Charles Ritchie, two uncatalogued paintings, (left) Paper Whites, 1990-1992, 5 x 3 7/8″, (right) Roses, 1992, 5 3/8 x 3 7/8″, oil on gessoed mat board.

Painting Again

Previous experience can inform the new unexpectedly. While working at Center Street Studio print workshop, I was exploring a new medium, whiteground (see entry for 23 July 2008). At first I felt very comfortable using the material; it reminded me of working up paint with a brush and water as I do with watercolor. My collaborator, Jim Stroud had also eased me into the project by providing the whiteground in a small, porcelain dish like the ones I use with watercolor in my studio.

However, the as I painted on the copper plate with the whiteground its unique handling properties emerged. Every brush stroke seemed to be amplified. Streaks and marks left by the brush were extremely hard to soften and blend. Part of the reason was the lack of friction on the very slick copper on which I was painting. Jim helped improve the adhesion properties by adding more soap to the painting medium. Still, it was very hard to get an even tone until I finally discovered that by building an evenly mixed puddle of paint and flooding it in a shallow layer, it would dry as an even tone. I also discovered that by putting such a mixture over previously applied textured areas could soften and unify the tones.

As I was working I suddenly recalled a series of small paintings I did using white oil paint, linseed oil, and turpentine painted on a dark ground. (see Roses and Paper Whites, images above). I did practically the same thing, build are reservoir of color and flood it onto the ground to make the paint spread evenly. I must have drawn on this experience subconsciously during my attempts to solve this whiteground application problem. Perhaps the reason that they are similar is that linseed oil is an agent common to both processes.

In hind sight, the week making prints at Center Street Studio was spent solving the technical problem of paint application. It is interesting that my expectations of exploring a slowed down application of tone never transpired (see entry for 13 July 2008). Shifting speed was not the solution; altering the medium was. Perhaps the lesson is that having expectations is neither good nor bad but what is most important is being responsive to the process; being prepared for what happens and using experience to problem solve.

One of my mantras is from The Carpet Crawlers by Genesis, its chorus is a chiming reminder for me:

“You’ve got to get in to get out”.

Detail showing two images from Plate 2 of the Accordion Fold Print painted in whiteground on copper plate. Images are approximately 3 1/2″ tall. The copper surface shows under the painted whiteground. Black hardground surrounds the images and is touched into the images in several places. Both grounds will block the acid when the plate is immersed in an acid bath to cut recessions for holding ink when printing.

Photograph of whiteground in porcelain dish. This material is painted on the printing plate and to block corrosion in selected areas.

Photograph of copper printing plate on table with images painted in whiteground. The black surround is a hardground block. The plate is seen before being placed in the acid bath.

New Print Project: Part 5

Renewing work on my Accordion Fold Print project at Center Street Studio, I resolved to use whiteground etching (also called soapground) as a way of adding tone to my plates. It’s a process I’ve had very little experience using and I imagined it would be a challenge. With only five full working days ahead, I would have to learn quickly. I also imagined the frothy look of this medium would add a nice contrast to the line etchings I had made on the plates this past spring.

Whiteground is painted on an aquatinted printing plate to protect it in an acid bath. The mixture consists of soap (Ivory flakes were used in this case), linseed oil, and water. I found that when mixed just right, applying the diluted paste with a brush in layers does feel a bit like watercolor, my favorite drawing medium. Areas of the plate that are left unpainted are corroded by the acid, which roughens the surface enough to catch ink and print black. Areas heavily covered with whiteground will not be affected by the acid and will print white. Thinner layers of whiteground are eaten away by the acid relative to the depth of the resist. They will print as grays.

To begin, I painted loosely on test plates, to see how the whiteground handled. The first mixture of the medium beaded up slightly on the metal plate, making smooth application of the whiteground difficult. Jim Stroud, my printer and advisor, added a bit more soap to the mixture and this time the adherence was perfect. Feathering the paint resulted in brushstrokes that allowed the acid to slip through, cultivating rough, irregular areas in the plate. By flooding a thin pool of well-mixed paste and wash into areas more even tones were encouraged.

Time was tight; with only 3 working days left I had to finish 13 images spread among the 3 plates. I worked from before sunup until dinner time each day painting the whiteground in order to complete the plates. We etched the plates and printed proofs as we progressed. Now the plates will be shipped to me so that I can scrape and burnish details in my studio. I don’t want to overdo the polishing and finishing of the images. I want them to be direct, economical, and expressive; equivalents of images I paint in my journal. When I finish the plates, Jim will print the final editions and tear and fold them into pages. Sections will then be adhered in an accordion format and the 12 page compilation will be fitted into a specially made cover that Janine Wong is designing.

