June Yokell's Blog

When to stop

June Yokell — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 04:28:29 +0000

While working on a painting,I get into a rhythm, making marks, changing, adding, balancing color, shape, form, messing with composition, tweaking it, looking at it and then doing one thing, one thing very unexpected, and then, well, then, it’s time to stop.

Waking up from not sleeping

June Yokell — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 06:02:34 +0000

I’m continuing to work on my memory pod using images that I collect through photographs I snap while on solo walks. Later on, I’ll look through the images and allow myself to response in a random fashion to that something that struck me, moved me, called me to look at it in that moment. Later, in the studio I’ll look back at that moment, which has become a memory and work with it focusing on the general feel of the place in time in weather and then move the painting into the more detailed places that draw me in, making the memory something present. Usually I’ll find that the something that draws me back to the present are the marks or pieces of light or shapes all piled up into some kind of abstract landscape.

Memory and Remembering

June Yokell — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:32:41 +0000

I’m working on a collaborative project with two other artists, Sue Almand Coffey and Catherine Ruane. Our project has water as it’s subject matter; some components of this project are collaborative, meaning that we will each be contributing paintings/drawings to one of the offshoot concepts, and some are individual offshoots. I’m working on an individual offshoot or “pod,” with memory as the tagline. I started by thinking about my earliest memories about water-and how those experiences had traversed through my life. After that began going through the various photographs that I’ve taken of water, knowing that I would use them in the process. But as I was going through the images and then looking at my work that I’ve done using water as the subject, I realized that I was thinking about memory in a very limited fashion and that just about anything could be considered memory as each moment lived is now and every moment that has passed becomes “memory.” Water is just the vehicle that moves memory through time.

Something new!

June Yokell — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:08:27 +0000

I’ll be having my studio open to the public every Sunday from 2-5 PM. My studio is located in the old Isabel Cook Building, 1000 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., San Anselmo, CA. Free parking, right next to the Red Hill Shopping Center.

Older work

June Yokell — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:09:09 +0000

I love some of my older work but because most shows want to see work done over the past two years, I have a bit more in stock than I might like. So I thought I’d put it out there that some of my older work can be purchased at considerable savings. Many of these pieces are on the large size, (5′ x 7;2″ being the largest). Some are framed, some aren’t, but if you are interested, write or call me and we can work out a time for you to view the work. I’ll be posting some images on facebook and linkedin.

Structure in painting

June Yokell — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:46:21 +0000

Last night I dreamed about structure in painting. I’ve been thinking that my own work is better if I have a hook to hang it on, meaning that in order for me to not feel completely lost in the chaos of the world; I need something that keeps me connected to the physical. I paint abstract landscapes, although I never think of them that way-I think of them as the something that keeps my feet on the ground, that gives me boundaries which I can bounce off to which then gives me freedom to explore composition, color, form, etc., hopefully coming up with something primal and fresh. I want the old with the new. When I go to galleries or museums and see some of the current work being made, I feel lost. While it’s not true for all the work that I see, it’s true enough for me to come away feeling bewildered and wondering why I’m not responding. I think it comes down to this: in order for me to feel “moved,” or “curious,” or wanting more, I need to feel connected to whatever I am looking at on a primal and physical way-I need to be able to process the information that I am looking at in a visual/physical way. This almost always means that I will need to respond to texture, scale, color, space, composition, value, hue, volume, lightness and density. I don’t really care about the idea if it is strictly an intellectual concept. I can appreciate the idea in theory, but if the work is about an idea without the visual/physical trappings, I’d just as soon read a good book. A good painting has its own language, which is one without words, but one which has its own internal structure.

Noticing patterns

June Yokell — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:54:02 +0000

Last weekend I was down in Pacifica, CA, visiting with friends. We went for a walk that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, out on a a pier where people were catching crabs. As we walked back toward the beach we all took the time to stare at the patterns that the ocean’s foam made as the waves returned to the sea.
The day before yesterday I took a walk along the creek near where I work. The sunlight was making patterns on the water and reflecting them back along the concrete edges which contains the creek. The pattern of light reflected back on the concrete was much like the patterns thrown on the beach by the foam.
Yesterday I was swimming by 7:00 AM. On the walls where the pool is, the light on the water was reflected back on the walls and again those swirling, light patterns upon the wall.
This morning I woke up from a dream where I was walking in the woods with my dad, first a leopard came out at us, and then a gigantic lion. We thought we were gonners but as the leopard came by, instead of attacking us, he licked us, and the lion disappeared.
Does noticing the first three patterns have anything to do with the dream? I don’t know. But I do know that I want to engage my work as a painter to capture the essence of these abstract patterns and to follow them where they may take me and for this, I need to work larger. My work is an abstraction of landscape, but is really an abstraction of the concrete aspects that make up form. I’m finding myself more interested in what makes up the form than the form itself.

