Painting at Sisters and John Day Fossil Beds

We all met at the annual Small Farmer's Journal Auction in Sisters, Oregon. This year along with a couple buggies I took to sell I set up my horse trailer as a gallery. Kind of announcing to the teamster crowd that 'ol Greggor is plowing a new furrow, that of a painter. Had a great time doing some sketches of old timers. Might bone up on portraiture and try to capture the ol boys before anymore of them hang up their harness for good. Did two oil sketches of Vern Leathers and Dan Kintz. Dan didn't stop telling yarns the whole time I was sketching. It took a couple days as we had to hang it up due to rain. Dan ended up with the painting and bought a frame to protect it on the way home.
Fellow teamster and Horselogger, Rod Gould, from Greenwood, B.C. took the time on the way home to go through the John Day country and do some sketching of the Fossil Beds. It would have been great but my tailgate fell off the pickup and I ran over it with the horse trailer. Luckily Rod was following and stopped and drug it off the road. Kind of an interesting sculpture now. We couldn't travel at night because it tore the pigtail for the trailer lights out so we made the best of the situation and camped over at the Fossil Beds to do some painting.
The fossil beds are pretty outrageous landscape. Kind of like what Mars must look like. I would try to capture more details next time rather than the over all landscape as the details are wonderful colors but are more believable than the incredible ash flows.

I did this painting for a poster contest for our local fair. It is a scene of a "Pony Express Race". The yellow T shirts and bandannas signify the 'Moses' team of Sonny Moses who passed away as a young man but his family still races his horses. The rider is famous for his 'flying mounts'. It is a stunning event where there are 4 or 5 teams, each team has a handler, catcher, rider and 3 horses. The race is started from a standing start, each heat is a lap around a quarter mile track, as the horses near the grandstands the catcher flags his teams horse and the rider jumps off and runs to the next horse that his being held by the holder. It doesn't usually go anywhere near as smooth as all that. There are wrecks as the catcher may be run down by the charging horse or the rider falls off leaving a loose horse to circle the track, riders rarely use saddles and run the race bareback at full speed. It's very exciting and has been a tradition going back decades.
The painting was done in the old technique of an underpainting or grisaille although I think 'grisaile' is a full composition done monochromatically. I achieved some interesting effects and was able to construct the composition very deliberately. It is a good illustrative technique when the purpose is to relate information. Because of my close association with horses I concentrate in getting the anatomy correct and fill the picture with details of the subject and event. I can see where such work would improve an artists skills and is why many collectors value such work, it is straightforward and doesn't require interpretation.

March '06 paintings, "On your Game"

"Belgian Study", 16"x20"

"March on the Sanpoil", 11"x16"

It's good to get back to painting after traveling on business for the Washington PUD's. You have to paint everyday to be 'on your game'.
Paul Dorrel, "Are You Making What You're Worth?", April addition of the Artist's Magazine, explaining to a patron that is new to purchasing art about the seemingly high price of artwork. In answer Dorrel, explained the amount of time, perhaps decades and training an artist invests in his career and although a painting may not reflect the hours of time it took to make it, the painting was a reflection of all the effort that lead up to that point. Dorrel also points out the role of the artist to society is as important as that of any other career be it legislator, archetect or engineer and to allow for that in your pricing. Those thoughts resonate with me. Sometimes it's difficult to continue when the financial challenges are so daunting. Such considerations challenge innovation and the exploration of technique or even content.
People want what is safe, especially in times of social duress but in fact it is this duress that motivates 'new' points of view and the challenge of established status quo whether it is in art or our homes.
In these studies I have been influenced by an artist I met and hope to have the opportunity to work with, Robert Krogle. www.robertkrogle.com . An exceptional draftsman his paintings are masterful. I bought a portrait study and have scrutinized it.
Solid basics of drawing, value, edges,color and technique. Thick over thin, back to front, light over dark.
I hope to get to Couer d'alene, ID. where artists are working together in studio to keep inspired and be challenged by fellow artists. Except for Everett Russel, Republic artist this area is pretty remote from other artistic influences.

