Form and Spirit

Fra Angelico, The Virgin Annunciate, ca. late 1420s; tempera and gold on panel; 12 3/8 x 10 in.

When we are standing in front of a painting we see shape, line, color with its hues and values, but what do we feel? How much of that feeling, so much of which is inexpressible, comes from the formal qualities of the work? How much is pure mystery? With a painter such as Fra Angelico who was a Dominican friar, we expect a Christian spirituality to infuse his work.

Hans Memling, Portrait of an Old Man, ca. 1475; oil on wood, 10 3/8 x 7 5/8 in.

See a high resolution image of this painting at the Met's website.

But what of a secular portrait of an unnamed old man? I know that when I am looking at this small painting at the Met, I feel pierced by sadness, compassion, love. But how does one speak of the ineffable?

Tawaraya Sotatsu, Waterbird in Flight, 1630s; hanging scroll, ink on paper.

The human form does not have to be part of the image for me to feel deeply about a painting. Here, the fluid lines of calligraphy, the empty space, the duck lifting into that space, the sensitive attentiveness to each element gives rise to a boundless feeling in my chest. I don't think it possible to experience these beyond-the-formal emotions while looking at a reproduction. The actual physical presence of the object is essential.

Golu, The lover prepares to depart; Nurpur, Himachal Pradesh, ca. 1710-20; opaque watercolor on paper; 6 7/8 x 10 5/8 in.

So much of the pleasure I get from this painting is in its color and the perfect balance of color-shapes. But again, it is looking at this actual work (it was in an exhibition at the Met, "Wonder of the Age", which I wrote about here), seeing it intimately––each touch of the brush, each perfect detail––that leads to an experience of joy.

Samuel Palmer, Garden in Shoreham, 1820s or early 1830s; opaque watercolor and gouache, 

11 x 8 1/2 in.

Landscape can also provide a connection with the visual world leading to a sense of the spiritual. The early paintings of Samuel Palmer, an associate of William Blake, have a quality of beauty that is more than itself; his way of seeing and simplifying the land around him is at times heart rending. 

Carl Dahl, View of Larsen Square, near Copenhagen Harbor, ca. 1840, oil on canvas, 

21 5/8 x 27 3/4 in.

Even a straightforward landscape, precise and clear, can evoke deep feelings. I love the Danish 19th century "Golden Age" painters. The quality of limpid light illuminating forms which recede rationally into space reminds me of when I painted in the landscape: I had a sense of openness coming from the chest, the heart, and flowing outwards.

John Peto, Help Yourself, 1881, 8 x 10 in.

What is it about a small still life painting of a common bag of peppermints that can elicit such poignancy? Is it the composition, the color, the forms emerging from darkness, the modest touch of the artist, the fact of the ordinariness of the subject?

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting: Black Rectangle, Blue Triangle, 1915, oil on canvas, 

22 1/2 x 26 1/8 in.

Some of the new non-objective painting at the beginning of the 20th century had as its aim an expression of universal and essential truths. Malevich wrote of his Suprematist works:

Let us proceed out of the labyrinth of the earth into boundless space with numbers and color and let us husk the grain of consciousness.

In reproduction, Malevich's work looks cool and rational, but in actuality they are dense and passionate paintings.

Anonymous, Untitled, 1997, Jaipur, India; gouache, watercolor, tempera on paper, 13 x 10 in.

It is interesting to think of the Malevich work in relation to this Tantric painting, a devotional image made by an anonymous artist based on a centuries old design; it is meant as an aid to meditation. So much abstract painting carries strong emotional resonance for me, moving beyond its formal elements.

Philip Guston, Light Bulb, oil on panel, 12 x 14 in. From a series of small paintings made from

 1969-1973.

