The Inner Muse: Embracing the Spirit of Process Driven Painting, an Essay by Sam Whitaker

Sam Whitaker, The Painter - oil on canvas

(NOTE: Artist talk on Saturday, September 19, 3:00-5:00PM with Sam Whitaker, Stella Zee, Andy Paczos and John Santoro. Free event open to the public.)

 

I started to paint when I was 16 years old. First, I was fascinated by Early Renaissance oil paintings, and how these paintings joined together the artist and the viewer through the sensuality, texture, and luminescence that come out of oil painting itself. For instance, through a process of applied colors and strokes, Rembrandt’s diffuse light and texture create mood from the paint itself; Monet’s haystacks hover in transparent depths of light as he dragged paint over his painting surfaces; Clyfford Still’s paintings pulse under his impasto shards of forms; while Rothko’s thin layers of glazes create his modulating surfaces.

Through the study of great art, I learned that oil painting is a Process-Driven Art. Through the process itself a vital aspect of the work emerges, as the work grow organically. 2. It is infinitely changeable as it only becomes richer. 3. We experience the passage of time it took to make the work. (it lives).

To illustrate these concepts, I chose three other contemporary painters who use the traditional medium of oil to show their work with mine: Andy Paczos, John Santoro, and Stella Zee. I came across Andy’s paintings in a one-person show at the Hyde Park Art Center, John’s work at the Thomas McCormick Gallery and Stella’s large-scale work in a curated show by Richard Loving in the Morton Wing at the Art Institute. In each artist I could sense their own painting process and underlying narrative. In effect the art and artist are one.

The Muse serves as collaborator, assisting each artist to infuse the work with what the heart beholds and to sense the changes inside of us when we are creating.

Andy Paczos executes a meticulous rendering of his subjects: cityscapes, interiors and exteriors, those quiet neglected urban spaces that frame our lives at every turn, imbuing them with a stunning grandeur. If you look closely at his work, you’ll see painterly swirls of brushstrokes invigorating each passage, teeming with life in the painting surface itself. His engagement transforms Nature through his unremitting attention, inviting us to integrate and reconsider the neglected scenes in our own lives.

In seeming contrast to Andy’s work, John Santoro’s paintings orchestrate a painterly approach with a fierce underlying precision. We sense a wholly new vision of harmony and balance. Santoro’s paintings pulse, as if harnessing the ocean, sky and earth into waves of paint, casting a turbulent film in front of us yet settling into quietude.

The paintings of both artists have an undeniable presence as does Stella Zee’s work. In Zee’s paintings we are faced, almost thrust into light-infused environments that pulse, dim, fade and illuminate. Amidst these infinitudes a single bird or animals emerge. We find ourselves, unexpectedly, inside her paintings, reconsidering our own place in Nature.

As for myself, I’ve attempted to merge the texture and color of oil painting into illusionistic light-filled space. Having painted landscapes of the lake and the ocean and exploring the luminosity of light and shadows, the three dimensionality of texture, I stopped mixing paint on my palette and mixed it directly on the canvas.

Each artist made these works by opening and closing a nearly infinite number of doors, inviting us to see something living and in a new way. Here, the Muse may lead us inside our own creative vistas, experiencing the beauty and possibilities that awaits us.

Sam Whitaker

BFA — Rhode Island School of Design

MFA — The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

What is process-driven art?

Every act of a creative pursuit is process-driven. Some creative pursuits show us how the art is made and others conceal the process. One approach is not better than the other. Process-driven art is an exhilarating insight into how we see ourselves, and how it changed our identities as artists and people. As 17th century humanism blossomed, the role of the individual and the artist began to show us that the artists could utilize their emotional natures as important as the art itself. The artist could function as both psychology and art. The arc of a new artistic awareness emerged. In Rembrandt’s or Sargent’s paintings, we care as much about their paintings as we do, even today, the artists themselves. Once the process-driven art was only the painting. Now, the artist behind the making of the painting entirely transformed the art by her or his distinct way of painting and how the artist’s vision elevates both parts of the Process. Each artist here arise out of process-driven painting, a combination of the on-going exploration of Humanism and the dynamism of oil painting that comes out of unexpected discoveries as the artist paints. -- Sam