"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.

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.

It's been a long haul getting back to writing this blog, a few highlights from the interim:

Began a new format on site, what I call my *big* paintings. Compared to the tiny "Jewels" at 6x6 inches the more recent format of 24x9 inches seems large. These two are not completed, left 'em just how I ended the session in the wet spring a while back. 

The titles are working titles so ya know...

 The Flood and Beech 

The river beyond the tree was flooded, muddy brown wonderful, and the April coolness kept the trees in that lovely pink, cloudy mauve period when they just begin to sprout out their blossoms and leaf sheaths. 

Beech trees have very thin bark and in our neck of the woods the temps can freeze them so they split, this looks to be the case, but it's hard to know for sure. She's repaired the wound and climbs on up higher. 

Also interesting is the development of very rough bark on the base, under that zippy green moss. 

This is an old tree with many stories observing the life spans of swimmers and gliders down the river. 

By the way, if you don't already own Forest Forensics, go get a copy.

Green Skin and Root Beer Pond

Nice comparison of Beech and Plane trees with shade over a vernal pond, fun challenge that blue/rust/green reflecting thing. 

This wetness was great fun to paint, and kept the people traffic low but lead a few weeks later to the mosquito hatch of the century! 

The spring melt and warm sitting water was consistently followed by torrents of rain so that the river didn't drop down to it's usual level until late in summer and the vernal ponds remained — an extension of surface area for biting reproduction.

It kept me outta the woods most of the next three months after trying, trying, trying all manner of protection; with the right bug dope my skin was safe but the little nasties flew into my nose! 

Couldn't deal with that. 

And, the mosquitos were heavily supplemented by black flies. 

That's all past and I have another stack of work from the experience. 

Show scheduled for September, probably small things, no idea what yet, several tiny projects in the works. 

Last August I was featured in the pastel magazine for the largest French language how to art magazine in France. (I know, that was a long one!) And on the cover too. The magazine is quite lovely, sometimes, somewheres available in North America but the pastel supplement, sadly, is only available in France.

Praqtique des Arts, available link here.

Anybody else out there painting, what are you working on? Does this too-much-green phase in the midwest have a comparable challenge elsewhere?

http://www.pratiquedesarts.com/

Thoughts from previous drafts not posted...


Painting larger pieces and working with the composition of larger fields/grounds/surfaces and substrates is like all other areas of growth. That old Quantum Mechanics saw of "unintended consequences" comes into play. Especially with a less than perfectly solid easel. The pieces are 24x18 and I find that the entire approach has changed in order to prevent me from mistreating the composition.

Here's a list of thoughts about painting:

Rules make lousy paintings. Eg, 'never put the subject in the center'.
The only thing that works is working.
Observation is better than instruction.
Fear can help unpeel the dangerous entre into good painting, risk all.
Let go of the previous look and dive into a subject that resists your style.
Get control of values, there is no sense in color until this is reached.
Don't color in!
No crayoning-in with the materials, the scrub must be also one stroke perfect.
Eliminate the need for recognition for mediocre work, this will kill all good things.
Burn your "children" – the paintings that have become too precious but still are stuck in mediocre or even poorer quality.
Find out why you paint.
Learn who you paint for.
Determine what ratio of your drive is from inside, and from outside you.
It's okay to screw up, do it as often as possible. But recognize it for what it is, see it clearly for good screw ups or foul screw ups.
Work even when you're away from the easel, paint in your mind and look, look, look.
Set a light source over the whole scene, skip the details and fussiness.
A good painting is not an inventory of detail.
Play with design exercises regularly, bad paintings usually happen at the start.
Let art and self-esteem be in separate buildings!

:)

Sandy

Pastel Society of America

After Lorenz Chavez suggested that I go for the best, I looked again at Pastel Society of America. It is the pinnacle organization and I'm now a member.

There are a few other items that should be shared including the success of the Mackerel Sky Gallery show. It's really lovely and somehow the invitational artists were all on the same wavelength in submitting gorgeous greens and vibrant summer energy. Usually. Of course I sent in a painting with a subtle light falling on river quality that is a long pano format.

Mackerel Sky Gallery

Interestingly, I just saw that Henry Issacs is showing a number of these long skinnies too at a gallery we both display at in Virginia, Warm Springs Gallery. Always interesting how the landscape is seen, his are lovely and quite abstract with interesting mark making and perky color.

Warm Springs Gallery Charlottesville

Critiques: Work well spent.

In January I requested a critique from the local art museum director, second time in a couple of years. It always takes a bit of prep to get the work organized and limited to a reasonable body which can be seen in the half hour/hour we have. This time I took in old work and new work. Six large-ish pieces that I call my swamp trees and about that many new pieces also large-ish.

