Interview with Artist Michelle Geromel

I first found out about the art of Michelle Geromel through a mutual friend on Facebook. She has a website, and writes a blog called Love & Passion. She also has an Etsy store, where you can purchase her work.

Hi Michelle. How long have you been painting?

Hi Paul. I’ve been painting for about 16 years. Before that I worked mostly in colored pencil and pastel.

Did you receive formal training for painting. If so, can you describe it for us?

No I did not. I have taken classes from instructors such as Diane Youngblood and Robert Burridge. But I never went to art school or took classes in college.


You seem to have a few distinct styles. What sort of thing is currently your favorite to paint?

Right now it’s a toss up between the abstract landscapes which I paint with my fingers and my figurative paintings.

Can you say a few words about the materials and brushes you like to use?

From a brush perspective I like to use filberts.

I have three favorite types of acrylic paint. I use a lot of Nova Paints (a small company out of LA). Nova paints are not as thick but keep their color well and are very inexpensive. Plus they have some fun colors to mix with or just experiment with like steel flecked or gold. I also love Golden and Holbein. Holbein has the best color pigments - but their colors are different than standard palette colors - so I mix it up.


Do you paint from life, or from photographic references?

Generally I paint from photos. That way I can setup the light the way I like and also from a practical perspective - I like to paint into the night. I don’t want to have to call a model at 10pm and ask them to sit for me for a few hours.


Do you derive more joy from the process of painting, or from the product?

That’s a really good question Paul. I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that.

Probably the process. If I could paint in my studio all day long, every day I’d be a very happy girl. BUT - painting lots of paintings means you need to put them somewhere. And I do get a great amount of bliss from someone’s happy smiles, or other indications of joy when they see my work/ purchase my work. So the product can derive a great deal of pleasure as well.


Can you tell us a story about someone you have met through an art connection?

I met one of my best friends. She was sitting across from me at Sawdust Winter Festival in Laguna Beach. And she came over and introduced herself. We became inseparable after that. Some of it was because of the art - having a friend who is an artist can be very comforting. All of a sudden all the odd ways you look at the world aren’t so odd, when someone else see them too. And some of the connection was because we were both coming out of relationships at the time and needed a friend who understood that pain. We are very supportive of each other’s art and I see her every week for one thing or another.

It’s funny - and I don’t think I ever told her this. Years earlier I walked by her booth at that festival and I remembered her after that. Out of all the artists - she was the only one who’s art and person I remembered that visit to the festival. And now we are good friends.


Do you find that you need the validation of others (buyers, galleries, critics)? Or do you already know in your heart that a painting is good?

Validation is a double edged sword. If you believe other people’s press about you - then when it’s bad, do you believe that as well? I really try to not need outside validation because that is giving my power away.

Am I hurt if someone criticizes my art? Sometimes yes. But when I step back I realize in most cases that person was threatened by something they felt from my art and/or they are a frustrated artist and seeing someone who is successfully putting paint to canvas bothers them.

I think there are people in my life in whom their opinion matters. A few of my best friends - I do ask their feedback, sometimes about a painting (ie. Is it done? - they always say yes way before I declare it done) and sometimes about a new series. But I have learned even here, a lot of times people I love don’t necessarily see the vision until it’s complete. How can they? It’s not their vision to begin with.

I have also discovered something about my art - and that is- it’s connecting. Some type of art may not be for everyone - but I know it’s good. And I can tell when it’s crap. And generally, even things I think are crap, other people think are good. So I’ve stopped looking outside for that validation and just paint.


If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring painter, what would it be?

Just paint. People will try to mold you into what they think you should do - what subjects you should paint, what your style should be, what color palette you should use. Don’t listen to any of it. Just do what you do - and listen to your intuition and eventually you will find your own voice, your own style.
When you create a painting, do you consciously have the viewer in mind, trying to create a certain set of feelings for that person? Or do you paint for yourself (by which I mean, follow your own vision) and hope that it also resonates with others?

