Fog Rolling In | Stephen Springer Davis | 2010

It was one of those August days in Maine when it actually was hot, as opposed to Colorado-like. Very refreshing to be overlooking the ocean on such a day, when it was in the upper eighties. I’m guessing that the water was about fifty. The result was that despite the sun fog started to accumulate over the ocean. As I painted, my right arm was warm and the left chilly.

Looking Down on Camden | Stephen Springer Davis | 2010

Camden has to be one of the prettiest towns in Maine. It’s right on the water and has a beautiful harbor surrounded by lovely, nicely kept homes. Nice parks, an enviable library that probably has multiple copies of The Preppy Handbook. Some might say the town leans to the hoity-toity, and I’d be inclined to agree. Let’s just say that I did this painting of the town from the distance that for me was the most comfortable.

Beachcombers in Belfast, Maine | Stephen Springer Davis | 2010

I like to find a beach scene where there’s a lot of beach and plants in the foreground, and the ocean fairly far away. This spot accommodated me because the tide went way out. When the tide was in here, people who wanted to wander by the ocean had no choice but to wander by the ocean, because there was really no beach, just rocks.

Portrait of Owenroe | Danni Dawson | 1971

Not surprisingly, Danni has gone on to great things, as you can see at her website. You should take a look at her beautiful portraits, as well as her luminous still lifes. I haven’t seen Danni since the early 70’s, I hope she won’t mind that I’ve captured one of her paintings here:

Lucia Henderson | Danni Dawson

If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them.

Winter Hillside | Stephen Springer Davis | 2010

I don’t know, of course, what your winter has been like, but where I live we got slammed with something like 80″ of snow starting in December. That’s really weird because we rarely get any snow. But in honor of this precipitation, I’m posting one of my few winter paintings.

In my experience, no one ever buys winter paintings. Galleries hate them consequently, and discourage me from including any in shows. I’ve over-ruled the owners in the past, thinking I must be wrong, but the result is always the same. I’ve talked to visitors at my shows about what they do and don’t like, in a general way. (This might be a good time to read my post about the Perfect Painting) Generally visitors have said they don’t like winter scenes because they’re reminded of, well, winter. That means freezing temperatures, the high cost of heating, scary driving, missed work. For non-skiers, who are probably the majority of us, winter is bad news. But sometimes a scene with snow is pretty anyway and has to be painted.

I’m not so tough as to paint en plein air in the winter. It’s uncomfortable enough to paint under a hot sun. In the winter I will strictly take some pictures and do the painting in the comfort of my studio. Did I mention I hate winter?

Evolution | Stephen Springer Davis | 1980

My work sold really well at that time, and I would bring a new batch up every month or two to replenish Kathryn’s stock. I have to say I was feeling pretty good about having a successful time at a New York Gallery. I was down-right chuffed.

One day in the fall of 1980 I arrived with my portfolio of new stuff to find a much older man, maybe in his late 60’s, there to show Kathryn Markel slides of his artwork. I was just standing around with him, waiting, because she was on the phone. We chatted and I asked if I could take a look at his slides. The work was colorful abstracts, quite lovely. He told me that Mondays were his day to visit galleries and show his work. He said he had never had a show, in 40 years of trying. I was amazed – his paintings were so wonderful. No one had ever shown them? That was impossible. I was humbled. Here I was, the self-satisfied 20-something, and I’d shown my work several times already. I thought that clever and accessible as they were, my punny rubber stamp prints on paper were pretty lightweight compared tohis more serious and bold oil paintings. I was embarrassed that I’d been more successful then he after only a few years of trying.

After that encounter I started to think differently about my work, and ultimately I changed to a more serious (I guess) direction.

Fragment No. 21 | Stephen Springer Davis | 1982

I’ve often thought about that artist, and I’ve wondered if he died without ever showing his beautiful paintings to the world.

In 1985 I read an article in the New Yorker by Lawrence Weschler called Shapinsky’s Karma. The story is involved and affecting. I’ve often wondered why it’s never been made into a movie. Here’s my precis:

The author was contacted by an Indian reporter and agricultural college teacher, Akumal Ramachander, about an artist he’d met in New York called Harold Shapinsky. Mr. Weschler had no clue who this artist was, but Mr. Ramachander insisted that it was his karmic duty, his destiny, to make the world aware of the artwork of Shapinsky. His spiritual calling was not to make money from success for Mr. Shapinsky, but rather to help him because the art world needed to know this unknown artist.

While Mr. Ramachander had good karma, Shapinsky’s was not so great. He had been a contemporary of all the big names in the New York art scene in the late 40’s: Motherwell, deKooning, Rothko, Pollock, all of whom would go on to be rich and famous. In 1949 Shapinsky was living in a cold-water flat, struggling to get the money together for canvas and paint. He became seriously ill, and his brother took him out to Long Island to recover. Unfortunately, this same generous brother forgot to pay Shapinsky’s $12 rent for the apartment. As a result, the landlord cleared out the apartment and threw away several years’ worth of Shapinsky’s paintings. Only a few were recovered.

