The Land of My Father

Summer Mountain Meadow 9.5x14 oil on board

If you drive up the winding (and indelicately-named) Dead Indian Road out of Ashland and up into the Cascades in the direction of the Klamath Basin...if you take the correct exit onto an unmarked logging road past Shale City (another mystery, the result of a failed attempt to mine oil shale by the settlers in the area, with no habitation whatsoever)...if you take the correct number of left turns followed by the correct number of right turns, you eventually end up at the end of the road.  Parking your car and walking a few minutes along an unmarked trail will lead you to a small but deep depression with a small body of water at the bottom called Lost Lake.  There are dozens of Lost Lakes around, and this one is not as well-known as many of the others, but it has always been a special place to me.  There are steep rock bluffs on which you can stand and look down onto the tops of towering fir trees.  At just the right time of year, Calypso orchids are blooming, tiny and heavily scented wildflowers that are somewhat rare.  And the scent of pine in summer's heat, the soft dead grasses and fields of wildflowers and the stillness of the place lend a mystical feel to it.  It is a place to look within oneself.

But if you instead drive up the south fork of Little Butte Creek Rd, leaving Medford in the other direction, going past White City and then Eagle Point, on past the little Lakecreek General Store, up miles of gravel road until you reach what was once my grandparents' ranch, and if you stand in front of the ranch house and crane your neck way back and look up to the top of the steep mountain that blocks the midday sun in winter and makes the little valley colder than you would expect, you see the peak where my grandmother told us my father would climb when he was a teen, and how with his friends he would hang a pair of underwear from a dead snag for a flag of conquest, and then they would cool off by swimming in this same little Lost Lake.  It was a special spot for him and his buddies, and it became special to me and a few of my friends some 40 years later.

Cascade Tangle 9.5x14 oil on board

And above is another special place - on the Salmon River trail near Mount Hood.  The water is so clear and brisk and it plays delightfully with the sunlight.  You could sit at this spot and contemplate for hours and when you were done you would be the better for it.

Memories of the Mediterranean

The Beach Path at Cap d'Ail 24x36

The above is a work in progress that may take some time yet to complete, because it is filled with the sort of detail that I don't normally use in painting, architectural and particularly the people in the scene which need fleshing out: I am placing myself (seated on the bench) and three other friends, at our present ages, in this scene where we shared good times in the distant past, because in a real sense we still inhabit that place: it is sun-warmed and carefree and full of possibility in a way that only youth can truly embrace, and yet we still hold onto that feeling even in our advancing years.  Just a short walk into the foreground brings one to the border of Monaco, and the homes along this coast and the people living there were all quite posh.

And then I have two studies from my dog walks, along Oswego Creek as the season turns lush and soft.

A Quiet Dark Water 12x16

A Silty Creek 11x14

Green

Emerald Pool 8x8

Along the Channel 8x10

Green is power, nature's fuse, the color of more forces and guises than are countable, a messenger announcing itself, paradoxically, as the hue of both renewal and reproduction or infirmity and illness.  It is at once the preternaturally ambiguous color of life and death, the vernal sign of vitality, and the livid tinge of corruption... 

As the color of Venus and Mercury, devoted lovers, green is peace, vegetation, gladness and rebirth.  It is associated with the number five and is the fairy color, the primal wash, the heraldic tint of envy, of nausea and of hope, of solid gems and eerie mists, of sea cabbage, eelgrass, salt thatch, subaqueous plants, algae, and sea lettuce bearding the rocky shore.  "Green derives from blue and surpasses it," says an old Chinese proverb, referring to the student who, learning from a teacher, grows to surpass him.  Did you know that "greenth" is a legitimate word, although rare, meaning verdure?  To "green" is even a verb, in Scotland, meaning to yearn.  So many hues and shades and tints of green exist in the natural world, so multifarious are its guises, it is impossible ever to fully know them....

From Alexander Theroux in Secondary Colors

Goat Island

Goat Island - 22x28 oil on canvas

This island on the Willamette in West Linn has fascinated me for years, especially when the Great Blue Herons are nesting in these trees; sometimes there are dozens for them flying around at once, quite a sight.

This next is a work in progress of a long-time friend, John, from a time in the distant past when we rafted rivers in southern Oregon, particularly the Rogue and the Illinois.

When We Were Young - 18x14 oil on canvas

Reworking a Sketch

Phantom Bluff, Covid Spring 16x20

Wanting to explore further the painting in the last post, I decided to take a little more time on it.  This one is closer to my original vision and seems to express the delightful clarity of color on the lake that morning.  The next step may be to try this one in an even larger scale, perhaps 32 x 40.

