Summer 21

                                                    Rainforest watercolor collage 26x20 inches

 I had a failed painting and after many heroic attempts to rescue it, I gave up. Since it once had promise I wondered if I could just patch over the problems with collage? I have a heap of fragments from previous debacles to choose from for my shapes. Instantly there was this new way forward with an interesting conclusion as well.

 I`ve been thinking I should write something. This is not the summer I imagined coming up when I got my second vaccine shot March 31. I have to admit I was expecting more joy, god knows we need it. Yet there is an undeniable tension. Only a week after the summer solstice, still June, the now infamous heat dome literally scorched the Northwest killing hundreds of people. The further north you were the temperature was even hotter. Records were broken everywhere by multiple degrees. This set up a cautionary mood, what are we in for? The first major wildfire soon began in southern Oregon fouling the air with smoke all through the northern Rockies. Our country’s  vaccination rates began to stagnate just as the ferocious Delta variant began sweeping through the states. Supporters of the former president risked their lives in making the political protest of boycotting their one safe passage through this, the miracle vaccine. On the left, those that shunned the vaccine proved how insincere their belief in the common good really is. With so much death throughout the world from Covid 19, it is privilege indeed to refuse this easily available protection which is absolutely free. Shame on those confused foolish people. Soon after the 4th of July, historic floods raged through Europe and then China. Global warming is here. Those that continue to downplay the reality of it are lying. Everyone can see now things aren`t like they used to be not so very long ago. 

I am at the last part of my life and I want a full engagement with what is left. Life goes on no matter if the sun burns or the rivers rage. Somehow I`m determined to move through these calamities with a positive spirit. My later years will be full of events and conditions that result from overheating the planet. In the destruction, how to have an open heart as it is breaking? I intend to find out and suspect this can happen best if my focus shifts away from my own disappointment. We are each surrounded by the needs of others. Attending to some of them may be a way forward.

  

So when I could tell my old friend was overwhelmed from the weight of caring for her dying husband, I offered to help. She lives on the central coast of California and the situation was quite serious when I arrived. Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to see what is happening. Having a bit of experience with hospice, I helped with that transition then came home. To be trusted by someone dying is a special humbling honor. 

                                                             John and Tiffany in the garden

My nephew and his wife from Southern California were in town this weekend. They didn`t bring their sons because one is still too young to be vaccinated. It has been such a unique pleasure to watch my nieces and nephews grow into themselves. To gradually understand their unfolding along with them. Last night we gathered in the garden of my sister in law Norma, talking and eating through the long summer twilight. It was perfect, the antidote for a year of solitude.

                                                                       by E M Corsa

 My dear unmet friend from the coast of North Carolina, Elizabeth Corsa,  has been featured in the magazine Artisan Joy. We both love and struggle with Yupo. She is as dedicated an artist as I`ve ever known. Check out the interview and the work on her website.

 

                                                 Laguna watermedia on Yupo 26x20 inches

 Like all these new abstract paintings, little is consciously intended when I begin. Soon though this had a coastal vibe yet it was too sunny for Oregon. Then I remembered all the holidays and summers I spent in Laguna Beach growing up. My best friend`s family always took me along on these vacations. Several families would rent this one big house overlooking the ocean but blocked by a bluff of a view of the beach. We had such fun swimming in the ocean. 

The town was in its last days of a bohemian art scene and I`m sure my imagination was enflamed by seeing so much art at its annual festival.  This was the 60s and galleries were not common where I grew up. I remember how exotic and exciting it was to know it was possible to have a life of painting. Just a little exposure to something new is all it takes for some kids to find out what they were meant to do.

 I was in an art supply store and saw a packet of 12x12 heavily textured watercolor paper claiming it was thoroughly sized. Sizing is like a glue that keeps the paper from being too absorbent. I knew better than to fall for it but I haven`t shopped in person much for a long time. Lesson learned, if it looks like a homemade paper towel, painting on it will be a similarly rustic experience; 

 

 Not much more than doodles but they let me think. Between more ambitious paintings, I often need an interlude of some sort. I want to be making something but with a small investment.

Randall makes a Poster!

                                                                       John Hoyland

                                                                       John Hoyland

                                                                         John Hoyland

To me they seem seeped in 1960`s psychedelia but they were painted later in his career. John Hoyland, the great British painter, wanted to make abstract art that vibrated with possibility. These examples of his later period I just love! They`re not just lyrical, they startle me into hearing a different language of color.

