by John Pototschnik

Kim Carlton interview

Posted on December 8, 2013

“I like to paint. It’s more of a compulsion actually. Even when I’m sitting in traffic, or watching a movie, I’m mentally painting. It’s pretty much always been that way, so I guess I was born to paint.”

 

Kim Carlton’s work is currently being featured in a solo exhibition, through 6 January, at the Cloister Gallery in Houston, Texas. Her two-dozen oil paintings depict action and energy within calm and peace, hence the theme, “Power and Peace”.

 

 

She is an engaging person, and yet, intensely  serious about her work…always learning and growing. Her good friend, award winning artist Denise LaRue Mahlke, describes her as a person with a positive outlook and quick wit. “I love how genuine she is, generous of spirit, kind-hearted, smart, and always learning. She is the ‘real deal’ and I am blessed and happy to know her.”
 

She’s also a realist. Kim describes painting as hard work…at least to do it well. “Being an artist is unique as a profession these days because we often must teach ourselves drawing, composition, color theory and paint chemistry, all the skills involved in the translation of the three-dimensional world into a new two-dimensional world. It’s a very complicated language to learn, and then we must spend thousands of hours practicing the art and science of painting. There really aren’t too many jobs like this. Singers can sing someone else’s songs, actors can repeat someone else’s lines, but the fine artist isn’t considered an artist unless he is the composer, designer and playwright of his own original work. After all, a counterfeiter of art brings to bear all the same skill and knowledge, but is never to be regarded as an artist, only a copyist.
 

If an artist decides to make a life of it, then he must also teach himself marketing and bookkeeping, framing, crating and shipping, business administration and website management, plus photography and Photoshop… particularly if he wants to enter art competitions.”
 

I am pleased to bring you this interview with Kim Carlton, a self-described Christian, wife and mother. As you’ll also discover, she is a wonderful writer…a master of the analogy.

What is your definition of art and your role as an artist?   I think true artists have a vision, and art is the substance of that vision.  My role as an artist is to communicate that in a beautiful and understandable way.

Do you consider the process of painting more important than the result?   No, for me that’s like asking if my heart beat is more important than my breathing.  When I first started painting, I was so happy; all I wanted to do was paint.  Then I wanted to see if my work was competitive, so I entered some shows.  After that, I got pretty side-tracked with the competition, as though painting were some kind of sport.  I did the same thing when I was a runner; I ran because I loved it, but when I started racing, I trained on a crazy schedule so I could win races, totally losing track of why I started running in the first place.  When I realized that I was starting to lose the joy of the process of painting in favor of a “winning” result, I had to pull back and regroup.  I’m a professional painter and my process produces a result.  If I focus on the process, I won’t get anything done.  If I focus on the result, I compromise my process.  If I personally let either one be more important than the other, they both lose their strength.
 

“Something Found” – 16″x 20″ – Oil

“Under the Stove Light” – 14″x 18″ – Oil

“James’ Game of Risk” – 18″x 14″ – Oil  (Merit Award, Salon International, 2011)

 

What colors are most often found on your palette?   I have two palettes but I use either one for every subject.  In other words, I don’t have a “landscape palette” and a “portrait palette.”  I started with the colors that Richard Schmid taught in his book, Alla Prima.  Then, when I was making my first plein air trip, I whittled my palette down to four colors and white for ease of packing: transparent oxide brown, ultramarine blue deep, cadmium red, and cadmium yellow pale.  I tried before I left to see if I could mix my other colors from these and found that I could come close enough for comfort!  When I returned home from that trip, my palette was thus laid out and so I brought it to my figure group to see if it would work there.  It did!  So for quite awhile, I used just these four colors, even for major portrait commissions.  If I had just those four forever after, I would remain quite happy.

In the last couple of years however, I’ve been experimenting with color and writing about my discoveries.  I have written quite a bit and am now editing and researching to see if I’m just reinventing the wheel.  I’m still using the four-color palette whenever I teach or travel, but in my studio I’m working with a more extensive palette that involves pairing colors.  It is intellectually rewarding but not necessary.  All an artist really needs are just a few colors.  If the palette is limited, harmony is unavoidable.
 

