Thomas Bosket - my avenging angel

I arrived at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts for a week-long Drawing Class full of anticipation and excitement to meet the teacher so wonderfully described in the brochure, a woman from some college with an outstanding reputation and very cool artwork.  Imagine my distress then when class started and in walked a tall dark-haired man who looked to be at the most 19 years old – his goatee didn’t fool me!

He told us something had come up for the other teacher and he would be replacing her.  His name was Thomas Bosket.

I felt resistant to change – a typical response for me - but had no choice so I listened politely as he began the lesson.  I was signed up to get Master’s level credit for the class, so I had to be a good student.

Thomas began by teaching us about contour drawing then having us do it.  Contour drawing is an exercise when you follow the contour of an object with your eyes as you draw it on paper.  Thomas modified it a bit.  He had us squeeze a blob of clay with our hands then follow the contours of that not only around it but also through it, creating a 3-D looking contour map.  I didn’t really understand what he wanted us to do, but I tried the exercise, grinding my teeth and gripping my pencil tighter.  It was not something my new-to-drawing-from-life brain could comprehend.  I wanted to throw that stupid lump of clay across the room.

I’d come to Arrowmont feeling pretty self-satisfied because I’d gotten an exhibit of my pregnant nude drawings, all done from photos, after only having been doing art for about nine months.  I thought I was pretty good.

So to not be able to draw a stupid lump of clay really pissed me off.

Thomas made the rounds of the class and eventually got to me.  He noted my frustration and told me other ways to approach the problem.  He even drew lines on the clay itself so I could see precisely what I needed to draw.  My frustration mounted.  Rather than ignore my petulance, he spoke to it, gently, respectfully – he let me know he could tell I was frustrated.  That validation burst open my floodgates, and, before I knew what was happening, I told him exactly what I thought of his stupid exercise and that I couldn’t do it and I hated it – my two-year-old was unleashed.  Shockingly, he listened.  He stayed put.  He let my toddler have her say then he addressed the adult in me – he told me he understood my frustration and he could see how important it was to me to do it right – maybe if I could relax into it a bit, and try to enjoy it, it might be more pleasurable.

Relaxing into something was not a familiar concept to me.  But having him listen to me and be able to hear my frustration without ignoring me or getting mad or taking it personally or holding it against me shifted something inside of me.  Part of me recognized I was safe and that there might actually be space for all of me in that art room.

Later that week, I told him there were two parts of me battling for expression – the super-detailed, uptight perfectionistic part that can copy exceedingly well.  She produced the successful pretty pregnant nudes.  Then there was (and still is) the expressive, wild side full of emotions and passion who wanted time on the page and canvas too.  I was afraid of her – she was too unpredictable and the results of her work were ugly and hard to be with, and no one would want to look at them. I wanted desperately to integrate those two parts.

Thomas came up with an exercise for me.

He tore off two six-foot pieces of brown craft paper and taped them next to each other on the floor so I had a 6’x6’ piece of paper to work on.  This was evening, so there were only about 6-8 people in the room rather than the usual 25-30 who were there during the day.  Each was working on his/her own project.

Thomas told me to sit on the floor, in the middle of the paper.  He put 10-15 drawing tools in front of me – pencil, pen, charcoal, conte’ crayon, marker, stick, ink, stone – weird and mundane.  Then he blindfolded me and told me to just let myself go – express myself however came through me.  He set a timer for an hour.

Knowing there were others around me, I had some difficulty letting go, but I turned interior and moved the writing instruments over the paper however they wanted to move, switching from one to another intuitively.  I was lost inside my own experience when I heard some giggling and finger pointing near me.  Yes, I heard the finger point.  Thomas was there in a flash.  He told them in no uncertain terms that I was doing some significant work and they had no business whatsoever speaking about it much less making fun of me.  He dismissed them then whispered to me to keep going, not to worry about them.

