A Summer Idyll

I continue to work steadily on the Lennox Woods body of work for my solo show next spring. There will be five large scale paintings - 48 x 60 up to 72 x 96-  and a total of about 42 paintings in the show. I started with the smallest of the "BIGs" as I call them, and am working my way up in size. I am working on several of them at the same time, plus others as well- usually about 8 to 10 pieces at a time. 

In January of 2012 when I first started on this journey, I was out in the Woods one day with Steve and Allen Phillips (the filmmaker for the project). Allen and I managed to wander off the trail. I didn't know my way around the Woods very well back then and neither did Allen. But, he had a GPS on his phone and we knew if we kept heading north we would hit the dirt road that runs along one side of the Preserve. So, we kept going instead of doubling back to find the trail. It was winter so bushwhacking through the Woods wasn't too hard and we got back into some spots that would be hard to find in any other season.  Pretty soon we came upon a small pond. It was a big surprise because the only water I had seen in the Woods was Pecan Bayou and the small streams it spawned throughout the Preserve. This pond looked self contained, although Steve thinks it is fed by a spring on adjacent property. Anyway, having found it, I knew I wanted to come back.

Here is a study for the 60 x 72 painting I am now working on.

A Summer Idyll

20 x 24

I started with lots of sketches, working out my ideas. This is my preferred way to work- hunting for motifs, then using drawings to work out designs and to gather reference materials.

Once I had the design organized and the field reference I needed, I started the 20 x 24 study.

I made a grid of the study and traced the main shapes and lines. I gridded the large canvas with proportional squares with vine charcoal, then drew in the composition.

Here is the studio with the large canvas on the left, the grid in the center and the study to the right of that. Just to get an idea of the scale, the painting on the easel behind the grid is 36 x 48!

Summer and a Studio Visitor

Late Afternoon Light

16 x 20

This painting recently found a home in Chicago. Thank you Hildt Galleries! It reminds me of those hazy afternoons that summer brings. So far, we have had a cool spring and our start to summer has been cooler than usual as well. I am not complaining!

My days start with an early morning walk and then the rest of the day is spent on Lennox Woods- working steadily toward my solo show next spring. But occasionally I have a studio visitor. A few days ago I came back from my lunch break and found this guy waiting on my studio steps!

Out of Season

Summer Evening

10 x 12

This small painting was started as a demo in my workshop in Telluride last summer. I just got round to finishing it, and it will be available at Galerie Kornye West in Ft Worth next week. A bit late and out of season, but it can be any season in the studio- or several! This week as I was finishing this up I was also working on a snow scene of Lennox Woods!

I am back to work in earnest for my solo show next year, Lennox Woods- The Ancient Forest.  I will have news about that soon. Stay tuned!

Summer Reading

Despite the horrendous heat (102 today!), my zinnias continue to show their happy faces to the sun. When I am not in the studio with the little window AC cranked up, I'm enjoying rereading Asher B. Durand's Letters on Landscape, first published in 1855.

Here's a sample:

"Go first to Nature to learn to paint landscape...take pencil and paper, not the palette and brushes, and draw with scrupulous fidelity...I know you will regard this at first thought as an unnecessary restriction, and become impatient to use the brush, under the persuasion that you can with it make out your forms, and at the same time produce colour, and light and shade. In this you deceive yourself, as many others have done, till the evil has become irremediable; for slovenly and imperfect drawing finds but a miserable compensation in the evident efforts to disguise or atone for it, by the blandishments of color and effect..."

Summer-Rick's Pool

Summer-Rick's Pool
Vine charcoal on Strathmore paper
5 1/2" x 8 1/4"

Rick’s Pool

In spring its surface is inscribed
With trails of water bugs
Across the water’s answer to the sky

On August nights the moon dips low into its darkness
While heavy breathing frogs chant
Their shimmering songs

In late October while birds make haste
Brittle pieces of color float,
Then sink, as autumn’s moment dies.

