What to do with those old paintings?

I'm taking a short break from my plein air blogging because I have a predicament. After the start of a new year I, like most people start thinking about making new goals for the year ahead. I have been working on getting my body in shape and alas feel the need to also get my studio into shape.

After spending the last week or so mucking out my studio space, I have come to the conclusion that I have a lot of stuff that I no longer need. Old dried up paint and broken picture frames I can deal with but what to do with all those old paintings? I, like a lot of you have stacks of framed paintings lying around my studio.

What do you do with all those framed paintings from years gone by?

My Plein Air Journey ~ Season Six and Seven

2008 and 2009 seasons of outdoor painting I continued to experiment with surfaces and washes to create my paintings.

"Path of Least Resistance" is on illustration board using water soluble colored pencils and dry colored pencils over the top. I tried to keep the fluid effect of the watercolor in this painting.

"Santiam Sunrise" is on Ampersand aquaboard. After the painting was completed I sprayed it with a fixative and then several light coats of lacquer. The painting is then sealed and does not require glazing.



I soon decided to start experimenting with the surface texture. The manufactured surfaces I tried had a very distinct uniform pattern and I wanted something more random.

"Where the Spirits Dwell" is on illustration board with tissue paper and gesso. This gave me a much more random textured surface.




2009 brought still more experimentation.

"Headwaters" was done on a sanded paper from UART. It comes in different grits and is made for use with pastels. It has been my experience that any paper that is good for pastels is also good for colored pencils.

"The South Forty" is on a very smooth light yellow paper called Pastelmat from France. Though it was smooth it seemed to take allot of layers.

My Plein Air Journey ~ Season Four & Five

2006 and 2007 mark a turning point in my plain air journey. I started out the 2006 season with the fluid acrylics on canvas as I had in the 2005 season but while I was at a retreat in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge I had an "Aha moment" and decided I would combine fluid acrylic with colored pencil.

I randomly brushed gesso onto some museum boards and then applied fluid acrylic in a equally indiscriminate fashion. This gave me a totally haphazaed surface as a "start" for my landscapes.

"Airley Vineyard" is one of my first successful attempts on this surface. The texture and color on the surface made it hard to do a lot of intricate detail thus forcing me to work faster and think more about shapes. (approximately 8X11~ private collection)

This becomes even more apparent in " Under The Vines". I used the technique of negative painting to create the leaf shapes. Original is 8" X 10" for sale ~ $300.00 framed. Custom size prints of this painting are available at Imagekind.

"Yin Yang" is a small 5 X 13 inch painting but it was a major breakthrough in my artistic journey. I was in a private garden and was inspired by the small clover like plants that were growing in a small pond. I worked on the painting and I remember thinking little about the placement of the plants and I did not intend to include the fish swimming among them. As the painting process progressed however the fish just seemed to manifest in the colored background. Viewed from a distance the painting reminded me of the Chinese Yin Yang symbol, thus the title. This painting is in my collection and I do not intend to part with it (one of my Hubby's personal favorites) but custom size prints are available at Imagekind.

My Plein Air Journey ~ Season Three

Season three I decided to change my approach and try something different. I had some fluid acrylic paints from a workshop I had attended and decided I would give them a try. I proceeded to buy ALL the colors Golden paint had to offer and a fancy but inexpensive French type easel to boot.

My fist attempts were soon painted over but I did manage a few somewhat successful paintings.

"Farmers Market" was one of my first successes on a 12 X 24 inch wrapped canvas. It was painted in the studio from sketches done on location.

"Walk With Me" was painted on location but with great frustration on my part. It was a very hot day. The paint would dry almost before I could apply it to the canvas. It is also a 12 x 24 inch wrapped canvas.

"Blue Drifting Dreamily" is one I consider to be the most successful of that season. It was one of those rare occasions when as an artist you need only get out of the way of the process, for the painting moves through you and out onto the canvas. I worked with very watered down paint that day, so wet that I was a bit concerned the canvas might warp. Thank goodness no one was painting too close to me because I would apply paint and then rotate the canvas, sometimes flinging it to move the paint around the way I wanted. It is on a 8 X 24 inch wrapped canvas and hangs in my family room where I can enjoy it every day.

My Plein Air Journey ~ Season One and Two

I became interested in plein air painting many years ago and I spend a great deal of time during the summer months painting plein air (outside on location). My objective is to create a painting in a few hours capturing the mood or light on the given subject in natural light. I am not a purest, I do not think the entire painting need be finished on location but I do think my personal work is fresher if I can capture most of the subject in one setting. The seasons I've spent plain air painting are beginning to run together but I believe I began in the summer of 2003. I thought it might be fun to document my journey visually beginning with that summer.

