Hi again....I don't know why, but it seems hard to both paint and get the computer stuff done?! Most of my work has been done in the studio lately or on the road. I'm not going to post my New Orleans studies, yet, because they're the raw material for the larger studio pieces that will be painted in the next few months. As a preview though, here's a painting done for the show which will open in November of 2008 at Coleman Fine Art in Charleston, SC. Okay, I'll post the study for this one as long as I've already painted the studio version. We set up on this dike road across from Algiers, LA to paint, and had about 10 minutes before the rains started in again. Did I say it rained down there in NOLA?!!! Rained barge loads of water. But, I did get a memory and a color note to work with along with the photos I took. In the studio version I decided to give the image more sky, and to 'brighten up' the light so that it wasn't so gloomy like the study. I hope you enjoy the result.


'Dike Road Study' 4x10 - oil


'The Dike Road Near Algiers' - 24x36 - oil on linen

Here are a few recent field studies of the rather chilly spring. It is finally turning green a little. Now if it would only quit snowing!!!


'March Afternoon '08' - 11x14 - oil on linen on panel


'March Evening '08' - 11x14 - oil on linen on panel


'Bright Light Of Spring' - 10x8 - oil on linen on panel

Late March found me in Charleston, SC at Coleman Fine Art's 'Wet Paint' event, a week of painting followed up with a very successful show on Friday night. Kate Starling, Daud Akhriev, Mary Whyte and I spent the week wandering the Charleston vicinity and doing our best to do it right. The week started out by making me wonder why I had gone all the way to Charleston for 30F degree weather and wind....we have that here...today as a matter of fact! But it did warm up as the week wore on and we had an absolutely great time painting. I took photos as a record of the work, but frankly they didn't really turn out that well. Paintings were taken into the gallery each afternoon as they were completed, as they were with no touching up. Then on Friday morning we framed and the gallery hung them in the afternoon. Smith, Mary and the gallery staff put on a great show opening with a string quartet in the garden, Hors d'oeuvre, and a lot of wonderful art loving people in attendance. WE had a good night.

This weekend I'm off to Missoula, MT for the OPA National Exhibit that my painting 'Prairie Fires' is a part of. Should be an exciting weekend of art demos, receptions and some painting if the weather permits. Minnesota is well represented in the show.
My best friend and painting buddy Kami Polzin's painting 'Light Around The Bend' ( seen above, a 24"x30" oil) is in the show too, as are paintings by my good friends Mike Rada (Burnsville), Ben Bauer (Stillwater), and Steve Atkinson (Mpls)!!!

'Golden Rays' - pastel - 12x11.75
Here's a little sneak peek of the finish piece from a demo that I think will be included in the July/August issue of The Pastel Journal. I've been interviewed by Deborah Secor, a great "interpreter" of "art talk" and one with the ability to take that mumble jumble and put it into wonderfully crafted paragraphs. She managed to see what I mean despite 'ME'. The issue features 'Sea and Skies'...and I'm the 'sky guy'. I used to be the 'cardinal guy' in my feathered critter painting days. So 'sky' guy is fine with me as long as I don't have to use all of those reds like I did back then.
The article will feature quite a few pastels with a lot of sky in them, and a demo of which this is the finish. Should be a good read. We had a great conversation and Deborah truly did capture what I meant to say. ;-)

A month since last post!!!???

'The Red Car' - oil - 11x14

This is one that I did yesterday in Taylors Falls. The location is just off of the main drag and is the backside of a couple of houses. It was a grey, drizzly, dreary day. But that red car (Mustang in reality) caught my eye poised in the shadows of those cedars. Made for an interesting study on an uninteresting day.

Where does time go? I've been in New Orleans painting with Mary Whyte of Coleman Fine Art in Charleston, SC. They are mounting a show for us next November with New Orleans as the theme. That will include Mary, Joe Paquet, John Crosby, George Strickland and yours truly. I painted for about 4 and a half days and came home with 13 oils. We had a lot of rain, but thanks to Phil Sandusky, a resident New Orleans painter (who has a great book out with a collection of paintings he did of his beloved city following Katrina. He painted, as he does everyday, around the neighborhoods that he always paints and recorded the aftermath. He did so many paintings that it seemed like a logical next step to put them into a book, he did and it's a treat to view. ), back to Phil and rain...Since he paints outside from life every day(ahhh, warm weather), he has options when it rains. So we found ourselves 7 stories up in an open parking garage looking down over the waterfront in New Orleans. It resulted in a sketch for me that has me the most excited to turn into a larger studio piece. New Orleans is an incredible place to paint. It's a color orgy! I highly recommend any painter heading there to explore the French Quarter (did some nocturnes there and that's a 'wildlife' experience unlike most other wildlife experiences I've had painting nocturnes), the Megnary (sp?) neighborhood of Creole 'shotgun' cottages from the 18th and 19th century. They are painted any color the owner darn well chooses! And they like bright color.