Of course, having a spirit that is more than the accumulation of its formal parts––color, shape, paint––is what makes a good painting; it's basic, isn't it? And it's essentially mysterious as to how it occurs, and why we can disagree so much about our most loved works. The earlier abstract paintings of Philip Guston fit within a spiritual context with their dense accumulations of paint floating in "boundless space". But for me even his modest small representational paintings, here a single round light bulb, touch me deeply. Where does my sense of longing come from, or of vulnerability, of loss, when I look at this painting? I think of my own work, the various media I work in, and wonder if any carry within them a feeling beyond their formal parts; I hope they do, realizing that some may do so more than others. I also realize that infusing a work with spirit, with feeling, is not something I––or, I think, anyone––can do intentionally; it's something we long for, but it comes, mysteriously, through the working process.

Making Bread: A Sourdough Pain de Campagne

I love bread; baking it has been an important part of my life for many years. I started out with simple yeast recipes, then moved to using a poolish, a mixture of yeast, flour, and water fermented overnight. I always thought that using a sourdough starter was too difficult and much too much trouble. Besides, I could buy an excellent sourdough pain de campagne at our local co-op. But then the bakers, my friends Helen and Jules Rabin of Upland Bakers, decided to retire 10 years ago; I felt bereft with the loss of that delicious bread. At around the same time I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffrey Hamelman, the director of the Bakery and School at King Arthur Flour, at a party at the Rabins. When I expressed my doubts about keeping a sourdough starter going, how much work it'd be, he simply asked me "do you have any pets? do you feed them every day?". So I decided to take a class on sourdough bread baking at King Arthur flour, which was very helpful, especially in learning how to handle the very wet dough. I've been making my own sourdough bread ever since, about once a week or so.

People have asked me over the past couple of years for a recipe for my bread; I never wanted to post one because it's very long and complicated. But I just decided, why not? So here is a narrative format recipe, with lots of process photos, which is why they are posted smaller than usual. You can still click them to enlarge to see more detail. I am starting here with the sourdough starter, sometimes called a culture, which I just mixed. I got my original starter from King Arthur Flour; you can order some by mail here. It is just flour and water, with wild yeast from the air around you, which is why after some time, your starter would taste different than mine: different location, different yeasts.

So, here's what I do: each morning I refresh the culture. I use a small quart sized pottery bowl, which I cover with a plate. An essential tool in the kitchen is a scale because everything in this recipe is by weight, not volume. I measured the empty bowl, even writing its weight on a piece of tape on the outside in case I forgot. I place the full bowl on the scale, then remove enough culture to leave two ounces. To that I add 1.7 ounces of white all purpose flour (King Arthur of course), and 1 ounce of water. I mix that with a wooden spoon till combined. This is a stiff mixture of sourdough starter, which works best for the bread.

Here's what the starter looks like after it's risen for a day.

When I plan to make bread the next day, I start a levain build the night before. This should rise for 12 hours before the final mixing of the dough, so I usually start it around 8 PM so it'll be ready at 8 AM the following morning. To make this I mix 3.2 ounces of white flour, 1.6 ounces of whole wheat flour, and 1.6 ounces of rye flour. To that I add 1.3 ounces of the sourdough starter and 4.5 ounces of water. I use the tare function on the kitchen scale for these measurements. I mix it all together, cover with plastic wrap, and leave in a spot that's around 70º. Don't worry too much about temperature yet; you can worry about that when mixing the final dough.

The next morning, one hour before the levain will be ready, I start mixing the dough. In his book, Bread, from which I adapted this recipe, Hamelman recommends mixing the flour and water and letting it sit for 20 to 60 minutes, which he calls an "autolyse" phase. My amounts of flour are: 15 ounces of white flour, 9.4 ounces of whole wheat, and 3.2 ounces of rye. I very much like the flavor that the rye flour gives to the bread. If you're interested, that comes to 54% white, 34% whole wheat, and 12% rye, so the whole grains are almost half the flour. You can adjust this up or down, depending on preference. After mixing the flours together, I take their temperature. I want the final dough to be about 76º; the only variable I can control is the temperature of the water, but there are four variables: the flour, the levain, the place where the dough will rise, and the water. So 76 x 4 = 304. I put 304 in the calculator, subtract the temperature of the flour, the temperature of the levain (I keep a room thermometer next to it to see, but I also guess a bit), the temperature of the room, and finally subtract 15 for the heat that will be generated by the mixing of the dough; then I get the temperature the water should be. Generally in winter it has to be warmer, in summer colder.

