2009 Workshop

For a number of years, I taught painting workshops from my studios in Florida and New Mexico, as well as locations around the country. When we moved, I decided to take a hiatus from teaching. I knew that my work was taking a new direction and I needed time for R&D. In the last couple of months I agreed to do two demonstrations in the early part of 2009 . That got me to thinking about how I would go about demonstrating and talking about my work and I also received a few inquires about workshops. I enjoy teaching and have always received excellent reviews from my students. Its something I take very seriously, so I wanted to wait until I was ready to put the required time and energy into a class. So, I've decided to schedule a workshop here at my studio in Clarksville, TX, March 28-29, 2009.

I've given much thought as to how to organize this class. Most importantly, I wanted it to be small enough that each participant would receive lots of individual attention with enough time for painting exercises and demonstrations. So, I've limited the registration to 8 artists. Here are the things I'll be covering in the class.

-edit and simplify the landscape for maximum effect
-create a strong under painting
-glaze and scumble to create luminosity
-choose and work with transparent colors
-create an interesting paint surface using a combination of opaque and transparent passages
-choose painting supports, tools and materials for indirect painting methods

Please contact me if you have any questions and also please pass this along to any other artists who might be interested.

You can go here to read more information about the workshop and to register.

Evening Pines

Evening Pines
10 x 8
Sold

East Texas is referred to as the Piney Woods. Tall, elegant stands of loblolly and long leaf pine can be found just about everywhere here. I am particularly fond of them, not only because they are visually interesting but because they remind me of north Florida (where I grew up) and south Georgia (where I spent some time in school and on horseback). I have in mind to do a number of larger paintings of pines and this little piece is a start on that project.

Gratification-Delayed

Winter Greys
6 x 6
Private Collection

Yesterday I took a drive of about 60 miles round trip over to the vet's to pick up medicine for Sophie (our oldest Corgi). Its a trip I take about once a month and I always look forward to it. Although the landscape along the way is very similar to where we live, it does have more of the tall pines this area of Texas is known for (more about that later). Yesterday,the fog was thick and I was fascinated by the variety of greys- from the violets and blues in the distance to almost maroon/wine colored greys in the near trees. By the time I got home, I had an entire painting composed and painted in my head.

I have never been a patient person. I tend to want what I want, when I want it. Instant gratification- a birthright. As my husband says of me in former days, before we came to the Bubble, "you were in a hurry". So it is probably a great cosmic gotcha that I have adopted a mode of painting that requires me to paint, wait, paint, wait, paint, and wait some more. Which is why I am posting a painting today done this time last year and not the one I started yesterday.



Deborah Paris Fine Art- Small Gems -Big Art in a small package

Old School-New School

December Dusk
8 x8
Available at Deborah Paris Fine Art

As regular readers know, about 18 months ago, I began to explore new techniques in search of a way to better describe not only the atmospheric effects in the landscape that interested me, but also to create a certain mood and look to my work. That quest lead me to a study of glazing, scumbling and the use of transparent paint in general. Glazing is most definitely Old School- a technique which goes back to the Renaissance and which was almost completely lost over the last couple of centuries as more direct painting methods were deemed to be more desirable. Many still feel that way, but this centuries old technique is making a comeback in some circles. Modern, man made pigments have added a whole range of highly pigmented, rich colors to the transparent colors now available to the 21st century artist (very New School) .

My aim was and is to combine this very Old School technique with a modern (New School) landscape sensibility. Over the last few years, I experimented with a more stylized and even abstracted form of landscape painting to accomplish these goals. Although I am very drawn to a decorative approach (I mean that in a good way), in the end, I knew I wanted my landscapes to be places my viewers felt they could actually walk into. I wanted to make the viewer look, and having looked, desire to linger. For me, that meant that a more representational (for lack of a better word) mode combined with a modern, spare sense of design and use of limited but rich color was needed.

As I've written before, I describe this as "just enough, but not too much". I often miss that mark, usually erring on the side of "too much" but occasionally "not enough". I think it is a pursuit that will engage me for the rest of my life, and as I come to trust myself more- I hope I can get closer to what I want to accomplish.

To Do or Not To Do

Heading South
20 x 20 oil on linen
Private Collection

It seems much that I read these days on artist blogs and Twitter is about getting organized, marketing and the all important To Do list. Its natural I suppose with the year coming to a close and the anticipation/anxiety about what the new year will bring for working artists. But, as usual, I seem to be swimming against the tide-or at least paddling in the opposite direction. This post is about one artist's fight against the tyranny of the To Do list.

First a disclaimer. I have been writing and using To Do lists for many years. In my previous life, they were indispensable. I still use them, although I try to compartmentalize them as much as possible. I have even perfected the art of the Honey Do list according to my husband. Unlike some artists, getting into the left side of my brain has never been a problem for me- its getting out of it that's tricky. In fact, one might say it took me almost twenty years to get out, and I'm not going back!

Truthfully, when I became a full time artist, I tackled my lists with new ambition. In fact, To Do lists were much more my comfort zone than the studio was. My analytical, problem solving background and training put to use in service of my art career- what could be better??!! So in those years, I taught workshops and participated in plein air events and other shows all over the country, wrote and published articles, built a 1200 name mailing list from scratch (and this was before blogging was even a twinkle in my eye), started a plein air group that grew into a 250 member state wide organization, organized a huge plein air invitational at a prestigious gallery in Santa Fe, and oh, did I forget to mention...... painted full time. But, the more I did, the more I began to feel completely disconnected from my real work- painting. My painting became more about show deadlines and submissions than about building a cohesive body of work. Finally a series of gut wrenching events forced me to take stock and to make significant changes in just about every area of my life. And that was a good thing....

What I know now, is that my work requires large amounts of R&D- research and development. This means for me, lots of reading, thinking, looking at and noticing things, and most importantly, just painting. I allow myself to wander around, both outside and in the studio, and in my head. The shift in both the technical and aesthetic focus of my work over the last 18 months has been, for the most part, completely the product of simply following a thread of thought and visual ideas and finding a technique which would best express those ideas- without a preconceived notion of where it might take me. Goal oriented thinking or activities simply won't get me where I want to go in the studio. So if it takes me ten minutes to walk the fifty yards from my studio to the house in late afternoon because I am watching the light flicker behind the trees or if I pull off the road on the way to town to see the clouds move across the horizon- its more important to my work as an artist than a check mark on my list ever can or should be.

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.