Truman Castle
Artist’s Statement
I remember a night in 1982, when I entered the studio of my teacher, Ron Lukas. I saw a still life set up for the students that mainly featured a weather beaten, plywood board as a background, a dull aluminum pot, and a few other non-descript objects. There were other colorful, interesting still life set ups for the students, and I remember thinking that I had no interest in painting the aluminum pot. Several hours later, as I was leaving the class, Ron showed me the painting he had done of the ugly, gray set up. The weather beaten plywood was interpreted in a range of beautiful lavenders, and the aluminum pot was sculpted in wonderful warm and cool grays, with the reflected light of the other objects tying all of the pieces in the painting together. It was my introduction to seeing something translated into the visual language of paint. For quite some time, I could not get the painting out of my mind; it opened my eyes to the possibilities for color; and the lesson is still fresh in my mind almost 30 years later.
One of the challenges I have recently set for myself is to find subject matter in some of the common structures and places here on Whidbey Island, looking for inspiration in the abstract patterns and shapes of familiar subjects. It has been said for centuries, that impressionist painting is about the light – and so it is for me. There is a sensual quality of oil paint, and at some point you reach the place where painting the effects of light is like sculpting in clay, with a warmer, more intense color bringing something forward, and a cooler less intense stroke pushing things back. The colors of the shapes and patterns in landscape are constantly shifting as the light changes throughout the day. Field studies must be quick, because your subject matter may change so much in an hour, that it is a different painting.
These shifting patterns of colors next to each other take on the properties of a chord of music, and they are the building blocks of the mood conveyed in a painting. Over time I have gravitated away from more dramatic subject matter, and am more interested in searching for the poetic quality in the mundane objects and scenes of my daily life. Some of my recent paintings have explored a series of phone booths scattered around the Island, and the reflected light in the water of the boats moored at the Langley Marina. Both of these areas of interest provide the chance to combine aspects of both representational and abstract painting, and I am interested in where these two types of paintings converge.
I have always been intrigued by trying to better understand what it is about a painting that connects with a person on an emotional level. That is what painting is all about. But it is usually difficult to verbalize what it is about a painting that will bring it to mind, months after you have seen it. At times the subject matter may play a role in this connection, but often it has little to do with it. Artists translates what they see into a visual language, and words or intellectual analysis are often of little help in describing the emotional impact of a particular painting. I don’t know who first said it, but I love the line: “Talking about painting is like dancing about architecture.” It captures the idea that a painting either connects with a viewer on its own or it doesn’t, and explaining a painting in words is just not very effective.
As I aspire to a more poetic quality in my work, I have also spent a good deal of time trying to understand exactly what that means. In recent years, I find elegance in simplicity and understatement. I am drawn to the contemplative quality of paintings by Russell Chatam, who manages to make a simple spot of light on the edge of a distant tree or hill the center of interest in a painting. Under his hand, that is enough. In studying the portraits of Ilya Repin, I have come to appreciate the importance of the gesture of a figure as a much more powerful expressive tool than unnecessary detail. Learning to appreciate line quality in the drawings of Nicolai Fechin has also been a part of my journey as an artist. As Mark Rothko’s paintings show us, the emotional impact of a color has everything to do with the colors that are next to it. One of the hardest things to learn about painting, is how to simplify, to focus attention, and to decide what is best left out. Deleted details are like the periods of silence between musical notes. The spaces between the notes are as much a part of the music as the notes themselves. In its own way, each of these elements helps define what it means to pursue a poetic quality in painting.
Painting for me is largely about seeing things in terms of the visual language I have described. I think of brush marks on canvas, as simply the notes taken of what I see. As I drive through the community on a normal day, I feel like I am constantly “painting,” as I notice the patterns and colors around me — even if I do not have the equipment to put the “notes” down in paint. If this is true, the collector of paintings, is no less a “painter,” even if they do not use a brush to “take notes” of their observations. An appreciation of art, and a better understanding of the visual language of paint, changes the way we see the world around us every day.
Bio
Truman grew up in Glenview Illinois, and lived in the Chicago area until 1961. He spent seven years in North Carolina, earning an undergraduate and law degree at Duke University. In 1968 Truman moved to Seattle, where he practiced law for 25 years, until retiring in 1992. His family had a vacation home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, starting in the early 1970’s, and he and his wife Faye moved to the Mutiny Bay area of the Island as permanent residents in 2000.
Truman was drawing and painting at a very young age, but did not begin to paint regularly until the mid 1970’s when studying watercolor with Jerry Stitt in Redmond WA. More intensive study of oil painting with Ron Lukas in Seattle during the 1980’s and 1990’s followed. Additional workshops included: Sergei Bongart, David Leffel, Scott Christensen, Bill Reese, Joe Bohler, Carolyn Anderson, and Kathy Gill. Seattle artist Ned Mueller has been a good friend for many years, and they have traveled and painted together in Mexico, Guatemala, the western US and Europe. Truman was a Board member and officer of the Eastside Art League in Bellevue WA. in the 1990’s. He has been a member of the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Painters since 1992, serving as a Board member, officer, and past President of that group.
Truman can be found painting on location around Washington State with the group Plein Air Washington and is currently active with Langley Artists Connect, here on Whidbey Island. He is doing oil landscape painting both on location (plein air) and in his home studio in the Mutiny Bay area of Whidbey Island.