I Resolve!

My New Years Resolution was to keep my blog up to date.  Here it is February 1, 2017 and I am finally getting around to it.  I can use the excuse that life has gotten in the way of painting and of blogging and that would certainly be true.  But life is always throwing things in our direction.  It is our choice how long to hold on to what has been thrown at us.  Right now I have a strong need to have more balance in my life and painting does that for me.  It brings me back to my place of center and in turn helps me handle what life tosses at me.

Over the next few days and weeks, I'll post some of the things I've been working on.  I would love to hear your comments as feedback is a wonderful motivator.

Being near the sea has always helped me feel connected.  Since I'm not living as close to the ocean as I would like, I've recently been bringing the ocean to me.

"Breaking Wave"

18x24 oil on canvas

Another View

This is another view of Lake O'Hara in the Canadian Rockies.  I would LOVE to go back there again!  I feel peaceful even when painting from photos I took.  The water is this amazing color of green with bits of the sky reflected into it.  I'm told the green comes from the minerals in the water.

"Another View"

20"x16" oil on board

It was risky

My husband always said he didn't like to fish but that meant that whenever we'd travel all he wanted to do was ride around and explore new areas.  That's fine but it also never gave me any time to paint.  So, as he prepared for a three month sabbatical leave, I presented him and my youngest son with complete fly fishing outfits  - rods, reels, waders, special shoes, flies etc.  It was taking a chance but I was desperate.  I wanted to explore but I also wanted time to just sit and draw or paint.  It worked!!  Bob fell in love with fly fishing and I get to do more painting.  I came upon this young guy one day and knew I had to paint him.

I realized that I wanted to capture for the feeling rather than the specifics of the scene so put him back on my easel.  This is the result.  What do you think? Before or after?

Summertime!

Summer officially arrived this week and with it warm, dry, sunny weather.  What else would I be inspired to paint than the coast.

Springtime

Spring has finally arrived here in the Cache Valley.

I love the way our mountains hold on to the snow while the fields are a study in abstract patterns.

There is never a lack of inspiration when you are living in a lush, green valley surrounded by mountains.

And spring is not spring without flower!!!!

The Joy of Both Watercolor and Oil

It's been awhile since I got out my watercolors.  It's not that I don't like watercolors, I do!  I can't even say I prefer one over the other as I love both watercolor and oils.  When I sit down to paint I follow an inner guide that leads me to one or the other.  It is more instinctual rather than a conscious decision to work in one particular medium.  Lately,  I've been led to play with my watercolors.

A few years ago a friend and I traveled through some of our great national parks.  This was a stop by a falls in the Grand Teton National Park.  I am enjoying combining brush and palette knife to give an abstract feeling to the scene.

Portrait or Landscape

Most artists have a favorite subject to paint.  For some it is still life, others love landscapes and others do mainly figures.  I don't think I've painted very many still life paintings but usually go back and forth between figures and landscapes.  I love both and never know when I enter my studio what is going to grab me that day.  Today it's a landscape.  Tomorrow remains to be seen.

Zoning out

It's been raining today with some pretty mild temperatures so I opened the window of my studio and started a painting.  After awhile, I began to wonder what it was I was feeling.  It took a bit to register.  It had started to snow and the wind was blowing it in the window and falling onto my canvas.  I know I often lose sense of time and space when I paint but this is the first time I got snowed on and didn't realize it.

"Golden Sky"

16x20 oil

Intuitive Painting

My camera takes wonderful photos and often I use photos as a jumping off place for a painting.  The painting below was not inspired by a photo but by a meditation.  I can often get so wrapped up in the holiday season that I lose who I am and what the season is really all about.  Yesterday I began my time in my studio with Christmas music and some quiet breathing time.  Often when I meditate I feel as if I've been lifted out of myself into a deeper place.  Feelings rather than pictures flood me and it was with that feeling that I began this painting.  I began painting what I thought was to be an ocean scene but it was as if the painting itself had other ideas and I'm not really surprised.  Trees and water speak to me and give me peace.

untitled

9x12 oil

I'm along for the ride

Sometimes I feel like breaking out and give the inner me a chance to rise to the surface.  I know that the "inner me" will involve lots of feelings and emotions and be more abstract that concrete.  It will also probably involve a palette knife.  When I paint with a palette knife, I find myself loosening up and just going with what the canvas and paint want to say to me. Crazy as it sounds, but there are times that I think I'm only along for the ride - the holder of the brush or knife but that the canvas and some other part of me are really the artist.

I did this painting below with music playing and no idea ahead of time as to what what going to come up.  The canvas is 24" x 36"

I have been painting - honest I have!

I had hoped that blogging would encourage me to paint every day and it worked.  I have been painting almost every day but I have not blogged in four months.   It's not that I don't enjoy blogging.  I do but I enjoy painting more mainly in oils.

I got to go to Oregon twice this summer.  Once with a friend who was preparing to return to India and another time with my husband.  I spent time in Portland, the Oregon coast and in Bend which is in central Oregon.  I took lots of reference photos and did some watercolor paintings, too.  Here are just some of my paintings since I last blogged.

So that's what it's for

Lake O'Hara

oil on masonite 8x10

I'm having fun playing around with my palette knife.  Lake O'Hara is on the back side of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies.   A few years ago my friend Linda arranged for us to spend the night in the warden's cabin right on the lake.  John Singer Sargent was known to have painted there and they even named the lakeshore in front of the cabin, "Sargent's Point."  I painted this painting today from one of the photos I took while there.