Walking

Dawn Study

8 x 10

I am back to my morning walks. Walking is for me my most intimate connection with the landscape, my subject. I am in it and its scale (and mine) are obvious to me. Many of the artists and writers I revere were dedicated walkers- Emerson, Thoreau, Constable, Frost, just to name a few. This is no accident. Walking clears the mind and attunes the senses. It is a great pleasure, especially on these winter mornings when the beautiful, bare bones of the landscape are scattered before me.

John Constable
Fir Tree Study

Just a quick reminder that the online class Drawing and Painting Trees starts in just a little over two weeks. For landscape artists, trees are arguably the most important raw material of our craft and art. Their very individual character, their attitude as living beings within the landscape make them a source of endless fascination and challenge for the artist. Artists in the 19^th century routinely sketched and painted studies of these sentinels of nature in order to understand their structure as well as their artistic bearing. These drawings and studies were then used to create larger studio works. Through drawing and observation, we will learn to paint not only their anatomy, but their line, character, and the emotions they can inspire.

There are just a couple of spots left in the class. You can go here for more information and to register (scroll down).

Skies

Last week, my online class The Painted Sky started. It is a very lively group and in addition to lots of sky painting we've been looking at images of studies and paintings by other artists from Constable to the present. This week I posted several Wilson Hurley paintings as examples of "big sky" paintings and I thought I'd post them here too. Hurley lived in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains just outside of Albuquerque near where I lived for over five years. I had the pleasure of meeting Hurley at a show at the Albuquerque Museum a few years before he died. He was a true gentleman and an encouraging role model. We shared both our prior profession (the law) and a passion for painting and art history, particularly the Hudson River School. The man could paint skies. Oh yeah, and these are big. Enjoy!

Busy Spring

In about 10 days I have five artists coming for the Advanced Workshop & Mini Mentorship here at my studio. They are traveling here from all points across the country, braving the difficulties of getting to Clarksville. In fact, one my students said that getting to Clarksville was more challenging than the logistics of her former job as field director for a state governor's political campaign!

So, we are in high gear here getting ready for that. I am also organizing my materials for the online Skies class I'll be teaching in a few weeks, and finishing up the last week of the Luminous Landscape class in progress now. I've got several larger paintings going in the studio, but none of them are in "postable" condition just yet. So, here are a couple of sketches by John Constable, the great early 19th century English landscape painter, who I have written about many times on this blog (see sidebar for links). Constable undertook several campaigns of skying during his career and left us with a record of not only the weather but the very heart of his art. Enjoy!

We are just wrapping up the online course Drawing & Painting Trees. As part of the course we've looked at 19th century examples of drawings and painted studies of trees. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. Enjoy!

John Constable-Study of Ash Trees



Asher B. Durand
Study of Trees


John F. Kensett

Jervis McEntee

John Constable

Skying

Summer Skies

4 x 12

"I have done a good deal of skying, for I am determined to conquer all difficulties, and that among the rest."

John Constable, October 1821

As regular readers of this blog know, John Constable, the great 19th century English landscape painter, is a major source of inspiration to me. I've written about him here , and even named a storage area in my studio for large canvases the Constable Closet. Constable was one of the first artists to make plein air sketching part of his regular working process. During the summer months, he would leave his studio in London and roam the Suffolk countryside. He had a particular interest in skies and today his on the spot sketches (annotated on the back with date, time and weather conditions) are among his most compelling works.

So, in homage to Constable and the season, for the next little while, I'll be painting and posting sky studies. These small works are not meant to be finished pieces, just research and development (R&D). Like Constable, I hope they will bring greater power, authenticity and feeling to the work I do in the studio.

The Constable Closet

April Dusk
12 x 12
Available at Blackheath Gallery, London

This weekend Steve (my husband) started framing up the walls for the new storage area in my studio. There never seems to be enough storage in a studio and I'm sure I'll fill this one up immediately. There is one very special feature to this storage area, however- The Constable Closet.

A few months ago Steve and I were talking about John Constable and his famous "six footers" - the large exhibition pieces he painted for the annual Royal Academy shows. In many respects these huge canvasses had an extremely beneficial effect on his career and brought him to the attention of landscape painters and collectors in France (even as he was somewhat ignored in England) . About the same time as this conversation, my dealer in Chicago started encouraging me to paint some really large pieces and Steve enthusiastically supported that idea. Ever since then, he asks me on a regular basis when I'll be starting my first "six footer".

I've had a few mishaps over the last few months, with large panels getting dinged while sitting around in the studio. So, this weekend when we started working out the design for the storage area, he came up with the idea to include an area where I can store big panels. And The Constable Closet, named after the great man himself, was born.

