Paintings and Prints available

12/30/05

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.

12/22/05


Merry Christmas Everyone
by Gregg Caudell

12/18/05

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.

12/05/05

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"

12/02/05

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.

11/23/05

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.

11/22/05

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.

11/03/05

Sanpoil Autumn and trip to Washington D.C.


Sanpoil Autumn, 16x20 Posted by Picasa

This is my first studio painting of the year. It's been raining and cold every day. We sure need it, the ground soaks it right up. It hasn't rained for months and months. There is snow in the mountains and the Indians are burning slash, creating a nice but pungent haze in the valley. When the sun does shine the mountain shadows are every shade of ultramarine blue. Perfect to set off the brilliant oranges and reds of cottonwoods and aspen. I chose to work from my studies. I still had the same paint on my pallet that I had been using so thought it would be logical to use those colors and the notes from some landscapes. I had fun developing some of the color combinations I had discovered outside i.e. intense gradations of Hansa + white for highlights down yellow cad, virmillion and alizarin mixing alizarin and ultramarine with white to get some wonderful pastels.

In this painting I used the "Golden Rule" idea for the composition with the center of interest in the middle of the painting perhaps too much so but it does feel like I achieved the intent. I look forward to perhaps a series of these to develop the idea and see where I can take it. I listen to classical music and don't notice the day go by as I paint away!

I worked outside everyday with the intention of working indoors during the winter. I started just fixing up some plein air work, adjusting and altering right on the existing painting but quit after I realized they were important notes that I can't afford to lose. I have lots of digital photographs but they aren't to helpful. They help with the mechanics of things such as composition and object identification but lack any kind of ability to inspire interpretation. I've come to the conclusion that nature is a point of departure. If I thought I wanted a perfect picture of reality I would take a photo but they don't even come close to the right colors. Paintings are about Ideas whether it was the cave man, Monet or Picasso the end result was a reflection of the artists thoughts or ideas.

I had the opportunity to go to the Freer Gallery where many Whistler masterpieces reside. I also got through Hirshorn Museum of Modern Art but felt those represented were large "smart asses" thumbing their nose at the viewer but I also recognized that they were those that pushed the envelope of convention. I particularly liked the installations and sculpture especially the most modern sculptures such as David Smith's welded sculpture of a Raven. I came to wonder why I can stand in front of a Church, Moran, or Bierstadt for hours and marvel at their accomplishments. As usual I spent most of my time in the National Gallery of Art looking at those favorites but discovered two wonderful paintings by George Bellows of his famous "Boxers". Huge dark canvases such as Rembrandt would have devised with two figures brutally locked in combat under a light from above, a rabid crowd dark on dark crowded around the bottom of the combatants. I was delighted to see two of his cityscapes. Truly a virtuoso painter. Much pallett knife work but very acurate fooling the eye in such a way that the shapes come together from a distance of about 10 feet. Fun stuff! I have to think that his process was such that after working on location he would distill his thoughts and visual memory into such wonderful work.

The Freer Gallery built at the behest of Railroad tycoon and art Patron (William?) Freer has many of the "Aestetes" such as Whistler, Dwyer and Twachtman. I didn't know that Whistler was so influetial on art history. He changed how art was viewed in his time by making a painting, 'art for arts' sake', a saying I have often heard but hadn't realized that there was an actual transition from allegorical paintings that told a story to what we take for granted today as the artists license to do his own thing. He also interjected "Harmony" into his paintings from observing Oriental art. The painting became an object in his own right. One of the most significant personal insights I got from observing Whistlers work some as small as my hand, was painting or rather drawing over an underpainting with thin washes in such a way as to allow the brushstrokes to appear transparent and delineate the lines of the form as you would with a pencil. The transparent veils of a woman's dress or japanese paper parasol achieving a translucent quality. He often painted on wood panels with thin washes over an underpainting. I hope I can remember to try the technique.


I have to mention why I was back in D.C. of all places for a horselogger/artist. As Secretary of the WPUDA we had to try to convince our NW delegation of the critical need to dissuade BPA from proceeding with deregulating our transmission system in the NW. Apparently we were successful as when we came back Steve Wright of BPA pulled out of the discussions which effectively kills the process although I won't be surprised if another 'for sale' sign gets hung on some feature of our federal energy resources. Stay Tuned!

10/14/05


"Fair Barn on the Sanpoil". I went painting with a group up in Republic. Got this done in about 3 hours. Lost the light but held onto the gist of it. Russel says I need to get away from mixing white with my colors and instead mix the next higher or lower value in intesity with the local color I am trying to portray. i.e. to get brighter cad yellow light, mix hansa or lemon yellow, to darken, mix cad red light or vermillion. Posted by Picasa

10/07/05

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.
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9/27/05


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. Posted by Picasa

9/24/05


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. Posted by Picasa

9/22/05

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......................... .......................................
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9/12/05

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.

8/29/05

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.

8/28/05

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.

8/26/05

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.

8/21/05

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.

8/18/05

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.

8/17/05

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!

8/11/05

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.

8/06/05

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.

8/03/05

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.................

7/30/05

News from Sanpoil Studios, "The Artist on the Road"


News from "Sanpoil Studios"

Painting out of doors is more than just painting. Being in a wonderful place such as Glacier Park, Mt is what it is all about. Not only do I take a piece of the landscape with me but I am there in the moment.
Here I am at a turnout of "Going to the Sun Road" that is carved out of the cliff face of the Rockies. Many artists have sat in this very location, Charlie Russel, Joe Abresscia to name a couple. It isn't hard for even a hack like me to paint something that has a little merit when you set up your easle in a place like this.
My feet are hanging over a 1000' drop into the valley below. Many, many visitors stop to take in the view and look over my shoulder. It takes a little courage to perform like this but I like it. People watching kind of makes me ramp up the effort and do a good job. I could have sold every painting I did if only for a couple dollars. 2 million visitors make the pilgrimage which says that it's good subject matter.
There are many galleries in the area. Bigfork in particular is a growing artist community. I couldn't believe the growth in the area. It has been discovered by the rich and famous with rumor of movie stars and industrialists building 38,000 sg foot homes.
One of our friends Steve and Sandy Nogal have opened a fine restaurant, "McGarry's" that is doing fine in Whitefish, Mt. If you ever have a chance you've got to try Steve's apple pie. It's awesome, especially with a little vanilla ice cream on the side. His baby back ribs are great and a wine list that is as good as any you will find.