Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Journal Keeping
2010-07-13 10:23:16 | Writing: Part 1
The artist writing in his journal 10 July 2010. The pencil drawing is work in progress based on a postcard image of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. ...Read More
2010-02-09 11:36:13 | A Window on Philadelphia
Photograph of the artist at the window with his temporary painting table. A Window on Philadelphia The exhibition Prints by Gallery Artists is on view until 27 February at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and three of my prints are included in the venue: Night II, and Water Tower and my accordion fold book, April 2008. I’ve just returned from seeing the exhibition and highly recommend it. As well as stepping back and seeing a few of my prints in a fresh context, I enjoyed studying the works of 16 other excellent artists hung in a salon style presentation: Astrid Bowlby, Emily Brown, Lynne Clibanoff, Christine Hiebert, Marilyn Holsing, Jeanne Jaffe, Mary Judge, Sharon Louden, Winifred Lutz, Rob Matthews, Linn Meyers, Kate Moran, Stephen Robin, Samantha Simpson, Mark Sheinkman, Martin Wilner. The installation is connected with the city-wide, season-long focus on contemporary printmaking titled Philografika. In order to make it to the Gallery Joe opening, my family and I drove on Friday from our home just north of Washington DC, ahead of a massive snowstorm. The light snow started just as the reception began and certainly didn’t dampen the opening crowd; at times I could hardly find a place to stand as the big crowd ebbed and flowed. Over the course of the evening I got to meet and talk to quite a number of artists and visitors (see below). After dinner, we retired to our hotel room as the snow and wind grew stronger and the blizzard began to roar into town. Originally we had intended to visit some of the Philadelphia museums and galleries over the weekend, hoping to see some of the other Philographika venues, but when we woke, it was clear, most everything was closed that day. So, I pulled my chair and table up to the small window of our hotel room three stories ...Read More
2009-09-27 13:18:18 | Memory
Beach Walk, Part 1; Book 132 Pages 58 and 59. Beach Walk, Part 2; Book 132 Pages 60 and 61. During my summer retreat, I occasionally get up well before sunrise and walk down the beach with my journal. Carrying a pencil in my right hand, I hold the book in my left; the pages are spread open with clamps and a very small booklight is attached that I can turn on and off as needed. Occasionally I stop to make a rough outline of something of interest, letting the pages evolve intuitively; roughing out several potential compositions across the spread of pages before I move to the next. These spare graphite notes are occasionally augmented with written abbreviations: “y” for yellow, “r” for red, “b” for blue, etc. as a jog for my memory when I later fill in color and tone back in the studio. My most memorable walk this summer began at 4:15 am when I slipped barefoot down the street to a black ocean. It was low tide and the beach broad and I was completely alone. The moonless night heightened brilliance of the stars. I immediately recognized Orion and the attendant stretch of bright constellations that prefigure winter rising out of the water ahead of me. The brightest star among them, Sirius was low to the horizon. Just to the north, lights of the pier flickered in agitated water. I knew Hurricane Bill was offshore, but too far out to make much of a difference yet. As I meandered up the strand, in and out of the edge of the waves, I eventually escaped the lights of the pier and began to note the subtle variations of lighting from the unseen streetlamps as they cut across the mostly darkened beach houses far behind the dunes. Cumulus clouds swept the rooftops, low enough to catch and reflect a little light from the beach town below. As I looked toward th ...Read More
2009-04-08 02:58:07 | Cadence
(above) Charles Ritchie, sketch after an oil painting by Giorgio Morandi, watercolor and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, one panel from an uncatalogued accordion fold drawing dated 8 August 1987, panel size 4 x 6.” Cadence I admire artists like Giorgio Morandi, who draw energy from diligent, sustained questioning. Morandi found a lifetime’s worth of investigation in a select group of motifs. His invention within the genres of still life and landscape relied on his ability to reduce subjects to an essence; engaging often incremental shifts in subject, lighting, palette, size, and format. The completion of each painting seemed to only rekindle a quest to find new ways to cultivate subtle variation and inflection. I am reminded of poet E.E. Cummings’ quote “Always the beautiful answer that asks the more beautiful question.” For