Presented to me by the Commanding Officer of the local National Guard
An art dealer recently said that people buy art through their ears, not through their eyes.
I say, “Look to the image that speaks to you of Nature and of Human Nature.
Approach these with patience, energy, and care. Rich or poor; fair or no; we seek out and point to it.”
Here’s the link to a little article about my current project:
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/lifestyle/10918354-181/painter-honors-everyday-heroes-of?artslide=7&sba=AAS
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
April 30, 2020, 8:13AM
We’ve all seen paintings of heroes — generals on horseback, soldiers in battle raising the flag — but how often have you seen an ambulance driver or a letter carrier exalted through portraiture? Not often. John Deckert decided to do something about that.
Deckert, 72, has a long history as a professional artist. For 20 years, he lived in New York City. He came to live in Mill Valley in 2003 before settling in Santa Rosa’s Rincon Valley three years ago, and he has continued to show his work, most recently in an exhibit that opened in Berkeley early last month.
He always has done both portraits and landscapes, but lately, he’s been focused on a much more specific series of paintings.
During the statewide shelter-in-place order, Deckert has been taking photos of people who must continue to work despite the coronavirus pandemic — a landscaping crew, EMTs in an ambulance, a PG&E repair crew, a tree trimming crew, the UPS delivery driver — and then painting oil portraits of them, ranging in size from 5 by 7 inches to 16 by 20 inches.
“I’ll ask the people coming to do tree trimming or lawn care,” Deckert said, “and I’ll approach them to take their picture.”
He’s posted the work online, at johndeckert.com/pandemic, where you can see it.
One of his subjects is mailman Ronald Crawley, who has known Deckert for several years.
“I first met John about three years ago as his new mail carrier. After a couple of years, I deduced that he was an artist, and one day I asked him questions about how he got started. He sent me email photos of some of his past work, and I was impressed with his talent,” Crawley said.
“Then one day a couple of weeks ago, he photographed me at his mailbox and told me he was doing paintings of people still doing their jobs during the coronavirus. People think we’re heroes, or something special, but I am just grateful to still be working, although I will be retiring at the end of this month,” he added. “I think his project is pretty cool, something that will be remembered for a long time to come.”
Deckert started with the people who showed up near his house. Some of them he already knew. Then he expanded his territory.
“Just today I received selfies of 12 ER nurses at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital,” he cheerfully announced one recent Sunday afternoon. “So, there’s a lot more work I have to do on this project.”
This isn’t Deckert’s first effort to honor those still at work while the rest of us seek safety.
“In 2017, after the wildfires, people were putting signs on fences, saying ‘thank you’ to the first responders,” Deckert said. “I’m a painter, so my way of saying thanks is to do a painting.”
With that project, Deckert worked from photographs to paint portraits he then gave to his subjects, including Santa Rosa Fire Chief Anthony Gossner, as well as the commanding officer of the local National Guard unit, the ranger at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and the head nurse in the emergency room on the night shift at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, among others.
His focus during the coronavirus pandemic is a bit different than it was after the 2017 wildfires.
“The pandemic has switched things around,” Deckert said. “During the fires, the attention was on the leaders. During the pandemic, when most people are inside, some people are still working, and they’re the real heroes.”
As Deckert began to produce portraits of essential workers during the pandemic, he planned to give the paintings to the people they portrayed, as he had done before. But his plans changed when an new opportunity arose.
Now he expects to show his work as part of a larger traveling exhibit, once the stay-home orders are lifted, featuring 60 similar works by some 30 artists nationwide, some of them top magazine illustrators.
Deckert is a longtime Marine reservist, and his work will be part of the new “Emergent Warriors Artwork” effort to honor essential workers. That effort is led by Michael Fay, a retired official artist for the Marine Corps who now lives in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, and Deckert has been involved from the start.
“I want to take this on the road. This will be international eventually,” Fay said about the new portrait effort. Deckert previously participated in Fay’s Joe Bonham Project, devoted to portraits of wounded veterans and named for the maimed hero of the 1938 anti-war novel “Johnny Got His Gun” by American novelist and later blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
“John’s art is wonderful,” Fay said of Deckert. “He’s just an incredible painter.”
There are 35 of Deckert’s paintings in the permanent collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. The work by Deckert and others in that collection demonstrates the lasting power of traditional realistic paintings, Fay said.
“Illustration has a lot narrative content,” he explained. “It’s all about storytelling. It’s interesting how people open up to it.”
You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department K-9 named Mako died unexpectedly today.
Thankfully, this dog and Sheriff Pasero are still safe.