After adding 22.1 ounces of water to the flour, this is the wet mass that results. I cover this with plastic wrap and let it sit in an warm place, around 80º is my preference. I'm lucky to have an old oven that still has a pilot light, which is very useful for rising dough in a cool room.  I also measure out .5 ounces of salt, to be added with the final mixing.

Here's the first mix of the dough in the bowl of my heavy duty electric mixer, a very useful appliance for mixing this very wet dough. It takes a lot of skill to handle the dough; I got completely stuck in it when I took the bread making class. The wet dough creates the delicious moist and chewy texture of the bread, with all the open holes. The curved bowl scraper is an invaluable item for getting the dough out of the bowl, and the blade is useful too.

Here's the levain build, when it's ready to be mixed with the flour. You can see the air holes and how much it's enlarged from 12 hours before. I add it to the bowl with the flours, along with the salt.

I mix on low speed for 30 seconds (another necessary item is a timer), then on the second speed for 3 minutes, never faster than that. At this point the dough will be very wet and not yet springy; as Hamelman puts it "the gluten network should be only moderately developed". If dough is stuck up the side of the bowl, I scrape it down. I measure its temperature: if cooler than 78, I put it in a warmer place, if warmer, it can stay for a while in a cooler spot. I can regulate temperature of my oven by leaving the door more or less open. Hamelman recommends the temperature for rising to be 76º, but I prefer close to 80º. The dough rises in this bowl for about 2 1/2 hours total.

In order to "maximize dough strength", I fold the dough 3 times at 40 minute intervals. Folding is very simple: remove the dough from the bowl with the scraper and put on a well floured surface; hands are well floured too. Press it down pretty flat, pressing out any air bubbles (there will be more with each folding); draw the back end toward you, then each side toward the middle, then the front over the top, pressing down. Dust off excess flour. Put back in the bowl and do it again in 40 minutes, and then again in another 40 minutes. After the fourth 40 minutes I'm ready to shape the dough.

At this point the dough is noticeably stronger. To form a round load, I first press down in a circle, pounding out the air bubbles with the heel of my hand. Then I draw pieces of the dough inwards, overlapping over and over, till it feel tight.

Then I turn it over and with my hands on opposite sides, turn and pull the dough toward me in order to get a tight ball. Then there's another wait, of 6 or 7 minutes, with dough covered with plastic wrap. This gives it time to rest so I can make an even tighter loaf. Then the whole process of flattening and rounding is gone through again. You can see little air bubbles in the dough, which I would press out.

While I'm waiting that 6 or 7 minutes for the dough to rest, I prepare the bowl for proofing the loaf. I use a large, 6 quart, mixing bowl, which I line with a well-floured linen towel. It has to be well floured or the dough will stick to it. I've used this towel for years, so it's seasoned and the dough never sticks.

I plunk the dough smooth side down into the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Then I let it rise in an 80º spot for 2 hours. About 40 minutes before I will be ready to bake, I place a 15 inch round pizza stone in the middle of the oven and turn it on to 500º. The stone will then be very hot when I'm ready to bake the bread on it. So when I place the dough in the bowl, I set my timer for 1 hour and 20 minutes. The heating of the oven takes another 40 minutes, which adds up to 2 hours. Sometimes if it's cool, I might rise the loaf for another 10-15 minutes.

Here's what the dough looks like when it's ready to go in the oven. You can see how much it has enlarged.

I flip it onto a well floured peel; now the good side is up. It spreads quite a bit once out of the bowl, and when put in the oven; the profile of the finished loaf is low, not highly rounded. I score the loaf using a single edged razor blade. This helps the bread break in a pattern as it expands in the oven. Then I slide it onto the hot stone. I steam the oven, which helps in making a nice crust: I keep a cast iron frying pan on the lower shelf, so it's been in there getting hot. After putting the dough in the oven I put one cup of boiling water in the cast iron pan, which makes a lot of steam. I bake the bread for 10 minutes at 500º, then lower the temperature to 425º and bake for an additional 45 minutes. I turn the loaf a couple of times because my oven doesn't bake evenly.