me, it’s easy to see how Morandi could find his limitations freeing; he woke each morning prepared to paint the what, allowing him to jump ahead to the challenges of how. Morandi’s oeuvre is filled with a cadence; a visual repetition of subjects in variation as well as the implied cadence of his own engagements. One of the most exciting images I have seen in years is from a recently published book of photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin called Giorgio Morandi’s Studio. The book lovingly visits Morandi’s studio/quarters in exquisite black and white images. One shot features the tabletop on which Morandi arranged his still life subjects lifted to reveal the web of traced arcs and contours representing footprints of the many subjects that the artist arranged and rearranged on that table. The artist’s hand-drawn record of locations, beyond being a beautiful abstract image on its own, conveys echoes of Morandi’s cadence. I’m ...Read More
2009-02-22 07:16:38 | A Hunt in the Forest
A Hunt in the Forest A few years ago I sifted through family photographs, hoping to find a trove of snapshots of the many houses where I lived as a child. After much searching, I was deeply disappointed; if we had taken pictures, most of them had disappeared. Since that time, I’ve been actively collecting images that speak to me about my past, and continually surprised at how often I neglected to document key places. When every so often I uncover a snapshot as rich with connections as the one seen above, I’m thrilled. This photograph, recently pulled from a storage trunk by my wife Jenny, shows me seated at the worktable of my first real studio; the setting where my earliest successful drawings emerged. This photo is the only one I know showing the full setting; the worktable and windows, as well as many of the reproductions of other artist’s work that I rotated across my bulletin boards; a constantly changing wall of inspirations. The year is 1984 and the spot is a rented basement apartment in a Victorian home in upper northwest Washington, DC where I lived for several years. My space was beautiful, a bit cavernous, but full of windows on the east side, and the view was eye level to the flower beds, I could watch up close as plants grew and the seasons changed. A built-in table next to the windows served as a drawing station and the desk and bulletin board shone bright under makeshift lamps. Under the table, just to my right, I can make out a few of my artist monographs, a tiny collection that has since swelled into a large library. The place was a perfect little heaven as I remember it now (see, for example, Window with Moon and Star, 1983). It’s unclear why Jenny would have snapped the shutter while I unpacked a radio and fiddled with dials. But beyond ...Read More
2008-11-28 17:07:35 | Passage
Charles Ritchie, Copy after The Large Enclosure by Caspar David Friedrich, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”. Passage When I copy the work of other artists in my journal, I meditate on their art in a systematic, physical way and by doing so often discover passages I might otherwise miss. The art of Caspar David Friedrich, the great German 19th century Romantic, has long been a favorite of mine. I find works such as The Large Enclosure spellbinding. This sublime landscape is dominated by an arc of clouds sweeping down towards an upwards bowing waterway. As a little boat approaches the center, it appears to be squeezed in a convergence of earth and sky. Sinuous networks of clouds and waterways enhance the sense of constriction. As I made my copy, I noted a little opening between the trees that is just the shape of the boat’s sail; like an empty space calling to the piece of a puzzle that fills it. But I sense The Large Enclosure represents passage on other levels as well. The dark trees in the middle ground block our view, creating hidden space relieved by tantalizing vistas that stretch into open landscape. While sketching, I noted a subtler passage at the far right, deeper in the distance (see the detail on the right page of the sketchbook spread below). I had never before observed this second tree line, one that offers a solitary opening into a further realm. Perhaps this passage was a symbolic crux of the picture for Friedrich, whose Christian faith would offer a single path out of our earthly enclosure. Several other thoughts occurred to me as I continued to sketch. The broad arcs that underpin the waterways and clouds in this work imply imaginary circles that stretch beyond the picture frame; evoking the curve of the ...Read More
2008-11-01 01:02:44 | Day Dreams
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 jou ...Read More
2008-08-17 10:40:47 | The Bend
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. ...Read More
2008-06-15 07:47:50 | Finding Forbears