Muffled and bare at last,
And wrapped in December’s shroud
It waits in silence for what comes next

Summer Evening

Summer Evening
36 x 30
Sold

Our big cumulus clouds have created some big storms this summer and also some lovely evening light the last few weeks. I am working on ten good sized pieces for fall shows and to restock galleries with new work. This is the first to be completed.

Summer Woods

7 3/4 x 8 1/4
Vine Charcoal on Canson paper

This week it was hot in Texas with big well developed cumulus clouds forming in the afternoons. When we moved here a few years ago, I really missed those clouds. We seemed to just get high cirrus clouds. But, this summer we've had the big boys! Yesterday I saw some really large ones, all stacked up to the north as I was walking back from the studio to the house in late afternoon. Soon after, a ferocious storm blew in and our power was knocked out for a few hours. This morning I noticed one of the huge old white oaks across the road had come down.

The Vault of the Sky

Summer Skies #6
6 x 8

When I first began to paint landscapes many years ago, one of the most helpful ideas I came across was the description of the sky as a vault, arching up over us as well as out into the distance ahead. As a child, I often lay on my back in the grass watching clouds or stars at night. But, somehow, as adults we lose that sense of wonder at the thin little envelope of air and light that surrounds and protects us. About the same time I read that description, I started laying down on the grass in our garden and looking up again. Very edifying. I highly recommend it.

Summer Skies #5

Summer Skies #5

4 x 6

More storms this week provided some fine skying.

The Dog Days of Summer

Daisy, Dixie, Archie & Emma

Its finally hot. The dogs like to lie in the yard and bake their little brains (except for Emma who is perpetually on the hunt). While they are sunbathing we, however, are in high gear. We leave for the Telluride Plein Air Invitational on the 27th. This will be my 4th year in this show (I blogged about it last year here). We have several orders of frames to finish before we go and I am working away on a painting for the "Masterpiece" exhibition (the one studio piece we can bring which is exhibited during the week we are painting en plein air - I really wish they would change the name of that!)

And, of course my car is a total wreck (literally) so we have all sorts of logistical issues to resolve. My inlaws arrive on the 24th to house and dog sit while we are gone (thanks Lois & George!). So, no dog days here!


Oh, and just a few spots left in each online painting class.

Early Moonrise

Early Moonrise
36 x 30
Available at Hildt Galleries, Chicago

"To rise, I must have a field to rise from."
Mary Oliver

I've been looking into phases of the moon lately and moonrises in particular. Online you can find out when the moon was full a hundred years ago or when it will be a hundred years hence (remember, hope springs eternal). What surprised me though was how often the moon rises at midday or early afternoon. When I was out walking this afternoon I looked for it. There it was almost directly overhead at 6PM. So, those early moonrises on summer nights when the moon rises as the sun sets are not so early after all.

Welcome, Summer

Hayfield Evening
30 x 40
Available at Hildt Galleries, Chicago

Our weeks of rain gave way to a few days of sunshine this week and the landscape responded by bursting forth in that sort of disheveled, frowzy way usually reserved for late July. The wrens that hatched in the shop have flown the nest. Crickets, and bees and mosquitoes have all come out in force. And, I ran into a huge box turtle on my way to the studio this morning. Hello, Summer.

A Summer Evening

A Summer Evening - oil 5 x 6
Sold
Last evening I was looking out the window at the long twilight, safe in my air conditioned envelope. It seemed so quiet and still. Then I went outside to take a closer look, and what a racket! Bird song punctuated the steady hum of insects, crickets chirped, the cows in the next field chimed in and the whole landscape was alive with the neon trails of fireflies.

One Summer Morning

One Summer Morning - oil 6 x 5
Sold

The other morning I was out early. We had rain the night before and there were still storms to the west where the sky was a dark blue grey. In the east, where the sun was coming up, the sky had an eerie greenish cast that bathed the landscape in a veil of light I had never seen before. It felt like the world was on the cusp of changing into something else- I know that sounds a little over the top- but there it is.

This is the first small painting I've done in quite a while-it was such a pleasure to do after working on larger pieces for weeks.