Back in the late summer of 2003, I remember setting in a peach orchard. I could hear the thump of ripe peaches falling from the trees around me. It was hot, most likely August. This was my first season out painting and I was not very efficient or prepared. Prior to that summer I had been working almost exclusively with colored pencils. I knew that I could not complete a piece in a small amount of time using only colored pencils so I decided to combine water soluble colored pencils with dry ones. The group I paint with starts at around 9:00 a.m. and paints till around noon when we stop and gather for a critique of our work and eat our lunch. I remember having just a faint sketch done by noon and very little color on my piece. I started out using a half sheet of water color paper. The painting was enormous for the technique I was using!

I struggled through 2003 and 2004 trying to complete a painting in a few hours time. Heck, I would have been pleased to have one half done by noon!

"Just Peachy" and "A Gray Morn" are the result of those first few seasons. Both are rather large, about 14 X 20 inches and both are on hot press water color paper with water soluble colored pencils and dry pencils.

YOU Are The First Filter

As artists we tend to have an emotional connection with each painting we work on. Something inspired us to paint the subject in the first place. As we work through the process of creating we reach a point when we must decide if it is finished. When that time comes is different for each of us. I like to live with a painting for a few days or weeks before I decide it is finished. I may "tweak" it a bit and then reassess. My final decision is based upon one question. Do I like it? If the answer is yes, it is finished, simple as that. If the answer is no, one of two things needs to happen. I must continue to adjust it or, I need to abandon it and move on. Sometimes making the decision to move on is not an easy one.






A few weeks ago I was out paining along the Willamette River. I was motivated by the river and it's bends and the way the light reflected off the water and banks. I especially liked the light on the cliffs. There was a tree at the top of the cliff that was bent over, barley hanging onto it's precarious perch. This intrigued me. I have worked on this painting, tweaked it, worked on it more and have finally come to the conclusion it is never going to be one of my better paintings.  I didn't capture the feeling that originally inspired me. I have fussed with it, adjusted the color, worked it over again and again. I just don't "like it".  I'll put a layer of gesso over it and hope the next painting turns out more to my liking.

Landscape Painting Workshop at Bald Hill Farm

Bald Hill Farm is the site of the 2nd western settler to the Corvallis area, Johnson Mulkey. The farm is 587-acres of strategically located open space and to help sustain the rural character of the Willamette Valley Greenbelt Land Trust is raising money to purchase the property. The goal is to raise $2 million in community contributions and private foundations to protect the farm adjacent to Bald Hill Natural Area, where public trails combine with cows, endangered wildlife and plants find refuge, and children come to learn about the natural world. This is an urban Farm that supports local food production, ecological restoration, recreation and education. There is nothing else like it.

To help in this efforts I was asked to lead a plein air workshop at the farm. It was a beautiful spring morning with a slight overcast so it was not too hot. I met about a dozen artists at the farm and gave a quick talk about how I approach an outdoor subject and then we dispersed for a morning of painting. I had a few people watch as I worked on my piece and we talked about the choices I was making and the birds and animals we spotted. At one point a flock of wild turkeys crested the hill top and we watched the tom's strut their stuff for the hens. Around mid morning a flock of sheep also appeared from over the hill and took refuge under the shade of a huge White Oak tree in the pasture. At noon we ate our lunch and shared the paintings started that morning as well as work the Greenbelt Land Trust was doing to preserve this magical place.

The top picture is my painting from that morning. I was far from finished with it, in fact one of the last things I did before lunch was to remove a tree I had placed smack dab in the center of my canvas! The only thing that remained was the top and it became the tree to the left of the barn. I placed the painting in my living room where I could study it for a while and decide what to do to finish it.

After looking at the painting for a few days I decided the pasture was too boring, and needed something to give it some intrust. I thought about adding some wild flowers and then remembered the sheep that morning at the farm. I live in the country and my next door neighbor has some sheep. One escaped through the fence and was happily munching grass in my pasture. Instead of running out to chase the beast from my grass I decided to grab my pencils and start sketching him into my painting. He was quite accommodating, first posing one way and then another till I had a whole flock of sheep grazing on the grasses in my painting.

The second picture is my final painting. I like it so it must be finished! I will be donating this to the Greenbelt Land Trust and they will auction it off as part of their fundraising. I am honored to be part of preserving this special place.

"Urban Farmland" 12" X 12" X 2"

For Sale Through The Greenbelt Land Trust auction

Sometimes You Get a Keeper, Sometimes You Don't

I was out painting today and I'm not at all happy with this one. There are a few things that are working for me but overall I just don't like it. I'll let it sit a bit and see if I can salvage anything. If not I'll clean the surface and do another.





Sometimes things work out and other times they don't. Clint Brown once compared painting outside to going fishing: "Sometimes you get a keeper, sometimes you don't".





Last week I was in the middle of the Willamette Valley painting and I got a "keeper".


"Almost Home" 12 X 12 X 2 inch $440.00