 

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Here for small prints from Saatchi

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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Prints from Fine Art America

Jackson Bottom and the End of Summer

                                           Jackson Bottom watermedia on terraskin 24x18


 I was delivering a painting to Hillsboro for transport to the International Society of Experimental Artists annual show, this year in Newport Oregon. And the wildlife refuge, Jackson Bottom, was nearby. I love these places. There is hardly anyone ever there and those that are, are birders! Such lovely people! Because it was late August, the refuge was dry as a bone. The pond I painted [above] was dry and had only a living green rim that suggested moisture. Still, on a summer day made bearable by passing clouds, it was magnificent;

 The show in Newport had an interesting angle. Applicants were asked to explain how their piece was experimental. This text would be posted next to the accepted entries. Mine was a watercolor painted as if I were the painter Bjornar Aaslund of Norway. I was trying to figure out his fusion of abstract expressionism and landscape painting. Oddly, it sort of worked. Just changing my palette alone provided some insight. You can see the entire exhibit here.

 H2O has opened at Ferris State University of Michigan in Big Rapids. The brave curator saw my work online, could see the importance of water in much of my work and included me.

                                                  Summer Water 4 oil on canvas 24x20


 The smoke had finally cleared out and the summer everyone yearns for was back, but only for a few days. The transition is often abrupt and this year especially. It was still August! The population has experienced true grief. Some hold out hope for that 'Indian Summer' but the sunlight is too angled now, the days too short. Our great fear is that every summer now will be one of massive forest fires. To those climate change deniers, you will breathe the same smoke as I do. My rage and disgust with the Republican Party make me choke for words, but listen to Harrison Ford. At least an actor can hold it together to speak the truth.

                                  The Mountain from the Train watercolor on terraskin 14x11

 From my great train ride to Seattle last month.

                                                  My buddy Mitch painting en plein air


 To anyone reading who is not an artist, I suspect you too know of this rapidly expanding phenomena called Plein Air painting. Doing it outside. Rain or shine for some. Here are some profile essays on the joys and frustrations. Made me want to do more again next year.

                                              Caravan of the Moon by Eric Merrell


 Speaking of on-site painting, Eric Merell, a painter I`ve admired a long time, does so in a most original way. Here is a wonderful little video of an artist in residency he did in the desert. This guy owns Joshua Tree.

                                                                 Richard Diebenkorn


Still another nine days to see the show of early work by the revered artist Richard Diebenkorn at the Portland Art Museum. I wasn`t going to see it but my brother Mike thought differently. I`m so glad I went! It isn`t my favorite body of his work but with the scholarship in the accompanying texts, I learned a whole lot. As is true for most artists, his early career was not easy and with WW2 in process, he had some tough choices. To see the work on paper he did during this difficult time was so sweet. He was a kid!


Only two days left to see the collection of astounding, one of kind automobiles also at the museum;

 For a long time it wasn`t appealing to paint with oils, I naturally gravitated to water media. Yet I can do the same things in oils, I paint thin and flat. Plus what one puts down in oil paint stays that way by and large. With watermedia there is always an accounting for things drying lighter in value. Basically oil is far easier and the paintings find homes much quicker. Economically, I needed to figure out my reluctance. Then I saw it;

                                                                     my palette !


No wonder! Yikes! The last time I gave it a good cleaning I ended up in the clinic getting stitches in my finger. So I decided to get a new one;

 Big difference! And I`ve promised myself to observe how it gets out of control. That took about a day. I paint until I`m tired and then do a half assed cleaning. Well, not the new Randall. Keeping the scraping razor pristine is key. It`s been three weeks and it still looks new. Wish me diligence.


Here is a disturbing photo;

Chinese students taking an exam for art school


delightful photo;

 my nephew`s new puppy securely fastened



work for sale in my studio


Portland Open Studio Tour  mid-Oct.

High Tide Below

                                                      High Tide Below oil on canvas 20x20


 This is a composite derived from peering over cliffs in California and British Columbia.

 The Northwest is burning. Hot smoky summers are expected annually. Unless the judiciary gets involved, it`s nearly impossible to imagine the political will to act on global warming. It will take a catastrophe. Winston Churchill said America will always do the right thing, but only after it`s tried everything else.

                                            Fire in the Forest watermedia on paper 12x9


 Summer is slowly closing down, the angle of the light is taking on a hint of autumn.
Here is a watercolor of the season done by the late genius David Levine. Better known for his caricatures of the famous, he was also a fabulous painter. Somehow I became aware of his work early in my life and I learned a lot about the medium by studying reproductions of his. Coney Island was his muse. I`ve never been there but know exactly what it is like.

work for sale in my studio

Portland Open Studios coming in mid Oct.

Downstream Tahquitz

                                                          watermedia on Yupo 26x20

If this creek, just west of downtown Palm Springs, had a normal flow in a normal year, those massive polished boulders and cliffs would have largely been submerged. But there is no normal anywhere any more. California faces an extremely serious drought which is predicted to have a major economic impact. It`s hard not to wonder how President Gore would have persuaded the country to act. When we were away in the desert, there were wildfires on the Oregon coast, in January, in the rainforest!! The Republican Party can`t die quick enough, we have hard work to attend to.


available paintings in the studio