Pierce the Gloom!

                                          Winter Wetland watermedia on paper 14x19 inches

 Yes it`s cold and soggy not to mention DARK, but what can you do? I`ll tell you, put on some proper clothing and go outside!! It`s the only way through, just ask a Scandinavian! They have a whole outdoor winter culture and they are experts with the darkness. The bottle is not the solution, trust me, it`s light that matters. Lights answer the darkness, get lots of them. Twinkling little bulbs lift the spirits far higher than their cheap price would ever suggest. Give your body ten minutes of walking and you can start peeling off layers to wear around your waist. It is so exhilarating to be warm outside in the cold looking at beautiful things. Like the forest which you can now see into because the leaves have fallen. Some intentional kindness to somebody, anybody ratchets up the goodwill like nothing else. To those vulnerable to grief during the holidays, the New York Times suggests making some plans, even lame ones. Be proactive, do not let sadness catch you by surprise. You honor the departed by living the best life you can. Use what they taught you. Keep them alive. Everyone over 30 knows how fast time scoots by. In a mere few weeks now, we will notice the longer days, hear more birds, and see the tree buds everywhere get fat. Our lives are just as valuable in winter, find a way to get right with it. 

We`ve all been through a mass trauma, let`s be gentle with ourselves and others.

                                                  Tidal Surge watermedia on paper 19x14

Finally, an abstract painting that flowed! No anxiety just a great sense of exploration. Some early random pours of ink ignited the construction and then it was a matter of finding a composition using the means I like to see; variety in texture, transparent and opaque areas, clear assertive color playing off subtle neutrals and a balance of light to dark values. It was fun. 

                                                Enter oil on oil paper 12x16 inches

                                                   Fade then Fall oil on oil paper 16x12

                                                 Tree Circle oil on oil paper 16x12 inches

 Three new studies from my walks around Cook`s Butte. Beautiful place that I relied on after my knee infections. I can do a lap near the top with a significant uphill section. I used it to build up my lungs again after being inactive for so long. You get to know a place with repeat exposure.

He sure could see the future. Wonder what he would say about restoring a faith in science? Sometimes I think only a mass tragedy will ever unite our country again. It is so stupid, we share much more than we realize. Because Fox news and MSNBC seem like propaganda machines, I never listen to either. Most Democrats don`t trust Fox so might not realize how demonized we are by them. Every now and then I get a glimpse of the hatred they encourage and it is shocking. What conservatives don`t understand is there is a limit to our patience with Republican attempts to rule the world. If the Supreme Court invalidates Roe vs. Wade, they will awaken a sleeping giant.

  Amy Donaldson`s work has intrigued me for several years. The elements in her paintings are continually repeated yet offer a large variety of content. Emotional content. Just from the titles you can tell there is another intention in the work as well. She might say it is one in the same. Amy is a devout Christian and it is important to her to express that faith not only in the paintings but in texts regarding her or the work. This interests me as I generally have a high opinion of artists and their ability to critically think. The Japanese American Makoto Fujimura is another believer whose work I respect. Both are painting from a sincere impulse and both achieve a depth that I can feel. Maybe because I was also raised to worship Jesus Christ, there is an affinity. My intellect had me rejecting beliefs on closer examination while still a teenager. Not the appalling attitude toward homosexuality you might expect from me but the conflict between a loving God and the necessity of 'salvation'. Couldn`t hold both ideas together but clearly many others have. So in a way, the persuasion in the expression of their work is more credible to me than any argument. Here are some of Amy`s paintings;

 I could live happily with one of these.

                                                                         Tipton oil 30x24

 I`ve been known to annoy other painters by telling them they should stop once their glorious simple underpainting is complete. I really do mean it but a modern painter has set aside studio time as a precious appointment with themselves. If you have 4 hours to give to your practice, you don`t want to hear you`re finished in half an hour. But maybe you should be. Maybe the spirit in your idea is most pure, lovely and immediate in the beginning. Maybe the solution is to have lots of available substrates on hand at all times so as to move on to something else. I do believe more great art has died because of the work ethic than anything else. Maybe if I listened to my own advice the painting above would still exist.

                                                                Natalie K. Nelson

Happy Holidays! The war on Christmas is here!

