River Mood Sketches

I find myself drawn again and again to the river for inspiration, and I have to admit that a great many of my paintings are either of the Willamette River (as above) or its tributaries, like the Tualatin or Oswego Creek.  The mood is always different depending on the light or the atmosphere and in the cold of winter, it can sometimes be bleak, but most often the light is remarkable in one way or another.  I never tire of it.  It is constantly inspiring and exciting to the senses.  

It has been hard to find time to keep at a schedule of painting with the holidays and the eating and drinking that go along with it, but this morning afforded me a nice long walk along the banks of the Willamette at Mary S. Young Park, and the following sketch was a result.  We watched for quite some time as a sea lion lifted his head above the water and trashed a big steelhead again and again, whipping his strong neck so as to rip bite-size pieces he could swallow, slinging the fish several feet away.  Seagulls harrassed him, hoping for some scraps.  A bald eagle drifted overhead observing it all.  That, and a foggy light - who could ask for more?  These first two paintings are 16 x 20.  The one below took just over an hour, and I still need to figure out how I can slow myself, and spend more time on a painting.  Careful intention has a place in my painting that I am displacing with the rush to achieve other aims, and having no instructor standing behind me, I need to learn to direct myself better.  But I still feel I got what I was after in this painting, sketch or not - the feeling of the special light on the water and in the atmosphere.  I intend to do a larger version of a recent painting, and the sheer size of it will require more of me.

I am not done with the recent painting "Below the Powerhouse"and there were several things about it that bothered me, so I did another version of it, but rather than doing it in a larger size, I did the opposite, and made it smaller, 11 x 14.  I am happier with the composition, but the original version may have captured the feeling a bit better in its somberness.

Lastly, a portrait sketch for making myself get to the easel, to warm up.  If nothing else, it is drawing practice, and I think there can never be a point at which one no longer needs to be concerned for drawing.

Morning Light

24 x 24 oil

Those morning walks are proving uplifting, the eyes are rewarded with a special kind of light, not as soft and warm as that evening light, but instead pure and clean.  The sandy beach, almost frozen under the cold, clear sky, crunches underfoot, but takes on a magical blue cast.

Tender Art

Below the Powerhouse. 16x20 oil on board

Above is a recent start, a work that I stalled on after pausing to take a look at it, since I observed a number of things I want to change but I am not ready to alter it yet until I better understand what I am trying to do here.  I was working at composition and trying for the values I was after, and paid little attention to the method of paint application.  I was attracted to the power of the compositon, the dark promise of the stream leading into... there's part of my problem.  I didn't really want it to lead to a destination, but instead to pull one deeper into the somber overall tone.  It is more an exploration than a finished thought.  At one point I almost felt it should head off into abstraction, and that's also a possibility still.  This is the first thing I have worked on in which I felt the pull of abstraction, but my nature still resists it, wanting something more concrete.  Is it my experience as a builder that steers me in certain directions?  Does my process derive from methods of construction in some way?  I do know that I feel a certain impulse to slap things down quickly, move along, and I think it is the years of framing houses that makes me feel the need to push through toward structure, rather than delicately add marks that accumualte into a coherent whole.  And I have not resisted these urges, even when I question them, because I have believed that there is so much to learn about composition, value, color temperature, etc.  It seems to me more important to learn lessons than to create finished work.

But at what point do I need to change that way of thinking?  Have I deluded myself into thinking it is okay to just forge ahead, assuming that a voice and a style will miraculously appear out of all that effort if I just persist.  Am I kidding myself?  Is this an excuse for not doing the hard work of learning the skills referred to in the following quote from John Ruskin?

From The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin:  "...there is one quality, and, I think, only one, in which all great and good art agrees; - it is all delicate art.  Coarse art is always bad art.  You cannot understand this at present, because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and subtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first look coarse; but believe me it is true, and you will find it is so in due time."

There is little tenderness in my process.  I have observed other painters working, and I have witnessed their tenderness in mark-making, envious of their almost magical touch.  And yet when I grab a brush, it feels more like a power tool; I feel the need to hammer out something, scrubbing it down, scumbling, sloshing, stacking...  When does my inner maestro wave that wand?

And even realizing all this, even seeing the need is not enough to convince me that I have to make a dramatic change in what I do.  I instead try to plunge ahead in search of passion and meaning.  I do not discount the notion that little by little I may succumb to the truth that a part of my mind can recognize, but in the end it is even more critical to me to hold on to the interest in the doing of it.  It has to be fun, too, and not all intellectual self-direction.  As my friend, Andre Bonhomme, once told me "C'est le plaisir qui count."