Boreas Sanctus
Plein Air Painting 2016
December 12th, 2016
(In Studio – from a photo I took of my Uncle’s Pond)
Oil on Panel, 16 x 20 in
I’ve been doing more teaching – which means that while my student paints, I can too. It means I do things I’m not used to doing – such as painting from a picture. I lived with this beautiful water garden in my backyard for more than 15 years, never painted it (from life) once. That was dumb of me. I did take good pictures, however, and this one made a decent painting.
December 5th, 2016
Oil on Panel, 12 x 16 in
My mother reminded me of a photo I had taken and of one of my Uncle’s flowers. She suggested I make cards of it. I printed the photo, and then found myself trying to paint it. I’m not even sure if this is what she meant, because this is a dahlia and she said it wasn’t a dahlia – but regardless. A fun exercise and an ideal subject for my medium.
December 2nd, 2016
Oil on Panel, 16 x 20 in
I’ve been living in Rockport since May and I suppose it was inevitable that I try my hand at this eventually (Motif #1.) I was actually out giving a private lesson at the time, so hadn’t entirely planned to paint much myself. I hadn’t been out in so long painting felt clumsy and awkward. Still, not a disaster.
December 1st, 2016
Loon at Sunset Reprise
Oil on Panel, 12 x 16 in,
Again, trying to work out the gleaming light of sunset in puddles on the water.
October 27th 2016
Cogswell’s Grant, Essex MA
Oil on un-primed canvas, 12 x 16 in
I was at Cogswell’s Grant to lead the workshop that high winds had curtailed on Sunday. The weather was not windy but rain was imminent and as a result, very few people could make it. As a result of THAT, I got to spend some time painting. I didn’t have any canvas with me, until I remembered a little painting I had done as a demo a week before. I decided to paint on the inside/back, the unprimed side of the canvas. I have struggled with fall paintings in the past, and I wanted to try again.
The paint quickly was absorbed by the cotton duck, which meant I couldn’t get much texture out of the paint – but I worked with the circumstances I had. I layered colors until the fabric had saturated, and then skimmed what I could on the surface. It was liberating to work with a different surface, and I enjoyed the process very much. The product I’m happy with too. They call them fall “tones,” which is right, because on quiet grey days you can hear the purity of color ringing brightly against the muddied, muffled drone of dying leaves.
October 18th & 19th, 2016
Loon Phoenix Rising
Oil on Canvas, 24 x 30 in
Not a Plein Air! I worked on this one rainy day and one sunny day. I attempted a similar painting a year ago and I was not pleased with the result. There’s something about the light and water my mind needed to work out, so I tried it again. Again my focus has to do with creating the illusion of glowing light. If you use a paint brush, the dynamic is a lot easier to create because you can blend and grade your highlights & shadows gradually. With the knife I’m working with planes and slashes and daubs of paint. The starkest contrast you can get on a canvas or a piece of paper is between black and white – but in spite of their being polar opposites, white on it’s own & in contrast with black doesn’t look expressly like “LIGHT.” Even in an Ansel Adams photo, you have the precipice of contrast but no sense of RADIANT LIGHT. The qualities of warmth, grace, beauty, benediction, life-force, joy – to me, those and countless other dazzling adjectives are what I see in light. That’s what I’m trying to paint. The secret and the key I know lie in colour, but also in the energy and motion of a moment.
Incidentally, I do see this as a sort of phoenix, and identify with it as such – particularly as this phoenix is rising up out of water and light rather than ash and fire.
October 4th, 2016
Magnolia, Massachusetts
Oil on Canvasboard, 18 x 24 in
Finally got to go painting today, beautiful weather, a new location, good company. At the edge of the beach were a pile of boats, and I thought to myself “I’m going to try something a little different today, I’m going to paint those boats! But first, the background!” Well, when I started the tide was low. I began, as one does, with the sky, then worked my way down to the land and distant water, taking some time to be attentive to the tree. Well, to make a long story short, the heaps of smelly seaweed and the water inadvertently became my subject, because I have a bit of a water fixation, especially if I haven’t painted in a while. The boats weren’t super interesting anyway. Maybe another time. Despite omitting the intended subject of the painting, I’d say it went pretty well.
September 9th, 2016
Kenora, Ontario Canada
Oil on Canvasboard, 18 x 24 in (I think)
I painted this, though I was not intending to fess up about it any time soon. I like the water on the left especially, I am angry about the trees. In real life, there is a bridge where lies that straight of sand. The right hand side is a still bay, while the left is subject to currents and a lot of boat wakes as it bears the brunt of welcome channel traffic (“Welcome” is a term I will use with extremely limited sincerity until the date silent, wakeless, environmentally protective boat technology is the law and custom on the lake.) Where was I? Ah. Well, I’m still mad at myself for what I didn’t think went right with the trees. Maybe next year when the memory of what it isn’t has faded, I’ll appreciate it for what it is.
August 22nd, 2016
Twin Island, Lake of the Woods, Ontario
Oil on Canvasboard, 16 x 20 in
August 18th & 19th, 2016
Kenora Ontario, Canada
Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 in