THE KEY TO MEANINGFUL EXPRESSION IN AN ABSTRACT

Watercolor
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PaintOutside(Even in Winter)
How to Make Good Useof Your Tools and Time
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7 Ways to Make
Viewers Linger
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DECEMBER 2019

A Juror’s Guide to Making

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Contents

DECEMBER 2019Features

16

LIGHT IN WINTER
Montreal sketchbook artist
Shari Blaukopf weathers theelements to showcase the city’ssnow-covered landscape.
BY AUSTIN R. WILLIAMS

24

24

FIGURATIVE,ABSTRACT, LYRICAL
Stan Kurth walks the line
between abstraction andrepresentation throughcolor, line and composition.

42BY JOHN A. PARKS

344250

Geoffrey McCormack breathes
new life into overlooked objects
by combining spontaneitywith intentionality.

A passion for color andexpressiveness takes center
stage in Elke Memmler’s
vibrant ﬂorals.

Replete with ambience anddetail, Richard Hanson’s Italian
nocturnes light up the night andinvite the viewer into the story.

BY MCKENZIE GRAHAM

BY BETH WILLIAMSBY STEFANIE LAUFERSWEILER

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORSBLOOMING COLOR

THE ART OF THE DARK

ArtistsNetwork.com

1Figurative, Abstract, Lyrical
STAN KURTH ADEPTLY STRADDLES THE LINE BETWEEN
ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION IN HIS WORKS FEATURING
EMOTION-LADEN COMPOSITIONS, COLOR AND EDGES.
By John A. Parks

24 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019

Stan Kurth’s paintings explore the exciting
territory that lies between abstraction andfiguration. Deploying a largely abstract repertoire of layering, dripping and mark-making,along with an almost classical sense of composition, he includes representational elements thatare sometimes powerfully assertive, sometimes obscured,and always mysterious and potent.
Suggestive outlines of human figures, animals, buildings
and other structures, along with purely abstract elements,
inhabit a pictorial world of shallow painterly space. Color isvaried and sometimes dramatic,
pitching soft grays and muted hues
against areas of flamboyantly saturated color—powerful oranges, harshgreens and blaring yellows. Moredrama is created when a generally
soft-edged painting presents sudden
straight and razor-sharp edges.
The works seem to yearn to takeon everything: human life, abstract
thought, aesthetic pleasure andABOVE
Vestige of Embers(watercolor,gouache, ink andgesso on paper,15x15)
OPPOSITE
Barrier Anxiety(watercolor,gouache, ink andacrylic on paper,15x15)

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LEFTRaptor Anxiety(watercolor, acrylicand gesso on paper,14x14)
OPPOSITE
Rail Man(watercolor,gouache and inkon paper, 15x15)

a wide range of feelings—fromrestrained, almost depressive moodiness to wild elation. “My paintingsare expressions of my life experience—everything that has touched
and moved me along a path to thelatest work,” the artist says.

The Path to
Meaningful Expression
The genesis of Kurth’s work beganwith earlier attempts at rather different types of painting, much of it
representational. “My work haschanged quite a bit over the years,”
he says, “and I hope it will continue
to do so. At one time, I wanted topaint like Raphael Soyer [Russianborn American, 1899–1987]. Manyof my earlier paintings were failures,at least in my mind.”
It turned out that failure andrejection were powerful contributors
to Kurth’s search for meaningfulexpression. “I was once rejected froma major juried exhibition,” he recalls,“and decided to rework the painting
with an ‘I’ve-been-rejected-and-don’tcare’ approach. I applied layers ofpaint, along with some gestural

26 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019

mark-making, smearing, scratching,scrubbing, scraping, scribbling,splashing, glazing and blending
over the underpainting. I was manipulating the surface in a manner I
had never done before, and I wasn’tworried about the result or if it would
be successful. I had attained an
expressive freedom in painting thatI hadn’t previously experienced. The
following year, that painting won anaward of excellence in the same exhibition. Far more important than theaward was what I had learned usingthat approach.”

