I'm blogging from Washington D.C. I'm up late, DC time, but not so late Washington time, i.e. Pacific Time. Even the mall in D.C. is an edifice to monumentality, makes apparent 'malldom' is a transitory, disposable, archetecture.
art note to self: painting as artifact- images as symbols, statement, less illusion than comment. Once technique is achieved the challenge may be application of opinion, perhaps through the excercise of imagination, less artist as recorder as in portraiture but artist as editorial commentator. At what point does craft become art? Cartoon become Art.
While touring the Freer Gallery, Corcoran and Museum of Modern art, I will look for answers to these questions. It is easy to be enamored with representational art, studying technique and impressed with the virtuosity of such masters as Rembrandt or Bellows or Matisse but challenging and not a little scary to work in the fashion of more modern artists such as Kandinsky, Miro, Chagall. Like bungy jumping or pointing your skiis over the precipice anticipating the challenge of making it down the slope without breaking a leg.
The Horse as a symbol. Color as expression. Close scrutiny to convey meaning the hopeful result a new creation that imparts understanding in the form of substance. Telling a story in a literal sense is a fine accomplishment but saying the same thing with feeling imparts substance i.e. Washington Crossing the Delaware as opposed to Guernica.
I am enjoying the contrast of urban/rural transition. Going from the paradise and peace of the Sanpoil to San Diego or Washington DC or Seattle which I have been to in the last couple weeks on business for the WaPUD Assc. my visual vocabulary is stuffed to overflowing which makes it difficult to commit to a particular expression but all goes away once the brush is in hand.
I was walking past the Capital which stands on a hill at the end of the Mall and the sun was lighting the sky which was filled with light purple cumulus clouds. A very difuse light in which the white stone of the capital building merged with the sky. What was extraordinary was the sky was Red, White and Blue. It would be a bit trite as a painting but having seen the effect I was excited to make the effort to portray the experience as I saw it. Sort of a Hudson River school lighting, sunbeams et all.

horse portrait commissions

I've been painting my horses on big canvasses or atleast 2'x3'. I would like to paint them bigger, lifesize would be good, 8'x10' canvas would do it. It's great to be able to use bigger brushes. It's a relief to be able to see better too. Not have to fuss over details, they just appear. I begin the painting in the coral with the horse tied up and then go in and finish. It usually takes me about 8 hrs of work depending on how demanding I want to get. I like bringing out their character. They all have distinctive colors and markings.

Painting can be a very lineal process. Rationally picking colors and laying them out using an intuitive grasp of the image that I have while keeping in mind the overall effect of the painting, works with big canvasses. I have to move around a lot and keep things balanced. When it is all said and done it comes down to the 'eye'. The eyes are a window on the soul. I've often felt when I look in the eye of a horse that I am closer to the Creator but not nearly as close as a horse gets to be.

a box of algorithms or a pallet of paint

I've been taking digital photos and playing with them in a photo program that has some spiffy tools. I got a little miffed because the computer does some stunning things that I wish I could do. What I have discovered is the computer as a tool has pushed me into new ways of working.


this first picture is a digital picture taken below Grand Coulee Dam called Seaton's Ferry, which I also did a painting of.


I used the computer to morph the digital photo into this version that is still somewhat representational


I then pushed it further into this rendition. What I learn here is how to see. How to push elements beyond the literal. How color relations are developed ending in an abstraction where the canvas becomes an object in its own right. It reminds me of reading Hans Hoffman's founder of the German, Bauhaus. I was a student going to Eastern Washington College, a half hour ride into the wheatland outside of Spokane, WA. He opened my eyes to the 'ideas' that an artist is obliged to grapple. It's been a long time since I was looking at things that intellectually rather than in the moment that I've lived in for so long.

I've often reflected upon what value there is to art. Picture making is not what it was when the camera didn't exist and the artist was something of a magician. Today we not only have camera but numerous technology that diminish the role of the artist who is relegated to the duty of operator of technology. People are saturated with visual stimulus and bombarded with ideas and take the images they are surrounded with for granted.

My attachment is to the process. Being one with nature. Like farming or logging my paintbrush is the team of horses that I harvest hay. Instead of harvesting a field I am harvesting a landscape and instead of producing a bale of hay I end up with a painting. One does not have any less value than the other and both share 'substance' which is how I want to live my life, a life of substance.

painting, belgian team, mowing 30"x40"

I've been working on a large painting of a team of Belgian horses mowing hay. This isn't necessarily my team or any of my horses as mine are more 'red sorrel' horses except for the mare Windy who is a blond sorrel but has an unusual grey mane.
It is a large painting for me but was not at all a problem. Being a person 6' 3" I find larger paintings to fit my physical nature. I also keep from overworking the painting as there is so much area to cover I can move around in the painting. I did the sky first. I had wanted to do cumulus type clouds but after 4 hours or so I ended up with a sky of 'mares tail' cirrus clouds that ended up fitting the composition quite nicely and are appropriate for the month of July when I am usually haying and are a good sign to a farmer as they represent a high pressure front of clear weather. I've had plenty of hay rained on, more when I was using machinery and had more hay to put up and had to start in June when the weather was chancy. Now I only cut 40 acres or so and can wait for the brome grass to get more mature and lend some grain to the hay. For the last two years the brome has looked more like oats it has been so heavy. The six horse I feed through the winter really like it and what they don't eat gets shook out on the ground and makes for good hay the next year.
I'm not done with the painting and have the harness to put on the horses. I've included the grisaille stage (imprimatura underpainting) just to show the progress. It's a different way of working than the imprissionistic rendering of the "Season Series" that I have yet to finish. I order stretched canvas from a distributor. It is incredible to be able to purchase such high quality canvases that are made in China and shipped to me in Washington from N.Carolina distributor. A 30'"x40x2" deep canvas is only $30. Some would think it improper to buy from exploited chinese workers but I'll bet, like the fall of the USSR, China will change due to the influence of Capitalism. Can't say that's a good thing either for us or them but it is a possible reason we would have fewer differences especially ones worth fighting about.

