Settling in.

This is always the toughest stretch of my working life. Getting back to the habit and structure of working, of labor. Oh sure, art is about inspiration, muses, fun.... all the stereotypical things that art is about. But it's mostly about work. Showing up, every day. After the disruption of the show season, just settling back into regular habits is tough enough, but this year I have the added distraction of an upcoming show at SUNY Geneseo. I plan to try and get my landscape work to unify in a new direction. Well, not so much new, as a fuller manifestation of the ideas that have been drumming around in my head, slowly evolving towards what I hope is a bigger, more unified idea, expressing the relationship we have, or maybe had, with the land. The land we live in, on, around. Home.

That may not sound like much, but it's making my head hurt. Most all the things I have been interested in over my life to date seem to be coming together. Now I want to see if I can make something more from them. And I'm feeling the pressure of that desire.

So what to do? I went fishing yesterday. Skunked, but a great day spey casting, getting to know a river that I am not too familiar with. Cold drizzle most of the day. Perfect

Just to cool out. Now back to work.

To get me focused, a little glimpse into a diary of sorts. Yellowstone sketchbooks from the summer.

Hell Roaring Overlook

Lamar Valley in Morning Haze

Lamar Valley Eratics

Slough Creek Eratic

View from Mt. Washburn

Gison's Barn

Gibson's Barn, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, 25 x 21 inches framed.

I saw my buddy Lexi at the Genesee Valley Hunt Races last weekend. She was giving me some well-deserved grief for not having posted in --well, ages. Her beau Sam was more low key, but confirmed that, yes, I'd been dropping the ball.

I'm going to post again- other than this one- soon. Lots to share and say, but I've hit the end of the season burnout. Last show of the year is in Bethesda this weekend, then a little time to re-charge, and back on the horse.

Cathedral

Cathedral, 36 x 36 inches, oil on canvas.

Wow. Been six weeks since I posted. OK, don't go thinking I've been laying around, just watching television. I drove to Denver for the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, then flew home for 10 days, then flew back for a show in Jackson, eight days in Yellowstone, then drove to Crested Butte, Colorado for a show, then to Portland, Oregon to fly home again. So any sittin' I was doing was behind the wheel of the Jug.

There was some great fishing, hiking, and visiting with friends and family. And somehow in the middle of that there were some advances in my painting I am really excited about, changes that will enable me to move in a new direction.

So it won't be six weeks before the next post. A couple/week til I'm back on the road for Labor Day. Catching up on my gowin's on.

Adding and Subtracting

Some color added, some removed.

So there I am sitting at a show, and I get to visiting with a friend of mine- we'll call him Dr. D. He's a good friend of my friend and one-of-these-days fishing buddy Dr. Z. Anyway, we're talking about who knows what, and all of a sudden this guy says, HeyMan......areyoufamiliarwithMondrian???Nothisgridstuffbuthisearlywork ........beforehecameupwiththegrids .....youknowwhatImean? No.Youshouldlookhimup ....it'scoolit'scool. Hedidabunchofarchitecturalstuff...strongcolors...Ithinkyou'dlikeit ..mmmmmmm...........How'boutTurner?Hiswork,youknowit?

I said, Yes, I love Turner's work.

Yeahyeah,Ithoughtyoumustmsutthewayyoulayerthecolorsputtingonelayeroveranotherwiththe
underlayersshowingthrough.

And I said, Yes, that is one thing I think I have in common with Turner's work. I think it was Turner that worked with meglip medium. He would often put a blob of medium on the canvas and float colors into it, and mix them in that fluid surface. I often work that way, but then I'll go in and take paint off the surface. I think what you remove is just as important as what you ad.

We were all quiet for a minute, and then the guy said, Cool.......loveyourworkmanthecolorrocks. And he was gone.

Dr.D and I were quiet for a minute and then he said, So who was that?

I have no idea.

Really?

Yeah, no idea.

And D. says, You said something I thought was interesting. That what you remove is just as important as what you ad. Do you know how a hand is formed, a baby's hand? (Keep in mind this is me paraphrasing/relaying what the Doc said, and my version should in no way be mistaken as a verbatim take on what he said, on your med-school neonatalogy final, or rephrased into a question for your final Jeopardy answer.) From the body of the infant a bud emerges and extends to form an arm, and then a small paddle or fin like appendage on the end. And then the cells between the the fingers die away, and the fingers are left. A bud forms on the front of the head, and the cells that fill the nostril cavities die away, and the nose is left.

What is removed is just as important as what is added.

Damn. Why didn't I have Dr. D. for biology class. I might have ended up as Dr. R?

Of course, I'm pretty happy as R the artist.

Spring, maybe.

So I headed to Florida figuring winter was about through with us. When I got home I was lulled into complacency with a few warm days, one of which I went fishing. And then winter came back again. We had a few cold snowy days, much to Molly and Finn's delight, but I am really ready for the season to change.

Hendricksons should be hatching in a week or so. And the trout season really gets started.


Evening in Spring, 16 x 20 inches, oil on linen.

Evening Glow

Evening Glow, 10 x 15 inches, oil on panel. Private collection.

Another from the ongoing river series.

I've had to drop back to three paintings per week with the Small Work project. Getting ready for the first show of the season, the Winter Park Side Walk Art Festival, has me buried under a couple dozen partially finished pieces. I'm hoping to finish most of them, but running short of time, trying to figure out how to best spend my time.

Managing work flow. Not really the sort of thing a person thinks about when they think of a working artist, but an important part of the job. I can't finish all of them before the show, so which will help present the strongest body of work?

And I'll finish the rest as soon as I'm home.

Evolution of a bear.

I am not a wildlife artist. So I've been saying for 25 years. And I'm not, unless I am. A somewhat atypical piece for me, a point along my own evolutionary path.

