Painting inside out

       In a former life I found myself in Munich during Oktoberfest drawing portraits out on the street. Some of the best street performers in Europe show up during Oktoberfest to pry whatever change they can from the pockets of the millions of tourists who come for the party. At the bottom wrung are  lowly portrait artists, always looking over our shoulders for the police, always ready to adjust a price or adjust someone's features when flattery is in order.  O.K. ,not the noblest profession.
       This Oktoberfest was not many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I worked beside three Russian artists, refugees from that cataclysm, all of them graduates of the Leningrad academy ( now St. Petersburg academy ), Russia's premier art school. I admired their work. It was some of the best street art you'll ever see. Their portraits demonstrated the quality of their rigorous academic training. The only flaw to their approach was that it always took so long to produce a portrait. Professional models may hold a pose for two hours, but people off the street cannot. Eventually your subject grows tired, fidgety, exasperated. The artist, truthful to a fault ,follows the sitters expressions  , beginning with a smile that gradually turns more sour, or stilted. They could charge more than I did, but I was able to dash out six or more portraits to their one . America 6, Russia 1, that was the score. Besides, I had the quick sketch market cornered. Luckily none of my Russian friends bothered with them.
      There's a trick to making quick sketch portraits.  Rigorous academic training helps. I had my share. It's nice to know the basics before you start. The most important factor is practice. Draw hundreds of faces, make that thousands. After a while you may become really good at it. You're no longer tentative, wondering where to place eyes or chins. After enough of them you no longer measure or calculate, you just let it happen on the paper. Something takes over, and all falls into place.  
       I don't want to get too woo woo, but you may find yourself operating on a higher plane. Suddenly your sitter is far more than just a subject.  It's as if their essence slipped right out of the body where it's safely kept imprisoned all day to freely play and dance with yours. It's from that soul to soul contact that I've found my most successful portraits coming. They tend to really look like the people because they were drawn from the inside out instead of the other way round.
       When this happens it's like catching fire. There are days when it doesn't happen at all so you just plod on. Some days you may be on your second or third portrait when it hits. Numbers four through ten happen in rapid succession because you're not the only one feeling it. The atmosphere is electric. People are lining up behind you working out who will sit in what order. You're the conduit, the medium, the master magician! 
         I don't know why it's taken me so long to figure out that this applies ,or should apply ,to landscape paintings. I can be a very slow learner. The connection now seems so obvious. It came to me yesterday .  I was trying to figure out why  plein air paintings often reveal more than their studio cousin even while containing less. I went to the internet for an explanation. There were several articles listing the advantages of plein air ( meaning " open air"  ) painting. None of them really were all that convincing. There was something missing in their advocacy , but what was it? 
          My mind flashed to those summers in Europe, drawing the quick sketch, getting it down to ten minutes, keeping one step ahead of the police, enjoying the vibe of pedestrian streets and outdoor cafes . I thought of Oktoberfest and working beside the Russians. I think those Russians were at a disadvantage. Between themselves and their subjects there was a barrier. They missed the inside. While they laboriously drew what they could see I was busy soul dancing, digging in deeper, showing less.                                                                                                     Natural scenes and scenes around town have a surface to them just as people do. And as with people ,the real story lies within. Unlock it and a painting rings. The only way to paint nature is to go out there and respond to what your senses tell you.  Plein air artists are about to ascend to Telluride. They'll be painting what they see, call these the facts, call them the surface. They'll probably be adding something more. They'll  go beyond what they're seeing to reflect what they're feeling, and that part is marvelous. That's the inside out part. Now that's a noble profession.

The disruptor

      Early on in the Trump administration the President arranged for the release from detention Egyptian -American Aya Hijazi. She'd been held for three years along with her husband and four employees of their charity that cares for Cairo's street children. The charges against them pursued by Egypt's justice department that they had sexually abused children are widely recognized to be baseless. Despite the the dubious charges and  Aya's American citizenship no resolution for this tragic situation presented itself until there was a new occupant in the Whitehouse. Trump had run as an outsider, a disruptor, a negotiator. Aya's case would put these claims to it's first test.
     In order to secure her return to Virginia Trump had Egypt's strongman president Abdul Fattah al- Sisi over to the Whitehouse and said a few nice things about him . Al-Sisi got the full on schmuze treatment. Trump's schmuzing incensed the Washington press core no end. The previous administration had kept al-Sisi at arms length , but reversing course did the trick. When Aya visited the Whitehouse to thank the President for his effective intervention it was covered by all the networks and most newspapers. Fox news was almost alone in demonstrating any enthusiasm. Democrat lawmakers, even those that had begged for her release earlier were strangely silent now. The public  either offered effusive praise for the President, or kept quiet. Following the most divisive election in a lifetime, the breakdown was predictable. Those who had supported the President in the election were apt to congratulate him . Those who didn't had nothing to say.
      I wondered if maybe we were just too close to the election at the time . Hurt feelings still stung. People were still talking about Hillary's three million vote advantage. For them Trump only prevailed on a technicality. Or maybe this would be the new normal. For 40% of us Donald Trump can do no wrong, while for another 40% he can do nothing right. The remaining 20% are an endangered species. Unfortunately the political divide is still growing. We're closing in on the sort of tribalism common to the least happy and successful nations on earth. This is the new normal.
       Last Sunday when it was announced that Mexico had agreed to sweeping proposals to remedy the crises at our southern border cheers were not heard from the plush new studios of NPR. Silence on the subject from media sources and Democrat presidential candidates would be an improvement compared to the swill they offered . You may have heard that Trump's threatened tariffs elicited no new policy proposals from the Mexican side. You may have heard that threatening to place tariffs on a country to force actions outside of trade is reckless and counter productive. You may have heard or read that Trump achieved nothing more than resolving a problem that he himself created. You may have heard these ideas because they are hard to avoid from  newsroom echo chambers . None are true.  Truth is beside the point when it comes to racking up points against Donald Trump. I think the thinking goes that Trump is so awful that anything you say against him is justified. It serves a larger truth even if it lets a few untruths sneak out in the effort. Giving him credit for anything is never acceptable.
        Credibility is no longer a matter of getting things right, unless getting things right means something much different from what it once did. It has morphed into picking sides politically and only broadcasting what appeals to your political faction while casting  others in the worst light possible. This is what passes for " the news" these days.
         Our President is unique. He's one of a kind. I get it if you find his style unpalatable. He's made me squirm often.   I can't believe the stuff that comes out of his mouth. For style points the guy rates around minus 4. When it comes to what he's actually done, there's more reason for hope. If you're not on board with tax cuts for 80% of taxpayers, reducing burdensome and unnecessary regulations,  reforming criminal sentencing so that deserving inmates don't have to spend their lives rotting away behind bars,  full employment, or rewriting  trade agreements that disadvantage us then you certainly have good reason to disapprove of , if not hate him. If you think any of these accomplishments have merit and you still can't stand the President then maybe you ought to rethink that.  Maybe you're favoring style over substance. Maybe you're listening to Trump's negative press without granting it the scepticism it richly deserves.
        I didn't support Trump in 2016. I'm reconsidering that position for 2020. Maybe the argument we heard for him during that last election was correct afterall. Maybe a disruptor is exactly what we needed. Maybe we need him still.

