"Morning at Salt Creek" Oil on Linen Boad, 8" x 10"
This Plein Air painting of Salt Creek Estuary was painted on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula. We have it all - from soaring mountains and placid lakes to roaring waterfalls and ocean beaches. I painted this small painting on a summer morning when the air was cool. It heated up quickly and I finished in just under two hours before the sun reached my easel. The blues appear quite intense on my screen but are in reality more subdued.
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"Tea and Mandarins"Oil on Linen mounted on Board, 8" x 6"
SOLD
I've been doing some small alla prima paintings to post on Daily Paintworks and this little piece is my latest. The crystalline glaze teapot was a gift many years ago and has remained my favorite over the years. I love it's shape and the way it holds light very softly. I've painted it in a dozen different ways in both alla prima and a very polished high realism.
"In Cool Light"6" x 8", Oil on Linen, Board Mounted
White Begonias are fun to paint. There are so many petals on them. White has its own itinerant challenges in that the shadows become vague and difficult to read. However, that gives the artist a little more license. As every color on the canvas is relative to every other, this might apply to any subject. But white invites you to tint in subtle way. I found yellow, pink and violet tones in these which made the cold of the white in north light, just a hint warmer and the shadows, just a note cooler. I want to try them again, but change the relationships a bit. Hmm. Blue shadows? That would be different for me. In case you haven't noticed, ahem. I've been doing a bit of alla prima work. Quite different from my more polished work, this white begonia floral, was done wet in wet in a single sitting.
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One of the reasons I enjoy painting florals is because of the challenge. They're elusive, delicate and subtle. All very difficult qualities to attain in a painting. Also their edges always intrigue me. Not all the edges should be painted as if they are important. Some should fade into the background while others should be sharp and come forward. The key words here are "as if", because all edges are important. They all add to the whole picture. So while one petal may not appear as important as its neighbor, it's quality adds to the delivery of the whole painting. Hmm. Did you get that?
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"Poor Man's Silver" Oil on Oil Primed Linen, Mounted on Board
This one seemed to sit on my easel forever. In my determination to rise to a challenge, I placed the bowl in the rear against the back wall of my set up. But the problem arose when I had to move the set up in order to prepare the studio for teaching. Normally everything is taped down, but this bowl just didn't want to stay put and kept rolling around and shifting it's angle. I finally gave up trying to get it over time and just repainted it in one long sitting. Phew. Done. I was happy with the background on this one as I experimented more with broken color placing warm against cool to create the atmosphere I was after. I entered it in this year's OPA National Competition along with "Tea for One". Oh well. What's $45.00? You gotta keep trying, right?
"Tea for One"Oil on Linen Mounted on Board, 11" x 14"
My friend Anne, routed out her lovely kitchen looking for pieces that I could add to still life and I settled on this little tin teapot. One of my students is a farmer and has been bringing me these wonderful brown eggs. Actually, of late, they are many different colors, but these just happened to be creamed coffee color and so that's what ended up in the painting. Some days, I decide which ones I'll eat by how many I have left of a certain color.
I'm happy with this piece. I find that since I left the atelier, I have internalized my teacher's voice. Drives me crazy. But it also keeps me honest with myself. I don't settle anymore. And if it's not my best effort, it doesn't leave the easel. Hope you like it too.
I've been heavily involved heading up a local event here in Port Angeles for the last five months. The event, "Paint the Peninsula", was a plein air competition which lasted five days and included a barbecue kickoff, a wonderful cocktail party at Camaraderie Winery and a Gala black tie event and show, all culminating in a Quick Draw competition and mini festival. That, in turn, was followed by a three day workshop offered by Ned Mueller, our judge. It was grueling as I not only helped to run and coordinate the event, but hosted two house guests and participated as well. Twenty years ago, this wouldn't have been a problem. Currently with a fresh back injury, it was like running two marathons back to back. I'm done. Stick a fork in me.
Anyway, with all this work on my plate (no pun intended), this weekend was the first time in a few months I've actually had to get in my studio, turn out the overhead lights and just paint. No phone ringing, no other work to do and no students. Just me and the set up and the quiet. This photo doesn't begin to capture the light in the painting. It has a bit more contrast in this photo too than is in the painting which I've tried to fix on Photoshop, but then I lose other stuff. Darn. The camera is still new to me and I'm a poor student of photography. Well, I'm going to have to cave and take some lessons. I did better with my Canon, but the Nikon is a little trickier.
I work under north light from a large cathedral style window which brings in soft, cool light. It's more noticeable when you see it live, but there's some broken orangey color in the background peeking through that helps to give the painting an airy feeling. Still working toward achieving that special quality of light that evokes a soft moodiness. I'm coming more and more to the point where I copy less of what I see and add more to the painting of what it needs. I'd like to get to that place with portraits as well. All good things in their time.
I've been painting small nudes lately. I think there's an intimacy about them that you can't get with larger paintings. Also the the size allows me to do more of them and experiment with abstracted backgrounds. Abstraction is something I'm deeply interested in. Don't get me wrong - I'm very much entrenched in representational work and have no intention of changing that. But any artist who has trained, knows that a good abstract design lies at the heart of every successful painting. For a long time I've been scribbling in sketch books ideas that I have for combining these two genre's. Yes, I know there are other artists out there who have done this quite successfully. There probably isn't anything new under the sun and I'm not out to reinvent the wheel. But I have to go where my muse leads or my work will get stale. I think the exploration of new horizons is a call that many artists hear but don't follow out of fear of losing sales. What I've found is that when I paint something I love, others love it too. So. Onward into the new frontier. Er, somewhat. I think you'll still see a lot of my traditional stuff here as I continue to forge new paths. As it goes with many experiments, sometimes the lab blows up.
Well, this was fun. This started out to be a small exercise in value and temperature - my favorite subject for exploration, and ended up taking more than a few hours to get right. Still, it was a lot of fun and the results were worth it. What's really surprising to a lot of my students, though, is that it took me as long as it did. They've seen me whip out larger pieces in half the time. But these days I'm taking a bit more time with my work in tweaking things. I think the lesson here is that we are our own worst or hardest critic. I'd like to think that I'm learning to be a hard critic of my own work. Sure I can find a lot wrong with my work, but more importantly, I'm better able to answer the question; "did I achieved what I was after?" Starting a painting without a concept in mind is a lot like taking a road trip without a map. Sure, you may get to a lot of interesting places, but you won't necessarily get anywhere you started out wanting to go. So these days, before sitting down to paint even a small thing like this little ditty, I try to have a clear goal in mind. That way, I can answer the question, "was the trip worth the goal?" If I've actually learned what I was after to find out, then even if the painting is a dud, I've been a success.