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Someone in Portland just ordered a bunch of stuff. If it was you, thank you!

Abstraction, national tragedy, plein air again

                              Untitled-violet watercolor on Yupo 18.75x14.25 inches, 48x36 cm


How are we now?
If I don`t attend to this blog I eventually get an email asking me about it. Where are you?
That anyone cares is touching, so I keep it up. It has brought me many friends.
Usually I just feel like I don`t have much to contribute and with this pandemic, only rage and sorrow. Who needs more of those? I will say this,  our lack of national mourning is dehumanizing, and a lost chance for unity. Such a pity.
The virus has claimed the lives of thousands more than the Vietnam War.
I remember that war vividly, I might have been drafted. The body bags returning home were endless.
Yet in just two months, over 89,000 people have lost their lives. I read the other day that just to speak their names would take over three days.
Our HIPAA laws forbid identifying photography of the sick so we are mostly unable to imagine the horror in the hospitals. In written accounts it is palpable but without images our collective experience of this historic tragedy is stymied. Unless we have lost someone, our pain is about the quarantine, economics and psychological survival. All important but as Governor Cuomo has said, death trumps everything. We have lost so many citizens, far more than any other country.
So, as we lurch to reopen our businesses and public spaces, I`m afraid we will not account for the dead. They will be quickly forgotten even as the numbers mount. I try to internalize what is happening for my own consideration. I read every obituary I see. I want to feel this moment.
The New York Times has segregated the covid deaths in a section called Those We`ve Lost. It feels important to read about the lives of these New Yorkers. It`s the closest I`ve been able to get, to understand what we are losing. New York is the mythic city of our ambitions and ideals, it deserves our attention.

 In the beginning of this pandemic, when it seemed quite possible I could get infected from living with a nurse, that I could conceivably die, I had to quickly reconcile the life I had already lived in order to face whatever came next. As whole as I could be. When it was clear the tsunami had missed Oregon, I was incredibly relieved and grateful. Yet this is not over by any measure. The economic hardship alone is going to be immense and crippling. The virus seems utterly unpredictable with reports now of it reinfecting those who had recovered, causing strokes in young patients and responsible for a serious inflammatory situation in children. It is no time to let down our guard. As I thread my way though this scary reality I`ve realized I need to clarify for myself not just how to survive but why. What gives me purpose? Painting of course is my reflective answer but it has not risen to this occasion. The overwhelming uncertainty is undermining the best intentions I realize, but underneath that is a personal question. Am I giving it my best self?, the deepest one? Reflecting on my experience while working I noticed I was not engaged with the landscape like I usually am. Could be that my walks now are anything but solitary. The forests near me are bustling with families out for diversion from their locked down lives. I`m completely sympathetic but I am not having the insightful and stimulating observations that have been the source for my work. So I`ve recently detoured into abstraction with more serious intent than I have had in years. The lack of a subject  causes persistent anxiety eventually and I return to representation. But now, with everything and everybody unsure, it feels right. The paintings are born with simply color in mind.

                                  Untitled-blue watermedia on Yupo 26x20 inches, 66x51 cm

                          Untitled-for Susan watermedia on Yupo 12x12 inches,  30.5x30.5 cm

                                           Untitled-red watermedia on Yupo 9x8 inches


Here are a couple of the better landscapes that preceded them;

                                 Mill Pond watermedia on paper 14x14 inches, 35.5x35.5 cm

                                     Twilight watermedia on paper 19x14 inches, 48x36 cm

                            Willamette Valley April watermedia on Yupo 20x13 inches, 53x30.5 cm



 Like many others, John got extremely frustrated that we couldn`t find toilet paper. When he finally located some online, he bought a huge bundle;

 Lyndon included for scale. Here is a single roll;

Notice the size of the hole.

 
Two great minds working together found a way to actually use it. This is industrial strength TP, interstate gas station grade. We have many years of supply now. Should anyone get desperate, you know who to contact.

An empty Golden Gate Bridge under quarantine. Unimaginable.

 If you`re a confused creative, let Matthew Inman tell you how it works. His take on running was one of the funniest things I ever read. He is well acquainted with his shadow.

.