Me?
I'm busy making
a pile of paintings
to stand on,
hoping for a better view.
You don’t have to believe someone else’s opinion, but it’s bound to be helpful to at least hear it. Think of it like wind strength and direction to a long shot. You’ve got to compensate for environmental conditions if you want to improve your aim.
I wanted to acknowledge the importance of the people who keep things moving during a government shut-down. Ordinary workers. You see them every day. They come, they do their job. They go away. But when all else fails, they are the ones who do the work. Essential workers. Here are some I’ve been able to get close to. Close enough for a photograph, that is.
A portrait is a painter and the model. Any third person will look at it and think, “Damn. That’s a fine figure painting!” Meanwhile the model thinks, “Do I look like THAT?!” Her friends reassure her that the artist is a jerk. The model’s husband thinks, “There’s something wrong with the mouth.” (John Singer Sargent rolling in his grave), and the painter thinks, “Why did I even start this?”
Everyone else, EVERYONE, thinks, “WOW! That’s damned fine. I wish I could paint like that.”
This is true for most artist/painters and their work.
So, just start. Get in there and start thrashing about and you’ll do fine. And if it’s not so fine you train yourself to have a short memory like the pitcher in baseball. Guy hit a home run off your last pitch? Forget it, you’ve got to pitch the rest of the inning.
I’ve always had trouble with the idea of “critique”. Back long ago when I used to write about art it was never very useful. I had strong opinions; everyone does. What worked better for me was to simply and honestly describe what I saw.
I knew people then and still do, who could not abide realistic work. Others who can’t stand abstract work. Concept artists hate the photo realists and they hate printmakers and they don’t like the Impressionists and nobody likes the way photographers machine gun walls full of pictures. etc.
Everyone thinks artists must be such darling free-thinking creatives and I’ve seen a lot of rigid, ambitious, elbows-out, competitive craftsmen. It’s why I’ve really enjoyed the group you put together Charlie. I’ve never before felt so much a part of a friendly cooperative team.
I think it has to do with your confidence in the program and trust in the individuals. I hope we did good for you, for the Museum, for the Marine Corps, and in a very real sense, for the country.
You say I do better with color— that might be because I’ve been here in Northern California in the middle of a very vigorous art community with the particular characteristic of entertaining the idea that color is a major speaking voice in the choir. A soloist even. I’ve been here since 2003 and could afford limited access to workshops but I looked really hard and learned all I could.
I think it may be the "we aim to please a family audience" mentality of the animation industry. Skywalker Ranch is only about half an hour from my studio for example. There are smaller satellite studios that support the industry all around, I think. Or at least there are a lot of artists trained to do so. And San Francisco is stuffed with them.
So the color you see in various Pixar animation films are all color schemes meant to be interesting and harmonious and while they may relate to nature, they are not natural.
I have found that if I paint the color I see (which is my tendency) the image has a kind of dullness to it. But if I exaggerate the color I see, the EFFECT of the color presents a seemingly truer scene to me.
I've had the benefit of a lot of good colorific painters to learn from here in California.
I'm usually one of those painters uses the same brush, wipe it off, a swish of mineral spirits and back in. Mix one color and then shift it to another color. The brush starts out painting the blue of a sky and ends up with some dark colors in shadows. And I always had trouble with changing a color already laid down - a tendency to grey down even parts I wanted to hold color.
Some long while ago I saw one of Marc Dalessio’s public videos and remarked to myself that he held a pile of brushes in his left hand while painting. At the time, I thought, "That's weird, everyone else holds a roll of paper towels." But the image stuck in my mind, even though for many months trying to remember who it was, I kept thinking was Frank Serrano. But no, it was Dalessio.
A couple days ago that image was so compelling I tried it for no particular reason and found myself picking out a new brush for each color change. What a difference! I'm kind of loose and ramshackle about my painting habits so no telling if I will stick with it as perfectly as he, but it DOES make a difference.
So, thank you, Marc !
We are shut-in due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, but some people must continue going to work. To honor them or those whose business had to shut down, I’ve been making small "People at Work" paintings. Working one at a time, I set it aside to bring another one up, then another, etc. Nothing is yet finished but all have filled with hope.
#electrician, #treetrimmer, #ERtech, #mailman, #recyclingdriver, #EMT, #cashier, #fabricator, #barber, #gallerist, #artist
The Fine Art of Painting is a language spoken well by a few, understood by some, and the rest have turned on a television. I'll be so happy when people learn to say something other than "stunning" when speaking of fine art painting. Painting is a language and we need to learn the vocabulary.
