Natural Light and the Landscape

Here is the flyer from my one-man show at Fermi Lab Art Gallery. the opening reception is this Friday. I'll post photos from the event early next week.

Upcoming Shows

Sorry, I haven't posted on this blog for a while but I have been busy preparing for the following 2 art exhibitions:

Natural Light and the Landscape One Man show at Fermi Lab Art Gallery
My first one-man show will be this December 8th thru February 7th at the Fermi Lab Art Gallery. The opening reception will be on December 10th from 5 to 8 pm. I will be doing a painting demo on December 15th at 11:30 to 1:00. I will be painting, talking about my art and painting in general, and fielding questions from attendees. It is free and open to the public. If you live in the area I would be glad to see you at either event. Stop by and say hello.

A Painting A Day art show at Riverbend Fine Arts Gallery
I am one of 12 artists exhibiting in a group show at Riverbend Fine Art Gallery in Bend, Oregon this December (2010). Each artist has produced 30 small works for this exhibition. Each artist was using the platform of a small painting to explore and experiment with palettes and subject matter, etc. Should be a fascinating exhibit.

Below are some 6" x 6" oil paintings from the Riverbend show.

Is Bigger Better?

This is an 11" x14" oil on linen painting "Pond Study I", I did of the Morton Arboreteum pond a couple of weeks ago. After completing it I thought it might have more impact at a larger size. So off I went to the art supply store, where I settled on a 24" x 30" canvas for the final painting. I usually like to work on paintings 18" x 24" or smaller, as my studio is rather small and I can't get far enough away from larger pieces to see them at a distance. I also often paint sitting in a chair and like to see the whole painting without getting up. These reservations aside I painted the larger painting.

This is the larger (24 x 30) painting, which I call "Dance". I named it "Dance" because the flowers in the foreground seem to dance across the paintings surface. Is it a better painting for being larger in size? I am not sure. But it does have more wall presence which I needed for my upcoming December thru January one-man show at Fermi Laboratory's Art gallery. In our society at least as far as art goes, bigger is often considered better. As for my work the jury is still out. However, I suppose once in a while, I will have the urge to paint a big painting, but when I look at the work of some of my favorite artists, for example, Thomas Aquinas Daly (who paints very moderate sized paintings) I am reminded that good art is good art whether big or tiny.

Spelling Problems, Randomness and the Painting of Flowers

Recently I have been experimenting with painting small floral pieces as a occasional respite from landscape painting. I have never been enamored of stiff looking still lifes, but I find the randomness of flowers in nature intriguing.

Here is my first painting of some flowers I saw along a path in Naperville, Illinois. It's a small painting 5 x 10 inches. I discovered something interesting creating this painting. It is that the flowers which punctuate the green background create an arc. A spiral of pink that only needed slight enhancement by me.

Here is another version with slight variation from the earlier painting. In this painting the flowers create a circular shape that leads the viewers eye. Once again nature only needed slight enhancement from me. I guess my point is that there is a natural rythym (did I spell that right?) to nature, that tends to flow in circles, spirals, ovals, etc. Straight lines seem to never exist in the natural world, only in the man made one. (So the old saw "I can't draw a straight line" should never keep a person from pursuing art if they feel the urge to do so. In fact, I doubt any human being evem Michelangelo could draw a perfectly straight line, without the aid of a ruler.)

So to get back to the main point of this post, when composing a painting of the natural world, look for the circular rythyms ( I always have trouble spelling rythym) that are everywhere in the seeming randomness.

Can you see the organic swirl, almost "S" shape leading the eye to the flower in this painting?

Or the spirals in this one.

Remember the circular rythym (there's that spelling problem again, I should invest in a dictionary) and randomness of nature when you paint. It will give your paintings a lifelike quality.

Evolution of a Painting

I was struck with the beauty of some ponds near my home and began to start to paint them. This lead to going back and looking at Monet's work, and I developed an interest in water lilies as a subject. The nice greens of the lily pads along with the color of reflections in the water and the light yellow and purple lilies make them a painter's dream subject. So calm and placid too. So I did one or two water lily paintings about a year ago. Here is one of those paintings.

Then I started looking closer at the water lilies and painted this painting.

This last week I had the inspiration, that sounds pretty high-minded, so let's say I had the idea, to paint some of our goldfish from our backyard pond in a lily pad setting. So based on a photo I had taken I did this thumbnail sketch adding our goldfish who weren't in the photo.

I noticed while doing the sketch that I had created a spiral, which is a great compositional device.

Can you see the spiral in the first sketch? Well anyway I could.

So now I had everything in place, good reference, a good composition and I was ready to paint.

