Farewell to a Teacher

I can easily say that Wayne Thiebaud transformed my understanding of painting. After finishing high school, I took an art history class at my community college. The instructor declared that if any of us aspired to become artists, we should go to UC Davis because some of the best artists in the country, people like Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Arneson, taught there. Arneson's bust of the slain George Moscone had recently propelled him to international fame. I knew nothing about these people but I read about the art department and decided to apply. Its graduate program was ranked #1 in the country. As the first person in my family to attend college, even to finish high school, this was a scary but exciting step. Going to Davis meant I was serious about studying art, and would no longer be burdened by familial expectations of shepherding. 

I took at least three classes with Wayne- drawing and painting, and a class on "Theory and Criticism" of painting. This last class was perhaps the most fun because we could listen to him talk enthusiastically about the art he projected on the wall. I took copious notes.

Wayne had an interesting teaching method for his studio classes. He gave us a lot of freedom within some clear parameters. We spent many hours painting a tin can or a glass filled with water. Eventually we graduated to two glasses or putting a teaspoon in the glass or two tin cans or added a fruit. Later there were live models. When the model took breaks, he instructed us to keep painting. He seemed to think that a glass of water presented infinite possibilities in terms of perception and complexity, as much as the nude figure. And, he was right. 

One time we watched him start with a blank canvas and paint a still life. Our class of 30 or so students stood behind him silently for 4 hours as he made "mistakes" he had to paint over, changed brush sizes and found surprising color combinations. He would squint his eyes, step forward and backward. Other times he gave us an assignment and disappeared for most of the period. He was in his studio across the hall and he was making his own paintings. He was teaching by example. But he was specific about our goals-  we were aiming to be painters, and nothing as lofty or presumptuous as artists. In one foundation class he told us that we were not there to express ourselves, but to learn how to paint. That meant starting by mastering our materials and developing our ability to see, to distinguish one color from another. Yet he often started classes by reading a poem or a section of Rilke and was constantly telling us to read, with handouts listing his suggestions (below).

Sometimes Wayne was absent because he was in New York. I was a bit sad on those days because even though he didn't say much during class, his presence came with a certain gravitas and inspiration. He broke painting down to its most basic elements but delved deeply into the heart and soul of this medium in the theory classes. I still have the list of oil colors we were supposed to buy, all his handouts and a notebook filled with sketches and writing. It is because of Wayne that I began to appreciate the strangeness of Morandi's shapes and muted colors, and the singularity of Bonnard's mushy paint and discordant colors. Wayne revered painters, along with art of all types from many different cultures. He jumped from Goya to Giacometti to Peruvian sculpture, to Chinese painting to Agnes Martin. 

There was nothing more important during those class hours than paint and color and light and the tensions and complications they could present to us. Any subject was fair game in Wayne's world, but he was rooted in his present surroundings, while playing wildly with his interpretations of what he saw.  Surrealism was not beyond him either. One of his assignments was to take the imagery of two different artists and combine them together in a new painting. What he did not talk about was Pop Art, even though his work was put into that category. He had little in common with Warhol but had much in common with Chardin. Wayne painted, taught, and spoke of painting as though he was in a lively conversation with the great artists in history and some contemporary ones too. As I look back on my notes I think to myself, "What an incredible education he gave us!"

Although Wayne was all about work, he communicated joy in making paintings and wonder in looking at them. I am certain that his class helped me learn to print in a color darkroom, like making small adjustments with filters to skew colors from magenta to green. I developed pleasure in looking at art through Wayne (and another stellar Davis professor- Seymour Howard) and that made my travels to places of interest often driven by which museums I could find. As I see new articles and videos pop up to honor his passing on December 25th 2021, I can't look at them anymore. Frankly, it is sad to know that he is gone and that this formative part of my life is over.

"If we don't have a sense of humor, we don't have a sense of perspective."

"What I do is called slow painting, slow looking."

Wayne Thiebaud interview