There was this:
which became this:
I am so very fond of revising! Or maybe it's just doing what I should have done to begin with....
I am off today to an Art Walk, a wedding reception, and dinner with Jane Davila and Terry Grant. At the end of the day, I may have to be carried off to this kind of resting place. --June
Azalea
-- Jer
Your English teacher always told you to revise your essays, right? Well, it turns out that for some people the same adage applies to paintings. Remember this Not-Duck?
Early Wednesday evening, turned on its side and worked over a bit, it looked like this:
Late Wednesday evening, that vacant lower right side was beginning to take shape.
And the moral of that story is -- you can't turn an essay on its side. But you certainly can revise it beyond recognition. --June
Candytuft
-- Jer
I seem to have collected a number of paintings that don't hang together. In fact, they aren't hanging at all -- they are stacked around the walls of the studio, waiting to be dry enough to handle more paint and/or be declared good enough to put away. (The other alternative is that they find their way onto the pile of boards and canvases to be whited out and recycled, but we aren't there yet).
Gresham Pioneer Cemetery, Pleine Aire, Oil on Board, 12 x 16.
On a sunny Sunday, we went back to Gresham Main Park (located off Main Street) where Johnson Creek and the Springwater Corridor are part of the scene. Along one edge of Johnson Creek, just beyond the Park, is the Pioneer Cemetery. I painted this while basking in the spring warmth under an evergreen. On the other side of the Creek, I could hear the thwack of baseballs and the yells of fams in the Park across the way. I was trying to play with some ideas about light and paint as well to get the scene blocked in. So this painting is sitting against a near wall in the studio, waiting for further work.
Trestle at Powell Butte, pleine aire, oil on board, 12 x 16"
This trestle bridge over Johnson Creek is next to a farm (which is out of the frame on the left) harboring loud peacocks, roosters, hens, and other noisy animals. Three deer meandered through the field just to the right of the painting, disappeared, and then reappeared about 10 feet behind my easel. I don't know who was more surprised, the deer or myself.
The Springwater Corridor trail uses the old railroad line, although the bridge itself had been damaged by floods and so is currently closed. Bicyclists and hikers take a detour down a narrow country road, across a roaring main connector, and back to the seemingly rural trail.
The painting is almost finished, and once again, I was charmed by the evidence of human activity (the flowering quince was in a slightly boggy meadow) against highly urban and amazingly rural forest and farmland. Powell Butte is worth revisiting.
Beggar's Tick (the painting). Oil on canvas, 30 x 40"
We have shown lots of photos of Beggar's Tick, so it's time to show a painted version. This painting has gone through visions and revisions (which a moment will revise.) It is not yet finished. At this point I'm not sure it will be finished. But since I have to finish it before I can put it away, I may get tired of stumbling over it and work on it just so I can shelve it. Such are the ways I can fool myself into doing more than I want to. --June
Tree nursery near Gresham
-- Jer
Inevitably, after a last class, the work ebbs into eddies. Here are a couple backwater pieces.
Once a pseudo-traffic calmer, transformed and transformed again. Further work will be done.
One of the biggest (failed) canvases in the studio, this one was an abstract based on the John Day Fossil Beds (Fall, 2006). It has now been whited out and something drawn in.
No, that's not a duck -- or at least won't be by the time you read this. However, I do like the patterning on the "path." And I'm rather fond of the uncovering of what's underneath, although I haven't the foggiest where it's going.
Detail of overpainted JODA piece.
--June
Gresham Pioneer Cemetery on a sunny afternoon
-- Jer
The final critique session for my studio painting class is over. I took in three largish oils which seemed to contain many of the changes that happened because of the class. I now am using more paint (I dream of people chanting "MORE PAINT" at me), I have a better idea of the smooshiness of edges ("think Cezanne," my instructor kept muttering), and my style, while not changing much, is getting, I think, even more firm.
The three paintings, of course, come with their own backstory. But first the images:
McLoughlin Boulevard, Mid-Day. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
McLoughlin Boulevard, Early Morning. Oil on board, 18 x 24.
McLoughlin Boulevard, Early Evening. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40.
The back story you've heard some of. McLoughlin is an old route, probably having its heyday in the 1950's. It was a classic strip, now boulevarded so that access to business off it are restricted and there are 3--4 lanes of traffic whizzing by. Many of the businesses, like the yellow ones (I showed photographs of them earlier), are deserted and derelict. Warehouses and mysterious company sheds abound, yet in the middle of them are nestled bits of residences.
At mid-day, McLoughlin is a folklore nightmare, inhumane yet packed with humanity's detritus. I haven't seen McLoughlin in early morning (I'm not an early riser) but I can imagine it in one of our grey dawns when not even a single car brightens its gloom. There is a kind of nightmare there, too, but a very different one than the mid-day frantic rushing about.
Finally, in the evening light, when the trees have leafed out a bit, areas around McLoughlin can look peaceful. The sun highlights various human dwellings and human colors and picks out trees to dwell on.
These paintings are all studio renditions of the same place, different light, different times of day, different moods. Even the armpit of Portland has its moments of charm. And I learned well the lessons of inner-southeast, particularly concerning electrical wires.
Check the continuation for other paintings of McLoughlin that I didn't take to the critique.
And oh, yes, the class was unanimous in telling me I should keep on painting. I didn't tell them that they couldn't stop me. --June
Monday's painting:
Monday's Revision:
Both have to have a glaze run over them, but that can't be done until they are really dry. And both have to have the trees worked up, but that can't be done until they are dry to the touch. And it's likely that Monday's painting will have more studio fixes.
I have at least one more that I want to do pleine aire, and then I have a notion about an abstract or two based on these pleine aire works. I don't think I'll be doing a full-sized studio of these -- they seem just right at 12 x16, oil on board. --June
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