Winter Morning on Tallulah Road

"Winter Morning on Tallulah Road"     16" x 12"   Oil on Canvas

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Recently I said to a friend, "I'm actually looking forward to winter."  He did a double take.  And I won't stake my life on that attitude lasting until springtime, but the colors I'm seeing in the winter grays are capturing my attention.  Winter as a metaphor suggests cold, gray and scant of life, but this winter I'm seeing a new beginning.  There is an openness that makes the stars visible at night, that lets me see the deer grazing in the deepest parts of my woods--things that are hidden when summer's foliage is in play.

This week's painting is a section of the Tallulah road from a photo shoot I did last January. It was early in the morning at a time when clouds were taking turns diffusing the sunlight.  Shadows across the road were alternating between disappearing and appearing again.  At times when they were clearly defined, the greens of the mountain laurel and rhododendron sparkled and the grays in the woods reflected subtle reds, purples and blues.

And it was so cold ice cycles were hanging from rocks in areas blocked from the sunlight.  But I was so intent on capturing what the light was doing to those grays, I didn't notice my freezing fingers until I was back in the car.

Winter's Birth

"Winter's Birth"    8" x 10"   Oil on Board
       CLICK HERE TO BUY

For the first time in ages, I am excited about the grays of winter.  From the time the sun comes up until it sets in the evening, the colors I'm seeing in my leaf-bare woods are nothing short of exhilarating.

This little painting is taken from one of my favorite spots on the Tallulah River where the river takes an S-curve, almost as if it's circling back.  It's one of the few places where the waters are quiet.  At this time of year all the summer's foliage has gone, leaving only scant spots of green from the pines, firs, laurel and rhododendrun.  This absence of greens allows the colors among the grays to become the stars.  Looking more closely and without prejudice, you can see purples, blues, yellows, oranges, reds and yes, greens.

Think about it.  We have a communal notion that grays are drab and depressing.  But isn't that a prejudice that prevents us from seeing all the colors inherent in those grays?  It all makes me wonder how much I have deprived myself from experiencing just because I approached things from an opinion rather than an open mind.

Morning Impression

"Morning Impression"  5" x 7"    Oil on board
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I rarely do really small paintings, but this week I decided it might be fun to make some small studies.  The problem with painting really small is capturing enough to make the painting work while not over-crowding it.

I remember nearly thirty years ago, I was commissioned to do a 3 x 6 foot mural.  I submitted to the client three miniature watercolor studies, each one-twelfth of that size, each a different point of view.  My plan was to take the mural from the study they chose, but to my shock when I began to lay out the composition, I discovered it would not work:  it fell apart when enlarged  to twelve times its size.

I learned an important lesson with that project:  make sure the composition will work regardless of the size.

This little painting is from an early morning visit to York Falls during early summer.  The light was flooding through the trees filtered by a light mist in the distance.  It was a brief impression, and then it was gone.

She Keeps On Going

"She Keeps On Going"    12" x 16"   Oil on Canvas
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After I get a painting set up and during the time I'm getting the canvas covered with paint, I usually have music going in the background, but while this one was being developed, I happened to have the TV on, listening to Charley Rose interviewing folks who have been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I have worried a lot lately about how attitudes towards this movement get formed according to which network a person is watching, about how our country is influenced by bias more than by fact.  But then my attention turned away from all this and back to the river and, taking a deep breath, it occurred to me that the river keeps on going regardless.  I continue to go back to the river because it retains its own truth, uninfluenced by all the noise of politics.

I'm making this painting available for auction.  You can bid on it by going HERE.

Tallulah Rush"

"Tallulah Rush"     12" x 16 "   Oil on Canvas
Available on Daily PaintWorks

One reason I keep going back to the Tallulah is I am never able to take all in.   In some areas it is so quiet you can barely hear the flow and many trickles of the water.  In other places, the water rushes so fast that the sound of its roar is almost deafening.  And the light changes from one minute to the other, causing a deep shadow to almost instantly become a pool of light .  It's like a perpetual slide show so encompassing that it's easy to go into an hypnotic state, awestruck as images pass in front of your eyes.

For fun, I set this painting up with converging lines, a principle I discuss in this week's Compose tutorial where the vanishing point appears outside the painting.  By using this, I was able to give order to an otherwise chaotic scene.

Both Strong and Delicate

"Tallulah Bouders, Today"    12" x 16"   Oil on Canvas
$210  BUY
Click on image for larger view

It is those huge boulders on the Tallulah that caught my attention this week.

