Conversation

trying printing with the computer

2011-02-21T19:19:00.000-08:00

I just took a class on Digital Portraiture with W.David Powell in Lebanon, NH at the AVA Gallery. We used Photoshop Elements. I brought a small drawing I made at Borders. A new habit of mine is to go to Borders to draw people. They tend to sit in one position for a longer than short time so I have time to make a drawing. I have been using these to make small paintings I call tronies, after the studies done by Vermeer or Rembrandt, as I learned in Amsterdam, of anonymous people who conveyed an emotion. This drawing was not really right for those studies and had a spontaneous sense of person on its own.
I had hopes I could upload the image here but it is not formatted correctly. I will see what I can do.

I may be able to add some tronies that are paintings. No those are too dark so I will try all this again soon.

Now November

2010-11-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

I should add that the drawings appeared in the Concord Monitor ,
many years ago,actually enough time has passed for a child to grow up and set out on his own. I will keep adding a few drawings along with a post. This surely represents my feelings as well as the allergies it was meant to illustrate. There is something delightfully simple about a black and white drawing. No glitter to it.
But I do have a few paintings to add. It was a very hot summer and I was out often.
I find I really like to work on canvas. This little scene by the water is on a panel. When I use a canvas, the oil bar helps create a sense of diffuse light. The tube oil on top solidifies some elements, but much can remain in the uncertain area we are used to when we capture a whole scene. These are on canvas. Then there is this calming scene along the Merrimack.

October 30, 2010

2010-10-30T14:35:00.001-07:00

I have been painting though I have posted nothing. I have two to add but there are many more.
A long time ago I lived in the woods and did drawings for the local newspaper. I no longer live in the woods, but still go to the cabin. I had a small studio then, in the woods as well. I illustrated articles that were hard to photograph. I enjoyed translating a written story into a visual image. I saved my many drawings and recently I found myself looking through them. They were in the process of aging, both from time and from animals that passed through the studio. I liked them once again. It took me some trips back and forth to make photographs that were adequate for the web. I selected some I thought withstood the test of time. They are here on the website. Here is an example of one- a dream of a tiger and me. and another I always liked. Doesn't it feel like you are on the bench sometimes?
I add two paintings now too.

a couple in a show

2010-05-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

Three paintings at "Twist of Lyme" in a Women's Caucus for Art show. They are at the Long River Studios at 1 Main St, Lyme. Check out www.longriverstudios.net. These three are in. I have been outside painting in the wind and the rain and the sun. I think I feel better for being outside again. I will add those paintings soon.

March 2010

2010-03-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

With so much available electronically, I sometimes think I could spend even more time with my computer. Connections are ever expanding and hopeful.
I just saw George Butler's movie Roving Mars about the Voyager and the making of the trip to Mars, or trips, really. Such inventiveness, with team enthusiasm and advancing thoughts about the planets, the Universe and anything else one can extrapolate, was satisfying to watch, even on an afternoon.
The weather has been sunny enough, warm enough and with the extra light in the day, I can get outside. I have a couple paintings I have finished. They languished in the studio as I knew there was something to reconsider but did not see it for some time. I did the Coastal Fall late in the fall when I parked my car next to Odiorne and stood in the sun to paint. Not a lot of time, and a complicated mass of color which took some time to resolve.
Then there was the day I only had enough time to sketch out Beacon St, which is to the left.
I add here two more that have been works in progress. They are related to the black and white drawings I did and the water colors which were derived from those. When the subject is in my mind, it arrives at completion differently than with a subject I have either in front of me or in a sketch.

February 2010

2010-02-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

I often think it might be easier to see what I wrote before and add to it rather than this blank index looking card of a blog. February in the basement has been cold and dark but I started something new for me. I have worked on plein air pieces then took to making pen and ink drawings, like Robert Henry, and using charcoal to create darks, depth and distance. You can see them hanging over my work table. Using those drawing to start a painting resulted in pieces like this on the left.

or this on the right. This painting actually has changed since I took the photo.
I added birds in the upper left.

