FROM CLAY TO PASTELS

In my last post I wrote that working with clay printing moved me into the world of pastels. After years of painting with watercolor, with a special interest in architecture, I was confronted with the problem of not having very good control of the new medium; I could not render some of the details and the hard edges that I wanted. To overcome this, I began enhancing the clay prints with pastels, using pieces of paper to serve as a mask or as stencils for obtaining hard edges.

It was then that I began working with pastel dust. With a stencil in place I scrapped the pastel in small kitchen strainer held over the stencil and covered the area with one or more layers of the pastel, using my fingers or wads of tissue paper to rub it into the print. Following are 3 of these early pastel enhanced clay prints.




The obvious next step was to try working with the pastel only, and because of my experience enhancing the clay prints I chose to continue using the pastel dusting technique. Working on cold press illustration board lying flat and covered with a thin monochromatic wash I applied layers of dust followed by manual blending and occasional applications of workable fixative until I achieved the desired results.
Because of the fixative, I was now able to use paper stencils without disturbing the background. The earliest paintings were...no surprise here...BARNS.




I don’t recall just how much time passed before I worked up enough courage to submit one of my pieces to the Pastel Society of America’s annual juried show. This was the painting...



To my total disbelief it was accepted into the show, won an award for best pastel with mixed media (black india ink was used in the building), and was sold! My feet did not touch ground for weeks. Patience and I went to the opening in NYC for the weekend and ended up in a topless art gallery, but that’s another story.

WHAT WAS I THINKING

when I drew these pictures, sometime back in the late 60's and early 70's? It was years before I ever seriously considered art as a second career. Drawing was a hobby, copying pictures from magazines, and my primary interest was faces and people. Somewhere along the way this interest gradually shifted to architecture and urban landscapes, and later still to the rural landscape. This is true for my studio work, however my sketch book continues to remain a repository for figurative work.

I am still in the inventory taking mode in the studio, but am almost finished. Yesterday I photographed a portfolio of early sketches, drawings, and paintings. Here are a few more early "Renzullis".





So many things to be drawn and painted...and so little time.

MEDICINE & ART II

Before I could leave my practice to “become an artist” (that is how I thought about it) I had to secure part time employment to meet my financial obligations to home and family. I approached the director of our local ER who made me a rather extraordinary offer, filling in for the vacation time for the growing staff I could work full time for 3 months, alternating with 3 months off. I quickly accepted the offer and spent the next 4 years alternating between three months in the ER and my studio.

It was an incredible experience, moving readily between two contrasting environments: the chaotic demands of medicine in a busy city ER, and the quiet, peaceful solitude of an artist’s studio. Survival in the first required blocking out the emotional impact of dealing with so much human pain and suffering, while creativity in the studio demanded an openness to my surroundings, feeling and experiencing the landscapes that I wanted to paint. It was more than simply changing hats every 3 months, it called for a complete reversal of my psyche; the 2 states of mind could not easily exist together. Attempts at working in the studio on my days off during the ER tour were totally unsuccessful and I soon stopped trying.

An interesting thing occurred during this time. Being self taught, I was at a very steep beginning of the learning curve, and after advancing my point on that curve with three months of studio work, I anticipated that it would slip back a bit after my stint in the ER. Too my surprise that didn’t happen, in fact upon returning to the studio I found myself even a little further along than when I left. Clearly things were happening internally, the changes that Rilke describes so eloquently in his letters.

Reflecting on those four years, my first thought was I was working both sides of my brain, the creative right side and the rational left side, but I have since come to recognize that this was an inaccurate distinction. Although the descriptions of each role are easily distinguishable, the person performing them remains the same, and inwardly there was no separation. For me, medicine and art are seamless, each one enhancing the other.

Here are several examples of work from my "ER" days.

Philadelphia Merchants Exchange...watercolor...one of my favorite buildings in Philly

The Pennsylvania Academy of fine Arts...watercolor...I love Frank Furness's work.
Behind Quaker Hill in Wilmington, DE...watercolor...I was big time into architecture.
My Sketch book was a constant companion during my ER days.

MEDICINE - ART -MEDICINE -ART - MEDICINE........

When I started this blog almost two and half years ago I intended, as the titles suggests, to reflect on my life and the two careers I have pursued. For the first several months I remained true to my intentions, but I soon learned that continually posting on my “reflections” was a lot harder than posting my art. As a result, this blog has been a lot more about my art than anything else. So, at least for a while, I would like to return to my original commitment and share with you some thoughts on how medicine and art have influenced one another in my life.

I am frequently asked about the relationship between the two and how they affect one another. To answer this it is necessary to go back to the late 1970s when I was engaged in the full time practice of internal medicine.

In retrospect I now recognize that my heart acknowledged my desire to pursue a career in art at least a year before my head did. I wanted to do this professionally, to make art more than a hobby or pastime. At the risk of appearing to be totally lacking in humility or modesty I have to say a word about my experience in private practice. I was a good physician. My strength was my ability to reach out to patients on a personal level, to listen to them, and to befriend them. My goal was to make patients feel better, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I took the time to listen, to educate, and to make them know that I cared for them and their families. The practice of medicine provided an opportunity to be present to and serve people in times of need, and this is a remarkable privilege which brought with it considerable responsibility which I gladly embraced. Their needs always came before any financial “bottom line”. I am not boasting; I am being realistic because this leads to one of the more powerful influences that medicine has had on my art, or more accurately, the influence that leaving medicine has had.
When I left my practice I was ending relationships with people who had come to trust me and count on me. In some cases the bonds were very close and I considered many of these individuals as friends. It was not without some guilt and remorse that I left this work, and I felt that I owed it to my patients and my profession to make the same commitment to art as I made to medicine. They deserved nothing less than that. . From the very beginning it was of utmost importance to me that my art be “serious”, even though I could not then, and cannot now, clearly describe what serious art is. My biggest fear was that artists, galleries, and others, would see me as a doctor with idle time dabbling in art. (I have never completely outgrown this fear.) From the outset I have been committed to creating the best art I am capable of doing and presenting my art and myself as professionally as possible. Thirty years later I still strive to remain true to that commitment.

The 3 paintings below were all done with pen & ink and markers in 1978-79, a year before I left my practice.

China Town

Futrona's Market

Washington Street