New Book: In Praise of Mountain Waters

Announcing my new book, In Praise of Mountain Waters

Available at Amazon.com

And Happy New Year!

A Wish for Peace

No painting this week, rather a wish for peace and joy to all people everywhere.

A Capella

"A Capella"   16" x 12"   Oil on Canvas

$200  Click HERE to buy

The point of view is pretty much the same as "Winter's Birth," located just to the left of "Winter Morning on the Tallulah."  This section of the Tallulah has always been my favorite.  Here the river is quiet and serene as it takes a u-turn towards another direction.  And this tree double tree stops me every time I go to the river.  Perhaps I'm caught by its duality:  two distinct trunks growing from the same root system, singing trio with the river, A Capella.

Slight Delay

This week's painting will be a day late.  That's how it goes during the Christmas season.
    Dianne

Winter Morning on Tallulah Road

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

SOLD

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
SOLD

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
SOLD

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.