Golf Course Gone Wild

A fine artistic benefit of the city closing a golf course has been the return to a lovely savanna like park of rolling land and scattered trees. The grasses grow tall and sway gold in the late fall ... and then they mow it! It's unattractive for a while but I like that they are selling the virtually pesticide free hay.

Here are a couple of the tiny paintings from there, and it'd be lovely to do more soon, before it does get sold for condo development (can you say, there's a housing glut?)

Working title is 'tiny skinny I'

'Tiny skinny II' below:

Some of what's fun to paint there:
• Juniper and pine, arborvitae and other evergreens with the orange and green problems
• Opportunity to look deeply at light as it falls between trees at differing depths from the painter, this is excellent to see how much a few degrees can matter in whether something is contra lit or flat front lit, sometimes both in the same tree
• A small pond that can be used for relief from the pattern of similar size forms against the grass
• The chance to paint dead weeds! So fun for pastel handling and mark making, great rusty colors of dock and dried umbels of Queen Ann's Lace
• Shadows in tall grass and trees that shade one another
• ...and at this time of year its a chance to get away from the "wall of green" that is happening most other places in the mid west.

Working titles will change after I have a few more in the group.

Go to the Driftless6/10.blogspot site where I posted about some nice wool, fingerless mits a friend made for me. Tomorrow promises to be a good morning for painting with them and I'll photograph them.

She made them from felted old sweaters.

Tomorrow I paint a new site in town. It's near one I was working on last weekend. Both were passed along to me by a new painting bud, Doug D who I'll be joining tomorrow morning.

Last weekend, those funny spectators were out. The park has a well established frisbee golf course and regular players even at 8 in the morning. So I positioned myself in the middle of a lovely field and painted dead pines against the light.

After an hour and a half, a woman came trudging with her dog across the field, shouting "what are you doing?" I thought she was calling to the dog who could have used some management. But her discipline the dog voice was directed at me:

"What are you doing?"

"Painting."

"It's so ugly now, you should have been here in Oct...those trees over there were yellow ..."

And so it went for a while. She had posed herself in front of my view and the dog was yelping and lunging at me. I asked if she wanted to look at the painting.

"Oh, you added color that isn't there. Those trees are ugly."

And so on for a little while more until I asked if she'd like my card.

"Yes, then I can call you and tell you when it's pretty out."

Funny.

Photos tomorrow.

Wisconsin painting.
Mid October presents another painting week in Door County with my painting buddies, yahoo! It will be beautiful though I haven't painted there so late in the year. This also presents a chance to work with the GPS markers I've planted over the last six months as painting sites.

I'm particularly interested in the sites I marked after the competition in July, when one of my new friends there walked me around and pointed out likely places. Many of the other sites are terrific and well tested.

The group will be dynamic and interesting as the range of talent is broad. Paint, paint, paint, crit, art talk and the next chorus is the same.

"Green Begins in March" is a working title for this late winter painting done last year. 6x6 inches, pastel and gouache on sandpaper.

As usual, it is en plein air pastel on sandpaper and the location was a farm copse with a pond during the winter and spring. What was interesting was the bits of green, of course, which after a winter can seem dramatically strong. Also, the tremendous blue band of shadow which because the overall terrain was pale, dead grass, took up the reflection of sky deeply. A hazard here became apparent as I watchrd the foreground tree shadow sweep quickly to the right and change the composition to uninteresting ... another reason to be decisive at the beginning and design immediately.

During this season of painting, I was also chasing the blanched quality of light which also indicates winter and some other conditions. The damp, light absorptive tree trunks made a dramatic and graphic contrast with line-based statements.

The gouache underpainting can be tough in winter weather, however, it pays off as a design tool for me beyond what a thumbnail can do. Thumbnails are great exercises and can produce good paintings, but my own do not excite me with the moment and the energy like an underpainting can. The potential handicap can be that I fall in love with the underpainting and am hesitant to obliterate it. Risk all to gain.

Here is another from that season:

"Forebearer to Spring" is likely to be another working title. 9x12 inches, pastel and gouache on sandpaper.

Working titles are a way to tie together the image and a word or two or three. Sometimes the title process can be the most difficult part of it all, or perhaps the organizing of that process is not yet well enough developed in my work flow. "Dead Pine with Friends" was a working title that was not going to do anything useful in the wide world, but still recalls the painting more thoroughly.

These two paintings remain labeled with working titles, at least until I sit down to do formal ones.

"Reclamation Pond, Dusk" Detail 6x18 inches, pastel and gouache on sandpaper.

This detail is one of several underpaintings I set myself up with to work on later. The goal is to set down the initial structure and go back, speed and decisiveness practice. This was painted last week, about Aug 17.

"First Light", 3x18 inches, pastel and gouache.

Another long skinny from painting at the very formal Victorian garden in town, this one is probably sold, maybe sooner than later since I have two entities vying for it. What was fun with this painting is that blanched quality of light when it's so angular and bright and contrasts strongly with the equally angular shadows ... all with light touches of roses, bar berry and blue shadow colors.

And with this painting, there is a "going in and in" that people have described with some of my work. What I understand that to be is an effective illusion of space, detail, atmosphere.

"Watching Fog Rise", 9x12 inches, pastel and gouache, 5:30 am during the Door County Invitational Plein Air Competition, week of July 19 thru the 28th.

"Shadows and Light: Perfect Moment" Pastel on Wallis with gouache underpainting, 9x12 inches.

The festival wrap up was yesterday so I'll post a summary to cover the week, photos here and there, therefore it'll be a longish one.

The painting above was highly energized, lots of interest while I painted it. It was done at the site I chose for my demo site. It's a real nice gallery in Sister Creek called Fine Line Designs and represents several of the artists invited for this competition. It could have sold five or six times this week – from the moment the preview opened at 5 pm on Friday until Sunday.

A very fun woman bought the piece at the preview auction and I'd had a lot of fun talking to her all week long, one of the palette sponsors who are an art committed group who purchased access to a number of extra events where we invited artists could talk and socialize with them.

Beginning on Sunday with stamping and ending the next Sunday at 2:30, the painting was full on, the events were full on and the people were full on...I didn't have time to see the other work until I walked the final two on Sunday!

Sales were good, I painted 16 or 17 paintings, even though working with an equipment handicap from Tuesday on. (Best laid plans.)

Kudos to the volunteers, staff, director and board members of the Peninsula School of Art, this event was incredibly complex, intense and entirely well organized. When the Tuesday disaster struck my equipment and I was without a working easel the school stood behind me and ordered a replacement along with helping me get back on my feet to paint. A really incredible group of people dedicated to art.




"Solitude" 12x16, pastel and gouache on Wallis. This painting was done the first evening and remains one of my favs though you're seeing it here as the photo on site which has shadows of grass across it. There are many incredible painting locations here which I didn't get to yet and will likely return to paint sometime late in the year – both winter and fall are said to be stunning.

This really was incredible and it really was intense – so much beauty and work.

I'll be staying with another host tonight and return home tomorrow. After that more info and photos from the event when I settle back in at home.