My immediate thought was, “Dude, you didn’t find your style. You found his style.” The paintings all had the same sort of pretty caricaturization that is the hallmark of Kobayashi’s style. It’s attractive, but rather cloying.

I’ve had this experience before. I’ll see a few paintings by an “emerging” artist and think, “clone of David Leffel.” Then I’ll look and see that Leffel is cited as a teacher. Or once I was at an open studio event and saw a bunch of expressionist paintings. “Oskar Kokoschka,” I thought. And darned if her bio didn’t state that she had studied with Kokoschka.

I’m not sure how I feel about this phenomenon. Once upon a time, it was pretty normal for a student to develop a style similar to a master’s: c.f. Van Dyck and Rubens, for example. These days, however, it seems a bit of a shame when a painter is presented as some sort of great talent when that talent really amounts to replicating another painter’s signature style.

That doesn’t mean that you should have no influences, but blatant copying of a style seems rather much, I think. Beyond that, I tend to be a bit disappointed when all of the students of a famous teacher such as Leffel seem to turn out paintings just like the teacher’s. It seems as if the job of a painting teacher is to help each student paint their own paintings, not more of the teacher’s work.

Thanks to Nick Orban, who posted this on Facebook.

Before I do, I should point out that Mr. Mathis is, so far as I can tell, a professional artist who supports himself with his very good paintings. I, by contrast, am no more than a wannabee. On that basis, he has and deserves far more credibility than I. He is, however, commenting on the practices of another professional artist of at least equal stature (and fairly similar artistic style). It is certainly true that some professional artists throughout history have used ill-advised materials and painting methods. In any event, either Mr. Whitaker is right or Mr. Mathis is right on any of these issues (or they are both wrong) and I, lowly hobbyist that I am, will attempt to compare one to the other against my own limited experience.

Mathis’ concerns are based on what he has gleaned from doing internet searches and by that means finding recommendations that Whitaker has made on various internet fora regarding appropriate painting practices. Before starting on his primary criticism (regarding Whitaker’s recommended painting ground) Mathis first objects to Whitaker’s recommendation that Maroger’s medium is good to use and should be mixed with paint in a ratio of about 25% medium to 75% paint. In case you are not aware, this medium is from a recipe originally conceived by an artist and painting conservator named Jacques Maroger. It consists of thick mastic varnish (made with turpentine) mixed with black oil (which is linseed oil cooked with litharge, a lead compound). There are many claims out there regarding Maroger’s medium and its effects. I have heard both that Maroger’s own paintings are in horrible shape (turned black) and that they are so perfect that they look like they were painted yesterday. I have heard the same of his student’s paintings. I have not seen any of them. Other artists make claims about Maroger that are all over the map. Most conservators seem to condemn it. At least one technical conservation paper looked at some of his student’s paintings and found that they had deteriorated rapidly (although some of his students seemed to like the stuff so much that it seems as if they painted with Maroger medium into which a tiny bit of actual paint had been mixed).

My general take on the matter is this. I agree that 25% of any medium is way too much. Generally, I prefer to use just oil paint and perhaps just a touch of medium here and there. There are a number of products that are called “Maroger’s medium” and I am sure that they differ in their properties, so a blanket condemnation is probably not warranted. The one kind that I’ve tried seemed to slightly improve the handling characteristics of the paint, but not in any dramatic way. I don’t use it any more, myself, in part because of all the hysteria (which may be based on some truth) and in part because there are mediums I like better. Overall, however, I am neutral on the issue of Maroger’s when used very judiciously.

Mathis next condemns Whitaker’s recommended practice of wet sanding. This is a procedure that I myself use and recommend. He objects that any water on dried oil paint will cause all sorts of problems, such as buckling or delamination. Huh? Sitting a painting in water is of course a bad idea. Spreading a little water on a dried surface, sanding for two minutes, and then drying it off is unlikely to cause any sort of harm. Of course one should make sure that the surface is completely dry before painting on it. Water has no magical power to damage a painting. Extended exposure causes problems. Light wet sanding improves the tooth of the surface and improves the mechanical bond between layers. That will likely decrease the chance of problems, not increase it. And if you do sand, wet sanding instead of dry sanding greatly decreases the chance that you will breathe pigment dust. Mathis also objects to the idea that one should try for a smooth surface when painting. He thinks that such a desire is “fussy to the extreme.” I think that depends on the kind of painting you’re trying to make. Certainly a van der Weyden painting would loose much of its power without a smooth surface. I don’t usually worry about a bit of texture in my paintings, but I don’t think that painters who want a smooth surface should be condemned for that.

Next Mathis gets to the heart of his objection to Whitaker’s painting recommendations: he opposes the use of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) as a painting surface. Firstly, he notes that ABS dust is very poisonous and that Whitaker suggests sanding it, which, Mathis says, is extremely dangerous. I’m not a materials scientist or toxicologist. No one should take my advice (or Whitaker’s or Mathis’) with regard to their health. The limited research I’ve done indicates that sanding ABS is something that should be done with a dust mask and that the dust should be thoroughly cleaned up afterwards. So far as I can tell, we’re not talking Chernobyl here. However, if you do choose to work with ABS, please do your own research and follow appropriate safety precautions. Err on the side of caution.