It's all good there. Even painting on the city streets is a real treat. It feels like Europe and the people are very respectful and interested in artists.

Eventually I will post some sketches but they're still in the box.

This painting that I last posted on has had some work done to it and now needs resuscitation. I might revive it, might not. At any rate, it's been shelved for now.

I'm done early today and going to show this detail because this is the only area of the painting that changed. I worked on bringing the tree up before getting into other areas because the paint is still very wet and if I don't take care of the edges surrounding this the major element of the painting before the paint in the sky area dries, I'm in trouble.

In the enlarged view you can see the soft quality in the paint application that I'm after. Again, paint applied with palette knives, scraped, brushed and repeated. The tree's branches and trunks were also drawn on with the knives and then manipulated with brushes. I'm trying to give dimension to this, it's a large painting and a large shape, but do it without allowing that detail to sneak out of it's place in the image and ruin the overall mood I hope to convey.

That's why this is all I worked on. I worked, removed, re worked, removed again until reaching this point. It's not done for sure, the tree that is, probably will be tomorrow.

Another Full Disclosure Demo

Okay....Here I go again! This is risky you know?! I could fail....yikes!!! But I figure that this will keep me thinking and not getting lazy in the process. It's a lot like teaching workshops and classes. I'm putting myself in full view of the three or four of you who look at this blog. That means that I better get it right....right?

So this is a 24x30 on stretched Yarka linen that I re-primed with Studio Products White Lead Primer. The surface is so wonderful to paint on that I've already decided that I will need to take a week later this spring and stretch linen and prime it with this primer, build a drying rack and stock up with many sizes.

I'm using a pretty limited palette for this one. For some reason I'm feeling 'tonalist' and am only using Cad Lemon Yellow, Light Yellow Ochre, Permanent Red Medium, Permanent Madder Deep, Ultramarine Deep and Raw Umber...that's right, RU! I almost never use that color but like it for it's smoky quality in greens and grays. Plus it dries faster and I am hoping for that too. For white I'm using Studio Products Great White, Flake white.

Sooo, what am I painting? Well I am going strictly for mood again. The composition isn't complicated. The color will be complicated even though it's tonalist in it's limitations. It's that subtle thing again. I think it's more difficult (for me) to reign in the profusion of color possibilities and keep my harmonics in balance in a lower keyed scale. That is my challenge for this painting and the 'thing' that I want to portray. So here we go....you and I will see what happens.

This view is from about 4 hours work yesterday. All of the work to this point has been laid in with a palette knife. Then I came back to it with bristle brushes to 'knock' down the look of the knife. I want the knife qualities but don't want them to be overpowering and too 'knife like'. Apply, scrape, smooth, brush out, scrape, apply, smooth, brush out. That's the exercise in brief.

My disclaimer is: Beware, anything can change at any time...and is likely to.
I'll be posting my progress at least once a day or when something interesting actually happens!

Studio Exposure-Partial Demo!

I started this out to be a 8 or 9 step demo of this painting and the process involved in it. What you need to remember to do if doing this is to take photos all the way through! I didn't so it's two versions of the start and then the finish. I'll do this again the right way....promise!

The interesting thing about this painting is that the idea came to me early one drowsy morning while still in a dream. I saw the entire painting finished, or so I thought. The concept for mood and atmosphere remained like the dream, but as I began to work with the painting my idea for the composition changed dramatically as you can see here. That's why the title of the post is 'Studio Exposure'. Meaning that I'm exposing myself by showing a start that was wiped out and begun again making a complete compositional change. What I did like about the first start was the line of the composition, the movement. As I started to paint however, I realized that what I saw in my dream was a painting that showed the breadth of space in the location painted. This is of an area that I've painted, hunted and wandered around in a fair amount and know well. I've painted a 20x24 plein air here, and smaller studies and have taken a lot of photographs as well. The finished piece is far from anything that is actually there, made up of many different bits of information. So that's the background of the painting. If you've ever had a dream that is so vivid that you can remember every detail in color you know how it is possible to recall it for sometime. I got right on this one so that I didn't loose that vision.