Another recent painting, a little less fully realized.  Somehow I am missing the softness of the moment that I was after.  Some glazing might help, or it may be too late to softly blend where needed.

Finding Normal

Although I know my mind needs solace now, and that painting might provide that fresh breath of air so needed (sucking through an N-95 mask in the grocery store), for me, at least, I need to begin with a mind that has stilled itself, and mine is still racing and on high alert.  I am in information-seeking mode.  I am edgy, uncomfortable in this new normal.  But I did force myself to visit my studio yesterday and pound out a small painting, a mad slap and dash to try to capture the clarity of the light and color as I witness the convergence of spring sunshine and skies suddenly cleared of pollution.  I can't emphasize how sloppily paint was put to canvas, as if I had held my breath and must hurry before I pass out.  This is not the way to paint.  I need to find a way to ease into it, to feel that I have all the time in the world, like a long and lazy summer day without a worry in the world.  How long before that feeling will return?

Pandemus Immanis

A Walk in the Woods 11x14

The whole of mankind is now facing the unknown together, and peril is increasing everywhere.  This comes across as hysteria to some, but you only have to look to other countries to see what is inevitable for us.  Many of us refuse to believe it, deny the changes coming, but more importantly, deny the changes we should be making right now.  This stubborn insistence on clinging to the familiar is going to force us to go through more pain and desperation than we really need to, but I suppose that as divided as Americans have become, we have no choice but to enter the shitstorm and then maybe we can reevaluate our prejudices and realize that we have to fight this war together.  Alternatively, we might end up fighting each other, and Putin wins after all.  At any rate, this is the scariest time we have seen in our lives, and our future will be quite different from what we have been used to, but it does not have to be worse than the past.  We can choose to make positive changes to the way we live and relate to each other.  We can choose to become We The People again.

Bryant Frosty Meadow 14x11

As difficult as it is to regain the calm and focus needed to paint, I know that I will return to the easel in the coming weeks, and it will become a harbor for sanity and health.  My scheduled exhibition (my first!) was cancelled.  Just when I had worked up enough confidence to believe in what I am producing....

Be safe out there, help your friends, and stick to those protocols.

A Quiet Place

Bryant Wood 16x12 oil

While the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, and there seems to be little one can do to stave off the negative and the alarming, I decide that the least I can do for myself is to make personal assessments and change my routines, refocus on mindfulness, read something from which to learn, and exercise the body to try to keep healthy and fit.  Painting needs to be a part of that process as well, and though it's hard to find the hour or two in the middle of a busy day, I try to find a quiet place in my mind where it is just me and the canvas, the multitude of decisions and small problems to solve, and a momentary joy.  

As a part of my new regimen, I watch series from The Great Courses (recordings of lectures by selected professors on a myriad of topics) available on cable now (for an extra $5/month).  Currently I am watching Mind-Body, a scientific study of Consciousness.  It captures my attention while the minutes slip by on the treadmill, the two-bird practice.  At any rate, a recent episode covered the visual cortex, and how we see.  It is fascinating to consider what happens to the image of the world as it comes through our eyeballs and bounces around the brain, how we see color (no color in our peripheral vision!) and why we have blindspots, how the brain fills in all those shortcomings in our vision.  I don't know how this will apply to painting, but it would seem to make sense that better understanding of how we see can help us paint in a way that conveys emotion more readily.

Sprung!

Into the Fog 12x12

Though it is still cold out, a few sunny days have turned our spirits around, and some of us got out for the first plein air painting of the season today:

photo by Burt Jarvis

Meanwhile, down by the river some very ambitious beavers were working on a large cottonwood and the park maintenance crew decided it was safer to remove the tree now before they toppled it.  Along came some OSU graduate and decided to add his or her own touch.  Go Beavers!

Creating a Portrait Sketch

One of my favorite practices, especially if I am out of the habit of painting and am having trouble getting going again, is to paint quick portrait sketches in my notebook.  These are not precious, they are not meant to be shared or sold, and so I can avoid the intimidation that sometimes keeps me from diving in.  I work from photo reference - anything with an interesting face and strong features and good light/shadow.  Normally these are old black and white photos.  I use a limited pallet of white, black, red and ochre, keeping things as simple as possible.

After a quick pencil sketch to get the features in the proper arrangement, I lay in the darks, below:

Then I block in the rest of the face roughly:

A quick background color to fill the page:

All of the above work takes about 15 minutes, and is done with the same brush,  a number 8 filbert.  I've been trying to get away from using Liquid, because it seems to make my brushwork too blotchy, and lately I have been trying to do the bulk of the painting with no medium at all.

Finally, I switch to a smaller filbert, a 3 or 4, and work the details, blend in color, etc.

Bertrand Russell

Another sketch, of Vincent Cassel: