Hello again, and welcome back to Senior Perspectives, a show about and by elders here on the North
Coast brought to you by the Redwood Coast Senior Center. I'm Charles Bush, I'll be your host
tonight and I have a very special guest tonight, David Jencks, and you're already slightly acquainted
with him even if you've never been to the Senior Center because those were his paintings. Those
were portraits of folks in our community that went flying across your screen at the beginning of the
program. David, welcome. It's a delight to have you here. Thank you. Tell me about that, all those
paintings when I first came into the Senior Center, wow, they were all up and down the hall. How did
that get going? How many? And just tell me about them. Tell me the story of the paintings. Actually,
it is an interesting story because I'm, painting portraits is one of my favorite things to do and
on the other hand, it's very hard to get people to come and sit for you. And I ran into and Darren
Arvola who came to my studio, she sat for me one day and I was complaining about how difficult it
was to get people to sit. So she said, I know a place where there's lots of interesting people
that you might like to paint. So she spoke to Joe Curran and I went to the Senior Center and it's
been seven years I think. That's what I was going to say. How long? Six and a half years. Right. And
do you know how many paintings there are up there on those walls? No, I think at least a hundred.
At least a hundred. Yeah, they're beautiful. You know, when I meet new folks who come from other
places and are visiting the Center for the first time, we walk down that hall, I have to say the
usual response is, ah, they just can't believe that someone has done that and that we've captured
all of those souls and have them hanging up on our wall at the Senior Center. What an extraordinary
thing having gone through the process with you. It's a fairly intimate exchange and I suspect way
more intimate on your part because you're seeing so intently. I was just sitting there but you were
doing something altogether different. What's it like to paint a portrait? It's very hard work
actually. As much as I enjoy it, it takes tremendous concentration and over a few hours that can really
drain you but there's something about bringing a person to life in two dimensions that's very
satisfying if it works out. If it succeeds? Are some better than others to your sensibilities?
Definitely. I like about maybe five percent of the ones I love. Is that right, really? I love them all. I mean, I think
they're glorious but it would seem that sometimes you feel like you capture it and then sometimes
not so much. What makes it good? What makes a portrait really please you? Well, it's interesting.
I think everybody likes the paintings on the wall but they don't like their own. I think, which is
kind of interesting in a way, I guess people don't really see themselves from any angle other than
looking head-on at themselves in the mirror. I think for me it has to be a good painting as
well as a good likeness and that's something that's even more elusive than a good likeness. A good
likeness you get by drawing very carefully, measuring very carefully. So the proportions
are all appropriate. And that's where the concentration comes in but the handling of
paint is what I really care about and some of them have that as well. Well, and there's the
proportions but then, and I know we'll get into this a little bit later because your paintings
are so beautiful and you paint light. You capture this ethereal thing called light and I see that
in the portraits too. That must be interesting to, again, it's not just the proportions but there's
something else magical and alive that you're trying to capture. Are you talking about the
light in the person? Yeah, well and the light of the skin and the way the wrinkles and the curves
and the contours of the face is so delicate and so intricate. That's partly because of the setup and
you know I close all other forms, other sources of light off from the sitter and just have one
big light that's lighting both the sitter and my canvas. And if that happens it's because I'm
painting, I guess painting light is really what it's all about because that's how we're able to
see and distinguish between form and one form and another. When I spent some years in northern
New Mexico and the painters there I think are all obsessed with light because in a certain sense the
landscape, although they're mountains, the landscape is pretty flat and light is mostly what it is and
I came to love the physical presence of light. Is that Taos? In Taos, right, exactly. You paint
the ocean and the sky and where we live in such an expansive and very exquisite way. Can we talk a
little bit about that because I think that your work is extraordinary and just exquisite and
luminous. How do you do that? What is it that you're capturing? Well, I have two different ways of
going about it and one is actually sketching outdoors which is very tricky procedure because
the light is constantly changing. So one either has to get a quick impression or use a good camera
like I do. That's an interesting question because you don't do portrait work that way very much do
you? No. Right, but do you take like a series of photographs or is it a photograph that you then
paint from? How does the camera, how does it participate in that creative process of capturing
the world and putting it on a canvas? Should I bring out one of these? Oh sure, let's take a look. You've got some stuff to show us which is by far the best way to get at this. It's the best way to talk about it.
