All Things Fine Art

"Creek Crossing", 20x20", oil on linen, $975

Being a solitary painter by nature, I enjoy the inner peacefulness I experieince in my studio or when listenting to the song of birds and the buzz on insects in a quiet pasture while painting en plein air. For this very reason, occasionally I prefer to focus on the neutrals and earths in a painting to capture that same feeling in a painting. Fresh from my easel, “Creek Crossing” is one of those paintings.

In our ever expanding world of color we artists are inclined to use more and more color in our work. Today there are many hundreds of colors to choose from compared to the very limited palettes of the past. Just look at Rembrandt’s work and you can gage how far the world of color has come from historical palette choices.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with too much color. It’s everywhere in our world today and heightened to a point of being “in your face” intensity. We see it on TV, in the movies, in publications, our clothing, etc., etc.. It’s times like this that I elect to recreate in my paintings the inner peace I feel while in nature or when fine music is playing in my studio.

In “Creek Crossing” I used my normal palette of pigments but simply grayed them as they were mixed to create an overall tone of harmonized neutrality. In very general terms, varying amounts of yellow ochre or burnt sienna was used in all most every mixture. These two workhorses on my palette work well together and retain harmony as they are added to the brighter intense hues.

I hope you like “Creek Crossing”. It most definitely evokes the inner peace I feel when I’m lost in a painting with only the sounds of nature in my ears. These are the most lovely of moments in my otherwise hectic world. I treasure them.

MY CURRENT PALETTE: Titanium white, cadmium yellow lemon, cadmium yellow medium, permanent red medium, permanent alizarin crimson, cobalt violet hue, ultramarine blue deep and viridian green plus the earth’s: yellow ochre and burnt sienna. Other occasional hues (but not used in “Creek Crossing”) include: cobalt blue, mauve blue shade and chromatic black.

Study (left): Soo Jin Ryu      Study (right): Heeyoung You

Painting the same subject repeatedly helps one to build skill and to thoroughly know their subject. However, constant repetition of any subject, no matter how great, can lead to what is called “formula painting”. I try to avoid this trap by occasionally painting something other than my first love which is the landscape. For convenience I usually rely on still life’s for my “out-of-the-box” experience. Very rarely do I do figures, usually because they are not available without hiring models which is cumbersome when you only paint them occasionally.

Heeyoung You (left) and  Soo Jin Ryu (right)

This weekend was decidedly different. In my journey as an instructor I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know many students from other countries whose cultures are very different from that of the USA. That’s one of the pluses of living in a major university community.  Most recently, I’m fortunate to have met and become very good friends with Soo Jin Ryu and Heeyoung You from South Korea. One day at lunch with mutual friends, we were discussing some of the variables of social customs between our two countries. The subject of weddings and wedding dress came up. Heeyoung showed us some pictures of her in her traditional S. Korean wedding dress and I knew instantly that I would paint them one day.

Heeyoung You (left) and  Soo Jin Ryu (right)

The photos published with this post are from a plein air session with a few good artist friends painting both Heeyoung and Soojin in my backyard garden. I think you’ll see why this was such an incredible experience for the seven of us that gathered to paint them. The ladies were natural models and with their own personal inner and outer beauty matching their gorgeous gowns we had a very special day of painting en plein air. It was so much fun in fact that our small group is planning on getting together again in the near future to give it another go. With the nearby university, we should be able to find many models with traditional dress to paint. Yummmm! Can’t wait!

Painting Heeyoung: Julie Fortino, GLPAPA President (top)  and (bottom) Lori Feldpausch (L) and Soo Jin Ryu (R)

As you can see, not being a figure painter my first sketch (top of page on right), that I did of Heeyoung, was a little timid and tight. The second one of Soo Jin (top of page on left) was a tad more successful in that I loosened up and didn’t fuss so much. Working on a subject that you are not skilled at or unfamiliar with really jolts the mind making one rethink why and what you are doing. This in turn most effectively gets the creative juices rolling in a positive and productive way. Returning now to my landscape painting, I will be coming to it with a fresher eye and mind set.

Have you ever finished a painting and for months afterwards looked at it and had an itch that something was not quite right with it?  In “Clouds Above the Marsh”, that’s exactly how I’ve felt. The painting was finished, placed in a custom frame and shown on my website and in at least one exhibition.  It kept niggling at me all through that process. 

This coming September, the Great Lakes Plein Air Painters Association (GLPAPA), is having a membership show in the main gallery at the Crooked Tree Art Center, in Petoskey, Michigan. The Center hosts several galleries and has a big reputation for exceptional art.  As a Master Member of GLPAPA, I was asked to place several of my studio paintings accompanied by the field studies that inspired them in the show.  In looking over possibilities I kept looking at the cloud painting wishing it had the spark I like to see in my work.  It didn’t! With luck, I chased a storm cloud one day this summer in my car for nearly 15 miles as it dumped tons of water on the landscape. It was magnificent and gave me the information I needed to complete the painting. With a few pencil sketches of the downpour and the small plein air painting that inspired the painting in the first place, I was able to make the needed changes to “Clouds” to make it ring with the effect that I wanted.

It was worth the wait and the mental gymnastics  I went through as I pondered possible changes to this painting and the final revisions. The painting is now lyrical and makes a statement and I feel it is complete. It even has been given a new name, “Cloud Burst”.

I hope it has something to say to you as well.