Sold!

Cottonwood in a Blizzard on Viejas Boulevard, Descanso CA
5x7 oil on Ampersand Gesso board

Old School

I decided to frame this in an ornate, old-style frame after seeing The Power of Art by Simon Schama and all of Van Gogh's paintings framed in this way. It seemed a lovely counterpoint to the brush strokes and light/dark interplay of impressionist painting, the raw color and direct strokes.

It took a while to find this frame, but I think it's perfect. The gold leads the viewer onto the trail, while the green areas, glossy and solid, focus the eye on the vortex made by the overhanging trees, their shadows, the up-reaching Manzanita, grass and wild-flowers as the trail narrows and heads up the mountain.

Pryor Mountains -- waiting for the horses!

This is a scene from a photo sent by a friend -- but the place is very familiar; it is the Pryor Mountains south of Billings! We'll see if I'm able to paint the small herd of wild horses grazing on the grass in the foreground of the picture!

So Much Fun!

This is an apple out of my refrigerator. It's also the first oil I've ever done directly from the subject without using a photo or a drawing. I like it a lot -- it's Gamblin Oil Paints on a 5 x 7 inch Ampersand Gesso Board. So much fun!

Small Paintings, Getting Ready for the Arts and Craft Fair November 19

The River Glatt, Wallisellen, Switzerland

Willow Leaves in Early Summer with Indian Paintbrush Blooming Behind

In the summer of 2000 I was in Milan. It was the kind of adventure no one wants; I’d gone in pursuit of promised love that wasn’t there. I found myself having to salvage a good experience out of a bad one. I wandered around the city every day and surprised myself constantly by what I thought I knew but didn’t, for example that there is no way of reproducing Leonardo’s Last Supper.

At the Sforza Castle -- which was filled with art before 2001, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the subsequent war, which Italy joined on the side of the Americans -- I saw a couple of fresco panels. One was St. Francis and the other Vulcan. I learned some years later where most of the paint had come from, the caves near Verona, but at that moment I saw fresco for the first time. It was luminescent, gorgeous, reflective, alive. Compared to the oil paintings hanging nearby, the frescoes were multi-dimensional, vivid while the oils were flat; greasy paint rubbed over a rather arbitrary and uncooperative surface. That’s how it seemed to me.

I resolved (partly because of the novel, Martin of Gfenn, my novel, the protagonist is a fresco painter) to take classes in fresco painting. I did this in 2006.

It was marginal. There’s a lot of work involved in fresco that has nothing to do with paint. Just getting the plaster to stick to the painting surface is hard work. The rest I liked; I liked the time limit (paint now or forget it), I adored mixing the pigment and I liked the surface. It was clearly NOT practical for a little person who lives alone and has a full time job, though. The school was in Howard Hughes former airplane hangar...

Recently I tried a new painting product, Ampersand Gesso Board. It is hardboard (like masonite) coated on the rough side with true gesso; gesso is the Italian word for chalk. In other words, it’s a “fresco” surface. I have been painting in oils and have seen how this amazing surface returns the luminosity of the frescoes with which I fell in love. The colors don’t flatten on this surface as they do on canvas. Ultramarine blue retains the miraculous sparkling beauty of the Virgin’s robes in medieval fresco, Giotto’s frescoes, for example. I paint WITH this surface whereas with canvas, I paint ON it.  I think the difference comes through clearly on these two small paintings, each 5 x 7, on Ampersand Gesso Board.

Winter Paintings on a Hot Autumn Day!

Descanso, Cottonwood Tree in a Blizzard 5 x 7 inches

Switzerland, Einsiedeln Sledding Hill 5 x 7 inches

 

 This small painting (in progress) is from a photo I took of a hiking trail on the north side of Guatay Mountain on a hike I took with Dusty (my dog) this past spring. The painting is 8 x 10 and I'm attempting to paint it all in one sitting. We'll see! Good practice for actually going outside and painting plein air someday!

Landscape, Tax Deduction, Learning Experience

Finished and framed -- three small cattle in the distance

Version 3 - dealing with the glaze that didn't work; better sky

Version 1 - First colors

Version 2 - being brave with sky

November 19 -- I donated this painting to the Descanso Townhall for its raffle to raise money for a new roof, so the piece ended up as a tax deduction! I'm very happy I saved all the versions and this story. It was a fun experience and I learned so much from it, most of all that I'm not a glaze person. I guess I think if you want to paint glazes paint water colors. But I never painted the tree and I never painted the cattle, though on the final paint

It was also the target of a scam on Etsy! It provided that experience as well.

I've wanted to paint this for ever -- well, since three years ago when I noticed beautiful, vivid yellow flowers blooming beneath a very large and interesting tree in Descanso Valley (the valley where I live). The cows love to hang out under the tree on a hot day, but they also seem to love these flowers because when they're blooming, the cattle are always there. Since they bloom in May, it's heifers and calves I see standing around the tree in the late afternoon light. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24

This is the first layer of paint -- I'm probably going to just let this painting carry me along. I had an idea of what it would be, but it seems to have its own sense of its own destiny!

More work -- not necessarily for the better -- we'll see. A glaze I tried does not make me happy and will probably go.

This is a tree in Palmer Park "The Bluffs" in Colorado Springs. When I was in high school there and things at home were rocky and weird, I would hike to this tree. Out of an ancient, dead base grew a perfectly straight new trunk. This is the tree forty years later! Still there, doing well, the small "Christmas" tree growing out of it has thrived and it is no longer so obviously the tree's second life, second chance. Oil on canvas, 8 x 10. Not for sale.

Iris in My Garden

White Iris, watercolor, watercolor pencils, gouache, 4 x 6 not for sale