CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
'Tiled Nest' shows the porthole over the tube in artist William Newman's shower that leads to the world outside. Paul Richard, Contributor
WASHINGTON:
Light shines through the grackles in William Newman's oils, as it does through the layers of his semi-transparent paints. His frantic birds, their mouths agape, are semi-transparent, too, they're that fresh from the egg. When the leaf-filtered sunlight gets into their nest, it goes right through their cheeks.
Their nest was built in a small tunnel. That tunnel is a tube that Newman had constructed through the wall of his house. The indoor end of the tunnel is in his shower beside the fold-down seat. He spends a lot of time in his shower.
'The Nest', his exhibition at the Adamson Gallery, includes 17 of Newman's bird paintings which, unlike most, don't look stuffed. Newman's bird paintings are motion paintings. His grackles aren't at rest. They're blurred by agitation, and by the desperation of their feed-me, feed-me peeps.
pleading nestlings
Newman's pleading nestlings are like little blossomings of the life force, vulnerable and poignant, miraculous nonetheless.
Newman, 57, was 31 when he learned he was weakening from multiple sclerosis. He put the tunnel in his shower when he found he couldn't walk anymore. The painter nowadays is seldom in a hurry. Once he gets into his shower, he tends to stay awhile. To the inside of the tunnel he fitted a ship's porthole (salvaged, screw-latched, brass). "That way," he says, "you can open the porthole and put your hand out and get the snow or rain.''
The tunnel was empty for nine years before birds decided to nest in it. For 11 days, both parents fed their hatchlings ceaselessly. Newman filmed them. His video is on view. He also watched and watched. These days he paints slowly. He's worked on and off for years applying coloured glazes to the oils in his paintings.
specialist in artists' materials
In the 1960s, Newman already was a specialist in artists' materials. He knew all about the stiffness of bristles and the colours of colour pencils and the efficiency of solvents and the varying absorbencies of different papers. He had to: Long before he became a professor at the Corcoran Gallery, he ran the in-school shop there selling professional art supplies to students at the Corcoran School of Art.
Most of his grackles are on wood. They're panel pictures painted on cabinet-grade, birch-veneer plywood, but not directly on the wood. Before he puts his colours down he applies a dozen undercoats of white and chalky gesso. He's similarly demanding when it comes to the medium in which he floats his pigments. The medium he prefers is one used by the Old Masters. Its recipe is ancient. Newman can't cook it himself anymore he doesn't have the strength but he used to.
"You should have seen him,'' says Tom Green, his fellow Corcoran professor, "working at his fire, outside, in the parking lot, by the kilns. He looked like an alchemist.''
Newman's formula called for 10 parts linseed oil to one part beeswax and one part lead, in BB form. To achieve the proper viscosity he had to heat the mixture slowly, over 2 1/2 hours, to 400 degrees.
The coloured light you see when you're looking at his nestlings has been through his glazes twice first arriving from outside, then after bouncing off the gesso, returning through his glazes until it hits your eye.
Newman's birds are not at all like those of J. J. Audubon, which tend to look like statues. Newman's are livelier, though similarly symbolic. Birds can't help being symbolic. Art may have older symbols (the moon, the newly opened flower, the female body), but it can't have very many. God got in touch with Noah by sending him a dove. The Winged Victory in the Louvre is in part bird. So are angels. Newman's oils look as new as video, and as old as art.
And they evoke him.
When I met him at the Corcoran in the late 1960s, Newman could still run fast, and throw a baseball, and drive. Tall, mischievous, candid, Newman wasn't like the other artists. He always had more fun.
Fun wasn't much in evidence in the art world of the '60s. Suffering seemed hipper. Lots of big-time New York art stars then wore a lot of black, and very seldom smiled. Not Newman. An undertone of play often twinkled in his art.
He was always experimenting with visual technologies, new as well as old. His most important tool, however, turned out to be the Mac.
While the birds were in the nest, Newman studied them intently. The video he shot is actually a string of some 100,000 separate frames. Newman took the time, he says, to study every one. One sees this in his art.
"The wheelchair," Newman says, "turns out to have advantages. It diminishes your arrogance. It gains you some humility. Most of all, it slows you down. The world slows down. You get connected to the beautiful just because you pay attention. Patience for a painter is not such a bad thing."
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