Its a bit tough to see (it sort of looks like a forest of 2 x 4s at the moment), but the tall narrow opening on the left front is the opening for the Constable Closet. It will be dry walled in the interior and have a funky little narrow door. I'll be able to store panels up to about 7' x 7' in there. The opening for the rest of the storage area is around to the right (the shelves will back up to the right wall of the Constable Closet. There, I'll have some vertical storage for smaller panels and paintings and shelves for supplies.

I've read that Constable often let his children play in his studio and that on one occasion one of his sons punctured a large canvas with the mast of a toy sailing ship. I just bet John would have loved this closet.

Another Word For Feeling

Evening Pines #2
9 x 8 oil on linen
Available at Deborah Paris Fine Art

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles to keep
an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch,
or an old acquaintance among the pines. ~Henry David Thoreau

This week has been a bit chaotic- house guests, a painting deadline for a show and other personal business to attend to. But, I didn't want too much time to pass before acknowledging all the interesting comments to my last post. I think many artists can identify with that feeling that a shift in the work is underway. Another point that was mentioned several times is the role of emotion in painting. I used to think that painting was mostly an intellectual exercise, in pursuit of an aesthetic concept. Now, I understand that it could not have held my interest and captivated my imagination so powerfully, if that was all it meant to me. George Inness, the great late 19th century American landscape painter, believed that the power of painting is in its appeal to the emotions. Edgar Payne, an early 20th century landscape master said "knowledge precedes execution." I think they were both right. Just as the poet selects a perfect word, phrase or form to reveal meaning, everything we can learn or understand about our craft, our materials, and our subject is brought to bear to convey our passion for the things we choose to paint and for painting itself. As artists, we need both our reason and our heart-I know I do.

"Painting is but another word for feeling." John Constable

Walking the Country

We live about 4 miles outside a small town (pop. 3800 on an optimistic day) in North Texas. Founded in 1833, back in the day, it was a prosperous town with numerous cotton gins and four drugstores and a movie theater on the town square. Now, not so much. Our road and the adjacent land in our area has had its own identity as a distinct community for many years also. Its called Mabry. My husband hates that- he thinks it sounds like "Mayberry". I say, so what? Mabry is, of course, a family name of the people who settled here and several of their descendants are our neighbors. When you turn on to our road, an old, white church and a graveyard mark the entrance to Mabry. The school house for the community (two rooms) originally stood on our property. A small piece of the foundation and a leaning flag pole (which we still use) are all that is left today.

Over the last 16 months I have painted mostly what I can see from our property, on our road or the drive into town. I cannot say, as Constable did, that these are "my places" given our short residency here, but nevertheless, they do feel like they are mine-at least aesthetically. Over these months, we have met our neighbors and most already knew I was an artist (that's the way it is in small towns). Many have graciously consented to let me roam their woods, pastures and fields in search of inspiration. I never have to go far. That little wooden ladder leaning against the fence behind my studio seems a perfect symbol of my place here- and I am content with that.

A Natural Painter

Hay Field Evening

30 x 40
Available at Hildt Galleries, Chicago

For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men…There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.
John Constable

As readers of this blog may know, I count J.M.W. Turner, the great 19th century English landscape painter, as one of the influences on my work. Turner and John Constable have come down to us in art history as the twin stars of early 19th century landscape. And though Constable has always had my admiration, it has only been in the last year that I have come to feel a deep kinship with his art and aesthetic point of view.

In art history, Turner plays the shooting star to what seems at first glance to be a more earthbound Constable. And in fact, Turner did burst on the London art scene, becoming the youngest member ever elected to the Royal Academy at age 24 , while it took Constable over twenty years to achieve that status. Both exhibited artistic courage by raising the art of landscape from its third class status and laid the groundwork for the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Turner's emphasis was on the Sublime and his audacious use of color and technique nevertheless were often used in service of history or classical themes which found more favor at the Royal Academy than the pure landscape paintings of Constable.

Constable's art was based upon a deep and abiding affection for the landscape in which he grew up and to which he returned during his entire life as a source of inspiration, saying that for him "painting was but another word for feeling" and that his art "could be found under every hedge and down every lane". Constable's approach to his art, grounded upon plein air work and close observation, combined with painterly technique was in fact, quietly revolutionary.

At a time when representational landscape painting is once again beneath consideration, if not contempt by the post modern art world (today's self protective gatekeepers as surely as the Academy was in its day), I take great comfort in Constable.

I should paint my own places best, for they made me a painter.
John Constable

Backyard Magic

Backyard Magic Oil 8 x 6
Sold

I've spent a lot of time this year painting in different parts of the country. Its one of the many blessings of being a landscape painter. These were all beautiful spots- oceans, mountains, deserts, you name it. The 19th century English landscape painter John Constable (one of the fathers of plein air painting) said "I should paint my own places best, for they made me a painter." So, that's what I did today.