Old and Sold

"Goodbye," oil on panel 20x16, 2008 (private collection)

Once in a while it's important to go back and review one's work with an eye to how everything fits together. Just this week while engaged in one of those reviews I chanced across "Goodbye," a figurative work from well over a decade ago. Exhibited at an annual exhibition and sale in Des Moines, it was a work that seemed to come together on its own. 

Almost any painter, writer, or otherwise who is making things can tell you that sometimes they make something that almost paints or writes or composes itself. That was the case with this one. It started conventionally enough from a reference snapshot of a rainy street. That accounts for the limited palette, which I chose almost instinctively. Another feature of this one is the value pattern of very dark foreground figures against a lighter background. While I was painting this at some point the figure in the far background showed up and the couple on the left under a single umbrella did too, with the body language as you see it. None of these effects reached the level of conscious, verbal thought. They simply came off my paintbrushes. 

This was my first exhibition in a local women's club show and sale. Someone liked it and took it home.
 

Food as a Subject

"Breakfast," oil on panel, 9x12

Food has been a subject for painters since at least the 16th century. During the high Renaissance, many painters produced complex paintings of banquet tables groaning with a feast, or huge bouquets of flowers that couldn't be blooming at the same times. The sub-genre of vanitas paintings is a great example of still life from the times, featuring bubbles, skulls, snuffed candles and all manner of visual metaphors for the end of life. 

Still life remains an interesting genre, though considerably less popular these days, and food still figures in its content. These days a still life might contain wine glasses and bottles, vegetables, or whatever, but unlike the days of Cezanne the results seem less popular. 

"Morning Coffee," oil on panel, 6x8

Over the years my own work has included quite a lot of still life. Quite a few years ago one of my exercises was to paint small, quick studies of common objects--still life in other words. Most of those works were small at 6x8 or less so that I could finish them in a short time. The idea behind those works was simply daily practice, regardless. "Morning Coffee" is an example.

"Marcee's Burger," oil on panel, 11x14

 

But food in still life also invaded my larger works. For example, "Marcee's Burger" is a celebration of our daughter's conquest of cooking. Until she made the hamburger in the work above she hadn't successfully done much cooking. 

Painting still life is a good way to work on shapes and color without the problem of a moving subject (like a person).

The Cold Blue of Winter

If you're familiar with the concept of temperature as it pertains to color, then you know that yellows and some reds are considered "warm" and blues, violets and some greens are considered "cool." When I think of the way the world looks during most of the year, the general temperature is warm. Spring is all yellows and yellow-greens, giving way to darker but still warm greens as summer comes in. Summer is a mix of greens--mostly warm but there is a mix of blue-greens (shadows, evergreens) that an artist would call "cool". Fall is a riot of warms--reds, yellows, oranges--fading into duller, browner hues. 

Winter, on the other hand, is almost all blues, violets, blue-greys and so on. Winter is a cold, blue season. 

"Raccoon River, Winter," ink and wc on paper, about 3.5x10

The watercolor above is a reasonably true representation of how winter looks these days.

Antique Cars

There is a dealer in vintage and antique automobiles and trucks here in Des Moines. They occupy a former new car dealership downtown, with a large outside lot along one side. Just across the street is one of the rare groves of trees one sees in our cities, where I've happily spent time sketching antique autos and trucks parked in that lot. These little sketches are commonly drawn lightly with graphite then painted. Emphasis and outlines are usually added afterwards, using a technical pen. 

"Veterans," wc and ink on paper, about 4x8

"The Blue Truck," wc and ink on paper, 4x8

"Two Antiques, wc and ink

"Three Old Ones," wc and ink

 

Digitalia

A digital item--computer program, or image, for example--is called a digitalium in certain places. In my case the term is applied to a series of digital drawings of mine that I post twice a week to Daily Digitalia, another of my blogs. You can link to it from the main page of this one. If you enjoy drawing you'll find many kinds, including a lot of figure studies plus heads and faces, leavened with an occasional landscape or other sort of subject.

