13 - Frank Eliel
252 Myrtle Road
Port Townsend, WA 98368
Telephone: 360.379.2696
f.eliel@att.net
Landscape paintings – wet pastel
November in Cadaquez
Wet pastel
17” x 23”
Demonstration:
1. A partially completed painting – after chalk pastel applied.
2. After pigment applied.
3. After UV varnish.
Will talk about the steps and the visual approach.
Directions to studio:
Myrtle not on most maps. South of Cape George, South of Beckett Point. Turn east (or left) from Cape George Road onto Huntingford. Turn right on Myrtle. Second house on right.
Artist statement:
Edges - Frank Eliel
My paintings arise along the edges, the edge of images, the edge of representation, and the edge of media. My very early art experience began along the geographical edge where art was barely taught. My sister remembers our mutual awe viewing Feininger’s Gelmeroda VI. During college I studied advertising, but I was more interested in the utility of advertising than in the insight. A 1965 trip to Mexico revealed the descendents of the great muralists. I thought to myself, “I can paint better than that.” This thought initiated my art experience, and forty years later I am still trying, I am still exploring the edges.
My training during all those years has been eclectic. I have attended classes taught by important teachers and painters, Noel Quinn of Chouinard, Rex Brandt and Delmer Yoakum. I have attended classes taught by good teachers and poor ones. I took figure drawing from Bill Clardy, over and over. He was one of the good ones.
Along the way I analyzed Feininger, Cezanne, El Greco, Lotto, Turner and John Marin, the pre-WWII great American watercolorist. I like the way Marin “saw”. His never stated but always suggested the fragments and his brain stitched fragments together to create pictures. It is, I know, the way I see. I am not a camera. So I work along the edges of images.
Because I am not a camera, I understand that the way we “feel” a person, place, or thing conditions our response. And we can have different responses to different fragments in the same visual collage. Therefore, feeling is as important and often more important than literal reality. Further, my feeling is not the same as yours. My feeling as painter and your feeling as viewer are equally valid, and I respect you. More than that our feelings, yours and mine, are not the same today as they were yesterday. But we must have a common point of departure. I need a clue, don’t you? Recognizable images provide those clues. So I work along the edge of representation.
I started my art experience as a water colorist. I was lousy although I made some wonderful images. At the end of those first twenty-five frustrating years an art teacher demanded we try pastels. I liked the effect but hated the infected sinuses. The thought occurred, “Why not use pastels like some California water colorists use water color, wet into wet.” This thought has occurred to a number of other people, but each one of us has had to invent their own approach. There is no school, or teacher, that teaches wet into wet pastel, or as I call it, wet pastel. Not all subjects are emotionally suitable for wet pastel. Some demand a more classic assault. For these situations I use water miscible oils – water not oil is used as the primary painting medium. . Again, I work along the edge of media.