(To be continued)

Printing plate 1 on press bed with a proof impression.

Charles Ritchie, Guitar, 1992-1994, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, private collection

Guitar Lessons

For many years I have played guitar; it is a satisfying part of my creative practice. One step away from the drawing table and I’m in a completely different zone; working in patterns on a field of time; focusing on completely different visual, tactile, and aural sensations than working with watercolor and brush. Even a short session away with the guitar returns me to the drawing table with fingers, eyes, and mind realigned and re-sensitized.

I’m a self taught rhythm guitar player, so I welcomed the opportunity to take some lessons from a professional; something I assumed would be instantly gratifying and quickly lift me into a different plane of playing. How wrong I was. I immediately discovered what a hole I had dug playing alone in the studio over the years. Sliding beats, fuzzed out notes; I had settled into a pattern of sloppy strumming and improvisation without accountability. It became clear by the end of the first session I was going to have to begin again.

So, in response, rather than the busy strums I’ve packed into each measure I’m stripping down to a single chord per beat; playing only the downbeat. I check each note for clarity; how it sounds on its own, how it sounds in relation to the whole. When collaborating with my teacher I now listen beyond my playing; what is my partner doing? Where is he in the music? Where might he want to go? How is my part serving his part?

The experience reminds me of making prints at Center Street Studio this past May. There, with my partner Jim, I found myself responding to what was happening with the printmaking process. When the photographic didn’t serve us properly, I drew the images by hand. During the unexpected detour I slowed my line down, learning to enjoy the feel of the needle pulling through etching ground as it exposed the copper of the plate. I cultivated clarity of line and tried to make each line serve the whole of the composition. Perhaps this slowing down and focusing on essentials will inform the next step of adding tone to the prints when I return to Center Street Studio next week. I’m also meditating what possibilities this approach might bring to my drawing.

As a side note, a number of artists of significance were excellent musicians. For example, Paul Klee almost chose a different career as a first-class violinist and John Singer Sargent was an accomplished pianist.

Works in Progress

As I keep so many projects going at one time, I thought it might be rewarding to lay out my current crop of drawings-in-progress and review them together.  The photograph above juxtaposes two shots in order to encompass the nineteen works that were arranged on the tabletop.  All are in various stages of execution.  Some have been in process for many years.  Others are recently begun.  Some will take only months to finish while others will take years.  Others may never be finished.  Some may be erased and the pages resurrected as grounds for other images.   

In the foreground of the photographs are examples from my Pages series.  These drawings are created in the format of pages from my journal, 4 by 6 inches, but are created as independent drawings.  Most are temporarily adhered to mat board using double stick tape (3M #415).  The mounting keeps the works flat while I lay multiple watercolor washes into the page.  I remove the mounting after the work is completed.  The tape on the back of the drawing can usually be peeled away from the drawing with a sharp knife, like an Xacto.  Any residue from the double stick tape can be removed with a rubber cement pickup.  This process works best for small drawings; substantially larger sheets tend to buckle and can’t be efficiently held down in this manner.

At center left of the photograph on the right is one of my Self-Portrait with Night drawings in a fairly late stage of development.  Two other works from the Self-Portrait with Night series in relatively early stages are at upper left in the left photograph.  At center of the right photograph are two landscapes called Dream Panels; the left one is entitled Summer and the right one is Spring. There is not enough detail in the shots to show the bands of writing that run through the images of both of these works but a closer view of Spring is here.  Two sketches in graphite that have been executed on watercolor blocks are on the right side of the left photo.   In the upper right of the photo on the right is a graphite drawing I began around 1985.  I am still slowly working this one.  Who knows if it will ever be finished?  It seems to me to be more about the path than the destination.

One of the great advantages of simultaneously working with so many pieces is forgetting.  Works like these are kept in piles. After disappearing into stacks of work, I often recover the drawings to see them with fresh eyes and am able to bring to them new abilities that were honed during the intervening period.  My prejudices drop away.  I begin again.

Note: The group of work shown in the photo excludes a number of works in progress: my current journal, other lesser used notebooks, all prints and related studies, and my winter drawings-in-progress.  Only my summer group is shown above.

A Fragment

I was digging through my boxes when I stumbled upon a bit of drawing; a rectangular scrap about three inches wide and one inch tall. I turned the small fragment over and rotated it in various directions. The image, although unrecognizable, was highly finished, well-worked with black watercolor and clearly a torn from another drawing. I turned it around again and suddenly recognized it as a section I tore from a small piece entitled Tomatoes; a work that left my studio several years ago.

