The Power of Design

If one believed in ghosts, the spirits of some of the major names in turn-of-the-century art would certainly be wandering the halls of Sam Vokey's Boston studio. When Fenway Studios was built in 1905, its 46 units housed many famed members of the Boston School of painters. Vokey recently moved into a spacious third-floor unit that once belonged to Edmund Tarbell (1862–1938), an artist Vokey greatly admires. This is the third Fenway studio Vokey has occupied, and he describes it as "the créme de la créme of studios." Modeled on a 19th-century Parisian atelier, his new domain is entered via a balcony and stairs. A wall of 14-foot windows floods the main high-ceilinged room of the studio with north light. A fireplace stands at one end, and tucked away under the balcony are a small kitchen, bathroom, and office/bedroom, which boast French doors that open into the studio.

Not only does Vokey work in a studio filled with the spirit of the Boston School, the artist also embraces the School's aesthetics in his painting. After graduating from Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, with a minor in studio art, Vokey received a five-year scholarship to the R.H. Ives Gammell Studio, in Boston, an atelier that emphasized working in natural light directly from life. It was there that Vokey became familiar with the methods of the Boston School.

"The Boston School," he explains, "was a synthesis of the European Academic painters and the French Impressionists. Their goal was to maintain the highest standards of craftsmanship, composition, and drawing, combined with 'Impressionist seeing,' which is a way of taking in the whole subject at once and seeing everything—color, value, and edges—in relation to everything else." Vokey contends that Impressionism is a misunderstood term. "It's not about how paint is applied," he says, "but a way of seeing. It's a very direct method that makes sense to me. The painter looks at nature and interprets what he sees in paint on canvas."

The atelier's program was rigorous, following the classical teaching methods of the French Academy. Vokey spent the first year drawing casts, exclusively in charcoal. Eventually, he moved on to still life, heads, and finally human figures in oil. "I had good teachers," he remarks, "and I learned to draw fairly well. They stressed the importance of designing with large shapes and simple forms to achieve a unified composition with carrying power."

Two works in progress sit on easels at one end of Vokey's studio. One, A Walk in the Park (Boston Public Garden), is a plein air piece, as are most of Vokey's landscapes. The artist admits that painting outdoors doesn't give him as much control over design as he enjoys when working on a still life in his studio. Working outdoors has, however, taught Vokey to paint in a higher key, a skill that has carried over to his studio work.

Since his primary concern is design, Vokey emphasizes that he tries "to make interesting shapes that lead you through the painting in a pleasing way. The job of an artist," he asserts, "is to control the eye of the viewer." One technique that he employs involves the use of diagonals. Because corners draw the eye like magnets, the artist diverts the viewer's attention from them through the careful employment of diagonals. "Diagonals create drama," Vokey says. "They provide strength and rhythm, a feeling of energy and movement. Diagonals are one way to make a strong painting. They create a structure on which to hang forms. In the West, we read from left to right, so the eye tends to enter at the bottom left of a painting." In A Walk in the Park (Boston Public Garden) for instance, Vokey exaggerated the shadows of the trees in the garden to create a diagonal that would draw the viewer into the painting. Another diagonal, created by foliage in the upper-right corner, guides the eye back in. The undifferentiated mass of foliage in that corner also encourages the eye to return to the center of the painting.

Diagonals are equally important in Vokey's still-life images. A painting of blue hydrangeas in a jug rests on an easel next to a carefully arranged setup. Vokey points to the strong diagonals that are formed by the cloth on the table, which leads to the center of interest; then he notes how a more subtle diagonal cuts through the bouquet of flowers to keep the eye entertained and circulating through the painting.

Besides diagonals, Vokey uses overlapping lights and darks, as well as elegant shapes with lost-and-found edges, to help create effective designs. He allows some light passages to blend with other light areas, while dark passages merge with other darks. Shapes, rhythms, patterns, and the way the eye moves over a painting are all crucial. "It's design that elevates a work to art," says Vokey. "Otherwise, it's just painting. Without strong design, it's a jug or a landscape. Paintings that resonate through the ages—the masterpieces—all have one thing in common: strong design. That's the first thing I look for, what I always keep in mind."

