"Early Winter Pasture"

 

This painting is a typical sight that one might encounter during a Taos winter. A person can rent a horse pasture with a little acequia  running through it for roughly $20.00 per head per month. When you drive by (a week after a snowstorm) you see that there is no trace that the owner is feeding these equine angels. They are foraging through the snow for bits of dead grass and because the acequia is frozen over, they are literally having to drink the snow. It upsets me so to see the vast disconnect between humans and animals (a cultural thing, I guess). If you toss a couple of bales over the fence you somehow manage to insult the owner.  I apologize that the painting probably no longer holds the impression of serenity and contentment that it did for you a few moments ago.

The cold ultramarine shadows in the snow set against the warm cadmium orange and Indian yellow tones in the horse's fur complement one another and show the stark difference between them both.

"Early Winter Pasture"    (20" X 24")    Oil on Canvas

"The Red Ball"

This painting is part of a series of paintings where a red ball is displayed in the foreground. The red ball represents the potential of anyone who seeks the path of enlightenment and truth. Here it is seen sitting in the shadows while the sheep, like people, are just grazing their way through life. The late afternoon light (I chose it because it is the most beautiful and fleeting light of the day) is coming from the right and only one of the sheep notices it. This represents the "Light that lighteth every man's way". Few heed the call, but when they turn toward the Light they embark upon that path of enlightenment and Love. The cross in the distance is a reminder of the limitation of the temporal body and the limitless eternal Spirit of mankind.

This is a typical sight in Norther New Mexico which is very pleasing to the eye. I prepared the canvas with a mixture of cadmium red light and thalo green to save myself a lot of work painting between the tufts of fescue. Interestingly enough: these two colors are used throughout the entire execution of the painting.

"The Red Ball"      (24" X 30")      Oil on Canvas

On Painting a Likeness...

Each particular combination of lines, planes and masses - in art as well as in nature - has for us a particular meaning.  Let us say, for example, that a tree, a real tree in a field, leans to the left. A slight swelling of the ground at its base indicates the position of an important root.  If the swelling is to the left, the weight of the tree is pushing the root into the ground.  If the swelling is to the right, the tree is pulling against the root, pulling it out of the ground.

In this painting "Apple Blossoms" even though the tree in the foreground is powerful and painted with deeper and darker values, the eye is led in the direction of the furthermost tree which fulfils the above description and it satisfies the eye as something that behaves according to the laws of Nature. Our muscular senses are elaborately aware of these thrusts and tensions. It is the sympathetic muscular sensation in our own bodies of these thrusts and tensions, and our translation of them in terms of our own emotions, which we interpret as the character of the image that is standing before us.  Thus, by using combinations of lines and shapes and masses, and the motor and emotional meanings they have for us, the artist can describe and make us feel the character of the resemblance he has seen.  How exactly this happens, however, I defy any artist to explain. This instruction applies to portraiture as well.

In order to achieve the gnarly effect of the tree trunk (foreground) I used a #12 boar bristle flat and loaded it with Payne's gray, Indian yellow, alyzarin crimson and ultramarine blue (unmixed) and moved the brush down the trunk following the direction that the bark was taking.  It was a happening -- almost like taking a dictation.  That's all I can say about the process, but it is the real joy of painting with big brushes and, of course, the immediate gratification.

Why did I choose oils over other existing media?

My answer is quite simple:  The oil painter can change and correct at will.  Her paint remains comfortably wet.  She can obtain the most subtle gradations with ease.  She only needs to smear.  Her picture can be endlessly repainted.  To match tones is easy.  Her colors are the same whether wet or dry.  She has no reason to be neat.  She can begin by painting as crudely as she pleases, in great rough areas of light and dark, and then refine and adjust them later.

An outline fixed at the beginning would be only a hindrance.  She can put it in as a detail at the end, or even, if she wishes, leave it out altogether.  She can permit herself the most outrageous freedoms and the most monumental messes.  Just as the art of the tempera painting is concerned with lines and the color the lines contain, the oil painter's technique has first of all to do with light-and-dark in tone and back-and-forth in space.  Ah, sweet freedom!

