Joseph Bohler: A Good Attitude Helps Make a Good Painting
by Bob Bahr
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| Colorado watercolorist Joseph Bohler painted a demonstration on a working ranch outside of Dubois, Wyoming. |
“I hope that painters start by having a good attitude,” says Colorado watercolorist Joseph Bohler. “Decide that you’re going to paint a masterpiece—or at least a pretty good painting—every time.”
This may seem like impossible advice, or at least a good way to set yourself up for disappointment, but participants in Bohler’s workshops can see first hand how this approach works. With Bohler, it works smoothly and gently.
Last fall the painter taught in Dubois, Wyoming, at the invitation of the Susan Kathleen Black Foundation for their annual weeklong workshop near Grand Teton National Park, in Wyoming. Other artists joined the painting group with much dash and panache, but Bohler sat quietly in his black cowboy hat talking with an acquaintance. The tone was already set. A few days later, he was painting a demonstration at nearby Brooks Lake, affably answering students’ questions, commenting on the dogs fetching sticks thrown in the lake, and creating a pretty good painting. (Bohler ended up entering this quick demo in a prestigious national exhibition.) It was evident that what the instructor meant by “good attitude” was not limited to high expectations for the finished piece. He chatted with the students on a wide variety of topics as he worked—from his childhood experiences on a Montana ranch to the musical merits of the mandolin. He answered questions about his color mixtures and painting decisions in a casual tone and seemed to deeply enjoy the day, the company, and the setting.
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| Jeanne DeHaan truly painted the landscape from within the landscape. |
Bohler believes in being fully present during a painting session. That’s one reason he prefers to work en plein air, and why, although he is an avid music fan and skilled musician, he never wears headphones on-site. “I couldn’t hear that dog splashing in the water or those grasshoppers snapping their wings if I were wearing headphones,” he points out. Bohler occasionally uses a microcassette tape recorder to capture the sound of water or nearby horses, and he will scribble in a journal to note the smells, the temperature, or how he feels at that moment. He takes reference photos, but it’s clear he is in his element painting outdoors. “It’s natural—everybody starts out using photo reference. But you get the best possible information in front of you when you paint plein air,” he comments. “Once you can break away from using a photo, you are free. You feel like a bird leaving its nest.”
Being physically present does infuse the painting with life, but painting on-site has its challenges—not the least of which is all the information present outside of a reference photo. On-site, there are many distracting and enticing things beyond the subject of your composition. The artist recommends spending some time “tasting the flavor” of a location and looking around 360 degrees before setting up. “Find your spot, find the subject, focus in, and go for it,” Bohler advises. “Don’t look around the whole time wondering about other views.”
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| John P. Finley, a lifetime resident of the area, painted the view of Brooks Lake. |
During the Wyoming workshop, Bohler needed to remind several students that a good preliminary drawing is necessary for most watercolor success. Bohler’s underdrawings are careful and nuanced, even though they are merely marking the basic shapes of elements and the areas where lighted portions give way to shadows. His next piece of advice echoes the words of most workshop instructors: Use a big brush and get the big shapes down on the surface. Bohler does this with a two-inch flat brush and very juicy washes of light transparent watercolor. He may then erase some of the darker graphite lines of the underdrawing. At this and every step, the artist stresses that he is concentrating on capturing the feel of the scene. “I’m not trying to put the world in a 16"-x-21" painting,” Bohler explains. “Just the essence of the area. The big shapes can suggest it all. Students sometimes jump ahead and put in details with a little brush, without having a good foundation underneath.”
Bohler makes frequent use of the drybrush technique, loading the flat brush with fairly dry paint and lightly scraping it over the texture of the paper, leaving highlights of the color that strongly suggest textures ranging from the surface of rocks to accents of color on grasses to sunlit spots on water. These touches, along with a strong sense of composition and an uncanny ability to use the unique traits of watercolor to conjure a scene, suggest a highly controlled painting technique. So it seems like a miracle to witness Bohler’s demeanor while painting. He exudes the relaxed manner and calm, satisfied air of a man lazily fishing. Don’t be fooled. “I take painting very seriously, even though I am laid back about things,” says the instructor. “It’s a joyful experience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. It’s a lot of hard work.”
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| Artist Chelley Lowder was always accompanied by her dog during the workshop. |
Bohler makes it look exceedingly easy, but his tours during workshops to check the progress of the students found a few of them struggling to do what he could achieve with a few deft strokes. The instructor would often ask permission, then pick up the brush to demonstrate a concept. Sometimes Bohler would simply recommend that the workshop participant dramatically change course or start the painting again. The emphasis was on using the workshop to learn and to stretch—and, more than with many workshop instructors, to become acquainted with the teacher’s philosophy on art.
