Sleetmagazine.com

Summer Splash Supplement 2010

SLEET INTERVIEW

by Susan Solomon

In the past, Sleet has interviewed writers. I thought I'd expand our focus and talk to artists in other fields about the creative process. Jeff Hurinenko is a realist painter in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose work focuses mainly on portraits and genre scenes. Jeff co-directs the Hurinenko & Paquet Studio, and he was kind enough to talk about his work, thoughts on the making of art, and the book he is currently writing. [ed.]

Sleet: Do you see similarities between visual art and the written word?

Jeff: Yes, the thought process is important in the creative process, no matter what discipline you're in — writing, literature, dance, any discipline. It is your responsibility as an individual to know the craft as you are approaching it. In most disciplines of art, artists convince themselves they can let go for a while and just let the creative process have its own life. There are certain times you can do that. There is a certain time in the painting that some of the judgment calls you need to make are dictated by where the work is so far. But I would think in writing that the sense of forethought and structure that needs to be put in can't breathe too much. Do you experience that, where you're in the middle of something and all of a sudden you decide to take a different direction? Your have to have forethought in your finish.

Sleet: Yes, a piece can certainly get away, and you have to rein it in. And that leads to my next question — starts. How do you start, and do you have a roadmap in your head; clearly you can't have something totally planned out.

Jeff: It's like building a house, if you start with a good foundation you can be creative about the style of house you would wish to create. Without forethought of this overall framework your creation is bound to wander and possibly collapse. In any creative discipline — the overall design or composition of your idea will be the foundation that will open the door to the creative process. The clearer you are with your overall concept, the less you will ramble and avoid getting caught up in creative tangents!

Sleet: I remember reading something by Truman Capote, where he was talking about process. He said you have to know how to write everything because then you have all the tools you need for any situation.

Jeff: Exactly. To paraphrase Truman Capote, know your craft well. For a painter, know your brushes and your canvases and your paints and your mediums and all of the techniques — they just represent the tools of the painter's craft. You can represent what's in front of you, but how do you give it individuality? The jump between being a craftsman and being an artist is incredibly huge. So now you have all those tools and you're going to start literally building the foundation of individuality. Think about how much you have to know to infuse some of your individual character into that thing to be recognizably different than someone else who has just as much craftsmanship. The leap into artistry is incredibly personal, soulful, involved and purposeful, a true balance between knowledge and intuitiveness. You can't just be led by what's around you, as an individual you have to lead your work. You have to make an effort to be honest with yourself. I always tell my students that part of my job is to teach them how to be their own best teacher.

Sleet: You have to know the questions to ask.

Jeff: Absolutely. And that's what you learn from going to class. In fact, last semester some of the students asked, “Can you write down all the questions that we should be asking ourselves?” There is another old saying, and I don't know where it's from — Knowledge is the father of experience, and only through experience can knowledge become practical. A student could read every how-to book in the world, I could write down every decision that I would make in a painting for my students, but it's not theirs. To be an artist means to create something only you could. Judgment calls only come from an individual, whether they be right or wrong. So through the experience of doing is the only practical way of showing what you know and what you don't know. It is better to experiment and explore the personal artistic opportunities of creation than to render what is before your eyes with perfection in mind. If all of your judgment calls are led just by what is in front of you, all you will be is just a good renderer and a conduit of what is there.

Sleet: So how do you get past just the observation?

Jeff: That is a huge question; there are volumes right there. It is believing that you as an artist are so personally responsible for what is on that canvas that is going to have a frame around it that you can't say, ”Yeah, but it was like that.” You can't allow yourself to do that anymore. How is your composition? How is your design? How is your balance? How is your edge control? How is the feeling of it? Is there emotion? What is your theme? Are you thinking within yourself? Everybody has a certain level of sensitivity and intuitiveness. Are you being true to that enough where it is being exemplified on the canvas? What is my responsibility? Think about freshness, spontaneity, economy, simplification, showing the essence of an object. These are just a few examples of the questions an artist must ask themselves if they expect true artistic responsibility for their work.

Sleet: How do you show the essence of an object?

Jeff: Experience. There is a saying that you can always tell the maturation of an artist by how they choose to simplify a complicated situation. I use poetry as an example when I talk about that. If someone had a lot to say and they wanted to say it in a beautiful way, if they didn't have a true command and a purposeful idea of what they felt poetry was, they would ramble on for pages. So to convey your message in a sonnet is not only a symbol of how this artist is choosing to distill their idea, it is also a beautiful statement of the artist.

