Recent Work

Granite in Shadow
14 x 16"
Pastel on Canson Paper

I've been busy for the last 6 weeks teaching some pastel classes at work, so have not been very productive. I do sometimes setup to paint when I'm out with the class, but most often move around offering advice, and "meddling' on their work. Its really quite fun and rewarding, but I have only some fairly rough studies to show for it.

This is a studio piece, based on studies and reference from last summer's trip to Lake Ediza. Granite is so light in value that it is like a litmus paper for ambient and reflected colors when it is in shadow.

4 days of Painting in Sonoma

I spent last week painting for the Sonoma Plein Air event, a non profit organization that raises money to fund art education in the public schools in Sonoma County. I have been a part of this event every year since its inception.
I arrived late on Monday, so just scouted locations in the afternoon drizzle that might offer shelter and a view of some sort. Tuesday and Wednesday were both wet, though it cleared on Wednesday afternoon. By then I was keyed into the possibilities of tree moss in gloom, and had to recalibrate my sensibilities to the 'glare' of direct sunlight casting shadows. Shocking. Here are the paintings, all pastel on Canson paper. I did 14 pieces, didn't bother to frame 2 of them (woof!). Sold 1 at the auction dinner, then 4 on the day of the show. I was beat by the end of the week, but had a great time. Sonoma Plein Air is well thought out, and superbly run by great people.

Windbreak
Painted in an off an on drizzle from the back seat of my car with the window rolled down.


Wet on Watmaugh
This is later that day with weather moving in. I was outside the car under the back hatch, with an umbrella up for further protection. However the cars roaring by a few feet away periodically swirled a mist onto my paper, some of which is stlll visible. Finally the entire background disappeared behind a grey wall. Time to go taste wine.



Maison Du Fox
While I was painting this, some vineyard workers came by and told me that a fox would come every year with her kids and live inside this tree trunk for a few months.



Mossy Tree
This tree was about 50 feet away from the preceding one. I found these green mossy trunks to be very luminous during the grey light early in the week.



After the Weather
I was driving down the hill from the mossy trees, and saw another painter working away at a turnoff which afforded
a great view down the valley. It was SusieHyer (no space in name intentional) a painter from Colorado. We chatted a bit then
I went to work as I spied some sunlight sliding across the hill in the midground, while the mountain behind it was in shadow.
Nice to have company out there from time to time.


Atwood Rocks
Julie Atwood was very generous in allowing painters to roam her property in search of material. She's got vineyards, old trucks, barns, livestock, but I liked the small boulders sitting under the oaks in the weeds...


Patten St. Spring
This is a small bridge over a creek in a neighborhood. I painted this about 5 years ago, and have checked it every year I come up to paint. A trio of female ducks came waddling by me, continuing right into my painting, and disappeared around the corner.


Carriger Closeup
There are magnificent specimens of Eucalyptus trees all over the Sonoma Valley. Some are bleached grey, others subtly striped with warm and cool bands. Their peeling bark lodges in the crooks of the branches and hangs down like dreadlocks. You got form shadows on the trunk, warm and cool planar color relationships in the shadows, little spots of background color peeking through the dreadlocks... what's not to paint?


West Sonoma
I thought this one would be easy, but instead had to struggle to get it working, hence it's non-rendered, iconic nature. I had to keep simplifying and flattening my shapes, and then try again. I think I was mainly attracted by the overall shape, plus the color of the shadowed grass, which is about what I ended up with.


E. Bonness a.m.
I may do a larger studio version of this. It is really more of a sketch. I'm not used to painting
that many discrete elements in an image, and reminded me of how clumsy my tools are for certain kinds of shapes.

Sierra Show Wrap Up

The last day of the show (one wall)


The last day of the show (other wall)
Red dot indicates a piece is sold.


I had a wonderful experience doing this show. I didn't know what to expect. The whole process has been a great education for me. From evolving a studio methodology for my own art, to trying different framing ideas and styles, to putting together a catalog, the responsibility and challenge of of doing a one person show is a good kick in the pants.

Being able to choose from 4 years of work helped me select and edit what went into the show. I used some pieces as studies, that I might have otherwise framed and exhibited, to do more resolved and larger studio pieces. My goal was to have a forum for my work that could be seen as a whole, and allowed the viewer to see the differences in light and color throughout the day. Jennifer Farris and Rab Terry of the Studio Gallery respected my goal, and changed their common practice of allowing customers to take a piece home the day it was purchased, instead keeping the body of work intact for the entire run of the show, for which I am pleased and grateful. I've always been a bit frustrated by the Plein Air format of putting up all your work in a show, and watching it get decimated in a few hours by buyers, so people that come by later may miss the thread, or range of ideas, one was pursuing and hoping to express. I am not suggesting that the sum is greater than the parts as much as a body of work can have an aesthetic and emotional resonance and range when viewed together that the separate pieces can't.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to do this, helped me put it together, and who came to the show, purchased my work, and/or offered words of support. This has been a long time in the making, but very rewarding in so many ways. The artists that went up into the mountains were a great catalyst... a mobile community of like-minded souls, that enriched the whole experience. The camaraderie and the opportunity to see the world through other artist's eyes made it that much more stimulating and fun. Patty, my wife, was my partner in selecting and framing all the work, as well as being my on call aesthetic advisor when I was stuck on some visual conundrum. Jennifer Farris and Rab Terry, the owners and operators of the Studio Gallery gave me the opportunity last fall to do this, and have been wonderful to work with. My advice to others is to go find your own mountain and climb it. You can do it!

