September 2011 Featured Artist

AN INTERVIEW WITH GORDON WEBSTER

 

CPSC is especially excited to present our fourth Featured Artist Interview with Ottawa based coloured pencil artist, founder and president of the Coloured Pencil Society of Canada, Gordon Webster.

1. Do you have a formal art education or are you self-taught? How do you feel your educational and personal background has affected you as an artist – or have they?

I am mostly self-taught. I had always wanted to draw and even remember taking Saturday morning classes at the National Gallery as a kid. Eventually I went into photography because I did not know how to draw. When I was building my 33’sailboat in the ‘80s I stumbled across Betty Edwards’ “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. If you have read it (and you really should) you know that after the background on the research that lead to the book, she asks that you do a series of preliminary pre-instruction drawings. I was busy building a boat and working full-time so I had no free time. I put the book on a shelf of books to go to the boat.

At the end of April 1987 my engine broke down in Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas. The mechanic found the problem, pulled the part from the engine and took it to the diesel shop in Miami for them to fix while he went to his doctor’s appointment. He ended up in hospital for a month and so I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

I pulled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain from the shelf and did the pre-instruction drawings May 1, 1987. I worked on the lessons in the book everyday for the rest of the month and on May 28 I was doing the final exercises in the book. I COULD DRAW!

2. When and how did you first discover coloured pencil as a fine art tool and why did you choose cp as a favoured medium?

I returned from the Bahamas in September 1987 and my daughter was born in February 1988. I spent a lot of time looking after her as an infant and I did not want to lose my newly acquired drawing skills. And I wanted to start working in colour. I needed a medium that was non-toxic because of the baby. As well it needed to be something that I could drop when the baby woke up from her nap, something that wouldn’t dry in a brush and something that had no fumes. That eliminates virtually everything except coloured pencil.

A couple of years later I had started my own photographic retail store and studio. One day I discovered one of my customers, Heather Dickenson, was a professional artist and she worked in coloured pencil. She was a great source of encouragement and provided me with direction. About this time I also took a weekend workshop with Bernard Poulin that really helped resolve many things for me. A couple of years later I had my first exhibit which was a joint exhibit with Heather. Thank you, Heather and Bernard.

3. What do you enjoy most about working with coloured pencil and why?

What is not to enjoy? This is such a wonderful medium. It is very accessible and very forgiving. Anyone can pick up a coloured pencil and they already know (basically) how to use it. You can spend hours working on a piece and then leave it for days and nothing has changed when you go back to it. It layers and blends beautifully. I love the feel of the pencil on the various surfaces I draw on and the different feel each brand has. I love the smell of the shavings when I sharpen a pencil. I love the texture on the pigment as it builds on the paper. I love the time it takes for me to complete a painting (typically hundreds of hours) because I believe it infuses my work with what I feel about the piece as it grows. I love how people who work in coloured pencil are so passionate about this medium. I love how different it is in each artist’s hand. I love how creatively it is being used today by artists around the world.

I guess I just love coloured pencil.

4. Where do your ideas and your inspiration come from?

I think my ideas mostly come from my emotional response to the things, natural and man-made, and people around me. I frequently have strong, immediate responses to things that are everyday things; shoes at the foot of a staircase, a coat hanging on a coat-hook, a shadow on a wall, a bird flying by a fence. These are beautiful things that usually get overlooked by people in everyday life. These are things that have a delightful sense of mystery to them. I find I have more ideas for paintings than I have time to develop them.

5. Do you ever get artist’s block and if so, how do you deal with it? What helps you to overcome it?

I have been very fortunate; I have never really suffered from artist’s block. When my wife and I were trapped in the limbo of our six year process waiting for Immigration Canada to issue her visa, I had to fight a growing inertia and sense of futility. I over came that by doing a series of portraits of her. That cleared my mind enough that I was able to keep working.