A handout that Bohler uses for workshops states that “The life that begins when light meets form, and the two become one, is sacred to me.” He goes on to explain that he tries to paint what he loves, and that he has progressed beyond painting strictly from the intellect to painting primarily from the heart. Bohler says this mindset has him seeking out and depicting the things in life he finds beautiful—be it a landscape, a woman, or an old building. “I’ve never worried about style or technique, or the fads that come and go, but try to be consistent with quality, with my chosen interpretations of nature and mankind.” Bohler’s work is definitely not faddish. In fact, it seems to prefer the past to the trends of the moment. “I paint a lot of old things,” he says. “An old, leaning, weathered barn—all the textures and character of it appeal to me. I grew up around old stuff. I drove a team of horses—Toots and Molly—when I was younger. So all of this is in me.” His story is further fleshed out when one considers that the name of his online gallery is Places in Time, and that the music he coaxes out of any piano he sees is a mixture of blues, ragtime, and boogie-woogie, with a trace of Hank Snow and Western swing thrown in. This aesthetic drenches his work, to the point that a landscape he paints today, even with no man-made structures in it to date it, seems to hover in time, reinforcing the antiquity of the hills and the timelessness of the forest. Even his choice of medium seems to evoke a place in time, and the endless cycles of nature. “I enjoy watercolor’s spontaneous sparkle and flirtatious nature as the paint and water caress the paper surface and the creative process begins and ends ... and begins again,” he writes in the workshop handout.
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| Bunkhouse on Horse Creek 2007, watercolor, 16 x 21. Collection the artist. |
A quietness about his teaching and painting reinforces this aura, which is marked by another important trait: optimism. Bohler’s low-key nature could be mistakenly interpreted as melancholy, but he feels it is better described as sensitivity. This is coupled with positivity. “Attitude is such a big part of this,” he says. “You have to try to do your best every day. You can never think, I’m going out to paint another disaster today. You should say, ‘I want to go out there and do my best.’ It’s all about confidence.”
Bohler may paint in watercolor, but students of all media are welcome in his workshops. “When students are using a variety of media I teach not only watercolor but good painting principles—such as values, composition, textures, and rhythm—that apply to all artists,” says the instructor. “My goal is to nudge each person to the next level of artistic confidence and ability. If you learn one or two important lessons from this workshop, your energy will have been well spent.”
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| Morning at Brooks Lake—Wyoming 2007, watercolor, 16 x 21. Collection the artist. |
About the Artist
Joseph Bohler is a founding member of the Northwest Rendezvous; a life member of the Transparent Watercolor Society of America; a signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the Watercolor USA Honor Society, and the Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Society; and a peer-elected member of the National Academy of Western Art. The artist has been featured in several books and magazines, including Splash II and Splash IV (both North Light Books, Cincinnati, Ohio) and his art is in the permanent collection of several institutions. In the early 1990s Bohler was commissioned to paint a portrait of Tex Ritter by the sons of the famous actor and singer and by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, in Oklahoma City. Bohler is also a gifted pianist and has released two CDs. For more information on Bohler, visit www.placesintime.com.
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| Bohler advised a student on how to depict what could be an overwhelming vista. |
About Susan Kathleen Black Foundation Workshops
Prospective participants are informally juried into the workshops run by The Susan Kathleen Black Foundation (SKB), which began as a memorial fund established in 2001 by Black’s widower, James E. Parkman. The foundation’s overarching mission is art education. This includes art competitions and financial support for both elementary school art projects and national teen workshops, as well as partnerships with other foundations, such as the Santa Fe City Arts Commission and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, but it is best known for its annual workshops, which feature an impressive roster of instructors, including Jack Hines, Jessica Zemsky, Jeanne Mackenzie, John Seerey-Lester, and Joe Bohler. For the last five years, this weeklong workshop was held in Dubois, Wyoming, which is just east of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
Black was an enthusiastic workshop participant with a charismatic personality who had a strong impact on her teachers and fellow students alike. “She advanced very quickly in her art career by attending workshops,” explains Pam Dean Cable, the foundation’s director. “Susan was constantly pushing the envelope, trying new things. That’s the kind of environment we try to have here at the workshops. The intent is to give professionals a place to get together and be students themselves. It’s not just to learn from instructors, but from peers.” One can indeed witness accomplished artists gamely working in an unfamiliar medium at an SKB workshop. The experimentation can be frustrating, but because this is one of the stated purposes for the workshop, artists feel comfortable taking the chance.
The percentage of participants returning from the previous year is always very high at SKB workshops, so much so that the organizers have had to turn some people away. “It has become a family of people who stay in contact with one another all year, sharing business knowledge and painting together,” says Cable. “We keep the skill level high so everyone can get the most out of the instructors—so the instructors don’t have to focus on fundamentals and dilute the experience." For more information, visit www.susankblackfoundation.org.
Bob Bahr is the managing editor of Workshop.
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