Okay, so this is a painting, these are paintings. This is an outdoor sketch. Okay. Which is a very
quick study from the headlands in Mendocino late afternoon in September or so and the trick is to
somehow, I think the inspiration for me was the light shining off the water and how somehow the
rocks seemed purple in the shadows. So this was maybe, this took maybe 45 minutes or so and then
I took transparencies, 35 millimeter transparencies at the same time and back in the studio I used
those to touch it up and kind of pull it all together and then I used this as a study for a
much larger finished piece which I did by actually projecting the transparencies onto the canvas in
order to get the drawing in and then I used this for color. Wow and this is acrylic. No, this is oil.
No, I paint in oil only now. Oh do you? And at one point you worked a lot in acrylic. Yeah,
before I painted in oils, I started painting in oils in about 1987 but before that I painted in
acrylic for years and years and years and when I moved to the southwest I decided to try oils.
To try oils. Partly because acrylics are very hard to keep moist in the heat and the hot climate.
Right. So I painted in both mediums for a while and then finally switched to oils just because it
seemed to be better. I know this is a little technical question but you know we have an
audience that has, it's full of artists and does oil capture light differently? Does it work
differently than acrylic? Is there a difference between those two media and what you can make the
canvas give back to us? Well acrylic can be a very sort of opaque flat kind of medium but I
used it with a lot of transparent acrylic medium in the paint to kind of like watercolor to. We
can switch that down actually if you want. Okay. I brought another one. Oh good. You want me to set
this down over here? Okay great. And we can switch to the next one here. This one is actually. Okay
let's see here. There we go. This is the kind of work that I do. I paint a lot of sunsets over the
ocean and of course the sunset is something that's very ephemeral and very transitory and
has gone in a flash. So these I do strictly from photographs. Do you? Okay. And I actually project
the photograph on the canvas and trace in the composition and then look, I tape the 35 millimeter
transparency to a little viewer and aim that at a light box while I'm painting for the color. So
it's kind of a painstaking process and the trick is to cover up all the numbers. So before you put
that down though just if we can get a camera back on that for just a minute. You know I
happened on an exhibit that I think it was in Mendocino. I don't remember even which the gallery
was. I mentioned it to you when I saw it because I just walked up the stairs and went oh my gosh
and ran over because the paintings did something to my heart. I mean it was if they're so ephemeral
they're just the light is palpable and what I wanted to ask you about is lots of sea painters,
it seems to me, paint water primarily. You paint light primarily and the mysteriousness of the air
in some of these paintings, the ones that so struck. This is an exception. This has more water in it
than most of them. Right, right, but even the water has the quality of the sky. Is that unusual and
unique I think to your perspective and it's so impressive. Well the sky is what I'm really
interested in. Right. And most seascapes have kind of a crashing wave theme and that's I don't
know been overdone. Right, the big curl of the big wave and the light coming through but. And I think
that any success that I have with this kind of painting is partly due to the fact that I'm
painting from transparencies because when you're looking at a transparency as opposed to a print,
photographic print, you're seeing light coming. You actually are seeing the light coming through.
You're seeing light coming through color and very, very analogous to looking at a monitor,
looking at an image on a monitor. It's the same effect and I sometimes paint from monitors using
digital photographs. So that's in trying to reproduce, to me the 35 millimeter transparency
is the closest thing to reality in photography. It evokes the actual sense of being there much
more than photographic prints. Right. So in trying to reproduce. Again because the light is actually
coming. Exactly. Yeah. Which is the way it is in real life. Right. And so trying to reproduce that
effect of the luminosity and just using the transparency as a as subject matter so to speak.
