Dance of the Cranes

"Dance of the Cranes"

Had a great trip to Seattle. Spent some time sketching in Pike Street Market. The folks hanging out (homeless?) will sit for a sketch. I pay them $1 for 15 minutes. Don't pay them for an hour or they just leave.
This is the view from the balcony where I stayed. It was a rare sunny day. Diffuse light. Great sunset that I captured in a watercolor.
On the way over I had the opportunity to meet artist William F Reese. We had a great visit and got to see his work. I soaked it up like a sponge and look forward to the opportunity to do so again. Bill has been painting all his life. Wonderful landscapes and exceptional horses. He's looking for a home for a life size skeleton of a horse! Nothing like the real thing to study from.
Came home to find that I had sold some paintings out of the gallery in Republic. Turns out most of my stuff has been purchased by other artists. Don't know if that's a pattern or just what that means. One of the things that Bill said, "Don't sell the painting before it is made." I certainly understand what that means. So many say to paint what you know, paint what your heart tells you to paint, and paint from nature to learn the right way.
Fall is coming and the days are getting short but the light is perfect. I'm not looking forward to it getting colder but I'll figure out a way to still paint outside.

A second visit to a great painting site. Indian Summer continues. It is warm and clear as the sun falls to the southern horizon. Deep ultramarine shadows amplify the gold and orange of softwoods. Alizarin crimson and burnt sienna blend with yellow ocher and yellow cadmium. Middle ground of green goes both ways. Warmed with ochre they turn gold. Cooled by bloom they become purple. I try to concentrate on brushwork. I utilize an underpainting by making it negative space but can't get away from blending color on the canvas to define shape. I seek to find a balance where brushwork doesn't disapear and the color of the underpainting combines with scumbled brushwork to achieve its complementary color as I did with the painting "Deep Lake" which is set aside as a favorite to strive for. 

I'm getting in "The Groove". There comes a point in the effort of developing a method that works that you find more success than usual. I think this is where artists get into a series, developing method and subject. 

getting there.........

Nora Jones singing in the background....."If I were a painter"....... "I'm dreamin of a place".........""and could paint a memory, I'd climb inside the sky to be with you"............

The war goes on and nature humbles the greatest nation on earth,

The place of art pales in comparison to what my brother suffers.

It's a little awkward for me to stumble towards some enigmatic goal of beauty in the face of suffering. The best I can do is to donate a piece to a local charity. Today in the gallery a nurse from the hospital came in and asked for donations for an event they are putting on for the damage done by the hurricane that devestated New Orleans. I gave 3 paintings. Meanwhile another hurricane even worse than Katrina storms down on Galveston. Oddly this is a good thing as it turns our attention to home and raises questions that challenge the purpose of the war in Iraq. Meanwhile fuel hits record prices and winter is coming.

As far as my artwork goes I've hit a new level.
I've started to gain "Sensibility", the ability to envision the subject in its entirety. The end result of an attempt to interpret what I see, what I believe and what I want to say. It's a pivotal place where what your efforts have amounted to enable one to express what is sensed. I have great expectations. My canvas is getting bigger my pallette is established and my choices difinitive.

Anyway......................... .......................................

After the Fair

Fair time in FerryCounty is a sure sign that fall is on the way.
I took 3 horses up and hooked them up in a Unicorn Hitch to have enough horses to pull all the 4-H kids. Last year there were so many kids on the Hay Wagon that the tires went flat and the team could barely pull them through the soft Arena in front of the Grand Stands.
On Saturday night when the Pony Express riders from the Rez getting whooping it up and kids at the Barn Dance go wandering around the grounds, someone let out some of the cows that are in the Wild Cow Ride and someone else let out the 4-H hogs and they got out on the State Hwy. Luckily no-one was injured and except for a couple of cows, everything got put back to normal.


I've hit a groove of sorts with my painting. With constant work I've developed my own method of working and applying paint/drawing to canvas. The intense colors of fall helps me distinguish the difference between values and color. Including a subject, such as a building in the painting to set off the landscape has been working well. It's easier to come up with a good painting when the subject matter lends itself to the final effort. At the same time I am learning how to interject what I think makes for a better painting. Using imagination to manipulate the information in front of me rather than being a 'camera' and recording the moment has helped composition. What is in front of me is simply a point of departure. I am beginning to feel that my own 'voice' is coming through. Vision is two fold. One, what one sees and then records. Two, what one has inside that what is outside brings to the picture. I'm beginning to look for those images that lend themselves to what I want to say. It's exciting to begin to percieve what comes out of my hand can reflect what I feel inside.

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.