Untitled | Harold Shapinsky |1950

Shapinsky’s next setback was that, unlike the other artists in the group, he was drafted in 1949. He didn’t get out of the army till 1952. As a result, he effectively missed the boat of New York Abstract Expressionism, and was forever more out of sync with the art world. Shapinsky struggled for decades, painting in his one-room apartment shared with his wife, keeping his paintings under their bed. A chance meeting in Chicago by Mr. Ramachander with Shapinsky’s son David started him on his journey to let the world know about this man who painted “like an angel”

Against all possible odds, Mr. Ramachander kept up his spirtual quest and ultimately got Shapinsky a show at the Mayor Gallery in London, where his paintings sold for $15 to $30,000. Other big shows and notoriety followed. The world finally knew about Harold Shapinsky.

In a related story, on December 20, 2009 The New York Times had a story about a painter aged 94 who was accidentally discovered after she had painted in obscurity for six decades. It happened that in 2004 The Latin Collective in New York was putting together a show of geometric paintings by women. One of the artists pulled out of the show at the last minute, and a friend of Carmen Herrera suggested that the owner include her. The owner said “Who the hell is Carmen Herrera?” Several of Herrera’s painting were delivered to the gallery, and the owner mistakenly thought that they were the paintings of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. He was amazed to find instead from dates on the paintings that they were completed ten years before anyone had heard of Ms. Clark.

Shocking Pink #20 |Carmen Herrera | 1949

Collectors immediately bought up her paintings, and since then she has had her work shown in England and Germany. As her friend, the painter Tony Bechara told her,
“The bus always comes for those who wait.”

Was the man I met at the Markel Gallery Harold Shapinsky? Probably not. But I’m still humbled by his story and those of Harold Shapinsky and Carmen Herrera. These three artists painted in obscurity for years. I’m going to continue to sit at this bus stop, working on my paintings when I can.

I have, though, been able to finish up a portrait of my wife. I’ve done a bunch of portraits in pencil and charcoal, but this painting is the first I’ve painted in oils.

Nina | Stephen Springer Davis | 2009

To see this charming kid display his natural and amazing ability painting in watercolors is inspiring but depressing. I spent five years working in watercolors and I found it a very difficult. This boy just makes nice and mature paintings from the git-go. I don’t think his paintings are museum- or even gallery-worthy (yet) but I envy his ability. I don’t mean this as an “Oh poor me” moment.

The debate about so-called prodigies has to be the classic nature versus nurture discussion. In the case of Kieran, the artist here, it doesn’t appear that his parents pushed him towards doing paintings. They seem to have nurtured his natural desire to paint, after he showed the interest himself. He saw scenes that he liked and wanted record them in watercolor. He had the skills to bring his inspiration to life.

Kieran’s not only precociously talented, but he’s clearly thinking like an artist, making choices in composition and emphasizing important elements, letting the less important recede. Kieran will have a successful artistic life, assuming he doesn’t get distracted by something else. For the rest of us, it’s never this easy. We maybe some of us are born with some ability, but it takes a lifetime of struggle and learning to get anywhere as an artist. And then you might never sell a painting or be in a show, let alone have a YouTube video.

In a related matter, I’ve played the guitar for a long, long time and I couldn’t play as well as this boy, as much as I might want to:

Sungha Jung is terrific and 2.75 million+ people have been curious enough to check out the video. He plays like a prodigy but not like a robot – he has a feel for the music. I’m sure he practices several hours a day. Did his rock and roll parents (maybe they prefer opera) suggest that he take up the guitar so that Sungha could be the rich and famous players that they weren’t? Or did he see a performer on TV and beg to learn the guitar starting at age 3, and that was that? Clearly he’s worked hard to be this good. Did his parents force him to, or does he love playing so much all he wants to do is get better?

Pop music is different from landscape painting. There’s no show called America’s Got Landscape Painting Talent. Singing and playing will always be creative routes that have a better chance of ending in riches than doing paintings. Talented guitar players can do their thing, playing in clubs or on stage and people will pay to see them (theoretically). Few people would pay to see an artist paint a landscape, I’m guessing.

All I know is it must be nice to be a born genius.

Storm at Acadia - The Day After | Stephen Springer Davis | 2009

I was immediately reminded of the much darker storm scenes painted by Winslow Homer near his home at Prout’s Neck, Maine. I’ve always admired Homer’s seacoast paintings, especially his storm scenes: waves pounding on dark rocks under a dark sky. The scene we saw at Acadia that day seemed much cheerier but nonetheless was just as scary. The Park Service wouldn’t let visitors get too close too the sea that day because tragically, the day before several people had been pulled to their deaths into the ocean by a rogue wave.

Storm painting | Winslow Homer