Fine Artist Paul Crimi turned a blank canvas into an outdoor scene in less than an hour during episode 16 in this recent series of "how to" videos called "Expressions in Painting."
Crew included Pembroke Community Middle School students Jessica Fano and Laura McCue on studio cameras one and two, and Pembroke Media's own director, Cathie Briggette on studio camera three. Each operator wore headphones and took directions for the entire hour from the director in the sound room.Laura McCue, age 12, gave Crimi the 5-4-3-2-1 finger countdown at the beginning. She also held up the 30, 15, 3, and one-minute cards letting Crimi know how much longer until his time was up.
It was both Briggette's and Fano's first time using big cameras, and they did a wonderful job.After 60 minutes of filming, everyone heard "It's a wrap," and knew it was safe to talk and make noise.
Crimi began the show with three finished paintings of bottles from other episodes. "I like the personalities they have," Crimi said. "They are starting to have their own kind of feeling."
He plans to make 25 or 30 similar works and have a series.
For this episode, Crimi created a Fall scene from his imagination. "I have all the colors, so let's just start," he said after squeezing two shades of green and blue from tubes into a Styrofoam dinner tray. "Then I'll sketch it out a little bit. I'll lay it out so we get some ideas."
Crimi continued and described the half-done painting. "It still has it's own personality and has a way of revealing itself.This painting is going to look more impressionistic that realistic. I love impressionistic anyways. I call myself a contemporary impressionist."
Then Crimi advised the viewer that "You have to be patient. Just take your time and keep putting paint on the canvas.
If you just keep putting the paint on the canvas, eventually you're going to get to where you want to go."
He gave lots of instruction and uplifting advice."Painting is something you feel as well as see. After all these years I tell people that painting is an expression of your soul and how you feel about it. Especially when you are painting from your imagination and you have nothing to look at.
"All you have to do is do it. Don't be too critical of yourself if you're painting. Just keep painting. I tell people that the worst thing you can do if you hate the painting is start all over again by painting the canvas black and begin again. I have a bunch of paintings when I first started that I must have painted 10 or 12 paintings on the same canvas. Those people who bought those have no clue that there are that many paintings underneath those canvases."
Crimi's phone number is 781-871-5333. He loves to hear from viewers, and wants you to know that most of his works are available for private acquisition, maybe even the actual painting from this show.