My marks became furious, incensed, rageful.  Scenes of being made fun of as a child sped through my head.  I felt the hot heat of embarrassment and shame.  I felt Thomas’s indignation and fury and loved my avenging angel for his words.  I thought about my younger self and felt great compassion for her.  I played the avenger for her in those previous scenes.  My marks began to change as I felt the gentleness of understanding and comfort and compassion for myself. I let the pencil move loosely and gently across the page as the anger dissipated and was replaced by the joy of the mark.  I let the pencil hang loosely between my fingers and noticed how it felt as it moved across the paper.  I hummed to myself.  I imagined being on a swing.  The pure joy of creation filled me.

The timer went off.  I pulled the scarf from my eyes and looked at what I’d created, feeling It would be wonderful and beautiful and meaningful.

Frankly, what was there on the paper wasn’t particularly notable.  It was a lot of scribbles that didn’t make any sense rationally.  I could see where my anger had asserted itself.  I could see the gentle joy of creativity.  I could see the passages where I’d been feeling embarrassed.  It was all there on the paper.  I didn’t know if someone else would be able to see or discern all that.  I felt some embarrassment surface again – what would others say?  It was just scribbles.  Thomas came up and listened to me pour out my thoughts about it.  He listened powerfully and helped me own the experience AND the results.  He hung the piece, huge though it was, on the wall of the classroom so I could look at it time and again over the course of the rest of the week.

I went to bed that night full of feelings – confusion, joy, satisfaction, fear about what I’d unleashed, excitement that I had a tool to use to let my intensity out, curiosity about what others would say, strength that no matter what others said, Thomas understood it and would help me remember what I’d done.

At the end of the week, we all hung up all our work around the room for a final critique.  It was a melee of activity as we worked to clean up our workspace, find our work, and find a place to hang it randomly amongst all the other pieces.  At some point I noticed that my big piece was gone.  My stomach lurched.  I asked Thomas if he knew where it was.  He stopped the class and asked if anyone had seen it.  One of the women said, “Oh, I threw it away – I thought it was trash.”  Not meanly, just matter-of-factly.  Thomas tracked it down and hung it up with a determined flourish.

We spent the next several hours talking about the week, about what we’d produced, how it had been for us.  Thomas critiqued our work and gave us feedback of things we could work on once we got back home.  When we got to my huge piece, he pointed to it and said, “This is the most important work that was created here this week.  It took tremendous courage to make it and was the moment of a powerful breakthrough for this artist.  If no other piece stands out from this week, this one does.”

I felt such joy in my chest as he spoke that way about my scribbles.  I knew at some level that he was right.  It took courage I hadn’t possessed before to overcome my perfectionism enough to dibble and dabble and scribble and scrabble on paper, blindfolded on the floor, in front of others and to let my own judgments and worry go enough to express my true nature.  I’d explored my feelings and gotten to see them, literally see them, come up and pass through. 

My painting of Thomas done several years later after we'd worked together a few more times.

 I will forever be grateful to Thomas Bosket, my avenging angel and the teacher who helped me love my own intensity.

Thomas Bosket's art class "Honing Your Vision"

Dear Friends,
What a treat!  It's that time of year again!  Thomas Bosket is coming to Richmond to provide us with another opportunity to hone our artistic skills and to hone our vision of ourselves as artists.

If you are at the intermediate skill level or beyond, this could be a fabulous class for you!  In this six day class, Thomas will lead us on a journey together through some tough stuff and some very stunning parts of what it means to be human - a journey that exposes our deepest longings and desires - one that will be tough at times and thrilling at others.  We will be taken out of our brains into our bodies.  We will be exposed to raw energies and experiences that may be uncomfortable but definitively alive.

In his almost twenty years of teaching art, Thomas has developed many exercises to help students break through their self-imposed limits on their artistic abilities.  The most memorable one I ever experienced with him was the following:

The first time I worked with Thomas was at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN.  I was a fairly inexperienced artist at the time, having only been drawing for about 18 months.  One of the main issues I was struggling with was feeling like there were two parts of myself artistically - the one who wanted my work to look perfect, photo-realistic, controlled, and the other who had lots of pent up emotion and just wants to express herself - wildly!  I couldn't begin to figure out how to blend the two on one sheet of paper.