Looking into Shadows and other Image Triggers

Iceberg Outlet
10 x 10.5"
Pastel on Canson Paper


Shadowed Face
14 x 10"
Pastel on Canson Paper

My upcoming show at the Studio Gallery is drawing near, and things are falling into place. My frames and glass are at hand, a catalog of my work is at the printers, and I'm finishing up the last paintings. The catalog will be available for sale on my blog, as well as at the gallery, and I'll post more information about that soon.

I find I keep returning to a few concepts that compel me to paint. One of them is the notion of seeing inside a shadow. When a shadow contains more than one value, it becomes transparent in my mind, not just a flat shape. This aspect, as well as the relationship of shaded colors to the illuminated parts of an image seems to be expressing some deep mystery of perception for me. A shadowed part of an image is a volume where one sees qualities that the illuminated parts of an image don't, or cannot, reveal: the color(s) of the ambient, or fill light, the bounce of local colors onto other surfaces — these qualities made apparent by the protective cloak of the shadow can often be imperceptible in direct illumination, yet they may be operating in those areas as well. Looking into a shadow is like peeking under the hood at the subtle, underlying components contributing to the overall color and illumination of an image. There's much much more that fascinates me on this topic that I've not articulated.

I'm also fascinated by water for a range of reasons, but I'll just mention an elemental one. I remember all the times as a kid, running around on beaches on the California coast, collecting shells and rocks, and putting them in a bucket. They were wet and shiny, and had brilliant hues. The next day, however, when I looked in the bucket, all my 'treasures' were pale and dusted with white. I had to fill the bucket with water to make the rocks look as good as they did at the beach! I no longer take the rocks home, and art supplies have replaced the bucket, but sometimes I still feel as excited and intrigued as I once did on the beach when I find scenes of water and rocks to paint.

Recent Work

Ediza Shore
10.5 x 10"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Here's one of the pieces I've been working on for the Studio Gallery show in April. I've flown over Lake Ediza in the winter and it is covered in ice. Funny to think of it in late summer, glowing luminous green in the morning. This was the view below my tent, where I would paint in the early part of the day.

Upcoming Show in San Francisco

I will be having an exhibit at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco, in mid-April. There will be more details forthcoming. The Studio Gallery was where the Early Birds show was held last year, but they have moved to a new location, about a block away, and have a larger space. As a result, I'm spending my weekends in the studio creating more work to fill the walls. There will be about 30 pieces in the show, a selection of pastels from the Sierras, done on location over the last 4 years, as well as some recent studio pieces based on field studies. Some Grand Canyon pieces will round out the show as well, as the subject matter is pretty much the same: light, water, and rocks!

Masses of split, chiseled, cracked, and crumbling walls of rock, and the way light bounces around
on their surfaces, have fascinated me ever since my first painting trip into the Sierras in 2005. The image below is a studio version of a pastel I did in 2006 up at Garnet Lake. I recall being terribly frustrated by the piece when I was done, as the subtleties of the lit and shaded surfaces, as well as the collection of forms was a lot to get down before the shadows altogether disappeared. Sometimes the pieces that bedevil you so much in the field are worth a second look. This weekend I borrowed back the painting, found some reference images, and went at it again.


Pond Wall
Pastel on Canson Paper
14 x 19.5

4 from the studio

In my job as a designer for animated films, I am always in the studio, but for my own personal work, I gravitated towards the plein air approach, partially as a means of escape from the studio. In the 12 years or so that I've been working outdoors in pastel, these are the first studio pieces I have attempted for my personal work. Recently I found myself with some time to focus on my own art, so over about a 2 week period, I took some of my Sierra pastels and worked them up into larger pieces. Large is relative, as these pieces are 14 x 16". Too large for me to take out in the field with my current setup, but perhaps still considered small by many artists. Scale aside, what I found valuable about this process was the ability to contemplate, correct, and explore 'happy accidents', following many of the valuable paths and processes that enrich our experience and work as artists. When working outdoors, there are all sorts of constraints and conditions operating that are part and parcel of that experience. The dynamics of light and color are constantly and relentlessly shifting, the weather may be bearing down unpleasantly, and there's a practical limit to the size one can work in. These issues are not present in the studio.
What's missing there, of course, is the contemplative, focussed, witness of nature, through one's own eyes, the sense memory of place, light, and color, as well as the physical result of that, laid down in some form by the artist. Each process has it's own unique benefits, and combining them is a natural evolution, I am realizing. The fact that it has taken me 12 years to figure this one out, doesn't really bother me at all. It just gives me something to look forward to on rainy days.

I was partially inspired by an interesting essay written by Jean Stern in the spring 2008 California Art Club newsletter, provocatively entitled, "Plein Air Painting: Where Did We Go Wrong? I felt Jean was challenging artists like myself, who only paint outdoors, and have ignored the studio as a resource for the further development of what is found in nature. He seemed to be implying that we were just eating the cookie dough, instead of baking cookies!
Also, Sharon Calahan, a coworker, and talented fellow artist, recently exhibited some large oils at a Napa Valley show, based on her plein air work, that impressed me.
The father of all this for me, has to be Clyde Aspevig, whose catalog 'Field Studies' was responsible for getting me up into the Sierras to paint in the first place. That catalog is hard to come by, but fortunately, most of the paintings in it are also reproduced in a wonderful book on Aspevig's work, entitled 'Elemental Solitude', which can be ordered from his own website.