Art Sync: On Flowers and Change

NC: I used to paint deep empty landscapes. It was a time when I was curious about textures and space and how light travels across it. I think these kinds of landscapes are taken in all at once. Lately, I’ve been zooming in a little and looking at the complexity of plant life. These compositions take time to navigate. Some of these might be presented as if something is blocking a broader view of something more beautiful behind it. These unusual scenes that are portrayed might make you second-guess what the main feature really is: are you not able to see the forest for the trees? Or can you accept what’s right in front of you regardless of how it’s presented and appreciate what’s going on? That’s been both a theme in the compositions I seek out and the way I’ve been regarding my daily life. The “scenic view” at the rest stop doesn’t guarantee a profound experience. The canned experience never quite surpasses a discovered one.

NC: I’ve been going back and forth between them to study something different in each approach. I paint realistically to find and study color. I paint abstractly to find compositions and quickly to create movement. But ultimately my aim is to integrate these two approaches. So far, I feel I have done so in Yellow Water Iris and Fanfare and a couple older paintings. Both styles aim to capture movement and patterns, and rhythms of light. Both aim to keep the painting operating continually beyond imagery.

EJ: Do you paint flowers as they are found in nature? Or in gardens and interiors? Do you find any difference?

NC: I prefer painting natural growth patterns, because my painting process mimics how nature behaves. It reacts to cause and effect. Even though there is a preset image with these paintings, something new is always revealing itself in the process of painting and I constantly react to those subtle nuances.

EJ: What about, say, 17th-century Dutch flower painters? And what about other artists that painted flowers, such as Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Hiroshige, and Hokusai? What painters influence you? Has ink or watercolor painting technique informed your oil painting?

NC: I’m all across the board. I look at all painters­­––and many of them don’t paint flowers! Of those that do: Anselm Kiefer––particularly his series Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom––and Van Gogh, although he has had more of an impact on my view of being an artist. He once wrote to his brother about a color he loved. He responded so deeply about color and that was enough. I love the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Expressionists. And while I do love Japanese woodblock artists, I’m inspired more by how Les Nabis artists took their concept of patterning and flattening space and integrated it with nature, not with linework and carving but through the language of painting. I’m also inspired by Itō Jakuchū’s work. I’ve always liked fluid calligraphic ink brushwork but never studied it in depth. I do see characteristics of it in my oils and it seems to be there to offer movement, direction, and a casual elegance.

EJ: I can see why you like Jakachū. He uses bold color and aggressive compositions that bring animals, vegetables, and flowers to life. He seems also to work with allegory.

EJ: On your website under “Selected Works” I find emptier, greyer landscapes. There are oceans and fields, and sometimes tree branches in front of them. Why has your work become more intimate and colorful?

NC: I’ve taught color theory for the past 10 years, and it naturally found its way in my work. I immerse myself in teaching, deepening my own understanding of the subject in the studio while teaching it to others.

EJ: Your compositions achieve their complexity by how you unify the light, by how you make patterns from varying degrees of brightness and shadow. Do you work from life and photos? Primarily from photos? Do you ever work from memory?

NC: I’m very much interested in creating patterns, whether through hue or value or through line and shape. This body of work mainly came from photos, and previous works came from memory, but both involved my own reactions to the paint and brushwork at every stage in the process. Through painting, the patterning becomes much more accentuated because of this back-and-forth dialogue between me and the paint. There is a rhythm to the compositions in which light plays a major part.

EJ: Do you take your own photos? Do you think of the eye of the camera as a "truer" point of view or one that codifies distortions as does the human eye? Does the gloss or matte surface of photos affect you?

NC: Yes. I do take my own photos. And what I get from them is mostly color. I unify them in the process of editing and painting. I approximate so the gloss and matte doesn’t bother me. I don’t accept every color at face value as it’s rendered by the camera.

EJ: Are there any flower paintings you dislike? For instance, Picasso? I imagine his simplification would work against your grain.

NC: I really dislike fake flowers and some paintings have that same artificial quality in the color and texture. Some of the Fauves and French Symbolists had that effect when they painted flowers, especially when the palettes were somewhat limited to the primaries and all in full saturation. But Picasso, I have no problem with!