Thomas gave me an exercise to help me out.  He tore off two 6' pieces of 3' wide craft paper and taped them next to each other, giving me a 6'x6' "canvas" to work on.  He put it on the floor.  He then sat me down, put 30 different writing implements in front of me - a Sharpie, pastel, pencil, charcoal, etc., etc., even a stick and several stones.  Then he set the timer for an hour and blindfolded me.  His instructions were to listen inward and to express myself however came to me to do so.  I immediately picked up something - no clue what - and began to make marks on the paper.  They varied at times from frenetic to chaotic to subtle and almost not even there.  I switched implements frequently.  I felt completely absorbed in the process.  My feelings cascaded all over the place.  At one point I heard some of the other students pointing at me and laughing at how I looked.  That took me right back to elementary school and fellow students' judgments.  My face burned with embarrassment.  Then I heard Thomas go over to them and tell them in no uncertain terms that they had no business saying a thing about me, that they were to work on their own work or leave, what I was doing was exceedingly important and they had to leave me alone.  Wow.  That healed some old wounds.  And gave me just what I needed to keep going, a bit freer of self-imposed constraints.

I continued to draw.  I went very interior.  The minutes flew by, dragged by, eluded me, then, suddenly, the timer went off.  I was excited to look at what I had drawn.  I had become quite attached to certain parts I thought would be emotive.  With my eyes open, it was difficult to find those passages.  What I came to realize was that it was about process, not product.  I was so absorbed in the process that I experienced bliss in the moment.  I learned a whole new way of thinking about art through that experience.


That is the type of teacher Thomas is.  In this workshop he will give us exercises which will help us shift our perceptions of ourselves, our worlds, our art in ways we can't begin to imagine.

If you are at a place in your life where this sounds like a good journey, one you want to take, please get in touch with me and let me know.  We can only take 12 students, so please sign up right away to insure your place.  The logistics are below:

When:  June 19 - 25, 2011
           Sunday, June 19, from 2-6 with dinner afterwards
           Monday - Friday, June 20 - 24, from 10-4 daily
           Saturday, June 25, from 10-2
Where:  Crossroads Art Center at Staples Mill and Broad, Richmond, VA
Cost:  $600 for all instruction and dinner on the 19th
How to sign up:  send me an email, then send me a $300 deposit to reserve your place.  The remainder will be due by June 1.

If you're interested in learning what others have to say about Thomas's teaching, you can go to Rate My Professors to see what his students at Parsons School of Design in NYC have to say about him.  It's kind of fun to read their critiques! 

Each time I've worked with Thomas, my artwork has taken a quantum leap forward.  I can't recommend him highly enough.  I hope you'll join us if it feels like the right class for you!

Happy Creating!
Susan

P.S.  By the way, if you live outside of Richmond and are interested in taking the class, let me know - we can probably figure something out about a place to stay.  Don't let that little detail stop you!

Workin' my stuff

It took me a while to build up my courage to start on the new canvas.  For one thing, I asked Chris to make it 40"x60" then decided to reduce the size to 30"x45" but regrettably forgot to mention that to Chris (!), so when I came home from teaching Tuesday, he had already made it the larger size.  Intimidating!  It has ended up being perfect - I'm loving the larger size - but it made it a little harder for me to get going.

Plus I couldn't figure out how to incorporate all the new stuff I learned from Thomas - Jenny Saville?  Freud?  Rembrandt?  Whose lead should I follow?

I took out my books by each of them plus another 10 or so books with other nudes in them and looked to see which sort of image I wanted to end up with.  The interesting thing was that none of the pictures looked like I wanted mine to look.  The colors were off, or they were too extreme, or not extreme enough, or they distorted the figure - whatever.  Though I didn't quite have a vision of how I wanted mine to end up, I couldn't find it in the books either.

I decided that was a good thing and it meant I was doing something unique, so I began!