Sometimes I find my muse feeling a little bored. When this happens, I usually start experimenting with other media, either in conjunction with coloured pencil or completely on their own. Sometimes this results in some fun play time which is very refreshing and sometimes it results in exciting new ways to work a painting. I have never been able to get watercolours to work the way I want them to but one time during one of these experiments I produced a painting that received an award at a group show. That is always good for the soul. Another time I experimented with raw powdered pigment (left over from experimenting with egg tempera) that I ground into the paper and then finished off with layers of coloured pencil. I have experimented with oils, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, pastel, charcoal, graphite, watercolour pencils, oil pastels, egg tempera, contee, clay, wax, ink, lino-cut printing and papier mache

Regardless of the results of the experiment I always come away from it refreshed, excited, and renewed. I find this works so well that now just trying a different paper is enough to refresh me.

Usually I will have new ideas demanding to be dealt with before I am finished what I am working on but if am were ever stuck there are so many portraits to do of important people in my life that if I did nothing but these I would run out of time before I finished them all. There are landscapes I see every day that are screaming for attention and if I get near a body of water there are half a dozen seascapes immediately available to me. Any subject is a potential work of art if “seen” the right way

6. On average, approximately how much of your time do you devote to your art (or art-related activities, such as research, photo shoots, thumbnail sketches, etc)?

Not enough. At the moment there are so many demands on my time (a two year old daughter, an elderly mother, a full time job, the CPSC, teaching, astronomy) but I try to devote a minimum of 12 hours per week to actual painting. This does not include any framing time, planning, photo shoots or other related activities. I find that when I am busy I do a lot of the mental preparation for a painting while I am driving. Sometime when I am teaching and we are discussing composition I will use a problem I am working on as an example of how to work it out with thumb nail sketches. When the demands are less I try to spend 20 to 40 hours per week.

7. How would you describe your art style?

Magic Realism. I like to have a sense of mystery in my work regardless of the subject matter.

8. What subject matter and/or themes do you prefer to explore and pursue in your art?

I love seascapes and landscapes but I also enjoy interiors and people/portraits.

9. Describe your coloured pencil technique?

I work with a needle sharp point on my pencil and apply the pigment with just the weight of the pencil. I apply layer on layer this way until I build up a depth of colour I am after. I almost never use a single colour but will layer different colours or shades to create the final colour I am after. For example a blue sky may have as many as six or eight different blues in it and there may even be several magenta or yellow tones as well. Sometimes I will build several layers this way and then use a tissue to vigorously rub the pigment into the paper to help create a smooth even tone that fills the little white hollows of the paper. I will then re-apply these colours to create the finished texture that I want.

When I am working on a portrait, I will frequently do an under drawing in chromium green and then layer the local colour to create the flesh tones that I want. I find this creates a depth to the flesh and gives it a more realistic look.

10. Generally speaking, how much pre-planning goes into your art work? Are you fanatical about working out all the little details ahead of time, or do you tend to work more “by the seat of your pants”, or do you fall somewhere in between the two extremes?

Much of this depends on the subject matter of the work. I have an on-going series of painting of staircases that require the perspective to be absolutely correct visually. This involves a great deal of preliminary drawing and adjusting to get it “right” and it is much easier to get it correct before any colour is applied. If I am working on a landscape or a seascape I will often only draw in the horizon line and then let the painting evolve from there. I do however make sure I have the composition clearly defined in my mind before the piece starts. I will often place a small mark on the paper to indicate where a major element fits although I do not develop it until much later in the drawing process.

11. Can you describe your work process for us, from conception to completion?

I’ll try.

First of all, most of my ideas occur fully developed in my mind. I will “see” my final painting flash in my mind a nano-second before I see the scene as it “really” is. If I am “sketching” with my camera I will often respond to scenes that stir something in me and I will take several reference photos which I will sort later in my studio but even here I will see the finished work first. I do not reproduce the photo but I try to reproduce the image that spoke to me. Often this is significantly different than the reference photo since what I photograph is only the spark of the idea.

If I am working from life the same process has to happen. I must see the image I am after before I know where I am going or what I am doing. Most often this happens instantly when I look at something but occasionally I will recognize that the image is there but I don’t see it clearly, immediately. When this happens I will often do thumbnails or other quick sketches to try and find the image. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, the idea will hover in my mind until I find the image. Once it took over a year until I worked it out.