Unlearning Whiteness

   Anyone looking at the photo of me that accompanies this column may have guessed that I am a white guy. Funny , but I don't really notice that myself. I see a wrinkly guy. I see, most of all an individual with traits, and quirks, and failings, like anyone else. Human beings are not clones. I love them for that. Sure, I know I'm white. I'm not like the character Steve Martin played in The Jerk  who having been raised by a black family is convinced that he is black himself, but I don't give my whiteness a lot of thought. Some people claim that this is a symptom of my entrenched white privilege. Others may not have the luxury of such color blindness ,they're judged every day for their color, slighted ,and marginalized because of circumstances beyond their control. I don't entirely disagree.
      I went to a coffee talk hosted by Mountainfilm last week on the subject of white fragility to get an ear full of what two progressive women, academic and author Robin DiAngelo ,and activist Favianna Rodriguez think I ought to understand about whiteness. 
       Robin DiAngelo encouraged the white members of the audience ( approximately 95% of us, it was a Telluride crowd afterall ) to " break down our identity from the core and rebuild it". She said we should ask ourselves "how has our whiteness shaped us." She confessed that " I was born into hierarchy and that system has shaped my life. ". She pointed out that white supremacy is all around us. It's in us. It's not just a handful of Klan members  marching around the town square. Its a problem for all of us, particularly those who won't acknowledge it, or work to excise it from our unconscious thinking. Without a critical mass of white people acknowledging their racism ,systemic racism is here to stay. 
        The best quote of the morning came from co- presenter Favianna Rodriguez who claimed " whiteness must be unlearned ". Her audience didn't bat an eye at this remark. I challenge you to examine this prescription for yourself. I" must unlearn my whiteness"? Doesn't that sound a tiny bit insulting, maybe even a tiny bit racist? Modern progressives have redefined racism in order to weaponize it against philosophical opponents while providing themselves a handy formula for misunderstanding them. They don't know what racism is, but are certain that it is everywhere, influencing everything. The same goes for patriarchy, or homophobia. I doubt she'd recognize real racism if she saw it, having twisted the concept so far beyond recognition. 
     Are whites more inclined to judge others by their skin color, their accents, their culture? More than Chinese , more than Pakistanis, than Kenyans, than a mestizo living in Mexico or Ecuador, more than anyone else ? I'd like to see the data on that. I suspect this is a firmly held belief without any basis in fact. The speakers had a lot of those.
     What if she had said this about any race or group other than  Caucasian?  Say something comparable to Polynesians, or Hxoza's, or Zulus or Indo-Africans ,or anyone in South Africa other than whites and what might we say about the speaker? She'd rightly be branded a racist. Why the pass on whites? It's not hard to trace this trend to earlier currents in academia that have long beeno popular. Now they're doctrine. Anti-colonialism, Anti-imperialism, Anti-Western have morphed into Anti-white, and now and then, Anti-Semite. We've steadily wound ourselves into this perplexing state and no one dare question it. Once academics considered it their duty to open the minds of students. Once ( but I'm not sure when) the Socratic method of unflinchingly holding every piece of accepted wisdom up to scrutiny was thought to be praiseworthy and valuable. Without our noticing ,academics have assumed the role of medieval priests and inquisitors, stamping out heresy wherever they find it, and enforcing dogma.
    
       What's it matter anyway? Of the races of man ,whites are first on the list to go the way of the Dodo. We're not reproducing at sustainable rates. Europeans haven't been replacing their numbers for generations, ditto Japanese. White Americans have finally joined them. Soon we'll find the white race as extinct as the Valley Floor prairie dog. I'm not passing judgement, just passing on a few facts. As someone who is nearly extinct himself, it really doesn't matter to me whether future generations look more like Brad Pitt than Tiger Woods ( but wouldn't it be great if we could look like Brad or Angelina and play golf like Tiger ?). I care more about what our progeny do and think than their skin color. Some ideas really ought to follow the Dodo.

Plein air in Telluride