These paintings were hard because the color and the translation from the simple drawing to a representation seemed not to work quite right. I had trouble making the color come right and sometimes I seemed to get stuck on the image before I felt I had fully worked out the drawing. I think that may be the nature of representation. I wanted to escape my own trap so I have started some watercolors which give me the freedom to play with color as I develop or search out an image.
I use the same black and white drawings to start an image and use color and the water to wash around in search of what is buried there. I have found a few interesting starts this way.

The watercolor to the left here I have started as a oil. I again tried sketching the composition in oil pastels and have added tube oil on top. It seems to have a new feel, less restrictive but open to imagination. I have found myself with an intuitive idea about how something should go. I think this is the best way for me to paint. It feels very free and poetic.
I do not always like to show something in progress, but I think it may be interesting in this case for me. This to the left is the oil I started and am working on. Images have come out of what is put down, even beyond the watercolor.

I was in Washington at a conference and saw the artwork of Brian Jungen at the Museum of the American Indian. He does art the way it should be done, with social commentary, humor and imaginative design. Lots of places to see his work but here is a link to an article.

January 2010

2010-01-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

I have fallen into the funk of New England when it is cold and dry and dark and we take to the indoors.In this case I mean the basement studio. The basement is cold, maybe only because of the cement floor and the ceiling level windows and the electric radiator. It is dark at the end of the day when I get there. I have worked on some imaginative paintings which are taken from drawings I have done, images I store and emotions that live somewhere nearby. I rely on the techniques I learned from Robert Henry last summer to start with a drawing and develop it. Something pleases me in one part and I can see a beginning. The development of this painting is quite different from stepping outside and capturing fleeting moments of light on objects. I have stacks of drawings I have done of light on objects that have interested me and this gives me meditative time to move them into something else. That sounds a bit grand but the reality is an effort to dredge free floating images out of my head. To simply imagine, not to plan for particular images. This is different from trying to read something into the paint.
Here are some paintings I did from the late fall, and even the beginning of winter. These are a mix of outdoor work in some inside.
I took these pictures in the studio without the flash which means the picture is of limited focus. They show the color and the composition. I am using oil bars on canvas with palette knife and tube oil on top. The tube oil diminishes the airiness of the canvas. The total snow scene of limited color intensity was done inside after drawing the scene outside in a heavy snow. It is a palette knife painting.

The last is from the fall. It is a palette knife painting of the Merrimack as it passes through Bow NH. It is a beautiful spot. It was hard to photograph in the light of the studio as was the snow scene. There are elements of the studio around the edges.
Beware.I got an email from a Salmon Walker inquiring after a painting and its availability. I was flattered though suspicious. The email was written in broken English, implied a need to close the deal with speed. So I answered, and came away wiser. No loss, thankfully, when he said he was sending more than I was asking and would I give the extra to the mover, I knew it was a scam. Vulnerabilities get me. Not every time, but often enough. I hate to develop more wariness than I already have.

adjustment

2009-10-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

One painting, and it is my favorite from the 6x6 series was covered in the post, so here it is again. The backlit trees.

October in New Hampshire

2009-10-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have done 8 small pieces for a Women's Caucus for Art 6"x6" show. These itsy paintings are not always as quick as they would seem. The fall colors have inspired the work with light bouncing off the leaves in a brilliant landscape. I have greatly enjoyed being outside even though the weather is mixed. I think it best just to put them up.

I have also finished a painting from a trip to Provincetown in September. I was in a marsh in the East end. The light was beautiful. The painting feels right.If I don't get it in the right position it will still be pretty clear that it is not New Hampshire.
The last one is from New Hampshire. It was a bright day because of the leaves. I like the picture I have because it is on the easel in a dark studio. The trees almost lost substance in the painting. I hesitated several times over how far I wanted to carry the painting when the colors were so ephemeral.

