Today I finished up the my latest piece for the Quilted Landscape series:
I also touched up two new pieces for the Southwest series. These were done 90% en plein air (outdoors) around Portales, New Mexico this spring.
Three finished paintings
trees
Reinstating the Sketchbook Sunday Segment!
Here is a sketch I made yesterday from a rocking chair on my front lawn. I know you can hardly see what it is of but that’s not the point. (It’s a house and some trees at the end of our road.)
The point is that I remembered some of my old blog posts being titled: “sketchbook saturday” or “sketchbook sunday” and like the idea of using my sketchbook each weekend… religiously shall we say.
Loving weather
This was one of the last paintings I completed for my show. I began it over a month ago when Portales experienced a nice storm – anyone who lives here will understand what a great thing this is. Rain!!! I get very excited when it rains and especially enjoy thunderstorms, dark skies and the swallows that take shelter in my covered porch with me.
I felt the air pressure change and set up my supplies on the porch and painted quickly as I watched it move towards me across the fields. The swallows didn’t make a peep but watched intently and I took that as a compliment. Storms seem to blow over quickly here, so I knew I had to work fast. The result of such a quick painting session didn’t impress me all that much, so I set the canvas aside. After that storm passed and we were left in bleaching sunlight for another month I just couldn’t bring myself to continue work on it.
Finally, last week we had another rainy day and I was inspired to finish it up, just before my show went up. So… er, yes, it’s hanging wet in the gallery… shhh!
Long lost siblings
Sometimes the process of making a painting is over in a blink. The ideas come to me in an instant, I make the time to plan, sketch, set up the colours and dive in. My body cooperates (no headaches or back aches) and hours later I stumble out of the studio in a dehydrated daze trying to remember when I last ate… I’m happy when I peek back through the door and see a new creation staring back at me… I’m excited, often surprised as I stare at it… the painting almost seems to be saying, “What? Did I get the wrong address? Isn’t this where I’m supposed to be?”
But quite often, this is not the case. Sometimes ideas germinate for a long, long time. I sketch, I plan and nothing develops out of my efforts so I leave it alone and move on. Often I let the ideas go forever (there will always be more) but some are more potent than others and I keep thinking about them from time to time, curious and hopeful that they might still one day grow.
I made Cedar Falling a few years ago and it has since been waiting for a “sibling” painting. I had many ideas in mind and never found the time between my four part-time jobs to test them out, always afraid they wouldn’t turn out and I’d have wasted my time. For the past two months however I’ve been walking past the imposing 38 x 48″ canvas of Cedar Falling, which I set against a wall in my living room – a constant reminder of those ‘loose ends’ in this story.
So for the past two weeks I’ve been piecing together more of the imagined narrative and have three new small canvases in various degrees of completion. Below is the first one that I finished today. Hopefully the other siblings will also find their full force and I’ll post them here… maybe they won’t. It’s a mystery. Stay tuned.
