Red Gum, 24x36 oil on canvas

Like me the Red Gum, a variety of eucalyptus, prefers temperate coastal conditions and does well with salt spray. It’s dense glossy leaves, dark above with a pale underside offer deep and welcome shade. It flowers several times a year in spectacular fashion, putting out large sprays of fluffy red, pink and yellow flowers in sprawling clusters that float on a field of rich green leaves. The urn shaped seed pods are beautifully and move from green to purple to brown as they remain on the tree. 

Springtime Natal Plum, 10x20 oil on canvas

In the area I grew up it was important to learn to identify this plant early in life. Natal plum was a popular accent plant in the yards where we played hide and seek at dusk diving into bushes with abandon. Beneath the glossy green leaves of the Natal Plum are some wicked thorns that you needed to encounter only once to leave a lasting impression. It took me years and a much more civilized interaction with gardens to forgive the plant for its barbs and notice the beautiful fruit and the star shaped flowers that smell as sweet as the orange groves that once defined our region of Southern California. 

 

The Staff of Life

The Staff of Life

12x16 oil on panel

A few weeks into quarantine when the days had begun to feel indistinguishable people began to bake. Social media began to look like the window of a giant bakery - full of muffins, scones, banana bread and lots of sourdough. 

The baking section of markets emptied just after the paper goods aisle emptied of toilet tissue. Those packets of yeast that sat undisturbed on the top shelf since your grandmother’s time became a hot commodity. Flour mills couldn’t keep up with the demand. 

Yes, everyone was trapped at home and had nothing but time on their hands, and yes, every trip out the door was viewed as a health risk, but really, what was going on?

Social scientists say that baking offers comfort and is nurturing of others. The sudden passion for kneading grew out of a survival instinct not only to feed but to control. We were realizing that our entire world could be tipped over by a tiny virus and that we weren’t the masters of all we see after all. But if we kept our dough warm and timed the rise, punched it down and let it rise again we could create an ancient food considered essential.

Home cooking had become a bit of a rarity in the last decade as markets sold more prepared food and dinner could easily be delivered. We spent lots of time and money enjoying more and more elaborate food while eating out. When all restaurants closed what we could produce in our kitchens was all there was. The impulse to do it well, and go deeper than ever before is so sweet. I mean if you can create the staff of life in your own kitchen, isn’t that the perfect way to push back a pandemic?

You’ve just got to love the resilient nature of the human spirit! 

I've been painting, just not posting!

I've been altering my style slightly, which has required retooling my process, habits and the way I look at my subject. It's required a lot of focus, a lot of small paintings and a sense of humor. 

I returned to my favorite subject - the endless beautiful forms found in plant life - while I push myself toward abstracting the shapes they present. Some times it works better than others, and I have to remain fully concentrated or else I find myself blending value shapes as I have in the past. 

I'm deeply engaged with this, and like where I'm headed. Hope you do too!

A great workshop with Catherine Kehoe

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a week in a the beautiful Winslow Art Center Studio on Bainbridge Island, Washington studying with Catherine Kehoe (www.catherinekehoe.com) . She is someone who's work I have looked to for inspiration for some time. She is able to describe reality without detail. In doing so she captures the essence of a scene or a person by distilling what she sees and records. Consequently, her work is pure, beautiful and timeless. 

I have tried to adjust the way I paint a number of times and have found that the habits I have formed over the years are so powerful that even changing direction slightly is very difficult. You might say that that's OK, that's the way I paint, but I would like to feel that I can choose how I want to approach a subject and not have my habitual style dictate the outcome. 

Kehoe's workshop couldn't have been more perfectly designed for my interests. First she separated us from our familiar methods of drawing, then she had us view our subject as a design distilled to 2 values. Only then, on the fourth day were we allowed to paint  - with a limited palette, using only straight lines and flat shaped of color. On the fifth day she turned us loose with color and allowed a full pallet. 

When we arrived there was a crowded still life along one wall of the studio

We selected a composition from the jumble

And we spent hours developing a drawing using relational lines, always drawn with a straight edge. After completing the drawing we broke the drawing down into 5 values and transferred the drawing onto another surface (which is why this drawing appears to be done in ink, I used a pen to transfer the image)

We then worked with sheets of paper painted with 5 values of acrylic that had been cut into random geometric shapes. We glued them down in layers to create the image strictly in value and in flat, straight edged shapes

Another drawing done Kehoe style

This time we transferred the drawing to another surface and used paint in 2 values to describe the design of light and dark in the composition 

And the resulting painting

Another drawing, looking only at major shapes defined by value changes

The 2 value study  

The painting that grew out of the 2 studies.

I found the numerous deliberate steps really effective in separating me from my customary habits of thought and action. Catherine Kehoe proved to be a great teacher as well as a great painter and just the right person at the right time for me. In the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting in my own studio with the information I brought home from Bainbridge Island and am finding exciting new paths, which I look forward to sharing with you later!

