"Sugar and Jill" - Oil  20" x 30"

 

The painting of these lively pointers, Sugar and Jill, took only three weeks to paint, but in truth, it has been some thirty years in the making. My lengthy career in sporting art led Editor Chuck Wechsler to suggest that I occasionally bring my thoughts, experiences and paintings, along with those of other artists, to these pages. It is a great pleasure then to present you readers with my first installment of Abbett on Art.

Sporting art, as I’m sure you all know, is the child of the world’s oldest art form, that of hunting. Coming to America from its European forbearers, the artform has persisted, growing into the vigorous, colorful genre we know today.

Briefly, my own interests in hunting, fishing and art date from boyhood when I would thrill at the paintings of Ogden Pleissner, Lassell Ripley, C. E. Monroe and many others reproduced in Sports Afield, Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. Later, my dad taught me something about shotgunning by throwing tin cans ahead of me along Lake Michigan’s then rural beaches. He also taught me that flipping the safety off would leave plenty of time to track the target.

In the 50’s, as a fledgling illustrator in Chicago, I did illustrate an article or two for Sports Afield, and in 1970 I extended my interests to so-called gallery painting. The commission to paint a friend’s English Setter, Luke, centered my enthusiasm when I learned that, with some exceptions, sporting art featuring hunting dogs had not been vigorously pursued since the late 1920’s. I have been painting them ever since.

To me, sporting art demands a responsibility not present in all mainstream painting. The knowledge and presentation of the events; the sports themselves including the people, their equipment, the seasons, the protocols and prey, the birds and hunting dogs - all must be familiar to the artist and accurately displayed. Hunters, fishermen and outdoor folks have a keen eye for their own sports, and find no joy if they are improperly displayed.

A second responsibility of all artists is to gain the ability and technique necessary to convert this knowledge into and interesting and compelling painting. For me, then, the images must be painted realistically, so that viewers can readily interpret them and relive their own outdoor experiences through them. Realism leaves plenty of opportunity to express the action and mood of the sports artistically. Making the viewer feel he is out there with me is always my first goal.

Such painting ability is the artist’s craftsmanship. I’m speaking now of the process of how to draw well, and how to get the paint down in the right place with the right color and with some of the artist’s energy showing through. As I tell my young students: “Craft is born of study and practice; there is no shortcut, and without craft, there can be no art.”

My philosophy of creating sporting art, then, is to put myself in places where these events occur and where ideas will invariably emerge. I’ve found that “being there” is more than half the battle, and so each commission I travel to, or every hunting estate or preserve where I shoot, each gun dealer I might know, every dog trainer I may spend some time with - these all connect and add to my personal knowledge and familiarity with the subjects I love to paint.

A walk in the woods and fields anywhere can easily generate ideas as well. I see a corner of a pasture where an old tree has lost a few limbs and I can easily visualize a cock pheasant roaring out while a working Britt stands by, staunch. This part of the equation is played out and replayed constantly in my pursuit and discovery of good picture material.

As an illustrator, I was skeptical about inspiration, and more eager to get to the final stage - to paint the handsome couple and make the deadline. Over the years, however, I have learned what a fragile but necessary thing inspiration really is to the building of a successful picture. Seemingly separate from the gathering of picture ideas, I have never successfully defined it, but it is the artist’s job to recognize it and maintain its presence.

Inspiration is what moves you to work on that one particular painting and to push others aside.

Sugar and Jill is an example of a painting inspired by the real dogs themselves. They belonged to a real friend, the late Rainey Williams, with whom I had hunted many times. By the way, I don’t believe I ever saw Rainey miss a bird. The setting is Red Rock Ranch in northern Oklahoma, owned by our mutual friend Ed Joullian, and the occasion was an annual get-together at the ranch, for shooting, eating too much, and, of course, telling the usual hunting and fishing whoppers. Rainey had arranged for me to do the dogs’ portrait, and so with some bobwhites borrowed from Ed, we worked them in a fitting piece of Red Rock landscape.

This was a photo shoot, because these days neither animals nor artists are trained to work from life. Indeed, realistic action painting would be especially difficult if not impossible without some photography to capture the dogs’ too-fleeting stances. Sugar and Jill were filled with vim and vigor that day, but after an hour’s work they settled down and provided me with some crisp, excellent points.

Their final pose and the scenery were composed back in my Arizona studio. I chose a medium close-up so we could plainly see the dogs, and still have enough of a background to set the scene. Over the years I have found that viewers, while always attracted to the dogs, also enjoy “walking” in and around the background. For this reason, settings should never be sold short. In addition to the action, the feel and textures of the grass and windfalls plus a good earthy color scheme and a believable sky should all help to keep them looking.

A rather comprehensive sketch was then drawn and presented to Dr. Williams. With his okay, the full-sized painting was transferred onto and painted on its masonite panel. Two weeks later it was shipped to his home.

Obviously, not all sporting art is commissioned; the artist’s “spontaneous thoughts,” as we sometimes call them, are more often the case. This is where the artist has an idea or the kernel of an idea floating in his head until things progress to where it bullies its way into his or her studio. Being able to recognize good picture material or to conjure it up from scratch is a constant, major role in the selection of what to paint. It can be a certain dog or animal that just seizes the artist’s mind or a colorful, birdy background.

Two months ago, I was driving through New Mexico, and just out of Tucumcari I saw the kind of boulder-covered rugged hills that one would see as a perfect background for a mountain lion painting. If Bob Kuhn had been along, he very well might have been so motivated. Or more likely, he was probably there long before me.

In any event, sporting art continues to hold its audience in awe and appreciation. Though it has undoubtedly suffered the ups and downs of any painting school, including the testing of untraditional techniques and faddish subjects, there will always be those who feel its call. It will begin when artists see that certain patch of light on the bend of a trout stream or thinks how a pointer might look against a broomsedge stand, and they will start the picture process all over again. Who knows, one day we just might see them here on the pages of Sporting Classics.