Painting Is Life
Kurth’s discovery that he could open
himself up to a wide range of intuitive
manipulations of paint and imagery
led to his current process, in which
he simply launches into a painting
with little idea of what’s going tohappen. He’s adamant that he doesn’t
wait around for inspiration before
starting. “Chuck Close [Americanpainter, b. 1940] said it best,” he says.
“ ‘Inspiration is for amateurs; the restof us just show up and get to work.’That’s how I feel about inspiration.

“Painting is my life,” Kurth continues. “If I’m not painting, I’m thinking
about painting. I’m teaching painting.
I’m reading about painting. I’m goingto museums and galleries to study
paintings. I’m attending openings
and exhibitions to see paintings. I’m
involved with numerous painting
groups and associations. I’m usingsocial media to see paintings andengage with other artists. I guess you
could say breathing is inspiration
enough for me. I go to work.”
For Kurth, being at work means
keeping multiple paintings in progress, often in a variety of media andsizes. Continually working and completely immersed, he trusts that hisvision will unfold with the paintings.
“I begin a painting with the confidence that my collective thoughts
and feelings will predicate the necessary moves,” he says. “Starting withrandom marks and color, I build alibrary of elements, including value,texture, line and shape. Some I
quickly enhance; perhaps I fill ashape with color or a value gradient,or I add a line with contrasting widthand value.”In this first stage of the process,
Kurth is generating his own subject
matter, in a sense pulling it out ofthin air by allowing chance movements of the hand and brush to create
marks and shapes with which he canthen begin to work. Even at this earlystage, he’ll sometimes reject things
that appear, wiping down marks orbrushstrokes and trying again.
Other influences, memories andassociations are already making theirpresence felt in this generative process. “Although paintings start withlines and marks randomly drawn
using ink, crayon, oil pastel, charcoal
or colored pencil, they’re not always
quite random,” says the artist.

“ I BEL I EV E G O O D PAI N T I N GS G ET T HE VIEWER’S AT T ENT ION
W I T H CO MP O SI T I O N AN D HOL D IT WIT H CONT ENT.”

ArtistsNetwork.com 27

“Sometimes shapes appear from my life experience. For
example, I might see something resembling the front fenderof a 1940 Ford. It’s merely a starting point and may notappear in the finished painting. I was an avid model builder
as a boy, so the shape is ingrained, as are many others.”
Clearly, the artist makes himself open to every possible
suggestion, and early shapes might include anything fromparts of figures to animals to structures. “When I feel thelibrary is adequate, I shift into compose mode,” Kurth says.
Instead of generating new imagery, he’ll engage in a
dynamic dialogue with the subject matter he has created.
“I diminish or enhance portions of the painting for balance
and unity,” he says. “For example, I may want to shift thecolor and value balance by glazing using thin layers. The
glaze darkens value and unifies the color underneath
simultaneously. This creates unity because the hue of theglaze is now a part of all the colors below it.”

28 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019

Ambiguity
Influences Narrative
While Kurth embraces representational elements as part of the initial
library in his paintings, he’s careful
to retain a certain ambiguity in thestatus of these images. “I believe goodpaintings get the viewer’s attention
with composition and hold it withcontent,” he says. “My work often
contains vague or ambiguous representational forms like humans,animals, cars, furniture and otherassorted personal archetypes. Becauseof their ambiguity, the relationshipwith the more abstracted elements in

