/

AMERICAN ARTIST
The Swan, 2002. oil. 36 x 28.
Collection the artist.

Opposite page: Detail

from The Swan.

For John N. Booth,

a Chicago-area artist, teacher,
and former professional musician,
value relationships orchestrate
prizewinning paintings.

D I X : K M B E R 200.1 23
 T
he Best in Show award
at the American Ardsts
Professional League's
Grand Nadonal Exhibi-
don last fall went to Tbe
Swan, a daringly composed paindng
of a cellist performing. The musi-
cian's head and hands are strongly
illuminated, perhaps from a stage
spodight. Except for a small area of
background behind the head, the
rest of the space in the paindng
, lives in deep, suggesdve shadow.
"Lives" is the correct word for
this large area of darkness; it is not
merely an absence, but a pres-
ence filled with hints of forms and
sounds. The cello's bridge, its strings,
the bow, and the wann, polished
wood of the instrument's body are all
just barely visible, and offer an
uncanny visual correspondence to
the cello's characterisdc low, serious
rangethe musical backbone of the
orchestra's string secdon. The play-
er's hands and head contrast not only
with this sonorous shadow, but with
each other. Her right hand holds the
bow delicately with the fingerdps,
while the fingers of the left hand,
pressing the strings, exhibit maxi-
mum tension. Yet, her face is relaxed,
her eyes are closed, and she seems
transported to another realm by the
music that arrives at her ear by way
of the cello's neck as a series of long,
fluid brushstrokes. Those brush-
strokes actually depict the cellist's
hair, but they are also expressive
symbols of the paindng's real subject:
the transforming power of music.
"Music is the essence of all art,"
asserts John N. Booth, the ardst who
painted The Swan. "It doesn't need
to represent anything. It is pure
architecture, pure emotion. If you
understand music, you're well on
your way toward understanding all
art." Booth says he wants his work to
aspire to the state of music, while
respecdng the craft, tradidons, and
inherent representadonal nature of
the visual medium. "Lines, edges,
and shapes in a paindng can all be
said, at dmes, to be 'musical' or to
'dance,'" he remarks. "I've had peo-

