day three, 60" x 63" oil on canvas

oil on paper, 22" x 30"

oil on paper, 22" x 30"

oil and shelf paper on board, 36" x 24"

oil on board, 36" x 24"

Oil on paper mounted on aluminum, 28" x 20"

oil on board, 30" x 22"

Oil on canvas, 60" x 63" in progress

This felt so good, working large again. So freeing and exciting.

Mark as Index
A mark can be the smallest visual increment an artist can use from a tiny single brush stroke to a huge trough of paint smeared on a canvas. An index is the sign and the concept behind the symbol. For example, a painting of a bowl of fruit we understand as fruit. In painting, the marks can only become the index. Created through marks, the index is where the communication lies in painting. Later, I will discuss form and meaning through different kinds of mark making, but I will continue to use the word “mark” for any kind of stroke the painter leaves on the surface.

Rosaland Krauss in Notes on Index, cites Marcell Duchamp’s Tu M’ as a “panorama of the index” (198). Krauss states, “ Across its ten-foot width parade a series of cast shadows, as Duchamp’s readymades put in their appearance via the index” (198). What we see are painted shadows of readymade corkscrews, a bicycle wheel, and a hat rack, instead of the actual readymades, but our mind fills in what those marks are. This may seem simplistic in western culture where the representational objects depicted are universally recognized. Yet, even abstract marks in Duchamp’s painting become indexes to the brain. I see stacks of colored paper samples and other references to stacked papers throughout the composition. This is the subjective part of any painting: what a painting speaks to the viewer.


Marcel Duchamp, Tu M’ ,1918

My own work depicts representational interiors, so the indexes attached to my marks are very accessible. Recently, I have begun to mask out areas of paintings, leaving silhouettes of flowers and vases. My reason was to force the viewer to fill in the index of the object left out of the composition. This deletion creates an interesting push and pull of space when contrasted against rendered interior surrounding the silhouette. In Window Light, the painted marks all work together to read: window, sofa, lamp, and pillow, and orchid silhouette; all indexical symbols, even when parts of the painting are incomplete.

Michael Pfleghaar, Window Light, 2009

Marks as Form
On a recent trip to the Flint Institute of the Arts in Flint, Michigan, I was not only struck by the collection of Abstract Expressionist paintings, but by the way these painters used marks to create forms in abstract painting. These abstract painters were creating forms through various mark making techniques in a very simple manor. Marks, for example, made through paint staining raw canvas, thickly applied with a pallet knife, or dripped on the surface. Thus illustrating marks as the creation of form in abstract work as well. The most powerful passage about marks as form is in Jean Fisher’s essay On Drawing:

The important thing, as Paul Klee understood, was not to assume the form of an object as definitive, but to grasp the significance of what happens in the dynamic relation between things. In the end, what Klee called “form-creating” was seeking an expression of the mobile play of forces that gave form to life. Klee’s theory of creativity is summed up in the following way: “The way to form, to be dictated by some inner or outer necessity, is more important than the goal itself, the end of the road ...Form must on no account ever be considered as something to be got over with, as a result, as an end, but rather as genesis, growth, essence. Form as semblance is an evil and dangerous specter. What is good is form as movement, as action, as active form. What is bad is form as immobility, as an end, as something that has been tolerated and got rid of. What is good is form-giving. What is bad is form. Form is the end, death. Form-giving is movement, action. Form-giving is life” (218).

Klee’s idea of form-giving is the best analogy for painting; form creating, conceptually giving life to something that is inanimate: paint. Take the example of Lee Krasner’s painting Happy Lady below; painted during a time when she had broken her arm, so she painted directly by squeezing paint out of tubes onto canvas. Forms as patterns come to life through her complex application of squirted paint built up over the picture plane.

Lee Krasner, Happy Lady, 1963

Form in my work is more representational than Krasner’s, but the paint marks in Jeweled Lady are thick and loosely applied with the spirit of the Abstract Expressionists. A decorative lamp against a white ground takes on the look of Krasner’s marks on white canvas. The background has been masked off and carefully cut to reveal razor sharp edges that no brush could make alone. The stark figure/ground relationship of the decorative lamp against a white ground that lacks any signs of brush strokes, further exaggerates the heavy painted marks of the figure. Jeweled Lady is one of my successful examples of giving life to an everyday object through the energetic marks left for the viewer. The curly marks also mimic the curves of a female body decorated with jewels.


Michael Pfleghaar, Jeweled Lady, 2010

Marks as Meaning
Marks not only are the index and form in painting, but also what give a painting meaning. An example of meaning behind marks is best illustrated through the Pliny story of Butades. The potter Butades had a young daughter, who, anguished at the loss of her boyfriend going to war, drew the outline of the young warrior’s shadow on a wall from which was cast his likeness. The tracing of the shadow and subsequent clay bust represented to the young woman the symbol of the absent boy. The bust is not the same as the daughter’s young warrior boyfriend, but it took on the meaning of his presence (373).

