This painting was a challenge. The original, self-inflicted challenge was to make a non-specific chunk of the landscape look interesting just by painting it well. I was not successful in doing that. The true day was overcast and the first swipe at this looked dull and flat. My new assignment then was, save the painting!
To save the painting, I manufactured drama by forcing the pretend sun out and moving the pretend atmosphere in. The desert has no humidity so very distant things, on a still day, can keep much of their color. On a windy day, there will be dust in the air, which will alter the distance visually but keep it in the warmer end of the spectrum. I pushed the distance back by cooling it, which is the effect produced by denser air. It's risky, messing with Mother Nature like this. I've long felt that to be honest, I must be ruthlessly true to my subject but I'm beginning to believe that, as an artist, the greater truth is told when one is true to oneself and to the work of art as a separate entity from its inspiration.
I never posted a few of the paintings I wanted to show you from our plein air trip to New Mexico. I will do so now. This is one: a zig-zaggy view of the rugged landscape around the northern part of the state. I was laughing so hard on the road to this place, tempting fate as we were; our campsite was not too far away and we were exploring the vicinity in our little Mini Cooper. Not a great off-road vehicle, with it's really neato low-profile tires and ground-hugging stance. In my imagination, they would find our bones one day and say, "Too bad about the dead people but wow, cool car and really great painting!" I would not have died in vain.
I'm back from the 2012 Salon International and this was my first year to win nothing. I'm encouraged by the calibre of work there, however, and the overall commitment to excellence that I saw. My heart just soars when it settles on the knowledge that representational art is not lost to the ages but is enjoying such a resurgence.
Well, back to the present here at Scarlet Sage Gallery: Silent Symphony! This is a 24x18 inch painting. The title is supposed to summarize the idea that, while there are swirling, active, noisy things going on in the shapes and colors and patterns around her body and in her mind, yet the woman lies quietly; silent outside of herself, but within her mind there is music, dialogue, intrigue, excitement!
I approached the painting in the same way: layering the quiet passages so that they would culminate in activity that at once excites and relaxes, if that makes sense. I don't know if everyone hears a story that they read silently, but I do. When I'm alone and reading, if I suddenly respond out loud, my own noise startles me with the realization that it is actually silent everywhere but in my mind.
Well, thank you for coming back!
Keli reads from a book of sonnets. William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" could have been written for her:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This is one of my favorite paintings. My beautiful model spent quite a little while in the pool, posing for me in her long gown. She took this shell from the side of the pool and listened to it with no direction, proving to me once again that, while good art often requires much orchestration, sometimes it is simply recognizing a beautiful composition when you see it!
In real life, my model is a competitive swimmer and a lifeguard, born in Hawaii and thus no stranger to water. To me, she is Ariel, Daughter of King Triton and Queen Athena, communing with one of her subjects.
This painting is 20x16 oil on linen~ I hope you like it.
Keli, my model and sweet young friend, is the subject of this painting. She is an athlete who loves to read and who never wears a dress. To pose her in a dress with a parasol is funny only to us because we know who she is. She is also a romantic and lovely woman, though she hasn't fully embraced this aspect of herself. I see it, and she sees it when she looks at paintings I've done of her. It has been a joy exploring the potential of ourselves in this series of parasol paintings.
This piece, 24x18 oil on linen (like the painting below), framed in gold, is in the International Museum of Contemporary Masters of Fine Art and is currently in the 2012 Salon International hosted by Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, Texas.
This is Chelsea, one of my favorite models. I met her at the Salon International in 2011 and she began modelling for me shortly afterward. This painting of her is in the International Museum of Contemporary Masters of Fine Art and is currently in the 2012 Salon International (see banner below), the very locale of our first meeting!
It is a profound blessing to be able to spend time with such a beautiful person, working together to try to create something that is also beautiful.
The concept of this painting was light temperature and the pose explores line. The contour on the left side of the figure is one long, graceful line. The complement of this, on the right side of the figure, is the quick and active line of the parasol points and the tops of the model's hands. The color scheme is also complementary: red and green. This yin and yang energizes an otherwise quiet composition and hopefully excites and satisfies the viewer at the same time.
Thank you for stopping by!
The purpose of this painting was to study the light on the model and mix the exact value, temperature and color spot, then apply it in a stroke. No blending, no "licking" (a term used to describe repeated strokes in the same area). If a color spot is wrong, it must be scraped and repainted, but the goal was to make any mistakes on the palette. By the time the brush was touching the canvas, all the guesswork should have been done.