24 AMERICAN ARTIST
pie tell me, while looking at The Swan,
that they could almost hear music.
That's the kind of thing I'm trying to
achieve."
Underlying the romantic realism of
Booth's art is a rock-solid understand-
ing of the principles of value relation-
ships, w hich for him means the
orchestration of contrasts between
light and dark passages, both to clarify
the composition and intensify its dra-
matic and emotional impact. Booth
spent many years drawing with char-
coal in his eftort to comprehend and
master those principles, and he still
DEC:EMBER 2003
draws, independent of his paintings, as
a way of discovering new possibilities
to "score" his compositions.
The artist says he prefers charcoal
because of its similarity to painting. "I
see charcoal as a mass medium rather
than a linear medium," he notes. "A
jumbo charcoal stick is like a No. 10
bristle brush full of paint. It can fill up
a large area with tone quickly and easi-
ly. So, even though I keep drawing and
painting as separate disciplines, my
approach to each is basically the same."
A look at some of Booth's drawings
reveals four sequential stages in his
Above: OII sketch for Song
Without Words. 2001, oil,
14 X 11. Collection the artist.
Above, left: Portrait. 2001, oil,
21 X 14. Private collection.
Below, ieft: Carmen, 2001,
oii, 18 X 12. Private collection.
Opposite page, above:
Redining Nude, 1992, charcoai,
18 X 24. Coiiection the artist.
Opposite page, beiow:
Charcoal Sketch, 1998, charcoal,
24 X 18. Coiiection the artist.
25
26 AMERICAN ARTIST
creative process. In a portrait study
shown on page 24, first the artist
sketched the big shapes of the head
and body roughly and quickly with a
few lines. Next, he massed in the big
shadow behind the head and
smudged it over the area that would
become the face. Third, he picked
out the lights in the face and hair by
erasing areas of the shadow. Fourth,
he restated and strengthened some
of the linesat the collar, around
the mouth, nose, and eyes, and along
the right side of the headnot so
much to correct contours as to cre-
ate sharp, dark accents that heighten
the contrast with the lights.
Booth s method in oil painting is
just as logical and direct, and it is
governed by his concern for getting
the values right. Although formerly
he made careful graphite pencil or
charcoal underdrawings on his can-
vases, he found that step inhibiting
and bas discarded it. He explains,
"Now I begin with paint, making
some general indications for place-
ment of the masses. Most of these
get lost and restated as work pro-
gresses." After that. Booth proceeds
according to what he calls "the fun-
nel effect," starting big, conunitting
only to what is needed, and gradual-
ly funneling down to detail as he
becomes more sure of the relation-
shipsworking from the general to
the specific.
In The Scent of Roses, the artist
arrived at the complex, flickering
effect of sunlight and shadow, first
by dividing his canvas into two large
areas of light and dark. The figure
unites these areasher hat and
Above: The Scent ot Roses. 2002,
blouse belong to the upper light natural and easyyet, it took Booth oil. 40 X 30. Coiiection the artist.
area, her dress and basket belong to years of experimentation to pare his
Opposite page, above: Lying in the Sun,
the lower dark area. Against both the creative process down to these few 2002. oii, 14 X 24. Private coiiection.
light and the dark areas. Booth essential steps. "For most of my life Awarded Best in Show at Breckenridge
Fine Arts Centers 11th Annuai Nationai
strewed splashes of contrasting val- as an artist, I've struggled to get Juried Exhibition, 2002.
ues: the roses in the foreground, away from excessive finish," Booth
Opposite page, beiow: A Violet by a
arranged in a circular pattern over avers. "I'm at the point where that is Mossy Stone. 2002, oii. 12 x 16. Coiiection
the big lower shadow, and bits of no longer a concern, and I'm able to the artist. Received the Goid Medal Award
dark foliage in the upper light area. for Best Oii at the Bosque Conservatory's
paint as I like. But it's been a long, 17th Annuai Art Competition, 2002.
The color he uses, while rich, is hard road."
never allowed to become saturated A native of New York City who
or to break out of the structure now lives with his wife and son in
established by the values. It sounds Continued on page 71