Looking through my journals of 1989, the period when Tomatoes was completed, studies show my attention telescoping towards the kitchen window as a subject (see the sequence of pen and watercolor sketchbook pages below). Eventually peripheral elements are discarded in favor of the tomatoes resting on the sill. At the same time, details of the landscape outside the window emerge as a counterbalancing feature of interest. But the elimination process was never completely worked out in sketches. The final composition did not arrive until I tore the upper inch of the drawing off; removing a bit of window and trees from the finished work.

Above left I have replaced the fragment in the position it occupied before being torn away. Above right is the final drawing with the upper section removed. This is just one of the more dramatic ways a composition becomes resolved. This is also a reason I prefer working on a paper support to canvas or panel. Paper tears. It is versatile. It is immediate. I also like the element of risk; it is hard to return to the original composition after it is gone.

Book 62

Book 63

Book 63

Note: The subject of Tomatoes is unusual for me; the image does not depict my home. For a period I had access to a Victorian house and I tried the new setting as a challenge.

See: Tomatoes, 1989, watercolor graphite, and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, 3 x 3″, private collection.

New Print Project: Part 4

Our first task when I arrived at Center Street Studio was to transfer my drawings with inscriptions photographically to film positives. Here Jim Stroud trims one of the films we created that will be used to transfer the images for our Accordion Print project to the printing plates.

Subsequently these films were placed against the photo sensitive printing plate and exposed to bright light; the plates were placed in a bath and developed. The purple coating that hardens on the surface of the plate protects areas of the plate when immersed in the acid bath (image below). Anywhere bare copper is exposed to acid, recessions will be cut which to hold the ink during printing.

In the photographic transfer process, we found that in order to make my original ink writing appear light enough, my graphite drawings (originally done in pencil) had almost disappeared. As a result I decided to incise each image by hand onto the plates. I used transfer paper to outline the compositions and then drew with a sharp stylus across the plates, cutting through the purple resist to expose copper (image above). The drawing process took a long time, but I liked the idea of hand-drawing the images. I had not tried line etching in many years. Rather than sketch quickly, I slowed down my line and enjoyed the feel of the stylus point across copper. Printmaking often takes you places you least expect to go and the dictates of the process can bring healthy new experience. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “every wall is a door.”

When we printed the plates (above), I felt very happy with the result. I had constructed a clear linear armature that I would then augment with tone using aquatint when I return to Center Street Studio to finish the project later this summer.

(above) Interior view of the Center Street Studio workshop with one of my Accordion Print proofs and plates on the press bed. John Wilson’s intaglio portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. is on the left. Paintings by Jim Stroud are on the back wall.

(above) View of Center Street Studio workshop in Milton, Massachusetts. My deepest thanks go to Jim Stroud and Janine Wong my friends, hosts, and collaborators.

Photograph of project models for Accordion Fold Print; (top) Current journal book 130, open to one set of pages to be used as a motif for the print. (middle) Two horizontal rows of photocopied images from journal 130 that will serve as the image base for the accordion fold print. (bottom) The folded half-size maquette features the sequence of images sketched in watercolor on Arches paper.

New Print Project: Part 3

An accident opened a path.

I was cleaning the studio, making room for projects when a long strip of paper fell from beneath the cover of my drawing table. Two inches wide and forty inches long, it was a panoramic drawing on Arches paper I began in 1992. On the front were the bare outlines of a landscape I never completed. The back was unused white paper. Looking at the long format of the sheet, I instinctively knew that it would be my maquette for my accordion print. I had planned for the pages of the print to be the size and shape of my current journal pages: 4 inches high by 6 inches wide. By sheer coincidence, the paper I found was one half the height of my actual journal pages: 2 inches high. I began to fold the long strip of paper in the planned format. When I folded the whole 40-inch sheet, there were twelve panels and a half. The half page could be the title page for the project.

I still had no subject. Rolling through the pages of my journal, I sought images, a place to start. The past month had been an intense one both emotionally and artistically. It dawned on me that I could revisit a section of my current journal. Counting the pages in the month of April there were seventeen. If I removed a few of the images, I could make the whole month of April fit on twelve pages. A majority of my written entries could also be included.

After photocopying the pages from my journal that I wanted to include (see recent New Work entries for closeup views of these pages), I trimmed the photocopies to the 4 x 6″ page size and arranged them side by side in chronological, journal-entry order (see image above, 2 rows of middle panels). Next I took watercolor and did quick rough sketches on the long strip of paper to evoke the presence and flow of the folded object I was creating (see image above, bottom row).