I mixed up a bunch of colors I saw in her flesh - purple, pink, green, burnt sienna.  I decided to use a light green for cool and alizarin crimson mixed with vermillion for hot colors with enough dioxinine violet in there to deepen the shadows.  For those of you for whom that last sentence was Greek, what I mean is this:  when I look at a photograph or a person I want to paint, I think about values - where the lights and shadows are.  Then I take that one step further and consider where the woman's flesh looks warm and cool.  Creating those contrasts helps bring the form forward or send it back, thus creating a stronger illusion of three dimensionality.  If an artist accentuates the cool colors, the figure will be less appealing in most cases - more corpse-like perhaps.  If she focuses on the hot colors, the body looks more sweltering and full of life.  I think Freud focuses on cool greys, and Saville has hotter colors in her works.

In the picture of my palette(s), you can obviously see the darks and lights, but perhaps the hots and cools are evident also.  There are some cool greens on the left, and the oranges and reds and browns are on the right.

I put a lot of turpenoid on my brush then picked up a gob of paint - the turpenoid thinned out the paint a lot so it would drip and run and go on smoothly.  I worked in the shadow areas mostly because I wanted to get some interesting color into those so the piece would feel strong.

My next step surprised me - I had thought I might let the darks dry like that then come back in with the lights later, but instead I picked up some of the light green with my brush and started putting it in.  The brush was large - 3" - twice the size I usually use - so I didn't have a lot of control - a good thing, in my case!  I picked up some of the dark colors accidentally.  That ended up spreading the shadows and modifying them in lovely ways. 

After that, I took a smaller brush and did some work on her face.  I did a lot of it with larger brushes, but knew I wanted a better level of detail there, so I let myself use smaller ones.  After that I put in the curtains in the background and worked some areas up more.  I especially focused on the hand but was excited by how that went.  I'd put down the shadows and finger delineations carefully even though they looked like sausages hanging off her arm.  When I went back in with the right colors and a slightly smaller brush, I was surprised  how easily I could move the paint around and get an accurate-looking rendering quite quickly.  I'm finding it helps a lot to have so much paint on the canvas.  I'm used to working with it much thinner.

Today I want to refine her facial features and some shadows which seem a bit off.  Her left leg seems odd too, so I'll check on that.  Otherwise I'm feeling like she's pretty much done.  All that huge canvas in about 6 hours.  Ones that size usually take weeks.  I think it's the difference in confidence and looseness and trusting that I can say what I want to say in broader strokes. 

Dear Chris - now he's going to have to spend the weekend making me more canvases! 

More from Thomas Bosket's workshop

Whenever I work with Thomas, I do brand new things which challenge and exite me.  I go to lands hitherto unknown to me.  I learn things I didn't know existed. 

There's the saying, "Reach for the stars and you may just reach the moon" - or something like that - the idea being that going way far out and reaching high at least gets you further than you'd be if you hadn't left your comfortable easy seat. 

It's like that for me with Thomas.  I am reaching for the stars.  Ultimately I end up at the moon after a long while of integrating what he's taught.

Here are the images I've been working on this week.  They're not nicely cropped because my canvas is too close to the wall to be able to get back far enough to take a good image, but it'll certainly give you an idea of what I'm working on.  They're quite different than my usual work!

This first picture will give you an indication of where the pieces all started.  They were in this shape at the beginning of the week, though the others had some indications of value on them as well (darker paint where the shadows are).

The second picture has two different images.  The one on the far left is the first one I did.  Thomas was showing me how some of the Masters painted.  They would put down a carefully gradiated layer of grey values and from there they would work darker with transparent paints and lighter with opaque ones.  Obviously I haven't gotten to the second stage of that one yet.

This is Thomas's first layer of a painting by Rembrandt to show me how to do the layers juicier and looser.  I used that technique - believe it or not - in the second one before putting on all the crazy layers.

The second picture in this image is what I spent most of yesterday on.  Thomas gave a demo on mark making in the morning then I decided to try to incorporate all those types of marks - and more - into my painting.  I went into the basement and found a bunch of crazy tools to use - bad house paintbrushes, twine, scrapers, plastic pieces, etc., -  then looked outside for more - leaves, sticks, twigs.  I think I used them all.  It was very freeing to try to think of ways to use each one.  It gave the picture a lot of diversity of marks and many interesting passges throughout.