A little bit of both. I started doing my male torsos because people kept asking for them. But I couldn’t start them until I was ready to paint them - with powerful intention. Meaning on the back of every piece I place an emotion, an objective for that piece. And until I could comfortably do that I didn’t paint men. And now I think these are some of my best pieces. However, at the same time, I was told a while ago, by a great expert in art, that I knew nothing about nudes because mine were not lying down. That just doesn’t work for me. It’s not my vision - it’s not why I paint them. I’m inspired by the ancient roman and greek statutes. So while I do listen to what people want, and what resonates with them - it also needs to resonate with me first.

That's hilarious about the "not lying down" comment. Some people want to inhabit such tiny boxes.

What one aspect of your life in art has brought you the greatest joy?

Great question. Growing up and then working in corporate America, there always seemed to be a “what will people think” question running through my mind. I don’t mean about art - I mean about everything. The color of the rug in the living room, what I was wearing, what decorations I put outside my home etc. And I’ve noticed this internal dialogue in a lot of other people as well.

The awesome thing about being an artist is I’ve learned to turn that off. Because for me there is no way I could paint anything I now paint if I was worried about what people might say. No one got the torso paintings when I first started them. No one got why I would paint a giraffe - but now they love them. This worrying about what other people think is stifling.

And I don’t have that anymore. And occasionally if I forget, friends will remind me that I’m an artist, I can do whatever. So I do. I wear what I want. I decorate my house as I like. I even dyed my hair with pink highlights for a while, because I could. Embracing being an artist has been the best. Because it has been freeing.

Thanks, Michelle. Awesome interview!

Vinsetta Garage Closes - A Sad Moment

Here is a story on the closing of Vinsetta Garage, which is only a few miles from my house.

It has been in business 91 years.  That's right - there were still brand new Model T's being built when this garage opened.  So sad!

1999 (For All Confirmands)

Here is a poem I just discovered wasting away in a metal filing cabinet in my basement.  I wrote it more than ten years ago, but just put the finishing touches on it today.

1999 (For All Confirmands)

The world is young and in her lover's hands.
She's not the aged spinster some have said.
Regeneration has released the bands
Of Lucifer, who chained her in his bed.

Another lover now caresses her,
Who found her torn and bloody and in need.
And lately he has compassed her with myrrh.
And lately, too, has given her his seed.

Another thousand years will soon be gone.
Another thousand soon to hear his mirth.
A new millennium can safely dawn
With such a lover ravishing the earth.

Come, drink, all you his holy confirmands.
The world is young and in her lover's hands.

Courting Danger

I don't really like safety.  There, I've said it.

One of the great things about hot rods (other than that they are loud, fast, and cool looking) is that they are just a tad dangerous.  That is why they draw the attention of adrenaline junkies such as myself.

I do understand both the feelings and the logic of those who are more risk-averse than myself.  I just can't seem to feel it the same way they do.  And they, in turn, do not understand the fact that I am drawn to situations in which there is an element of risk. 

Yesterday some friends, who had been without heat in their house for four days, called me with an urgent request.  The man was coming to their Hamtramck house to turn on the gas, but they were delayed while helping a relative, and were trapped out of town.  They asked me to go over to the house and let the gas man in.  "But I have no key!" I objected.  Oh, you can just climb in the front window and let yourself in that way.  This is not something I was at all comfortable doing.  So ... I did it.  Partially to help them, and partially for the thrill of it.

It is exactly as I wrote the other day, here:

I need to feel myself a rebel in some sense, and part of a conspiracy. At the same time, I need to feel that my actions are righteous, and that I am fighting on the side of the angels.

And this "mission" filled the bill quite nicely.  It was a mission to help some friends not freeze at night ("fighting on the side of the angels":  CHECK!), but at the same time it was breaking into a house in broad daylight in a not-very-nice neighborhood ("feel myself a rebel in some sense": CHECK!).
 
But I was supposed to be talking about hot rods, wasn't I?  One of my (and my son Eliot's) heroes is Wild Willie Borsch.  You will notice in these photographs that, though drag racing is intended to be a straight-line sport, the car is usually sideways.  Do you think Wild Willie got out of the throttle during those crazy losses of control?  Not on your life.  Then he would have been "Safe Willie" Borsch, or perhaps "Mild Willie" Borsch.

