Facing the Postmodern Art World

Facing the World, Self-Portrait, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 16” x 12″ Private collection

Poets and Artists published this on September 2nd, 2018.

Romanticist in a Postmodern Art World

In 1998, the year of the above self-portrait, I was living in my rented two-story Turkish house/studio in the Old Town of Rhodes, Greece, which overlooked the Mediterranean and the town’s minarets and domes. Two decades before, as a 20-year-old American, I had started my focused art journey in The Hague, Holland. Between Holland and Greece I moved every few years seeking inspiration from a different culture, a beautiful place, or from a big city’s energy. Everywhere I lived I produced my own pop-up shows, selling enough to keep painting. I tried both New York and Los Angeles a few times, knocking on their art scene doors, but my aesthetic was incompatible with contemporary art institutions. I was a romanticist aiming for my definitive works to have the feeling of a Puccini opera. Meanwhile postmodernists were rejecting art’s evolutionary developments and seriously trying to create from a preoperational cognitive state of mind like Louise Bourgeois. Others like Duchamp, Creed, and Christo sought to be radically original by using shocking, unlikely, and unrepeatable mediums for visual art.

Newberry at To Dentro by Thodoris Archontopoulos

Archaeologist Thodoris Archontopoulos takes us on a journey through Newberry’s works in progress. Originally published in the Greek newspaper the Rodiaki, 1996.

The Pond, wip, oil on linen, 54 x 48″. Destroyed.

Michael Newberry exhibits his works in Rhodes at the salon-like gallery To Dentro (the Tree), June 15th through July 13th 1996.

Newberry has lived in Rhodes since 1995. Previously, he studied art in Los Angeles and in Holland and exhibited in The Hague, Brussels, New York, and frequently in Los Angeles, where he taught drawing and composition for four years at Otis/Parsons College of Art and Design.

In 1995 he exhibited in the Bastion of Saint George, sponsored by Rhodes Cultural Affairs and the Archaeological Service of the Dodecanese.

This year’s exhibition is of large canvases and their preparatory studies in pastel and pencil on paper. This exhibition represents a profound confession to all of us as Newberry takes an absolutely transparent look into the communication between the audience and the artist. Newberry shows us, in an uncommon way, how and even perhaps why he paints.

The character of this exhibition reveals the genesis of painting, but it also allows us to grasp how these expressive studies are united by a common vision, an unusual concept for an exhibition. In three large, unfinished paintings and many preparatory studies (45), we get a special look into the construction of the paintings through their relation to the studies. While the studies are made with different techniques in the mediums of pastel, pencil, and oil, they relate to one another, are connected by a common cause: form and light. Out of form and light the basic idea and the message combine with the color to create a personal aesthetic.

Pastel Color Study for the Pond

Atmosphere Graphite Study for the Pond

Graphite Landscape and Water Study for the Pond

By observing these two elements, the paintings and their studies, we can locate the common rudiments of form, composition, light, and atmosphere. The studies’ differences of details, atmospheric light, and colors reveal the time involved in the conception of a large painting, and they contribute to the elevation of the aesthetic of the paintings.

Portrait of Duchamp

Portrait of Duchamp, ink on paper, 5 x 5″

Portrait Triangulation Time-Lapse

Portrait Triangulation Time-Lapse 24 sec. One of the great drawing tools is triangulation. You fix two points, for example, the bottom of the chin and an earlobe, from these two points you find the angle of a third point. You now have three points of reference. Using any of the two points you established you find another third point. It resembles something like a star chart.
When the axis lines are erased you end up with a very natural looking object.

 

Adam Pastel Time-Lapse

 

27-sec time-lapse of a pastel color study for the painting Adam. Pastel on dark paper is drawing pure color vibrations – pulling out the color and the light. The technique I use is to build towards the light using spaced strokes and a light touch.

Anatomy of Light

Understanding the makeup of light and shadow is a fundamental art tool. Indeed, you cannot create forms without it.

Three-Quarters Classic Light

A 3/4’s light is falling on this egg form.  This means that 3/4’s of the object is directly lit and the rest of it is in shadow.

Four Key Elements

Just looking at the form, there are four elements: highlight, mid-tone, core shadow, and reflective light.

In the light: the mid-tone and the highlight are the areas that are being “hit” by the light source.

In the shadow: the core shadow and reflective light.

Mid-tone: The tricky part here is to mold your mid-tones so that they accent the form of the object.  Artists tend to flatten their mid-tones by making them too light, and by making the contrast between the core shadow and the mid-tone too strong.

Transparency – A Key to Spatial Depth in Painting Part 1, Black/White

Art Tutorial
Transparency – A Key to Spatial Depth in Painting
Part 1, Black/White

This online tutorial is a transcription from a 2002 lecture I gave at the Courage of Your Perceptions Conference (Satellite to the EC’s Vision Scientists’ Conference) in Glasgow, Scotland.

We have examples of artworks from 30,000 years ago to the present in which artists have worked with spatial depth in their drawings and paintings. I have been fascinated by this phenomenon and, for years, I have asked myself how did these artists achieve these startling effects. The result of my query is the formulation of the concept that:
Given a two-dimensional surface, transparency and contrast are the means to place forms in spatial depth.

Transparency will place the forms in depth away from us, and contrast will raise them towards us.

Triangulation in Drawing – 10 Min Video

Triangulation is a drawing technique which you line up landmarks and use them to achieve proportions and perspective. It works great with the figure and still life.

Pastel on Dark Paper – Just Add Light

Pastel on Dark Paper – Just Add Light by Michael Newberry

Pastel and dark paper are a great combo to create light effects.

Whenever I am a little stressed or some of my big projects weigh on my mind I get out pastels and some nice black or beautifully dark paper, like a Cansons, and go to town.

I love working pastel on dark paper for one important reason: the pastel being lighter than the paper directly creates a pure colored light.

I remember being in a kind of down mood and when Kimberly arrived to model I wanted to shake off that mood and feel free. We collaborated on this pose, one quite difficult to hold for more than 2 or 3 minutes.

The paper is black Cansons, 19 x 26″.

Lights and Darks in 3’s

Lights and Darks in 3’s by Michael Newberry

One big problem that artists face when developing light and shadow in a work is that they tend to have the exact same darks and lights scattered around the surface. The result is that it kills the life out of the drawing!

A great way to solve that problem is to celebrate a hierarchy of lights and darks. The simplest way to do that is to focus on three different tones of lights and darks.

Here I will take you through what I mean.

Dreams of Round Things, 2006, charcoal on Rives BFK, 26 x 19 inches.