Chasing sunsets

This afternoon I was in the pasture with the horses painting as a thunderstorm rolled in. The horses tossed their heads and ran from one end of the field to the other every time thunder rolled. By the time I was nearly finished with the scene I was working on the light really started to become dramatic. I whipped out a little 9 x 11 canvass and did a cloud study. Later I rambled around the valley as Redneck, the neighbors dog, chased cows as I took digital snaps of the cloudscapes.

I wrote:

"The sky like a belly ful of wine, blushes, and stumbles off into the twilight."

I took 91 pix but only one that I like. Digital doesn't capture color.

Afternoon light, Sanpoil

This is a view from the pasture below the studio a good place to work in the shade when it's hot. I tried to get the values correct on the mountain in the mid ground which is named, Chic le est, an Indian name which means, Creator Mountain. A geologist once told me that the mountain is older than the rest as evidenced by the amount of glacial scarification and the lack of new basalt that can be found on the higher mountain in the background, Chillimoss (Cold Mountain). I had trouble until I added the value of the sap green tree in the hard light. It is a challenge to record the moment when the shadows are growing so rapidly. I spent about 6 hours, setting up in two, 3 hr sessions. That worked OK because the sky was the same each afternoon.

One of the curious bits of history that isn't apparent in this landscape painting is a ditch that runs along the crest of the bench in the right hand shadows of the painting. It is an irrigation ditch built in the 30's by the Civilian Conservation Corp. The government had their WPA crews in the area improving tribal farm ground. They ran 30 mile creek in a system of ditches on the Whitelaw place along the benches and irrigated hay ground for more than 3 miles down the bottom of this valley. It's quite impressive to think of the work it took with horses and men using shovel's and picks. Times were tough and men needed work. Some of the finest work you will ever see was done during this time. There are bridges, stone walls with hand hewn rock and other projects including Grand Coulee Dam that were work projects that provided jobs and built the west into what it is today.

I finally got a piece on Ebay. I put "Owhi Herd" on the net to feel out the market possibilities.
http://art.search.ebay.com/greggs_Art_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsacatZ550QQsatitleZgreggQ27shttp://art.search.ebay.com/greggs_Art_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8QQsacatZ550QQsatitleZgreggQ27s, I've done alright selling pieces there before. I love the idea of being able to reach a market from the wilderness of the Reservation even though I might not get what I can at a gallery or show. Ebay has the potential to make art quite Egalitarian. I like that. Anyone can afford artwork. It's great to be able to surf through such a vast assortment of artistic effort. Some of it is quite good. I believe artwork auctioning on Ebay will create its own influence on Art History. Never before has the ability of so many voices been accesible at one time. It is something of a measuring stick that an artist can use to measure his work against others. And vice versa, the auction process allows for patrons to have an enormous level of comparison between artists and their work. I cross my fingers that all goes well.

Keller Ferry, Colville Rez

One of the realities of living where we do is the Keller, Ferry.

When the Grand Coulee Dam was built it backed up the Columbia River and created the 15o mile long reservoir, Lake Roosevelt, named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Many small towns and ranches were drowned and had to be relocated. What was once a paradise of orchards and free flowing river abundant in 80 lb salmon, it is now a quiet lake with attendant problems of pollution from run off and mine wastes. The town of Keller itself was deluged. A few buildings were moved. When the lake is drawn down you can still see old foundations and road beds.

An extension of Hwy 21, the Keller Ferry is a free ferry that operates from 6 in the morning to midnight. Many is the time we have hurried to catch the last ferry after a high school wrestling match or trip to Spokane. My boys figured out that they had spent over 3000 hours each on the hour and a half bus ride to Wilbur. Because they lettered in 3 sports a year their day was very long, usually from 6 in the morning to 7 at night. After such a schedule, life outside is going to be a snap. They are both off to college now. One in Montana and the other in N. Dakota on wrestling scholarships. They had to go back east because Washington gave up wrestling for girls sports. What a shame but that may change as girls are starting to be interested in the sport.

This view is from the reservation looking south towards the wheat country of Lincoln County, the bread basket of the world. This year farmers got as much as 80 bushels per acre on dryland farming. Incredible!

The hills are the Keller Grade. It's a pretty windy road that climbs more than 1000'. The view from the top looks south across flat wheat land and north to the forests and mountains of the Colville reservation. I'm sure I will paint the view from the top someday. But first I plan to go a little upstream and do a painting of Whitestone in the Hellgate area. It's a wild looking landscape of basalt cliffs and long horizons.

Charcoal portraits

I go to Sisters, Oregon once
a year to touch base with the Draft horse crowd. Teamsters, young and old. Wannabe's and worn out hands that come together to BS and load up on Draft horse gear or sell some of their collection. Some folks are into it for a hobby and others make their living with horses, farming, logging or hauling people. One of the things I've noticed is how many of us old duffers wear spectackles and grey beards.
It's a great time put on by Lynn and Christy Miller that publish "The Small Farmer's Journal", www.smallfarmersjournal.com.
I hope to do a painting with many of the faces that frequent the show. It will be fun to see the reaction of the guys when they discover a painting with their mugs in it. Hope it turns out.