Since the beginning of my graduate work, my mark making and meaning behind those marks has come to the forefront of my exploration. I have always been attracted to painters who paint with thick paint and expressive marks, while my paint is very flat, thin, and controlled. So, as described in the Jeweled Lady painting, I am trying to break out of that tight mode of paint application to become more expressive with paint. There lies the symbolism or meaning created by these expressive brush marks in my work. This experimentation mimics the learning and taking risks that come with graduate school. So the more risky brush stokes help illustrate meaning behind the marks.
For the same reason I masked off the background, so too do I still have a need to control paint. Just as in Window Light, I paint in very thin layers of washes, sometimes covering up the marks, sometimes leaving them. In this painting, I wanted a quiet contemplative mood, so the application of the marks and the meaning I was trying to convey relate to each other. If in this painting, I applied paint more thickly and expressively then the mark making would defeat the contemplative meaning.

Throughout art history, from Butades, to Duchamp, to Klee, to Krasner, the mark is not about representing form but the relationship between the index and meaning. Just like Klee described, form-giving any marks on a picture plane give shape to genesis, growth, and essence. The semiotic relationship between the marks representing index, form, and meaning are inseparable, and are the vocabulary we artists use to communicate. This better understanding of mark making and its ramifications has allowed me to utilize a wider range of marks in my own paintings.

Works Cited
Fisher, Jean. “On Drawing.” The Stage of Drawing-Gesture and Act:
Selected from the Tate Collection. Ed. Catherine de Zegher Tate Gallery Publishing, 2003. 217-226. Print.
Pliny. “Books XXXV.” Natural History: Books XXXIII-XXXV. Ed. G.P. Goold and .
H. Rackham, The Leob Classical Library. Boston, MA: The Harvard University Press, 1952. 371-375. Print.
Krauss, Rosalind E. “Notes on the Index.” Originality of the Avant Garde and
Other Modernist Myths. Boston, MA: MIT Press Books, 1985. 196-219. Print.

First day working with my new pallet of colors and huge glass pallet. Felt great, needed a good day in the studio because I have been feeling somewhat deflated from all the voices in my head. Feeling like I cant do anything myself. A good day in the studio will shake those thoughts.

This started as a demo for a graphic design class, silk screen printing in multiple colors using drawing fluid and screen filler. Below each color is printed separately with a different screen.

14" x 11" edition of 7

Peter Doig, Concrete Cabin, 1991, oil on canvas

Neo Rauch, Schöpfer, 2002, Oil on linen, 82 x 98

Patrick Caulfield, Second Glass of Whisky, 1992, Acrylic on canvas, 61x76.5cm

Jerome Witkin, "The German Girl", 1997, oil on canvas,80 x 124

Jeremy Long, Ithaca Home, oil on canvas, 72 x 96, 2009

This week I had the unexpected pleasure to meet and have a critique with New York painter, Jeremy Long, a visiting artist to GVSU. Thanks to Jill Eggers for bringing Jeremy to Grand Rapids.

Two things struck me loud and clear. One, being the importance of mentors and how we as painters pass on knowledge to the next generation and how painting builds on the history of painters before. Secondly, painting is not about representing things in paint but the relationship between marks and shapes and colors and how we arrange them on the picture plane. These two things sound simplistic in written words, and something I always believed, but it took someone verbalizing them to really hit home.

Jeremy was mentored by Wilbur Niewald who proposed he use a pallet of colors that has been passed down for generations. Niewald was one of a handful of artist/teachers from around the country who reacted against abstract expressionism, and used this color pallet in very naturalistic representational paintings. Jill Eggers, my new mentor studied under one of these artists at Yale, so this color pallet is being proposed and passed onto me. As I sat and listened to Jeremy Long's talk about his work I was sitting next to Don Kerr who I studied with at Grand Valley years ago. So, this small circle of strange circumstance and the importance of wisdom being passed on was so evident to me this week.

During my critique with Jeremy he suggested that I let the paintings assemble themselves instead of laboring over trying to make things look right. He suggested looking at minimalist painters: Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Martin, Glenn Goldberg, and Leland Bell to study what they decided to leave in a painting or take out.

Design is also an issue I need to resolve. I need to figure out how design meets paint. How do I let go of the objects and paint what they represent?

Other artists suggested to look at and how they deal with picture making are: Lennart Anderson, Philip Taaffe, William Bayley, Stanley Lewis, Gabriel Ladderman, Dana Schultz, and Jesica Stockholder.

Also suggested was the film "Painters Painting" to study the process of how painters came to their style and the problems they were trying to solve.

oil on canvas, 12" x 12"