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Summer travels

Friday, August 13th, 2010

When I’m back in Dallas blogging regularly again, these photos will be posted on the photography website. An unplanned extra trip from Alberta to Ottawa; in Ontario a second time, means I won’t be back until the first week of Sept. Here are a few photos I took on the shores of Lake Superior just east of Wawa, ON.

Viper’s Bugloss

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Viper’s Bugloss, 18 x 25 inches Dry Pastels on paper. With pink buds and blue-violet flowers along tall stems, it’s tempting to bring these wildflowers in as cut flowers, but the plants’ properties make the skin itchy and sore, so are best enjoyed left where they are, growing in masses beside the highways in eastern Ontario during the summer. I was curious about the name… according to the Encyclopedia of Herbs and Herbalism edited by Michael Stuart (c. 1979, 1987 ISBN 0-9999-48911), they were formerly one of the most respected plants used for the treatment of viper’s venom.

Visitor

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Raccoon, 11 x 11 x 3 inches acrylics on canvas, sides painted. I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead on this one..it has a watercolor airiness to it.

Jone’s Falls

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Jone’s Falls, near Thousand Islands, Southern Ontario 11 x 11 x 3 inches acrylics on canvas, finished. April 11, finished: I scratched some barely noticable lines here and there, and they break up the space into sections now, if you compare the 3rd thumbnail and the finished piece. This is exactly why paintings need to sit off to the side for a while. With new eyes a few weeks or months later the finishing touches will suddenly be obvious, or there will at least be renewed confidence about what else to try that might work..

Left, February 28: mapping out composition by washing off damp paint with a wet cloth. Central and right, March 1: experimenting with limited palette, work in progress.

Dancing With Trees

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Dancing With Trees (# 3), 85 x 45 x 3 inches Acrylics on canvas, name changed from Your Majesty, and the signature piece for the Majesty of Trees solo exhibition. There is no black in this painting; the darkest areas are dioxazine purple. Aside from a couple of areas that are still questionable this painting is now finished. Specifically: I’m not sure about adding shadows and contrast on the bark of the main trees because it may take away from the cheerful expression of colors.

Progress in previous posts: January 19th and 30th

I’d also like to change the name of the exhibition to Dancing With Trees because I discovered there is a book with the title ‘Majesty of Trees’; I don’t want it to seem plageurized, but also the new title seems overall more suitable for the collection. All the proposals from now on will be entitled Dancing With Trees , but the show still opens under the original one.

* Thanks Karen for your perspective, I really do appreciate it *

Tulip Season

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

1) 2006 2) 2009 in progress 3) finished today

Finished today: added some life to Tulip Season, 14 x 11 Oil Pastels on paper. Except for the fact that paper has a limit to how much it can be reworked before it starts stretching, I could keep revising these drawings in the Paper Places series continually. Some of them are finished in a day, and truly finished. Some drawings seem OK when they are finished, but have areas that are not quite “there” yet, so I’ll leave them for a month or a year or two then take them out and rework the whole piece. It’s great exercise playing with color and composition. Some are taken too far, which is kind of a shame as far as not having a result for the labor, but with regard to learning: effort is never wasted. Change characterizes this series; change of place, change of time, change of styles, changing what’s already been changed…

Method reflected by purpose

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Left: Hemlocks, Queen Charlotte Island, 1980 – 4 x 4 x 2 inches Acrylics on canvas, painted plein air. Right: Birch, 1993 - 6 x 4 Watercolors. I have been trying to return to the same carefree approach I painted with during the earlier years. While some of my first paintings were a little on the sloppy side, the look and feeling of life in the work comes through the first reactive sloppy-looking brushstrokes. Too much refining tones down that energy. It has taken about six years to rid myself of a lot of habits that developed by painting murals, like tidying up too much and mixing colors on the palette as opposed to just throwing the color onto the canvas. Not that mural painting is valued as less than canvas paintings, but they require entirely different methods, and because their intended purpose is slightly different, so is the approach to painting them. Switching back to canvas now, even if the surface is large it’s taken six years to readapt to the process of painting on canvas. All that I think I know can get in the way sometimes. In Your Majesty I’m rediscovering some of the joy that pushed everything forward in the first place. Virginia, you say that this sings and dances…well, that’s exactly how I feel while painting this one.

January 23rd work in progress:

Your Majesty 85 x 45 x 3 inches Acrylics, wrapped canvas. Today more definition was added to the trees beyond and the skyline about a third of the way down. Working on the overall movement in the composition as a whole is a really important thing to establish right from the start and keep in check all the way through until it’s finished. I think it’s more important than anything else. The values are not yet accurate, but they may not need to be completely so when finished either, because I don’t really want to tone down the colors much. Hoping I can imply tones by placing color beside color instead, the way the Impressionists did.

January 21st details:

Shadows of Summer update

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Today’s work, above: Played with color/gel washes and studied the painting a lot today, judging what needs to be changed and what should be left alone. The right side of the trunk needed definition but not with hard edges. The leaves may still too bright with that tell-tale Acrylics look, which I seriously don’t want. There was extra paint on my pallette, so I pulled out The Fourth of July and started in on that one again; may only paint that one tomorrow and set this one aside to study for a while before making any more marks. It may even be finished; put out of sight for a while I will know at a later date.

September 21: Phase 6, started gaining more confidence with the trunk and some of the motion via abstract that I’m searching for. After a lot of work softening shadows and contrasts on the trunk by adding and removing color, the leaves now need more definition and depth.

September 18th post, right detail image: The upper bark is too pink, keeping it on the same plane as bright leaves on the side; am building up the layers of color and have put most of the work into the shadows so far…so now maybe it’s time to start basking in the light! Also just started to play with space implied by streaks of color and washing out areas…see detail, right. The painting may become subtly cubist. Also still hoping a more unique title hits me while working!

Eastern White Pine

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Eastern White Pine 18 x 24 inches Oil Pastels on paper, framed size 21 x 27 inches

Finished today, and the first drawing in a long time that I didn’t stop to document along the way…that breaks the momentum of work sometimes. This one kind of flew out for a change! It can be viewed in Arlington, Texas at AVAA’s 32nd Annual Regional Juried Art Exhibit, February 15 – March 28, 2008.