new revolution and an Anniversary

                                      Overgrowth watermedia on Yupo 8x26 inches 20x66 cm


 The week before I was practicing and this was one of those pieces. I wanted my demonstration at the White Bird Gallery to be credible. It was an 'event' in the first Earth and Ocean Arts Festival which was timed to coincide with last weeks Climate Strike.
Somehow, somewhere deep in our collective psyche, something turned. Did you feel it?

                                    Northwest Forest acrylic on Yupo 20x16 inches 51x45 cm


 This was the demo I began at the gallery. Below is how it looked when I stopped for the day.

 Believe it or not, I thought it was really promising when I concluded.
A reader of this blog asked me to record it live on Facebook. She said it was easy and it was. I taped my phone to a tripod and commenced painting. In my last post I mentioned I would try this so there were some viewers waiting. I chose a generic northwest forest as my subject because the motif is familiar. I learned the hard way to do something without too many surprises when demonstrating. Nonetheless, right from the start I had a major change of plans. Yupo has to be handled very carefully. If you touch it bare handed the oils on your skin will leave an area that resist the paint. Knowing this, I cleaned the surface carefully the night before. To no avail. My first strokes seized up as if I were painting on a waxed floor. The whole surface! The show must go on so I got out some acrylic medium to mix with the watercolor and squeezed out acrylic paint all around my mixing palette. This would have to be an acrylic painting. Improvisation is what I do and disastrous experiments are common in my studio. This time I just had an audience.
 Rather than having to figure out how to verbally explain my actions, I like it if I have questions. Christopher Mathie sat close by and we had a nice conversation while I painted.
 It is saved on my Randall David Tipton Studio page. If you take a look, two other videos show up first. They were done very crudely in my studio. Someone who had been watching earlier wanted me to proceed with the demo painting, so I tried to oblige her. I couldn`t find an option to just take a video, only one that would broadcast live. That would be ok I thought, no one knows I`m doing it. Wrong! Soon I was getting comments and some complaints about the lighting and hearing from people I had not had contact with for years! Sarah Peroutka watched it from her sleeping bag while camping! It was a real mess but also kind of fun.

                                                       Big thoughts at Pig and Pancake


 That is my husband John.
Twenty years ago I answered his personal ad on Yahoo. The whole online dating industry was still many years away. We had a long funny talk on the phone and agreed to meet at a Starbucks near his home. I had seen his photo and he was not there when I arrived. Considering  myself a good judge of character, I was surprised. After waiting twenty minutes I asked the barista if there was another Starbucks nearby. He said 'oh yes, right around the corner'. Soon I saw him sitting in the sun and there, for the first time, he said 'you`re late'.
Within a few months he had a key to my apartment and I began to notice his stuff in my closets. I`d come home from the restaurant late in the evening and he would be there. My experience with healthy romantic relationships was zero. But I had been diligent in pursuing why in therapy. When he sprang off the couch to clean up my diabetic cats vomit, I knew he was a keeper. They bonded before I did, also a good sign.
 So we count our time together from the day we met. Twenty years ago there was no cultural recognition of our kind of relationship. No rites of passage or celebrations except for the ones we created ourselves.
 Any marriage is a leap of faith. When they hold, over and again, it is so humbling.
That man reading his phone while waiting for breakfast is exactly who I want.

                                        Momento Mori watercolor by Richard Diebenkorn


 That is one of his last works, painted shortly before his death.
If you like his influential work, here is a wonderful essay by Diebenkorn`s student Tony Berlant. [He is phenomenal in his own right]

                                 From Laguna Pueblo, photo of her brother by Miriam Marmon




Click HERE for work for sale in my studio

Prints from Fine Art America

I love paper

                        Bryant Woods, Late Winter watermedia on terraskin 23x36 inches 58.5x89 cm


 At last, nearly all of my 'serious' oil paintings are complete, many are already in galleries, and I`m working on paper again. I`ve yearned for this moment but haven`t totally trusted it. My perverse human nature could have only been wanting what it couldn`t have. But it feels good! Paper is liberating, anything can happen on a piece of paper. All is allowed.
 My tough early years as an artist have ruined me for anything more precious than good paint. How someone could commit an image to Belgian linen is beyond me. I need  the [relatively] cheap substrate of paper. Then I can  relax and maybe forget about myself.
 All summer I used paper in my plein air efforts though they weren`t too good. I had new equipment, stimulating conversationalists along side me, and a gentle smoke-free gorgeous summer to work with. I did much better stuff two years ago when I hobbled to each site using a cane. There is something very interesting about adversity enhancing creativity. I don`t mean the stereotype of the doomed, drunk artist, I`m talking about how sweating in the heat, shooing away mosquitoes can make for nice painting. Every time I sit on my lawn chair, open up my 'travel' palette and look around, I think this is the stupidest thing I could be doing. It is way too daunting. The solution is to not think at all. Get everything in place and just begin. No gap. With luck, the discomfort can make me transcend my ego with its fear of failure, and humbly do my best. Without exception I always feel I failed. Then later I look again and think that wasn`t so bad! A few adjustments later and I might have a piece imbued with how that morning felt. I also remember this dynamic always in place when I worked with the figure every week in New Mexico. Our efforts will always seem small when we can look up and see an actual forest or human being before us. The comparison isn`t fair.

                  Oswego Creek Spring watercolor on Terraskin 23x35 inches 58.5x89 cm


 Both of these bigger paintings burst out of me but I thought long and hard about how I would paint them first. Beginning a new piece is my least favorite moment in the whole process. I`m no visionary, my engagement doesn`t kick in until I have enough to react to. Bonnard inspired Oswego Creek but Klimt was my companion as I worked.
 In Spring, the Northwest is a crazy, complicated pointillist landscape. I`m usually at a loss at how to respond. Well, it`s six months until that is my reality again. My memory scaled this back to something manageable.
 Here are a couple more watermedia pieces, done either on location or while waiting for oil paint to dry.