Sleet: You once said in class that if you see your friend from a block away, you will recognize them. Why is that — because you only see general things?

Jeff: Usually it is a light effect. If you are close to someone, you can see form and features, so there is a balance between mass and line and features and character. But when someone is a block away, you don't see all that, but you still know it's them because of the way the light is falling on them, it reveals the essence and the simplicity of their character. Maybe the way they walk, or maybe the light is hitting the cheekbone a certain way that reveals who they are. All the plane changes and the individuality of character is different to everybody.

Sleet: But then a few key details are important, too?

Jeff: This is where balance comes in. You do need a few key details to help explain, but if you get lost in too many details you'll lose the overall essence of your creation. One of the principles in painting is understanding the “big look” — because if things aren't relative in the major masses right away, the details aren't going to save you.

Sleet: There has to be a reason for every painting to be made. There is a line where something goes beyond just being a class assignment, standing in a row of people painting the model. Something in the painter has to click.

Jeff: I believe this happens when the artist has a true connection with their subject. What makes the model that model? What makes him/her relative to the other 10 people that we could bring in here? So it is looking more at character and the essence of that person, and why they're different. It's so easy to get caught up in the details…because if you can see everything, an artist's natural inclination is to put everything in because you think it's vital. In the learning process, everyone has their baggage that they're carrying around with them. As a teacher, I'm always struggling with teaching an individual, but also being able to say things generally and to give a foundation of thought to the class. As a general statement, I work more with people who have convinced themselves the more they put in, the better the painting is going to be. At the beginning of the semester, I had a really good experience with one of my students. She was working on a painting and it was close, but it wasn't working for her, so at the end of the day, she erased the whole thing. But she erased it to where it was just a ghost and it kind of pulled everything together. And I said, “That's perfect! Let's look at where you can go from here.” So everyone gathered around. And we talked about how few character orientated marks could represent the models likeness in a simplified manner. I wasn't going to re-mass, not redo her outlines. I put in a shape of an eye and maybe just a hint of the jawbone, and made probably 10 marks on it relative to what she had, and it was on. It was there. I liked the experience because it showed them that she was so busy trying to find everything, that when she wiped most of it out and a few necessary marks were made, it was actually better. It gave us a chance to really pare down the number of details that served the major theme of the original idea.

Sleet: Let's talk about revision and a Russell Edson quote, “Revision is deadly. Rather than revising, it's best to go on and write something else.” So that's what happened, then?

Jeff: In a way, yes, she had wiped out most of what was there, essentially starting over. In the learning process a student often gets to a point that they recognize it is better to start over than to correct an ill-conceived beginning. This is a good thing — to recognize there is an insurmountable problem is the first step in recognizing what a clear idea right from the beginning brings your work. Once something is gone, the time put in past that is truly counter-productive. It's like putting a bunch of time into proofreading or editing a piece that is unclear with its overall message. Trying to refine a work that needs revision is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. For an artist “revision” and “refinement” are two words that couldn't be more opposite. To refine is to bring final clarity to your creation founded on purposeful intent and emotional individuality. To revise is to change or alter the process of creation usually in the midst of creating, which blurs the clarity of your concept. The unintended problem with revision is that if an artist approaches any creative process with even a thought of revision in mind, they haven't understood the true responsibility of why they are creating. Don't get me wrong here, in the learning process revision can be part of the process, but when you mature into becoming a professional you need to move away from the luxury of revision and think brevity and refinement while you are creating. A simple outline can give an artist a creative path; it's essentially the ‘big look’ of your creative process, so your process is creative instead of corrective. If you are creative with purpose from the beginning and your start leads purposefully to your end, then you don't have to revise. You don't have to take 3 steps up and then 2 back. I think the number 1 fault in the creative process in the arts is trying to get to the finish too quickly with an undisciplined start.

Sleet: It seems that anything an artist makes has to be somewhat autobiographical. As soon as you make a mark, you're saying something about yourself. Now here's my crazy question: Say you had Jeffrey Dahmer up there, before you knew, and after. How would the painting change?

