Evening Pond

Work in Progress
Evening Pond
36 x 30

As I've written many times before, there is something very compelling about autumn to me. Visually, its a time that the landscape begins to strip itself bare, to uncover and expose the structure of things. The rhythm of life seems to slow, even to ebb. The sun which used to set directly behind my house, offering extravagant sunsets in summer, has migrated to the south and slips below the horizon, sending weak rays of light across the field behind my studio.

Morning Fog

Morning Fog at the Pond
11 x 14
Available at Deborah Paris Fine Art

When I did the under painting for this piece a couple of weeks ago, I had something else in mind entirely. But lately, we've had this lovely morning fog and it was all I could think about when I got back to it yesterday. Technically the challenge was to keep the values as close as possible yet high key while using shifts in color temperature rather than value to give the painting visual interest. I love the way fog softens, envelops, hides the forms in the landscape.

A Studio Visit

Work in Progress (sorry about the glare)
Sunset Stream 30 x 30

Still working on this piece. Monday I had two studio visitors, so everything came to a halt for a massive clean up of the studio and house. I had this piece on the easel -always makes me nervous for a collector to see work in progress but it gave me a good opportunity to talk with my guests about glazing and how it works. The fact that its a centuries old technique still used by artists today seemed to be genuinely interesting to them (although I can go on about this stuff until people's eyes glaze over ...). Anyway, it reminded me about the great article on the Gamblin web site which explains the science behind the stunning visual effects created by glazing. I think I may have linked to this before, but if you haven't read it and are interested in glazing, here it is.

And now for a commercial break.... some of you know that my husband and I own a small company (very small- just the two of us) called Mountains Edge Frames. Its how we pay the bills (or not) in addition to painting sales. I try not to muck up this blog with that, but like everybody else in the world, we are having a holiday sale, so click on over if you are interested. Also, we have added a new product to our line- birch painting panels- both uncradled and cradled, finished with gesso or not. Earlier this year, I blogged about the Magic Panel, and that quest turned into a new product for us. They are fantastic if I do say so myself. Now, back to regular programming.......

Giving Thanks

Work in Progress

Sunset Stream 30 x30

Here is one of the pieces I am working on now. The under painting was posted here. Now, the sky has been laid in and an initial color glazed over the foreground. Still many painting sessions to go on this one.

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day writing and sending my holiday studio newsletter. After it went out I received a number of emails and a few phone calls from other artists and collectors. One conversation in particular reminded me of the power of art to connect perfect strangers and made me grateful for my role in that process. I had never spoken with this person-let's call him Bill- before, but he is a regular reader of my blog. He told me a bit about himself and his passion for collecting art. His tastes and his collection cover a wide range - he clearly just loves art.

Its easy in an economy such as this one to let the question "will this sell?", or worse, "what can I paint that will sell?", creep into the studio. Talking with Bill yesterday, I was reminded of this quote from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard:

...the more literary the book-the more purely verbal, crafted sentence by sentence, the more imaginative, reasoned,and deep-the more likely people are to read it. The people who read are the people who like literature, after all...I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

And so it is with painting. The more passion for your craft and your subject you put into your work, the more likely it is that people like Bill- people who love art- will find your work. Nothing you do can make someone who does not care about art -or about your kind of art, care about your work. But the people who do, are the ones with whom you have a bond, a shared passion and to whom you owe thanks and the responsibility to make the best work you are capable of. So, thank you Bill.

Holiday Studio Sale

The painting area in my studio -
definitely a work in progress

I'm having an online studio sale this holiday season. From the looks of my studio, you can probably guess why its best for me to do this virtually rather than in real life! One of my goals for this year was to get my studio finished- which means book shelves built in the study area (can't see that in this photo), storage space for supplies, frames, etc., paint the walls...the list goes on and on. As you can see from this photo, none of that has happened...yet. But hope springs eternal, so perhaps the combination of having a studio sale and the embarrassment of posting this photo will spur some action. Available work can be seen at Deborah Paris Fine Art. There are generous holiday discounts and payment plans are welcome!

Autumn Pond

Autumn Pond
10 x 8
click to see larger image

One of the things I really love is the change of seasons. Fall, in particular, seems more drawn out here than in other places I have lived. The crisp halcyon days of indian summer have slipped way to the almost brittle melancholy of late autumn. The crunching sound of dry leaves underfoot follows me on every walk. The landscape has opened up again, bare trees revealing corners of woods that have been hidden from view all summer. Right before my eyes, the landscape is reinventing itself.

Technical Difficulties

For some reason I am not able to download images from my digital camera to the computer. Keep getting some error message about a power surge on the port, so I am hoping its a problem with the USB cable, as the port seems to be working otherwise. Got a new cable ordered today, and since it will be a while before it gets out here to the boonies, I am posting a piece I painted last year at the Telluride show.

Aspen Nights
14 x 18 2007
Private Collection

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of nocturnes. Love to paint them, look at them, and stand outside and gaze at the real thing. An artist friend of mine says I am a Neo-Romantic. Is there such a thing?