If I am working totally from my imagination the process is the same. Once, I started work on the second painting in a series of three directly related seascapes. I had drawn only the horizon line where the ocean meets the night sky. As soon as I started to lay in the deep blues of the night sky, the ocean refused to be anything but the flat roof of an apartment building.

Once I have the image, all I have to do is get it on paper. With my light layering technique this can often take many hours. Two to three hundred hours is not unusual for a 12 x 18 inch piece. The first step is to define the proportions of the piece. Most often this is already defined by the mental image that has developed but when it hasn’t or the proportions don’t seem right I am forced back to thumbnails. With the proportions confirmed I select the paper I am going to use, usually museum board, Stonehenge or Bristol Vellum. I then draw a frame on the paper within which I will create the painting. Having a border around the painting prevents the edges of the work getting damaged and it makes it much easier to frame.

I start work on the large areas of the piece first, the sky, the water, the foreground grass. As this progresses, I will begin to bring in the other areas. Degas said that you should be able to walk away from a drawing or painting at any point and it should be able to pass for being finished. In other words, you need to work the whole piece all the time. I find this is especially true with coloured pencils if you (I) ever hope to get the values right. I will usually continue this until I have the built up the local colours to nearly the correct values before I start working to add the internal details of that area. I will continue like this until I am finished.

12. Name three coloured pencil artists whose work you greatly admire or who inspire you. What is it about them or their work that appeals to you?

I love the spaces and the sense of mystery Allan Servoss creates in his work. I am in awe of what Alexandra Bastien has done in her latest exhibit “The Beast Within”. Her skin tones are flawless, her drawing is impeccable and her images are stunning. This goes back to what I said earlier about the vast range of what can be done with coloured pencil. These two are so different, not only in their subject matter but also in how they use the medium and the effect it creates. What other medium offers this range?

Erica Walker’s portraits of young girls are sublime and incredibly moving.

Two other artists that I admire and who have inspired me (and happen to use similar techniques to the ones I use) do not work in coloured pencil. Andrew Wyeth worked in egg tempera. This is another medium that relies on building many, many layers to create the tones and values of the final image each cross-hatched one on top of the other, each effecting the final look of the piece. The other is Alex Colville who works in acrylic but uses it in a cross-hatching multi-layered technique. Both these artist’s works are moody and mysterious. Both have a physical and emotional depth to them that I find very appealing.

13. In regards to your own work, which is your favourite piece, and why?

That is a difficult question to answer. The most obvious answer is “The one that I am currently working on” but I am currently working on seven pieces. There are pivotal pieces that will always be favourites and there are portraits of my wife and daughters that I will never part with. If I had to pick one, at the moment it would likely be “Yellow Boat”. As a realist, I really like the abstract qualities of this piece.

14. What are your artistic goals?

I would like to raise awareness of coloured pencil as a fine art medium to the point that it is accepted without question or qualification. I also want to have my work in the National Gallery of Canada. I want to raise people’s awareness of the beauty in everything around them.

15. Is there anything else you’d like us to know about you, the artist, or about your art?

I am often asked why so few of my pieces have titles. I find that unless the title is totally obvious or innocuous it forces a point of view and I only use titles when I want to direct the response. Paintings make statements. Titles are statements too. They must work together to make the same statement. If I do a seascape, with boats pulled up on shore, and call it “Sunday Morning” it has a totally different impact than it would if I called it “Moratorium”. At one exhibit I had, the gallery really wanted titles for everything. I had a painting of my daughter wearing a hat that she had chosen at about age eight and worn daily for several years. When I did the painting she was only wearing the hat occasionally and I wanted to capture her with the hat before it became a thing of the past. I had titled the piece “Sarah’s Hat” but the gallery didn’t like that. For the exhibit they labelled it “Sarah’s Hope”. I try to be careful with my titles.

16. If you could offer a little tidbit of advice gleaned from your own experience with using coloured pencil to an artist just starting out in the medium, what would you say?

There are two things you must embrace, experimentation and failure. We do not learn or grow from our successes and things we already do well. We learn and grow from our failures and by trying new things. Also, listen to what people say about your work with an open mind. If someone says something negative about a painting of yours, don’t take offense and become defensive, listen to what they are saying and learn from it.