Q&A – Questions & Artists – Kyle Martin

“Sunflower Farm” by Kyle Martin.

I first met Kyle Martin, an invited artist, at this year’s PAS Plein Air Festival. I was out early in the morning looking for several of my favorite artists. I turned off Highway 42 on Plum Bottom Road and as I drove east, I saw a plein air artist painting the pasture and barns, and buildings. Even from the road I could see the lush color the artist had put down showing his impressions of the scene.

I continued down the road and then was actually drawn back to see the painting and meet the artist. Kyle Martin and I talked and he showed me his value sketches. I asked him what his concept of painting was and he said, “We paint falling light on objects.” This is almost a quote from the great American artist Charles Hawthorne.

As you will read in the following interview, Martin understands color and understands how light effects color. That in my opinion is the essence of painting.

Randy Rasmussen (RR): I read that you have done a painting a day for five years. Is this true or false?

Kyle Martin (KM): Tricky Question! I average more than a painting a day, but do enjoy some days off. For the last year I have enjoyed working smaller. If something works out or begins to feel special on a small panel, I will return to the location with a larger canvas. I enjoy the spontaneous and intimate quality of smaller work, and the outpouring that happens when working alla prima.

I think chasing that feeling on a large canvas is something that every painter would like to be able to do. The larger pieces are a bit more studied and I can take a longer look. In general the larger pieces feel like an accomplishment.

“CC Study #2” by Kyle Martin.

RR: When I saw you painting the farm at Highway 42 and Plum Bottom Road I actually saw your colors as I drove by. I was drawn by your mastery of the barn. How many colors are on your current palette?

KM: Well, thank you! I use probably around 15 or 20 colors at any time. Color is important to me. I have always thought that the landscape painting palette is really about the yellows, but was talking with the painter Matt Holt today, and realized that I have probably four or five blues on my palette as well.

I like the pthalos and the quinacridone colors. I like the spectral palette, one where the primary, secondary and tertiary colors are represented. Before quinacridone, cool reds were a problem for painters – they were fugitive. We live in an age where we can confidently use violets; magenta’s and rose colors without the worry that they will degrade our work in the future. The argument over the spectral palette and the limited palette has probably ended friendships.

I see much value in searching for colors with the limited palette, but generally find it valuable to have the largest color space available to work from. I love working with tertiary colors. I love having a turquoise, a Naples yellow light, and a red violet. Permanent rose by Winsor and Newton is my absolute favorite color to use.

RR: Can you give the readers your background in art?

KM: I remember finding my mother’s oil tubes in the closet when I was five years old. I held them in my hand and felt that they were a powerful thing, something not to be played with at the time. Around the same time my mother and I would visit the adult section of the library, where we had to be very quiet, to look at books of modern painting. I vividly remember forming questions about abstract painting, things that I continue to inquire about today. We also went to museums as a family.

When I was 12, I milked cows with my father every morning at 3 am, and then went to school. One morning, as the warm morning sun illuminated the pasture, I observed the transformed colors of the field, the hot oranges and lemon yellows casting long cerulean shadows, and thought to myself, “One day I will paint that.” I was drawn to the effect.

In high school, my friends and I would pour over the skateboard graphics in the skateboard magazines that we would read religiously during study hall, and dream about designing our own decks.

“Chair and Lamp Interior” by Kyle Martin.

Also, in high school, we took a field trip to the Chicago Art Institute, and I got to see some Cezanne, van Gogh, Vuillard and Monet paintings for the first time. They were doing things with color/tone that specifically spoke to me, but again, I tabled the idea of painting as I had youthful fish to fry.

After high school, I went to art school at MATC Madison. It was great being thrown into the swing of things with a bunch of other creative misfits, and the program was very strong. During my first semester, Chris Gargan had a showing of his oils in a gallery. His paintings, and specifically his color, spoke to me in the way that the impressionist and post-impressionist paintings had a few years earlier.

Chris taught me how to think about the landscape, instilled in me the philosophy that painting is problem solving, and has encouraged the development of my personal voice.

After college, I worked at a community access radio station for some time doing their print advertisements, and later at a newspaper. I also owned a skateboard shop during those years, which was one big art project in itself. I got to design and hand screen decks and travel and film skateboarding with some great people. I started painting again in 2008 with the goal of simply doing it as much as possible.

