Tag Archives: Oregon

Journey of a Photograph Puts Painting in the Woods On Hold – Vietnam

Posted on by

Night Train

I have been invited to participate in an online collaboration. Painting in the Woods, a journal of the progression of three paintings will be continued after this exciting detour. Meanwhile my poetry, photography, drawing and painting will be merged into a post which will be entered next week on Journey of a Photograph. Saying that, my post could be made up of something completely different by then.  One word, an idea for a photograph or a brush stroke leads to another and you are off and running. My post could go through big changes by next week. For a look at how a group of highly talented artists have interpreted a photograph go to http://journeyofaphotograph.com/  I’ll see you there next week.

Painting in the Woods – Day Two

Posted on by

portland#2-5035

IMG_5059

I thought of Matisse‘s chapel in Nice, France. Chapelle_du_Rosaire_de_Vence .  The two doors carved in wood designed by Matisse for the confessionals are painted a slick white enamel. Colored sunlight makes its way through  through the carved open areas and spills onto the floor.  Inside the little room are stained glass windows coloring the sunlight;  yellow for the sun, green for vegetation and blue for the Riviera sky.

IMG_5068

It looked too much like a stilted wooden butterfly had landed on the painting. I replaced it with the sky shinning through the leaves.

IMG_5061

Setting up for lunch. I invited a friend to join me for lunch in my studio. Bring your own food and chair.

This painting was worked on the rest of the day – more to come.

Painting in the Woods – Day One

Posted on by

canapy2-5016

Enveloping, quiet, vivid, comforting, safe

Wow, one bright yellow green leaf !

Gone

Still

Quivering

Momentary

Restful

Light, gentle

Private

studio-portland-5009

Thoughts on painting in my studio space in the woods.

‘The thingness of the thing.’

1. The feeling tone holds the key to the painting.

2. Content

3. Form, Line, space, color and texture – Do they support the feeling I want?

At the moment of existence, it is what it is.

Feelings ‘predictable. Chances of my feelings at the moment’  Cezanne

IMG_5021

Before I left for an invitational painting workshop in Portland, I cut the canvas for vertical trees, but when I stood in the space in the woods my immediate reaction was this is going to be  a square painting. I went with my first thought.  Square – 4 square canvases, which at the end will work as a set of four. At the end of the day, the painting did not look like how I intended it to be, but it did convey my feeling in this space with the sunlight flickering through the trees.

IMG_5191

#1 acrylic on canvas 32″ x 32″ unfinished

The next morning the painting looked like it had two eyes looking at me so I painted out one of them. Now the painting is split in half. I’ll continue working on it back in the studio at home.

 An exhibition, Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966, is at the de Young Museum. It seems that there is always a prominent vertical line in his paintings, even more so than his horizontal lines. I just noticed that my transitions from picture or blog has verticals, not intentional – just think it is interesting.

Listening to Miles or Kind of Blue

Posted on by

photo-4

‘Listening to Miles’    6. 12. 2013       64″ x 46″    Atelier Interactive Acrylic on canvas

‘Listening to Miles’    Day #5

Ouch !  I need a professional photographer, John Janca,  to record my paintings. I have lots of parallax distortion, here.  The color and focus definitely could be better. Cadmium red and cadmium orange are used here. My hands are taking a beating from using the computer too much. Leaving the computer at home, I’m heading to Oregon to paint with a group of artists for a week. By settling myself in the middle of the woods I plan to take chances, paint what is unfamiliar to me, try new colors, new shapes, new whatever – just throw away the familiar for awhile and see what happens. If you keep doing the same thing, you are going to stay in the same place. Right? We will see if I can do it.

This painting came very fast – 5 days.  I was listening to Miles Davis in the studio. My idea was to paint about the sound of his  music.

Listeningto miles#1-4315

Day #1 – What a fun day this was!  The painting stayed very loose, strong and lots of color.

IMG_4330 - Version 2

Day #2 – At some time the painting takes over and I let the painting take me in a new direction. Fantasy animal-like shapes started to appear, a couple of  figures popped up, a strange shape with blue lines punctuated the painting.

Listeningto miles#2detail-4379‘

Day 3# – Detail showing brush strokes.  I changed the Stripe to green.

Listening-to-miles-detail-4431-2

Day #4  Today I took out the stripes. They were distracting. My eye went to them first and that wasn’t what I wanted to emphasize. Adding black on the lower left hand corner seemed to be right. I strengthened my shapes. Now I see a four legged animal in there.

Listening-to-Miles-02477

Definitely some guy is tapping his foot over there on the left.  I was listening to a lot of his music when I painted this. Interesting, there are no cool blues  in this painting.

A few months ago I did go see a small exhibit of artwork by Miles Davis in Napa Valley. His trumpet was displayed. So was one of his jackets and a wonderfully soft leather bag. It was a thrill to be so close to part of him. He was an extraordinary jazz musician.