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Paintings
One of the great joys of my later life is painting, playing with various art techniques to convey the beauty of nature. Whether I’m using acrylic paint, dye, alcohol ink, or watercolor, the emphasis in my artwork is on the use of color and line. You will see here how I use them to express my love of nature. Enjoy!
Paper Quilt
I call this piece The Long and Winding Road. Notice the crooked line of neutral colored pieces up the middle - like a winding road. The design reflects my love of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, with the sea at the bottom, the forest higher up, and finally the bits of blue sky. Notice also, the colors of the top left are spring colors, while those in the top right reflect the beauty of woods in fall. Wherever you look, what ever the season, this part of the country is just gorgeous.
The piece is 12.5” wide by 23” tall. Each square is 1” x 1”. So, doing the math, that makes 287.5 pieces of hand-dyed and/or hand-painted paper. Of course, I actually produced far more than 287.5 pieces, so I could pick and choose which ones to include in the finished piece.
The process of creating this took weeks, first to paint and dye the papers, then to cut them strategically to capture the best parts of each, then to arrange, and rearrange, and re-rearrange, and finally attach them to the watercolor paper base. Whew! Lots of work, but I was enamored of the colors in the papers and enjoying playing with them. and confident that the result would be beautiful.
All this got me thinking about what keeps us going, either life or in an art project. Now, as I think about it, I realize I had invested more than time and energy in this piece. With every project I undertake, whether it's a painting, or a photo shoot, or an essay, my heart is in it all the way. That's the secret to finding the persistence you need to accomplish the results you want.
In the process of creating this piece, I learned some important things:
-Persistence and hard work pay off, eventually.
-Doing our best work takes time, maybe a lot of time, inevitably more time than you expect.
-You can only stay with a project as long as you are enjoying the process of working on it.
So, the key is: Put your heart into whatever you do, whether it’s creative work, or your job, or mowing the grass, or washing the car, or cleaning the house, or caring for a colicky baby, an obstreperous teenager, or an elderly parent. Just stay with it. You'll be glad you did.
The piece is 12.5” wide by 23” tall. Each square is 1” x 1”. So, doing the math, that makes 287.5 pieces of hand-dyed and/or hand-painted paper. Of course, I actually produced far more than 287.5 pieces, so I could pick and choose which ones to include in the finished piece.
The process of creating this took weeks, first to paint and dye the papers, then to cut them strategically to capture the best parts of each, then to arrange, and rearrange, and re-rearrange, and finally attach them to the watercolor paper base. Whew! Lots of work, but I was enamored of the colors in the papers and enjoying playing with them. and confident that the result would be beautiful.
All this got me thinking about what keeps us going, either life or in an art project. Now, as I think about it, I realize I had invested more than time and energy in this piece. With every project I undertake, whether it's a painting, or a photo shoot, or an essay, my heart is in it all the way. That's the secret to finding the persistence you need to accomplish the results you want.
In the process of creating this piece, I learned some important things:
-Persistence and hard work pay off, eventually.
-Doing our best work takes time, maybe a lot of time, inevitably more time than you expect.
-You can only stay with a project as long as you are enjoying the process of working on it.
So, the key is: Put your heart into whatever you do, whether it’s creative work, or your job, or mowing the grass, or washing the car, or cleaning the house, or caring for a colicky baby, an obstreperous teenager, or an elderly parent. Just stay with it. You'll be glad you did.
Rainy Day
A favorite hymn begins with the words “I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the roses”. On the day I was working on this painting, it wasn't dew on the roses. It was rain. Surely the garden needed rain, but still…
Karel Matej Capek Chod’s "Gardener’s Prayer" begins:
"O Lord, grant that in some way
it may rain every day,
Say from about midnight until three o'clock
in the morning."
The next day, was forecast to be dry and sunny. My garden was drowning right then, but the beauty of God’s creation endures.
Karel Matej Capek Chod’s "Gardener’s Prayer" begins:
"O Lord, grant that in some way
it may rain every day,
Say from about midnight until three o'clock
in the morning."
The next day, was forecast to be dry and sunny. My garden was drowning right then, but the beauty of God’s creation endures.
After Richter
This painting is one of my many beloved failures. I had been studying Gerhard Richter’s art and wanted to duplicate his technique. His skill in manipulating transparency was more than I could accomplish. However, that effort did refine my understanding of the use of line and color, and this little painting resulted from my experiment. It was fun to do, and I enjoy the result. What more could an amateur artist want? Had I learned to paint like Richter, the most I could hope to achieve would be a pale imitation of his great work. Instead, I have a cute little thing that is purely me. This is integrity in art.
Approaching Storm
There’s irony in this image. I painted it while I was in Arizona. The colors in the painting are true to the desert. However, in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona, where I live in the winter, I’ve never seen rains like this. The average annual rainfall in Tucson is just under 12 inches. Having lived in Atlanta, where the average annual rainfall is almost 50 inches, I was unimpressed when the Tucson weather forecasters warned of rain in Tucson. A recent forecast had predicted ‘substantial’ rain. Signs were posted throughout the city, warning of dangerous wet roads. The actual rainfall total, after the storm, was 0.03 inch. I sometimes think the local weather forecasters are eager to have something to say beyond their daily ‘sunny and hot’. Personally, I’m ok with day after day of warm sunshine.
Blue Mono
Why do I love this piece? It’s very inconsequential. It’s very small. It took very little time to make. And yet, I find it charming.
One of my favorite art class assignments was to do a series of studies in line and color. That’s exactly what this piece has, and all it has. No wondering what it represents, no attributing some transcendent meaning. It’s just simplicity.
Or not. It has layers. The weblike lower layer provides texture. The upper layer has movement. I know I put those upward moving shapes there with my own ultramarine blue acrylic paint, applied with a fine comb (actually an angel food cake knife, in fact). Still, to me they look like they just pushed themselves up from the bottom of the page, as if they could continue upward and ultimately move right off the page. This is what art teachers are talking about when they say diagonal lines imply movement.
And then there’s color. The choice of ultramarine blue was not random. It’s my favorite, and I buy it in great big tubes. I’ll never know whether I like it because of its association with the sea, or because it’s just so beautiful, and as a cool color it has a nice calming effect.
So, enjoy this little piece, and maybe go launch your own study of color and line. Enjoy!
One of my favorite art class assignments was to do a series of studies in line and color. That’s exactly what this piece has, and all it has. No wondering what it represents, no attributing some transcendent meaning. It’s just simplicity.
Or not. It has layers. The weblike lower layer provides texture. The upper layer has movement. I know I put those upward moving shapes there with my own ultramarine blue acrylic paint, applied with a fine comb (actually an angel food cake knife, in fact). Still, to me they look like they just pushed themselves up from the bottom of the page, as if they could continue upward and ultimately move right off the page. This is what art teachers are talking about when they say diagonal lines imply movement.
And then there’s color. The choice of ultramarine blue was not random. It’s my favorite, and I buy it in great big tubes. I’ll never know whether I like it because of its association with the sea, or because it’s just so beautiful, and as a cool color it has a nice calming effect.
So, enjoy this little piece, and maybe go launch your own study of color and line. Enjoy!
Explore: Photography
Outside, on scene, my camera replaces my paintbrush as my tool of choice. Click here to see a few favorites from my archive of over 15,000 images captured during six decades of wandering the world with my beloved camera.
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