Hand study, after daVinci

"Marty"

"

"1935 Bugatti"

"Classical"

New York Scene

Although it's been since before the pandemic that I've visited, Manhattan and it's buildings continue to fascinate and lure me. 

This scrap of an old sketchbook page reminded me how much I've missed the Big Apple. Soon, I hope...sooon.

Iowa Land

Although many people who haven't been to Iowa believe the land here is flat, in truth this state has quite variable terrain. The northern part is indeed flat, where the Wisconsin glacier tens of thousands of years ago crushed the rolling hills. But the western border, the Missouri River valley, has great bluffs of loess (an unusual kind of soil), and the southern counties from roughlyt Council Bluffs east to the Mississippi are hilly. 

"Toward Coon Rapids," oil on canvas, 18x24

In "Toward Coon Rapids" the land looks like rolling folds of a blanket--a verdant, undulating cover of the earth.

Downstream

Winter can be dark and grim or bright and sunny, both metaphorically and in reality. This year has been no exception but lately the weather had moderated. Grey skies sometimes but sunshine too; brutal cold but a few days above 50 degrees. Of course, most days have been studio days, but as the sun comes back and days lengthen the outdoors will beckon. 

Meantime, this is an image of Druid Hill Creek about a half mile downstream from my home studio. It flows through a few acres of woods before emptying into Grays Lake, another place that I've painted many times. This one is a studio work based on many references.

"Downstream, Druid Hill Creek," oil on panel

Four Views

Opening Thursday, January 5 at The Cellar at La Poste in Perry, Iowa, I have the privilege of exhibiting with three talented artists, all of whom have spent time as Artist in Residence at the Whiterock Conservancy, an Iowa non-profit that is carefully restoring the soil and landscape while educating the public. The conservancy has a third mission of recreation, supplying glorious places to hike and cycle, even float the Middle Raccoon River. 

"Middle Raccoon," oil on panel, 11x14

In our exhibition, Four Views of Whiterock the glories of the conservancy can be seen from differing viewpoints and with differing visions and methods. We think the show will help people understand and visit as the days progress. 

Four Views of Whiterock runs through the end of February 2023.

Happy Christmas Season

This year the holidays have been particularly cold and snowy. With luck though, the clouds will pass with the snow. Regardless, the days are starting to lengthen. Here comes the sun!

"Winter Walk," oil on canvas, 24x20

Merry Christmas and a productive and Happy New Year.

Lazy River

Last summer I spent considerable time near the Middle Raccoon River, a slow-moving tributary of the river that runs through Des Moines, some sixty or seventy miles away. Here the river is deep, even torrential, in spring but runs shallow in late summer. Like many rivers through agricultural land, it is browned by silt and can often look dark. This view of the river gives the viewer an idea of how this land might have looked before the plow.

"Downstream, Middle Raccoon River," oil on panel, 11x14

 

Winter

Although it has seemed wintry here, with snow a little earlier than usual and some chilling low temperatures, the real winter weather has begun now. Snowfall has been small but low temperatures have kept it on the ground. And low temperatures are going even lower, with the daily high later in the week predicted to be only zero Fahrenheit and the low in negative double digits. Brrr. 

At the moment the weather feels like Union Square, an oil from several years ago, albeit with less wind. 

"Union Square, Winter," oil on panel, 10x8

Frankly, we Iowans are probably all hoping for sunshine, not wind and snow and sleet, even if the temperatures are low. Bright sunrises are the thing to keep our spirits up, here in the darkest few days of the year.

"Winter Sunrise, oil on panel, 10x8

Primaries

One of the exercises that helped advance my paintings skills was doing a painting a day. Those were not larger than 6x8 so that a still life could be completed in thirty minutes or perhaps an hour. The other part of that exercise was to place the object(s) to be painted without a great deal of thought. For me, arranging and rearranging objects is simply putting off the main objective, so I mostly simply plunk something down, consider it and the lighting for a few moments. 

