Self-Portrait with Planets II, state two, drawing in progress 7 August 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″

Day Dreams

I’ve become interested in daydreams; flares of imagination that punctuate waking hours. We all do it; drift a bit and the mind is somewhere else. A few days ago I was dozing and an image floated up in my mind, three people were sitting in a car with a woman who was pointing to holes in her bare feet. I blinked. There was such matter-of-fact quality to the image, no sense of pain or alarm. What could it mean? A few days later I was sitting talking to a friend at the table and as we moved our heads, I felt I was seeing front and side views of his head simultaneously; he seemed cross-eyed for a split second. Not exactly a daydream, but a phenomenon representative of the slips in reality I like to note.

Perhaps my sustained recording and study of dreams has cultivated my awareness of such jags of the mind. Kin to dreams, I can’t help but scrutinize them in the same way, imagining some underlying truth about myself or my situation being revealed to me in their arcane symbols. In previous online entries I’ve talked about my method of recording my dreams as a means of self-scrutiny (see entry for 25 December 2007). I am convinced these daydream images are a similar nudge from my subconscious to look at myself from an alternate, previously unnoticed perspective.

I have begun to note these moments in my journal and I’m particularly encouraged by the momentum my writing has gained from incorporating these observations. The annotations have also begun to embellish my series of drawings called Pages (three states of one of the Pages are used as example above and below). Executed on sheets of paper the size of leaves in my journal, the Pages combine image and inscription tuning into my stream of consciousness. I especially prize dreams, daydreams, and slips of reality. As I make my notes and drawings I am often waking in the early morning studio, my script is often packed with such fleeting phenomena.

But the inscriptions also have a visual effect in the Pages series. Beginning as pencil notations, they parallel the drawing as it develops. As the graphite inscriptions fill the page, they are generally obliterated in the image-making process and as more space is needed for writing. I trace the mental process that attends the making of the drawing as well as scrutinize the act of drawing itself. To bring the drawing to a close, I usually pick a particularly pungent dream from the many I’ve had over the period that I worked on the piece. I transcribe it, returning to see if I can uncover further associations as I ink it on the page.

I like the fact that my journals and drawings continually change and evolve and I see this expansion of subject for my writing as another step along the way.

Self-Portrait with Planets II, state three, drawing in progress 15 October 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″

Self-Portrait with Planets II, state four, drawing in progress 31 October 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″

Photograph of studio table with plate 1 for the Accordion Print Project. Tools seen in the foreground include 1/2″ wide, and 1 1/2″ wide mezzotint rockers, scalpels, burnisher and dental tools. Image areas of the printing plate have been roughened and smoothed with these tools to hold varying amounts of ink when the plate is printed. Earlier impressions from the print project are visible (upper left) as is Book 130, the journal which contains the images that are being adapted. A mirror compensates for the reversal that occurs in the printing process.

New Print Project Part 6

When I am in the midst of a project it sometimes takes time to find my next step. I try to pull back a bit, be patient, and listen to the work.

Returning home in July after producing the printing plates for my Accordion Fold Print project at Center Street Studio, I hung the proofs on my studio walls and watched images out of the corner of my eye. I also kept the plates available on my tabletop for study. As time went on, I realized how much I liked the whiteground technique I had explored while working at the Center Street shop (see online journal entry for 23 July 2008). Without having much experience in the painting of whiteground, I had used it boldly, and while the effect I had achieved was a bit ragged and a little too loose at times, the overall feel was energetic and not far from the vigorous watercolor sketching that goes on in my journals. Finding a printmaking equivalent for my watercolor journal sketches seems like an intriguing goal.

However, as I kept looking at the trial prints over time, I realized there were several things that were not sitting well with me. First, I would have wanted more detail in the images. I had tried to articulate elements that had not materialized with the painted whiteground. Secondly, I wanted richer grays; the whiteground had tended toward strong contrasts, blacks and whites. The absence of detail and range of grays was due to my inexperience with the technique; the next time I work with whiteground at Jim’s shop I’ll try to stretching my abilities in this direction. But more than anything else, the blacks in the current proofs were not as rich and dark as I wanted. Mezzotint (see online journal entry for 24 August 2008), the intaglio process with which I have the most experience, can give a deeper, richer black than the black produced with the whiteground. I decided that the solution was to go back into the plates and augment them with mezzotint, working them by hand using a variety of tools, including mezzotint rockers, a scalpel, a burnisher, and small dental tools that works well for smoothing the low metal relief of the surface (see image above). The hand tools allow me to roughen and smooth the metal in selected areas, reworking and enriching surfaces that were previously cut by acid. With these tools I am able to bring out detail, create mid-tones (grays), and make the blacks denser.

