Phil Starke Art Talk

After years of taking and teaching workshops, I’ve come to understand the difference between a good work of art and painting to undertand the fundamentals. As John Carlson says in his book, John Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, “Art is a thing so much of the imagination, of the soul, that it is difficult to descend to the fundamentals of technique and yet make it plain to the student that these are but the means, and not an end in themselves.  The underlying principles, or fundamentals, should be so hidden anyway by the beauty that they are eventually to support, that it would require much digging to disclose them.”  In other words, they become second nature to the artist and not the main concern every time he or she paints.  A beautiful passage in a painting that looks spontanious and simple will only happen with the knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of painting.   

    Edward Seago was a 20th century British landscape painter.  Known in the US primarily for his plein air work in oil and watercolor.  It’s hard to find books on his work but I have found some show catalogs of his plein air work.  One book that can be found is this “Edward Seago” by Ron Ranson.

He used a limited palette outside that varied from Indigo Blue, Ochre and Indian Red to different forms of primary colors.  His paintings always had a great sense of color harmony, very expressive and spontaneous brush work thats shows only what is important to the painting.  On the internet you can find galleries that carry his work and some will have catalogs.

Well, as you can see, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to get back to the blog.  I began to have several things converge upon me all at once and priorities had to be set.  Our biggest events this year were the wedding of my daughter and the graduation of my youngest son.  So yes, we are officially empty nesters.  Next were three big exhibitions during this same timeframe as well as two major trips. 

I’ve also been writing two books which are soon to be released.  One is a book with a compilation of my work, the other is a painting instruction book. So something had to give and I’m afraid it had to be the blog.   Now that things have settled down and I’ve got  some sort of a routine, I’m able to be back here blogging again.  My wife has also updated my website, so you might want to check it out.  She’s done some revamping and still has some more to do, but her main goal was to get the site to work faster and that has been accomplished.

Wilson Hurley passed away recently on the 29th of August.  I didn’t know Wilson very well, but I was able to visit his studio twice where he was kind enough to critique my work and spend time talking about painting and things that influenced him.  Wilson had a varied and full life, he attended West Point, became a pilot and served in Vietnam.  He attended law school and practiced in New Mexico.  During all this time he painted when he could.  He eventually started painting fulltime and used all his experiences in life to teach himself to paint and was encouraged by Robert Lougheed, also an artist in New Mexico. 

Wilson’s work can be found in many museums including the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Albuquerque Museum of Art.  The pieces that have had the most effect on me are the four very large murals located in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  They are monumental respresentations of light and color in landscape painting.   If you haven’t had a chance to see a good body of work by Wilson Hurley, you might want to check out this book “ Wilson Hurley: A Retrospective Exhibition“, then you, too, will see what tremendous talent he was.

My Great Uncle, Joseph Brooks lived on the farm that my dad was raised on near Kansas City, MO. He tended the chickens and had his own room off the kitchen where he would show me drawings and small watercolors that he would do around the farm. When I was older and serious about art I found out that he had gone to art school at Washington University in St. Louis after World War I. He became a commercial artist in St. Louis doing newspaper ads, labels and brochures mostly in ink and gauche. I inherited a lot of the work he did during those years. One that sticks out is the Clabber Girl Baking Soda label that is still being used today. Sometime in the thirties he moved back to the farm because of family demands.
He had always talked about his Life Drawing teacher in art school, Oscar Berninghaus and told lots of stories of Berninghaus living with and painting Indians in New Mexico, strapped to the top of a train riding throughout the West to get a better view and sketch when the train stopped.
Later, in art school, I found out how important the artist Berninghaus was and I studied his work at the St. Louis Museum and the Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. My uncle gave me his life drawings from school saying that Berninghaus would often sit down at his drawing to show him a point and end up doing the whole drawing.
Anyway, I’ve said all this to recommend a book that I finally bought, Oscar E. Berninghaus, “Master Painter of American Indians and the Frontier West”, by Gordon Sanders. Berninghaus composed beautiful paintings of Taos Indians in the midst of their element, surrounded by large cottonwood trees, the Pueblo, working with horses or putting up hay. He had a great sense of color that really caught the light of Northern New Mexico.