When the loaf is done it will be a deep rich brown and the bottom will sound hollow when tapped. I let the bread cool on a wire cake rack then cut it in half. A half of this 3 1/2 pound loaf will last me for about 4 days; because the crumb is so chewy and moist it doesn't dry out quickly like yeast breads. I freeze each half in a plastic bag, finding that defrosted, reheated bread has a thicker crisper crust than bread fresh out of the oven. Each morning I have two slices of bread for breakfast, one with Gjetost, a Norwegian goat cheese, and one with homemade jam and butter. It is an excellent start to the day.

The Myriad Forms of Flowers

Centaurea montana

I often marvel at the complexity of some flowers, such as this Centaurea, with its petals finely divided at their ends, and interiors of spidery black and violet.

Columbine

Or of this columbine, growing wild in the back yard, with its numerous petals overlapping each other, each a small curved trumpet. When I see forms like these I wonder about the evolutionary reasons for them, and for all the variations in flower form; after all, their reason for being is reproduction. Then I think about how boring humans are in comparison, with our sameness of from and just tiny variations in color, size, and shape. But of course...humans are only one species, homo sapiens, in the animal kingdom. There are about 5500 mammal species. But the number of species of flowering plants is 250,000-400,000! no wonder that they are so varied.

Salvia

Some flowers grow in spikes, made of of many flowers. In the case of Salvia, the individual flowers are  small.

Dictamnus alba

The Dictamnus flowers are quite showy, so each spike is dramatic, and lovely from a distance.

Baptisia

Baptisia is in the legume family, so its flowers, on long showy spikes in a shrub-like plant, have a resemblance to pea flowers.

Siberian Iris "Summer Skies"

There are many flowers that grow one or two or three to a stem, such as irises, with their lovely arrangement of spreading and upright petals. Words used to describe the parts of the iris flower: standard, crest, fall.

Korean Lilac "Miss Kim"

Many flowering shrubs––lilacs, hydrangea, viburnum––have composite blooms made up of many small florets. This shrub, the last lilac to bloom in my garden, has delicate fragrant flowers that open up at their rounded ends like so many bugles announcing the day.

Meadow flower, a variety of Hawkweed?

The flower head with rays of petals in a circle is so familiar to us from dandelions.

Wild Rose

Snowdrop Anemone

Then there are flowers that are elegant in their simplicity, several petals surrounding the center of stamen and pistils. 

Jack in the Pulpit

All the flowers above are in my yard, but this amazing wildflower, the Jack in the Pulpit, was alongside the path in the woods. The "Jack" sticking up at its center is actually a spadix, with tiny flowers at its base, and the curved form above is a spathe, a leaf-like bract. So in this plant, the actual flowers are hidden from view. The world of flowers, so varied even in this tiny corner of Vermont, is wonderful to contemplate.

A New Painting: "Untitled (Crimson/Light Green)"

Untitled (Crimson, Light Green), egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 9 x 8 in.

I believe that I'm beginning to understand what I want to do with the series of "cloth" paintings I've been working on. For one, I think that I might begin to call them my "organic" paintings, and the machine based images "geometric" paintings; it keeps the categorization more in the realm of the abstract. What I've realized is that I want to keep the images simple. At first I added other elements to the organic forms––a sphere, a rectangular solid, a cylinder––but now want just the folds. Before doing the study for this painting, I had tried using three colors, with two of them having folds. I thought it would be terrific, but instead it nearly drove me to give up the entire project. So I calmed down and did more studies, this time with just two colors, one background and one folded color. The image is close to this painting, and similar in its simple elements to this painting. 

Untitled (Crimson, Light Green) detail

Painting the curving forms is very engaging, getting a sense of the tactile is extremely satisfying, as my brush creates the illusion of fullness and of light playing over the turning surfaces. Not long ago I wrote a blog post on cloth in Medieval painting and sculpture, which you can read here. Cloth can be expressive, and as it's associated with the body, can have emotional resonance. 