The key to reworking is a ½ inch wide mezzotint rocker that I have become fairly adept at using. It allows me to do some very selective roughening of the copper plate. I can pit deep, parallel, serrated lines into the plate’s surface. These lines will hold a lot of velvety printing ink. I think of the areas I’m roughening not so much as fields of darkness, but more like areas of crosshatching. I use the mezzotint rocker to introduce hatching tones that define form; essentially drawing with the mezzotint tool.

I’ve spent more than a month rocking and burnishing (see photo above) and now it’s time to send the plates back to Jim at Center Street to be printed. I’ve been lookng at the physical surface of the plate and imagining what will translate, but you never know exactly what is present until it is inked and printed. In printmaking, one gives up control and allows other forces to introduce unpredictable changes. These forces can improve a work in a way that cannot be premeditated; or can turn a work into a disaster. Printmaking always carries risks and I’ve grown to love it for that. (To be continued)

Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie at the Gregg Musuem of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Photograph by Matthew Gay.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Stepping into one’s solo exhibition can be revealing; especially if work that’s been out of mind for years is included. It’s strange enough seeing one’s art framed and under glass, or presented in display cases; a situation that denies the whole tactile experience of creating the work as well as displacing it from the studio in which it grew. The unfamiliar, freshly-painted white room, the rarefied lighting, and the uncluttered, surprising juxtaposition of works serves to make everything feel alien: what a great place for an artist to be.

As I spent time going through my exhibition in at North Carolina State University, several things struck me. I enjoyed reviewing some early drawings that haven’t been shown before. The group includes Window with Moon and Star and Worktable with Open Book, drawings from 1983. Both works feature the same subject, the table and window of an earlier studio. The tight pen drawing of the former was made by thinning inks and building up layers of line with a very fine point pen. This very precise drawing process took months. Compared with Worktable with Open Book, a much larger piece created using large brushes in loose watercolor wash on a watercolor block; this drawing was executed in probably a half hour. I’m fascinated that I was working with such variant methods at the same time. I think the tension of swinging between loose and tight approaches has been one of the elements that has kept painting interesting for me. I still vascillate between these poles when I work. I should also note that Window with Moon and Star seems to me to be a reflection on the 19th century British artists that I was vitally interested in the time, William Blake, Edward Calvert, and Samuel Palmer. All of whom became more familiar to me during the summer of 1984 on our honeymoon in England.

Another early work, The Bend, completed in the fall of 1984, (see my online journal entry for 17 August 2008), seemed to be a reflection on the period in which it was created. The year was a turning point of my life; I married, I began the move to my present studio, and my outside work shifted towards a curatorial career. Looking at the drawing, I felt as if the picture was a long jump; a leap across the dark space between the lights on the left and right of the composition. This kind of metaphor never occurs to me while I am working, but such associations emerge in hind sight. Perhaps I subconsciously scout such visual metaphors when I choose my subjects.

One of the discoveries I made looking at the show was that during the mid-to-late 1990s I was not drawing so much. There are few works from that period in this exhibition. During this period I began working with Jim Stroud at Center Street Studio making prints. Also at this time, I experimented with oil paint on gessoed board, an investigation that was never fully successful. During this diversion, I discovered that I like the versatility of working with paper and the quick drying time of watercolor.

Regarding the installation of the show; the journals seem particularly out of context when displayed in exhibitions. My books are utilitarian and when limited to a spread of two pages open in a display case they lose their functionality and serial richness. They are meant to be held in the hands and experienced as a sequence of pages. Of course, the alternative of giving up security within such a public setting seems far less palatable. I have found no better solution.

