Ben Wohlberg: Evolution of an Abstract Painter

I mean, like when I'm in my space, I have my music, you know, and I know where all my stuff is. I can be relaxed and focus and think about what I want to do. You know, I don't really have any specific thing in mind. I just want to start painting. This is Sommet, a roof paint. What I did, I had part of the can left out here, and I tipped the can on a canvas and it spilled. And it was an accident that I said, well, let me try painting on that. I've spread it around. And I've been using it ever since. Underpainting, I call it. And I also call it the bones of the painting. Because it's, I try to give it some structure, as well as create interest with textures. I think at this point, I need a stronger horizontal right here. I like the way that shape works with this. And I'd like to see a little more action over here. And I think that's about all I need to do. On the first stage. I just always wanted to express myself in one way or another since I was a child. And because of the depression and the way my parents had to struggle to make ends meet, it gave me my need to get a job with something I could make a living doing, rather than just expressing myself as a painter. I thought I could achieve my artistic aims as an illustrator. Right, because I admire a lot of illustrators like Norman Rockwell and different people. But when I got to New York and found out that that was not an option, I had to focus on a market. I would say about 25 years that I did illustration and was also painting for myself at the same time. This painting was one that I did of my daughter sitting in front of a fireplace. But this particular one was a game changer for me in my illustration career, because I was fortunate to have my neighbor, who was the art director of Red Book Magazine, came by one day and saw it and wanted to use it for the cover of Red Book Magazine, which was a total change, because I didn't do it as an illustration. I did it as a painting. But right after that, he started giving me a manuscript from stories so that I could illustrate it in this manner. This is an illustration, and it was a mother caring for her sick boy. And the sketches, you know, I was working, you know, with shapes, and the negative and positive shapes. I mean, this could have been a dark cup of coffee, or a dark cup, but I liked, you know, that shape. So I was able to use that there. The pillow had all kinds of possibilities, could be almost any shape, right? So I just was able to use these different shapes that I felt worked as a painting. This particular type of painting was like a prelude to my more abstract painting. I was in New York for many years, and witnessed many phases of art forms. Pop art, pop art, cover field painting, all the rest of it. But I never felt like I wanted to work in any of those particular areas. And when I was painting, I really was prone to be interested in figurative work. I did quite a number of them over the years, maybe three or four years. And eventually got to the point where I felt like I didn't need to rely on a figure to make a painting. And that's when I started almost eliminating, like this, there's not much of a nude here. I call her Blue Nude. But I mean, you can see her if you look for her, with her head and her hips down here. But this was like a start of another progression into straight abstract painting. Well, I think I came to realize that to recognize a nude or something in the painting, that that's all you saw, you know. And I wanted to do a painting for its own sake with just paint, just form, color, drawing, etc. And that became the challenge for me. The danger of my doing this is that I want to put it someplace else and I shouldn't. That's my red and my blue. I think I enjoy using oil paint and the way it works and the way you can move it around. I mean, there's more possibilities. I really like to use a lot of paint when I'm working on a painting. I have some that I wear, I use a palette knife because it just gives you a much more sensuous feeling in the paint itself. If you start with something and you have this intuitive kind of attitude about it and gestures or whatever, leave it alone because it's the initial thought and impulse that makes it good. It gives it spontaneity in life. So I try not to change any more than I have to on these paintings. So I better not do any more. Portrait work was an extension of my illustration. I think painting affected my portrait work, not vice versa. I think it enabled me to do a better portrait using shapes and forms and color in a better way than I would have without that kind of background of painting. I think every artist paints from their experiences in life that comes out. And I think that's true with any artist. You're you're involved to some degree with with your heroes. You know, I mean, Bekuning and Pollock, who are originally condemned, I became aware of how good they were and how important their work was. And they were somewhat influential in my work and letting things happen. You know, as you're working, a la Pollock, as it happens, you just continue with that rather than having a specific idea or notion when you start a painting. I can't say enough about Harbor Island. People are wonderful. They're very friendly. It is small island, only half mile wide, three miles long. It's more secluded. There's less commercialism. I just love it there. I think that the island definitely had an