ExclusivePainting Life: John Hood on the Art of Realism

Realism is the artistic representation of subjects with an accurate and truthful depiction of their natural form. How does realism improve life and one's character and feelings? Our innovator today is John Hood, who has been an artist all his life. I don't paint for others, I just paint for myself. I've been artistic all my life, trained as an architect and I practiced architecture for 40 years. And I always knew I wanted to paint. It's such a gift to me. He's dedicated to improving his skills in the art of painting and keep realism alive. I sign all my paintings with, I have learned to look, now I yearn to see. I think that as an artist, you develop a trained eye. And that trained eye opens up the world to you in amazing fashion. This is Bay Area Innovators and I'm your host, Steve Espas. John, welcome to our program. Thank you. Well, glad to have you here. So, you're a realist painter. You have your works exhibited in galleries in San Francisco. I would like to ask you, how do you feel when you paint? What's the feeling that comes out? Good question. I find that I'm consumed. The painting and I have a dialogue that is intense. And frankly, it's obsessive. When I'm painting, I listen to classical music. The family leaves me alone and I just feel it's a beautiful experience because I believe that the painting has a mind of its own. That it talks back to me and so we have this partnership. And of course, the painting can't talk yet. That's how it feels to me. When I'm preparing for a show or I'm working a lot, I will paint for several hours and then I'll take the painting upstairs and put it on the mantle where the best light is. And I will stare at it for 20 minutes and then I'll turn my back and I'll walk as far away as I can be from the painting and then I'll turn quickly to look. And what I've learned is the first thing you see is the defect. Where's the fault? It's the area that I need to work on to improve. My family laughs at me about it, but it's very effective. And then I take the painting back down and work on it some more. It's a wonderful experience. I love it. You said you listen to classical music. Is it during painting or before? And what kind of music? I wear headphones because I like to play it loud. And it's classical like Yo-Yo Ma's Bach concertos, Mozart, all the classic wonderful composers. Also ballads, Sheryl Crow, The Beatles. And so I have an eclectic mix, but they all tend, John Lennon, they tend to be rhythmic and gets me into a flow. And when I'm working on big areas, backgrounds, my hand starts moving with the flow of the music and it's very entertaining to me. So I was going to ask you if you get some inspiration from the music or how do you get the inspiration? So the music sets a mood. The first thing I do when I sit at the easel is I plan the area I'm going to work and I make sure that I have the colors that I'm hopeful for. And picking colors is a blending process. I sit quietly for a minute and just stare at it. And then I make the first stroke and usually I have to redo it because I'm too picky. Over time it's one stroke and then it's 50. The whole time I feel elated. I just feel wonderful to be able to sit there and have... It's such a gift to me that I can paint some. And I don't paint for others, I just paint for myself. And the fact that some of the paintings are successful is a bonus. I've been artistic all my life. I trained as an architect and I practiced architecture for 40 years. And I always knew I wanted to paint. And my mother told me I could do anything I wanted to do and so I believed that. And I was hooked, the way the color went down. Watercolors, we'll look at some watercolors later. The colors are very transparent and so they're very delicate, very immediate. Whereas acrylics and oils are luscious and they blend well and you have time to work them. Whereas watercolor, if it takes more than three hours, you're making it mud. Research shows that realism paintings can enhance emotions, well-being, productivity and all of this. Did you experience any of this? I'm captivated by looking at art. When my wife and I travel, we go to all the big places and my wife's a photographer and so sometimes she'll have work in the cities that we go to. And so I go to the museums and she does her work. And just standing in front of a painting, it's an emotional interaction. And I can picture what the artist was thinking. I can picture it. And the anger in the eyes or the sun as it rises. And Gustav Klimt is one of my favorite painters from the Art Nouveau period. One of his famous paintings is called The Wedding and it's two figures intertwined with this beautiful mosaic of a pattern. And it looks like there's so much love in the painting. And it doesn't fit into the category of realism, realistic painting, but you know exactly what he was talking about. And because of the period, it's an amazing painting. Tell us more about your favorite painters or role models that guided you. Well, favorite painters and