Going Bolder

Bigger shapes, stronger color and better design are my keywords for the new year. I've made some strides in 2015. The most important is embracing the flat brush over the round. After a few years of screwing around with Rounds, I decided that Flats were my new direction. The first success happened this past October on the June Lake Loop. The Aspen trees were done with real Flat brush strokes.

Shapes are crucial too. It is essential for me to not get caught up the details. On that same trip I fought strong winds and tried to capture the sage and Rabbit Brush.

Light and shadow are now essential elements in any painting I start. In the old days I might ignore shadows. I guess it was easier that way. I always have to remember how Ray Roberts makes the shadows the chief elements of his design. My cabins in Bodie seem to be a step in the right direction.

OK . . . what about color? After so many workshops where the stress was on gray I felt like I was falling into a trap. I needed bolder colors. Cathy came to the rescue on this one from the Dominican Republic. "More color," she admonished, "Don't be afraid . . . more color!"

It's a Funny Thing

One of the more amusing situations for an artist center on comments from the "peanut gallery" about your work. Nearly everyone starts with the same question: "How long did it take to paint that?" That one is funny because the answer for me, at this point in my journey is: "Oh, about 12 years!" After that the line of questioning usually goes toward subject matter. Some of my non-painter friends love to point out a scene and exclaim, "wow, now THERE'S a painting." I usually agree and that's the end of it.

However, last summer my friend Todd Harris was captivated by a wheat field in France. He especially loved the one tree in the distance which looked like a lollipop. To a painter, a lollipop tree is a big no-no. We are always trying to vary the shape of any tree. But this damn tree was a lollipop and Todd loved it. When we arrived at the wheat field that morning he told me that I needed to paint that field with the lollipop tree. I nodded politely.

We were parked there as it was the finish line for that day's stage of the Tour de France which were televising. We were there for 7 hours. Todd must have asked me 5 times if I was going to paint that scene. "That's really an impressionist painting" he exclaimed, "and we are in France."

I told him that the lollipop tree bothered me and that if I painted it I would change the shape. He urged me not to change it. That's what he loved about it. So here it is, in all it's lollipop glory.



Another comment from the Peanut Gallery which usually gets me stirred up is, "wow, that looks like a photograph." I find that particularly perplexing because it assumes that the photograph is the standard. But part of my problem is that I try too hard to make the painting "realistic." Often, I will start an impressionistic painting only to find that I have over-rendered the subject. This is my biggest struggle these days. I want to, as my friend Ray Roberts says, "paint form, not objects." Ray, a true impressionist often jokes that people say his paintings "lie." I want to lie! I did do a big painting a while back which almost walks that line. It's a little "photographic" but it heads in the right direction.



But no matter how hard I try, my "realistic" nature jumps back in. Back in August I saw these trees in Barracks Canyon, Utah and loved the play of light. I almost got it . . . The beat goes on!