influence on my work. When I'm working in the Bahamas, I noticed a major change in color and lightness. I think it lightens my whole kind of attitude about painting. What I'm doing is looking at the shapes with your hand, you can block out shapes. What I'm seeing here is my eye being trapped in this circle, which I want to try to change. And I think it might have to do with this because this brings your eye up this way. And this, this line tends to bring your eye up to nowhere. And so I feel that that is one thing that I need to change. Now, where's that brush? Shapes create form in a canvas. There we are. The teacher in New York, Rosalind Brown, turned me around a lot in terms of my painting and learning a lot more about building a painting. Through form. The way she taught was fascinating. She would have two projectors going and she would say, take a Manet and project it and then do another projector with the same slide and project that out of focus. So you couldn't see any realistic shapes and show how effective and abstract that painting was. I had an interesting thing happen down there once with a young guy who used to go by my studio and he couldn't figure out why I did this. He said, what are you doing? Don't see anything here. And I said, you see a painting, right? He says, yeah, all these are paintings. And I said, what kind of music do you like? He said, well, I like rap. And I said, well, what do you hear here? I said, well, some kind of classical stuff. And I said, yeah, I like classical stuff, but there are no words. There's just music. My work is not unlike music in terms of its form and structure, and it has to have form and structure as any good piece of music does. So he got it. It was very interesting that he related that he could see it. I love the flowers, but I've had so much trouble with them here that you've got to rely on other things. Native, especially. It was not easy to get started there with a garden, so I realized I had to work with native plants and also major problems with right on the sea or on the ocean. Salt's a major factor. But it's wonderful working with palm trees and the various plants that tolerate salt and are more indigenous to the area. The garden's a great motivator because there's always something to do in the garden, and I just love doing it. And the same thing in my studio. I mean, it's just always another painting to paint. It's a little weak somehow. I mean, it needs a little more strength and probably a stronger dark, and I can see where it could be. And I'll try that. I think that's all it needs, really. All areas are detailed. Parts of the painting, I think, have to work by themselves. Take that section in the right. I could see that working alone, but it has to work with this as well. But I can also, even like the big white farm, you know, that works. But it's also working with the rest of it. I'm just looking at this as we speak and wondering about that strong vertical at the bottom, if it could be shortened. And sometimes I do that with paper. Let me try that. When you're dealing with a painting with verticals and horizontals, OK, maintaining negative and positive space within that shape. A diagonal suggests distance, like a road or something going off. It suggests depth and distance. So it's helpful to counter that with either a vertical or a horizontal. OK, and that keeps the painting flat and maintains the surface of the canvas. So you think that in those terms, not three dimensionally, but two dimensionally. I like it better. I was right before. Again, you did the same kind of texture stuff first. Essentially, kept working on it. That painting I worked on a long time. That guy took very little additional work. I mean, I think I did that two days. Yeah, it was the lay in, you know, and it worked. I like the shapes and I like the softness of the edges. And then I added the, you know, the color, some of it and the darks in some places just to give a little more structure. But that was it. You know, I left it. Understanding painting has to do with what you know and what you feel about what you're looking at. I've had a lot of people react totally differently. I usually start left to right and I just start working with shapes and just let it flow through. The canvas is right next to each other. When I started, you can see where this one from there goes right from this white line. You know, do you work on, do you work on a complete one at a time? Or do you actually, when I start, I start with this whole group, you know, I treat it as a group. As a triptych. And then I go back to try to improve each one as an individual painting. And that's what happens with the stronger colors. Blakon is definitely home for me. And I, you know, for years developed the garden and I've always had a fascination for it, for plants. And it's very satisfying. And it is also a form of art for me. I mean, you have to, you know, put things together in a garden, not unlike you do in a painting. With textures, color, form. So it's very related. And it just enables me to do the things I've always wanted to do in life, paint and garden. I think the painting comes first, hopefully. I've had people ask me this in the past. You've been an artist all your life. And I say, yes, essentially. I don't think it's any different than the need I had as a teenager to go out and do watercolors. OK, I just felt like I had to do that. I had to paint in one form or another. I never lost that.