Carolina Wren: Beginning of a Series

"On Alert"     7" x 10"    Watercolor on Paper
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This is the first in a series of studies I'm doing of a Carolina Wren who has been visiting my bird feeder.  I was able to shoot a video of this little guy, then capture a number of still frames of his movements.  From these stills I have been doing a number of gesture studies.

What I'm trying to accomplish here is an immediacy with this little bird.  I have spent my career focused on the creative process, with my most recent focus being on the way we artists compose our work.  Now, I'm giving my attention to pure immediacy:  what happens when I respond to my subject without thought, with the only goal being to tune in to how I am responding.  Nothing more.

Double Dare

"Double Dare"
  11" x 8"  Watercolor on Paper

One of the entertainments of early spring is watching male cardinals duke it out.  So when I was asked if I'd be willing to do a cardinal commission in watercolor, it was that territorial dance that first entered my mind as I studied their activity in my yard.

I sat up my camera aimed out my kitchen window and put it in movie mode so that when the cardinals appeared at the bird feeder, I could film their gestures and expressions.  It is from these video clips that I compiled this little painting set in my woods where Spring has not yet produced a single leaf bud.

Dancing Light

"Dancing Light"  13" x 21"    Pastel on paper
$300

I finished this painting a couple of weeks before Christmas.  It is the fourth in my series of paintings from a canoe trip on the Tugalo River in the fall.

The images from that trip remain as fresh today as the day I experienced them.  During this moment, the surface of the water displayed its own painting, changing moment by moment with the movement of the water's ripples and the subsiding light of a sun setting.  Our boat was skirting along the surface of all this, adding its own note to the pulsating motion, becoming a part of a both fleeting and emerging, a dance of light on the water's surface.

Just Before Sundown

"Just Before Sundown"   15 x 21  Pastels on Paper   $400
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This is the third painting in my series from a recent canoe trip on the Tugalo River.  Heading down river about an hour before sundown, the light was golden, illuminating centuries-old earth striations and exposed roots from several decades ago when trees were cleared to accompany the construction of Lake Hartwell.

These images stick with me today as fresh as when I was experiencing them.

Once A King

"Once A King"  15" x 18"   Pastels on Paper
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Until two weeks ago I strongly disliked painting with pastels.  Over the years I have taught its techniques to my students, but have not given it the time of day as a medium I could relate to.  I have complained about how I dislike the way my fingers feel when touching it even though I enjoy looking at a well crafted pastels painting, I've made a declaration "not for me."   Well.  That all changed and without any warning.

Not long ago, I was taken on a delightful canoe trip up the Tugalo River.  Lake Hartwell into which the Tugalo flows and from which it takes most of its waters had been drawn down since spring to several feet below the rivers' banks, leaving a desert of  lake bed and consequent desertion of boaters and their lake folk, but the river remains a haven for canoe lovers.  As we rowed up the river, bare bones of old stumps raising their heads to light, cast breathtaking reflections on the waters.   These images along with the old piers of a once covered bridge caught my attention.

I assumed watercolor was the ideal medium for communicating my impressions, but watercolor wouldn't work.  It was as if the images were demanding I reach inside myself for something else.  Oil wouldn't work either, so reluctantly, I dug out the pastels and the images began to flow into place, surprising me and all those who know me and the disdain I've spouted forth about the medium all these years.

"Once A King" is the second painting in this series.  And I am a reborn painter, now adding pastels to the painting mediums I love.  Imagine that.

Majesty

"Majesty"    "12 x "14"   Pastels on Paper"
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The subject for this little painting sits in the Tugalo River, once one of a triumvirate of piers holding a covered bridge whose history reaches back into the mid 1800's.  The stones were cut from a quarry nearby.  But this painting is not so much about the bridge or even this single pier as it is about the stalwarts we humans abandon, especially in this new world of modernization.  It is easier to ditch an old thing than to shore it up and keep it going.  We place more value on the market than we do on the seeds that provided the produce.

Thoughts of Lothlorien

"Thoughts of Lothlorien"   20" x 16"
 Oil on Canvas
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This painting began because I was drawn to a bright blast of light radiating from a tree on the edge of the riverbank.  As the painting progressed, the images Tolkein paints with words describing Lothlorien kept floating in and out of my awareness.

One problem in painting is finding the right balance between showing the brightness of light without blinding the viewer and making it bright enough in the right places to convey the experince of it.  It's very much like getting the right volume with music without blowing out everybody's eardrums, or for a poem, choosing words strong enough without screaming.  It's this balancing act, among other challenges, that keeps me fascinated with art.

Golden Light

"Golden Light"    12" x 16"   Oil on Canvas$
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I began this painting while reading the section of Tolkein's Fellowship of the Ring where Tom Bombidil appears.  Tom stole my heart the first time I read the Tolkein trilogy:  his oneness with nature, his wisdom, his wholeness of heart and his perpetual singing.  When I did the first drawing for the painting, I wrote "Tom Bombidil's song" underneath the drawing.  To make the title more inclusive, I called the painting "Golden Light" because this interpretation of the Tallulah river feels to me like the Withywindle close to Tom's house where he found his wife, Goldberry.

A Place To Sing

"A Place To Sing"   14" x 18"   Oil on Canvas
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After just having finished The Hobbit, I am reading again Tolkein's Trilogy, Lord of the Rings. One thing that endears me to the hobbits, dwarves and elves is their love for singing.  Even when not singing, the hobbits will often hum to themselves, especially late in the evening on their way back from a stroll.

This new painting is about music as much as it is about anything else.  The scene is a tiny piece of my beloved Tallulah River, but on that day I was sharing this place with very special friends who are themselves musicians as well as kindred spirits.  We--not unlike the hobbits traveling away from their familiar homes to unfamiliar lands, feeling a bit vulnerable, but determined to make their journey--can always find a place to sing.

Tallulah's Early Spring

"Tallulah's Early Spring"   16" x 20"    $400    Purchase

So where is our focus when we're painting?

I am convinced that it is the peripheral thoughts that give the painting its spirit.  Whatever pulled us to the subject in the first place will guide us throughout the painting if we don't allow our minds to wonder away.

What led me to do this painting was the feeling of renewal I experienced standing on the edge of the upper Tallulah River in the spring, at just the time when the foliage was getting ready to burst forth.  Light on the water was dazzling and the water's sound was unusually musical.  The fact that it spoke to me was all I needed.

Modern colleges and universities focus on the conceptual, concerned more about their students belonging to the modern age of expression where it is more important to reflect a culture than it is to listen to one's inner voice.   What worries me about that is how many students swallow that philosophy rather than question its validity, thus shutting out their own uniqueness.  One's inner voice should never be muted, but rather should be provided with skills, techniques and knowledge to enable it to speak clearly.

I yearn for the day when a thousand university art students can stand on the edge of a riverbank and paint what it speaks to them.