“Little Gypsy Girl” – 14″x 11″ – Oil

Are you more concerned with value or color?   Value.  The human eye has 120 million rods, which interpret value, and only 6 million cones, which interpret color; our eyes are designed to read value.  I think it’s critical to be able to express a visual idea with just value so I start my students off with one color (transparent oxide brown) and white.  That and a good squint will help you learn the value of value.
 

Describe your typical block-in technique.    I let the situation dictate how I block in and create a painting and I try not to get locked into a formula.  I do have a major categorical division in my paintings though.  Like a musician has rehearsals, I have “field” work where I practice my “scales” and experiment.  But when musicians are recording or performing in a show, that’s another level of work altogether.  That’s my “studio” work.  I divide my paintings into those categories: “field” and “studio.”  I approach them differently and price the work differently also.
 

“Christina in the Shallows” – 10″x 8″ – Oil (Work in progress)

Field paintings are practice or fact-finding or exploratory and they are always alla prima, always quickly done.  In the landscape, I usually do a couple thumbnails to get a composition.  I do my block-in based on the thumbnail, then shadows followed by anything that is fleeting.  This is really important for sunrise/sunset work, or when painting boats or urban landscapes, when someone could get in and drive away with your subject!  But when a “field” painting is done in a portrait or figure group, I just jump right into the painting, no composing, no thumbnails.  I’ll often start with a quick tone covering the canvas, then pull all the light area off with a towel.  If I like the design, I’ll normally commit the shadow shapes first, then the light, leaving enough time to make the focal point read well.

Now studio paintings are altogether different.  My block-in is not based upon having to get it done quickly.  I take my time, planning not only the paintings composition but the layers of paint and the treatment and handling of the layers themselves.  My studio work will probably have everything from visible bare canvas to thick impasto paint, with tone and underpainting, scumbling and glazing in between, all strategically done.  It’s like the anti-alla-prima approach, but a lot of it is still applied “all at once.”

 

“Scout Arriving” (Block-in stage)

“Scout Arriving” (Intermediate stage)

“Scout Arriving” – 24″x 30″ – Oil

How would you define “success” as an artist?   This is a question that always comes up with painters.  I see ambition to “succeed” as a sickness in the arts right now.  Well, not just in the arts.  Success is being defined for us, as earning money and respect and fame– “winning.”  There is a growing segment in our profession that is saying “enough” to that.  There are performers in the other arts who are constantly promoting themselves and doing wilder and wilder things to keep the spotlight, and then there are the Anthony Hopkinses who ignore all spotlight-grabbing self-promotion and just do the job really, really well.  That is success.  I believe that if you are doing the thing you’ve been called to do with all your heart and soul, you will have such a joy and such an excellence, you won’t need applause or ribbons to validate you; you are a success.
 

As a wife and mother, how did you go about developing your painting career?   My original life-plan was simply to be a fine artist.  When I found, in the ‘70’s, no teacher or school or career path, I decided to make one up.  I chose to be a pilot so I could get paid to travel and have plenty of time to paint.  I couldn’t afford lessons so I joined the Navy to let them train me in exchange for a few years of my life.  It’s a long story but the short-version is, I accidentally fell in love and gave up my wings for a ring and an altered plan to still be an artist.  It gets hilarious when you add the blessing of three sons, but the answer to your question is this: I never gave up and I was always working on it.  I drew all the time and I studied.  I always did the next thing that I could do.  Sometimes I got impatient, but I have a good husband who showed me that while my window of opportunity as an artist would be ever-widening, my window of opportunity to raise these three sons would not, and it would one day be forever closed.  So I made being an artist a more “minor” part of my life for awhile, until I could make it a major part.  I could have it all, just not all at once.  The choices I made put me behind my peers in the art world, but I read a quote early on that impacted me.  It said, “In your life, would you rather be something to everyone, or everything to someone?”  I cut it out and taped it to the kitchen window so I could read it while washing dishes.  Having a career in art was not going to make me an artist.  I am an artist.  Having a family was never part of my plan in my art career, but the script that God wrote for me was so much better than the one I had outlined for Him.