role models are two different things. So I'll talk about favorite painters for a minute. In current day, I think the best painting of our lifetime is Gerhard Richter. And the reason I say that is he can paint in any medium, realist, abstract, mixed, landscapes. And the paintings are just amazing. And so the fact that he's so versatile, I really admire. I like that I can paint in watercolor and oil because it keeps me fresh. So Gerhard Richter is one of my heroes. In Rembrandt, How Can You Not Like Rembrandt? The way he uses light, he was one of the first people to use light in the way that he did. Caravaggio is another. Klimt and Degas from the Impressionist period. He said, more or less, you find a subject that you like and you paint it hundreds of times. And so that's why you see so many. He painted multiple, hundreds of ballet paintings. And so he totally engrossed himself in the ballet scene. So those are the older ones. And then John Singer Sargent, huge fan because he also painted in oils and watercolor, although he's famous for his watercolors. And then Winslow Homer, another man who painted both in watercolor and oil. I happen to have a friend that has a studio. Their house is right next to where Winslow painted. And I was able to sit at my friend's house and paint scenes that I can imagine Winslow sitting on the rocks, painting at the same time. And it chills down my body, this famous person. You see the same thing that he was looking at. Yes. And if you look at some of his paintings, he likes to paint water a lot. And in Maine, where he lived, where his studio was, the water is of a certain color. And the water has a certain violence to it. And it's aggressive on the coast. And he captured that. And I'm so impressed with that. So those are really the best group, I would say. Speaking of that, we have some of your paintings here in the studio. I'd like to kind of look at a few of them and we'll bring more. But tell us a little bit, starting with the one to the left over there, what was in your mind when you painted it? What special feelings goes with each one? So the three on the top are all watercolor. And the one on the bottom is oil. And the thing to understand about watercolor is that once you put a color down, you better know that that's the color you want because it's very hard to change. And I've painted a version of this painting four different times. And each time, I'm trying to concentrate on the color and the way the light comes across. And if you look, you'll see that in the foreground, the light is darker. And in the mid-background, you can see actually the sun hitting the grass. That particular painting took probably two hours to paint start to finish. And that's one of the reasons watercolor is so gratifying because you start with nothing and then in two hours or three hours, you have a— I mean, if you're successful, you have a beautiful thing. What about the bird? First of all, this is combining two things that I love, water and birds. And I've painted multiple birds, cardinals, herons. People love them. I think the reason they like them is because they're so strong and the color is so rich and then the reflection in the water. This is one of my favorite birds. That's a beautiful painting right there. And it's sold, and the person who bought it let me bring it to today. And then the one on the right is Sunset. Hopefully, obviously, that's Alcatraz with the island in the back. And what I was feeling, I think the island of Alcatraz always reminds me of a ship. And so I don't put it in the center of the painting. I always have it biased to one side or the other so it looks like it's moving through. Many people have commented, well, the water never looks like that. It does look like a ship, actually. You're right. Well, and that's how I see it in my mind. That's not the way water looks. Well, I say, well, that's the way it looked to me. And that's why I painted it as such. So that's what I would say of those. This one is an oil. People like this painting quite a lot. It's my daughter's favorite painting. And they will say, well, where is it? And I say, well, it's Black's Cove. And they say, well, where's Black's Cove? Is that up in Mendocino or down? And I say, no, it's back in my brain. I invented the scene in my head and then put it down on the canvas. And this particular painting, I had talked to my mentor, and I felt like I was blocked. And my paintings tended to be looking the same. And he said, loosen up, give yourself a time limit, and be finished. And so this painting took two hours, which in oil just never happens for me. And it's done with a palette knife and a brush. And so the color goes on rapidly, and you smear the color on. And if you close your eyes and run your hands over the canvas, you'll feel the texture of the paint, which I think is cool. I love it. What about this painting? Tell us your feeling. I'm a hiker myself. I love outdoors, and I can relate to this painting a lot when I see it. But tell us how you came up with this. This is very reminiscent of my