The Fog

Cook's Butte - photo

To walk in Nature at this time of year is to walk through what seems like an abstracted landscape, filled with mystery and delicacy.  Randall is a master at capturing this feeling, but I have not yet found the way to this particular grace.  I will have to remain contented with walking in the midst of the real thing, though that doesn't stop me from beginning aborted little efforts like this one below.

I am currently working on a portrait of Zach, and it nears completion, but I am now at a stage where I need for it to dry completely so that I can go back in with light glazes to build believablity into the skin tones.

Zach 12x16 oil

And lastly, another little landscape from the spot that seems to call to me:

Below the Powerhouse 11x14 oil

Sunbreak Serenade

Fall on Oswego Creek  24x30 oil

There is a remarkable tree at the confluence of Oswego Creek and the Willamette River.  I am no arborist, and don't know what sort of tree it is (locust?) but it is rooted in the sandy soil and boulders and for weeks at a time the roots are under water when the river is high.  I don't know how it survives it, but it does, year after year.  Today, Election Day, I only hope our democracy is as tenacious.

I marvel how often I return to this small creek for inspiration; it is only a few hundred yards long, from where it drops from the dam at the lake until it feeds into the Willamette, but it is filled with a myriad of individual pools and lagoons and rocky tumbles, and I find endless possibilities there for painting.  Here is a sketchy version from a little ways upstream:

I was trying to loosen up and leave more evidence of accident on the canvas, something that I find excruciatingly difficult to allow, and I'm sure a therapist might be able to better explain how fixed I am on trying to portray reality.  It might be argued that I have a limited imagination, though I prefer to believe that Nature is beautiful enough on her own without my embellishments.  

Below is a photo taken a couple of days ago, the reason for the title of this post, and it is of the same area as the first painting, but from upstream looking down.  I am the figure on the right in the mid-distance, and I am marveling at the brilliant sunlight breaking through the threatening dark sky, lighting up the fall colors.  The subject tree is on the left, aglow and reflected in the still waters of the creek.  Moments of beauty like this can give meaning to a lifetime, and they lift us up when we have fallen, they carry us on.

Ad Infinitum

Light Before the Storm 12 x 24 oil

Nature has a way of dazzling the mind and thrilling the heart with her powerful displays of light and texture and nuance.  I rush home to try to capture the feeling in paint, but my own puny human powers fall short.  It is an endless game, a hamster wheel trap into which I have fallen, and I see no end in sight.  As soon as I begrudgingly abandon my efforts on one piece, my imagination and desire is sparked by the next thing I see, and off I go again, ad infinitum.  

Portraiture, on the other hand, is a sort of respite from this frustration, because when the goal is achieving resemblance, sheer perseverance can apply, and though as a painting it does not soar, it can still mark the meeting of milestones, the progress that comes slowly, imperceptibly at times, but it's a simple reward that encourages me to slog on. Randall offered to sit for me, insisting that I should be working for life instead of from photo reference, and we managed an hour of it; the results were god-awful, but after he left I continued to work on it from snaps I had taken, and after a while the resemblence did appear, not perfect, but passable.  

Randall 11x14 oil