Lacamas New Season - Papers - Perseverance

                                      oil on canvas 30x24

  I was trying to suggest the tipping point where winter begins to move toward Spring. Here, that`s usually late January.
  I hike frequently in the hills above Lacamas Creek WA with my sister in law Mary. I always think it`s visually interesting though I remember taking some friends from Nebraska there during a bitterly cold moment a few years ago. They were not impressed with the wilted frozen ferns, the biting wind and treacherous footing. Normally it`s just wet, usually green with moss and there are stands of dramatically gnarled oak trees. Walking uphill among the rocky outcroppings you can see the branches rising behind the boulders. I love this and have painted it several times.

                                     oil on canvas 24x24

                                watermedia on yupo 12x12

                                     oil on canvas 20x20

  In the Spring of 2010 I had the most unusual visitor. She had decided  she deserved good art to live with even though she was near the end of her life. I can`t remember the wording of her google search but somehow she found my work and asked if she could come visit my studio. So between kidney dialysis appointments, this elderly woman drove non-stop from Boise Idaho to Portland, checked into a motel then called and came over. She bought three of my best paintings and returned home the next day.
  I have never felt so flattered and validated  in all my life.
  Yesterday one of her sons called to say she had passed and would I like to buy the paintings back? I have never been asked this question. These are the paintings;

                          Reed Canyon Spring oil on canvas 48x36

                             Mt. Talbert Fog oil on canvas 30x24

                          Stones by the Trail oil on canvas 18x24

  When I posted a few watercolors of Georgia O`Keefe`s recently I learned I wasn`t the only one curious about the paper she used. Betsy Chang had written a librarian at the Museum of Modern Art in New York inquiring as well. She received a pdf file with several O`Keefe reproductions and an exhaustive analysis of her materials and methods. I thought it was fascinating but suspect only artists would care. If anyone would like to see it, I`ll be happy to forward it.
  The answer I was looking for is this - watercolor cartridge paper!
  Now, if someone would please tell me what that is?
  I have to be careful, I can get really obsessed with papers. Any paper and way past rational. What I would kill for is some of the exact paper our money is printed on. I know it has a high linen content and is obviously tough as hell. I bet watercolor would be sensational on it!

  For those older artists I mentioned in my last post, those returning to their creative natures again, here is a video by Ira Glass, the man behind the wonderful radio show 'This American Life'. He has some comforting words about the disconnect between taste and execution. He is talking about writing but it could just as well be painting.

Happy New Year!


Work for sale in my studio

watercolor on Yupo demonstration in my studio Sat. Jan 10, 10-11:30 am. Guests brought stools with them the last time and used them.
5373 Lakeview Blvd
Lake Oswego OR
97035
 

'Tualatin Overflow'-O`Keefe Watercolors-the Longest Night

                                       oil on canvas 30x24

  This new painting comes from a walk last week along the Tualatin River. I live close to its destination, the Willamette River. Here it`s at its widest and at this time of year flows with purpose. Yet even swollen with rain and silt, it`s maternal and graceful.

                                        oil on panel 12x12

 Another untitled abstraction, this makes five of these 12 inch squares. I think it`s out of my system now.

  A quest I`ve been on for decades is finding out what kind of paper Georgia O`Keefe used for her watercolors of the 19teens and then getting some for myself. This was in the beginning of her career and I don`t think she could afford hand made imports from Europe. The works are remarkable in their simplicity and eloquence. The colors sit on the surface and sometimes flow into each other. With extreme yet painterly minimalism she suggests vast spaces;

                                 Light Coming on the Plains

                                  Pink and  Green Mountains

                                          Starlight Night

  She`s best known for her giant flowers and New Mexico landscapes but it`s these modest watercolors that get to me. Here she is in a short video.
  I was in I`ve Been Framed recently and thought I might have hit pay dirt. Amid the reams of odd, sometimes unidentified, discontinued and surplus papers I found a legal size document paper that was 100% cotton. Nice texture to it and at 5 cents a sheet, a steal. I bought 20 and tried it as soon as I got home;

                                       Sky and Sea [Tipton]

  Not bad but not as hard a paper as I had hoped for. This took lots of pigment and the washes were absorbed in a less than sparkling manner. The search continues...

                The Longest Night watermedia on paper 12x9

  A few years ago when she was still driving, during a bright and rainless December, my Mom asked me why the sun was always in her eyes. It might have just been conversation, maybe a senior moment, but I didn`t know where to begin with an answer. I thought it was common knowledge how the seasons happen, the tilt of the earth etc. but maybe it isn`t?
  I`m not a pagan or Wicca or anything New Age, nonetheless I think the winter solstice is truly significant. The early Christian Church agreed and placed the birthday of Christ right at this juncture. In the northern hemisphere it meant the return of a growing season, warmth and the chance of continuing survival. Life and Death. The progressive return of the sun, our first god, represented hope itself.
This is the season for light, these are the longest nights.



work for sale in my studio