(above) Photograph of the artist copying in his journal at the Ashmolean Musuem, Oxford, England, June 1984. Finding Forbears In June of 1984 my wife, Jenny and I went to England for our honeymoon. We spent a week in London followed by a week driving around the country. We wanted to do something romantic and beautiful for the occasion, but neither of us are travelers so I look back now and imagine we were subconsciously homing in on spiritual forebears. On the trip, I certainly encountered artists who have changed the way I see the world who continue to inspire me with their achievements. Sure, I liked John Constable’s landscapes before our trip, but when we stepped into an exhibition of his small studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I was overwhelmed. Constable communicates a thrill in depicting his world, putting painterly bravura at the service of the humble and commonplace. At Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, I fell in love with Samuel Palmer’s work; I too wanted to invest a small page with mystery. Palmer’s varied mix of pen and ink and watercolor has informed my own drawing technique over the years. During the trip I also became aware of the work of John Martin whose command of scale is breathtaking. You may never feel as tiny as in front of one of Martin’s works. For example, his Creation of Light (see also below) convincingly evokes the immensity of the universe, juxtaposing human form with astronomical. What a master of light! The brightest point in the work is not the depicted sun, moon, or stars. It is the vaguely defined point just to the right of the sun; possibly a reflection off of a cloud bank? Who knows? Such is the imagination of John Martin. (above) Book 130, Charles Ritchie after John Martin, Creation of Light, 2008, ...Read More
2008-02-10 06:40:12 | Journal as Lifeline
above, Book 2, 1978, undated entry with notes taken on a night bus ride.below, Book 129, Fall 2007 / Winter 2008, entries for 20-24 December 2007. There was a time I thought my art might be leaving me. After undergraduate school I took a job as a graphic artist doing paste up for all sorts of uninteresting advertising projects. It was one of the lowest points of my life, working sixty hour weeks, making junk for a world that needed less of it. I knew I had to find a way to get my art back. A book was the answer. It was small. I could carry it anywhere. Even if I didn’t have enough drawing time I could manage to sketch a note or write a little bit. My book became a repository for whatever I wanted when I needed it. I began by recording the events of my life in my legible handwriting, carefully dating each page (see previous entry illustrating Book 1 1977-1978, entries 16-17 July 1977); but that bored me quickly. As an experiment I determined that I would record whatever words came into my head scribbling my train of thought with no edits, often illegibly (see Book 2 above) page after page; no dating, no clarifications. That path too seemed to narrow. Eventually my handwriting developed into tiny, private notations. I began to date my entries again, and started to include dreams as a way of tracking my subconscious. From noting the occasional stray dream the entries evolved into streams of multiple dreams per night; too many to write down at times (see Book 129 above). My journal developed out of a need to hold on to something that was very important to me; my art. I’ve held fast to it like a lifeline, and now, looking back, the thread connects me to who I was at every stage; a lifeline of another sort. My books will continue to change with me. The arti ...Read More
2007-12-17 12:08:35 | Pages from My First Journal
My first books were manufactured sketchbooks. Jenny, my wife, did not start making my journals until 1992. The early writing disappoints me. In hindsight I don’t like the poems I wrote and my prose seems very self-conscious as if I knew someone might read it. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that I realized that my dreams were accessible to me and a much more interesting way to log and explore life. The first drawings are of houses, often sketched from Polaroids or pinhole camera photographs I was making at the time. I rarely work from photographs now, preferring direct observation. ...Read More
2007-11-21 04:45:38 | 30 Years of Keeping a Journal
I began my journals begun thirty years ago today, 20 November 1977. The inside cover of this, my first book has an inscription in graphite by Jenny Lyle Ritchie, who was my girlfriend but later became my wife. I inscribed the first page using felt-tip pen, my preferred writing tool at the time, with a quote from artist Paul Klee: “Broadening the horizon: that by all means!” The four leaf clover was taped in the book by my great aunt Mary when we visited her in the summer of 1978. ...Read More