This was an unequivocal success! Tahitian French Toast!
John had made an amazing spongy kind of bread that was going stale and I had just bought a bunch of Ataulfo mangoes. This kind;

Not the beautiful but disappointing red and green ones.
So I thought a tropical version of French toast would be good. I put a little dark rum in the eggs and then topped the toast with lots of mangoes, toasted coconut and almonds, a drizzle of maple syrup and crowned with creme fraiche. It was a delicious homage to the carbohydrate.

I`d love to hear what others are making, this is a perfect time to experiment.

                                 Bryant Meadow watercolor on Yupo 14x11 inches, 35.5x29 cm

What a gorgeous morning! I was sitting in that meadow painting the day.
Even with my current ambivalence about landscape painting, getting out and just being there was a joy.

                                                         dazzling   Shara Hughes

Now she is a colorist!

by Bill Watterson

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Happy New Year?

                                     Outback watermedia on yupo 26x40 inches 66x101 cm


 It was a sad beginning of the new year and it started before Christmas. The impeachment debate in Congress was so utterly discouraging. A whole political party stonewalling the constitution, undermining our democracy and pretending that the President`s behavior was normal. The holiday arrives and I`m blindsided by grief once again, missing the half of my original family that`s gone. The fires in Australia just get worse and worse, people are camped on the beach or in boats trying to escape,  while millions upon millions of innocent animals perish. On the West Coast of the US we have seen voracious fire storms in recent years so it is extremely imaginable. The terror and loss of life and habitat are overwhelming. Then our commander in chief takes out an important, if evil, Iranian general to prove something that is never clear. For several days it seems we are on the brink of war!
Not the calm beginning I wanted. January is best when it`s quiet and productive but 2020 has been anxious and dispiriting.
 At least, finally!, an Evangelical Christian leader spoke truth to power and said what most people think. He is morally unfit for office and should be removed.
 I hope the Iranians really have concluded their almost symbolic retaliation. I hope Australia cools down in a widespread rain. I hope against hope the Republican party will put their country first.
 The painting above was not an intentional response to the fires in Australia. But as with any deliberately abstract painting I do, I`m lost at the outset. When I began this all I knew was I wanted a golden warm palette. Here was my opening move. Acrylic medium with purple quickly brushed on followed by an orange soup.

Big mess on the floor as the paint flowed down and off creating a veil.

Making a donation to the International Fund for Animal Welfare was definitely helpful to my mental health.
Here is a very interesting article on 'cultural burning', an Aboriginal technique of a slow circular intentional burn around structures enabling them to withstand wildfire.

                     Trees in the Autumn Marsh watermedia on paper 19x14 inches 48x36 cm

This is my most recent painting. The wetlands of Fanno Creek become colorful after the leaves fall. The marsh shrubs are densely entwined and at a distance look almost cloudy. I did a study soon after my walk through the area a couple of years ago;

                                                                     oil on Yupo

                               Rainforest Canal watermedia on paper 19 x14 inches 48x36 cm

An improvisation from memory of the lush canal that feeds Lake Oswego.

                                                          by Eva Lundsager

                                                            by Eva Lundsager

                                                                  by Eva Lundsager


 Eva Lundsager has been a favorite since I stumbled upon her in 2012. She paints in oils too but I always think of her as a watercolorist. She loves transparency and also the landscape. The work seems in motion. Using saturated color her work is celebratory but never shallow.

                                              View from Muley Point by Thayer Carter

                                                        Gates Pass by Thayer Carter

                                                   Vermillion Cliffs by Thayer Carter


 Thayer Carter is a friend from my time in New Mexico. He`s also the grandson of Rockwell Kent.

                                                                  by Rockwell Kent


 He`s told me he doesn`t even try anymore to paint deliberately different from his grandfather, he has the same vision: a reduction of the landscape into simpler solid forms with radiant light. I think it`s the same phenomena as my father and me having similar handwriting. It fascinates me that mark making could be genetic.
 Thayer`s work is carefully composed to give his subject an unequivocally dramatic presentation.
 Nearly two years ago he was invited to spend time in the former Rockwell Kent home in Newfoundland as an artist in residence. Granddad was controversial in the community but they welcomed his progeny.



                                       

He was great, just not the servant I expected. Most parents are heroes. I wanted this badly and there he was on Christmas morning.

                                                            by David Fullarton

grateful to be a painter!



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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




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