This painting came about during one of those daily panting sessions many years ago. 

"Primaries," oil on panel, 6x8

Annual Review

One of my habits this time of year is review of past work. Sometimes the review focuses on work completed in recent months or perhaps the last year of two, but many times the review dives deep into older and often unseen folders. This time it's been the latter result. Many older works came to light. These two are watercolor sketches made in the Pacific Northwest more than a decade ago. In each case the colors and techniques were explorations and didn't lead to any major changes in materials or methods.

"Sunrise, Redmond," watercolor on paper 9x5

"On Puget Sound," watercolor on paper, 5x12

Reviewing older materials provides the chance to revisit places, techniques, ideas and a lot more.

Here's my favorite plein air oil from the past year: Whiterock Morning.

"Whiterock Morning," oil on panel. 9x12

And here's another older work, this time in casein, done to study light and also the medium. Casein is an infrequently used medium made from milk protein. 

"Shellac," casein on panel, 8x6

Invention and Experimentation

Although there are quite a few reasons why painting attracts me, one of the foremost is the chance to do something I haven't done before. It might be using a new kind of paint, or perhaps a new support. Sometimes it's mixing a specific color using different components. The kinds of experimentation and invention are endless. Not long ago I bought a stack of heavy paper from the Legion Paper, a well-known supplier of art papers. This particular variety has a slight tooth, making it suitable for metalpoint and other drawing media. But it's also somewhat heavier than lighter papers I've used for watercolor. So I gave it a try. 

"Country Lane," watercolor on paper, about 6x8

This particular composition is based on a photo I snapped not far from my house--that is, the reference is a city street, complete with driveways and houses along the left. I simply removed the houses, emphasized the trees and changed the street to resemble a gravel road. So in a sense this is an imaginary scene superimposed on an ordinary street. The paper held up well, too.

Favorite Artists 18 - Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, ca. 1870

If ever there was a quintessential American artist, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) fills the bill. Mr. Homer was born and grew up in Massachusetts, in fairly middle class circumstances. His father was a businessman always seeking a big fortune. His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist who taught Mr. Homer his first lessons. Eventually he was apprenticed to a lithographer after he finished high school. Leaving apprenticeship after a couple of years, he opened his own illustration studio in Boston, where he was immediately successful. Most of his work in those years was graphic--wood engraving primarily. By 1859 he lived in New York and kept a studio in the famous Tenth Street Studio Building in Greenwich Village, the first purpose-built studio building. Although Mr. Homer is said to have been mostly self taught, it's also true that he attended classes at the National Academy of Design and learned at least the rudiments of oil painting by Frederic Rondel, who taught there. 

Harper's Weekly illustration--"Sharpshooter on Picket Duty"

"Home, Sweet Home," oil, 1866

Although his family hoped he would travel to Europe to study painting, he instead secured a position with Harper's magazine making pictures of the Civil War, many of them wood engravings. He spent time at the front, drawing and collecting material that went into studio works like "Home Sweet Home" which he exhibited at the National Academy of Design to considerable acclaim, and an oil version of "Sharpshooter on Picket Duty," among others. But even though he did oil paintings of war subjects, much of his postwar output depicted women, children and rural settings, despite his studio being in New York. 

"Boys in a Pasture," oil, 1874

Following the war he did spend nearly a year in France, though he didn't study formally but spent time doing drawings for Harper's, seeing the art that was current and doing his own outdoor works. 

"Snap the Whip," 1872

Through the decade of the 1870s Mr. Homer focused on rural subjects, including one of his most popular works, "Snap the Whip," among a number of others that remain popular if nostalgic.

