A Painter's Musings on the Visual World

"Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague"  William Safire

I was reading an article about clichés in art and it gave a list of 110 subjects to avoid in your paintings. It included sunsets, fluffy clouds, the moon, palm trees, rain, beaches, cabins, railroad tracks, villages, all sleeping animals (especially kittens), horses, and roses. Are roses really more cliché than daisies? And I could understand dragons, unicorns and mermaids being on the list but HORSES? They just vacated the walls of every western museum and show in the country as well as several major museums. 

Realistically what is a cliché and how can you avoid it without making viable subject matter taboo? A cliché is an element or an idea that has been so overused that it is boring, meaningless or even laughable. (I’m thinking clowns with teardrops here.)  

James Reynolds  "Monsoon" 24 x 36 Oil

It so happens that I just came from the Booth Western Art Museum in Georgia and saw what this article would consider to be entire galleries full of cliché subjects. Why then are they considered great works of art? If it is not just the subject matter that qualifies a work for cliché-hood, then what is it that elevates the work above its subject matter?

If we start with one of the greats, James Reynolds, he tackles horses, rain, and a sunset all at once in the painting “Monsoon”. He even adds the yellow Resistol slicker to the list. To me the answer to why this painting is not a cliché lies in its subtlety of edges and color. It is a dark painting and yet finds an immense variety of color in those dark values. The sunset is out of the frame and we only see the effect of the low light. The slicker, the rain and the horse are supporting elements of that light and none of them overpower it.  It is so skillfully done that we are totally drawn into the story. We believe it is true.

 Edgar Payne "Navajo Scouting Party"  28 x 34 Oil

Fluffy Clouds? Western skies would be lost without them and living part of the year in the west, the sky in this Edgar Payne painting is true. (It also has horses – Yikes!) Executed with skill, a fluffy cloud is more than just a standalone shape – it becomes part of the whole design and harmony. Of course the key word is skill and the only way to get good at painting clouds is to not avoid them.

John Seery-Lester "Cool Spot". 12 x 16 Oil

Sleeping animals are a little trickier because they are usually painted entirely from photos. To find the truth in them, try some direct observation while taking those photos. John Seery Lester spends a great deal of time observing and studying wildlife for his paintings. If the sleeping animal is your pet (also on the taboo list) you have a great advantage finding the truth in it because you know more about it than anyone else. There are lots of opportunities to sketch and get good at it and that’s something you should never avoid. Anne Blair Brown tackles the very taboo sleeping pet cat with bold brushstrokes and color, proving you don't need to paint very whisker.

Anne Blair Brown " Cat Nap" 16 x 16 Oil

The moon can be just an element of a painting or the focal point. Either way the goal of putting a moon in a painting is to have it be in harmony with its placement and not look like a cut out circle used as a graphic design. Nothing that far away has hard edges and this is where photography can lie to us.  Direct observation tells us a more subtle truth.

T Allen Lawson "Belt of Venus" 30 x 18 Oil

It is hard to imagine excluding beaches and palm trees from our repertoire, especially if you live on the coast. It is just as easy to create a cliché from a rocky coast as it is the beach, so when we try any of these subjects, it is helpful to get a different perspective on them. I hated palm trees as a subject when I first painted outdoors in Florida. As compositional elements, they required too much sky in the painting which made everything around them insignificantly small. This painting views them both from a high angle and connects the fronds to the rest of the composition and also views them as a cohesive shape in the distance. It fills the frame top to bottom but gives us a whole lot to look at in the middle. The beach is an inviting destination, not just a dune to be trudged through. Again, the skill of color harmony and composition make the whole thing work.

Mian Situ "Laguna Beach"  20 x 30  Oil

My way of overcoming palms was to do the opposite. By zooming in on the details of some foliage and light around them, I did not have to worry about the whole tree and its outlined shape on the horizon.

Jane Chapin "Palm Light" 12 x 9 Oil

Subject matter is rarely the problem in painting. They all can give us another exercise and another skill to be learned.

"…begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time."  Octavio Paz