(NOTE: I don't always use photographs to create my paintings, sometimes it's plein air work etc. that leads to a painting. However, sometimes if you use them right a photo works just fine. Especially digital photos shown on a computer monitor which gives truer color than slides and the like.)

So I started painting. It was going good. I spent quite a bit of time capturing the lily in center of the painting and I liked how the fish were looking. I was on the path to success. But alas and alack, something was wrong. The lily which I had so carefully delineated was sticking out like a sore thumb, and the fish were overshadowed by the lily's grandstanding. So as much as it hurt, I wiped out the lily and repainted the area it was in. Now the fish were the main players just like I had originally intended and the quiet rhythmic spiral of repose was there.

Here is the finished painting, which I dedicate to one of our goldfish who is in the fish hospital, receiving medication  and I hope is on a healing path.

Three Fish

14" x 18"

Oil on Canvas

Music You Can Paint To

As much as I love rock music when I am cruising down the highway or taking a shower (sorry if that just put a horrific image in your mind), it can be a bit distracting while painting in the studio. You really don't want to be on the "Highway to Hell" while trying to create a serene piece of art. So I decided to share with my fellow artists and my collectors, my studio listening favorites:

1) Into Silence by Deva Premal
I suspect Deva Premal is a follower of Osho or maybe she is a Hindu, but whatever religion she is, her spirituality comes out in her beautiful voice. The music is a mixture of mellow eastern and new age instrumentation which really works well. Though I am a little iffy on eastern religion myself, just hearing the opening notes of the first song/chant Aad Guray instantly mellows me out, and I am able to blissfully concentrate on my painting leaving other cares outside the studio door. Besides I think the music has the added benefit of putting a peaceful feeling into the work.

2) House Made of Dawn by Coyote Oldman
I got this cd at a charity tent sale for 99 cents. One of the best deals of my life (I think I've had about 2). When I start playing this cd it's instant calming ambience fills the entire studio. Since I paint natural scenes it turns the studio inside to an outdoor world. There is something about Native American flutes that resonate deep in the soul.

3) The Mask and the Mirror by Loreena MacKennit
It might be my English/Scottish/Irish DNA, but MacKennit's mix of Celtic music with Morrocan, Arabic and other world musics just stirs my crusty old soul. Not to mention that she also has one of those out-of-this-world etheral voices. When I listen to her music in the studio I am transported to the times that J.W. Waterhouse so aptly portrayed in his paintings.

4) Things About Coming My Way_A Tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks by various artists
Not spiritual, not quietly ambient, but a rowdy good time. This cd has really grown on me. I play this cd during those times in the studio when I want to cut loose in my painting and just have a darn good time. Sometimes old-timey music can, gosh-darn-it, be humorous, as well as melodic.

Well, there are several other cds I listen to, but I have run out of time for today. I'll write about them soon in another post. Is there any music that gets your creative juices flowing in the studio? Let me know as I am always on the lookout for some good sonic spirituality or just good tunes.

Money, Oops, I mean Monet troubles

I found out an interesting factoid about Claude Monet just recently that might be of interest to fellow artists. Even though Monet went through an early period of rejection, his work soon began to sell fairly well. But then something happened. France had a recession, and voila, Monet was broke again. However, he survived the recession and in his later years became quite a wealthy man. Wealthy enough to set up that little house in Giverny, with the famous gardens and ponds. Anyway, the point is, even for a talent like Monet there could be some hard times. So fellow artist if your sales have slumped a bit in this current recession, buck up. You are only in the middle of the movie of your life and maybe, just maybe, if you perservere you will reach the success you have been looking for.

One of my oil paintings that was partially inspired by Monet:

Carol's Path

The Secret of Painting

We've all heard of the book "The Secret" which proposes to bring you everything you wish for in life, I am not sure if that secret works, but I am going to give a SECRET in this post that will practically guarantee you will create better paintings. I found it in an old out-of-print artbook called Creative Painting by Lenore Sherman. Are you ready? Here it is: "Painting is the visible expression of ideas held by the artist. It is at first a mental activity, then a physical expression. Therefore, if an artist has only a vague idea of his subject and a hazy notion as to the technique of painting it, then the painting will show this uncertainty." Did you grasp the importance of this? Without getting woo-woo about it, see the finished painting in your mind, before you start painting it. I read once about an artist who would just shut his eyes before his blank canvas and visualize a finished painting on it for about 15 minutes before touching brush to canvas. Try this out and see if it works for you.

Here is one of my recent paintings:

If you'd like to see more of my paintings, check out wwww.wworcesterart.com