RR: You now paint in oil. Did you start with pencil drawings?

KM: When I was young we had a table in our basement that was filled with markers, pencils, and construction paper. All the neighborhood kids would come over and we would draw and draw. We were into playing baseball, and we would take my dad’s old seed corn companies hats and remake the logos to be our made up baseball teams. We were all about drawing.

That said, I don’t feel like I know enough about drawing. I recognize the value in drawing, and have been working my way through the exercises in the book The Natural Way to Draw. Whenever I start a painting, I try to place some accurate masses with a thin wash, or even a pencil at times, but I am inevitably seduced by my muse which is color, and find myself unable to continue with much drawing because I want to dip into my piles of paint.

RR: At your painting site you were kind enough to show me your value sketches. Is this always part of your preparation for a painting?

KM: Yes, the value sketch has been valuable to both my working process and my ability to teach the concepts of values and composition.

In graphic design school we were often assigned to make 50 thumbnail sketches to explore ideas before moving onto finished work. That was always my favorite part. When I began teaching, I understood the “value” of values, but knew that there had to be a better way of teaching it than simply saying – “have good values,” like, what does that mean?

To begin I observe the subject in terms of contrast, and eliminate all the superfluous information. This leaves only the major divisions of light and shade. I then create a value sketch using greyscale markers. I have created a special value palette, that anyone who has taken my workshops can remember using. The value palette helps me be assured that I am mixing my colors at the proper value. Working like this makes painting into a fun puzzle, and it helps me to abstract and get down to the essentials.

“Blossoms” by Kyle Martin.

RR: You, and I share a love for the Charles Hawthorne tradition in painting, “The Cape Cod School.” You described to me what you do as “painting light falling on shapes.” Can you describe this for our readers?

KM: Absolutely. To me, the reason to paint from life seems to be about observing the poetry of light and color. To take that a bit further, one reason to paint from life might be to observe the effect of light falling onto the landscape, a figure, or an interior. Each lighting situation, whether it is morning light, or mid-day, or overcast, or a nocturne, makes an object appear differently. Your face looks different in mid-summer sun than it does under twilight. Hawthorne, and especially Hensche, at the Cape school were very aware of specific light keys and would work studies up day after day whenever the light key was the same. Hensche was after a visual truth.

One tool that I use in my workshops, to help painters understand the light key, is painting the same object twice, once under a blue lamp, and once under an orange lamp. The goal of the exercise is to enforce the idea that if you paint what you actually see, the light key will simply happen on the canvas.

Hensche’s ideas on painting always seem to be controversial. Many people think that he made those colors up. I happen to appreciate Hensche, and feel that he captured outdoor light better than most. I have never done many of the sustained studies personally, but I flirt with it. Besides the Cape School, I happen to enjoy the simplified abstract quality of many East Coast painters in general. Several of these painters have taken what they have from the Cape School of thoughts on color, but have made it their own. I like full sunlight. I like to have a stark contrast between areas that are kissed by the sun and the shadow.

RR: When did you discover Charles Hawthorne and his contemporaries?

KM: Maybe three years ago? Dan Corey had me out to Maine to paint in 2010, and I was exposed to so much during this time. Dan is my favorite painter; he has shared so much with me. His vision is very specific and poetic, I love that guy!

Another painter that I really get into is Al Chadbourne. In the future, I would like to peruse more studio work from sketches as the reference. I would like to continue using representational subject matter, but would also like to divorce myself from the motif. Sometimes information should just be represented as a dark shape, or a light shape, and when we are standing in front of it, we see too much. I want to go out and sketch from life, and then work up ideas in the studio. I don’t want to get into what Fairfield Porter has done for me.

RR: You have been painting for five years. When did you start doing plein air painting?

KM: Starting with painting en plein air was a case of not knowing any better! I was familiar with the concept and the term, but I did not know what plein air was as an industry when I started working in the open air.

From my understanding, influenced from my time with Gargan, painters who wanted to paint landscapes worked directly from them. The thing that worked in my favor is what a friend once referred to as my creative itch, the fact that I am constantly thinking about doing something. That damn itch has been bugging me my whole life. I am habitual with painting, and the point of highest growth was when I said to heck with trying to paint pictures that I am familiar with and just started exploring raw visual data and going after the essentials.

