Green Olives and Tea

 "Green Olives and Tea"

12 x 12 inches, oil on canvas
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Here is my thumbnail sketch for this painting:

And here is a studio shot with my work-in-progress - the still life, my thumbnail sketch on the floor, for reference, and my easel cuddled up close to all of it, for a bird's eye view. In the background, by the window, you can see the still life setup for "The Pattern Beneath All Things," which I was painting at the same time as this one, in the afternoons, with the blinds open.  I had tape marks on the floor, and I just shifted the easel over.  

The thumbnail sketch for this piece snuck into this random shot of my studio desk as well - along with some objects from the painting - the garlic, the blue-rimmed plate. The olives are even hiding in this shot. (Hint: they're in their jar.) I think my motive for taking this picture was to document the excessive number of sketchbooks in play at once. Or maybe I just found the overall scene pleasing. I do love a good jumble of objects.

The Pattern Beneath All Things

 

 "The Pattern Beneath All Things"

10 x 20 inches, oil on canvas

$500

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I am amazed that I have no work-in-progress pictures of this one. It just kind of snuck out while I wasn't looking. 

So, here's a picture of a cow:

 

I passed this girl and her buddies every day on my post-studio decompression run. Running by the side of the highway sounds pretty dismal, but as you can see, it was anything but. And pretty peaceful - not much traffic - just me and the cows and the huge changing sky. 

Bright Breakfast

 "Bright Breakfast"

10 x 20 inches, oil on canvas
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A couple of weeks into my residency at Playa, it suddenly felt like my studio was full of paintings. How did that happen? It was the elves. I came into the studio every morning excited to see what they'd been working on overnight....

....and stopped on the way to snap heartbreaking sunrise pictures like this one! 

 

In Which I Make A Ruler...And a Time-Lapse Video

"Six Inches"

10 x 10 inches, oil on canvas

$250

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Although I felt like I brought about half of my possessions to Playa, I somehow left my ruler at home. And, of course, I needed it - so I made one out of a piece of paper. And it found its way into this still life somehow....

If you had been there, you'd agree - this composition was just crying out for a tiny touch of white. Which was perfectly supplied by my homemade ruler. Touch of white, title inspiration, semi-accurate measurement - what a useful life!

I made a time-lapse video of this one - about four hours of painting condensed into two minutes. I like watching that plate pattern emerge in the last 30 seconds. Painless in hindsight.... Enjoy!

Change and Experimentation

 "Two Oranges (Blue Scrap)"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

Click to bid in the online auction!

The last of my 8x8 orange paintings from Playa, and the only piece I made there that I'll be auctioning online. 

It felt good to have familiar subject matter to fall back on during my first week at the residency - in an unfamiliar studio, in an unfamiliar landscape...an unfamiliar landscape with schizophrenic weather, I might add! One morning, I wake up to a rainbow, the next, SNOW! These pictures were taken from the same spot - I was just reluctant to venture all the way out to the railing to take the second one. Can you blame me? (By the way, both shots were taken between 7 and 8 am.)

With nature in such a blatantly experimental mood, I felt inspired to try some new things myself. Here's a pencil sketch on Arches oil paper that I painted over - from memory. It's amazing how having the sketch underneath helped my recall of color details, even with the still life itself dismantled. 

I did spray-fix the graphite before painting on top. 

"Playa Vessels"

6 x 12 inches, graphite and oil paint on Arches oil paper

collection of the artist ;)

Back To Basics

 "Three Oranges no. 2 (Yellow Scrap)"

8 x 8 inches, oil on canvas

$200

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After my initial surge of residency-ambition, I had a bit of an 'OMG, what now?' moment. We all have those, right? Well, when I have mine, I usually try to go back to basics. (Sometimes, I go shopping, but at Playa... um, not an option). And the basics for me are shapes and colors - and artificial lighting - with the added bonus that I could work on paintings like this before the sun came up...

and then step outside and take a sunrise shot like this!

 Getting up so early (ugh, yes, I'm a morning person)  has many advantages, but it tends to leave me looking like this by evening self-portrait sketch time. Looking like this - or seeing like this. Tired eyes do some crazy things!