September already

2009-09-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

I took a class at the Provincetown Art Museu m in August with Robert Henry. The link in his name will bring you to a video about his life in art with his wife of more than 50 years. Celebrate. He called the class: the Taproot of the Imagination. Having studied with Hans Hoffman and developed a style that is spontaneous and intuitive, he was a challenging teacher for me. I enjoyed watching him walk back and forth in the studio, paint with a butcher knife or squeegee and change an area he had worked on for quite while because another idea came to mind. I will think about the concepts and approach to making art. My paintings from the class I leave behind but carry on with the ideas. He said to do what you do well. I use color well. I have started doing canvases again, and using oil bars. So here are a couple new ones.
This one is on canvas and a rough canvas at that. I used oil bars to form the lights and used a palete knife to add color and cover the canvas. I had started with an acrylic underpainting to create a composition. I do like the light at the end of the day and it is when I get out most often to paint. An advantage with this is I can work on a bigger piece without taking forever to do it. This is 18"x24".
I have a sketch of the next one. I notice it is rather blurred. In Henry's class we used a reed to draw, with sumi ink, a beginning idea. Though then we drew from our imagination, I find drawing has always helped me think through what I want to paint and this is the same. The reed pen is less precise even then other tools I have used. So you can see the effect. He used feathers too or string tied to the end of a stick. I will try that too.

This one was done on a panel. The effect of oil bars is slightly different on a panel. This was a day of bright color.

I have a few more to add here. They are in progress. I was back on the Cape in early September. I am working out two paintings from that trip. I have a couple I have done in Concord recently as well. Those are for a 6x6 show with the NHWomen's Caucus for Art. An itsy painting is an interesting design problem.

Late July

2009-07-30T18:32:00.001-07:00

I have a couple new paintings to share. I started a book to track locations of interest or that might work to paint in. I found hidden parking lots were quite appealing. Sometimes I thought I found a great spot and when I went back, there was no place to set up an easel without being in the road or half in a swamp.
This red house was a bit of an extrapolation from the site but I like the way it perches where it is. The dark shadows gave it place. I took the picture with the painting on my studio easel.
Again, I found a great spot behind a church with a view that was no too remarkable though I like the result.
I love to walk at night. The night air, the lights from houses or the moon or streetlights and the peaceful calm that settles over the city charm me. I was out recently with my sketchbox. I carry a plastic clipboard with an inside. Inside I put my conte crayon and paper. I can use a couple pieces then store them back inside. I can take them out as I use them for a painting which makes it easier than a sketchbook. So here are two drawings from that walk. They both translated to paintings nicely though work in the studio generally take me longer to work through. I suppose without having the scene in fron of me, the problem solving is differnet and more a product of my mind. I am still wroking on the one with the cars next to the house. It may change some more.

June

2009-06-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

The weather changes daily. I have been painting outside, most often with Dinah. Usually we find a spot around Concord . Sometimes it is hard to decide just where to paint. Decisions about where to paint are affected by whether it is a gray day or better to be left alone or we want to paint houses. Sometimes I spot a perfect location on a drive but when I return, the atmosphere has changed enough to reduce the location to uninspiring. Sometimes I want to paint without the interruption of people coming to look and ask questions. It is a curious sight still to see the easel set up. I am afraid I fill the characterization of an artist with painted pants, straw hat, french easel. Funny thing is all those things work for this particular form. One day while I was painting the corn field, an ice cream truck came by. The driver stopped when I waved for ice cream and then gave me some spots she found in her rambles that would make good locations. She said she thought it reminded her of Paris to see artists outside painting. I chuckle with delight. Yes, Paris, I think, transported. Being outside is a reward for me, but Paris is fine memories and aspirations.
My latest discoveries with paint are around setting up a background with a hue that helps me see the composition before I paint and still resides in the color after I am done. I have one more just finished but has not been through an inspection process. I like to review my work in the dark light of the studio without the grand beauty and detail of the outdoors. The collection I put here is the most recent work, or work from June.

May

2009-05-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Though I have not posted anything for a while, I have not been idle. Spring has finally opened the doors and it is great to be in the late afternoon sun painting. I have done a bit of traveling so I have some paintings from NY. I found it a task to account for the light change. The landscape was different as well. The buildings are big and dominate the landscape. The light was more diffuse, I think so was challenging for me to capture.
I was in the mountains and had a chance to stay by the side of the road for a while. The pleasure was interpreting a dream I had with the giants in front of me.

Another image was based on a drawing from the Saturday Morning life drawing group. I was struck by the model's fierceness and interpreted it as a warrior.
This image was with me for quite a while.

The colors are quick to change now. It was challenging to use so many bright greens and so many pale colors. I am still having trouble taking good photos, so so appear distorted. I think you can get the sense of the painting though.

