"Light Filled Forest" Exhibition began.

The wall is small but the space is lovely and the new work looks great.

Link to the exhibition space, Grand Art Supply here. Greg has a great supply of art supplies, and best prices too. Knows a lot, so you can ask intelligent questions and get intelligent answers rather than marketing in reply.

"Water Cycle" 23 x 9 inches.

During the reception an unexpected number of people, many established artists, were most interested in the piece I thought was most challenging; nonstandard composition – all were non standard format, and very unusual color and tone use. All the way around it was a painting done for me, that appears, again, to be connecting well to the patrons.

This is an interesting phenomenon, pushing edges and sometimes it works. And it often depends on how confined our thinking is; at a workshop a while back one student described a display piece as wrong because it was centering the focus in the center. She also said it was a great painting but that it was still wrong. Interesting, yes?

So "rules make bad paintings" came about from that point on and was talked about afterwards too since we had an optional afternoon session of plein air and there's no better place to work on our edges than plein air. It is a crush of opportunity, too much to work with, energy all around and decisiveness a must.

The student who couldn't compose fluidly also did not join the plein air portion of the workshop, interesting, yes? There is no safety or control out on site, at least not for ages and ages, until one is beating up all preconceptions and simply forced to try new ways through it all.

Here's the first day of working on "Water Cycle"

This is a lovely time of year to paint, spring, before things are sprouting and blooming and unfurling much. The mud colors and neutrals are excellent and one gets to use a new palette now not useful during the rest of the year. Browns and gray, touches of color and always the soft greens of lichen and moss running vertically up trees.

Things had begun their march to blossom. The spring beauties made a carpet and I learned to use them for their weather casting potential: they protect their pollen by turning down if it really is likely to rain and close. Today they were mostly turned down and mostly closed when I arrive on site, so no surprise to feel a mistiness begin that you can see here is tented, sheltered, sealed against. 

No avail, after twenty minutes it was clearly going to mist a long time and I packed up and left. 

This is the hazard of outdoor work—you sometimes need to contemplate things instead of rush to them. 

I want to comment on one of the grand inspirations in art, Robert Genn, who recently was given a deadline, read about it here: a marvelous spirit and worth an hour at his artist newsletter website (the link) and you may wish to also google him and see expanded info there.

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.

"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.

"Life Force Jewel #4" A.K.A. "Jane's Little Cutie" since the buyer and I took months to finally be in the same town at the same time with the painting.

This was an experiment in delicacy and understating the forms, done on Belgian Mist Wallis sandpaper with a gouache underpainting. The swamp where I have been working for the last year and a half has great forms and the late day light must cross a row of trees on the Western edge to strike the standing ones, no longer alive, that stand about the wetland.

After the first few months, I started to collect information about this wetland, which has only been flooded for about five years, hence, the mature trees. When I first discovered this area, there were many more trees with bark still surrounding the wood and this has almost entirely changed. The painting here was done at the transition point, when I first came upon the swamp and there were still many trees with bark shrouded in lichen and moss.

Here's where I plug in my mea culpa band aid about the long delay to actually getting the blog up and talking. More regular postings are on the schedule, however, coming back to this, I've much to post so I'll give a summary of the highlights:

Recognition:
• May thru early Nov 2007, outdoors painting 30 or 40 hours a week. It was great!
Met a mink at my usual swamp
• Oct 2007, juried into the Degas Pastel Society
• Nov 2007, two pieces included in the Springfield Museum of Art plein air show
• Nov 2007, one of the paintings at the Springfield show sold, "The Fall of Albert". It was the only painting to sell at that show.
• Dec 2007, interviewed on Insectapod.com, episode #6: My series on Coleoptera earned this attention, give it a listen it's light and has a couple of thumbnails of the work. These were last winter's answer to the weather in mid-Michigan.
• Jan 2008, two paintings accepted to the National Pastel on Paper Show, Wichita Kansas, exhibit runs March thru April
• Jan 2008, awarded scholarship to paint in Tucson March 2008
• Jan 2008, painting accepted into the Texas Nation Art Exhibit
• Jan 2008, scheduled for two-month solo show at Mackerel Sky spring of 2009


Work:
• Working larger, sold the first 18"x18" studio piece painted from a site piece at the reclamation area near MSU
• Studio/indoor assignments this winter include working at the entomology department specimen museum. And, after doing a short class in portraits, I'm negotiating access to the symphony to sketch. Other figure sources have been elusive. However, it is February and the inclement weather can't last. If nothing else, I will be in Tucson painting for eight days next month.