Right. Gives the painting that kind of quality of light. This is again it may be a goofy question
because art is something I just appreciate and I don't understand the process very much. Did you
study and develop a certain set of skills and then discover a vision and create the technique
to make that vision happen? I did study in college, excuse me, and here and there afterwards but it
took me a long time to get around a painting. I had a lot of other things to get on my system I guess.
And I had a lot of I was very nervous about being able to make it as an artist. I still am actually.
Financially speaking. I want to talk about that a little later about the the commerce of art but
please continue. So it was probably you know it wasn't until I was about four years old that I
really started painting seriously and I think that it... Is that late as artists go do you think? I
think so. I mean. How old are you now? Sorry. 66. 66 okay. And proud of it I guess. So 26 years as a
painter. Exactly. Yeah. And I guess I've always taken slides of what I'm working on outdoors. I
started up painting just still lives because it was something that I could control and I'm sort of
kind of a little bit OCD about things and wanting to get everything just so. I think my painting
life has been an odyssey from a kind of super real very detailed approach to representing the
subject matter to constantly trying to break out of that and and be freer and and I think that's
you can see that in many artists work. Yeah. Through at least in the last hundred years or so. It seems
like to me being an artist your eyes are precious in a very unique and special way. I know I've been
told I can't draw. I don't have that facility. I haven't practiced but so often I've heard
instructors say you have to see first then draw. Does that make sense? Yeah it does. I drew as a
child and I just drew an isometric projection without even knowing what it was. I mean I was
drawing drawing came very easily to me and my mother was a commercial artist so that. So you
were around and saw it. My earliest memories of her were working at a drafting table in the living
room doing freelance greeting cards with airbrush. She airbrushed kittens and puppies but she could
actually do anything and draw circles around me but you know drawing is definitely the foundation
and portraiture is I mean I spend a lot of time painting from photographs for the marketplace but
painting people sitting right in front of me is really the thing that I get the most the most joy
out of. In terms of the actual act of having a relationship and making that making that happen
on a canvas. It's incredibly challenging and but if it works it's just supremely satisfying.
Do you, photography has advanced to such an immense degree in so many ways that the technologies of
pointing and recording visually and portrait painting is I just don't run into portrait painters
that often. I guess is what I want to say. It's I wouldn't say it's a dying art by any stretch but
but what's the the tension between the photographer of a person and painting a person. How to talk
about that difference? Well it's interesting I think today we're so used to looking at people
smiling in photographs because photograph is it's an instant and it's something that is is sort of
ubiquitous it's everywhere right photographs of people but now literally everywhere I mean but it's
very hard to paint a portrait of somebody smiling at least for me because I'm very I'm kind of slow
but I think a photograph the camera also distorts it has its own kind of I think usually what happens
is everything in the middle of the face kind of gets pushed forward a little bit and is a little
bit bigger than everything else so it's and yet it's so easy to I mean I can start painting
somebody and then take a break and see them from the side and think that my proportions are all
wrong. But I think that a painting and getting to know someone and being with somebody over a
period of time especially if you can have more than one sitting those paintings at the senior
center are all single mostly single sitting aren't they? Absolutely and relatively short even I would
imagine in terms of if I came and said I want a portrait painted we wouldn't have done it so fast.