ABOVEWindowpane No. 22(watercolor, acrylic
and gesso on board,19x19)
OPPOSITE
Monolith(watercolor andgouache on paper,21x21)

the painting lends itself to a wide
range of narrative for the interestedviewer.” For Kurth, it appears that theartist’s role is to draw viewers into aworld in which their own imagination
can be unleashed.
Although Kurth remains open to allkinds of elements and subject matterin his painting, he inevitably findsthat various themes recur. Some ofthese he groups into series of paintings by title. One such series is“Coastal Anxiety,” encompassing
paintings in which landscape-likeelements dominate.
Another of Kurth’s series is“Windowpane,” a title that refers toa name for the hallucinogenic drug
LSD. These paintings seem toacknowledge the “mind-opening”
aesthetic of the 1960s counterculture. Yet another series, “Loner,”
incorporates images in which a single,isolated figure dominates.
In spite of these groupings, therange and variety of Kurth’s paintings
are considerable, and his open
approach often yields the mostunlikely of images. In Raptor Anxiety(on page 26), for instance, a seriesof broadly brushed areas of brilliant
color coalesce around the image ofa running figure. In the background,a large yellow shape takes on thevague appearance of a dinosaur.
Kurth did this painting as a demonstration, with the subject matteremerging through suggestions andchance as he proceeded.
Similarly, Rail Man (on page 27)
arrived as a surprise, a figure thatsuddenly took on the look, the artist
realized, of a train conductor standingat the door of a rail car.
Other paintings appear to be moreor less entirely abstract. Windowpane
No. 22 (opposite) presents a rather
stately composition of rectangularelements, each with a lavishly built
surface in which overlays of semitransparent paint create considerable
color richness. On the right, the artist
has scratched back through the paintwith the end of his brush handle, asgraffito technique that reveals thecolor beneath.
In Monolith (at right), the artist
arrives at an image that feels as
though it’s both an abstract structure

and the painting of an abstract structure like a building or sculpture.
In other paintings such as LonerNo. 27 (on page 30), Kurth appears toembrace an almost entirely narrative
approach. In this work, a carefully
drawn hand and arm seem to rest on
the back of a bar stool; a drink is positioned alluringly on the bar. Here, as
in many of his paintings, the color
settles into opposing zones, withdarks and muted grays dominating
the top of the painting and brilliant
eruptions of saturated color burstingfrom the bottom.
Sometimes the abstract elements
themselves take on narrative or literalroles. In Loner No. 14 (on page 31),for example, what appears to be asimplified figure is crushed tightly
into the painting by large areas ofbrushed grays that surround it, almost
as though the paint itself has imprisoned it. The subtle changes in the grays
are brought about by variations in theToolkit
PAINTS• various watercolor, acrylic
and gouache brands
SURFACE• canvas or paper
BRUSHES• various brands, sizes andqualities. “I use qualitybrand paint and surfaces,
but brushes are anotherstory,” Kurth says. “I do use
quality brushes, but theones I like the most are theones I abuse, the ones I’m
not afraid to push against
the grain.”
MISCELLANEOUS• palette knives, scrapers,brayers, pencils, markers,
crayons, wax, charcoal,graphite, ink, gesso

ArtistsNetwork.com 29

colors that lie underneath them. Kurth’s deft use of layering and glazing techniques allows for color that’s bothsubtle and active.

Detours on the Path
If change and variety are a hallmark of Kurth’s painting,they’ve always been part of his life. While art has always
come first, he has taken a number of detours. “I think
everyone is an artist when they’re young,” he says. “Youlearn to walk. You learn to talk. You learn to draw. It stuck

30 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019with me. My aunt gave me a small
canvas and some oil paints when
I was 4 years old, and I painted myfirst oil painting in her studio. I’ve
been painting and drawing ever since,and I still have that painting.”
Nonetheless, when it came time forcollege, Kurth didn’t major in art. “Ihave a bachelor’s degree in history
and English literature from Northern
Arizona University,” he says. “I reasoned

ABOVE
Loner No. 27(watercolor, gouche
and ink on paper,15x15)
OPPOSITE
Loner No. 14(watercolor,charcoal, crayon,
oil pastel, acrylic
and gesso on paper,21x14)

John A. Parks is a painter, a writer anda member of the faculty of the Schoolof Visual Arts in New York.