“Goin Bananas” by Kyle Martin.

RR: How many plein air events do you paint in during a year?

KM: I did a few this year, and more last year. I always have a good time because it makes you go a little bigger and a little juicer. This year I did Beloit, Green Lake, Cedarburg, and the Door County Invitational. I have great stories from all of them.

In Cedarburg, I arrived on the first day, and had no plans for a place to stay. Claudette Lee-Roseland and Susan Hale pulled up in a car to see how I was doing just as the sun was setting. Claudette and her husband ended up taking me in for the week, and gave me my own space in their attic, which basically allowed me to do the event.

During my ten or so days in Cedarburg, I would paint first light, then another piece and go on a two or three mile run before lunch. I would try to take a catnap every day at about 3 pm, so I could be ready for the last light. Sometimes I would sleep at Claudette’s house, and sometimes in my car. I have a nice hybrid SUV and I would make organo gold coffee and oatmeal with a plug in tea kettle in my car every day. Any time that you can make three decent size paintings in a day is a good day, and that is what the festivals bring out.

I consider myself very lucky for the opportunities I have been given. I gave the artist demo in Cedarburg this year, and had to paint and talk into a microphone during the demo. I think every painter has some sort of scary thoughts go through their head every time they set up the easel, let alone when they are painting for 75 of their closest friends. As soon as I made the first marks it was fine though. I had my value sketch nailed down and I am lucky to be able to talk and paint.

RR: What was it like being an invited artist to the Peninsula Art School Plein Air Festival?

KM: It was an amazing experience again in 2013. I can remember getting the call from Kay [MicKinley] in the autumn telling me that I was chosen to be a featured painter again this year, and I was so happy that I went out skateboarding and got three tricks on film that day.

The Door County event is so well organized, and everyone at the school is just perfect. They want you to succeed and give you every opportunity to do so. I really enjoy painting at the scheduled events. I like people talking to me when painting. They become a part of the painting and the overall experience is heightened. I have enough time spent alone in a ditch that people are always welcome.

The sunset paintout is always a highlight of my week, I enjoy listening to bebop and for the past few years there has been a great band playing all of my favorites from Coltrane to the Jazz Messengers. The Bowling party on Wednesday was also so much fun. Stuart, I’m coming for that trophy! The people are the best part for me.

“Rumination” by Kyle Martin.

RR: Was there a lot of interest in your class you taught at the Peninsula School of Art, emphasizing the Hawthorne principles?

KM: Yes, it was full of bright young minds. I am a better teacher than a painter, and the youth is my favorite demographic to work with. One young lady was back in the Midwest after a couple weeks in Europe, and she led a discussion on the Cezanne paintings that she recently saw at the Muse de Orsay. Several of the students took in theatre at night, after the class. Another girl, when asked to pick out an album to listen to, specifically wanted to hear the “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” by Pink Floyd. She also discussed Syd Barretts paintings. One boy in the class talked about how sad he was upset that he couldn’t keep in touch with everyone else because he made the personal choice to live without social media as a part of his life. To me that was very cool to hear a young person who would like to avoid the clutter of Facebook.

The students were attentive during the demos, extremely well behaved, worked hard, and had fun while doing so – we even played tag! The best part of the week was when they serenaded me with the song “Here Comes The Sun” while I finished an outdoor demonstration of a sunflower still life. That was the best week of my life.

RR: What do you see as the future of art?

KM: The future is freedom and people. Those coming out of art school now can access information faster than anyone before them, and those few that use this combination of technology and youthful abandon will be unstoppable. The future will be influenced by traditional and new media, it is an exciting time. Many of these young artists never remember a good economy, so it seems like they would be less influenced by the prospects of making a living from their art, and they will just do what they want to do. The best artists are intrinsically motivated, and I see this in the youth. They are not limited by media or what is normal/has been done. They are not going away. I have recently met a couple of these like-minded people and have to say that they are influencing me towards personal bests.

For me personally, I am hoping to experience the art of living at some point. I am hoping to travel and to enjoy my life as a painter and teacher. Movement and music inform my work, so I hope to keep skateboarding, enjoying music, and creating little oil sketches. I want to stay sparked. I hope that I can continue to teach painting workshops as I gain more from my students than they do from me.

To learn more about Kyle Martin and his work, visit kyle-martin.blogspot.com.