Last Painting Class at RAC

These are pen and ink studies I did while teaching at the Richmond Art Center. Those are the students. I like drawing people the most when they are not posing. I used a drawing metal nib, a watercolor brush and india ink on 140 lb Cotman paper. The paper was roughly 8 x 10."

Poet Karen

At first, one sees the person who is modelling; but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model.
Alberto Giacometti

This is a 24 x 24" acrylic that I completed at the Firehouse in Berkeley. It took me six hours because I had a lot of trouble with the hands, but I like the light and the background. I learned a lot struggling with it!

Our Friend Adrian

If every person who commissions a portrait was able to pose this well, I would be done in record speed and they would pay less. Adrian had never before modeled for a group of painters. He held the pose extremely well! The result was a decent 24 x 18" painting, with good color. I hope he was not in pain when we ended. Modeling is very hard work and it's best to be in shape.

A Berkeley Figure Painting Session

I was invited to a painting group that meets in Berkeley, at the home studio of a local artist. I have painted the model before, but this time, because of the strange size of the canvas (15 x 30") I extended the view to include a fellow painter hard at work. This palette had Titanium White, Pyrrole Orange, Pthalo Blue, Dioaxine Violet, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow and Pthalo Green.

Our Standard Schnauzer

This painting started as a family joke. Kafka, our schnauzer, is a perfectly well-behaved dog until he sees either cats, picas or squirrels. The later seem to flip him into another channel! Standing is his favorite position once he has spotted one. Because I am teaching a basic painting class at Richmond Art Center, I wanted to do this painting completely from references. Thus began a series of life sketches (all interrupted because he is 16 months old and barely able to stand still), diagrams of his muscle system, and a value study followed by a color study. By the time I grabbed this small (20 x 16") canvas, I was feeling much more comfortable working from photos. A friend gave me permission to base the background on a photo of El Sobrante Ridge, and I painted the squirrel from memory. It has this tinge of magic realism, which is what I was going for.

Bruce at The Firehouse

I occasionally visit the Firehouse group on Tuesdays to do figure painting. This 20 x 16 acrylic painting felt wonderful, because it flowed. The model was excellent! I was happy with the light and the modeling of this figure.

Hotel W for the Momentum Conference

It was only three days, but the folks from Tides pampered my paintings at the Hotel W. Marika Holmgren the event coordinator, made sure I had everything I needed. My work was shown at the Community Room, together with the work of Amanda Lopez. This photo was taken by Kevin Tuney, the engineering assistant who hung my paintings with 100 lb nylon line from screws placed on the ceiling of the hotel walls. Making sure they were evenly spaced and level was very very hard, but Kevin was great to work with. I want to thank Bruce DeMartini, the Tides program cooedinator of Tides Shared Spaces, who thought of this series and invited me.

Two Sessions, Two Paintings

These oils on canvas are the product of three hour sessions with a wonderful model from Berkeley. The square one is 20 x 20" and the rectangular one is 16 x 20." I was joking about the difficulties inherent in doing the pattern on her jacket when the previous coat of paint has not dried. For this, I avoid hog brushes and use something much softer, like sable. I have many nylon brushes but they are stiffer than natural hair and tend to scrape the paint even when dragged sideways.

The truth is I have been trying out some Escoda Kolinski oil brushes. They are fantastic, very responsive, they retain their shape well, they last long... and so do the Escoda hog oil brushes. In addition, the handles are more ergonomic. I will have to make that special trip to Barcelona, as the company resides there since 1933.

Two Models

Two professional models who posed for a total of six hours. They chose their pose. These are oils on canvas, approximately 18 x 24." I bought this new chair and I'm asking everyone to sit on it, perhaps because I am tired of the old chair.

I confess I love the heater next to one of the models. That is, I love the painting of the heater. It was a lot of fun to do, toward the end. I have removed a lot of paintings from the wall and have stored them. Only small landscapes remain.

What a Success!

The exhibit held at CompassPoint, Undocumented: Latino Immigrant Portraits by Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez, was a fantastic event. The VIP reception was earlier, to give the press a chance to see it before the rest of the public. Given the tremendous number of people who came (more than a hundred), this was a wise decision. Luckily for us, some came earlier and others late. Martina Ayala and her husband Alex Balmaceda, my friends from graduate school who did all of the public relations, are responsible for such wonderful numbers.

