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       'Painting is just like making an after-dinner speech. If you want to be remembered, say one thing and stop."

                                                               -- Charles Hawthorne from Hawthorne on Painting

       Throughout history, in all forms of artistic expression, people have sung the praises of simplicity. Quotes about simplicity are ubiquitous, and when a creation is well thought out, rarely will there be a complaint of it being too simple. Even successful works of art that at first glance might appear very complicated will typically have an overall elemental concept that guides the artist on what to put in and what to leave out.

      This echoes the advice given me by my teachers and what I've been able to gather from the artists I've studied and the way they worked. Here are a few examples of quotes from art school that follow along with this principle of editing down to one idea:

----'Either paint a landscape with a figure, or a figure in a landscape.'

----- 'Sometimes you have to give up a pawn to save a queen.'

---- ' The most important thing is to have something to say.'

----- 'It's not what you put in, but what you leave out.' 

     More than anything else, these teachings are the foundation of what continues to guide me in my work today --- helping to make my paintings stronger but also as principles I keep in mind with writing, photography and pretty much life in general. I don't make after-dinner speeches but if I ever do one, I'm pretty sure I'll follow the same advice there as well.

     While many aspects of the painting process, both large and small, can benefit from a clearer vision of the principal story, certain painters I've studied have emphasized this simplification idea on an entirely different level. Early on I noticed that the artists whose work spoke to me in a way that made me want to understand and emulate what they were doing placed a particularly heavy emphasis on saying one thing and stopping. Why? Here is my theory -- because of the effect of light they were trying to capture. Basically, it comes down to an acknowledgement of the physical properties of paint compared to the range of what nature is capable of, so for those of us who aspire to achieve this quality of light in our paintings, the mantra of 'say one thing' takes on an added significance. 

       I can still recall the first time I saw The Boit Children by John Singer Sargent in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The light hitting these 4 sisters was so vivid, so believable. It felt to me like if the room lights had been switched off, the painting itself would still be filled with that same luminous glow. Eventually I came to understand that Sargent didn't leave out a lot of detail and smaller forms just as a byproduct of  bravura brushwork or because it was cool (which it is) but because by leaving things out it's possible to create a more compelling illusion of light and form.  The expression of light will lose some of it's impact with each plane, color or bit of detail that is added. Therefore, using the limited value range in an economical way and hanging onto that initial statement is a key lesson in how to create such magic with mere pigments. To capture an effect like that, one has to be pretty ruthless in cutting things out, as revealed in the instruction of Sargent's teacher Carolus Duran --

                     "All that is not indispensable is harmful. Art means selection ---therefore select."

After decades of painting, my respect for the wisdom of this discipline has only increased and the notion of simplifying one's expression down to a primary concept has become much more than just a prescient observation about human beings and their short attention spans.  The way I interpret 'Say one thing' today encompasses a lot of territory but I don't internalize it as a strict rule to never be broken. Rather it's more like an acceptance of what I can say in paint given the materials I have to work with. For everything I put in, something else is subtracted. It's fine to squeeze as much as possible into each painting but establishing a priority from the very beginning allows for the judgement to push the envelope successfully. Without a game plan, though, it's very easy to get distracted and not have a clue which way to go when the inevitable forks in the road start popping up.  Not simplicity merely for the sake of simplicity, but simplicity to free up the power of your palette for the most important thing you have to say. Above all , it's a reminder to be satisfied sometimes with just doing one thing well. It's harder than it looks.

" The simplification of anything is always sensational."  -- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Work for simplicity more. Keep the lights together, the darks together. Separate lights and shadows enough to make them solid. Don't get too many things in the light ---avoid too many branches, too many windows, too many spots. Only the owner of a house counts the windows." --- Charles Hawthorne from Hawthorne on Painting

Years of painting by natural light have made me hyperaware of the sun's schedule, and that's especially true during the winter months as we approach the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Right now I'm noticing the light in my studio begin to fade around 4 in the afternoon, and that will happen a bit earlier each day as the next few weeks go by. Whatever hours of daylight there are, it always feels like a wonderful gift to be able to work under the cool diffused light coming in from my studio windows. Much of my painting life though, was spent in less than ideal lighting conditions so here's a few tips for making the most of whatever situation you're in. There's a huge mystique about the whole north light thing but the basic concept couldn't be more simple. Outdoors you have two light sources --overcast light from the entire sky and point source illumination from the sun.  The overhead umbrella of the blue sky provides an ideal light source to work by, whereas the always shifting sunlight and moving cast shadows across your palette, canvas and arrangement can be a distraction, to say the least.  Basically, when working with natural light , the 2 main things you have to watch out for are sunlight and multiple light sources. For all of you living in the Northern Hemisphere, north facing windows will catch the least amount of direct sun but if you're in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite and it's south facing windows you want. At the equator, I'm not sure what the solution is since I've never had to deal with it or known anyone who did. At any rate, even if all you have is an east facing window and the sun has moved overhead for the day, the diffused light should be constant enough to be able to work by that window for a few hours in the afternoons. A west facing window can in the same way provide fairly consistent light in the morning. Even when the sun isn't directly coming in a window it can still bounce off of surfaces outdoors and to some degree affect the quality of the light indoors but generally speaking it will stay consistent enough to work from. If you are a still life painter working from life and the light from your window doesn't reach far enough to accommodate both the arrangement and your work area, then my suggestion would be to use an artificial light for the still life but park yourself, easel and palette beside the window. The full spectrum natural light will serve you well for color mixing and as a bonus may also improve your mood, especially if you are sensitive to lower levels of light during certain times of the year. In other words, avoiding Seasonal Affect Disorder is yet another good excuse to spend time at the easel! Before you get started on setting up an arrangement, place a highly reflective glass or metal object on the table where the still life will be. If there are multiple highlights on that object , eliminate or minimize as many as you can by using a shadow box, shades over some windows or whatever does the trick. The objective is to have one clearly dominant direction the light is coming from so you'll be able to capture a strong feeling of light and shade. Just as with painting outdoors, anticipating what the light will do and how long the best working conditions will remain constant is all part of the process, but in my opinion, well with the extra trouble if you can manage it.

Still on the topic of light, here's a fun exercise in observation skills that's easy to access during the holidays. I have a bad case of Magpie Syndrome anyway -- a fascination with shiny, sparkly things --- but with the abundance of colored lights around this time of year, I never get tired of noticing the dramatic visual phenomena of the shadows appearing to be the complement of the color of the light. A red light will have a blue-green shadow, a blue light will cast an orange shadow, etc. Regardless of whether life at the moment has too many interruptions to allow time at the easel, you can still practice your observation skills in this way. Noticing these color relationships when the chroma is so vivid can help solidify color principles in your mind and be very helpful when working with the more typical painting situations where the color of the light and its influence on the shadows is much more subtle. Studying a shadow and trying to determine the color can sometimes have me rotating around the entire color wheel, but remembering and using this guiding principle helps to keep my color decisions in context and the overall composition will end up having a more consistent feeling of light and harmony as a result.