It is the memory of things I see and experience that I am most interested in. I have had an idea floating around in my head for a while now, about how this might be applied to animal imagery. Black Bear is not exactly what I have in mind, but it is a step along the path that I am happy with. Drawing something is one of the most effective ways for me to learn about it, to embed the memory. It is departing from the drawing and making something more than a rendering- that is the struggle.

Evolution is a slowly ongoing process, even on a personal level.

Black Bear, 44 x 40 inches, oil on canvas. Private collection.

Dusk on a Northern River

Dusk on a Northern River (Missinaibi), 8 x 12 inches, oil on panel.

My nephew Christopher emailed last night, wanting to know if I had any information on the Missinaibi River. He is thinking about about a summer canoe trip, and thought he remembered that I had paddled it. Wasn't that the mosquito pants trip?, he asked.

Most startling to me was that I had just that day finished painting it.

I spent some time over the last couple weeks rearranging the studio. In my previous studio, a neighbor who spent weeks turning her studio into a lovely clubhouse, said to me, It looks like you walked in the door, dropped the stuff in your hands and started working. I did. And I did the same thing again when I moved out to Kim and Jerry's farm. And even after I rearranged, I'm not sure you could tell, but hopefully the light and layout will be a little better for both painting and printmaking, and tripping over the dogs will be a bit less frequent.

And when I'm rearranging, in addition to blowing all kinds of time reading magazines that I hadn't finished (hey, mostly art magazines- ok, ok, some were fly fishing and paddling, oh and a book or two), I come across unfinished projects. The painting above was one of them. Started quite awhile ago- a couple years- finished yesterday, only a few hours before Christopher emailed.

And yes, it was the mosquito pants trip.

Coyote

Tracks. The creek bed runs along the fields out behind the house. Frozen in the winter, it gives up some of what happens when we aren't out there. I step out on the culvert nearly every day while walking the dogs. Watching the creek flow by three seasons of the year, seeing the ever changing tracks of unseen neighbors during winter.

I am finally settling into a productive working rhythm between the Small Work and my larger pieces. I just finished the bear project, and I am trying to do a little more with it before I show it here next week.

A Veil of Light

Red Barn, Golden Light, 16 x 20 inches, oil on linen.

As we drove home from my folks place last fall, we went past this barn in the beautiful light of a fall evening. I loved the light peaking through the partially opened door on the backside, and the overall peaceful feeling of the place. A one minute sketch and we were gone.

The next week at the studio, I roughed out what I remembered, and started painting. Layer over layer over the next several days. But I had several pieces going, trying to get finished up for an upcoming show, and I lost focus. At some point I set the piece aside, not quite finished. Over the next couple months, I pulled the painting out several times, set it on the easel to work on it.............. and left it alone. Something wasn't quite where I wanted it, but I kept mining my memories, trying to remember what it was I had seen. It wasn't holding together. Finally, I set it aside, halfway to the burn pile.

How many times do we have to learn the same lesson? A painting is a painting, not the "thing," the subject of the painting. Color, form, value, design, surface, line - the elements of the image relate amongst themselves first and foremost. That they combine to represent the subject is secondary, or possibly irrelevant. I think the scene may have been too strong in my mind, tied to the last visit of the year with my folks, Darby and the kids. The memory may have been too loaded.

Or, I am one of the worlds truly sloooooooow studies. Anyway, I was working on several of the Small Works pieces this week, and as I scumbled a glaze of gold over a small piece, the barn painting popped into my head. I think I've been subconsciously puzzling over the piece all along. And there was my answer. Years ago, while apprenticing to Richard Beale, he had taught me the importance of what he referred to as a Mother Wash, a single wash of color, layered over the entire painting, tying things together with a unifying tone. Robert Genn frequently employs a similar idea in many of his pieces, and refers to it often in his weekly newsletter.

The painting needed a unifying tone, and I pulled out the painting and laid a semi-transparent, sorta scumbled, gradation of gold over much of the image. Essentially a golden veil settled over the landscape, tying all the separate elements of the piece together in a wash of warm light.

And I had another reason to be grateful to Richard Beale, for passing on many lessons I may not have been ready to hear at the time, but somehow absorbed. He was instrumental in helping to set me on the path to what I do today, and I still use much of what I learned from him. At least the stuff that I remember.

And he was patient with my slow study.

Sunset, moonrise.

4:35 on the muck, sun nearly down.

A meeting and running errands today. One of those days that you accomplish a lot, and feel like you've gotten nothing done. I finally got home and thought about diving into work.


Tracking Finn. At nearly 14, Molly doesn't like the deep snow anymore, and Finn is less than bold without her big sister.

But I can always work. After a day of freezing rain, we got a good snow last night. I went skiing with Finn.

5:15 and the moon is already high above in the eastern sky. Days are noticeably longer.

On again, off again. It's winter now.

Finn in the woods, out for a ski with Darby and me.

The holidays are winding down, a new year beginning. I'm not making any big resolutions this year, but I am really excited about the way things are going. The Small Works have really gotten off to a good start, and I have already found an unexpected benefit. I have struggled for years to paint the season I am in, normally running weeks to months behind, painting summer in winter, fall in spring. Not getting a chance to paint the things I see every day.

But the small paintings move along, not taking weeks or months to finish. I have several small pieces, that will finish in the next few days or so, of the weather we have enjoyed during our two bursts of winter. And as Darby and I went to the Yard Of Ale this evening to celebrate the new year, we drove through a stunningly beautiful scene of softly falling snow in the last light of day. Not an image meant to be a small painting. And with all the small winter scenes I am working on, my mind is there already. I'm stretching a canvas next week. A big one.