Merry Christmas Everyone
by Gregg Caudell

season series

These paintings are lartger than I have done for a while 24"x36" and 2" deep so that they can be hung without frames. I intend to do two more 'Summer' and 'Spring'.
As in the "Fall Series" I've taken my Plein Air attempts and used them as notes that I expand upon using the technique I've developed resembling a semi abstract perhaps 'tonalist' rendering of a landscape subject. I've discovered that my affinity for color and pushing paint around has developed into a distinct technique that uses something of the effect of Seurat's 'pointilist' practice of placing pure color in proximity to each other to create a third color. The technique achieves a vibrancy but working spontaneously and expressively, mixing color on the canvas, I have developed a personal application of paint through brushstrokes that imparts a vigorous and I think, 'unique' effect that allows the canvas to become less the rendering of an image or a picture of something as an artifact in it's own right.

As each picture developes I discover new things that I wish to pursue in the next painting. Working in series helps develop both a theme and continuity of process.
In an effort to apply to shows and contests I made a CD of my work and was disconcerted to find that although there are many pieces that I liked and had good things going on, I realized that what the public or 'industry' would be looking for or more comfortable with, had to have continuity.

I think I am achieving a way of working that I am comfortable with and one that I will want to work with for some time to come as it has much potential and is natural for me yet challenging in that it has intellectual prospects that can disclose both subjective and objective issues.

winter efforts

"Winter, Chick le 'est, 11"x14"


"January Thaw, Devil's Elbow" 16"x20"

I have been delighted with the results of winter work out of doors. It is cold but I have the luxury of a car heater. When my hands or feet get too cold I simply jump in and warm up. I tune the satelite radio in to the Opera and turn up the volume with the doors open and paint away. Eat your heart out Monet! Luv it! The white of the snow is like the white of the canvas which makes it easy to decipher the composition and shape of things. The painting just about paints itself and I try to keep from overworking the painting. I use a very limited pallet raw umber, raw sienna, alizarin, cobalt blue a little viridian and very little cad yellow but lots of thick impasto titanium white.

"Storm Over 21 mile" 16"x20"


"Winter Tracks" 11"x14"


"Tracks in the Snow" 11"x14"

Studio Paintings

I promised myself I would start working on paintings of horses if only because I have worked with them for more than 20 years and figure I should paint what I know. I've got a lot of material, digital photos, regular photos, and 6 models, Lucky, Rainy, Windy, Sunny, Willow and M&M.
The challenge will be working in the studio as opposed to life studies. I do tie up the horses outside the window and study them to get things right but I miss the colors of the warm seasons and the horses are wearing their shaggy winter coats.

Myers Falls 16x20

This painting was started on location at Myers Falls, the oldest longest producing millsite west of the Mississippi, 1826, or atleast that is the claim of the caretaker that lives below the falls and maintains the power house that still operates and makes enough power for up to 1000 homes. Pretty cool. This was also the area that the Hudson Bay Company established a post and if it weren't for David Thompson and political shenanigans that occured at the time this area would have been part of Canada. Also nearby was one of the greatest salmon fishing sites on the Columbia to which tribes from all around the west would gather for a potlatch. The first of the catch went to the Creator, the next that were provided for were the elders and handicapped, then those that came to trade were dealt in. Salmon didn't make it up Myers Falls but continued on their way up to the Upper Columbia, one of the greatest Salmon fisheries the world has ever seen. Today dams on the Columbia have closed much of the fishery off to salmon, many species of which are endangered of extinction. I wonder what it was like back then. I bet you had to dodge Grizzlies and wolves for some of the bounty.
It was a very cold and grey day to paint. I had to brighten it up in the studio. I was tempted to put turkeys in the painting. As I was working a flock of turkeys flew from the trees across the canyon over my head. There were atleast 50 of the big birds and it was a delight to watch them cruise over my head, gobbling to each other as they landed.

Fall Series

I've been working on a "Sanpoil Autumn" series.
I've enjoyed developing a simplifying my compositions as well as color notes from plein air work onsite. It is a pleasure to explore possibilities and interject the poetry I derive by reflecting on nature. I listen to opera and refer to notes of paintings and digital photos I took on location. I have always been enamored with the process of painting, of discovering new color combinations. Painting is much like playing the guitar. Many times I take time out and play the guitar as I critique my work. I have noticed there are many similarities between the way I play and the way I paint. It is very personal, I have never been inclined to play music as it is writen, rather it is a point of departure that I build upon with innovation and simplification. If art is about growth then I am growing. I discover my self through my efforts. It is an aesthetic development of the window of the self and the world that self occupies..




I visited the Frye museum in Seattle and discovered works by Cummings, one of the last of the NW greats like Tobey and Graves. I had seen some of his "Western" work in various magazines. The show was a retrospective of his very hard life in which he was married 7 times, survived TB and being a Communist during the days of Black Lists. I found insight into an artists development. He was true to his own vision. His later works are a celebration to his committment to color. He said something to the effect that after 40 yrs he finally allowed himself what he always suspected, he was a color junky. That's not exactly how he put it but it certainly is appropriate for his later Masterpieces, "Balthazar" and others.