To ensure that the design will work, Vokey invests a great deal of time arranging his still lifes, making sure they're interesting and well balanced. He uses the sight-size method, in which he puts his easel directly beside the still life, and then stands back so he can take in the canvas and setup without moving his eyes. This distance is usually three times the greatest dimension of the canvas. But he rarely draws in the composition, unless it's very complex. He explains, "I dive in with a large brush and thin paint and block in the major dark and middle-tone shapes, covering the white canvas as quickly as possible. I also indicate a few of the light colors, which allows me to calibrate the other values. I don't do an underpainting, but go in immediately for the color notes I see. When mixing color, I try to limit myself to two colors plus white for any note, adding a third, if needed. Four will usually turn the color to mud."

Keeping the big shapes out of focus allows Vokey the freedom to move them around. "I squint, so the details evaporate," he says. "It's important to bring everything forward at the same time, so I try to work on the painting as a whole, always looking for the areas that are least developed. I know it's finished when there's nothing else to bring forward, and everything is in the right kind of focus." Motioning to the still life on the easel, Vokey says, "At some point, I'll have to bring out the edges that are important. Some Impressionist paintings have everything out of focus; I like the edges more crisp near the center of interest to help hold the viewer's attention.

"Color," Vokey continues, "is a very personal thing. I like to paint the color I see. And I like rich color. This painting has lots of blues and grays to keep it simple, but I keep wanting to add color," he says, placing an orange behind the vase in the setup for the still life.

Hanging on a nearby wall, the seascape Reaching Home further demonstrates the artist's sensitive use of color. Although blues and grays dominate the picture, complementary orange streaks break up the evening sky. "Painting sunsets from life involves a lot of pressure," the artist asserts. "There's no more than an hour of painting time. But that makes you paint loosely, since there's no time to fool around. You must nail those color notes and keep checking everything in relation to everything else. I use lots of paint, and I paint juicy and loose. Sometimes I scrape off the paint with a knife as the sky changes and then put down thick paint on the wet canvas. To pull off a good design at the same time takes a lot of experience."

When Vokey paints sunsets, he finds them so bright that the colors on his palette don't have the necessary range. "To create the illusion, you've got to use neutrals or complements near the bright colors," he advises. "Add greens and purples around the orange/yellow of the sun. That will also make the sun fall back in space."

But mainly the artist counsels, "Paint what you see. Really try to hit the color notes. Remember, the sky gets warmer toward the horizon. Try having a darker foil in the foreground—land or trees—to expand the color range. Look at the sky out of the corner of your eye and see its relationship to the land, and then it will look right. Some sunsets are too garish to paint, but I've painted even those," Vokey confesses. "You get caught up and overstate. There's no easy way to paint sunsets. Just go out there and practice."

Vokey uses the traditional Boston School palette for still lifes and landscapes: French ultramarine and cerulean blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium red light (or Winsor red), cadmium orange, cadmium yellow and cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, viridian, and titanium white. For flesh tones, his palette includes titanium white, ivory black, burnt sienna, Indian red, yellow ochre, and English red light. "Those are all the colors you need to paint skin tones," Vokey stresses. "The simpler the better."

Winsor & Newton paints dominate Vokey's palette; he also uses Rembrandt cadmium yellow light and English red, and favors Williamsburg white, which he finds "very buttery." As for mediums, he says, "I try to use as little as possible—just some turpentine when laying in. But in dark passages, I do use a medium—five parts turpentine to one part damar varnish to one part stand oil—to keep the pigment thin and transparent. I paint on the best canvas I can find—Claessens double-primed oil—and choose Robert Simmons and Rembrandt brushes, mostly rounds and filberts."

Linda S. Price is an artist, writer, and editor living on Long Island, New York.

About the Artist
Sam Vokey recently received the prestigious Edmund C. Tarbell award for painting at the Guild of Boston Artists, where he is a full artist member. His work hangs in numerous public and private collections, and he has exhibited at the Harvard Club of Boston; the Attleboro Museum, in Attleboro, Massachusetts; the Concord Art Association, in Concord, Massachusetts; the Museo de Arte Americano, in Maldonado, Uruguay; and the Brockton Art Museum, in Brockton, Massachusetts. Vokey is affiliated with the Copley Society of Boston; Tree's Place Gallery, in Orleans, Massachusetts; Powers Gallery, in Acton, Massachusetts; and Wilson Galleries, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. For more information on the artist, visit www.svokey.com.