A Sea of Untended Line

A Sea of Untended Line
14x18 oil on canvas

The completed image is at the top of the post

Fouled Lines

Fouled Lines
18x24 oil on canvas

When lines aren't tended or are mishandled they no longer function properly and the ship can't sail on course.

The tonal underpainting

Laying in the color begins

Focusing on and bring detail to the rope

Refining the lines and the imagined chaos 

Attention paid to the stormy sky, lines in the background, the mast and boom

To finish the final image, I brought more shadow and detail into the knot.

Greg LaRock workshop

The Estuary
16x20 oil on canvas

Just over a week ago I spent 4 days in a workshop with the landscape painter Greg LaRock. I have always felt that there are so many skilled painters recording the California landscape that I'd leave it to them and I'd focus on something different. But I so admire the work of Greg LaRock that I thought I would spend a little time looking over his shoulder to see how he develops his loose, painterly pieces that seem to capture the feel of a place in a very real way.

I couldn't have been more impressed with the generosity of Greg's spirit and the energy he poured into teaching. He enthusiastically shared his techniques, his favorite tools, the colors on his pallette and his methods of storing and working from photos. But, as always I learned the most from watching him paint. The sequence of decisions he made as he built his paintings was fascinating. If you ever have the chance to either study with or watch Greg paint, do it!

Untitled
9x12 oil on canvas

Untitled
9x12 oil on canvas

Winged Seeds

Winged Seeds
24x36
oil in panel

This painting just left to take up residence at a sweet friend's beautiful home. I will miss it, and the studio feels a bit empty without it. It is one of the larger paintings I have done, which means that it commanded a lot of space, and it is by far the painting that I worked on longest... over a year! I started it in February of 2017 and only just finished it. I would work on it in fits and starts, with many other projects completed while it was percolating.

These uniquely beautiful pods and seeds in real life are no bigger than an inch high.

I decided to experiment with a new approach. I started using latex paint  (yes, house paint)  to execute the underpainting. I painted directly instead of using the method I have come to rely on - working from a middle tone, laying in my darks and wiping away the lights. 

Also, you might notice that the color is not my traditional Burnt Sienna. Far from it! I thought I'd use the complimentary color, or the one directly across the color wheel, from the green that I knew would dominate the painting.  

Once I had the shapes and the darks and lights mapped out the next step was laying in the color. 

I thought that if I had bits of the complimentary color peek through it would add sparkle to the piece

With the color laid in in a general way I stood back and realized that in my usual thorough way I had managed to paint right over most of those little flickering bits of complimentary color I had been excited to let show through. Old habits are hard to break! Oh well "I yam who I yam"!

As I built the painting I realized there were shapes that didn't work compositionally that I decided to remove. 

Liking the simplified composition, I focused on how the light caught each object

I worked on defining the forms and how they relate to one another, pushing the background deeper and pulling up the  light on the foreground.

Nearing completion, I continue to add details and and make sure that the stars of this show are in the spotlight. I double check that my focal points are working and that the eye travels around the painting in the way I would like.

In the final sessions I glaze (putting a thin coat of transparent color) on some objects to further push them back, and I warm other passages with a glaze. I reaffirm my high lights, and then do what what I find the hardest part of any painting - sign it and call it finished!

The finished piece is at the top of the post.

Salad Days

Fresh Picked #1
8x8 oil on panel

I've spent so much time in recent years looking closely at plant forms in both gardens and in the wild that the natural next step is to look at them in the kitchen, right? It occurred to me how beautiful the food we now routinely eat is, and I felt moved to record a few beautifully abundant salads. 

Fresh Picked #2
8x8 oil on panel

I grew up in the time of Tang and TV dinners. Fortunately my mother didn't believe in frozen dinners, but she sure did believe that the only trustworthy vegetables came out of a can. How lucky I am to have lived in California enjoying the produce of the Central Valley as cooks have made it a more central and satisfying part of our meals. Not only is our new cuisine delicious and nutritious, it stunningly beautiful!

Last Leaves - Volcan Mountain

Last Leaves - Volcan Mountain
18x24

This painting is the second painting done for my residency with the Volcan Mountain Foundation (www.volcanmt.org). My mission this year is to capture the change of the seasons through the cycles of the plant life in the Volcan Mountain wilderness area.

This image was captured on a cold and rainy day in late October when clouds sat low on the mountain. As we hiked, trees we neared would emerge from the fog while others remained simple silhouettes.  There was a hush broken only by the drip from branches creating a rhythm that changed as mist gave way to passing bands of rain.

The grays were endless in number, and created a reflective mood. The browns of plants pulling in and down were wrapped in white as fog blew around and through branches, shrubs and golden grasses. In this quiet setting the very last of the fall leaves provided startling flashes of color. They drew the eye, creating a beautiful counterpoint to all the subdued, muted colors. 

The panel with my value drawing, in Burnt Siennna.
I use this to place the elements in the composition and make sure I can capture what I am after. 

Here, after several sessions of work, I have the basics of the background and the branches painted. I have yet to begin work on the leaves, so there you see the underpainting. It took several more days of work to complete the image to my (and my family's) satisfaction. The completed painting is at the top of this post.