| he watercolors of Texas artist Dan Burt are radiant, | | | | which are darker, staining colors; they'll carry the bulk |
| animated mosaics built up from slashes, drips, and | | | | of his design--in this case, the massive, rambling |
| strokes of transparent paint. They remind you of the | | | | exterior wall and the palm trees that flank the |
| way light dances through stained-glass windows. His | | | | building. But he still leaves small white areas on the |
| style is part California school and part Old World | | | | paper for the light tones. He sloshes ahead, nearly |
| Mexico, with a dash of sun-splashed Texas Hill | | | | filling the page with a great mottled mix of colors. "I |
| Country. But his harmonies and contrasts are his own. | | | | use broken color mostly, these dark tones," he says. |
| Burt says of his use of color, "I try to achieve some | | | | He drops one of his yellows and some alizarin into a |
| kind of a conflict in the color--to create interest. For | | | | wash of ultramarine. "I'm trying to let the painting |
| me that's the only purpose of color in a painting." For | | | | paint itself--changing the colors yet keeping the large |
| this reason, his hues don't depend on the local source. | | | | shapes in the same dark value and also keeping it |
| They come from his memory, imagination, and | | | | wet," he says. "When the painting stays wet, things |
| intuition, and they're always subservient to whatever | | | | can happen. When the paint is dry, things don't |
| value scheme he has in mind. | | | | happen. Here, I have a mixture of Winsor yellow and |
| An ardent colorist, Burt doesn't use tube blacks, | | | | Winsor green, but after using it, I'll drop some alizarin |
| grays, or earth colors. Along with the tube colors he | | | | into it in order to make it grayer: There's a time to |
| does use, which he puts on a Robert E. Wood | | | | be shocking and there's a time not to be. But before |
| palette, he makes up trays with puddles of unmixed, | | | | you hit the panic button and blot up the mess you |
| dissolved colors, replenishing them as needed. There's | | | | think you've just made, wait. Watch what happens. |
| a system to his puddles: He uses four trays of color | | | | Watch the paper." |
| (the tops and bottoms of two John Pike palettes). | | | | Burt's brush stays on the move, finishing the frond of |
| The puddles on the first tray are made up of both | | | | a palm tree at one end of the sheet, dropping to the |
| transparent and granulating colors, among them | | | | foreground to swipe in a shadow, interrupting the |
| viridian, cobalt blue, aureolin, and permanent rose. In | | | | drying of a color near the top of the wall with some |
| the early stages of a painting, he uses these | | | | wet, contrasting hue. He paints negative space, |
| pigments for light-to-middle-value, broken-color | | | | continuing to preserve an amazing variety of white |
| washes, letting the colors mix on the paper. | | | | shapes that will later read as sections of wall and |
| On the second tray are puddles of darker, mostly | | | | roof and window--jutting planes catching the sunlight. |
| staining colors, including ultramarine blue, new | | | | He also eliminates many of the whites saved from |
| gamboge, Winsor yellow, Winsor green, and alizarin | | | | the previous stage. He does whatever it takes to |
| crimson. These are for the middle and dark tones | | | | make his dark pattern coherent at a glance. It's |
| applied in a painting's later stages. On the third tray, | | | | uncanny the way his great expanse of dark, for all its |
| Burt repeats some puddles from the second: alizarin | | | | richness of color, its contrasts, and its modulations, |
| crimson and Winsor yellow, for instance, plus he adds | | | | still manages to stay dark. Burt says, "When you |
| other colors, such as Winsor green. He might mix one | | | | work wet-in-wet, the hues tend to stay in the same |
| puddle with another or spice up one with tube color | | | | value." |
| for surprise combinations and accents. | | | | Up to now, everything put down on the paper |
| The fourth tray holds puddles of opera pink, scarlet | | | | serves as a backdrop for the painting's center of |
| lake, and cadmium yellow. He likes to use these | | | | interest--in this case, a cluster of figures in the |
| colors, and their complements, in and around the | | | | building's entrance shadows. Burt, like many painters, |
| focal point of the painting in its early stages for what | | | | concentrates his darkest darks on the composition's |
| he calls "shock effects." | | | | focal point, where, typically, has also saved his |
| Burt uses sable brushes because, he says, they hold | | | | whitest whites. By this time, he has already put down |
| more water (and therefore pigment) than do | | | | his highest chroma colors, such as opera pink with |
| synthetic brushes--an important consideration for his | | | | scarlet lake and opera pink with cadmium yellow, and |
| wet-in-wet style. He especially likes large sable rounds | | | | complements Winsor green, Winsor yellow, or cobalt |
| (Nos. 9 and 12) and sable flats (1" and 1 1/21). | | | | blue. For his darks, Burt relies on ultramarine blue with |
| Burt uses the same approach for all his paintings, | | | | alizarin crimson and Winsor green with alizarin crimson. |
| whether of a Mexican church or a Gulf Coast shrimp | | | | He says that as the painting progresses, the puddles |
| boat. In his Kerrville studio, sunlight from a patio | | | | become richer, or more complex, in color. |
| window streams in over his left shoulder and Aaron | | | | Burt rarely layers his color, but in the final stage of a |
| Copland music surges forth from a radio. The artist | | | | work he may occasionally paint over a dried color to |
| stands over a full sheet of cold-pressed, 140-pound | | | | punch out a shape from its background. In this work, |
| paper that's propped up on his easel at a height not | | | | he sculpts a figure in the doorway's shadow with a |
| far above his knees. His subject--already captured on | | | | juicy mixture of alizarin and ultramarine. He then adds |
| the paper in minimal, spidery graphite lines--is the | | | | a few more inky accents of mixed blacks using |
| Mediterranean-looking facade of a San Antonio | | | | Winsor green mixed with alizarin crimson--shadows in |
| apartment building. | | | | the architecture and in the foliage and calligraphic dots |
| Clutching his large sable brushes, he works with his | | | | and dashes that enliven the picture surface. |
| fourth tray of shocking" colors and their | | | | Finally, chaos has turned to structure. The contrasts |
| complements in and around the center of interest in | | | | sing. The painting is finished. "My whole idea has been |
| light values, wet against dry, and with the first tray | | | | as much as possible to be spontaneous, to let most |
| of paints, laying in the painting's lightest tones | | | | of the colors mix on the paper," Burt says. "I've tried |
| wet-in-wet. He makes a bright, airy patchwork of | | | | to keep the value patterns distinct--the light tones, |
| these transparent and granulating colors, being sure | | | | the middle tones, and the dark tones--so that by the |
| to leave generous white areas of paper throughout. | | | | time I put in the darkest darks, they'll really act as |
| He drops diluted paint into the washes, charging | | | | darks." Burt believes it's the value contrasts that |
| complements into them and again letting them mix on | | | | make the subject stand out. He has saved whites, |
| the paper. These color notes--made from the first | | | | jabbed in dark accents, and engaged the eye with |
| tray--are light, clean, and fresh; they're middle values | | | | color conflicts in every portion of the picture space. |
| and take up very little space in the | | | | "But," he concludes, "even though there's a lot to |
| composition--mainly the sky and foreground. Most of | | | | entertain you all over the work, your eye will still go |
| the picture at this stage is still untouched white paper. | | | | to the focal point. |
| Now, Burt moves to his second and third trays, | | | | |