Upcoming Art Show(s)

I have 2 shows coming up, and one of them is just around the corner. I'll be exhibiting at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco, from Oct. 13th-Nov. 7th. The reception will be this Saturday, the 16th, from 2- 6. There are 41 paintings focussed in three areas, the Sierra, the Grand Canyon, and local views and foliage studies. I've done 4 studio pieces for this show, and the rest were all done on location. An online catalog of the entire show is available here. Selecting 'view slideshow' allows you to see all the images without having to click on each one. Meanwhile, here's a few of the pieces that are in the Studio Gallery show with notes.

Black Butte Aspens I

Black Butte Aspens II
I spend a week in Oregon every year at a family reunion/vacation at Black Butte Ranch. It is one of the places I first started using pastels outdoors in the mid-90's. There is an enormous meadow in the middle of the property with a bicycle path running across it, bordered on the south side by small aspen groves. I have been whizzing by them on my bike for over 15 years, but this year I stopped, and spent 3 quiet afternoons working in this dappled space with flickering circular aspen leaves and pale trunks exhibiting beautiful colors. I'll probably be sitting here next summer as well.



Emerald Afternoon
This is a studio piece from a packtrip to Pear Lake in Sequoia National Park in 2009. I had already stopped at one lake to paint, and walked off the trail to look at this one, but wanted to keep moving. This small lake had several great rock falls, cliffs and beautiful green depths of water.

Granite Shoreline
This was from a non-mule, weekend packtrip out of Tuolomne Meadows to the Ten Lakes Basin. I brought with me a very small
set of pastels, and did several studies while I was there. This one was a good candidate for a studio piece, due to the level of complexity in the smaller forms. You can see the field study for it in this post.

Grand Illumination
I have ten pieces in the show from a Grand Canyon trip I made in 2008. I hope to return there and paint some more.
It really is an overwhelming experience for an artist to be immersed in a world of such complexity, scale, and the strength of reflected light and color into shadows. Combine that with 100+ degree heat, 48° river temperature, thundering rapids, and all your senses are fully loaded. I could only paint when the rafts were pulled over, and we were on the water from about 8 am to 5, so we motored past an extraordinary number of views I desperately wished I could paint. This image is a typical example of me gawking at a massive display of reflected light into a shadow as it casually drifted by one morning never to be seen again. That's where the studio comes in.

In Deep

Even in the confines of the canyon, one could periodically see a fair distance, and when the light got low enough, quite a bit of atmosphere was visible. The river would make a turn, and suddenly you were looking down a long corridor towards the light with large shadowed portals on either side. You were always in motion on the water, so the scale was dynamic in nature, as a slow parallax effect told you how 'big' the world really was.

I'll also be participating in a group show of Pixar artists that opens in early December at the Holton Studio in Emeryville. Tim Holton handcrafts beautiful hardwood frames, and also maintains a gallery space. The other artists are Ernesto Nemesio, Dice Tsutsumi, and Sharon Calahan. I am excited to see what everyone is doing, as we've all been busy at work on different projects, and I haven't been out painting with any of them in quite awhile. I'll post more details on this show when I finish the pieces, and the opening date is firmed up.

I hope to see some of you at the reception this next Saturday, the 16th at the Studio Gallery.

Sequoia National Park

Late last month, I was fortunate enough to be part of a group of artists, writers, naturalists, former park rangers, and educators who were invited to spend a few days camping near the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park as guests of the Sequoia National Park Foundation. A group of us would head out and paint every day, meeting up periodically with the others, some who had extensive experience in the Park. We were taken to some wonderful spots to paint, fed well, and had stimulating discussions (fueled with poetry and wine) at all hours of the day. It was quite a wonderful experience to be a part of, and I hope I can do it again. The mix of individuals and viewpoints made for lively interaction. This is the kind of retreat, with no fixed agenda, that stimulates creative potential of all sorts. It was a very positive and thoughtful experience for me.

This year also marks the 5th year of an annual painting packtrip that I have put together with the help of my artist friend, Paul Kratter. Paul, and another packtrip stalwart, photographer Bob Watters, were also invited to the above mentioned event, so we planned our back country adventure to dovetail with the one in the front country. For this part of the trip, we invited 4 other artists, Suzanne D'Arcy, Carol Tarzier, Sharon Calahan, and Ann McMillan, to come along. We hired a cook and mules from the Horse Corral Pack Station, run by Charlie and Judy Mills, to haul a field kitchen and most of our gear, up to Pear Lake out of the Wolverton trailhead for 5 days of painting in glacially carved granite at 9500'. It was quite a nice spot to work, and the company was good. I've posted below a range of studies from both trips in a general chronological order with a few notes appended.



We were camped at a boy scout camp about a quarter mile below the trailhead into the back country. This was painted in the parking lot of an old ski area that has been closed and overgrown. It was a nice spot to walk to in the morning and get in a study or two before walking back for breakfast.



I looked at a lot of Sequoias, but this is the only one I painted. They had a marvelous bark color, bordering on orange in direct sunlight. The light on this day eventually became completely overcast, and I became more interested in the 'tree holes' of sky poking through.



Painted in a rather deep, granite lined creek bottom, looking at a reflection of trees up the slope that were well illuminated by morning light.



After breakfast that same day, we hiked up this granite lined drainage full of small pools, boulders and streams of shallow water pouring down, one after the other. This boulder at the bottom of one of the descending ramps of granite caught my eye.


I stayed there most of the day and kept doing studies. This is fairly late afternoon. While the color is not so interesting, the collision of forms, made an interesting composition to my eye.



This is painted looking South towards Morro Rock in early morning light, one of the icons of the park.


One of the studies of Alta Peak I did the first afternoon at Pear Lake. The whole basin was almost entirely formed of solid, streaked and fractured, glacially polished granite, along with erratics and many boulders that had tumbled down the steep walls surrounding the lake. Alta Peak sat at the far end of the lake from where we were camped.



You could pick out a section of the steep walls surrounding the lake, and find interesting compositions. This area had some 'survivors'... trees that have toughed it out in a harsh place.



We had one day with a white sky that just flattened all the light. I hiked around and became intrigued by the patterns of solid rock running down to the lake. Even in flat light they were interesting.... to me anyway! Perhaps I was desperate. I did several studies of this type. They may yet bear fruit.



A midday painting. Below the lake, there was a lengthy sloping drainage covered with fractured slabs of granite, some vegetation, trees, and periodic boulders.


Late afternoon, looking northwest down the drainage to the opposite slope of the valley.


This view stayed fairly stable for a long period of time in the morning, as the light would slowly creep over the far rim of the drainage on the east side, while the foreground was bathed in warm light. The main surface of the drainage was patterned with cracks and fissures. I painted a few of these views.