The earlier work was on black and the new work done in my usual technique of gouache underpainting on sandpaper. "Spooky" and "alive" were the first comments to come out of the curator and the director's mouths seeing the first, black background, early work.

The second body of work was all about the magic of a particular place, discovered last fall while we sipped up an extended Indian Summer.

Neither body of work has yet made the gallery rounds, so this was a test balloon sort of critique.

I had so much fun with this one, except that the hauling of 20x24 inches work needs to be refined, every new expansion requires a refinement in my technique, schedule, hardware or supplies. The critique was a great way to move this all forward into new territory.

More soon.

Featured in Pastel Journal Magazine, May/June 2010. The issue is on the stands and includes the new feature with my representing Michigan and a little info on painting and art in the state. Here's a link to the publisher Pastel Journal Magazine May/June 2010

Here's the frozen underpainting, even the brush froze after a few splashes and behaved more like a twiggy weed than bristles. After 30 minutes wandering around to photograph and drink coffee while waiting for the underpainting to thaw, I broke down the easel and walked over to where my painting buddy for the day was located. They weren't painting with ice cubes and were working in water colors. So it's all about location, location, location.

"Painting With Ice Cubes"

The usual gouache underpainting was not a good approach on this day and after the sun came up the temps dropped further. The top of the pond had ice and even the dribbles from my rinse container froze instantly.

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.

"Roaming Apple Tree" 8x10 inches, pastel over gouache on Uart.


Four painters roamed for four days over the Door Peninsula the third week of October this year finding it cold, cloudy and often wet. Fortunately there are many ways to find shelter and this painting was from within a row a trees against which the wind buffeted. 


The first morning I didn't set up due to continual rain that became increasingly dense. But the oil painters continued to work, some without cover, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. Being the only person working in pastels, I can't say if that was an advantage or no. 

That was the only day that I couldn't get going. After that, these wild apple trees continued to get my attention, seems like I did four or five paintings of various groups ... it says a lot about the former orcharding going on in the area.

This sample of Uart brand sandpaper worked well enough for me to want to try it again soon. The paper was mounted and nicely flat, a light tone to it to start, took the washes well and dried at least as well as Wallis which was slow only because of the really high humidity.


These old apple trees were a persistent source of sculptural forms, even holding their fruits which ranged from brilliant yellows with carmine tints to deep lipstick reds which had even darker blushes of burgundy.


I also need to announce that the group of painters on this trip and I have launched a blog for the group. Please give us a few days and then see what happens ... there is a lot of energy and with everyone so attracted to the Driftless area, or from that region, we've named the site after it. See the links to the right for the Driftless 6/10 Blog.

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.

"Indication of Spring" 6x6 pastel on sand paper.


Back in town for a few weeks between trips I have been working to wrap up pieces that were part way through and needed to be completed. This is one that I did out of my window one late winter morning and set aside for quite a while. The raking light and complexity of the distant houses made it interesting but since it is small I wanted to wait until the energy of the thing returned. It did and was an easy completion.

That's when I know the design was right, the purpose was right and the painting worth waiting for.

The underpainting was quite detailed and nearly a painting in itself. That can be a worry, too much commitment too soon and the risk of what happens in the rest of the painting process can cause all sorts of "avoidies". That is what I call the design elements, strokes or color I've become attached to.

What happens in the beginning of a painting is different from the end, so this too much too soon thing means there sometimes is not enough psychic latitude when I return to one of these to see it as a whole.

This one worked out and is a nice story of the oak leaf remnants, emerging grass among dead, dead winter sop. It's hopeful the way that sunlight can be after a long winter. It has a lot going on and is still relatively simple. Interesting too that the sand paper is a dark tone rather than the white I usually prefer. Dark and light, it's always about that.

Working title: "Dusk" 6x18 pastel on sand paper, Door County Wisc.

This piece shows quite a bit of underpainting and the delicacy that I most enjoy and with which I have wrestled over the summer to incorporate into larger pieces. It is a light touch that works well in the smaller pieces and was elusive as I changed subjects, format and size. 

Coolness but lightness in the shadows of this June painting were a direct contrast to the startling radiance of light striking the aspen. Deep dark pines in shadows with a few cedars also in shadow in the upper right. The scene is a long abandoned homestead, hence the irises in the sunlight area along with other garden flowers in a now weedy field. The large shrub left and background right of center were old, old lilacs long past their bloom and presenting an odd display of seed pods–a rangy color of rusty brown.

"Wetland Jewel #60" 3x18 inches, pastel and gouache on sandpaper.

The colors of fall are showing up and the raking light emphasizes it much more.

"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.