Occasionally I would wander over to his place to see what he was working on. One day it might be a landscape with foreground, middle-ground and distance nicely done and the next day the same painting would have some religious figures down in a ditch in the foreground. Due to his prodigious use of drugs, I never knew what I would find each day. I remember one portrait of an Indian chief that was amazing in its execution and the feeling the piece evoked. The problem was, by the time I saw the finished painting, he had taken it to a compulsive level of finish that entirely ruined what had been so strong before. It’s unfortunate but true, that an artist occasionally needs, as the old saying goes, someone to hit him over the head when the painting is done (As a sad postscript to this story, this artist’s life seemed to mimic the same vicissitudes that his paintings underwent. One day while I was home painting I heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the yard next door. When I looked out the window to see what was going I saw this troubled guy up on a flight of stairs stabbing his landlord in the neck. The landlord fought back and threw him over the railing.  Amazingly, my neighbor did a back flip in the air and landed on his feet, something I might not have believed had I not witnessed it myself. At that point I went into a sort of fight or flight mode and ran outside with a baseball bat that I immediately laid down next to me behind a three-foot cinder block fence in case my peaceful gestures didn’t work.  I remember asking this artist to give me the knife, which he did, and I directed the two of them to separate until the police arrived. It was all so surreal and everything went off without a hitch—something I credit to an extra amount of help from above. After that I didn’t see much of this guy and found out several years later that he had committed suicide. It was a sad story that didn’t have a good ending).

The point I make is that sometimes in life as well as art, too much is too much and a more centered approach will take an artist to greater heights. To be sure, stopping before the point of ruin would be a good skill for any artist to develop.

In another example I remember an art-instruction book by an artist I had the good fortune of studying with for a week back in the ‘80s. Without meaning to be so, it was very instructive on this point. It seemed to me as well as another artist friend who mentioned it, that many of the step paintings looked better in the second-to-last step before the final painting. There was something clean about these penultimate steps that somehow got clouded with too much added flotsam in the finished work.

So where is that magical stopping place and how do you know when you’re there? I wish I could say there is a clear-cut answer to that question, but truthfully, there isn’t. This is one of those things in art that just requires some tasteful decision-making. I remember being out painting with Ken Baxter some years ago and he mentioned that sometimes you just need to step back from the work, take a break and return a few minutes later out in the field to get a fresh eye. Considering the limited time you have on location I was amazed at his calm demeanor and easy going way, as though there were no time restrictions. I chewed on that for a while and decided that he was right, a few minutes of what may seem like down-time in the field might be just what an artist needs to work more effectively as opposed to more quickly. The same can be said for the studio, where you might possibly work over a problem for days in your mind before laying another brushstroke on the painting. The more we know, the more effective will be our execution.

It took two summers for John Singer Sargent to finish “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose,” working methodically for 15 to 20 minutes each session and then scraping down each evening’s effort before he felt that he had it right. I suppose we, of the fast-food generation who become annoyed when our computers take a minute to boot up, could learn something useful from the past and “chill” a bit with regard to our approach and expectations.

Organization Spotlight: Salt Lake City
Connecting Women Artists
Aerin Collett and the Womens' Artist Collective
by Sue Martin

Aerin Collett, 30-something and a recent graduate of the University of Utah, knows how important it is to have support and encouragement as a woman artist. “As women we have to fight harder to have careers and deal with issues men don’t have to worry about,” she says. That’s why she started the four-month-old Wasatch Women Artists’ Collective.

It can be found on Facebook and it’s open to any Utah woman artist, amateur or professional, working in any medium. Right now, the fledgling group meets the first Monday of each month at 11:30 a.m., in the back room at Art Access. Though there are 60+ group members on Facebook, the gatherings have attracted 3-6 women.  “The group is growing slowly,” says Collett, “which I think is better than having a burst of many people and have it dwindle to nothing. In time, as we build energy, we will start to add other activities and meeting times.”

In the first meetings, group members have shared work, processes, marketing ideas, and begun collaboration on applications for one or more group exhibits. Their first exhibit theme is “Seeing Red,” which Collett says can be “metaphorical or literal; each artist gets to decide how she will interpret the meaning.”

Collett’s vision of a successful group is one that “as it continues to grow and build tighter bonds of friendship and support, it increases in energy. As we stimulate each other’s thoughts individually and as a whole, what we can achieve becomes limitless, and what we decide to do with the group is infinite.” Though she is the group’s founder, she envisions a group that doesn’t have just one leader, but where all lead each other. Eventually, group members might also divide into smaller groups around similar interests, possibly meeting at different times.

By including artists at different age, experience, and career levels, Collett hopes everyone will have something to offer and will benefit in some way – creative stimulation, marketing and business savvy, as well as friendship.

Collett herself has had an inspiring start to her art career. In fall 2012 she won the top award at the U of U student show juried and hosted by Williams Fine Art (now Alderwood Fine Art). As the winner, she was the featured artist in this year’s show, held Nov. 15 -27.

During the year she cultivated a relationship with gallery owner Tom Alder and his assistants. She asked if she could bring in a couple of paintings and they agreed. “When one sold, they asked me to bring more and sign a contract with them,” says Collett. 

Collett has developed a visual language and process that combines contemporary and traditional art in a way that is not only fun for the viewer but fun for her to create. Most of the work created for Alderwood features larger-than-life birds realistically rendered on highly textured and layered backgrounds. “I enjoy layers and transparency and thinking in a more complex way,” says Collett. For her it’s all about invention – challenging herself to combine media in unusual ways and working continuously to evolve and refine the process.

Meyer Gallery in Park City has also invited her to display work starting this month. Using similar processes, her subject will be bears and mountain sheep.

While keeping these galleries supplied with new work, Collett is hard at work on a new body of work with new subject matter in a similar bright and colorful style and process. That’s the only hint she will give right now.

After graduating in May, Collett rented studio space in the basement of Alderwood Fine Art. Since then she has had the unexpected opportunity to move to Mount Pleasant, UT with her three children. She feels blessed with lots of creative space, and beautiful vistas. At the same time she looks forward to visits to Salt Lake City for the Wasatch Women Artists’ Collective and monthly gallery strolls.