wife and I are big hikers. My wife is an amazing hiker, and she's out on the trails every day. It's not the actual trail that she likes so much, but it's very similar. What caught my eye about this is the way the light was coming through the trees. And with this painting, if you're able to zoom in on it, you'll see that there are actually rays of light. Yeah, you can see it right here. Yes. Absolutely. I like how the path, it really draws you in. And this is one of the things that is wonderful about realist paintings that's different than abstract. Abstract painting tends to be, and all abstract painters will be mad when I say this, but it tends to be two-dimensional. Whereas realist paintings are trying to draw you in. And so even though the surface of the painting is still zero-zero, it feels as if the back of the painting is 50 feet away. And I think that this painting captures that. And the way to capture depth is with shade and shadow. You can see the shadows of the trees as you go back, and the light as it falls. Notice that in the brown of the path, there's probably five or six different shades of brown. There's gold, there's green, there's some purple. The vine that's crawling up the tree on the far right, and the vine that's crawling up here, they look like they are electric. They really catch the light well, and I'm very pleased with that. How long did it take you? So this was much longer. My process is I will paint for a session. And the session sometimes is an hour and a half, sometimes it's four hours. And this painting probably took six or seven sessions. Those six or seven sessions were probably over eight days. From my point of view, it looked very nice before I put the sun in. And I was very nervous about putting sun rays in because I didn't want to ruin, because I've done that before. And so I built the rays, which it's a glaze that's added to the finished painting. And I totally messed it up. I made them too intense. And the beautiful thing about oil is that you can repair. And so I was able to strip out half of the rays. And I find the sun rays as successful. And I feel at peace that I feel as if I'm walking down that path. I can relate to you. You can look at it, and there's so much to look at. You can keep looking and imagine what's behind the tree, and then you can keep thinking how you're going around and on the path. So that's pretty amazing. What I want to ask you now is about what is the impression you get of people's interest in realist paintings in San Francisco and the Bay Area? It's such a beautiful art. It brings out all these beautiful emotions and feelings, yet it seems like it's declining. So the people you run into, do they still like it? What's your thoughts? So we have friends that are in high places in the museums and friends that spend a lot of time at the Fog exhibit and actually some of the people that organize it. And I'm always frustrated that when I go to the shows that there's less realist paintings. And the market has changed. And so big, wild, abstract things. As I say this out loud, I'm sure people will object to what I'm saying, but my perception is realist landscapes and scenes have lost some interest for people. I don't know exactly why. Since Picasso, it's more or less when the modern abstract movement started. It was only 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. And so it's still such a new thing. Maybe it's just the new toy. I think that realist paintings will always be part of the puzzle. And part of why it's different is that you can do so much with photography now. And I find that specious. Because a photograph, now with photography, you can't tell if you can doctor the photograph to such a degree with Photoshop that it doesn't look anything like what the photograph was. And I just think that the difference between manipulating a photograph and creating a painting is so much more precious. And, of course, I say that because I'm a painter. Well, actually, speaking of that, in journalism, we always run into things that are either created by AI and we don't know, be it a picture or an image or even a story. What are your thoughts about how AI can influence art in that sense? And I may create something like that and it won't look as good, for sure, but people may not know. I'm actually quite worried about it. As an artist, I just can see more and more people being pushed out of the business. Computers themselves, forget about AI for a minute, computers themselves are amazing what you can do. And I'm an architect by training, and we used to hire illustrators to create paintings of our buildings. Renderings is what they're called. And it was a big business for these guys, and there were only four or five people in San Francisco that did it well. Then the computers came in, and if the mountain that sat in front of the building wasn't in a great spot, he would just move the mountain because it didn't help the photograph. And I do that to a certain extent with painting, but I'm not a big fan. And I'm worried about it, because I think