UKCtVlBKR 2(M)3 27

m music or pmnii
Continued from page 27
suburban Chicago, Booth has moved
back and forth between the worlds
of music and visual art several times
in his life. At the age of 12, he read a
biography of Sargent, and became
familiar with what Booth terms the
"loose but accurate way of thinking"
that intluenced him as a painter.
After high school, however, he
steered toward music as a vocation.
He e.\plains, "Most of the art schools
and university art departments at the
time were focused more on 'self-
expression' and less on the things I
was interested in learningnamely,
sound academic drawing and the
craft of tradidonal paindng." In
music educadon, Booth found the
discipline, structure, and respect for
craft and tradidon that he was
searching for. He became accom-
plished on tbe viola and performed
professionally for more than a
decade with many chamber-music
groups and orchestras. As his under-
standing of a wide range of musical
styles deepened, so too did his
appreciadon for the physical ele-
ments of the performers' world. "As
got to know many other musi-
cians," he recalls, "I nodced the
beautiful shapes ot the instruments
they played, and the equally beaud-
ful postures, atdttides, facial expres-
sions, and hand posidons of the per-
formers themselves, plus the lovely
ambience of musical eventsand I
quickly found performing musicians
to be very attractive subject matter
tor paintings."
Soon after turning 30, Booth felt
the urge to try painting again, but
tinding that the art-school approach
had changed litde in 15 years, he
resolveil to teach himself Through
his training in music he had learned
tbat there were no shortcuts to mas-
tering an art form; to master paint-
ing, ahead of him lay years of dili-
gent pracdce, particularly in draw-
ing. I lis mature technique in char-
coal owes much to the "classic" peri-
l>l',C:KMIiKR2O()3
od of American magazine illustradon
of the mid-20th century. "I believe
that the real American art of the
period, from 1920 to 1960, was
found not in galleries and museums
of contemporary art, but in illustrat-
ed books and magazines, adverdse-
ments, even on billboards," Booth
contends. "Certain American illus-
trators were the greatest ardsts of
the period. Their pictures succeeded
in the way all good pictures do, on
their intrinsic merits, by the
exploitation of all the attributes and
possibilities possessed by the media
in which the artists worked."
When teaching. Booth tries to
wean his students away from their
desire for quick results. "Almost
every new student has wanted to fin-
ish a drawing or a painting soon
after they've begun," he observes.
"But artwork, like most other crafts,
has a beginning, a middle, and an
end. The way you work in the
beginning is very different from the
way you work in the middle or the
end. If you start drawing in detail at
the outset and after an hour's work
you've got the most beautiful mouth
you've ever drawn, but it's in the
wrong place, in the wrong reladon-
ship to the other parts, the tendency
will be not to wipe it out and start
again. Because of the dme and care
expended on it, it will be left and
'lived with.' And that's the death of
the drawing."
Booth prepares his students for
the feeling of insecurity they should
expect when beginning a new work.
"I tell students to assume that, even
when trying their best to be accurate
in placing the big facts, everything
they do at the outset will have to be
changed or constantly adjusted as
the work progresses." He strongly
discourages the use of artificial aids
such as rulers or grids while drawing
and paindng. "Real drawingthat is,
real seeingis done with the brain,"
he asserts. "The brain must be
taught to work independently as an
organ of acute perception. Any
attempt to shortcut the process sti-
fles the character and originality of
71
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the ardst. And only when we're so
comfortable with the process that
we're almost unconscious of it do we
become capable of originality."
The clear, deliberate sequence of
steps that Booth pracdces and rec-
ommends is like the sequence of
steps a musician must follow, both in
learning to play an instrument and
in pracdcing before each perfor-
mance. He believes that the same
rules apply to beginner and master
alike. Far from inhibiting creadve
expression, the rules actually facili-
tate it by helping the ardst commu-
nicate effecdvely to the audience.
"Many of us reach adulthood think-
ing art is merely self-expression, and
art schools and much of the art
world foster that myth," Booth
argues. "But visual art is communi-
cadon. If an ardst paints a picture
Lind shows it to no one, it may be
art, but not totally. It's like a great
singer performing a beautiful song
only for herself. It's only half the
story." The implicadon is that the
rest of the storybe it musical or
pictorialtakes place in the mind of
the listener and the beholder. The
purpose of the exercise should not
be the pursuit of mastery for its own
sake, and sdll less the conscious pur-
suit of originality or novelty, which
as Booth says, "is an empty thing
and has nothing, by itself, to do with
art." The purpose, as Booth shows
us in his paindngs, is to awaken in
other individuals, one by one, a
sense of the musical architecture of
reality, the emodonal and spiritual
underpinnings of die world in which
we live.
A signature member of Oil
Painters of America, Booth has had
his art recognized in a number of
nadonal juried exhibidons. In 2002,
in addition to his award from the
American Artists Professional
League, he received Best in Show
prizes at the Breckenridge (Texas)
Eine Arts Center's 11 th Annual
Nadonal Juried Exhibidon and the
17th Annual Nadonal Competition
of the Bosque Conservator)' in
Clinton, Texas. Booth's work is rep-
resented by Newman Galleries in
Philadelphia and Proud Eox Galler\
in Geneva, Illinois. The ardst teach-
es and maintains a studio in
Wiieaton, Illinois. POr informadon
about his paindng workshop, Eaces
and Figures, E-mail Booth at
trejoli 1 @earthlink.net.
Joseph C. Skrapits is an aitist indfreelamr
writer ti'bofivtjucntlycontributes to
American Artist, V\'aterc()lor, and
Diversion magazines.

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