In any event, I don’t think that the choice by an artist to use or not use ABS has much to do with the morality of modern Western civilization. Which, I might point out, generates vast amounts of surplus wealth that allows hundreds of thousands of people to work as artists instead of doing backbreaking manual farm labor to feed themselves. I find that to be a good thing.

If Bill Whitaker is recommending that people sand ABS without first taking appropriate precautions, then he’s giving bad advice. Mathis also objects, however, to painting on ABS after it has been prepared as a painting surface. I’ve done exactly one painting on ABS. I was sent the panel as a free sample by the folks at www.realgesso.com (who, I suspect, use appropriate precautions in their manufacturing process). The panel was already prepared and I did no sanding. I found it to be a very pleasant surface to paint upon. It took the paint well without being sticky or “chattery.” Overall, however, I didn’t find it to be superior to either traditional gesso or lead primer. The panels are expensive, so I prefer to make mine myself with materials I understand a bit better than ABS. Mathis recommends lead white, and so do I.

He also objects to ABS on the grounds that there is no reason to suppose that paint will reliably adhere to it. When I used it, the paint seemed to stick just fine. That painting is less than a year old, so there is no telling what the long-term prospects are for permanence. My overall philosophy with painting materials is that I want to work with stuff that other people first experimented with at least a generation ago, so that any problems will have come to light. I appreciate the brave sacrifice of those who use ABS panels, alkyd mediums, and other materials of questionable longevity for painting applications. 100 years from now, artists will have an excellent idea of whether they were a good idea. For now, we don’t actually know.

For that reason, I’ll generally skip ABS. While I don’t have the philosophical objections that Mathis does, I don’t see that ABS solves any problem that I actually have.

He’s got lots of discussion of his process of watercolor painting and drawing. Good stuff. Check it out.

My pedantic quibble is this: Pilate pronounces “ecce” wrong. He says, “eche.” I’m no Latin scholar, but it is my understanding that there are no soft “C” sounds in classical Latin. It should be pronounced “eke,” just as Caesar would have been pronounced “kaisar,” not “seesar” the way we say it today. The soft “C” pronunciation is from Medieval Church Latin, which did not exist circa 33 A.D. Any real scholars should feel free to correct me on this.

I know, I know. Who cares? It just irritated me. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

What’s all this have to do with art? It’s only tangential. I’ve been thinking about and looking at Renaissance depictions of the adult Jesus lately. Artists were called upon to paint various moments from the life of Jesus. Artists at the time produced this kind of religious art for customers and patrons who paid for conventional work that reinforced the religious conventions of the time. They sometimes managed to transcend the limits of the marketplace, however, with original work that is profoundly moving.

	Here, for example, is “Ecce Homo,” by Bosch, from about 1475–80.
	Here’s is another one of the same scene by Bosch from the 1490’s. I like the earlier one better.
	This is Bosch’s “Christ Carrying the Cross,” from about 1515–16. It seems more like the work he’s most famous for—chaotic paintings of hell. In this one, the composition is an almost random spread of grotesque figures surrounding Jesus as he is forced to bear the cross.
	And this is my favorite Bosch depiction of Jesus. It’s “Christ Mocked,” from about 1495–1500. In it, Christ stands patiently while a group of grotesque fools make fun of him. Using caricature freely, he creates a strong sense of humanity in the juxtaposition between Christ and the figures surrounding him.
	Here is an “Ecce Homo,” by Caravaggio from about 1606. Here he shows his typical mastery of composition, light, and darkness to create a dramatic and moving scene.
	This is Caravaggio’s “Taking of Christ,” from about 1598, in which the Romans are led to Jesus by the traitor Judas. Look at the way that the dramatic lighting is used to lead the eye across the composition from right to left—the opposite direction than we normally expect.
	But Caravaggio’s most moving depiction of the adult Christ is his amazing, “The Entombment,” from about 1602–1603. Caravaggio makes Christ into a mere corpse, without any of the traditional indicators of divinity such as a halo or crown of thorns. In doing so he emphasizes Jesus’s humanity and the genuine grief of the mourners. Once again, he leads the eye from right to left into an unusual, but effective, focal point.

Not all of his paintings depend on special effects like this, but these are some of his best.

The radio ad says that he painted the, “beauty of everyday things.” Grrr. I can understand why the ad copy is written that way—they think it will pull in more visitors. But I believe it completely misstates Hopper’s work. I don’t think he did that or tried to do that. He wasn’t really interested in beauty; if he had been, he wouldn’t have painted the way he did.

Hopper was trying to paint the way everyday things feel, which is by far a more difficult and worthwhile thing to do. He didn’t always succeed, but when he did (as in the brilliant “New York Movie,” for example) his paintings were fine indeed.