Integrity
by Stefan Baumann
In my lectures, I discuss integrity as an artist which is painting what you know. If you live in a city, paint city scenes; if you like people, paint portraits. There are a lot of portrait artists that don’t like people. If you don’t like people, don’t paint portraits.
I, myself, paint nature -- grand vistas of the American landscape. I live in the city, San Francisco; I’m a little out of integrity. Therefore, this month I purchased some land at the foot of Mount Shasta where my new studio has windows that look out to a grand 14,000 feet mountain.
Those that know me know that I am a classical pianist. It was that discipline that my German mother bestowed upon me at an early age that made me the painter that I am today.
For me, painting from life is akin to playing music. The notes are there. One tries to get them down in the proper proportion to bring out the proper impression. Realize that your palette is limited; it cannot begin to have the richness, the depth from light to dark that nature encompasses or the subtlety of it. Painters seem to strain for its effects and yet nature has so much power. One always wants to feel confident that one is painting what one sees but nature is not always what it seems. You must live your paintings, be part of who or what they are. It amazes me how different artists can use the same colors out of the same tubes in so many different ways, all in an honest attempt to recreate nature the way we see it. That is why it is important that you understand it; you must live it. To have integrity, you must live your subject matter every day. The best paintings are painted from your street, your neighbors.
New England artist Andrew Wyeth does not paint the Grand Canyon or the Tetons. His subject matter is from his backyard, where he takes daily walks and makes small sketches and brings them to his studio. He also collects local twigs and rocks and recreates them at another time.
Sargent, another artist, lived in the city painting people, but when he wanted to paint nature he would summer in the Alps or travel to the Rockies. These artists know that you can’t paint from a post card or from a photo of your neighbor or of Aunt Hilda who died 20 years ago. Artists paint living things that touch them, move them, and inspire them. In return, artists give to others a world that few people see. That is painting with integrity.