Jeff: That is a good question. As I mentioned before, just nailing the likeness doesn't unveil a fair look into a person's soul. Sometimes the slightest movement in a pose can accentuate an individual's character. Representing the caricature of the person means there is a connection between the artist and who is there. So yes, I would say absolutely, that the portrait would be different because personality is not just held in the likeness. You get to know the person by what they give off, not by how they look. When I do a commission, I will sit down, I will talk to them, I will talk to their parents, I'll talk to the people in their office. I will always take the time to talk to them before, not only to get an idea of how they want the painting to feel, but it gives me a chance, face to face, to see who they are, what is important to them, maybe just to see subtle characteristics of how they talk or listen. That is so important. In some of the best books out there, especially where there is a main character that repeats from one book to another, the writer spends a lot of time forcing you to get to know them as a person, not just what they look like.

Sleet: And the writer has to know the characters before they sit down to write the book.

Jeff: If a good writer has a recurring character through their books, they will spend a lot of time making sure you understand how the character thinks and feels, how he's making his judgment calls, the kind of friends he has, his past, everything — because you need to know as a reader who that person is.

Sleet: That's interesting, comparing painting someone to a writer knowing a character. Now, let me ask you some easy questions: Who are your painting gods?

Jeff: The Old Masters, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens, Vermeer, Sargent. They did a good job showing not only the visual explanation of their time, but they were at the renaissance of changing and influencing how society felt about art.

Sleet: Did you always know you wanted to be a painter?

Jeff: No. Deep down inside, I think, yes, but in our society, we get so many different signals — we're supposed to make money, supposed to be responsible, supposed to pay the bills. When I went to college, I was in pre-med. It was time for real life now. And then I was literally going to take the medical school admissions test, and I knew something wasn't right, and I trusted myself well enough to step away. And it wasn't until a couple of years of floundering, until I came back to art, and I ended up meeting who I mentored with, Charles Kapsner. I showed up on his doorstep one day and literally a light came through the window, and this epiphany answered; this is why you're on the doorstep; this is why you're here; this is who you are meant to be. And 2 days later I was on a flight to North Carolina!

Sleet: To go to school?

Jeff: Yeah, I was just married. And I had done a couple of drawings of Jane, my wife, and she thought ‘where did that come from?’ And I wound up training on and off with Charles for 4 years. I was the only apprentice he's ever had.

Sleet: That must have been a really scary time.

Jeff: Talk about jumping off the cliff! You have no idea. And I took the workshop and it turned out pretty well, and I was on my journey. Well, not till you're way into it do you realize that this is big. It is so personal. So after a couple of decades of really working hard, you start getting a clue to how hard and how responsible you have to be to everything — your craft, your art, yourself. People ask me all the time what it's like to be an artist. To be honest, it is becoming comfortable with different levels of frustration, because if you're always pushing and challenging yourself to get better and never be complacent, even if you're successful, you will always grow. You're always putting yourself in a position to get better. So, literally, the answer is, just becoming comfortable with the journey. You use your successes and failures as experience-driven building blocks. There is no end.

Sleet: You might run across an artist now that you would love or a book now that you would love that you wouldn't have many years ago because you just weren't there yet to understand it.

Jeff: The influences we let in need to be discriminate for where we are in our journey. We might have heard a very good piece of advice but it might not have been at the right time. When it is, this information becomes a pearl of wisdom and will positively influence us.

Sleet: Talk about the book you're working on.

Jeff: The book will be titled The Relative Balance of Life and Nature because to me everything needs to be in balance. The book will be centered around a teaching concept. It will be about the building blocks of craftsmanship, but also the intuitiveness of injecting yourself into your work, and the balance of these two within the creative process. One of the hardest concepts I have to confront while teaching is that balance of knowledge and intuitiveness. The artist is literally working both sides of their brain. Creating while keeping this balance in mind is what makes the process and the finished work a very personal and individual experience. It's funny how often the lessons I talk of in class translate to our lives and nature itself. I believe it is necessary for all things to be in balance within an individual or with each other for harmony to exist. I believe we could all think of many instances in our own lives or historical events that would exemplify to us when things were out of balance. In the creation of art, the connection that exists between the artist and their work needs to be in balance for beauty to come easily. Sometimes when an artist has to fight or struggle through a piece, it might represent some form of disconnect and this shows disharmony.

Sleet: What do you like to read? History, biographies?

