Field at Mineral Point

It looks a lot better in person. Sometimes you get a nice image from the camera, but I just don't think this is the best one. That said, the painting is done and since it is 36" X 48" it is impressive for size alone. It took about a month to complete: plenty of time to paint it, but also plenty of time to carry an image through one's thinking. By that I mean that a painter is thinking of the next step and (shall I call it meditating?) how it will be painted; does what I painted look alright to me now and next morning. Sometimes there are more hours thinking after the day's work is done -- thinking while watching tv or eating dinner. I remember when I was working on other jobs not art related and thinking/wishing that I was painting. So all of you painters working at non-art related work, you can still carry out your art in your thought life.

Old Sawmill

This is the old sawmill which is no longer in use at the John C. Campbell Folk School at Brasstown, North Carolina. It was the tin roof all rusted and colorful that attracted me to painting this. I took away a utility pole and converted it into a tree and added a tree where there wasn't one. If you look at the second picture you can see that I painted this on a picec of canvas taped to a piece of cardboard rather than put on stretcher bars. I thought I would try something new (to me), something I have seen other artists do. I found it to have a nice feel and it allowed me to just do the painting without worrying about fitting it onto a certain size stretched canvas. When it's dry I will take it off and stretch it to 10" X 16" stretchers and have to have a custom made frame. After working on a 36" X 48" canvas over the last month it was a relief to finish one in about two days.

Mineral Point painting

This is another stage in the painting I've been working on for the last several weeks. I've gone down the right hand side and center putting in the weeds, reeds, rocks and snow. Right now I am in the midst of working on the left hand side (will post that soon) and making adjustments as needed. You just can't "complete" one piece of the painting without making changes to what you thought was finished elsewhere. My plan is to enter this in the Farms and Barns show this fall. If the painting does not sell there I will offer it on the Xanadu Gallery website -- I am one of their "Studio" artists. I have about ten of my paintings for sale on their website at any one time.

Secret life of the artist part 8

....at least I think this is part 8....I haven't looked to see if I'm in numerical sequence. I think I started this "Secret Life of...." series when I came back from the John C. Campbell Folk School some years ago. The point of it is, of course, that artists often have many abilities, some undiscovered. My wife and I were down in Brasstown, North Carolina at the Campbell school. She quilted as she usually does and meets the same excellent teacher and many returning friend quilters. I have to find a class for myself or else I just go painting in the local area. As I did last year, I chose Woodturning. Pictured first is my Woodturning instructor, Steve Ainsworth. My wife took this picture and got him to smile. In the classroom he is quite a bit more serious, but yet funny and helpful. He does some incredible bowl turning and turns pewter as well. Last year he told us if we take Woodturning again, to take someone else. Well, I was so excited to see that he was teaching the same week as my wife's favorite instructor that I signed up immediately, but with a little trepidation. All was well and I found a groove and turned (woodturned) out twice as much work as I did last time.

The next picture has three "natural" edge bowls -- bowls with the bark still on. The other picture has two bowls and a goblet with a captured ring. At times I had 4 to 6 inches of wood shavings at my feet. The next thing for me is to find the funds to buy a lathe of my own. All this will take time away from painting, but bowl turning is fun -- tough, but fun. The last picture is of the large painting that I'm working on -- the "Starting with a mess" painting. I prepared to work down into the foreground reeds, snow and rock. I'm much further on now and will be posting soon.

Painting a tree

These are three images of the tree in the landscape I'm working on: the block-in, second stage and third stage. I've since added a few brushstrokes to it. What I can say about it in a few words (pictures are worth a thousand...) is that there's a simple value study to begin; light and dark, or sunlight and shadow with plenty of airiness from the first image to the last. I'm trying to keep it light and airy because of the tree being against the sky. Don't be afraid to pop in a few skyholes to keep it light and don't reach for anything too dark in the shadows. This takes a lot of work -- comparing, keeping the whole painting in mind without focusing totally on the one thing you are painting. And.....don't paint that trunk too dark. Yes, it's dark, but it's a dark surrounded by a light sky and a light background. It pains me to see tree trunks painted in black by new artists who haven't gone out and painted outside. I am now working on the reeds, snow and sticks in the right foreground. I was away for about 10 days on a trip to North Carolina to the John C. Campbell Folk School doing a Woodturning class. More about that later.

the mess continued

The second and third stage of the Mineral Point painting are here. Since I am quite a bit further on with the painting than these images, I actually feel quite good about it. Mr. Hall, responding to a student's question about their feelings about their own work, said "You'll always feel about your art just the way you feel right now." And he was correct. No matter how accomplished you become, you still see flaws or have trouble painting certain things. Don't get all emotionally bent out of shape about it. So about this painting.... some days I like it and some days I don't, but when you are dedicated to painting you just step up to it with your brush in hand and carry on and you will soon forget that you didn't feel like painting or had any problem with it. Walk away for a while, even several days if you have to. I had started working the sky and then what's in front of it -- working from the back to the front. It's hard to get the type of edges in a tree unless the sky behind it is still wet. I've had to repaint the sky on some of my paintings just because that. I had been called away from my painting to do something else and by the time I returned to it the paint had dried. Just paint over it and carry on. This is what is so great about oil (and not great about acrylics) -- it stays wet for several days and you can work into it like it's still fresh on the first day. As I said, I'm quite a bit further on, but as I work on the background I am constantly working a wash or a few strokes into what I am going to paint next -- the foreground.

"Start with a mess..."

When I was an art student in the oil painting class, my instructor, Eugene Hall came up with a number of really good and/or oddball quotes. One of them was: "Start with a mess, it can only get better". I was traveling in southwestern Wisconsin to the town of Mineral Point, a town that has a good number of artisans -- artists, woodworkers and potters. The small photo you see clipped to the right side of the canvas was taken in the morning one day. Most of the days I was there were cold and dark, but this was a sunny morning. Since I had stretched two 36" X 48" canvases at the same time and finished painting one of them, I have been waiting for a subject to carry on with the next canvas.

I like to get information onto the canvas quickly and so wielding a large brush I began to block in areas of darks and some shapes to help locate things. So you see the result of starting with a mess. I even begin paintings that become quite accurately drawn later this way. I just don't like forcing myself into a "paint by number" scenario where you feel compelled to color in your drawing --- that's not painting. In case you find yourself lost here, the foreground is snow and grassy plants making their way uphill with a high hill on the left and a far away backgound to the center right. I've never followed a painting from start to finish taking pictures along the way, but I am going to try. I am going to try my best to do the kind of job I want on this painting or else this will get painted over, or possibly destroyed if I don't like it when it's finished. Talk about pressure.... Anyhow, starting with a mess allows you to come about the painting slowly and find new things. Today I found a circular path of darks which I intend to use as a compositional device. If I thought I had an audience, I would write Eugene Hall's biography. He was an outstanding teacher and an even better person.