Chris looked at it in the evening and wanted to know how people feel looking at it who already like my work the way it is.  I told him that isn't the point.  I have to keep developing as an artist - it's the only way to be an artist - to keep exploring and learning new things.  I doubt my work will continue to look like this, but for right now, it does - and it might.  And if that's the case, then people will either like it, or they won't, but I'm not creating for other people - I'm creating because I have to.  I think artists die inside if they get trapped into making art that always looks the same.  It's a horrible fate, and I refuse to consign myself to it.  Period.

So the second image has lots of explorations in it.  Lots of different types of marks.  Lots of intense color.  Chris commented that it has lots of emotion in it - I can certainly see how it gives that impression - but I wasn't angry or anything like that.  Instead I was curious.  I was playing.  I was intensely interested in what I was doing.  I listened to music for part of it, but that was actually too much - it got in the way of the rest of my mind. 

This last image was a real gift from Thomas.  He came out to the studio with me after the other students had leaft, after dinner.  We looked at a book of Jenny Saville's images.  She's amazing the way she paints.  The image here is the one we were looking at when we did the above image.  It hasn't gotten to the finished stage Jenny Saville's piece is at yet, but we're heading there.  Saville puts all those colors underneath - those gashes of paint, the drips and runs and stains and deep darks and shocking lights.  Then turns out with something so exquisite and real looking, it makes me want to weep with recognition of the pure humanity of it.  Her work is also 10' tall or bigger usually.  I wish I had such a large canvas prepared so I could practice on it, but this smaller one will have to do for now.

Thomas sat behind me and told me the strokes to put on and how.  It's so completely foreign to me to figure out how to do those strokes - I mean, compare that image to the first, grey, subtle one!  This later one is NOT my normal predilection!  But I'm loving learning how to do it.  I am looking forward to figuring out the next layer today.  I feel trepidation about being able to figure it out myself, but that's the task I'm setting for myself.

So now the canvas looks crazy with the three different styles of pictures on it, but I'm seeing it as an incredible opportunity to learn so much in one week.  Amazing!

Off to the races!  Who knows what'll be up here tomorrow????!!

This week I'm involved in a workshop with Thomas Bosket, my long-time teacher who teaches at Parsons School of Design in NYC during the school year.  This is the 6th or 7th time I've worked with him, beginning in 2000 or so.  I met him when I took a drawing class he taught at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN.  He's a fabulous teacher, full of knowledge and an insatiable desire to share it.  He is zany, intuitive, kind, and demanding. 

When I work with him, I invariably learn enough for me to chew on for the next year or two.  My work shifts dramatically after his workshops, and I find it takes me a couple of years to absorb everything I've learned and to integrate it so it's mine.  Our first year together, I went from drawing 3" pregnant nudes in pencil to drawing my kids' faces 3'x6' on brown paper!  THAT was dramatic!  The thing is, I feel like both options are completely valid, and I like both - it's just that he opens me up to possibilities I hadn't considered before because I hadn't know they existed.

The other thing he helps me do is figure out how to integrate my very intense, emotional side and my more perfectionistic, careful side.  Can you figure out which is which in the two pictures I've put here?!  I tend to behave very carefully in my world so I won't rock the boat or upset people.  That part of me certainly comes out in my very careful, photorealistic work.  But there's also another part of me which is quite intense and emotional.  I feel deeply - what artist doesn't? - and, with those with whom I feel safe, I express myself thoroughly.  I would ideally love to integrate those two parts more fully both in my life and in my art. 

Each time I work with Thomas, I work on ways to accomplish that.  Over the years I've found ways to bring more passion into my art, even if it's subdued and subtle.  The picture on the left, Dancing Woman, isn't subtle at all!  I had begun the canvas months before but couldn't get anywhere with it so I set it aside.  Then one day I was feeling angry and decided to blow it out all over the canvas.  In 2 hours I had a finished piece, and I felt so much calmer!  It was great therapy!  So constructive - and effective!