Drawing

2009-04-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have been attending a life drawing group on Saturdays with Dinah at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. www.nhia.edu. We pay a small fee and work quietly for several hours interpreting the poses in several different media. Some folks draw, some paint,some use a computer program. I have found drawing helps me both satisfy the need to draw and put together some poses I can interpret later. I was using a bamboo pen and washes until I ran out of some excellent paper I had that absorbed the wash but left enough moisture to blur ink as it was applied. I find the bambo pen is an extension of my arm and if I train my eyes on the model, the line I put down carries the feeling of the pose.

I draw with a calligraphy pen as well. Theses drawings have been on smaller paper, 8x11. I use a delivery man's plastic clipboard with an inside compartment. In it I can carry loose paper which I find suits my style of drawing very well. I can take the paper and use it alone without having to rip apart a spiral bound notebook. The clipboard holds the paper in the wind. The compartment protects finished drawings. I use the calligraphy pen for sketching outside as well. I also carry conte crayon which I have added to some drawings. Some of these are gesture drawings are made in one minute. Warmup work which helps one get with the feeling of the model, the underlying attitude in gesture and the way they hold their body. Some drawing I also do on large paper from Staples with a conte crayon. One of a model struck me for the fierce attitude she conveys, along with no modesty which I have worked into a painting of a warrior, or I think of it that way. It isn't quite ready for display.

Now that I ran out of the paper, which was maybe 20x 34 and was captured from a recycling bin so not easily found again, I bought some chipboard in hopes I can use it the same way. Instead I have found that oil crayons worked well for crafting an image. It is done the same way. I use a bamboo pen, study the model while my pen/arm go over the form. I have added the crayon for highlights.

Some poses have proven to be a bit stiff for further work, but may well form some library for me of images I can use as I work on pulling images together in painting.

the end of March

2009-03-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about art for many years. Recently, it has seemed to me to be an expression of wordless feelings, an exercise in freely using colors and images to convey feelings that I may not have reached otherwise. The act of making art helps me think through feelings or ideas just as writers use words to make them think through ideas. I just finished a small book called "But is it art?" by Cynthia Freeland. I am interested in theory and what is expressed by thinkers about art. I was delighted by this quote from Susan Langer "Sometimes our comprehension of a total experience is mediated by a metaphorical symbol because the experience is new, and language has words and phrases only for familiar notions.....But the symbolic presentation of subjective reality for contemplation is not only tentatively beyond the words we have;it is impossible in the essential frame of language." I am sure I would not go that far, but language often stops short of some experience or need for expression that comes only with the manipulation of paint. It is to arrive more distinctly formed once a painting is finished. So I have here the painting I mentioned of the woman in her garden.

This view of Concord was just this past week.
Painting outside is slightly different from the thoughts expressed above, although I do allow myself freedom with color, there is still a representation of light and dark and a city.

Dinah and I were out with a Plein air group a couple Sundays ago. The ice was still on the pond but it was great to be in the sun standing on it.
I have Dinah's painting of children on the ice and mine of a tree by the side.

March light

2009-03-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Crazy March weather in NH means a snow storm one day and fifty degrees the next. I plan to be out in the sun this afternoon with a larger group of plein-air friends. The conversation in life drawing added to our group.
I did another painting from the drawings I made but this time I decided to start with the body in green. I wasn't sure where I was going with that start until I was at a Lucinda Williams concert the other night. The vision coalesced and I now see I did not photograph the result but will add it later today. It started with the drawing in the last blog.
I finished a small painting I did from a cross country ski tour I love to make through White Farm area in Concord. Coming back, the view is across a field to a few trees. One afternoon. the late light hit the snow to create a lavender light.
I finished another small painting based on the drawings from a model. I thought her pose suggested vulnerability so I emphasized it with the color of her body. I think the painting stands on its own and uses a pose to create a poem.

stretched thin

2009-03-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

The winter, as beautiful as it can be, tries me with the cold, slipping as I walk, having to paint indoors, another gray day. I took one drawing from life drawing and worked it into a small, very small painting. It is 5"x8" on clayboard which sucks up the paint as fast as I put it down. I was experimenting with making the woman pink. The background came along with it.
I think there is more to say about women from the drawings I have made so I will explore making paintings from them.
This one was finished in the studio after starting it from the model. It was interesting to do. How fast time flies by. The sessions with the model are gone in a flash. The time spent later in the studio evaporates in the color of the paint.

late winter or almost

2009-02-17T17:47:00.000-08:00

I have finished the painting I started from a quick sighting. It was a first time I used a photo for a simple reference, not as a crutch. It made carrying a small camera seem more useful. I may have more to do on this painting but it seems to work now. I like to show things the way they are, more or less. Sometimes a painting is just done. If I work too much, the spirit is lost. I might as well start again. I enjoy that delicacy actually. It is a difficult call sometimes to know when it is done.