"Breezing Up," 1873-78

Something happened to Mr. Homer--perhaps a romantic loss--because in the late 1870s he retreated from much social contact. He lived in Gloucester and the UK before moving permanently to Maine in 1883. His studio was near the ocean, in Prout's Neck, and it was there that he painted a number of monumental works, including one of my particular favorites,"Undertow," a depiction of an event he'd witnessed elsewhere. Two women are being dragged from the surf by two lifeguards.

'Undertow," 1886

Mr. Homer lived in Prout's Neck until he died in 1910, though he traveled widely and painted many other works.

"The Gulf Stream," 1899

"Fox Hunt," 1893

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Also in this series:

Favorite Artists
Favorite Artists 2--Chardin
Favorite Artists 3--Grant Wood
Favorite Artists 4--Diego Velazquez
Favorite Artists 5--Andrew Wyeth
Favorite Artists 6--Wayne Thiebaud 
Favorite Artists 7 - Edward Hopper
Favorite Artists 8- Nicolai Fechin
Favorite Artists 9- Rembrandt 
Favorite Artists 10-Hokusai
Favorite Artists 11-Franz Hals

Favorite Artists-12-Vincent 

Favorite Artists 13-John Sargent
Favorite Artists 14-Thomas Eakins 

Favorite Artists 15-Ilya Repin 

Favorite Artists 16-Albrecht Durer

Favorite Artists 17-Holbein the Younger

 

Echo of the Past

Sunsets are coming earlier and earlier as winter closes in. We're in the colder and darker months but memories of summer help. This is a small panorama of oak trees and prairie, based on sketches and photos made last summer. 

"Oak Savanna, Summer," oil on panel, 12x16

It's sad when you learn that this kind of native landscape once comprised much of primeval Iowa--now plowed, planted and developed. These trees are old growth and the spot has never been logged or farmed. Echoes of the centuries resonate in this patch of prairie.

Saturday in November.

This is the season of changeable weather here in Iowa. Although it isn't yet December we've had more than a week of snow and cold, followed these past few days by sunny skies and unseasonably high temperatures. When the wind howls down from the north and the skies stay pewter-grey, I stay in the studio. But days like last Saturday beckon me outside.

"November on the Racoon," wc about 3.5x8

This photo is a trifle blue rather than the warmer white of my sketchbook. Nonetheless I think it captures the sense of the banks and waters of the Raccoon River, which meanders through our nearby park. The trees are bare now, the branches either fan-like or more spidery, while distant groves of trees take on varied shades of yellow-brown. The sky and the river are nearly the same blue, but the river is a little darker. These days, as drought has continued in the upper and westerly regions our rivers are all running low.

Waiting for Food

One of the great things about sketching is how portable it is. You can sketch virtually anywhere, with a bit of discretion. Last week I sketched in the program while our local symphony played. There was ample light from the proscenium and the music (Holst's masterpiece "The Planets") was transcendent. No one minded, of course. 

"At the Airport, Waiting for Food," wc/ink

Another place one can sketch is in an eatery. One of the fun things I've done over the years is sketch in a very small pocket book using watercolor and ink. I posted about that a couple of years ago. This is another sketch I made some years back while waiting for food in an airport. It's actually a lower corner of my trip diary, We were enroute to visit family in Seattle.

"Sarge's," wc/ink

This second sketch is another from a trip, this time to New York. A favorite neighborhood place on the east side of Manhattan is Sarge's, a fairly traditional New York kind of place that we used to visit quite often. Both of these were sketched quickly with permanent ink and colored either immediately or shortly after eating. 

Sketching is a simple way to make visual notes that can become part of a visual library for later work.

Up North

The cold months are upon us. Here in Iowa we are emerging from one of the coldest early November weeks in recent memory. And although it's comforting to remember the lazy hazy crazy days of summer, the realist in me says we have to face the winter weather. 

"Up North," watercolor on paper, about 8x10

 "Up North" is a watercolor from a long time ago that shows folks from our neck of the woods, going about their daily business in spite of wintry weather. .