Creeklight

While every place in the country was sweltering this summer, the northwest was blissfully cool. We just broke 90 degrees a bit over a week ago. In early August I talked with someone from Seattle who said at that point, the city had reached 80 for about an hour and a half. The weather has been gentle and sweet and yet I still managed to grow ripe tomatoes!
This was lucky.

A daily painting I did after my weekend of collage.

Collage #2

New Day

An idea I`ve had for a long time, is to use my reject Yupo watercolors for collage. Yesterday I did it with this simple first effort. Although it`s tiny, I was cutting and moving shapes around for a good three hours before I reached for the glue. The process was awkward and used a part of brain that isn`t active much, it felt really unfamiliar. The work of Romare Bearden has excited me for a long time. It`s inventive and hopeful and rich. He was the ultimate collage artist.

Shorewash [1999]

David asked to see another from that earlier period I mentioned in my last post. I`m happy to oblige.
Day after day this week, I worked on a canvas that always seemed close to having the sensibility I was after. At the end of last night`s session, I realized it was hopeless. That is such a strange feeling. Was I delusional all along? Many times during the process I congratulated myself for being tenacious, that it would be worth it. But it wasn`t.

Genesis

From my last abstract period, 12 years ago. I was trying to meld aspects of geology, atmosphere, weather, botany... into a nonverbal narrative. It was overwhelming and mostly unsuccessful. I turned to painting the creeks and forests near my home.
I`ve been asked to participate in an exhibition inspired by the late Irish poet, John O`Donohue; "The Inner Landscape of Beauty". He saw the attraction to beauty as a spiritual impulse and found parallels between our experience and feeling and the wilder landscape outside. A moving interview with him, shortly before his unexpected death at 53, can be found here. The venue is a new one for me; the Narthex Gallery of St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Wilsonville OR. I`ve been persuaded that my work is appropriate for this intersection of faith with art.

Watercolor Creek

Since I was already working on Yupo with the commission I just finished, my tolerance for frustration was higher than usual. I decided to try for a watermedia version of this. It took three days!

Light in the Forest

This was a commission from a hotel that wanted a large version of this tiny 5"x5" painting. I don`t generally accept them but this seemed like an interesting project.

Path through the Winter Grasses

This just came back from the Seattle Art Museum`s Sales/Rental Gallery, it`s been on loan the last several years. I gave it a bit of a makeover.
The subject is a marsh in the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge near Olympia WA.

Winter Fog in the Forest

This is an improvisation melding two different landscapes, one local and one of a coastal forest. I`m not yet convinced it`s right. Those two trees remind me of opera singers, which I`m not sure I like.

Tillamook Head

And another daily.
A view of the mountain from the beach at Seaside.

Deep Summer Field

Another daily.

Split in the Cliff

From a walk along the Old Salmon River on a flank of Mt. Hood. It looked like a chunk of the basalt just fell out.