that AI is going to change the way we live our life with many ways that we don't know yet. What is the message you try to convey with your paintings? I think what I'm really trying to do is capture beauty. Let it speak for itself, basically. And if you saw this, the image that I took it from, it's quite different. Yet I think that what I've done is more rich, is more beautiful. It elevates the beauty. And I don't want to sound like I know what I'm doing, but I think that when you create something beautiful, if it's beautiful to me, somebody else will think it's beautiful. And so that's my goal. All good art has three things that it does well. It captures light, it has a nice composition, and it demonstrates depth. And again, I'm speaking realist. And I think that you'll see in the other things that I brought here that those tenets, those basic tenets I've tried to explore, tried to enhance. And that's how I'd answer them. We talked earlier, when you paint, you feel some kind of power of energy that helps you to bring up the value or the painting. Can you talk more about that? What do you feel when that happens? I'm very often going through a question and answer process. Does it need more? Does it need less? Does it need to be spread out? Does it need to be smaller? And I believe that I have some skill, and that the skill that I have has come from hard work and lots of practice. I'm not sure I think that there's a divine gift or anything like that. But I do believe that there's a constant dialogue in my head. And I probably spend as much time staring at the painting as I do putting brushstrokes on. And at the end of each session, I will take a photograph of the painting, and then I carry it around with me all day. And then when I'm on the bus or I'm bored, I look at the painting, and I try and see how I can improve it. So I find it all-consuming. Well, next I want to ask you about your quote, which goes on the paintings I understand, which is, I learned to look, now I yearn to see. Tell us about that. Well, thanks for bringing that up. I sign all my paintings with, I have learned to look, now I yearn to see. And I think that this is speaking to, I'll never arrive. I've learned some things, but I want more. And yearn, I think, is a beautiful word. One leans in, one wants. And that's how I feel about painting, is that I yearn to be a better painter. And I have learned to look and to see the world in a way that allows me to paint. I think that as an artist, you develop a trained eye. And that trained eye opens up the world to you in amazing fashion. And when I'm in the middle of a painting blitz or when I'm working on a show, I see the world differently. I don't see trees as a round shape. I see tin shapes, and I don't see two greens. I see tin greens. And then I can look in deep, and it's not green. It's actually purple. And I hope I'm not a broken record, but painting enriches my life. And I feel very lucky that I've learned how to reach for it. And that's exactly what the quote says. I've learned to look, and now I yearn to see. Well, so the beautiful thing is that it enriches your life, but it also enriches other people's lives. Well, I hope so. I used to give paintings as gifts or give things away. And I stopped doing that because someone would get a painting, and they'd go, oh, well, thank you. But maybe it doesn't speak to them. And so when someone decides to buy a piece, they are communicating to me that they have a connection to that piece. And I consider it an emotional connection. So that's how I feel about it. You have an interesting family history, how your family came to the U.S. Please tell us about that. On my mother's side of the family, they've been in the cattle business for 70 years in Moab, Utah. And we have lots of family in Utah. And over time I learned that the family was Mormon. And over time I learned that in 1850, or I don't know the date exactly, Brigham Young came out from Pennsylvania with the early Mormons. And my ancestor, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, was in the third wagon. And so when you go to Salt Lake and you see the statue, there's his name. And my name is John Taylor Hood. So it's ingrained in me. My youngest daughter was interested in the ancestry. And so she started researching it. And she was able to trace the family back to 1647 in England. And she was able to find out the ship that they rowed over on. It's a very valuable piece of family lore that we love. That's a very nice story. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for keeping realism alive. And any final thoughts, anything you'd like to share about your gift? I feel very lucky. I feel excited about the next 25 years. So the work that you're seeing here is three or four years. I think the earliest one is three years ago. And every few years I notice that I'm getting better. And so that's exciting to me. Maybe you'll interview me in ten years, and I'll have a whole new set of realized things to show you. And thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you.