Conrad Schwiering (1982)

[Music] the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Ghost bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts which we're about to receive from thy body through Christ Our Lord amen name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost [Music] amen I think that it's good to have it challenge in front of you that's almost unsurmountable because this makes you grow this makes you strive the challenge is the important thing and the artist has to have a challenge that is super powerful to make him come against it and try to come up to it [Music] the mountains form that kind of a challenge to me the awesomeness of the power of nature is uh I think uh very keenly ingrained in in my thinking about painting I want people to feel their big powerful mountains I want them to feel that when they look at a painting n [Music] it's true I've got a love affair with the mountains and I've had it all my [Music] life I don't want to destroy anything that's out there I just want to try to capture a little bit of it each time when I think of what it was like when I great artist Moran came out into this country to paint he didn't even make it into this Valley because it was so hard to get in here he just got to Teton Basin after at least a month's struggle and trip to get in so when I think about that I think gosh how lucky can you be and I feel that I am in charged with a heavy responsibility because of the ease with which I can get to these things to work this heavy responsibility weighs on me every time I go out to paint I want to do the very best I can every time when Mary Ethel and I first came up into Jackson in the spring of 1947 we found a beautiful Charming western town that was still with the flavor of the old west I wanted to do the thing that was here meaning the moods and the mountains and the people and I felt that an artist could grow if he grew alone without the influence of a peer group I think when you have a peer group you usually have a leader and everybody is kind of subservient to what the leader thinks and how the leader reacts and I want to be my own leader in the early days in order to try to get somebody to buy a picture I used to paint right here on the Square every afternoon try to entice somebody to go down to Mar Ethel at the trailer and buy a picture it didn't work too well but I did a lot of it but I've had lots of experience with people as are over the years I'm recall one situation in which I was painting out in Oregon along Ela Bay and I discovered a a uh beautiful boat yards they were repairing boats and what not and I'd started a picture there and it was coming along pretty well and the uh school kids got out of the school bus about a half a block away from me came on a high lope of course just like flies to Honey to see what I was doing and after a while they began to dwindle away one or two at a time but finally there were two young Fellers left oh a first and second grader I guess brother and the older brother said uh gosh we got to go and the little one said yeah yeah Mom will be worried about us and the older brother said boy that's a pretty good picture isn't it and the younger brother said yeah yeah boy I bet he could sure sell that at a rumage sale and that's common uh with the things that happen you get all kinds of interesting comments from the people that are around you you have to learn to roll with the punch when I pick people that are going to be characters in my paintings I look for an authentic individual I look for somebody that's lived it his life and so his habits as in the habits of Lou Wilson that's posing for the picture of the pack outfit crossing the tager crck uh he doesn't do anything wrong when he's on a horse I'm not interested in trying to paint Russell's West or Remington's West or something that I have to dig out of the past I don't want to be a second anybody [Music] when I was just a little kid they were bringing the horses from the red desert through laramy in herds of 500 or a thousand I used to see those herds come through in fact I used to ride a little old pinno Pony that I was taming for a man out to meet the Cowboys as they came in now of course course I began to decide then that I want to be an artist cuz I was always drawing horses but I had an awful time making the horses exist somewhere that wasn't satisfying to me and I began to think well I got to learn how to do the other things I've got to learn how to paint a landscape so that I can put a horse in it now that was my first urge and then gradually I began get interested in the wonders of the landscape the wonders of the things that were around me so I went to New York to study with the greatest artists of the time [Music] [Music] [Laughter] I don't think we got a name for this one yet lilyon have you got any ideas well we don't have a name for that picture yet we've discussed it but we haven't come up with anything definite so we'll have to think about it one of the hardest things that we do is name the paintings I often tell Connie that it's harder for me to name the paintings than it is for him to paint them gosh I don't know that's going to be a tough one the name yes I think it is let's see what I've got here um I've got uh tranquil water uh-uh don't like that one well let's see I've got um how about quiet in the woods no this is on a pond of course we could always just call it Lily Pond yeah how about quiet time of day or quiet time quiet time it is wouldn't that's not bad either now yesterday when we were naming pictures we had uh several that he did in Mexico and we called one of them Market day it was on the Main Street in San Miguel another one was of a lady going up the stone steps of an old house that was built probably in 1549 and we called that one Senora de San Miguel he has another one called techalote Street and our friend tells us that techalote means Street of the owl one of the paintings of the mountains is of the alpen glow that comes on the Tetons in the early morning we talked about calling it alpen Glow and then the as we uh looked at it considered the pink light on the mountains and the clouds lifting off