In a redwood sided, barn like structure in Sister Bay, Wisconsin, Door County's heritage speaks to contemporary realist painter Craig Blietz His three-story artist's studio fills with Northern light from a slanted wall of windows, and spotlights the space where his striking Renaissance like paintings that depict the humble cow appear from.
Blietz's highly organized working studio and the multiple accoutrements include a variety of brushes and paints, charcoal and colored pencils, pastels and photographs in neatly arranged drawers on castors or all lined in piles on shelves. This vast array of artistic tools includes two full-length mirrors along with several glass-topped islands because Blietz uses the glass for his palette when working. Easy to clean and wipe off, or keep for another day.
On either sides of the studio's wall, Blietz's striking bovines hang in two rows. One wall features tiny squares in the middle of white paper (approximately 4” by 4”), studies completed in watercolor, which could be stand alone paintings. The other wall requires admiring or studying over a dozen paintings in various stages of completion, either oil on linen or panel, many in acrylic, and even gouache on paper to set the composition and formal relationships in space on his frequently dark abstract and layered backgrounds. One study has more details than the finished painting because Blietz embraces a reductive quality in his work while he explains that while in the process, “The painting talks to you.”
Blietz paints full time, as he has most of his adult life, although he still occasionally teaches part time. He has called Sister Bay home for the last 12 years, and his studio is within 30 yards walking distance from his living quarters, located away from Door County's shoreline and surrounded by wild fields. The inner peninsula offers the idyllic location from which to paint his black and white Holsteins and his infrequent brown Hereford, goats and sheep. The farms here provide him with ample subject material, and as he claims, “He's in the belly of the beast.”
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The painter just recently completed a body of work for three groups show, and a pair of two person shows, and can spend up to ten hours a day in this secluded hideaway, drawing, painting, making his art. Blietz begins the process again for several upcoming shows, and that is why his studio may be neater than usual. He's doing the necessary preparatory paintings and studies for the larger images to complete later this year. Fish Creek's Edgewood Orchard Gallery has him scheduled as a featured artist in July 2012, there's a solo show at the Plymouth Art Center in fall 2012, and then he comes to Brookfield's Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts. Blietz will be in their Ploch Art Gallery for two months beginning January 2013. By the end of these next 18 to 24 months, the time Blietz requires to complete a substantial body of work, he hopes to finish 30-35 various sized pieces.
There's also a monumental sized charcoal sketch of his cat sprawled out lengthwise on a huge piece of drawing paper. Any visitor will be immediately drawn to this larger than life image hanging near the ceiling, far above the more familiar cows on the walls below. That's his 22 year old pet cat, now too aged to come and visit the studio, although the cat is here in spirit. Masks from his academic training also hang together with muffin tins and measuring spoons above pigment colors to be mixed, often by hand. There's so much more to observe, although the painting's on either wall really invite one to get up close and see every brush stroke, whether the acrylics, oils or watercolors.
A favorite painting in the planning stages portrays two cows, nuzzle to nuzzle, and not quite touching. A black sky and full moon rests over the almost touching noses in an ethereal moment that offers a touch of magic when he recalls nursery rhymes and love potion #9 all at once. And yet, Blietz only painted a pair of Holstein's. Or did he? Right next to that, another painting depicts two cows where Blietz closely focuses on their black and white colored coats blending in an abstract, modern design where the animal becomes secondary to this pattern play. Every painting a new work, the artist's studio invites one to an inner sanctum, a view into their internal process, the inherent creativity in each unique individual expressed through external objects. Each studio unveils a source to draw inspiration from, each a privilege to visit, each adding necessary understanding to the art of making art.
Craig Bleitz exhibits at Door County's Edgewood Orchard and at Milwaukee's Tory Folliard Gallery. Visit their websites for his current paintings. or www.blietzstudio.com. Later this week view Art Talk's interview with Bleitz from his Sister Bay studio on how his visit to the Wisconsin State Fair influenced his paintings.