Varnish provides a removable protective covering
for the painted image and enriches existing colors with a “wet look”
I received a letter today from Major General James Kessler, the President and CEO of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. It is deeply humbling and a great honor to announce that I'm to be presented the 2020 Colonel John W. Thomason Award for the military paintings and drawings I've done from 2017 through 2019.
Good news from Oil Painters of America
The story of my Coast Guard Motor Lifeboat Surf Drills painting.
I got called out on a cold and windy day. Coast Guard Station Bodega Bay found the right wind and tides for a Motor Lifeboat Surf Drills that day and sent me a message to report to Sand Beach. I google-mapped the location and arrived about a half mile north of their location. I climbed the dunes to get a better vantage point then hiked down to near their location where I found a Coast Guardsman with a radio. I set up on a tripod and used the longest lens I had, 200 mm.
Two boats present. Waiting for the oncoming wave sets. By turns, each boat adjusts their timing and aim and smashes through, lifting high in a billowing splash of water.
The day was grey with no other activity on the water. The scene was their classroom for practising this maneuver and it went without a hitch. However, I have seen the angry ocean and this was not such a storm. I know these practice drills in the surf are meant to prepare the crews for much bigger water and less than optimal conditions.
So, I began to imagine. My brush began to experiment. My eye wondered what it would look like if . . . and . . .
In the end, I worked out a scene with impending darkness and a threatening sky. The ambiguous form of a far off fog bank and distant ship in distress. I put in steeper oncoming waves than what I saw on the beach that day. I put the element of drama out front because I felt it was important to call attention to the courage and skills these crews may have to draw on any given day. Semper Paratus is the motto of the United States Coast Guard; Always Ready.
Good news from the California Art Club.
My iPhone video from the open ramp of a C-130 performing aerial refueling over the Pacific Ocean of F-18 Hornets from VMFA (AW) 225 during training exercises at MCAS Miramar.
July, 2019 video credit, John Deckert
We did a little Plein Aire work this morning, taking it to new heights. Aerial refueling from Major Sheldon’s C-130 to Captain Sasso’s F-18 over the Pacific Ocean at 10,000 feet altitude and about 300 mph air speed.
The experience was the most exciting and beautiful thing I've ever done. It was NOT scary. The man that hooked us up into the harness with a walking tether was on loan from the Blue Angels and he was just the best. Scratch that, the whole crew was the best, but CW was really special even beyond that. We wore foam ear plugs and the ear cups in the helmet on top of that. You couldn't hear someone standing right next to you or even talking right in your face, unless you at least lifted the helmet off your ear. The C-130 is made for carrying very heavy loads, 58,000 pounds of jet fuel for example. Ours had a light load and it felt like you were in a noisy balloon . . . smooth. Out at the end of the ramp the ride was smooth too in the center of the ramp. I sat to the right and Alec to the left. The jets came to us from the left side and slid over to the right side for refueling. So, my iPhone was held in the smoothest air flow. a little past my left shoulder, the center of the ramp. The closer you move to the side of the ramp the more violent was the buffeting of the wind stream. This was almost 300 miles per hour. At the side of the ramp the wind will open zippered pockets and empty them. Alec felt that the jet gave a sense of raw power and speed but I thought of it as a graceful floating beautifully shaped sculpture. They are cumbersome, heavy, angular machines on the ground but in the air they are magnificent, lovely, and serene. Yes, even that. Serene. The pattern these planes flew during this operation was like an extremely large oval. When I checked the photos I took afterward I saw that we had been flying out over the Pacific at one part of the ellipse and over Tijuana over another part of it. Afterwards both Alec and I made a similar comment. Normally I have a fear reaction when getting too close to the edge of a precipice. Alec too. But neither of us felt anything like that during this event. It was exhilarating for both of us. We are here to gather reference material for various kinds of aircraft at the Marine Corps Airfield named Miramar, near San Diego. Alec is a skilled sketch artist and I was getting photographs of the whole thing to later turn into paintings.
By the standards of the day I think Vincent Van Gogh was judged to be deficient in technical facility and yet we respond to the soul of his work and the energy of his work and believe that he was a great artist. The hands on his figures for example, are not anatomically correct rendering of human hands. They are tortured, knotted vines with a sometimes tenuous or desperate hold on life. It is that very poetry of life in visual form we respond to in a painting. In one sense virtually anyone behind a good camera is a great technician. That cannot mean that just anyone with the ability to record a scene is a great artist. The art of the mundane can take you only so far before you crave the nourishing pulse of deeper emotions.