Meet the Artist

Turn for a demo

Stan Kurth (stankurth.com) was born and raisedin Phoenix, the city where he still resides. He studied
English literature and history at Northern Arizona
University while completing many courses in painting
and drawing. He worked as a graphic designer for
40 years, painting in his spare time. These days, hedevotes himself entirely to painting while teachingworkshops around the country and exhibiting widely.
He’s the winner of numerous awards in juried
exhibitions and is a signature member of several
watercolor societies, including the National Watercolor Society, the San
Diego Watercolor Society and the Western Federation of Watercolor
Societies. His work is represented by Esprit Decor Gallery, in Phoenix.

MATTHEW BIRD

it would please my father, a lawyer, if
I received a degree and then went tolaw school. I never did go to law
school, but I did get the degree, andall free electives credited to my transcript were fine arts classes. When I
graduated, I had quite a few semester
credit hours in fine arts. I kept taking
classes in the years following andaccumulated more semester hours infine arts than in history or English literature. I really didn’t want to be alawyer and, as it turned out, myfather would have been happy withanything I wanted to do.
“In the ’70s,” Kurth continues,“I landed a job in a commercial studiodoing layouts for directory ads, which
launched my commercial art career,and I made a living in graphics for
40 years. I painted in the off hours
and got involved with local art associations, showing work in those typesof exhibitions.”
Kurth’s career experience certainly
contributes to his fine sense ofdesign and keen eye for weight andbalance in his compositions. As anavid student of painting, he has been
influenced by many other artists.
In recent years, Richard Diebenkorn(American, 1922–1993) has been
his chief influence. Kurth, like
Diebenkorn, began as a representational painter before engaging in akind of lyrical abstraction married
to a fine compositional sense.
Asked about how he’d like people
to respond to his work, Kurth isthoughtful. “Philip Guston [Canadian,1913–1980] said something like, if
you’re painting for an audience andkeep painting, the audience will gradually leave and then you’re justpainting for yourself. And then whenyou leave, that’s when the painting
gets good. I think he was right.
“I strive to make paintings I like,”
Kurth says. “In the past, I’ve painted
for an audience in my head, and manyof those paintings stagnated. I guessthe ideal viewer of my work would be
an appreciative one, but in the end, it
doesn’t matter how anyone responds.
My job is to offer it up.” WA

ArtistsNetwork.com 31demoOrange Sunshine
Stan Kurth uses lines to enhance the color passages
as a contrast to broad washes and bold strokes.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

I filled the surface with a wet-into-wet washof orange and red and a grayed-downyellow, leaving scattered whites. The
beginning of any painting is always
a random one; I don’t start with a plan.

I began to draw using an oiler—a syringe
attached to a small plastic bottle—filled withwatered-down black gesso. I constructeda web of lines, which may or may not
become part of the final composition.

The painting became more complex whenI added a veil of gray over part of the middle ofthe painting and a darker gray to the upper left.
Notice that parts of the original painting wereleft as they were. The gessoed line receded
when covered by the veil of gray. The veil of grayhas made the upper passage yellow-green.

Step 4“ I BEGI N A PAI N T I N G
W I T H T HECONFI D ENC E T HAT
M Y COLLEC T I VE
T H OUGH TS AN D
FE EL I NGS WI L L
PREDI CAT E T HE
NEC E S SA RY MOVE S.”

32 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019

I cut into the painting using more grays.
The amorphous light green shape at thebottom is now a square, and I added morelines to the pink shape. I also painted
around the square protrusions, forcing
them into prominence.

This demonstration
is excerpted withpermission fromWatercolor Mastersand Legends byBetsy Dillard
Stroud (North LightBooks, 2016).

FinalI obliterated the left upper quadrant of the painting, leaving only snippets of shapes from the previous step.
I painted negatively on the right, creating a ﬁgure who magically emerges from the chaos. The rectangular mid-graybetween the bottom shapes brings Orange Sunshine (watercolor, acrylic and gesso on paper, 21x14) to completion.
ArtistsNetwork.com 33