The Season Turns

Right before sunset yesterday a front came through. I woke during the night to the sound of rain. This morning it was a bit cooler, but still mild. But, I could feel that the season of bright autumn days was giving way to something else. Bare trees now mix in with the rusts and ochres and trees in the distance look more violet. The grass has stopped growing and everything looks more spare, stripped down. Out on the road, windswept with leaves, it felt a bit desolate, like every living thing was turning inward, preparing for the rigors of winter.

I stayed in the studio most of the day and worked on several larger pieces. This is the latest on the 48 x 60. I've worked on the trees a bit more, repainted the sky and glazed over the edges of the trees again. I've had to wait several days between each session, not only to let the glazes dry, but also to "oil out" in between. Oiling out is an old term, used in the 19th century, to describe the process for bringing the colors and values back to their original state. When oil paint dries , the darks will dry a bit lighter and the lights a bit darker. So before you start again, its necessary to use a bit of medium over the surface to regain the saturation, color and value. There are still several more painting sessions to be done to complete this.


I've also been working on two other under paintings. I finished this 30 x 30 yesterday and a 36 x 30 today. It was a good day in the studio.

Leaf Peeping

Indian Summer II
10 x 20
Please contact me if interested in this piece

Our beautiful fall weather continues. The leaves are just spectacular this year- much more so than they were last year (our first fall here). We don't have that sort of over the top Vermont kind of color- its more a full range of rich ochres, rust, copper, with the occasional screaming red maple thrown in. So, I've been out leaf peeping up and down our road every afternoon, hither and yon, over hill and dale...you get the idea.

A New Site

Over the last couple of months I realized that new readers to the blog (or even old ones!) might not want to scroll through all the archives to find work that is available through my studio. So, today I've launched a new site- Deborah Paris Fine Art- which has only those pieces that are available for purchase through my studio. It includes small pieces (6 x 6) up to larger studio works (30 x 40). The paintings are available for sale either framed or unframed. I haven't got all the images up yet, and I'll be updating it regularly.

Indian Summer

Indian Summer
12 x 16
Please contact me if interested in this piece

We have had some incredibly beautiful fall days over the last week or so. Yesterday it was almost 80 degrees, which made me start thinking about the term "indian summer". It turns out to be a uniquely American term, in use for over 200 years, although this phenomena is recognized and called by other names in Europe and other parts of the world. Of course, it refers to a warm period of weather, occurring during a time of the year (fall) when cooler weather prevails. I prefer a less meteorological definition - a metaphor for something that happens at an unexpected time like a late bloom or flowering- something perhaps brief, but cherished for its untimely appearance.

Imagination & Execution

This past week I reread the book Art & Fear. I was first introduced to this wise little tome over ten years ago. Its one of those books that you can reread again and again, finding new and deeper insights each time. This time was no exception. The passages that seemed particularly apt had to do with what the authors call the "correspondence between imagination and execution"- that is, the place where your work actually gets made. The idea is that at the beginning the work can be whatever you can imagine but as it progresses- as you actually begin to make it- the possibilities narrow with each successive brushstroke, until at the end only a very narrow range of choices remain to complete the work. It is then its own thing, separate and apart from the world and what inspired it. In other words, as Annie Dillard (paraphrasing Paul Klee) wrote:

The painter...does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
I have read those words a dozen times over many years and have only just begun to understand what they mean. I had this ridiculous notion that I was in control!

This past week I've been working on the large painting-the underpainting is posted here. This first image is one glaze over the foreground and trees and the sky laid in with opaque paint.

Once the sky was laid in, I began to adjust the values and color temperature. It gets tricky here because you have to remember that each successive glaze will darken that portion of the panting. In this next image, I've put several more glaze layers on the foreground and the distant trees, repainted a portion of the sky, and adjusted the distant tree shapes and color harmony throughout.


So far, I've done very little to the large trees in the foreground and nothing to the small piece of water in the very front. And the sky will need repainting again. There are zillions of little adjustments to edges and shapes and color needed everywhere now-each needing to be fitted to what came before-to the paint.

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.

Finishing the Start

Evening 48 x 60-under painting

Its amazing the amount of things you can get done while you are trying to avoid tackling a big canvas-things like laundry, cleaning up the garage and even your taxes (yes, we procrastinate around here). But eventually you have to face the music, or in this case- the linen. The one thing I have learned is that no matter what I intend the work to be, no matter how many studies I do, the canvas will, at some point very early on, become its own very different thing. When I painted in a more direct manner I would sometimes try to force it back into its cage, so to speak. But now, I cannot so easily cover my tracks. The under painting tells all and whatever happens by the time I have finished the start will be part of the finished work.

October Afternoon

October Afternoon
7 1/2 x 12 oil
Please contact me if interested in this piece

This past weekend I drove to New Mexico for the opening of the Albuquerque Museum Miniatures & More show. It was a quick trip- 24 hours of driving squeezed into about a 54 hour trip. But, I'm glad I went. I saw many friends at the show and I always enjoy the drive, especially at this time of year. I was more than a bit worried about how the show would go, given the recent economic news. I haven't heard whether overall things were slower, but Summer Moon sold, for which I am very grateful.

About a year ago, I was making the drive back from a show in California, and wrote about not being sure where home was. But Sunday, as the high desert of New Mexico gave way to the rolling hills of north Texas, I knew I was heading in the right direction.