Winter Blues

The past few weeks we have been inundated with low clouds and fog, creating the most beautiful blue sky at sunset. It was impossible to capture the color with my digital camera, but I was determined to try to emulate that unbelievable blue.

I pulled some images of the birch groves along the canals of France from my barge trip last September, threw them into Photoshop and went to work. The final images are a composite of multiple photographs, spliced and layered with varying levels of blur and opacity. All the layers are adjusted with major amounts of color alterations from the original. This work took weeks of manipulation to produce.

Satisfied with the results on my computer screen, I printed the images digitally onto 100 % cotton watercolor paper with archival inks. The images are spliced together and mounted to hollow core doors.

I am using more base layers of wax than in my previous work. These panels have up to 15-layers of clear wax medium, interspersed with a few layers of transparent white. Then finished with glazes of oil paint burned into the surface.

I just love the results. Mysterious, soft and gentle. I have one complete, one on the table, and hopefully two more will be ready for the show in April.

The result is so close to my memory of that winter color over the Puget Sound.

Trying to Keep Pace

the studio, January 2011

I'm always trying to catch up.

I have an abundance of imagery and words in my minds eye. I feel an overwhelming sense of urgency to get them all out of my head and onto the canvas quickly, before they disappear from memory. But there are too many visions, and I can't physically work that fast. So I have to make choices. And some ideas may never see light. Because by the time I've completed the first bunch, my mind has already moved beyond where I was before. Maybe if I didn't have such an abundance of pictures in my head, I would be able to produce more. But I don't think I'd like that trade-off.

So, I'd better just show up every day. Get as much out of my system that I can.

Commission Complete

"One Sunlit Morning" photoencaustic and oil, triptych. 30" x 104" x 2"

The paintings are complete and will be delivered next week. I call the triptych "One Sunlit Morning". It will be hung in the waiting lobby of a beautiful new hospital here in Washington state.

The next two months will now be devoted to preparing for my solo show in April at Patricia Rovzar Gallery. I actually have enough work completed already, but I feel that I'm missing some variety in scale, subject and color. Send good thoughts for productive studio work!