Art Notes to self from DC
Friday, March 3, went on a "Gallery Walk" in Dupont Circle. Surprised at how many were on art walk, quite popular. About 20 galleries on list and we hit maybe 8 of them. Many served wine and hor d'ouvers. Tiny, tiny little galleries. Some were converted townhouses useing both floors and sometimes basement. Very clever use of archetectural space but too crowded especially for viewing larger spaces. The townhouses are quite attractive and should be the subject of some sketches but the wind is blowing 30 miles per hr down these concrete corridors and too many museums to absorb the masters, I'll be going with Betts to the National where there is an installation of Cezanne in Provence http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/index.shtm#cezanne. Saw a show of Degas, Sickert (who I had never heard of, an Englishman that hung with the Montmart Impressionists, it was wispered he was Jack the Ripper but just gossip) and Toulous -Lautrec who I admire for his facility with the brush and intimacy with his subjects, the absinth drinkers, dancers and patrons of the debauched society of Paris. fun! Degas' is a superb draughtsman of the transatory moment i.e. ballet dancers, circus acts. In distinction to Sargent whose drawings we saw at the Corcoran who is a superb Academic draughtsman.
In Dupont Circle we discovered an acedemician, Dennis Olsen, from Santa Reparta Int., school of Art, Florence, Italy that resides in Texas. I only mention this artist as an example that affirms my opinion that 'art is a barometer of culture'. His work is interesting, in-as-much-as it is modern heirgliphics establishing the painting or rather wall decoration as 'artifact'. The trouble I have with much of modern art is the need for interpretation. I also don't think much of art that includes words or statements. Mr. Dennis Olsen's, work is derived out of what he refers to concepts of pentimento, vestigial images and palimpsests; which to me safely ensconce his work in an insularity that precludes a damaged ego, by that I mean, being so enigmatic insulates ones ego from critisism, which is safe but not courageous as hanging ones ego out on the end of a brush. Leaving ones self open to criticism is one of the best way an artist has to grow both technically and in character. One thing he did say that affirms my thoughts is that todays art is 'pluralistic', which I take to mean, "anything goes". I find the effort of making anything go the next extention of that thought. We, as artists, push the envelope hoping to discover some truth thereby shoving the wall of what we know forward, which is culture, this is true of any discipline but art, unlike engineering and the pracitcal arts, doesn't have any rules, like navigating through un-charted space and is congruent with what I feel is true about artists, they are the fringe element and should be either institutionalized or provided an island in which to live. I fear such an island would be a twilight zone and look a lot like a Hieronymous Bosh pictue.
I got Betts to the Hirshhorn (weird, two H's back to back?), and a dose of modern classics. If art is a barometer of culture then art history is the face of the barometric guage and the Hirshhorn does a good job of presentation although at this juncture there were more contemporary installations than pieces from the past. A number of them were photo based and quite cerebral. I was surprised to find the biggest crowds were viewing modern art as opposed to classic stuff although we haven't been to the largest display of representational art at the National Gallery. I think part of the reason is that the museums do a good job of local advertising and DC is a place of Universities and well educated bureaucrats, politicians and none too few population of a million people in the area.
The Corcoran, www.corcoran.org, which is also a school had an installation of dead things. It was horrible. I guess that was what the artist was after. I can't imagine working with such things. The smell was overwehlming. Dead fish, dead birds, dead coyotes it was appalling and entirely offensive. The artist was Ronald Gonzalez and you can have him and the death he must love. YUK!
The best impressions were of a piece by Henry Twachtman in the Phillips collection, that we both loved. We discovered a landscape of his that was gorgeous. It might be that we liked it because of the similarity with my own work. We discovered another piece in the Corcoran by Monet with similar technique of evident brush strokes that emphasize light and local color in which the artists personality and character is evident because of the brushwork and the choice or perhaps love of color.
Betts and I agree that one of the most important features of a painting is that the hand of the artist is evident. You can always recognize a certain artist by their work but should that work be appealing and something that resonates with the viewer becomes the mature patrons reason to appreciate and perhaps desire to own. If a person extends themselves to purchase or own a work of art outside the consideration for investment, it is likely because that work resonates with them, speaks to them, perhaps on many levels and is the mystery that compels artists to continue to pursue the muse. It must be something like a love song. There have been enumerable love songs throughout history but we never tire of hearing the same thing in a new way, so too art, we wish to know how others see the world, whether it affirms, discovers or refutes what we have come to learn or wish to discover about life.
Before I sign off I have to mention the discovery of "ledger art," that we found in the Museum of Native American Culture. Ledger books were provided to Indians by settlers, storekeepers and governments on which native americans would draw. It is a curious record of both the art (primarily storytelling i.e. tipi drawings/symbols) done on a record of the life at the time, purchases, records of death, birth and enrollment lists. Their is a dual value in that the record the drawing is on is antique and the drawing itself. In some fashion it relates to what Dennis Olsen and his work is doing in that it is about a record of a record that becomes an artifact.......fini...........almost, I must remind myself of the early work of Richard Diebenkorn, good stuff.

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.