I have never visited the Tallulah River without being keenly reminded of how deeply we humans are connected to the earth.  I wonder why in the world  anybody would object to protecting our planet.  Here are huge boulders untouched by human's tendency to harvest for their own profit and flowing through them are waters replete with life.  It is one of the few areas in our mountains that is surviving the deluge of human activity.

As as a sidebar:  With this week's post, I'm introducing my new association with Daily PaintWorks, an on-line sales gallery and auction website owned and managed by David Marine, husband of artist Carol Marine.  I'm excited about this new opportunity to make my work available for sale on a website with such a high degree of integrity.

Very soon, I will be presenting a pre-Christmas auction of small works.

Tallulah Reflections and a Triad

"Tallulah Reflections"    10" x 14"   Oil on Canvas
Click on image for larger view.
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 I decided to set up a challenge for this little painting:  to use no more than three colors plus white, no matter what.  I chose the following three colors.

It's been a while since I've done a painting using a limited palette.

For days I'd been stewing over this scene from the Tallulah River.  It was about mid-afternoon, but the sun was falling behind the mountains making it feel much later.  I was struck by all the warm and cool colors reflecting on the water's surface and as it always happens later in the day, the light was changing by the minute as were the colors.  I'd been stewing because those colors had me guessing what in the world was I seeing.  It was a good time to start subtracting from all the colors available and ask myself what was I REALLY seeing.

Greens, blues, golds, deep brownish reds, pinks and purples, so without much thought I decided on a triad of primaries:  a red, a yellow and a blue.  Sometimes the solution to clearing the clutter can be found in going back to the most simple thing you know.

Wildcat Creek: A Sketch

A quick oil sketch of Wildcat Creek     8" x 10"    Oil on board

I am reading Frederick Franc's wonderful little book Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.

And so this week rather than working on a single painting, I've been doing quick oil sketches focusing on opposing movements of the water and varying colors I see reflecting within an overall neutral environment.  Just that and nothing else.  I selected one of these to share in this week's post.

To study for the sake of study--to break away from old routines and stand bare in the presence of nature-- is to coalesce all the years of living and learning into an uncensored response.  What strikes me as revealing this week is how much more fun it is to play with pure childlike curiosity, giving myself permission to ignore any intellectual interference.  

Enjoy your Sunday.
Dianne

Waters Rush, Rocks Stand Firm

"Waters Rush, Rocks Stand Firm"    18"x 14"   Oil on Canvas
Click on image for larger view

Although not where it ended, here's the scene where this painting began.

I was thinking about those multitudes of huge boulders along the Tallulah and wondering how far back in time they reach.  And about how torrents of water rush between them and at times, over them.  Barrels and barrels of water rushing and tumbling, crashing and splashing, then quietly pooling, still enough to collect foliage greens, tree bark grays and sky blues before crashing and bursting under sunlight into zillions of stark white bubbles, creating a sound so deafening you can't hear your own voice.  

All day long my brush was pushing paint with my eyes focused on those boulders while all along  it was the water I was hearing.  Then after the end of that long day of virtually non-stop painting,  I scraped down the canvas, turned it vertically, and started over.   It was the water that wanted my attention this time.

An Enlightening Visit to York Falls

"York Revisited"    16 x 20   Oil on Canvas

This was supposed to be the painting of the century and that's the problem.

I sat at my computer for an hour last night trying to decide what to say about York Falls, the subject of this week's painting.  It's a lovely little falls, it's tucked between two ridges where sunlight has trouble finding it at certain times of the day, it's edges are clean and easy to maneuver thanks to the community of folks that give it constant attention.  So there's a lot that can be said about the little falls, but nothing seemed to click.

It didn't click because the painting didn't click.  It's an okay painting, but doesn't sing to me.  And the reason is that my attention to the falls was mediocre.  I got too interested in making it a superb painting, neglecting to delve into the falls and respond to the obscure little mysteries.  A painting can't sing if it comes from the wrong intention within the artist.

But there's an important lesson here that I hope I can remember:  when you try to make a good painting, when that becomes the purpose of the painting,  it can't be more than mediocre simply because it is being done for the audience, not the artist.  And who needs another good painting?  There are thousands of them being made every day!

What we need is for those of us who are artists to keep our intentions on our responses to the subject.  Otherwise, there cannot be an expression of our unique selves.  It's only when we really search out those things that brought us to the subject that we find what is unique to ourselves and only then can we express our own truth.