story, and is now an event in itself. It hangs in the Louvre in Paris and when I first saw it I was blown away. When I think masterpiece I think of this painting.

It moved me enough to make sketches, drawings and ultimately a series of small paintings based on details I found interesting within his composition. My painting thinks about the figures who are waving cloth and seeking help from a distant ship on the horizon. My 2006 painting above is titled I Need Your Help, and may have started with my Louvre experience, but now it lives on its own. It may possibly give life to any number of new stories depending on the mindset of each viewer and art patron. This is my reason for making this painting.

Donut and Plum.

Two paintings from a continuing series of square compositions that I've been creating over the years at my art studio. Even completely different subjects can play well together.

More Art on Walls.

This awesome painting hangs boldly on the wall at the top of the entry-way stairs. It's one from an ongoing series of sea urchins by local artist Charlie Callahan. The artwork becomes a vibrant abstraction of color up close and tightens up to become a vivid icon from the sea as you view it from a distance. It's such a cool painting as are all his urchin mandalas. A mural of the same subject can be seen on the exterior of the Outerlands restaurant in the Sunset District. Very cool stuff!

What art is hanging on your walls at home?

This is a question I sometimes like to ask people when we get to talking about art. The answers give me a little bit of insight into what people are into. There's always a story. So here's one of my answers to my own question. This colorful art piece hangs on one wall in my living room. It's a serigraph from the 1950s and I'm only semi-embarrassed not to know the name of the creator. I tried to authenticate it in the past but had no success. This kooky composition never fails to please me. It's easily my favorite image on my home walls but not the only one. Maybe it's nostalgia that grips me since it made it's way from Sioux City to San Francisco and was forever on the same wall in the house where I was raised. That's one. I'll post others later.

The Blank Page.

The above painting was commissioned by a writer. He had seen a painting of a baseball I had created for a friend of his last year. The painting above that painting is the baseball painting. The machine is a 1933 Burroughs Electric Carriage I borrowed from the writer's extensive typewriter collection. I chose this one to paint because of its blocky shape. Now, as I see them together, I think about the natural combination of these two vintage icons. How well they go together and not just because of the delightful geometric juxtaposition. One plays and the other tells the story. In 1933 the great sportswriter Ring Lardner died. He wrote his last baseball story that year titled Lose With a Smile. It's the story of a Brooklyn Dodgers rookie who writes letters to his girl. Did Ring type it on a Burroughs? I don't know but it's likely that some sportswriter wrote about Babe Ruth or Carl Hubbell on one of these things. It's this kind of wondering that creates a sense of longing in me for those good old days that I never even experienced. But I've imagined them. And like the blank page in the typewriter, the imagination is full of possibilities.

Belizian Bananas

I scrawled a dozen sketches of this bunch of bananas hanging from a pole in a bar on Maya Beach in Belize. They are the snack food of choice and I had to scribble this image before each banana was grabbed to be eaten or plunged into a rum drink. This painting is the result and reminds me that great things come from hanging out in bars.

Perhaps, that forbidden treat that Eve plucked may not have been an apple after all...

Tropical

Theses three paintings are from a series inspired by visits to Belize and Honduras. Each is an oil painting on linen stretched over birch panels. They are 48" x 60" of robust fruit from Central America and currently available. More variations on this theme are on the way.

Sketch Exhibit Encore: Saturday March 19th.

I've decided to encore my First Annual Sketch Exhibit. It's this Saturday March 19th from 11am to 5pm. Can there be too much of a good thing? Not when people get together to talk about art and share in the positive and uplifting discourse that creativity inspires. That's how it was last Saturday: a tremendous gathering of the big hearted and open-minded. So, why not leave the artwork up for one more week?

Come one, come all...

Jay Mercado Studio -- Saturday, March 19, 11a - 5p -- 4754 California Street @ 10th Ave.

Sketches!

Some Not-So Recent Sketches

I think a sketch doesn't have to beautiful. It just has to be drawn. The process is the beautiful part. It's grounding and centering and observing. How many things in life truly rivet our attention? Sketching keeps me in that moment. And those moments become fresh again when I look through old sketchbooks.

Some Recent Sketches

In my bag I carry a sketchbook, 4 X 5 cards and loose leaf arches and rives printmaker's paper. I keep watercolors available but have not used them as much as I used to. I mostly use a Uniball micro pen or Sakura Microns for my drawing. Recently I rediscovered an old Senator fountain pen which has a nice feel. The feel is what it's all about. Whatever feels good in my hand will give me the best opportunity to express myself fully in the moment.