we finally decided on first light Connie and I often discuss the paintings he's going to do and after he's finished these paintings he always has me come and look at them and if there's some part in it that bothers me I tell him then he'll he'll study it and if he thinks it needs to be changed in any way he will and if he doesn't think it needs to be changed then of course he leaves it the way it is isn't that a great sight those wonderful mountains how could anyone fail to be deeply impressed and deeply moved by their great awesomeness and their wonderful Beauty when I'm out painting and working with these mountains I go through a strong period of time in which I'm so emotionally involved in my translation of the mountains that it's completely draining my whole experience is involved in the hour or two in which I'm working on the mood that's happening and I try my best to translate that so others can feel that mood this is one of the most beautiful spots in the world this is in the center of Grand Teton National Park and it's my home I've had a period of 30 years to work on it maybe a little more to work on trying to record my feelings about this park in this Valley there's everything that an artist could [Music] want I really don't know who said this first but he was absolutely right an artist grows with Miles and Miles of canvas behind him this puts me in mind of a situation that I ran into when I was visiting rungus after I had been painting for quite a few years and I started to tell him about all of my re search and whatnot and he took this for a matter of 30 seconds and very impatiently he leaned back and pointed to all of his thousands and thousands of sketches and studies and said then you do 2 3,000 then you begin [Music] when I'm painting when I'm involved in painting and selecting a subject uh it's an emotional sort of thing I'm absolutely sure even with animals when I see an animal subject that appeals to me and many times I compose a picture around something that I have seen long ago the impression is still in my mind and when the factors of a landscape come together in such a way that I could put that idea in a picture it's there to put in so it's a it's a kind of like a storehouse or a computer bank of memories that uh come back to you and help you in designing or putting together an idea in a picture [Music] the editing of an idea for a picture is uh sometimes a long process and sometimes a very short one an experience of an instant can form deep impressions in your mind that eventually come out in a painting and long impressions of something sometimes never get on the canvas it's a it's a mental editing that uh I don't seem to have any control over [Music] [Music] [Music] to me an impressionist the way I feel an impressionist Works he feeds upon what the sunlight does to the land this means he tries to be in tune with the moods of [Music] nature I would rather think in terms of my approach to the mood is one of just floating with it like in a stream and and and play it like a musician in composing music a musician must just play the notes until they sound good together and I think that's the way an artist ought to paint [Music] for [Music] la [Music] painting the ocean helps me paint the mountains helps me paint anything else because it teaches me to search for the thing that will do the best in the painting the combination of factors on the ocean it's endless that Sea comes in and cracks against the rocks and makes beautiful shapes and they're gone and the next time it comes in it's not like it was that time and it's beautiful that time and the next it's beautiful it's hard to compose the sea [Music] when I landed in this country to do my work it had not prepared me for these great mountains gradually I began to learn that if you're going to talk about these wonderful forms you have to learn to edit you have to learn to simplify you have to learn to find the essence in the subject I began to make careful drawings of the subject to get it in my mind so that I knew where the forms were and how they interacted the final result of this was I decided then I got to paint outdoors I got to paint with it because this is where I'm most successful I began to make the rough drawing forms or go out with a board that was tone for the general tone of the mountain if that was going to be the subject so that I could start directly expressing the thing that was impressing me I'm so impatient to get going on it that it's hard for me to even get the fundamental things ready before I start to go at it you've got to get all of those fundamental things out of the way like your planning sketches and a simple drawing of the material on the board with the spaces allotted and paint on your pallet all of it out and ready and your board hooked up so it won't blow away those are the mechanics that have to be out of the way it's very hard for me to do that I'm impatient to get started my translation of the m is based on what I see and how I react to it and I'm organized so that when I'm painting nothing else interferes my whole concentration can be on grabbing the instant he [Music] I don't think you have any excuse for yourself for not learning for not growing you cannot say the road's too rough or the uh obstacles are too great whatever they are you have to have to overcome them deltess in my life has been built upon the burning drive to learn to do it and if somebody does not have that burning drive I have the feeling he'll never be an [Music] artist failure only makes you try harder to accomplish the thing that you want to do and an artist life is full of [Music] failure an artist paints so that he can convey to others the great thrill he gets the great emotional experience that he has it's vitally important to have a deep emotional commitment to everything that you try to [Music] do if you're talking about what makes Talent God doesn't come around and Pat people on the head and say this one I make an artist and this one I make a lawyer and this one I make a doctor God gives that great burning force that works within an individual that he can't quench I couldn't live if I couldn't [Music] paint e