I re-discovered charcoal from the artist Scott Burdick who does wonderful portraits. He and his wife Susan use powdered charcoal and a brush. It's probably an old technique but something that is new to me. Working with a brush allows me to work slow and find the image. Some folks use water with the brush but I haven't got that down although I use it for final details like the lines around the eyes and the eyes themselves. You have to be careful as it doesn't erase. I also have a problem getting things dark enough. The powdered charcoal builds up and is hard to remove from the surface without getting it all over. I just workout the, "fortunate accidents."

I got Burdick's DVD on oil painting. I learned a lot and find that DVD's are a great tool to learn from and hope to get more. Drawing out an idea is essential for studio work. I don't consider myself any good at portraits but I'm having fun trying. The internet is also an incredible tool that didn't exist a few years ago when I was painting up a storm. Last night I surfed over to www.internationalmastersoffineart.com and discovered Michael Stack who does clouds like I would like to be able to do. They've got a great stable of artists and online gallery.

I keep painting everday. I'm trying to get things on Ebay but they require a credit card which I don't care to have but might have to get if I am going to peddle things online. I sold some work in 93 or so. Didn't do to bad for prices. It's a little scary but is a way to find a home for some of my stuff. It's pretty neat to be able to live in Paradise of the Reservation and eke out a living of sorts.

Painting, "When Papa Works"

This has been a fun painting.

Now that my boys are off to college and I miss them. I look forward to including them in my paintings if not to hang the memories on my walls, then to sell them and help pay for the boys college education.

I think anyone can relate to this picture either as a child fishing or as a farmer working while they wish they were fishing.

I remember my oldest son Paige was driving a mower and team in front of mine and his windrow got pretty crooked. I thought there must be something wrong with his mower. When he turned the corner I could see what the real problem was, he was reading a book! Since he was only 13 I thought it best to have him drive an old reliable team but after seeing he was bored, I figured he would be better off with the younger team I was driving. That got his attention! I only hope he keeps reading when he's in college.

I'm working on getting these all on Ebay soon! Paige is off to Jamestown in North Dakota and Justus will be at Great Falls, Montana. They both have wrestling scholarships. I only hope they don't weigh the same and have to wrestle each other. Wouldn't that be something! Justus is a freshman and 6' 4" and still growing, he must weigh 190 or so and his brother Paige is 6' 3" and 210 #'s or better. Paige is a Junior and has made it to Nationals. JC is still in a cast from knee surgery so he will probably red shirt and not compete this year. We hope his surgery went well and he will be whole for the future.

Working in the studio, the Owhi Herd

I've spent some time lately in the studio on the advise of my friend and fellow painter Everett Russel. He says that a painting is an idea. "It's all well and good to paint outside but you have to let the dust settle and see what you have learned by working in the studio."

After a couple days working on this painting of a wild herd of horses I can see what he means. Working in the studio allows me to spend the time building the painting. Planning the layout and composition, what pallet to use, and the key of the painting. What with all the choices it gets a little overwhelming but that is taken care of with the first stroke of the brush. The looseness and spontaneity of painting out of doors with the weather and light changing is difficult to work into the painting but at the same time it's nice to be in the shade and "no bugs!"

This is a work in progress. The paint is pretty thick although I am layering glazes over the dried oil and changing the composition with color rather than object placement.
The painting is holding together so I will continue to refine it. I enjoy the idea of a herd of horses, showing the herd sire, the mares, their offspring of different ages. The two little paint colts are exceptional. I've gone back to visit them and they are thriving, they've put on quite of few hundred pounds and are wild as elk!

I've joined a local gallery. It is a co-op and requires the members to take turns manning the desk and waiting on people. Even though it's 35 miles to town I look forward to visiting with folks and seeing the work of other artist. I don't know though? If the price of gasoline keeps getting any higher I'm going to have to drive the team to town. I might make it in a long day!

August 11, another painting excursion

I did this painting yesterday. It's 11 x 14". Looking south down the valley at Chick le est with Chillimoss in the background. I'm going to wear this view out I've painted it so much. I guess part of the reason I paint early morning light is that it's so hot in the afternoon and I hide out in the studio to duck the heat. Sometimes I take a chair down to the creek and sit right in the water and paint.
I'm going to work on this a little more. I like what's going on here and there but think it should have a little work on the mid ground values. It won't be alla prima but whose looking? I like how the foreground values work. I'm trying to work with warmer earth tones in the foreground and not get stuck on greens. I'm looking forward to autumn and the wonderful colors that the Cottonwoods and aspen create.

