richard pratt paintings

RICHARD PRATT studio

RICHARD PRATT paintings

1


2



3

Published by

RICHARD PRATT studioKnoxville, TN USA

printed in Amsterdam

Richard Pratt’s writings copyright © 2013 by RICHARD PRATT

all images of Richard Pratt’s paintings copyright © 2013 by RICHARD PRATT

all other images are in the public domain

ISBN 978-1-4675-7022-0

* * *

On the Cover:

A Rake’s Progress: The Heir Detail acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

2010 -2011


4



5


6

Contents.

07 Contents 08 Introduction 10 Transitions 12 No Two Years: The Four Seasons 16 Richard Pratt paints a painting 22 Disruption: Winter into Spring 24 Heads Up: Seasons at Our Feet 26 Homage 27 A Rake’s Progress 29 Richard Pratt paints a series 36 Feeling 37 Vines 40 Abstract 41 Street Trees 42 Aloft 43 The Last Word


7

Introduction.

A painting is sometimes worth a thousand missing words, especially for

someone like myself who is a painter but not necessarily a writer. A painter

has a natural aversion to having his work reduced to a definitive paragraph

or two, and yet he relies on words to speak about it and to listen to a

viewer’s reactions.

Words take their time traveling from page to page, from ear to ear, but

paintings can be comprehended immediately. Even though a viewer might

return time and again to a favorite painting and discover something new to

her, the painting does not change in time, she does. It is through these

often uniquely personal reactions that a painting finds a continued life

beyond the studio.

The images in this book may offer the reader a similar opportunity and

encourage a closer look at the paintings themselves. The words in this

book are offered as a rumination on painting in general and on my work in

particular. In the longer essays an attempt has been made to reveal an

artist’s process and to provide a glimpse into his mind and studio. The

shorter pieces are intended as flashes of insight into specific paintings.

A painter reacts to his own work as much as anyone else does and

continues to do so long after he actively disengages himself from the

process of making a specific painting. The memory of his original

intentions is often buried beneath his continued reactions to a painting.

The words grow and grow around the work, viewers come and go, but the

paintings will forever remain the same, waiting patiently to be seen again

and again.


8


9

The Nomad SeriesNomad I | Nomad II | Nomad IIIacrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches each2009

Transitions.

We mark the passage of time, our lives, by contemplating the seasons, while artists’ and poets’ works pertaining to the seasons have guided us through long centuries. The question becomes, “How does one paint spring, summer, fall, and winter this time around?”

In No Two Years the leaves of one year’s seasons are caught by the wind, constantly change, and are gradually effaced by time.

“There is a bit of every season in each season.”Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 1974

No Two Years: The Four Seasons acrylic on four canvas panels 48 x 192 inches overall

2011/2012


10


11

No Two Years: Winter acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

2011/2012


12

No Two Years: Spring acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2011/2012


13

No Two Years: Summer acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches

2011/2012


14

No Two Years: Autumnacrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2011/2012


15

Richard Pratt paints a painting.

For months I thought about painting the foliage of trees: leaves that would

float and overlap each other on the canvas but reveal little of the structure

of the branches beneath them. This idea came from a casual, daily

observation of the woods behind my studio where scrims of small leaves

sailed before curtains of larger ones, and the leaves of tiny saplings waved

in the air beneath.

A Rake’s Progress I & IV, 2011

My plan was to limit myself to a simple vocabulary of leaf shapes cut from

stiff paper. I had done this for a different effect during the previous year in

A Rake’s Progress, a series of eight paintings in which the repetition of

standardized shapes had given structure to otherwise random patterns. As

always, ideas for future paintings gestated while working on the current

one, but at that time I had no picture for my future painting, no mental

image to get me started.


16

I completed the Rake series barely in time for a show in Atlanta and left for

Italy a few weeks later. Travel is not a usual part of my process as a painter,

but anything that happens in life contributes to the work, anything from a

small itch to a grand tour.

So one hot day in September I found myself standing in the Uffizi Gallery

in Florence looking at Botticelli’s Primavera, a beautiful depiction of Venus

as the personification of April. Most importantly for me, though, the

painting revealed a clever emphasis on the subtle transformations between

one season and another. Although Botticelli’s Primavera reads backwards

through time from right to left, I suddenly thought of the forward

movement of the seasons as a fitting subject and their transitions as a key to

painting them. Later, when I came across Annie Dillard’s thought that

“there is a bit of every season in each season,” my project found its mantra.

Sandro Botticelli La Primavera, 1477 - 1478


17

While still in Italy and unable to paint anything, my own thoughts about the

four seasons kept turning and turning, quickly becoming an obsession: I

could begin the painting by indicating each season through the changing

colors of foliage. I could present each season on a separate canvas, but

incorporate effects leftover from the previous season as well as hints of the

approaching one. A pattern of movement forward through time and from

left to right could rise out of a dynamic repetition of simple shapes.

Longing for Italy, but happy to return to my studio after a three week

absence, I realized that I was now committed to a very large picture

comprised of four canvas panels measuring 48 inches by 48 inches that

side by side would add up to a painting four feet tall and sixteen feet wide.

My equal commitment to Botticelli’s concept of seasonal transition meant

that I could not paint these panels as a series of paintings as I usually do,

but would have to paint all four at the same time in a small studio. In fact,

due to the lack of space there, I was never able to view these panels as one

complete painting in my studio.


18

I began work with a quick sketch of the four panels showing the shape and

placement of the two large tree trunks that I conceived as anchors for the

composition. A small sketch like this served as the ‘scaffolding’ for the

painting. I tried not to over-think things, preferring a degree of natural

awkwardness in it. Once satisfied with the composition, I remained

doggedly faithful to it throughout the painting process.

More gradually, I devised a ‘protocol’ for the four canvases, an evolving set

of rules that would unite the panels visually and give them a sense of

belonging together. As is usual of course, in time I ended up bending or

violating these rules. This protocol addressed an important element not

included in the sketch: the leaves themselves. The new rules required that

they be based on four standardized leaf shapes, diminishing in size, each

size to be painted in one of three horizontal bands or zones of foliage on

the canvas. The rules fell apart, as predicted, when I painted ‘Autumn’ with

its swirl of leaves covering the canvas from top to bottom, but the protocol

served its purpose overall.

The sketching, the creation of picture protocols, the first marks on primed

canvas, and the blocking-in of shapes on the canvas are just preliminaries

to the complicated process of actually painting a painting.

Figuring out the visual relationships between color and light is the primary

challenge for me as a painter, and my preference for discreet, flat areas of

paint further complicates things. Placing unmodulated areas of color side

by side --- think of a map --- can be tricky when trying to maintain clear

contrasts between elements and when determining which of these

elements will be visually dominant, which one will be light or dark, bright

or dull, stand out boldly or blend into the background.

So for a painter, the word ‘painting’ is a verb, a loop of continuously

repeated action-verbs: painting, looking, judging, deciding, re-painting,

looking, judging, deciding, painting again ... on and on. When the most

recently devised color for a group of leaves is deemed worthy of

permanence, after long hours of painting and repainting, that color can

easily influence and determine all the other colors in the painting --- the

sky, the tree trunks, the flowers --- and further limit the artist’s options. Color

becomes an increasingly difficult puzzle as a painting nears completion,

frustrating, but delightful at last, one hopes.


19

No painting can be made from a blueprint. New ideas arise daily in

reaction to the unfinished painting. Many of the ideas that I incorporated

into No Two Years were the result of further thoughts about the seasons and

how to represent them in my painting. The tall, abstracted band of grass

behind the trees, the stripes of rain in springtime, and the fireflies and

flowers were all new ideas discovered along the way. Unoriginal to my

plans for the painting, they were nonetheless necessary to its final

appearance.

A painting becomes familiar, recognizable for what it is, and will be, as the

days pass in the studio. At some point, the artist opens his studio door and

says, ‘There you are.’ From that point onward, every element in the

painting must support this final, dominant image. These supporting

elements ---shapes and colors --- are tweaked, sometimes for days on end,

until everything works in concert to make the finished painting.

This painting began with a simple idea: a desire to show leaves floating

through space and time. What was at first no more than a potential idea for

a painting expanded enthusiastically in Italy when I encountered Primavera

and received the ‘key’ from Botticelli. A quick sketch in the studio, and I

had the scaffolding on which to build a painting. Reacting to the painting

each day led to additional ideas that made the hard work occasionally

exciting.

No Two Years lives up to its title, I think. If I were to attempt to paint a

second version based on the same protocol and format, we would in spite

of them see an entirely new and different year.


20


21

Disruption.

We see spring as a liberator after the long lock-up of winter, Primavera bringing rebirth to dormant life, but these two paintings show another side to the season: Spring is disruptive as it breaks through the serenity of winter and shatters the silence of ice and snow.


22

Winter into Spring acrylic on two canvases 48 x 48 inches each2012


23

Heads up.

Preoccupied with work and worry, we stride through the city while flocks of leaves roost unnoticed above our heads. This canopy of leaves, alive with change from month to month, drops notice of the seasons at our feet.


24

Seasons at Our FeetSpring | Summer | Fall | Winter acrylic on four canvases 48 x 24 inches each2012


25

Homage.

Looking downward, we see the scattered leaves, and taking hold of a rake struggle to collect them while the wind scatters them again and again across the canvas.

A rake’s progress, or lack thereof, comes to mind and Hogarth’s eight engravings with that title. Is there a narrative in these eight paintings? Are the leaves acting out an elaborate opera about Tom Rakewell’s downward progress?

No. These are shapes scattered by a painter on fields of color while giving thought to Hogarth.

William Hogarth The Heir from A Rake’s Progress, engraved 1722


26

A Rake’s ProgressThe Heiracrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


27

A Rake’s ProgressThe Levee | The Orgy

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches each2010/2011


28

Richard Pratt paints a series.

Years ago my dog Artemas taught me to look downwards at the ground in

the same way that birds taught me to look up at the sky. He was a small

dog and an inveterate scavenger, and for this reason had to be watched

constantly during our neighborhood walks. In this way I began to

appreciate the beauty of cracked concrete sidewalks and the accidental

gardens that grew there. In the nineties I painted several nearly abstract

paintings based on Artie’s habitual perspective and my new one.

A decade later I was obsessed with trees. Their gestural dignity fascinated

me and I had painted a dozen or more paintings featuring tree trunks,

limbs, tree stumps and foliage. But now, in 2010, my desire was to paint a

series of paintings that would be more abstract, more subtle than these. I

wanted to somehow suggest the presence of trees without actually showing

them. I started looking downwards again.

From a high window I could see that flattened lawns and pavements were a

lot like canvases. They were often framed by rectangles. Looking

downwards at them, there was no requirement for a fixed point of view:

one could look towards the east or towards the west, but never upwards.

Gravity was so uniformly distributed that the weight of things disappeared.

I began to think of the possibility of painting the shadow of a tree on a lawn

or leaves that had fallen to the ground.

Ultimately, the fallen leaves had more appeal to me. I could see that their

unruly mass of uniform shapes would encourage abstraction. Order could

present itself in the repetition of shapes, but the repetition itself could be at

random. I could use these two poles, orderliness and randomness, in

constant tension with each other, to make a series of abstract paintings.

Being civilized, of course, I wanted to rake the leaves, gather them up, and

return the landscape to order. I thought of how much I hated raking leaves

as a kid, how leaves would conspire against me: Stragglers evaded the

rake and the wind repeatedly hindered a rake’s progress.


29

A Rake’s Progress. What a clever pun, I thought, and a perfect title for the

project at hand, for in the early eighteenth century the British artist William

Hogarth had also named a series of paintings A Rake’s Progress. Showing

the downward ‘progress’ of his protagonist, a rake or feckless ne’er-do-well

called Tom Rakewell, Hogarth’s eight paintings were succeeded by a set

of highly popular engravings that collectors bought by subscription. I had

read Jenny Uglow’s biography of Hogarth several years back and I

admired him too much to simply steal the title from him. After all, he had

included a favorite dog in his self-portrait painting. So how could I make

amends for calling a rake a rake?

It occurred to me that if I kept the narrative captions for each of Hogarth’s

prints in my mind while painting the paintings, I could respectfully and

somewhat humorously parallel his project to my own. Ideas about story

could underlay my compositions and give each painting direction while at

the same time I could pay homage to Hogarth by keeping him in mind

throughout the process.

Ultimately, Hogarth helped me paint eight paintings in a series that would

have otherwise comprised itself of no more than three to five works. The

paintings are mute, of course, and in this way keep a secret about process,

a painter’s inside joke between Hogarth and myself.

The titles for each of my paintings parallel the titles for Hogarth’s, a mere

suggestion that the same narrative is taking place within them. In each

panel one sees a scattering of simple leaf shapes over vertical rows that

have been ‘raked’ across the canvas. One leaf in each is white, the

‘protagonist,’ or my own Tom Rakewell. The white leaf in each panel is

surrounded by chaos that overtly tells no story, and in the last panel, the

madhouse, it loses itself to oblivion, drowning among identical white

leaves.

Perhaps a rake’s only true progress is time.


30

A Rake’s ProgressThe Arrestacrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


31

A Rake’s ProgressThe Marriage

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


32

A Rake’s ProgressThe Gambling Houseacrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


33

A Rake’s ProgressThe Prison

acrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


34

A Rake’s ProgressThe Mad Houseacrylic on canvas 48 x 48 inches2010/2011


35

Feeling.

The painter works from what he has seen, remembered, borrowed or imagined. A painting will differ from his intensions, but the feeling of seeing something for the first time, and then a second time, is there. For a painter there is never a separation between feeling and seeing and thinking.


36

Vines SeriesVines Iacrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches2009


37

Vines SeriesVines II

acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches2009


38

Vines SeriesVines IIIacrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches2009


39

Abstract.

Abstractions reveal what we share in an instance of recognition: Shapes become trees and leaves, flatness becomes territory, and color becomes the embodiment of or the absence of light .

We all see the same painting don’t we? The eyes travel around a gallery, resting where they can, if they can. Paintings do not move, but a tree’s leaves are blown forward into time and our point of view becomes nomadic, flitting from wall to wall, panel to panel, edge to edge. And yet paintings defy the passage of time, are static, eternal.


40

Street Trees SeriesStreet Trees IIacrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches2009


41

Aloft SeriesAloft I | Aloft II

acrylic on canvas 36 x 60 inches each2008


42

The Last Word.

Paintings are objects made not to please potential viewers, but to exercise their minds while looking. This takes place wordlessly, with or without pleasing. Born of intellect and memory, paintings exist as things, not thoughts. An alluring skin created by the layering of paint reveals an image and causes us to think, not just of an image but of the skin as well.


43


44


45

RICHARD PRATT studio

Richard Pratt is a painter living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee. He received a BA in Art History from the University of Tennessee followed by graduate studies at New York University. His paintings have been exhibited most recently in Atlanta, Durham and Knoxville.

[email protected]


46

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

richard pratt paintings

Documents

richard pratt studioknoxville

years seasons

favorite painting

seasons acrylic

specific paintings

passage of time

missing words

continued reactions