The Secret Life of the Artist part 5

This is the final version of Farm at Honey Creek. Honey Creek is along route 20 in Walworth county Wisconsin. The picture is maybe a little out of focus, but that's maybe OK -- I don't want my online art thief stalker having my artwork at their disposal. The secret life....it has to do with the last two months. My wife and I have had to deal with difficult family things just like everybody else. It has meant dealing with things you don't want to, not getting enough sleep and not being able to work while all this is going on, but it has to get done. I did have four of my paintings accepted into a show at the Next Picture Show Gallery. The show is called "Influences" -- like which painters influenced your development as an artist. My paintings are my copies of work by Rubens, Rembrandt, Thomas Moran and Frenk Tenney Johnson. Here's the other part of the Secret Life of the Artist.....my choices reflect my growing interest in being able to do portraits, multiple figures in a painting, landscape and landscape with a figure and animal. As a painter you have to look ahead to what kind of things you can come up with to challenge yourself to go beyond your current level of skill. Those were huge challenges for me then as now. The Influences show opens tomorrow, August 5th, with the traditional wine and cheese reception. I will be making the two hour drive to meet people and answer questions. So....there's a little...or quite a lot about the secret life of the artist.

final version of Wyoming Sundown

This is my final version of a painting that has been in the works for over a year. There were quite a few changes since I did the last posting. Simpler was better. I redid the haystack in the foreground taking out all the little stringy brushstrokes I had put in. I also did a glaze of blue over the mountains on the right and through the middle to bring them down a bit without losing the color too much. Glazing....now there's something I learned from studying Rembrandt. Speaking of Rembrandt....I just had four of my paintings chosen for an upcoming show at The Next Picture Show gallery in Dixon, Illinois. The show is called "Influences" and will feature four of my copies (forgeries, if you will). Well I am giving full credit to Rembrandt, Rubens, Thomas Moran and Frank Tenney Johnson --- they are the real masters. Anyhow, I am having three frames made at quite an expense, so I am hoping to sell at least one of the paintings. When I was an art student my instructor, Eugene Hall, told me to go do some copies. He was right, it helped me learn color and develop skills. E. Hall was a really great guy and probably would have like Wyoming Sundown...he was a westerner.

A couple more watercolors

Once upon a time in art school, heavily under the influence of Southwest Art and magazines of that ilk, I thought I would become a Western painter. To some extent I did that for a while when I was in an Oklahoma gallery. Anyhow, I happened to come across a book of Edward Curtis' photographs of American Indians. The one painting is actually of Edward Curtis, the other is from one of his Indian photos. These were black and white photos which I painted and added the color. I guess I'm guilty, like Ted Turner of colorizing black and white photos and films.

Recent watercolors

I usually start my watercolors with no drawing, preferring instead to evolve the painting by throwing down value washes. The giraffe was done this way. The portrait was done from a book I have on Russian artists. Painting can be like sculpture -- working with the paint and brushwork to shape the object you are working with.

Wyoming Sundown -- in progress

This painting is up on the easel -- Wyoming Sundown, an oil on canvas. Should I say it's been up, down, up and down numerous times on the easel. It's only a partial shot of a larger painting and I shot the photo in terrible light. Anyhow I've been working on this intermittently confronting one problem after another. While working on it I've had to repaint several major areas, glaze over part of the mountain to get it to go back in space. I was really taken with this scene, but the painting has given me so many problems that I just can't tell whether or not I like it. The light rakes across the scene at a low angle only touching certain things. I really like what I did with the sky, mountain, foreground rocks along the road and the low grasses. It's the hay bales and ground that bother me. Maybe too much work on the closest hay bale -- it's overworked. This is why it's been set aside numerous times. This is from my excursion out west to Cody, Wyoming a couple years ago, an unforgettable trip made even more unfogettable by the difficulties of this painting.

Plein air in Wildwood

This is an 8" X 10" oil done a couple weeks ago. The day was bright and sunny and maybe my background got a little too light. The interesting part of the story is that I painted near this spot over 30 years ago when I was still in art school. The assignment was to do a landscape outdoors. I had only done a few of them and didn't know that 18" X 24" was rather large for outdoor painting, at least for a beginner. (That's nothing if your name is Joachin Sorolla or Aldro T. Hibbard.) The painting turned out good, very brushy and I wound up selling it almost immediately at the gallery that represented me at that time, after I finished art school. This was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma at Talisman Gallery that used to sell Richard Schmid. In the mean time, Jody Kirberger, the owner of Talisman has now retired, but not before selling one of my pastels before shutting the doors. Now I am on the Xanadu Gallery list of Studio artists and an artist member of The Next Picture Show Gallery.

Ambush portrait and other recent watercolors

These were done in the last two weeks. First is the ambush portrait of Michelle (dark hair), the others were done from photographs. They are all in the 7" X 10" range.