A final note; memories of the creation of the work can affect how one remembers it; such as remembering it bigger or smaller than it actually is. Ones hopes and dreams of what one wanted to achieve with with a work can also jade memory. Reacting to the inaccuracy of these mental images can often times spark the trajectory for a new journey when one steps back to contemplate in the setting of an exhibition.

Other installation photographs are below. Deepest thanks to the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, Raleigh for their beautiful presentation and particular thanks to Matthew Gay who documented the show with these images.

The Bend, 1984, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, 3 5/8 x 14 7/8″.

My journals are filled with watercolor studies that explore options for images I am creating outside of my books. For example, during the summer and fall of 1984, one of the independent works I developed was The Bend (above), an image of a road set in a long format composition. Books 30 and 31 (below) contain studies that establish compositional details as well as offer various solutions for the borders of that work. While a long rectangle with a gently arched top was selected for the final composition, the books show that other configurations were proposed; including a broad box shape with no arch. I was looking for a way to create visual interest by maximizing tension between the long, wavelike shape of the road and the arched top of the composition’s border. One of the wonderful things about keeping a journal is being able to go back and trace the development of an idea.

Book 30, Summer 1984, sheet: 4 1/4 x 6″, watercolor graphite, and pen and ink on wove paper in bound red linen volume

Book 31, Fall 1984, sheet: 4 1/4 x 6″, watercolor graphite, and pen and ink on wove paper in bound red linen volume

The Bend and the two journals presented here are among the 65 works on view in the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie, on view at The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh from 21 August to 8 October 2008.

Charles Ritchie, Interior with Stack of Journals, work in progress, second state, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″.

Risk: Turning Pages, Part 2

When is a work of art complete? When is it overworked? When is the artist signing off prematurely; too easily satisfied? These are difficult questions that permeate the core of painting.

My online journal entry on 1 June examined the abandoned watercolor, Interior with Stack of Journals and my plans to reinvestigate the image on another sheet. Through the summer I have continued work on the second attempt (see above), taking advantage of the period when the early evening light enters the west window of my studio. As the season comes to an end, and the specific lighting on my subject drifts away, I find myself pleased with the work. It has reached a plateau, as many drawings do; very close to way I had envisioned it, with some surprising details evolving; the mirror on the desk reflecting a bit of interior, for instance. However, the big improvement is that the brightness of the landscape has remained; far preferable to the overworked landscape in the previous version.

A plateau can be dangerous, though. One might easily convince oneself the work is done. At any point along the creation of an image there are times of balance and imbalance. I consider the present manifestation of Interior with Stack of Journals (above) a balanced composition, but not yet finished. My major dissatisfaction is that I want the interior to be darker in very specific places; more like my most recent preparatory journal sketch (Book 130, 11 May 2008). To accomplish this I will apply wash; not too dark not too light. If done just right it will increase contrast with the light from the window while integrating details and further unifying the composition.

Time is short, though. I prefer to work in front of my subject so I must make my move in the next few weeks or leave the project until next May when the same lighting situation returns. I don’t like to work purely from memory in a case like this one. The visual reinforcement of the subject cultivates courage to take the necessary risk. I have found that the best response to the present situation is to put the work away for a while, get involved in many other drawing and printmaking projects. In the next month, I will forget the problem and then surprise myself when I finally make my move to finish.

One might recall the well-known sequence of photographs in which Henri Matisse documented his Large Reclining Nude (final state seen here) through twenty-two states during a six month period in 1935. I see numerous places Matisse might have stopped his work that could be seen as more successful than the one he chose as a culmination. Even the best artists are challenged by the “when is it finished” question. It’s also important to note that certain media facilitate continual change; Matisse used oil paint for his Large Reclining Nude, a very forgiving medium. Watercolor is different. One cannot scrape out with ease or paint over without damaging the luminosity. Watercolor ups the ante. To continue working my drawing carries the risk of overworking it. I could be faced with starting over again.

In 1994, I took a risk with my drawing Daffodils with Astronomical Chart. Tearing off the upper section of the sheet, I painted a final layer of darkness, completing the work with a move that I think improved it significantly. (To be continued)

Charles Ritchie, Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, (left) early state c. April 1993, (right) 1995, drawing completed, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, 4 11/16 x 5 1/2″, note: left image is taken from a slide; color and tone are inaccurate. The finished drawing is in the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.

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.