I will also often paint with my hands (with latex gloves on) because that is so visceral.  It's so satisfying - like finger painting when I was a kid, or making mud pies.  The picture I did of Dylan recently was done with my fingers.  I like the immediacy of it.

In this workshop with Thomas, I'm trying to learn how to paint classically, like Ruebens and those guys.  I am aware that I don't have a lot of technique - I just paint however occurs to me.  So I figured if I learn the classical way to paint, I can then choose to use that or not, but I'll be making a clear choice rather than working by default.  So this morning Thomas showed me the first step to painting a cactus in this method.  it's extremely dark and subtle at this point. 

First he painted the canvas brown - he wanted to use burnt umber, but all I had was burnt sienna, so he used that mixed with a bit of Vermillion (red).  Then he mixed black and white - I NEVER use black! - and painted the shadows in varying values of grey.  Then he modified the greys by putting color in with them, but still in the mid-value range - not very dark, not very light.  The result is the picture you see (except that it's a poor picture because of the glare on it from the wet oils - sorry!)

Thomas is going to show me the other steps tonight so I can see the whole process from start to finish.  Thank goodness!  I'm finding it embarassingly difficult to understand and absorb the process from words.  I really need to see it, then I need to do it!

This afternoon after his lesson I took out a canvas I'd laid aside a few months ago (Shiela x 4) and started doing the process on it.  First I covered the canvas with a layer of sienna brown mixed with a bit of burnt umber.  I don't  have a picture of that.  Then I began putting in the greys on the far left-hand image. The task I set for myself was to render the values correctly in grey.  I didn't get to the next stage yet - this one took a long time.  What it feels like to me is that this process takes many, many layers - it's a lot more work than direct painting.  You also have to know where you're going and trust that the process will get you there.  I don't quite trust it yet - that this grey image will end up with luminous gorgeous skin.  I have done that with direct painting, but I can't figure out how to get there from here.  It seems like the greys would just remain grey and yucky. 

I do trust Thomas, though, and look forward to learning how to do it.  I have an image of a woman who has exceedingly pale skin.  I'm looking forward to figuring out how to make her look effervescent and glowing from inside through this method.

Stay tuned!!

10 drawings in a day

In the last pastel class last year, I talked to one of my students and encouraged her to do a lot of drawing over the holidays if she could find the time.  I told her I should do it too!  Then I told her I would  do it - then another student said she would too.  So the three of us committed to it.

Then I promptly forgot all about it!  Until 2 days ago when I realized that class will be starting tonight, and I hadn't done a single drawing.  Sure, I'd been working on art almost every day, but that wasn't our agreement!  It was that we'd each do 10 drawings.  I wish I'd done them all along, but I didn't, so yesterday I came out to the studio and started drawing!  By the end of the day, I'd done 9, but just couldn't quite finish one last one.  I did it this morning.  Whew!  So glad to have kept my commitment!  Now I'm looking forward to seeing what the other two students have done.  It's a wonderful practice, drawing each day.  I think it's like exercising.  Whatever you do on a regular basis, you get much better at.  This coming semester (starting tomorrow) I will have a free period each day when I'm not teaching.  I will take my sketch book and commit to doing at least one drawing a day during that time.  I also want to work on my book during that time, so it'll be busy, but that's OK!  I like to feel productive!

My teacher Thomas Bosket often sets crazy rules for himself to follow.  Once he decided to use only 4 colors to paint with.  I don't know how long he did that, but I think it was for well over a year.  You'd better believe he learned everything there was to know about those 4 colors and how to get everything out of them a person could get!  He inspires me to take on new projects, to try on new things, just to challenge myself and see how they feel.  Have you ever done anything like that?  I'd love to hear about it!

Here are the 10 drawings:

OK, now I get to go paint before the day is done!  I'll be teaching tonight and want to have time to paint before then!  My new painting is calling loudly to me.

Have a great day!