There is such an energy between the model and the artist when this kind of work is going on. The model is working to keep the pose and the artist is working to capture the pose, so they're unified in their purpose and exerting great electric fields of concentration. The main difference in their experience, having sat in both seats myself, is that time passes very slowly for the model and unbelievably quickly for the artist. That's why the model should be the time-keeper.
Madame G reminds me of John Singer Sargent's Madame X.
She's one of my favorite models and I painted her all day recently, studying the non-linear approach to portrait painting.
In the top shot, you see her on the model stand in the background. In the foreground, you see my stage-2 effort to capture her. Stage-2 is the light and shadow shapes, plus the next dark and next light shapes. For the most part, the color on her cheeks and lids is the same value and temperature as the light.
Beneath that is a canvas that I used half of in the morning and half of in the afternoon. The morning work is the upsidedown image on the left, showing my first stage-1 effort. My purpose at this stage was to show only the shape of the light as it bathed her face and dark value shape surrounding that. Rightside-up-side is a shot of stage-3 from later that same day. The details were just beginning to reach expression: more value and color were added to the light shape, letting the contours of her face emerge. Had I continued, I would have next blocked in the light of her hair and then the background. I only hope that this beautiful woman would have become more and more beautiful on the linen, that I might return the honor of her posing. Thanks for your visit.
I promised you I'd cover the Clayton Beck workshop and all I learned there. This was my favorite: paint small, quick studies working up from the darkest light and the lightest dark on the model. It required the most strict concentration and restraint on my part but it forced my brain to actually understand some things that it only thought it understood until now. These flanking paintings were the most successful, in my opinion. The more detail I added in these paintings, the weaker they got and the less I liked them. Food for thought.
I did 2 paintings at Longpool in Arkansas; this is the afternoon painting. The morning painting was weaker and my excuse is that I was suffering from motion sickness after the windy backseat ride to this primo spot. This was my "window of well," as the trip back was worse and that evening was the only time that I didn't go out on the town with my peeps after painting :-( But that was the night that I got to paint the cooling tower so it was not a total loss. This 8x10 was done in the shade on top of a cliff, looking through an opening to the longpool below. I was mostly in love with the sinewy arm of the tree trunk, twining down to the determined fingers of the roots that grabbed and clung to the side of the cliff. It reminded me of a strong old man.
I have a hat. It's a ballcap that has flashlights in the bill. I'm not trying to make you jealous but there are 3 of them: click once and 2 crossbeams light up and point at your palette; click twice and a super beam points straight out in front of you, at your canvas; three times and all 3 are lit and you look like a real goober :-) I found out that the front beam is too bright to use for painting in the dark, it wrecks your night vision. Also, you need to really know your palette and what your colors will do when you mix them because the eye (at least my eye) is not very color-discerning in the dark. It's kind of funny, when you think of the subject matter, that only the rods are working. Get it? It's funny on a subatomic level. This painting is also very small: 5x7. With it, I've tried to show the beauty of that cooling tower at night.
On our painting trip, we camped in the state park on Lake Dardanelle, directly across from the only nuclear power plant in the state. This is the view of the cooling tower from our site. It was endlessly fascinating to watch: sometimes the plume was small and acted like the vapor that pours from dry ice; sometimes it was a beautiful thick column of white that drifted to a graceful end at the top; other times it seemed to make its own clouds. It sort of reminded me of a vase that was filled with different flowers and every time I looked at it, I wanted to paint it. I got 2 very small (5x7) paintings done and a larger painting started, this being one of the small works.
The reflection of the plume was so clear in the foreground water but the more distant water was blown by the wind and did not offer the same clarity. I debated whether to show it as a constant reflection but elected to depict it as it actually was that day. I'll post the other one next~ thanks for visiting!
I painted this in Arkansas one afternoon, standing on the shores of Lake Dardanelle. For awhile, two of my favorite peeps were with me but they finished up and took off. Soon after that, a group of people arrived, consisting of two couples and someones mom. They sashayed past the "No Fishing From Pier" sign with their fishing gear and proceeded to fish off the pier, right across from Arkansas Nuclear One cooling tower. I tell you, it made a great poster. Their colorful lawn chairs and the big red "no fishing" sign would have made a very nice painting. I hope you'll accept this painting as a suitable substitute, since it was nearing completion when the new painting arrived.
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