December GlowI'm working on a couple of more time-consuming paintings and decided to do a colorful wintry scene to break things up a bit.
Apparently there's an arctic front moving in this weekend with highs of 0 degrees...it looks like we can hopefully expect a white (but freezing) Christmas!
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It's really starting to feel like December here. I love the snow when I'm sitting inside with a cup of hot chocolate, but I'm not so fond of it when I have to defrost my freezing car and drive in it. This is such a beautiful time of year, though.
The paint on this piece is very thick, so I've provided an angled closeup to help illustrate that a bit.
Road Less TraveledHere's a sort of fanciful mountain/prairie scene. I love sequestered country roads. Since they're often forgotten or traveled upon infrequently, they seem almost like red carpets rolled out in front of you that appear just to take you to some peaceful, secluded place in life.
Winter's Calico SkyI saw this stunning sunset the other day and decided it would fit well with a wintry atmosphere.
Harvest Moon Over Rimrocks
Montana Dusk IIHere's another dusk painting. I love it when the sky takes on a reddish glow just before the sunlight is completely gone.
On an unrelated note, my favorite radio station (which I mentioned earlier) is now streaming oldies online: FM 99 The Mountain, Red Lodge, MT.
CambriaThe beach at Cambria, CA is probably one of the most beautiful places in the world. I remember feeling like I was in a Mediterranean hillside when I was driving there.
Let It BeAfter taking a break from this painting one day, I discovered that I liked the unfinished look of it so much that I decided to leave it alone and consider it done. It's based on Richard Avedon's famous photos of The Beatles.
More art will be forthcoming. I'm sorry for my neglect of this blog, but the past several months have been intensely challenging to say the least. Updates will probably continue to be sporadic for awhile, so please bear with me. I have a number of semi-finished pieces that I hope to upload soon.
This is based on a photo of my mother as a baby, playing in the fields at her grandparents' farm in Wisconsin.
Oldies but GoldiesAfter a bit of an unplanned hiatus, I'm back, with more art forthcoming.
I bought a set of oil pastels and decided to experiment with them. I've also been listening a lot lately to an oldies radio station - a true oldies station, none of the generic ClearChannel, new-format stuff. Listening to oldies and painting this floral, vintage-esque porcelain bird was really a lot of fun.
Just another quick experiment with palette knives and thick paint, this time of a field out in the Snoqualmie Valley.
I decided to experiment by using only palette knives for this one and forbidding myself to touch a paintbrush. I have a lot of fun smearing color on canvas with palette knives (like I did with the backgrounds for "Penelope" and "Shine"), but using them on such a smale scale as this canvas board was a bit difficult. I think I'll be doing more like this but on larger supports.
At any rate, this image is another that comes from my memories of the outskirts of Billings. For being the biggest city in Montana, it has a lot of rural life left in it. Being out in the mountains of Washington (despite their beauty) makes me miss these familiar plains.
New BeginningsThis painting is based on a photo I took of the lavender in my garden last summer, having just moved into a new house and inherited a lovely little herb garden. It seems that growing amidst all the dense lavender blooms are what I think may be some Korean Mint blossoms; I really love the image of them hidden among all the lavender.
WestwardThis painting is based on a photo from a roadtrip my friend and I took from Eastern Montana to Western Washington several years ago. Montana is a huge state to drive across, but the scenery - and sunsets like this one - make it worth it.
This painting is actually an older one from about three years ago. It's based on a dirt road on David's idyllic organic farm in the Snoqualmie Valley of Washington. I plan on doing many more paintings of the farm and am excited to do some plein-air work there this summer.
ShineI'm posting two photos of this painting, since a little bit of glare helps to show the highly-textured background. I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and experiment with painting the Nike statue sketched in a previous post. I envisioned a setting sun over the sea when I painted the background with a palette knife and decided to paint a transparent and abstracted image of the Nike statue over the background. I wanted to emphasize the color of the sea playing in the shadowy areas of her garments and wings, with the colors in the sky appearing in the highlights of her upper chest and shoulders. Scholars think the statue originally rested upon the prow of a ship that was placed a pool of water; the color and movement of the water reflecting from the bottom of the statue must have been beautiful.
Joni Mitchell's new album inspired the name of the painting.
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This painting came out of my memories of driving around the outskirts of Billings, MT at night, when the sky is so brilliant and clear that it's hard to tell where the fields and the sky even meet. The Rims surround the valley and fit so well into that huge Montana sky.
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Winged Victory I decided to do some sketches of my favorite classical sculpture - the winged Victory of Samothrace, a Hellenistic depiction of Nike (now residing at the Louvre). The sculptor depicted her, garments billowing, just as she touched down on the prow of a ship, and she was placed overlooking the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace. I imagine her right arm was originally raised with a wreath for the victor, and her left hand probably held a feather.
I wish I could do her justice - she's so impressive in person. I want to play with the scale and composition a bit and try to translate that "impressiveness" onto canvas.
Just a quick sketch today of Penelope. I'm planning to do something like this on canvas with a lot of fun colors and a bright background.
This painting is based on a photo I took from my hotel window in Missoula, MT several years ago. As is typical in Montana, the city's skyline mostly consists of mountains and hills and an expansive sky.
In an effort to motivate myself and define my own style, I've decided to paint and sketch on a daily basis. At the moment, I'm still trying to figure out how to successfully take digital photos of my paintings, so please bear with me. :)
I just finished "Penelope" today. It's a portrait of my cat, who I got as a kitten when I was in kindergarten and who just recently passed away at the age of 18. It's been intensely hard to let a lifelong friend like Penelope go, and I wanted to attempt to put her on canvas. She had beautiful green/gold eyes that I wanted to really bring out in the painting.
