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 Voice Introduction for

 OIL PAINTINGS, Page One:

By artist Paul Hall

"High Water 1996"

The first of it's kind for me.  This was painted with the finest sable brushes I could find.  I had to go from Claremont to Concord to find some and even they weren't fine enough.  I found myself painting with the corner of my square cut "brights" again, as I usually did before.  My technique became what I might describe as "micro scumbling", working the oil paint into the sanded gesso ground with repetitive strokes.  Once having decided on a brush stroke, once is not enough for the application: the same stroke must be decisively and carefully repeated many times again in the same way so as to work the oil paint into the picture plane.

I don't like the idea of cutting the oil paint with thinner.  In my article "The Voice of the Pigments", I discuss my feeling that the pigments have a voice of their own that should be a big part of the painting.  That's one reason why I'm so interested in chemistry, quantum physics, and so on.  The linseed oil has a marvelous way of holding the most amount of pigment so that it can be just as much on display as the picture it makes up.  It's the setting for the treasure of the elements that sends the treasure of the light to the treasure of the mind.

"Visions of the Cantilevered Walkways of Gold"

Every hear someone say to someone else, "... you're seeing things..." as if to imply that not only that what seems to be seen isn't 'there' but also that the one who sees it is being a little nutty.  But in a sense, we all -- every one of us -- really does see things that seemingly aren't there.  It seems to be a faculty in at least the human species if not all animals with eyesight to "visualize" and therefore to grasp a visual meaning of some thought or purpose.

I am arguing that we all have a higher standard of being that we are avoiding.  Among man's common abilities is the ability to foresee things.  I point this out in my series called "Premonitions" found in this website, but I don't claim unique abilities in this regard.  I maintain that all of us have premonitions, and for some reason, perhaps an inbred sense of denial, we are afraid to discuss them.

This is partly what I saw in my hotel room at the Hotel Miriam in Caracas, Venezuela.  I visualized a figure walking on an angled walkway.  The golden color, the stars, the carnations I added to the composition.  The figure I represented by a self portrait photograph of myself on walkabout in the gold fields in Australia.   But the aspect of the figure on an angular road and the objects on the tops of the poles I got from beyond myself.   

"Delta Bird"

I realized that I was doing all my paintings as landscapes close to the ground as when one views a scene from on foot.  So this landscape is from above the planet.  I suppose you could call it an airscape or a skyscape (My spelling checker is having trouble with those two words; hasn't anyone done an airscape before?  Perhaps from a balloon in the 19th century...).  So maybe Delta Bird is a first.  Maybe it's the first skyscape!  Add it to your word processor's dictionary.

"Dingleton Hill Covered Bridge"

This is the second covered bridge I encountered in New Hampshire.  In fact I owe the New Hampshire Highway Department a debt of gratitude.  I need to especially thank them for those wonderful covered bridge signs they went to the trouble of putting up everywhere they could to help mark the spots from major highways where covered bridges are to be found.  

It was down along highway 12A that I saw the sign and the number of the bridge.  A quick trip up the smaller road and there it was.  The Highway Department also published a book about the Covered Bridges of New Hampshire that helped immensely in the Covered Bridge project for New Hampshire by Paul Hall Studios.  

"English Girl"

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email address:  art@paulhallart.com