It feels wonderful to have received such support from friends, colleagues, family and total strangers interested in art. They asked very interesting questions. My only regret was to not have had enough time to go beyond, "Hi, thank you so much for coming!" due to the opening's popularity.

The Mission Vocational School's Culinary Department did the catering. I didn't eat, but I heard the food was excellent. They were very professional. We served wine, water and get this: vitamin water. This was another good decision, as the temperature went up with the number of attendees.

Curator Linette Morales spoke first. She talked about the impression the paintings had made on her personally. I thanked the incredible team that made it possible: my partner Sarah Calderon, in charge of the logistics for that day, the framing of all 16 paintings, and of helping me pack and deliver them across the bridge; Carmen Melendez, who did almost all of the graphic design out of her business Pitipua Graphix; Linette Morales, who volunteered her curatorial skills; and Vicky Lee, who supported us on CompassPoint's behalf. Bianca Serra, from The Centro Legal de la Raza, explained what they do to help undocumented Latino inmigrants, since this is the organization that will receive 30-40% of any sales.

I placed a "vote for your favorite" board on a column, and will use this feedback to decide which paintings should I reproduce as gliclee prints. We also asked those those are interested to give us their e-mail so that we can notify them as they become available. There was, however, considerable interest in the paintings themselves. We are working on a way to sell with an agreement to allow other exhibits even as new owners take possesion. We'd like this exhibit to travel to Los Angeles next, but I'd have to find a way to finance the shipping as it is a costly proposition, even if I deliver them myself.

Undocumented Series

She was the last model to pose who could have made it into the exhibit, and the only canvas I had left measured about 20 x 24." She was also the most forthcoming of all the people I have painted, in that she felt completely free to comment on my style and approach to her portrait (for example, she thought my colors were too bright). I explained to her that I had grown up in the caribbean, where colors are bright, and that this had probably affected my color perception. I also said I didn't think anything looked alive enough if done in a muted palette. So now you have an idea of our conversation. A completely self-possessed young person, she asked many, many questions about my training, interests and background.

Undocumented Progress

It's a team effort! My childhood friend Carmen Melendez is designing the bilingual postcard that will announce my August solo show at Compass Point, a non-profit organization on the second floor of a building (731 Market St) in downtown San Francisco. The opening will be on August 22, at 6 PM. The show is titled Undocumented: Latino Immigrant Portraits by Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez.

Meanwhile, my partner Sarah is framing all fifteen paintings in my studio, no small feat if you consider we do not own professional framing equipment. Doing this is preferable to sending them to a shop, as a framing shop, even a discount one, charges four to five times as much. So we bit the bullet and got an early start.

Linette Morales will be the curator for this show. She will come to my studio mid-July to help me select the paintings that will make Compass Point's small space. My graduate school friend Martina Ayala, a producer and community activist, will promote the show in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

I have been working on both the series statement, and on a reflective essay based on the series's effect. The series statement will be available at the opening, but I am not yet sure of where I would post the essay other than my web site. I did read it to an audience gathered at the writing retreat I was recently coordinating and got some suggestions. However, I do need to start writing the press release.

Immigrant Portraits

I have been painting Latino immigrants for a few months now. Sometimes they bring each other, or I hire them from the neighborhood. They pick their clothes and the pose. I pay them by the hour. At the end of the day I take a photograph print it, sign it, and give it to them. They sign a release and take a copy home. Once they leave, I might finish the background, but I don't tend to work on their image much more. Each painting takes 1-2 sittings, and a total of 5-10 hrs.

I do it in part because they are underrepresented in formal portraiture. I have always done portraits of people of color in oil. But until I saw the portraits of African Americans that Beverly McIver was showing at a show in Sacramento, I did not understand what exactly was it that I was looking for. I wanted to give the sitters exactly the same choices someone with more means might have had had they commissioned a portrait from me, but I also wanted to have more emotional involvement in those portraits. I also wanted to give them the experience of sitting for a portrait in which they would not be treated as the exotic other.

This oil is the latest of seven I have completed so far, measuring 24 x 36". The 12 x 16" charcoal drawing was done as part of a figure drawing session, and not as a study for the painting.