This new painting is somewhat larger at 9 x 8 inches than my other works. I've been slowly making this body of paintings on parchment a bit larger; when I started they were around 4 to 6 inches, and now they are closer to 6 by 8. An inch at this small size makes a big difference. So here's a photo of recent work on a wall in the studio. I love the fun of the organic paintings alongside the illusionistic textile (which has outsized visual power alongside the paintings); they are all flat, but all are asking to be seen as three dimensional.

At the Met: The Eloquence of Hands

Rogier van der Weyden, Francesco d'Este, ca. 1460; oil on wood, 12 1/2 x 8 3/4 in.

See the entire painting here.

During a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art  I began to look at the gestures of hands, seeing how their movement and what they held expressed feelings and told a story, sometimes more eloquently than the face portrayed. In the examples I found, mainly of Netherlandish painting, the hands are sensitively rendered, and a secondary focus of the composition. In the portrait of Francesco d'Este, a son of a ruling family, van der Weyden placed one hand resting on another that is balanced on the edge of the picture. He is holding a ring and a hammer, which may be either symbols of power or jousting prizes.

Lorenzo di Credi, Portrait of a Young Woman, ca. 1490-1500; oil on wood, 23 1/8 x 15 3/4 in.

See the entire painting here

The young woman in di Credi's portrait is also holding a ring, but for a very different purpose. Her hands are crossed, as in a pledge, and the ring could, as the catalog entry says, have "connubial significance", which is how I read it. An interesting piece of information at the Met's entry for this painting is that it wasn't until the mid 15th century that Florentine portraits of women were other than in profile and bust length. So earlier paintings would not have included the expressive hands.

Attributed to Hans Memling, Young Woman with a Pink, ca. 1485-1490; oil on wood, 17 x 7 3/8 in.

See the entire painting here.

Here the hand is holding a flower delicately aloft, framed by the space between dress and arm. A pink was a symbol of betrothal.

Gerard David, The Annunciation, 1506; oil on wood, 31 1/8 x 25 in.

See the entire painting here.

A hand is held aloft, one finger pointing skyward, as the angel announces the coming birth of Jesus.

Hans Memling, The Annunciation, 1465-75; oil on wood, 73 1/4 x 45 1/4 in.

See the entire painting here.

Mary, in another painting, accepts the greeting with what seems to be uncertainty in the gesture of her hand, as though to say "wait". In the book of Luke, it says of the moment "she was troubled at his saying".

North Netherlandish Painter, Christ Bearing the Cross, ca. 1470; oil on wood, 42 3/8 x 32 3/8 in.

See the entire painting here. 

Sometimes several hands make a symphony of movement, a flow from one to another, as clear as the spoken word. This painting celebrates an annual procession in Bruges, honoring the city's most sacred relic, a cloth stained with a drop of Christ's blood. The cloth is here being held carefully in two hands, and one is touched gently by Christ as an acknowledgment, his other hand holding the cross, while a soldier's hand behind holds a rod. This is one painting where the faces are individual and quite extraordinary, so see them at the link above.

Gerard David, The Crucifixion, ca. 1495; oil on wood, 21 x 15 in.

See the entire painting here.

The hands are prayerful and sorrowful, enhancing the facial expressions.

Gerard David, Christ Taking Leave of His Mother, ca. 1500; oil on wood, 6 1/8 x 4 3/4 in.

See the entire painting here.

There is a beautiful arrangement of hands at the center of this small painting, forming a curved circle of prayer, sadness, and leave taking, echoing the circle of heads.

Greek Attic, Marble stele (grave marker) of a woman, ca. 375-350 B.C.; marble, height 54 in. 

See the entire sculpture here. 

For the final image, we go back in time and into three dimensions for a simple and touching gentle clasping of hands. It is a subtle, yet deeply moving, small gesture of love and loss. Much of what we know of the world comes through our hands, we use them to supplement speech, or to speak if we have no voice. Some hand signals are widely known (think of the time-out signal and others in sports); a crooked finger moving toward the body is a clear "come here"; a baby learns bye-bye very early. So in art, we can pay attention to the pictured hands.