                                                             Luscher Farm Field

                                                                     Cottonwoods

                                                                      Riverbank

                                                               Frijoles Canyon

                                                                      Aleutian


And this just because it`s so bad. A friend was visiting Bandon by the Sea and her instagram photos provoked my own memories of the massive rocks all over the beach. I will paint one of the caves!

 Despite many hours I achieved an unspeakable orifice, more tissue than stone.

 Cheryl Strayed spoke recently at the local high school. Part of a 'Living Well' series sponsored by the Adult Community Center. Her memoir 'Wild' was deeply moving and I wanted to hear her. The event sold out so we arrived early to get a good seat. It was quickly evident we were in a sea of women. I could count the men on two hands. What the hell? Afterwards John and I were leaning against a wall talking about her remarks when one of the organizers approached us and thanked us for supporting the women in our lives. ?? I think she thought we were waiting for our wives to get their books signed. We told her what 'Wild' meant to us. We had both listened to the audio book and both of us found ourselves weeping on our walks. That is power. No doubt it was my male privilege that I didn`t realize the feminist icon Cheryl had become. After all, not many 22 year old women walk a thousand miles alone carrying a heavy load. Grief had been the engine in her trek along the Pacific Crest Trail after the death of her mother. Profound loss can cause a fearlessness. The worst has happened and one becomes untouchable.
 I`m now listening to her book of advice columns called 'Tiny, Beautiful Things' and it too has stirred my emotions. Without flinching she will dismantle the deepest insecurity or impossible situation. Her responses to these difficult matters is ruthlessly honest but exceedingly kind. She has helped me imagine a better self and showed me how to do it.

 This is my beloved Carter flying high on narcotics. This little rescue has had one problem after another. He just had all of his teeth removed except for the canines. He has the auto-immune disease Gingivostomatitis. He is allergic to the plaque that forms on his teeth. If you have a cat with terrible breath and it isn`t from Fancy Feast, your cat may be afflicted, it`s not uncommon. Untreated, the mouth becomes so sore eating is extremely painful. Somehow they can still thrive without their teeth and even eat dry cat food again! He`s healing nicely and in time we will be brushing those four remaining teeth.
I wouldn`t want to live a life without cats.

 The great Bill McKibben has written a report from the future and it`s well worth reading. It is fascinating and depressing but hopeful too about how the world will be 30 years from now.  IF we get serious about climate change. Is there anyone alive who truthfully still doubts global warming? The catastrophe will require worldwide cooperation and we shouldn`t be surprised that our possible demise is what finally brings us together.

This is my third try in three days to publish this post. Earlier I tried to include something from the Newport OR Police Department that corrupted those attempts. It was an excerpt from Winnie the Pooh about a visit to Eeyore when they notice his absence. He is sad and his friends just sit with him in silence. September is suicide prevention month. Simple quiet kindness can help those drowning in despair. Never underestimate the healing potential of just bearing witness. Just being there. It is awkward but it is something real.

 On Sat. Sept. 21 I will be demonstrating watermedia on yupo at the White Bird Gallery in Cannon Beach OR at 2 pm. This is an event that is part of the first Earth and Ocean Art Festival. It is a benefit for our Mom. Come to the coast and celebrate mother nature!
 At the request and encouragement of Heather from Chicago, I will also try to live stream the demonstration on my Facebook page Randall David Tipton Studio. She says it`s simple......

click HERE for work for sale in my studio

Prints are available at Fine Art America

                                                            Dune by Joan Mitchell

Forests, real and imagined

                             Selva Profunda 1 watermedia on Yupo 14x11 inches 35.5x28 cm

                              Selva Profunda 2 watermedia on Yupo 14x11 inches 35.5x28 cm

                           Summer Morning CB watercolor on Yupo 14x11 inches 35.5x28 cm


 Trees are why I am an Oregonian. Even though most of the original forests are long gone, the scrappy ones that rose in their place please me too. My fate was set during my family camping vacations in Northern Calif. and Oregon. I took a long detour through New Mexico but once I arrived at last, I knew I was home.
 The paintings above are recent, the third one done on location. It really doesn`t matter if I`m sitting there or not. I remember what they look like once I begin. What I especially enjoy when I do paint on site is the stillness and the intermittent sounds. Usually I`m walking through them getting some exercise. I`m taking it in but it`s a shower, not a soaking bath.
 At 19 on a farm I lived on near Mendocino Calif., I would walk into the woods and find a nice spot. I always had a piece of plastic in my back pocket that I sat on to avoid getting wet. I`d smoke some pot and then just study the forest in detail. It was an education.
 More;

 For those disheartened citizens shocked and appalled by the administrations environmental destructions, here is an article to give you some hope. The state of Maine once had a governor as hostile to nature as Trump but they are turning things around fast. Thank you Governor Janet Mills!

                                                              Wayne Thiebaud


 And here is a lovely little clip of Wayne Thiebaud talking about his career. What an example of kindness and humility and obsession. He`s nearly 100 but still creating. Here is a recent interview with him. Everyone loves Wayne Thiebaud!

                                                     Flood Waters by Wayne Thiebaud

                                                Ice Cream Cones by Wayne Thiebaud



click HERE for work for sale in my studio

Watermedia on Yupo Demonstration Sept.21, 2 pm, White Bird Gallery, Cannon beach OR