Sketches

Sky/River Sketch 11x14

Notebook Sketch 11x8

Morning Run

Morning Run 11x14

The new year is off to a quick start, and though it has been hard to find time for the studio, I did manage to eke out a small one that evokes the mood I am in as we begin 2020, a little dark and tentative, not knowing where we are headed in this important year that will have long-lasting consequences for the future of our country and for our planet.  Trying to provoke a war with Iran doesn't seem like the best first step, however.  

Finding Light in December

The morning before the storm came in gave the gift of a light show like a Turner painting, and my effort doesn't do justice to the remarkable array of color and nuance that came through the fog hanging over the trees on the east bank of the Willamette River.  But it was a treat, given the many gray and rainy days that we face here in the Pacific Northwest.  

Luscher Sunrise 16x20

This one doesn't feel quite done yet, but I need to let it dry first.

A Merry Christmas to all!

River Light In December

December Morning on the River 16x20

Most days during this rainy time of year are grey and unremarkable beyond their soppiness, more likely bringing discouragement and misanthropy than cheerful spirits.  But occasionally the light is truly magnificent, a blessing and a joy to behold, and one feels so lucky to be out there in Nature when it happens.  When the surface of the river is smooth as glass, unbothered by raindrops or breezes that roil across and spoil the reflection, the mirror of the sky more than doubles the impact of the light, and I pause and let it feed my soul and soften the hard edges.

More portrait sketches done between weight sets:

End of November

Oswego Row Club - early morning, late November

Oswego Creek Lagoon

Deep in the Dordogne

Back Road to Urval 12x16 oil

On our recent stay in the south of France, we often found ourselves on small roads like this, buried deep in a Dordogne forest with little light, and the allure of dappled roadways was too much for me to resist.  Once, coming back late at night from dinner at a little restaurant in Cadouin, a wild boar ran across this very road just in front of us, and we were all treated to our sanglier experience.

When I find myself struggling to spend time in the studio painting, I work on small canvases, 11 x 14 or smaller, and that seems to help; there is less at stake, failures are easier to accept, completion is faster.  But now that winter is coming, what else am I supposed to do with all these short days and long nights?

Back in the Saddle

Looking South From Loubès-Bernac 24x30

After spending nearly a month in the south of France, it has been hard to pick up the painting routine again.  At first I stalled and found excuses, then I tried some very short portrait sketches (below) which helped me remember what it is like to hold a brush with purpose.

With luck, I will be able to focus on the amazing autumn color that teases the eye at every turn, that beckons and calls, full of promise.   But mostly I just hope to get into the flow of the painter's process.

Turning Season

Luscher Fields 11x14

The heat of August is behind us, and ahead awaits the endless rain and gray through which we will need to navigate for the next six months or so.  It is a melancholy time of year because of this semi-dread, but it is not without beauty of light and color.

September River 16x20

This summer I have strived to make it outdoors with regularity, and that may be coming to a close, too.  I will miss the camaraderie of painting friends and the challenge of finding a semblance of the color before me.  It has not been about picture making, but about study, and though I can study all year round, there is nothing quite like standing there before raw Nature with nothing but a paintbox.

plein air 14x11

plein air 14x11

The above painting was done on the boat, anchored up close to Phantom Bluff, trying to stay in the narrow band of shade so that I could at least see what I was aiming for, but the perspective made it tough to make anything of it.  

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 10x8

The above sketchbook study was made from an old black and white photo from shortly after college, a time when I was a bit disgruntled to have left the comforting womb of academia and been thrust into a world that didn't seem to give a damn about my needs and wants.  Looking back, I wish I hadn't been so serious, so disillusioned and so contrary.  It takes some of us a long time to learn that like reeds, we need to be able to bend with the wind.  And yet all the advice we might offer from the benefit of age still falls on the deaf ears of the young.  Life must work best that way.

sketch of an idea 8x10

á la longueur du lac

á la longueur du lac. 8x24 oil

One of the rewards of making paintings is that I find myself looking more, observing light and color in a way that I had not done before.  Sure, I saw the sunset, admired beauty, even noticed nuance, but I don't think I really paid as much attention to the way the sky changes in color as you lift your gaze from the horizon to the zenith, deepening, becoming more blue, more ultramarine blue, slipping along the color wheel.  I often find myself sitting contentedly for long stretches of time as my eyes drift from one thing to another: like the dull, cool greens of the inner cedar branches, and then the warmer, yellower tones at the edges in the sun.  Subtle things, and things we see every day without giving much thought.  It is so easy to take the world for granted.  We will live forever, and there is always another day to feel grateful for it all, or at least we might choose to live that way until it is too late and our time on this earth runs out.  So I am pleased that trying to paint allows me to slow down enough to observe more, and to be grateful for those little things of beauty.

In the case of the above painting, I was struck by how the sky in the west was so lemony yellow, but as the eye tracks eastward it shifts subtly greener, and then into a deeper blue.  These same changes are reflected on the lake, and I often notice that it isn't just the beauty of a scene I admire, the warm glow of light, the blue of the lake against the green backdrop, but it is the subtle changes along a distance, how the morning light to the east sings one note while the still sleepy light to the west sings in harmony, and each are beautiful in their own right, but together they are something more, something that feels like an understanding, and an acceptance and a need for the balance.

And then again, it's nice to have a faithful companion who is always willing to enjoy the beauty with me:

Below the Powerhouse 11x14

Oswego Creek 12x12

Unfamiliar Faces

The above is a recent notebook sketch, from a photo gathered somewhere on the internet a long while ago and saved in my computer; I have no idea who this is, but I do love his eyes.  I get asked why I don't paint people I know, and I sometimes do, but frequently I just want a face to begin with, a reference from which I accept the challenge of quickly finding a likeness, a way of exercising my paint-mixing and application.  Often I paint these portraits between sets on the weights in my little exercise room.  It is a balancing act, because if I get caught up in the painting and spend too much time on it, I lose the benefit of the workout, but if I speed too quickly through the motions of painting, I end up with a mess.  Sometimes a mess is okay, as in the one below, where I was interested in the effects of aging.

It's obvious that I took less time and care with this one, but that is not always the point.  Time, as seemingly endless as all the sands in the world, seems to slip through our fingers just as easily, and I find that I can guard it jealously and also waste it like a brute.  Time leaves its mark on us all, steals from us, gives us everything we have, and yet we simply cannot ever understand it fully: does it form a loop, is it an endless line, can we ever travel back and forth on it?  We seem destined to remain ever ignorant, left with a sense of loss at the end.

Here is One Art, a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; 
so many things seem filled with the intent 
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 
The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or 
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 
The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident 
the art of losing’s not too hard to master 
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

On A Dark Pond 12x16 oil

And finally, a recent plein air from along the banks of the Tualatin River.