This is just one way that I start a painting. In the first step of this one I wanted the lines to flow in a nice 'S' shape, so I started with a dark 'drawn' outline for placement. The linen (AE350DP) was first toned with a warm reddish tint to play against the greens in the final. I do still like the 'S' shape that is in this version and might take it on again.


This is after the first half hour or so, just establishing the color temperature gradation into the distance. This is when I began to realize that this layout wasn't going to work for me. My concept of showing distance into the meadow environment was being stopped before barely making it to the middle ground of the painting by the large tree and the middle patch of large shrubbery. That's when I decided this had to change. The next view shows how I began to stage things after wiping this idea out. I did a lot of 'thinking' with a paper towel, thinner and a brush. Just wiping and moving the landscape around until I felt like I was getting back to my original concept seemed the best way to move forward.


This is the beginning of what the painting ends up being. The basic structure that will be more developed is here in this version as crude as it looks. I still haven't decided what to do with the little stream at this point. It's an integral part of the scene as both an element to break up the space and because the life of the meadow environment is dependent on it. It's a spring fed native brook trout stream that is in good shape in areas and not so good shape in other areas due to cattle traffic. But in the area I'm painting it's actually fishable and a treasure of nature. I've changed the hill structure to add to the illusion of distance and have also established the mood of the sky. Though as you'll see that becomes even more 'wet' and overcast as the painting develops. I think it's safe to say that for many painters it's this process that keeps us coming back for more. When the painting begins to come to life and 'take' you along, it's an incredible feeling that can't be explained and can't be understood completely. I know in my own case that it's at these times that the best work is done.


In this view I've almost set up the entire painting, except for details, etc.. I decided that the stream needed to come forward out of the bottom of the picture plane to add depth by using the diagonals of it's banks to start the line into the distance. I'm beginning to lay in color from the background forward now. I still don't know what to do with all of the variety of growth in the meadow. It takes a couple of days of dry brushing, scumbling and glazing to build the depth and complexity of the meadow flora. But I wanted to do this without needing a degree in botany at the same time. If I only have to actually render a few flowers to make the other 50,000 look real, I'll be very happy. And that will also keep the painting from becoming too stiff and photographic.

This painting is not painted thick with lot's of impasto and that's designed to be that way. The atmosphere is like a soft veil of gauze covering everything and in my view that quality would be defeated by a 'heavy paint for the sake of heavy paint' approach. It's a more delicate scene than painting it that way would do justice.


'Mist On The Meadow' - 20x24 - oil on linen
This is the painting in it's finished state. That is for now, change is always an option. I wish I'd taken photos along the way to show the evolution to this point. Although a lot of it was barely noticeable, just subtle little additions and subtractions. I accomplished my main goal, to recreate the peaceful quality that my dream presented to me. Before you get too whacked out with me and this dream idea, I think what really happens is that these ideas are in us already and just need time to brew. They come when your mind is ready to accept them and that deep state of the dream seems like the perfect delivery system.
Next time I promise to take more photos too. Thanks for looking in.

'Old Chisago Cemetery' - 6x4 - gouache

Well, I'm going back here again. I just barely scratched this itch. I drive by this Lutheran cemetery at least once or twice a week and am always looking at it as a subject, summer and winter. The graves are very old and the stones are tipped and growing lichens and moss. The Arborvitae look like the Cypress of Tuscany, Italy. Not quite as tall but close. That's what caught my attention yesterday afternoon. The warmth of the greens being lit by a reddish light of the afternoon sun, against the coolness of the snow shadows stopped my dead in my tracks. It's a great car painting location because there is a huge parking lot right there. In fact on each side of the parking lot is a large swamp and lake too, also good subject matter.

These are quick sketches and have things that I wish I'd done better or different, or both. It's usually an early choice in design that leaves me thinking that it should have been different. But...that leaves room for a next time. I like the color of this one but lost sight of the scale. The scale I've painted is probably measurably close to reality. But the 'impression' was that the arborvitae stood like giants against the grave stones. To reinforce that concept I should have made the grave stones more subordinate to them. Next time!