Painting by Window Light

 "Playa Tea"

12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas
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As I mentioned yesterday, in the first post about my Playa residency, one of my goals was to paint with natural light on my still lives. For the past two years, I've been in a studio with very little window light - which has its advantages, but is limiting as well. Although I really enjoy composing with the dramatic shadows cast by clip-lamps, and exploring all the warm glowing colors created by halogen light bulbs, there's just something so serene about sunlight. So window light vs. artificial light is not an either-or proposition for me - I enjoy both - but having the choice? Love it! 

 Here's my setup, on a nice little ledge built above the studio heater, next to a north-facing window. I painted this one in morning light, switching to the feather painting I posted yesterday in the afternoons - an A.M. and a P.M. painting! How very impressionist of me.

Here's how this painting got started. See those gridlines on the canvas? It's a product from Masterpiece I've been trying out, and I like it! 

Of course, I was also moving onward with my daily self-portrait sketches, in the evenings when I was too tired to do much else. This one was done in a combo of water-soluble graphite and white gouache. 

 In between my morning and afternoon painting sessions, I hiked! The weather at Playa changed constantly - and rainbows were an almost-daily occurrence - though not all of them as glorious as this one. Nothing makes me feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be than seeing something like this:

The Artist Returns!

 "The Owl Feather"

12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas

$400

 Click to buy

Wow! Well - I am home from an amazing sojourn at the Playa Fellowship Residency Program, in Southeastern Oregon - and how to even begin describing the experience? The shortest possible way would be to say I made as much work in four weeks there as I would have in four months at home. But luckily, we don't have to settle for the shortest possible way - I'm planning to spend the next few weeks posting my new paintings, and writing about my time there.

So, I'll begin at the beginning - packing! Playa is in a pretty remote location - 60 miles from the nearest grocery store - so in addition to my art supplies and warmest winter-weather sweaters, I had to pack a lot of food. My car was full!

 

 Playa isn't all that far from my home in Eugene, Oregon - a 3.5 hour drive in good weather. I had a much shorter journey than many of the other residents. Here's a photo from near Willamette Pass, crossing over the Cascades

I watched the landscape slowly change, from deep snow and tall pine trees to more open vistas of scrublands and chilly blue sky.

I arrived at my destination at last - after driving right past it. This place seriously flies under the radar. Aside from being in the middle of breathtaking nowhere, it doesn't announce itself. There's a small sign, a rustic gate made of tree branches, and group of unassuming, red-roofed cottages on the edge of a huge, shallow, half-iced-over lake. The atmosphere is down-to-earth and unpretentious - the focus is on quiet, and work- time, space, introspection. And, after unpacking my many provisions with a wheel barrow between car and studio, I attempted to settle in. 

I am a relatively quiet person, used to working alone, used to structuring my own days - but when you can do absolutely anything you want to do - where do you start? I actually showed up without a clearly defined plan of what to paint - on purpose - hoping to use natural light on my setups, paint whatever I found around the place - just see what happened. 

And, in the absence of anything happening, fall back on self-portraits. From life - not photos, as I usually do.

 I made a plan to do a self-portrait sketch every day - and I did it. Here's number one, the night I arrived. I still have that glimmer of civilization in my eyes....

 And soon, still life subjects started showing up. I found this beautiful owl feather practically on my front lawn, just out for a walk in the wind and mud.

 

In this studio shot, I'm just about to begin the painting; you can see my still life on the table, in afternoon light from that west-facing window:

 

 And so it began....

New Year, New Art, New News!

"The Blue Fish"

10x10 inches, oil on canvas

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My first painting of the year! What took me so long? I could trot out my litany of excuses, but I'll simply say I've been preparing for big things coming - including an artist's residency - my very first - at Playa Summerlake. I'm really looking forward to this opportunity to do nothing but paint for four weeks. With no plan going in, just to take what I find there and see what comes out of me. 

I'm thinking this will change the course of my work, temporarily if not forever. So...I'll be out of touch for a while, but will be back with a vengeance, renewed energy - watch out online students! And to all my loyal blog readers, thank you, and stay tuned for exciting things to come in a few short weeks!