I joined a local gallery. It's a cooperative by Ferry County artists in Republic, WA, called 'Gold Mountain Gallery". That's appropriate for my mountains! The jury is still out but I stand a good chance of getting in. With two boys in college I'm going to have to peddle a lot of paintings! Maybe try Ebay and connect it with this blog. That should be interesting.

life is an art

I "nailed" the light coming down 30 Mile Canyon. Light coming in the window woke me up at 5 a.m. At first I was grateful to see clouds as it has been up in the 90's. Clouds are a mixed blessing as they usually bring lightning and threaten forest fires in the dry days of August.
This little 9 x 12 painting took about 2 hours. I limited my pallet to titanium white, virmillion red, cadmium orange, cerulean blue in the sky and French Ultra-marine blue for the dark shadows mixed with alizarin crimson.
I've been painting Plein Air, alla prima,impasto, trying to choose my colors on the pallet and refraining from overworking and blending on the canvass. The paint gets rather thick, almost like clay. I'm having fun watching the effect of pure colors that stand by themselves on the canvas. I believe this makes the canvas more of an artifact and stands alone as an object not merely an image.

I remember being impressed by the brush work virtuosity of Rembrandt's protraits of the Apostles in the National Gallery last winter. I would walk through the Museum on my way up Capital hill to lobby congressional reps on energy and telecommunication issues. I took lots of notes that I have reviewed and remind me of painting dark to light, light over dark, and thick over thin. Rembrandt painted over an underpainting, letting it show through. It was interesting to see the detail in the dark values of the paintings. If I looked closely I could see the vague impression of a hand just a slight value above the darkest value, allmost invisible.

I am getting better at translating color and maintainingg value. I am working on brushwork and hope to develop a distinctive method of work illicited by my technique.

One of the benefits of color choices rendered deliberately is that the economy of movement physically saves my arm that suffers from artritis developed from driving horses for hours and hours. I have been painting as much as 12 hours a day on a studio painting of a herd of Paint horses I saw over on the Owhi range. It is far more challenging. I am inclined to be far more conservative and often refrain from correcting errors out of laziness and fear that the improvement will not work as well as the existing effort. Overworking is an issue. It helps to have other paintings to work on to refresh my mind and return to the effort with a fresh eye.

Paint everyday

I get up around 4:30 to capture the morning light as it lights up the valley and pushes the shadows down into the valley.

It was cold. 3 hours of painting and I was froze. I had to go to town, (Republic, WA) to get a cup of coffee and warm up. I gave up coffee sometime ago but had to have a cup of Joe.

The buildings in the background are those of the Campabasso family. This is the Campabasso and Stensgar homestead. Stensgars are the descendants of those that ran the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Colville.

In the 40's there was a hunting lodge here. Glen Whitelaw flew in dignitaries to the back country to hunt. Today the tribe doesn't allow non-tribal hunting although they allow fishing and sell their own permits a.k.a. "squaw permits to fish.

This picture is a little misleading as I have worked on it since and have added a team of horses hauling a load of loose hay down the road. It came off O.K and interjects the element of a story instead of just a landscape. The canvas is only 11 x 16 so the team of horses is only 1" biig. Might be the smallest team in the world!

Going huckleberry picking today up in the Kettle mountains with Aunt Dian. Should be good picking as there was lots of rain this summer although not much snow last winter.

Wednesday, 8/1/05

Today painting went OK. The setting is so important to success. A good setting paints itself.

I got up around 4:30 a.m. and beat the sunrise over Cache Creek pass. I wanted to capture the long valley that leads down to the Colville Indian Agency. I also hoped to find the herd of Paint horses that graze in this range as I have a studio painting of them planned. The stud horse of this bunch is a very loud brown and white paint. He has 8 or 9 mares and an assortment of the previous years foals from last year to about two years old.

This view looks out over the Columbia Basin to the Cascades that are faint blue silhouetes in the distants. You can see snow on them at times although this year there wasn't any.

This is the area of the Moses Band of the Colvilles and Chief Joeseph of the Nez Perce spent his last days here. He is buried in Nespellem. The Colvilles are basically a number of families, some that lived here and others that were located here.

The "Agency" is the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Tribal Government Headquarters. It is basically the reservation "capital" and heart of the Tribal Government.

I worked about 2 hours on a 9 x 12 painting. I forgot my paint thinner which was a good thing as I have been studying a DVD by Scott Burdick who layers thick impasto paint, wet into wet. It takes a lot of paint to cover even a little canvas. I find half my problem is just that I am so cheap I have difficulty squirting extra paint out of the tube to get the job done. The challenge is not to mix the paint on the canvas as that leads to muddy colors. It takes more drawing skill and value selection but lends itself well to softening edges and the effect of atmosphere in landscapes. One of the things I hope to achieve is better, more dynamic brushwork that results in a rich surface. I like paintings that are both highly skilled representational work with bold brushwork that allow colors to exist independently of the image yet combined, come together as a whole to be the image itself.

All that said, I have to paint, paint, paint.................