 

“Rapt Romance”  (Detail)

“Rapt Romance” – 24″x 18″ – Oil   (Dianne Rudy Memorial Award, American Artists Professional League)

What do you consider your greatest artistic challenge?   Having to do the things that aren’t painting.  I am not a framer or a marketer, a salesman or a businessman.  I wish that I didn’t have to do all that; it steals time from painting.

What advice would you have for a first-time collector?   Buy what you love.  You will never regret it.

What advice would you have for a young artist/painter?   Train yourself well: study books and DVD’s; get in workshops taught by artists who have something you need to know and who have a similar palette.  People who sign up for every workshop that comes around have scrambled thinking; they’re workshop-aholics.  I’ve found that a good teacher will give me the one thing I need to work on.  I will spend about a year really internalizing that before the next thing presents itself to be learned.  But work every day; miles of canvas will separate the good from the bad and the ugly.  And never give up.

 

Thanks for sharing your time and talent with us, Kim. You are much appreciated.

www.pototschnik.com

 

Rapt Romance, 24x18. sold

Rapt Romance, which was selected to show in the 85th Grand National Exhibition in NYC by the American Artists' Professional League and just won the Dianne Rudy Memorial Award, is also the 7th painting from the Power & Peace show that has sold. 
When I met the new owners of the work, I was deeply touched by how the painting affected them, especially the woman, Julie.  She felt a kinship with the girl in the painting, curled up with a book.  The painting officially became hers today and I wrote the poem below to go with the painting, into her life. 
Rapt Romance:

Rapt Romance

On her stone bench, face aglow
What she's thinking, who can know?
Within thin pages lives the beau
Who stole her heart away.

The rapt romance developed so
Her heart beat fast, time seemed to slow
All earthly loves she would forgo
To spend her life with him.

But creeping o'er her shoulder lo!
The sun's alarm, like a cock's crow
The worldly hour its light doth throw
A shadow o'er her dream.

But in her heart, love's seed did sow
A romance that would ever grow
Like sunflowers painted by Van Gogh
Are Julie's books to her.

Call to Muster, 20x16

Westward Vision

This is a detail of Westward Vision, an older painting that I posted when I first started blogging.

There has been a natural evolution of style that even I can see when I look at all my paintings together.  When I painted Esther, I was very new to oil painting but very experienced with drawing.  I entered two portraits in the Richeson 75 competition and they were both selected for the show, which was judged by Everett Raymond Kinstler.  I asked him to help me understand how I could grow as a painter; he revealed to me the fact that I was drawing with paint, not painting.  Painting is a way of seeing and thinking that I did not completely understand yet, but he actually helped my mind learn how to think differently.  That's amazing to me.

I am going to have a few older paintings in the Power & Peace show that opens this Friday and there will be two of this model, Esther.  Here is Esther's story, taken from the original post:

One day, I was at the grocery store and I met a vision that took my breath away. Literally. Her name was Esther and she was behind the deli counter. Her mysterious hair was hidden in a paper wrap and her lilting accent mesmerized me. I wanted to paint her immediately but did not have the courage to freak her out by asking, so I asked for some baby Swiss instead. Our paths would serendipitously cross again, giving me another chance.  She would become the subject of more than one painting and a friend for life. In this one, I am depicting her story, which she told me during a long sitting. She said that when she was a preschooler in Nigeria, she told her mother that she would one day go to America. She could not recall how she knew of America, but she looked westward from Africa from her earliest memory. I'm so thankful that she came all the way to Texas. Westward Vision was in the Richeson's first Top 75 Portraits international competition.

Fill Your Hand, 16x20

Cowgirl and Child, 16x12

 

This is one of the paintings that will be in the Power & Peace show in a couple of weeks.  It's also featured in the "Small-Scale Masterpieces" article in this month's issue of American Art Collector magazine, along with the landscape from the last post and a still life from another post.
Mother and Child, the universal and iconic image, does not lose its power with a Texas accent!  The women who came out west were of such strong stuff, but still so gentle.  I think mothers exemplify Power & Peace.  This tiny prairie girl is wearing a bonnet and boots with her flour sack dress, which her mother has bent down to adjust.  The tender moment is made strong for me by the clothing that the two are wearing.  The mother is dressed for riding, not darning, but you know she made the clothes that little girl is wearing.  The mothers of our own generation are equally able and versatile, strong and gentle: powerful purveyors of peace. 

Outdoor Painter Magazine

I wish there were a way to just give you the Outdoor Painter Magazine so you could see what the wonderful writer/editor Bob Bahr wrote up about my favorite place to paint.  I don't know how I would do that though so instead, I will post a link to his article along with a painting that was not actually included in the article but is linked to it in geography and spirit. 

 http://www.outdoorpainter.com/news/my-favorite-place-to-paint-kim-carlton.html


And here is the painting; it was one of three featured recently in a small works article in American Art Collector magazine (current issue, on the stands at this very moment!) called San Luis Pass, oil on linen, 9x12.  It will be available at the opening of my solo show at Cloisters Gallery in downtown Houston on 6 December from 6-8 pm on a special Small Works table:

Something Found

I made stuff up in my imagination about this woman as I painted her and when I was finished with the painting, I thought that it would be fun to write a story to go with her. 
My challenge was to fit the story into the little space beside the image that pops up on the website when you click on it: not a great deal of room!  So instead of a whole long story written out, I tried to allow a story to be created in your mind as you read a poem that gives some context to her and the tents and the thing she's picking up, while leaving much to your own imagination to fill in.  Here it is: 

Something Found

A Spanish lady, beauty so,
About her throat a cameo,
One sunny day the fairground went
She, looking for her beau.

Her treasure bound up in the sack
She’d sewn to hold all she could pack:
Her jewels and money, every cent,
So she could bring him back.

She thought she spied him over there,
His towering form and golden hair,
Yonder near the merchant’s tent,
Her lover oh so fair.

Her heart did throb, her breath abate;
She prayed that it was not too late.
Of everything she did repent;
Beloved, oh please wait!

But as she neared, it was not he
Her heart believed the man to be.
And now her fears and passions rent:
Her purse she could not see!

Retracing steps across the ground,
Her heart now raced and leapt and bound;
Could all be lost with nothing spent?
Ah praise! T’was lost, now found!

http://kimcarlton.blogspot.com/

Footlit Flapper

My model from Monday became a flapper on Friday.
Tesa did a marvelous job this week posing for artists.  Modeling for artists is much different than modeling for photographers.  Much harder, would be my guess.  The model and artist work together to find a pose that is a good design and also is thought to be natural and comfortable enough to hold without moving for long periods of time.  In real life, no pose is really that comfortable if the person is conscious.  Tesa was perched high on a hard chair with a bright light shining right into her eyes.  As the morning wore on, the artists found out that she had been quietly enduring a constant pressure on her ribcage from the position of the chair; she never let on.  In our group, every artist member has served as a model for the group in order to feel what the model feels.  That experience makes this particular group very empathetic toward its models. 
I don't know if you will ever see a finished painting of Tesa the Footlit Flapper.  I am so very busy right now trying to finish the paintings for the show: painting, varnishing, framing, and even writing about each painting.  We are going to try to have a book to go along with the show. 
Don't forget, 6 December from 6-8 will be our opening in Houston!  Here's your invitation:
 
www.kimcarlton.blogspot.com
www.kimcarlton.com

An Invitation to Power & Peace

This is the ad in American Art Collector magazine, the November issue, which just came out.  They also included our show in a section called "The Savvy Collector's Guide to Upcoming Shows," under Texas (link below) and wrote about it in "Small-Scale Masterpieces," with three more paintings!  We're having invitations made but if you want to come, please come!  Don't wait for an invitation; we will have the reception on 6 December from 6-8 pm and would love to see you there.

The link to the Savvy Collector's Guide is:
 http://www.americanartcollector.com/collectors-guide.php?issue=upcoming

Come and let your soul be recharged by an evening of wine and cheese and original oil paintings. There should be something for everyone: figurative, landscape and still life paintings, all united under the common light of “Power and Peace.” The paintings in this show reflect a high idea of action and energy within calm and peace. The changing light, the ephemeral quality of nature, the transitory yet purposeful presence of man: the subjects that have drawn artists and art lovers throughout all of history can draw us together this December in downtown Houston. Be there or be square!

Cloister Gallery is a downtown institution and one of the city’s most cherished lunchtime destinations. Jamie Mize and Dan Tidwell have been feeding Houstonians out of Reynolds Hall (the Great Hall, the Cloister) since 1981, and the famous Treebeard’s fare brings hundreds to their campus every weekday. Be one of them!

North Shore Nymph

The weather is perfect right now.  In Houston, the weather is always a little on the perfect side for some people: never too cold in the winter and a friendly, "close" kind of humid heat in the summer that makes your skin stay young.  But in the spring and autumn, the weather is absolutely perfect, no matter who you are.  It was very hard to stay in the studio and teach today, with the cool air and the flirty sun calling from outside!  But I did already get to paint out this week, with my new model, Tesa.

I met Tesa when I was registering students for the fall semester.  She was interested in being an artist's model and had already read three books on modeling!  She did an outstanding job as a plein air model for me.  She will model again on Friday in the studio for our Market Street Painters group, only then she will be a flapper from the 1920's.  For our day though, at a nearby lake, she dressed as a water nymph.
Here she is, taking a picture of the painting of herself:

 The fun and challenge of painting at a park like this is all that goes on around you while you are working.  The in-and-out clouds, the busy ducks and geese, the bugs and boaters and children (and parents) all conspire to pull your focus away from your job.  Tesa stayed focused on my face and I tried to stay focused on her face and my canvas. 
This painting was done with four colors (plus white): transparent oxide brown, ultramarine blue deep, cadmium red and cadmium yellow pale; the same palette we are using in Oil Painting 101 this semester.  The wonderful thing about a limited palette is the automatic harmony that you have.  No matter what you paint, you are drawing from such a limited source, all your resulting choices are related and so go well together.  My mind is always a little blown that so much can be done with so little.  Yet our printers only have a few colors and our television sets only have a few colors so it shouldn't be quite so surprising. 
Well, here is the sketch of Tesa, the North Shore Nymph:

Scout Arriving, 24x30

 

Some works call for reverie, others invite revelry.  This painting was the latter sort.  It was large for me and required standing and sometimes a little dancing to execute.  The subject matter also was the opposite of quiet and even my brush found a new dance step on this one.  Here's a close up of the scout's accoutrements, which I was hoping would catch the movement and action: 

 

I am doing several paintings in response to a Civil War reenactment that I got to see recently.  This scout, sword at the ready and pistol drawn, came bounding into my view right as the participants were preparing for battle in the background:

   

The attitude of the horse and rider together created such a beautiful mark against the smoke and sky, an abstract movement of forward momentum and back-straining to stop, only one foot touching the ground… it had to be painted.  My hat’s off to the Third Texas Cavalry Regiment of Civil War Reenactors!  An inspiration on so many levels. 

Little Gypsy Girl, 14x11

Maybe you recognize this little girl from Follies & Foibles, published in July. She suffered some insult but was not permanently injured in the process.I wish you could see the painting in real life instead of seeing the digital image of it. Digitizing these soft and subtle passages makes them so harsh and vivid, adjusting the temperature and values just enough to remove the romance, it seems. The joy of this painting is in the very delicate cool tones in her face, juxtaposed against the bright warm sparkling bangles of her headband. The bedecked little gypsy composes her look and is set for the day, having just been dropped off by the wagon that is disappearing in the distance. 

This silhouetting with only the rim lighting of the figure reminds me of calligraphy, the old-fashioned kind with the large Chinese characters done with big round brushes in black ink on white parchment. I have a couple of those and even though I don’t know what they mean, I appreciate their stark beauty. Maybe from across the room the abstract character of the little gypsy girl reads, Freedom.   

Oil Painting 101-The Foundations, fall 2013

Oil Painting 101, The Foundations has just begun. This class will cover materials and procedures, drawing and design, the practice and philosophy of oil painting. During the class, there will be presentations and demonstrations, actual painting time with personal instruction and critique, designed to bring the student from their present level to the next level.  In short, it’s the class that I tried to find when I was starting out in oils but could not find. We have a great group again this time and I am really looking forward to the fall semester. 

For our first day, I brought all the supplies that members will need to paint with oils, plus lots and lots of optional things (canvas choices, many palettes, every kind of brush, even easels!) that they might want, to make their life easier as they paint in and out of the studio.  Here they are, all packed into 10 easy-to-fit-into-the-Mini Cooper pieces!

I like this show-and-tell day because it allows everyone to see and touch and ask about things that they may have only heard about or seen in pictures. There aren’t many artists who don’t have a collection of things they thought they needed but didn’t. How much better to use someone else’s experience and save some time and money!

So, as we begin, our palette will be the most limited in history: one color + white. Starting like this will allow us to understand value as the most important foundational element in painting. Do you know that the human eye has 120 million rods, which interpret value, and only 6 million cones, which interpret color? Well it’s true and that is one of the reasons that it’s critical to be able to express a visual idea with value.

Our color is Transparent Oxide Brown, which is a very deep transparent partner for the opaque white. We will study why these characteristics are even important. In addition to value and temperature, we will explore line and edges using this pair and, when the time is right, we’ll add the three primaries: red, yellow and blue. By the end of the semester, we will have at least an understanding of the infinite capabilities of these few colors. Each class could easily be expanded into years of training, as it has been in the ateliers throughout art history. But we only have 4 months so I promise: we will only just scratch the surface!

Real Life

I am just emerging from the studio and seeing that it is going on 2 in the morning.

One of the things that I'm trying to do in my life right now is go to bed at "a reasonable hour." This goal has eluded me for my entire life but I will not give up because I keep reading about how good it is for you to have regular sleep habits and to let the sun wake you up. As a painter, I should be highly motivated to be up with the sun, but as a modern woman with really great studio lighting and really bad habits, I burn the midnight oil; I simply lose track of time. My theory/excuse is that, when you are doing the thing that God designed you to do, you have one foot on earth, one foot in heaven. Well, in heaven, as everyone knows, there are no clocks. Time is irrelevant. One is never late in heaven.
So I have a very lofty excuse for not being in bed at this time.
Now, to blog.

Someone recently said in my hearing that still lifes were boring. I asked him why he thought so and he replied that they always look staged, fake. Well, as a genre I suppose still lifes are long on still, short on life, but one of the fabulous things about still life painting is: YOU CAN CHANGE THAT. You are the master of everything when you paint still lifes. Clayton Beck once told me that if you don't like what you see in a still life, change your set up, change your position, or change your lighting. That is not possible for the landscape painter and it has only limited application for the portrait painter. (I might also add, when comparing still lifes as a subject to a model as a subject, that still lifes are free, you don't have to give them breaks every 20 minutes, and they stay up all night if you need them to. But I digress...)

These conversations were floating around in my head and my thinking was, just observe real things. Boring still lifes are just overly-orchestrated. Do what the landscape painters do and capture something from REAL LIFE and make a work of art out of it. Then BAM! I had the opportunity to practice what my mind was beginning to preach. My husband and I came home the other evening and when we turned on the kitchen light, he said, "Wow, that's a painting!" Looking at the produce on the counter I said, "Yeah, that would be a good painting!" Then he said, "Paint it! Now! I'll help you set up your gear."
Ha! Bluff called! My mind was saying, "But I'm tired! I'll take a picture of it and paint it later. It needs better lighting than the stove hood light anyway..." Immediately I was thwarting myself, but before anyone knew what was going on in my head, I said, "Okay, I will!"
So here you have my set up, my gear, my block-in:

And here you have a zoom of the produce because I'm not sure I like the composition, after all the work of painting it "as is." But the experience was very liberating; it was fun to explore something so close, so spontaneously. Perhaps I have a painting from it... we'll see: 

 

http://kimcarlton.blogspot.com/