“John’s View of Mount Shasta”

This is one of four of my paintings on display at the Westhaven Center For the Arts in the Representational Art League annual “New Works” show on display Sat./Sun. Afternoons until Oct. 28th. Several weeks ago, I met with John Crater at his studio on a foggy day and we pawed through his collection of photos taken from his many hikes. This subject caught my eye, because it had the warm hued boulders in the mid ground. I’ve been trying to train myself to pick out a section of the painting to focus the eye more than others, so that the viewer has a sense of where to go, and so the painting has a center of gravity. I did this by making the colors and contrasts slightly more crisp, and the edges slightly more sharp in the focal point region. Now that I’m gaining more comfort with this concept, it makes me want to repaint all my old paintings!

“John’s View of Shasta” 

oil on canvas 

14”x18” 

$750

Available at Westhaven Center For the Arts

Girl Playing in the Tide

This was the painting that I created and sold at the auction with a little help from Matt Stanton Beard for the Trinidad Coastal Land trust 40th anniversary celebration! It was a fun celebration with great food, lots of good peeps and the perfect party music by “The Sand Fleas”. 

Several of us took turns on another painting that was set up next to the band, tapping each other out when we thought we had an idea for what it needed next. Pretty fun! It evolved into a sunset scene with rocks and stylistic waves.

This piece in the photo was another of my attempts at putting figures into the landscape. Initially I had her father standing to the right, waiting, but he looked kinda creepy, so I scraped him off and let her swim unsupervised instead. Another thing that was interesting, was after the encouragement from Matt, I scraped off the two foreground rocks and repainted them darker to make them pop forward in space. I just painted them quickly and unselfconsciously and it seemed to work a lot better than before. I think Matt also lightened my Trinidad head mass in the far background when I wasn’t looking, which helped the depth as well.

The effect is termed “atmospheric perspective” for those of you who haven’t been indoctrinated in the science behind creating landscape paintings. As items are further away from the eye, they tend to get lighter and cooler, due to having to look through layers of atmosphere. 

Thanks to Jim for being the top bidder of the night!

Surf at the Mouth of the Klamath

Opening today(Sunday Sept. 2nd) at the Westhaven Center for the Arts from 1pm to 4pm. The Representational Art League will be doing a group show there until Oct. 27th. This is our big show for the year; each member was invited to bring 5 pieces, so it ought to be an interesting display. 

This piece was a break through for me. I decided to go back to working smaller(11” x 14”), so that I could really work on getting my technique to flow. Often, I meet with John Craater to paint, if the weather is poor, then we paint from his big screen monitor in his studio. The source photo was one of his, taken at the mouth of the Klamath. I really liked being able to go after the vivid warm earth tones on the rocks, and set them off against the crashing surf! Sometimes if a source is challenging enough, I have to turn of my analytical brain and just trust in the process in order to get through it!