Dinah and I go to a figure drawing group on Saturday morning. I made this drawing after quite a few warm up drawings. The model was elegant and perfectly formed. She was relaxed in her poses which I think shows in the drawing. I think there may be something here to work on so I taped the drawing up in the studio. Dinah and I love to eat lunch at Consuelo's taqueria on Amherst St in Manchester. My photographs are often less than great. I learned from Jim Braley, who designed this website, that I should prop them up against a white wall. This is done, but the studio lighting is a bit dark.
I spent the sunny afternoon of President's Day near the bus station doing a study of the scene in front of me. I may have to do a bit of touch up here too, but I will see that the next time I am in the studio. It was refreshing to be outdoors for so long solving problems of light and distance and shadows.

2009-02-10T19:52:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the images that we see in fleeting moments. Light that plays off a surface or tricks the eye into thinking we see something in a new way. Light coloring life with freedom and reminding us of the insubstantiality of life. I snapped this photo with my handy little camera at a stoplight in the downtown as I was watching a beautiful light pass off a building. There was a sheet of ice crystals passing in front of a brick building.The sheet was lit up by the setting sun and obscured the heavy brick building. The image was quick. I thought it would be something to work out in a painting.
I haven't been very successful using my camera to capture images to paint later. The tiny image or the precise blocks of objects always discouraged me from pursuing the camera as a source.
In this case though, it is winter in New Hampshire and it gets dark by the time I leave work. I didn't have time to make a sketch but did so when I got back to the studio.
The drawing is in the left corner of this messy table. I have my palette as well as my oil bars out. I set up a composition in the drawing. Then I drew it on a mdf panel and painted an acrylic composition in off colors. I am working on this on with a few glances at the camera for a sense of the scene. I usually try to play with what is on the canvas to see what comes to mind as I develop the painting. I have this starting point and worked on it today so it doesn't look like this now.

2009-02-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

February 1, 2009- The Concord Garden Club linked with an art show at the Kimball Jenkins Estate in Concord NH to put on "Art and Bloom." Patty Humphrey said it is an idea originated at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. With paintings as inspiration, the floral designers create arrangements. I was happy to have a small painting "Tree on North State Street, Concord" as a part of the exhibition. The painting was done in the early fall when color here in NH is striking. The sparkling quality of that one little tree with light behind it and around it was the intent of the painting.
At the show it was interpreted by Janna Cummings and her daughter Adelaide. I was impressed with their interpretation. I have attached a photo.
The opening was filled with an enthusiastic crowd.

On Saturday I went back to give a context for the show. I have attached a picture I took of the Kimball Jenkins Estate. If you want to see more from this interesting art school/gallery check out www.kimballjenkins.com.
My studio pal, Dinah Delaney, is in the foreground

Matthew Mead gave talk on Fresh Florals for Your Home on Saturday. Here he is viewing Nancy Young's interpretation of Tapestry by Kim Roth. His website www.Matthewm eadstyle.com may interest you for his aesthetics and interesting design ideas.

I have added a few other photos both of people there on Saturday and some arrangements. The interpretations were as varied as the art. Forgive my photography. I am a bit shy about asking people to pose and actually prefer to see people in action.

Sandune Details Utah "by Jeanne LaChance "
interpreted by Judy Matthews and Karen Royal

Waterlogged Hunter
by Caitlyn Cedarstrom interpreted by Rick Talbot cobblestoneflorist.com

Sticky Spring Snow by Thomas Hitchcock
interpreted by Lynn Ordway

Welcome

2009-01-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

I've set up this blog as a way to communicate with people outside Concord, New Hampshire, to talk about my art.