"Pueblo Winter"        (16" X 20")      Oil on Canvas

What does an Impressionist attempt to create?

 The Impressionist painter is not merely painting pictures of colored objects.  His task is much more complicated -- to see what colored objects look like under colored light.  His palette is much richer than that of the pre-Impressionistic painters, sporting mauves, violets, blues, bright greens oranges and intense yellows.  He can allow himself the liberty of forgetting that his pigments are only substances.  He can permit himself to confuse the paint on the palette with the light that he is attempting to represent.

In my painting of "Pelican Sunset" all of those colors are present, but are constantly moving and changing.  All the mauves, blues, greens in the water are seen while they reflect the changes in the mood of the sky and are speckled with moving reflections of the birds as they bob around and feed on the castings from the fishing boats.The glow of the late afternoon sun is evident as it blushes the wet feathers of these amazing creatures.  It was necessary to keep this painting as loose and wet as possible so that the changes could be made at a moment's notice.  I have to admit that I painted half of it with my fingers.  Sometimes this is necessary, but oh, so much fun!

"Pelican Sunset"     (24" X 30")     Oil on Canvas

What Constitutes a Good Composition?

Unless the composition is right, any picture, nomatter how skillfully executed, a picture by any system of aesthetics or values one can possibly employ, is only a picture that can be looked at with pleasure, and remembered with pleasure again and again.  This is precisely a consequence of the simplicity and directness with which the painter's ideas are presented -- in other words, of the picture's composition.

In my painting "Dead Horse Point" - just the title alone begs the question "What happened here?"  But it takes a lot more than that to hold the observer's attention.  This painting is quite large (3.5'X5') because it is a very panoramic view and I wanted to give the feeling that one could walk right into it. The truth is that that windswept pine is standing on the edge of a very high precipice.  It marks the edge of one of the most beautiful campgrounds I have ever visited.  Thia campground is located atop a mesa which, upon entering, is as narrow as the road itself.  That narrow road is where the horse rustlers in days of yore built a fence to stop the mustangs from escaping that they had rounded up from the open range.  They left them there to die in full view of the confluence of the Greene and Colorado rivers.  Many died attempting to reach the water in desperation.  Months later the mesa was discovered scattered with the bones of all those beautiful creatures.

The sunsets were exquisite and  I spent a week photographing them.  Unfortunately, when I was wending my way out of the area towards Moab, I popped open the back of the camera and exposed the film.  I cried like a baby for the next two hours.  You won't believe how beautiful this place is unless you see it.  This painting is reminiscent of my earlier style of using small brushes and large canvases and it was painted from a photograph.  It is owned by a doctor in Santa Barbara and I have'nt painted like this since I first moved to Taos, but I chose this painting to illustrate good composition and perspective.  Notice how the same type of terrain on the mesa below continues all the way into the distance, but the colors become cooler and hazier (caused by the atmosphere), but it satisfies the eye when it looks into the painting.  It is rather like looking through a window.

"Dead Horse Point"       (3.5' X 5')     Oil on Canvas

The Impressionist's Interpretation of Shadows

The most striking characteristic of the first impressionists' paintings is perhaps their cool, blue or violet general tone. This is partially due to those impressionists decrying the uses of orange-sepia-varnished offerings of the painters of that time who tried to give their works a false age and a museum respectability.

However, it is chiefly the accidental result of the impressionists' habit of painting out-of-doors. Shadow tones on the bright days, when painters work out-of-doors, are likely to be blue or violet. And it is the color of the shadows, not of the lights, that determines the general tone of the painting.

In my painting shown above "Sunset at Baca House" this is clearly demonstrated, as the shadow tones would never have been duplicated working with a photograph or slide. Though somewhat exaggerated, it is still closer to the effect or mood that standing inside the scene creates.

"Sunset at Baca House"        (20 " X 24")       Oil on Canvas