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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HERE for prints of my work or the images on merchandise 

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

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



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

Locality!

                                                Mid-winter oil on canvas 20x24  51x61 cm


 The local parks where I live serve me well. The bonds I vote for translate into maintained places that keep to a natural low key vibe. Just what I like. No picnic tables or swing sets, a visiting child can look for bugs. Most of my paintings, like the one above, come from my walks there. Occasionally though I get out of town and if the trip allows, into someplace wilder. Not back packing nature but more like car camping. I carried a pack in Boy Scouts but never since. I may give the impression I`m hiking in pristine wilderness but I`m really a mile away from my home.
 However last week, after a visit with nearby in-laws, we went to Silver Creek Falls state park. It`s a little chunk of old growth forest with multiple waterfalls and undisturbed rainforest vegetation. It`s a bath of green!

 With some really big trees

 As you can imagine, the atmosphere of the place is kind of reverent.
I just finished 'Barkskins' by the wonderful Annie Proulx and she shows the consequence of centuries of logging. Because she`s a great writer, I could stomach the descriptions of the brutal massacre of the New World`s forests and the incredibly arrogant attitudes behind it. It is ugly and the genocide of the people living in those places, will surprise no one. It is the story of our country entwined with the history of the timber industry. As an Oregonian, I`m glad I`m better educated now about the business that first produced the wealth of my state.
This was painted a couple of days later;

                                          Broken Promises oil on panel 20x16  40.5x51 cm

                                                       Spider Rock by Bob Stuth-Wade


 A couple of years ago, I was perusing the vast Valley House Gallery website when I stumbled across Bob Stuth-Wade and it was like a jolt of electricity. How had this magical realist ever gotten by me??
He knew the soul of the Southwest intimately, and his technique is so precise and skilled , it`s utterly baffling.Yet he is not a hyper-realist.  He works from life on location and his intentions seem to be humane, even loving. He takes realism to a rare, maybe holy place. A Stuth-Wade painting is a clear view into the miracle of existence.

                                                           by Bob Stuth-Wade

                                                                 by Bob Stuth-Wade

                                      Summer Meadow watermedia on paper 12x9  30.5x23 cm


I`ve done some more outdoor work myself. That meadow above is no other than the Bryant Woods meadow! That place just gives and gives to me.

    Mitch Burrell and me in a photo by Burt Jarvis. That was a fun day. I`m back to my old method of hauling around an awkward lawn chair and painting on my lap. The fancy easel I bought just wasn`t right and it took me a while to figure it out. The palette didn`t let me get close enough to the paper, I had to lean over it. Anyway being closer to the ground is nice. I was studying the grasses;

 which led to this;

                                              untitled  watermedia on paper 12x9   30.5x23 cm

                                                               by Richard Diebenkorn


 "I can tell as soon as he turns up at the garden gate. I can tell if he had a good day by the way he carries himself, whether he fumbles with his keys, whether he says hi. Just a few weeks ago, he came in and said 'it`s all over. I simply cannot paint!' The next morning he left early and stayed in the studio all day without putting a single mark on the canvas, just trying to look at it in a new way. And then he came home and said 'I think it`s the best thing I`ve done'." Phylis Diebenkorn, from the Diebenkorn Foundation on Instagram.

                                                                   by Michael Lipsey




work for sale in my studio

prints by Fine Art America

The Flavors of Gratitude

                                           Rainforest March watercolor on Yupo 26x40


 When something is good as in sublime, I never expect it repeated. So when I had a second walk up Falls Creek six years after the first, I was curious what the experience would be like. I never thought I would see it again after reports of catastrophic fires in the area. Yet it had survived and on the cold, cloudy, late winter day I returned, it was still jewel like. The temperate rainforests in the Northwest are unusual. The deciduous forests are bare in winter but because of the mild temperatures and frequent rains, they are outrageous with their neon green mosses and ferns. Visually stunning and hard to believe, the trees are distorted by clumps of vegetation all along the trunks. My legs were a mess then so my 'hike' was slow and aided with a cane but so beautiful I was consciously grateful for my life. That is too rare a realization.
 Now our great national holiday celebrating gratitude is upon us. Just the concept seems at odds with our nation at the moment. If ever there was a time to let our differences be, this is it. We all love our country. Eat well and reflect on some of our many blessings. The good stuff we did not earn.

                                          November Grove watercolor on Terraskin 12x12


 After a little trip to the coast I began this as a seascape. On the beach I had watched the sun struggle to break into view. My effort to portray that cloud formation was not working but it reminded me of the autumn leaves still lingering in the forest. So I carved out some trees with a wet brush and suddenly I have this soft elegiac painting before me. I`m not sure what I think of it but there has been no urge to fix anything.

                                                                   Larry Poons


The once renowned minimalist painter, Larry Poons, is the subject of a new film on HBO called 'The Price of Everything'.  In it he claims art is not business, something I`ve believed for a long time. Success in painting happens in the studio, success as a painter, is a matter of commerce. There is a whole lot of effort from all sides to blur this distinction yet it is true. Ask Larry.

                                                           Aronua by Larry Poons



 With that in mind, why did I decide to whore my work all of the sudden?
Because of a beach towel.
One with a fabulous Ferdinand Hodler landscape of an alpine lake. I love his work and seeing it on a towel seemed like the coolest thing I`d ever seen. Fine Art America was offering this item and many other printed products. The wheels turn. I have a dozen high resolution images just sitting on their asses on my hard drive. Why not put them to work? Why not partake in a little commerce now that the paintings are long finished? This was once an anathema but change is inevitable, right?
Now I may wake up tomorrow as my former high minded self and withdraw the merchandise. But for now, if you need a Tipton mug or a forest shower curtain, you will find one here.

.
The 2018 Portland Open Studios has come and gone. Although there was enough income, there were not enough visitors. It`s impossible to paint while waiting. Driving south out of Portland is too much to ask unless there is a cluster of artists to visit. This year there were only two in my community so I don`t think I`ll participate again. I`m talking with some local artists about a studio tour in just Lake Oswego. Anyone know of a guide for organizing such a thing?

                                                                   by Jo Bertini


 The Australian artist Jo Bertini paints the landscapes of her country with great economy and sensitivity. She doesn`t depict what she sees, she creates an equivalent. That is modernism.
As colorful as her work is, it`s used to intensify her response to the sensory conditions in her environment. To me she achieves a sense of lonely magic with that vast arid land.

                                                                by Jo Bertini

                                                                by Jo Bertini

 Yelp is certainly helpful but there are other ways to find good places to eat. In Six Rules for Eating Out, Tyler Cowen gives us observations and strategies to finding delicious food when we are away from home. His ideas are really useful. I don`t travel a lot but this issue can vex me mightily, usually when I`m already grouchy with hunger.

                                                                 by Mitch Burrell


 Yep, that`s moi!
Mitch was painting lots of portraits from photos and I kept egging him to work from life. Finally I told him I would sit for an hour. To give him the experience. I figured it would be much different. He said it was and he certainly got my likeness. Unlike in photography, the soul remains with the sitter.

Seattle Workshop Feb 2 and 3

Prints from Fine Art America

Work for Sale in my Studio