Right exactly right if if I was to do a commission for instance I would take several sittings in
order to finish it and I would take photographs to use as reference for to finish the clothing
and so on and so forth but to get back to your question I just think there's something that you
can I mean a good a really good photographer can certainly take a lot of photographs and come up
with the one that captures something more than just the surface appearance of the human being
but in a painting I mean I certainly try actually I actually don't consciously try to capture what
the what's going on inside the person even if I I'm so busy trying to just right make it look like
them that but somehow it's interesting at the senior center people always say oh you really
captured so-and-so or I recognize everybody and there's you know they all seem to have a certain
individuality that comes through but it's really just the sum total of of all the parts for me it
it's it's a miracle that that happens and when it happens it's I guess that's that's one of the
things it's such a such a kick so you said the word commission the artist in a certain sense has
a gift and presents a gift back and yet somewhere in that equation in order to have the time and
and the things you need to be able to do art you have to earn a living too and can you talk a little
bit about that dance the dance of the gallery and the sale and and the commission and that the work
of the artist and how do they coexist in your life and how has that worked for you well it hasn't
worked as a portrait painter I should say that that's interesting right out front because in
choosing to live here I think I've put myself sort of outside of the milieu where portraits are are
in demand which is I would say in academia government various and and corporate situations
so kind of where people think they're very important or in a way yeah down south important
enough to have my portrait painted yeah exactly and I hear that at the senior center so you know
I'll say to somebody you should and they'll go oh I'm not you know nobody would want to paint me
isn't that an interesting idea I think anybody is every and everybody is is fascinating to paint
so to me that's not an issue and and but as a marketable thing it's definitely few and far
between for me so that's why I paint you know why I focus on the sunsets over the ocean not only
because I mean they're very technically intensive to do but interestingly enough you'd think that a
sunset over the ocean would be would be kind of a almost a trite subject matter but nobody's doing
nobody else is doing it so that became for me a kind of a commercial niche and and even though
they are you know very labor-intensive the end result is something that that I find I mean as a
as a subject I think it's it has the potential to be evocative of something beyond just the
experience of being there it's it's it's it's suggestive of you know other other energies and
other other other realms potentially even a you know spiritually speaking so the goal is even even
through the very technical process of producing them the goal is to is to inspire people to see
something beyond it and but in today's market is just very tough altogether I today meaning fairly
immediately recession on absolutely the last two three years here definitely yeah artists must be
having a tough time well I had I was very fortunate to get into a gallery in Palm Beach Florida which
is a sort of a very upscale market and with my seascapes and and that just just collapsed all
together about two years ago I mean they're still showing my work but nobody's buying them at this
point so what I did is I I turned half my studio into a gallery and I'm selling prints of my
seascapes there and and originals and it's turned out to be it's turned out to work pretty well of
course I'm selling things at wholesale because because you've taken the middle out there and
so basically I've had to become my own gallery in order to continue to sell work and people turn at
Comptre Ukiah Road coming down 101 I see that sign out there and and follow the signs and wander up
the road and find your gallery yeah it's amazing that is it is striking it takes it takes a certain
I mean of course there's a lot of tire kickers but right sure but it's amazing people and I've
tried to create an environment that's you know the lighting and the background colors and so forth and
to to complement the work but people people come and they really seem to respond so so if I wanted
to find it I basically would drive south on 101 from Fort Bragg or even Mendocino and and get to
Comptre Ukiah Road which is just past the bridge there turn left head up the hill and and follow
the signs if the signs aren't there just call call ahead because I'm always I'm always open if
I'm home got it I got it even if I'm in the garage making bookcases my my favorite philosopher who
writes about artists is Ken Wilbur and and the thing that he says he said in in reply to how do
you know an extraordinary piece of art a very special piece of art and and he said it's very
simple it takes your breath away and and as soon as I heard him say that I had mused about that I
went oh you mean like like that and that's exactly what happened when I walked into that gallery and
so I'd seen your portraits and then I saw the I saw the seascapes that and that's exactly what
happened I literally got to the top of the stairs and went and I knew that I had seen special beauty
is that a pretty good capture of it what do you think that's what it's all about yeah I mean that's
success as far as I'm concerned right right artists do paint the meaningful and that is spirit do you
feel it that way is it magical when when you make a an exquisite painting yeah it's it's it's amazing
it's just like I said when it comes to painting a successful portrait that it just kind of happens
seems to happen by itself it's not something that I think you can you can try to try to do in a in a
specific way it's just you have to find something that that inspires you but you know I wish we
could continue this forever I think probably we better we better let these folks get back to
whatever they were doing before they tuned us in wonderful to have you here lovely to be surrounded
by your work and your paintings and good night everybody thank you for joining us it's been a
good visit