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!

Patience Required

Patience Required
14x18 oil on canvas

This is the third in my series of knots. I had started the series when I came across the lobby of the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. The huge plate glass windows in the entry were covered in a maze of tangled ropes. I became decidedly uncool in that very cool setting.

I probably would have taken the painting a little further, but I left for a week long painting workshop that has got me excited about moving in a different direction.

The value study

Beginning to lay in color

The second day of color application

The completed painting is at the top of the post

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.

What I did on my summer (or in this case winter) vacation

It's been a very long time since I've shared what I've been to. My husband and I had a period of months where we traveled a great deal. It was delightful in countless ways, but it did throw off my rhythm in the studio.

I decided to grab an hour here and one there while traveling to record glimpses in gouache on paper. I mixed a light value, a medium one and a dark and made sure they didn't particularly relate to what I was looking at. I wanted to take a vacation from the precision that I had developed in my oil paintings.

I found I especially enjoyed head studies done in this fashion.

Again using little bits of time I painted small and fast in my studio and created a number of cards that  for the most part have flown out into the world that look something like these below.

I'm happy to say that I've established a schedule that allows for more focused painting time once again, yea! I'll begin posting more formal paintings again soon!

Great to chat once again, I've missed you!