Jeff: Both. Some of the geniuses, Newton, Einstein… think how creative you have to be when all of your proofs and hypotheses have to be quantified in a very qualified, static manner. Newton came up with different types of mathematics to prove his theories. The genius behind that is just amazing. When I read about Einstein, he believed that his absolute key to success was the ability to visualize his theories. So when he came up with how light was moving, he visualized if he was sitting on a beam of light, how time and space would be relative to the movement of light. To truly understand how unbelievably creative geniuses are in any discipline is to get a glimpse of how they even think. Students often ask if it would be beneficial to copy masterpieces. There are a lot of different philosophies on that. I personally think, yes, go ahead, if you understand that you are gleaning all of the judgment calls that these Masters made, so it's not like you are going to be a better artist from this exercise, but it could influence your craftsmanship. You could learn some of the building blocks within the creative process — from composition and design to the different techniques of painting. Having as you called it, a stable of ‘Art Gods’, is a good thing; they can become your visual mentors. A visual mentor is just an idea, a standard, a watermark of what you personally think is visually valid. Every artist's list is different, its personal, and these masters had their lists also. It's not your goal to create exactly like someone else, it's recognizing greatness and then trying to personally emulate the qualities that caused you to put them on your list in the first place.

Sleet: I think it's a bad thing when students paint or write like their teachers.

Jeff: And you can't believe how the students fight that, too, because they want the answer. I talk about principle and theory, and I always start with, “This is not a cop out. I'm not purposely not answering you because I don't want to give you answers, but you have to be responsible at some point for making a judgment call on how you feel something is right or wrong.” The ability to self-critique is a paramount concept to learn and hone throughout your training. The last thing I should do is go around to everybody and say ‘move that over half an inch, move this, move that’ — fix everything for everybody. That's not going to make them a better painter or understand it better. They have to personally go through that. It is experience-laden. In dance, in music, in literature, in painting, I am absolutely convinced that only through doing, succeeding and failing, will you have an idea of what direction you are going and know what adjustments within your work you need to change to solidify your chosen path.

Sleet: Do you believe talent can be taught?

Jeff: There is some pure talent out there; there is. Artistry is a different deal. I can't teach you how to be an artist; that's like someone showing up and asking ‘can you give me a different personality?’ I can teach you the building blocks, the essence of and the meaning of talent, but it is only yours to find, grow and expand, so it becomes your talent, not anybody else's. Just like in writing, there's only so much you can teach, you can't teach the story itself; in music, you can't give somebody a great voice. In the end it is wholly up to you. You have to believe in your personal journey. I tell my students, the best thing you can ever do is shut the door and get really good at what you're supposed to be good at. Take yourself seriously and ask yourself the right questions. You've gone to the museums. You know what's right and wrong. You know what you love or why you don't like it. Be patient. That was one thing that Charles told me a long time ago. I asked him that question, “Do you think I'm ready; should I start selling my work?” He said, “You'll know.” You don't need anybody's answer or approval. You'll know.”

Sleet: Do you like to teach?

Jeff: I love it. I teach because I love it; I don't have to.

Sleet: If you could paint anything, if you had all the time in the world, what would you paint?

Jeff: I want to do a really nice portrait of my wife; I've wanted to for years. I did a drawing of her a number of years ago. We have 3 kids, so I'm running, she's running. I talked to her about it just the other day, and she agreed to it. She's a really good person, so I want to make sure that I exemplify that. I know her more deeply than I know any person on this earth, so the challenge for me isn't going to be a visual thing. It's going to be can I exemplify all the things that I love about her in this visual statement. It's going to be very difficult, but it will be good, and I want to enjoy every part about it so much.

Sleet: Do you always try new things in paintings?

Jeff: Oh absolutely. Every time, every commission, every painting that I do, I will try different things. And it always centers around, ‘can my statement be clearer?’ Can my purpose and intent be stated with more clarity right from the beginning? Can my foundation speak to my finish, so it is not detail oriented, so it is relative as fast as possible. The simplification of my idea has to be felt in the big general areas. Think of the challenge with that. How close can you get to your finished statement, but make it as general as possible without being laden with detail? It's almost a conundrum. Is it a success every time? No. But I will always try, always.

Jeff Hurinenko's work can be seen at www.jeffreyhurinenko.com.