In summary, I don't want to hurt the people around me.  I don't want to die before my time.  But if you are going to be my friend, you are going to have to watch me get sidewise every now and again.  I can't live any other way.

Splendid Sparsity (Part 2)

Here is another of those splendidly sparse songs.  The kind that works magic on your heart, but falls to pieces if you try to take it apart and see why it works.  Under analytical scrutiny, there doesn't seem to be any reason why this song should work so well.  But it does.

Today, I Started Loving You Again

Today I started loving you again
I'm right back where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today, I started loving you again

What a fool I was to think I could get by
With only these few millions tears I cry
I should have known the worst was yet to come
And that crying time for me had just begun

Cause today I started loving you again
I'm right back where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again

Well today I started loving you again
I'm right back where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
Then today I started loving you again
Then today I started loving you again

This song has basically two unique verses, and only one idea.  But I bow before its majesty.  My only clue is that it works by putting the hearer to work.  The listener hears what the song is about, and fills in all the voids with the sad tincture of his own sorrow.  At least, I do.

A Splendid Sparsity

Up until about 8 years ago, I fancied myself a songwriter.  Until that time, I was pretty happy about the songs I was writing.  They accomplished what I had intended for them to accomplish.

But then I started running into a series of songs that I perceived to be infinitely better than mine.  They were, for one thing, more general than mine.  This allows the listener to imagine that the song is about him.  But it wasn't just that.

As I began to dissect some of these songs, usually in order to learn to sing and play them, they seemed to fall apart in my hands.  When I wrote out the lyrics on a page, there seemed to be almost nothing there.  And yet, when sung, they gave me goose flesh.  They almost made my heart stand still.  I still don't really understand this type of songwriting magic very well.

But I can give you instances of it.  This is Good To See You, from Neil Young.  (I'll feature another song some other day.)

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
Good to see you

I'm the suitcase in your hallway
I'm the footsteps on your floor
When I'm lookin' down on you
I feel like I know what my life is for

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
Good to see you

I've been down on the endless highway
I passed on the solid line
Now at last I'm home to you
I feel like making up for lost time

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
It's good to see you

Behold the economy of words used by Neil there!  My jaw just drops when I look at this.  Look how much room he leaves for the listener to do the work of putting together the story, instead of finishing every corner himself.  Here is just one phrase I love:

I passed on the solid line

Now, if I had written this line, it would have said something like: "I drove home real fast."  But look what he does:  He paints an entire picture of the driver as eager lover, taking the risk of passing when the line on the road tells him not to.  He badly wants to be back home to his beloved.  You can just see his car swerve out around a slow truck, blow past it, and fall back in line.  And Young tells us this, paints this entire scene, in six (6!) words.

And that is why I don't write songs any more.

My Version of Chesterton's "Double Spiritual Need"

In the first chapter of his landmark work Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton set forth a "double spiritual need" which is common among men and which, by his reckoning, only the orthodox Christian faith can adequately answer:

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.  I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool.  I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.  This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?  How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance.

Lately, it has occurred to me that I also have a dual spiritual need, which has only been adequately fulfilled, really, since I have been Anglican.  I thought at first that it was separate from and parallel to the dual need expressed by Chesterton, but now I think it is merely a specialized case of it.

It is this:  I need to feel myself a rebel in some sense, and part of a conspiracy.  At the same time, I need to feel that my actions are righteous, and that I am fighting on the side of the angels.

This need is, of course, precisely delineated and answered in our Lord's command, recorded in the 10th Chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel:

... be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Because the world is currently captive to a usurper and his forces, we can easily get our fill of rebellion, insurgency, and adventure.  Yet, because we fight for the true King, we can be comfortable in the knowledge that our actions (if we are good soldiers) are ratified by Heaven.

I have felt this double need, simultaneously fulfilled, many dozens of times since becoming an Anglican.  I felt it particularly when I was still organizationally linked to that great Satan, The Episcopal Church.  We traditionalists were always embattled, almost always losing, rebellious to the death (if necessary) against the Zeitgeist, but at the same time, innocent as doves regarding the commandments of God.  I don't know any other feeling which satisfies me as much.