The Arizona, Colorado, California, connection

June Yokell — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:43:32 +0000

About a year and a half ago I got an email from an artist, Sue Coffey Almand after she had seen my work on the Western States Arts Federation website. Both Sue and I have been using water as the subject matter of our landscape paintings for some time. After emailing some, we decided to see if we could work on a show together, and then I suggested a third artist, Catherine Ruane, an artist whose work that has focused more landscape that lacks much water, whom have come to know through face book.

Sue lives in Colorado, Catherine lives in Arizona, and I live in California. We thought it would be fun to work on a traveling show that could be seen in each of the states where we live. We worked on a theme, “States of Confluence” which embodies several “pods.” Each of us worked on ideas about what came up for us when we thought of water, in metaphorical terms, physical terms and ecological terms then depending on our individual inclinations, we chose various pod themes to focus on.

Our first endeavor is working on a collaborative piece, and since we live far apart, all communication with the exception of the one time that I met with Sue in person, has been done electronically or by phone. For our collaborative piece, we chose to work from a photograph that we voted on, gridded that photo into a grid in which each one of us would get three individual images to work from that grid. We decided that we would use paint, and that the surface of each image would be a 20″ x 20″ cradled panel and that we would use paint as our medium. When shown together as one image, our individual paintings will be interspersed within the total grid so that none of us shows any work in succession.

I thought that I would not be able to begin until mid October, but decided to take a break from some of the other painting that I was doing and to focus on our collaborative piece. Having recently completed my multi painting for the 50-50 show at the Sanchez Art Center, the grid format is like renewing an old friendship, with form and color, reiterating the relationship between landscape, abstraction and representation as well as starting off on a long term trajectory of thoughts, ideas and collaboration with two excellent artists.

Back to the studio

June Yokell — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:10:21 +0000

So summer is almost over. The last piece that I completed was my 49 six inch by six inch 7′ x 7′ plus one for the 50-50 show which opens tonight at the Sanchez Art Center, 1220-B Linda Mar, in Pacifica. The show will be up from tonight, August 25 to October 2. Tonight and tomorrow night, attendees will be able to bid on the individual (or the whole) painting and purchase pieces, so if you go to show after tomorrow night you may not, should individual pieces sell, have an opportunity to see the piece in it’s entirety.

I found the process challenging. I loved that there were specific parameters (each image was 6″ x 6″, which then made up the 7′ x 7′ format) and I loved that I had chosen to work on both the whole image as one painting and each part as a component-what happened was that it highlighted the way I both see and work, which is both representational and abstractly and that I utilized my favorite landscape subject matter; water, trees, branches, brambles and reflections. This image can be seen on my website under the Sanchez Art Center 50-50 show.

Other than completing and installing this piece, I’ve been spending a lot of time scheduling and installing other shows. Currently I have a show up at Mt. Tam Racquet Club in Larkspur, CA through September 29, will be installing another show at Crome Architecture in San Rafael, CA as of the first week in September, and will be part of a show at the Marin Community Center in San Rafael, CA starting the first week of September.

Now I have an opportunity to go back to the studio and incorporate the process of painting that I experienced while working on the 50-50 show in the next body of work that I’ll be doing-stay tuned.

Goings on

June Yokell — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:27:23 +0000

I’ve been working in the studio on the 50/50 show at Sanchez Art Center, in Pacifica. It opens on August 26 and installation date is August 22. Since I have a visitor coming in a week for the next three and a half weeks, I’m working day and night in order to get ahead of the curve.

The 4th of July weekend was an intense week of showing. I had a painting (Slough on Corte Madera Creek) selected and installed at the County Fair, seven paintings showing at the annual Marin/Scapes show, a benefit for Buckelew House, and installed a show at Mt. Tam Racquet Club in the cafe. Yesterday my painting, “Daydreams,” was installed at Jason’s Restaurant at Drake’s Landing in Greenbrae. “Daydreams,” will be at Jason’s for the next three months.

Marin/Scapes was well attended. I sold the painting “Another Point of View.”

All of this showing and selling is great, but the best part is working on the pieces for the 50/50 show because it is the process of painting that keeps me alive and vital, with new ideas being generated from working on each component painting.