Richard Baumann relies on two complementary colors to develop his landscapes and interior scenes, applying mixtures of them around the canvas so he can orchestrate the relationship between shapes and values. As a result, subtle color accents stand out against the balanced composition.
(Right: Interior with Poinsettia, 2006, 20x16 Oil)
The best way to make something important in a painting is often to make changes that subdue everything around it. That's a simple statement to make, but the concept is one that artists often forget when they are trying to make a flower, a vase, or a cheekbone more significant than it currently appears in a painting. They are inclined to add more yellow to the color of the flower, thicker highlights on the vase, or more pink to the crest of the cheekbone. But quite often the best solution is to make everything around that object grayer, softer, or less contrasting. By adding a complementary color, smoothing an edge, or reducing the difference between values, the competing shapes become less important and the center of interest becomes more obvious.
Richard Baumann understands and applies that concept as well as almost any contemporary artist. His interior scenes and landscapes are brilliant examples of how colors, shapes, and values can be simplified so they will have the maximum impact in a painting. The key to the success of those paintings is that Baumann works with a limited palette of colors that emphasizes the complementary relationship of violet and yellow, red and green, or blue and orange. For example, Abingdon Square Studio With French Tulips is structured around the relationship of violet and yellow, with most of the sunlit shapes warmed with a cadmium yellow, and the shadows cooled with shades of lavender that represent subtle shifts in the combination of blue and red. Because the composition is developed with "color/gray" mixtures of the complementary colors, the yellow tulips and blue cloth stand out without the colors or the values being pushed to the extreme. That is, with most of the canvas covered in subtle mixtures of violet and yellow, the pure yellow and pure blue grab the viewer's attention without much effort.
(Above Left: Abingdon Square Studio With French Tulips, 2007, 14x11 Oil)
When one compares several paintings created in Baumann's New York studio using the same chairs, mirror, fireplace, vases, and flowers, it becomes even more obvious how the artist uses carefully balanced color relationships to offer completely different responses to what he observes. The same is true with the paintings he creates on location and in his studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts. "My wife and I have a vacation home in Gloucester where I spend most of the summer painting." he explains. "Some of the smaller canvases are started on location and completed in the studio, and others are done indoors from sketches and studies. Despite the change in venue and working conditions from my New York studio, my palette and working procedures are essentially the same. I'm always striving to simplify things and concentrate on the fundamental relationships of shapes, edges, values, and colors."
The benefit of this concentration can be seen in the painting Gloucester Boatyard in Fog. Most
of the picture is developed with slight shifts in a basic violet color
that leans toward brown in the foreground, ochre in the middle range,
and blue in the distance. The exceptions are the circular buoys
hanging from the side of the boat, which are brighter red shapes. They
stand out because they are exceptions to overall composition, not
because they are painted with new colors added to the limited palette.
(Above Right: Gloucester Boatyard in Fog, 2006, 15x20, Oil)
"My teachers at the Art Students League of New York, Frank Mason and Robert Maione, always talked about atmosphere being one of the most critical aspects of painting." Baumann explains. "They pointed out that objects gain a sense of truth, vibrancy, and life in the way a painter moves them in and out of the atmosphere. That's how an artist creates the magical illusion of three-dimensional objects existing on a two-dimensional surface: It's all about the "air" in a painting suggested by the subtle relationships of closely related colors and values.
"The English artist Bernard Dunstan wrote about the same issues, and he
had a strong influence on me." Baumann adds. "He described how
artists can control grays by mixing complementary colors. For example,
he demonstrated how a green can be softened with the addition of a
small amount of red; how the combination of complements can drop a
color in value without it becoming muted or dull (as would happen with
the addition of black); and how an artist can maintain the richness of
color through all the incremental shifts in value. Monet did this
brilliantly in such paintings as his famous Le Gare Saint-Lazare. The
reds stand out because they exist in an atmosphere of cool blues,
grays, and violets. The warm colors explode because of the foil of
cool colors around them. Many of Monet's paintings include those kinds
of dramatic notes set off against color grays made with combinations of
complementary colors.
(Above Left: Claude Monet's "Le Gare Saint-Lazare," 1877)
"My method of developing a painting is also based on my study of Cezanne." Baumann explains. "Cezanne painted patches or slabs of color around a canvas and gradually brought those together to identify a tree, building, or mountain. No one element of the landscape was completed until Cezanne was able to bring the entire picture together. That is, he would make a few strokes of the brush to place a limb in the lower right, indicate a roof line in the upper left, paint the local color of the rocks in the middle of the canvas, move to the left to establish the location of a distant hill, and so forth. Eventually he would go back to the limb, the roof, the rocks, and the hill to complete them at the same time every other section of the painting was being resolved.
"Cezanne's approach makes a lot more sense to me than painting the center of interest and working my way out from there to the edges of the canvas," Baumann comments. "The approach follows the movement of the way objects relate to one another in space. Everything is incomplete and at the same level of development until the painting is finished. I actually followed his example and painted watercolors in this "point-to-point" or "patch-to-patch" method so I could understand it better before using it with oil colors. The advantage is that I know where things are and have a better sense of the overall proportions and integration of the pictorial elements before I've applied a lot of thick paint. People who watch me are totally confused by the seemingly disjointed strokes of oil paint all over the canvas, but I know what they indicate about the landscape.
Baumann says this method of painting is one that can best be employed
when the subject is directly in front of him and he has the opportunity
to edit what he is seeing. "I rarely work with photographs because
they don't accurately record the atmosphere, nor do they allow me to
move things in and out of the picture," he explains. "When I'm
looking directly at a landscape or a setup in my studio, it's easy to
move objects closer together or farther apart, to make them darker or
lighter in value, or to take them completely out of the picture.
Interestingly, this idea of making radical changes inside a picture
first occurred to me when I was working as a security guard for the New
York City Ballet in the 1980s and watched the designers build sets,
change the lighting, tear everything down, and then construct an
entirely different scene. I could stand in one place and watch the
world inside the theatre change completely in a matter of minutes."
(Above Right: Chinese Laundry, 2007, 12x24 Oil)
In commenting on his technique, Baumann explains, "I'm not saying these methods are superior to other approaches. The point is that this process works well for me and makes sense in terms of what I want to express."
Article from the November, 2007 issue of the American Artist
by M. Stephen Doherty, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of American Artist
Richard Baumann earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pace University, in New York City, and a teaching certificate in fine arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan. Baumann's paintings have been exhibited in a number of group and solo exhibitions in New York and Massachusetts. He is represented by State of the Art Gallery II, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Chrysalis Gallery, in Southampton, New York. For more information on Baumann, visit his website at www.rbaumannstudio.com.
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