After talking to printer and artist Jim Stroud, my collaborator, I learned that the plates we use would only accomodate 4 panels set side to side. I laid out 3 new sheets of paper, each comprising 4 of the panels (see image below). I sketched out the outlines in pencil and inscribed my journal entries in pen and ink. These 3 pages will be passed to Jim who will have a photographic negative made that can transfered the images/texts to the printing plates. The outlines will serve as the armatures on which I will work various printing processes. I head to Center Street Studio to work this week.

(above) Three sheets of 30″ wide paper each containing layouts for four of the pages to be included in the Accordion Fold Print. Written entries are inscribed in pen and ink. Drawings are in pencil. Each of the three sheets will be photographed and transfered to a printing plate as structures to be interpreted and expanded in a range of printmaking techniques.

Study from Book 130, Self-Portrait with Planets and Gibbous Moon, 2008, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, 4 x 6″. This watercolor study was executed using two colors; Indigo and Raw Umber Violet.

Colors of Black

Around 1980 I abandoned color.

It wasn’t hard for me as I was no extravagant colorist. I grew up cultivating the practice of pen and black ink, keeping pen and fingertips in the medium to explore the topography of the page. The challenge of placing dark irrevocable marks against bright paper was for me; get it right the first time or else. Color seemed superfluous to my practice.

Nevertheless, I pressed my comfort envelope by trying acrylic paint. I muddled along, hating the spring of stretched canvas and the distance the brushes kept me from my surface. No intimacy. And by the time a canvas was prepared, inspiration was lost. I shifted to acrylic paint on paper and felt more at home. But color confused me; too many choices. Slowly, I distilled my work to elemental black and white

Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania must have stirred some of my fascination with light and dark. I had traded a life in the suburban south for a stint in the urban north and bumped against a different universe. Pittsburgh had a mini-Manhattan setting; an island between rivers that stretched to steep hillsides. By day the topography was dark and rich, from steely to earthy warm; particularly in winter when the snows patterned the earth. But at night the city was transcendental; I felt I was driving through a box of stars, tracing the water’s edge, parking my car at intervals to make studies (see Pittsburgh Night image below). On clear nights the lights of buildings, bridges, and highways reflected off the water, earth, and sky it seemed. Black and white was all I needed.

Move forward twenty years. Who knows why self-imposed limitations are outgrown; the blue sky needs demarcation from brown earth. After trying multiple combinations to make gray I discover one that makes black: Indigo and Raw Umber Violet (see photograph below). This discovery offered reasons to articulate warm and cool. Perhaps this eureka launched me on a path toward more color. Or perhaps I’m on my way to deeper blacks. I’m still on the trail.

(Below) Photograph of watercolors Indigo (left) and Raw Umber Violet (right) mixing to near-black.

Charles Ritchie, Pittsburgh Night Series: Number 1, c. 1978, 23 x 30, black and white acrylic paint with acrylic matte medium and lithographic crayon on Fabriano paper, uncatalogued.

Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004.

Wallace Stevens Walking

Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice.

In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry.

Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me.

I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people.

Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the contact of the real world and real people and real life situations provided an added level of input and ferment. I think that is what Stevens may have meant by character. Cultivating the outside world in all its forms and contexts to use as grist for the mill in order to extract the broadest understandings of life.

By the way; walks are something that have buoyed many creative minds. According to psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me high”) who has studied the lives of creative people, walking is one of the activities where sensations of the highest levels of creativity are reported. Stevens alludes to the percolation of the walk; the regenerative inhale and fecund exhale at the beginning of section VII of his poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

“…Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,
A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain and
A wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.”

If I were to introduce the poems of Wallace Stevens to a newcomer, I would probably select one of his still life pieces. Here we feel the complex and incremental walk of the eye:

Link to Study of Two Pears by Wallace Stevens.

Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000)

The Star Magnolia

As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month.

I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed.

Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session.

I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition.

During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new shape punctured the window’s rectangle and pulled the grid of panes into the border. I liked the minimal articulation of the depicted drawing; I used watercolor to mimic the graphite of the original. This new gray panel or wall seemed right. I also liked the idea of inserting a troubled drawing into another troubled drawing; trouble mirroring trouble. And through the window, the depiction of the star magnolia now represented trouble on another plane for me.

These kinds of personal associations drive my drawing, but the viewer doesn’t need to know the connections to appreciate the work. I believe if I respond to my intuition and feelings, work intensely, and stay honest, there’s a good chance something will be there for an audience.

The drawing, I feel, is complete now; consummated in meditation and loss. In one of my favorite short stories The Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, a couple re-lives through remembrances found in the various settings of a house; personal reflections lead them to their treasure and essence.

(above left) Charles Ritchie, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work in progress) 7 February 2008.
(above right) Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work completed) 10 April 2008.
both: watercolor, graphite, and gouache on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 4 x 3″, collection of the artist

For Pokey.