Sandpoint Inspiration...

I was lucky enough to get accepted as one of the artists for the ArtWalk event in Sandpoint, ID.  ArtWalk there means that you have a show at one of the downtown venues for a month during the summer.  I was assigned space in the beautiful Sandpoint Financial Center which is the home to Panhandle State Bank, IMFC,  Tango Cafe' etc.  The building is designed to show art with a cable hanging system and great lighting.  The photos above include the set up and then a shot of some of the paintings hanging for the show.   I was assigned also a volunteer from the Pend Orielle Arts Council who would hang the show.  I don't know if I lucked out, but had the great pleasure to meet and work with Carol Deaner who absolutely made me feel welcome and privileged to be there.  She had a team of volunteers working with her and in a matter of minutes had mine and another artist's work hanging.  You can tell she is experienced; she looked at all the work leaning against the wall and started moving them around in the order she thought they should hang and it was right on...expertly done!   She introduced me to collectors and friends...one would have thought she was managing a well established gallery as she  was busy making her artists feel comfortable as well as bringing in clients.  WHAT A PLEASURE!  POAC has a real gem in Carol!! 

The Sandpoint area is really beautiful and is certainly a destination for lots of folks.  The lake is beautiful any time of day as well as the surrounding areas.  The little painting posted today is a result of the visit.  There is so much to look at; the mountains, the fields, the lakes, river, etc.  The town is small, but so many fun shops to visit, a farmer's market, great cafes.
So, if you get the opportunity to visit Sandpoint, do.  The 2 ArtWalks happen back to back and there are lots of other events in the area.  I have work there until July 25th.  Then I will put some work in the POAC show "Aquatics" that will be at the Power House Building where the POAC resides and their art shows decorate the walls of this fabulous old building.
So, my message is this...respect and appreciate a good venue and the volunteers or employees of that venue.  when you hang work at a lot of different places, and one is outstanding to work with, it makes you feel good just to be there!  I have that a some places that I have work and I do appreciate my gallery owners and managers and employees....they sell YOU!  They have the gift of selling and promoting and as an artist; I need that!!  So my hat goes off to my favorite galleries and what they do...Kelly's Gallery on Main, Moccasin Mountain Gallery, Wenaha Gallery, POAC, Allied Arts...you all are wonderful to work with!  Simply....thank you.
Sadly saying goodbye to Raphaels in Pendleton as they close after 25 years; but wishing them the best in their next adventure and looking forward to their promise to be back and open again in 5-ish years!!!  You were great!!!
Happy painting...

quick draw in pastel

I am going to talk a little about my quick draw experience and at the request of Ida, posting the 3 most recent quick draw results. 
About the images...the pieces are all in the approximate size of 9"x12" or 12"x9" depending on the orientation of the paper.  The vertical one of the cottonwoods along the water and farm buildings in the background was the one I completed in 30 minutes for the Miles City  Bucking Horse Sale Quick Draw event in May.  The horizontal of the aspens along the river with the cliffs on the right was done at the 2010 Festival of the Arts in Joseph, OR in 1 and a  half hours and the river in fall with lots of vegetation was done for the Wallowa Festival of the Arts as well, but  in 2009.  It was also a 1.5 hour limit.
So I approach the quick draw events with a plan in place.  For one that allows only a 30 minute drawing/painting time, one needs to be well prepared for the party!  I went to Miles City with an entirely different image in my mind to paint - hay bales - which are fun to do and I had worked up a nice sketch and also felt it was a piece that would work well and hopefully sell well for the area.  I worked the trials on this several times and was really never comfortable in completing it the way I wanted in the 30 minute time frame.  So I was feeling a little uneasy and finally decided to abort that plan and work up something different.  I still wanted something relevant to the area to hopefully entice bidding from local collectors, so decided that the cottonwoods would be my best bet.  Going back before the hay bales I had toyed with the idea of something representational of the Yellowstone River Valley - because that's where MC lies...along the river near some beautiful rugged multicolored hills covered with pines, juniper, sage etc.  With a couple of mock quick draws, using my idea of the fall cottonwoods, my confidence was restored knowing I could create something that was quality in a 30 minute time.  It worked!  The piece was the highest selling art at over $1000.  So my set up included having the paper type that I knew would work well - a sheet of black Art Spectrum paper (I wanted that black to assist me is creating depth; knowing I wouldn't have to do a very heavy coloring of my favorite deep blue for the depth I desired and that it would allow for good texture for my focal point cottonwood leaves.) and I had chosen my palette and put those pastels separate from my large color box (keep me focused on the colors I needed over that 30 minutes!).  I also packed my supplied and had them all together so there wasn't any stress in getting set up.  This quick draw was in a wonderful city park, so I wanted to be situated in a spot that had some shade to work in (lots of huge trees) so getting there early was important so I could pick a spot that would work for me.  The artists  have to bring all their props.  I used my French easel and a chair to set my pastels and other supplies on.  For me, keeping it simple works...The quick draws tend to gather a group of on-lookers and one thing that is fun is to be able to visit a little with the folks taking an interest in your work...with a 30 minute time frame - one needs to concentrate pretty much on your work and not visit too much...but I managed to do a little chatting while I painted.  Because I had a plan and subsequently stayed with it; the piece was actually ready for it's frame at 25 minutes.  So for the short time frame quick draws, I suggest a well planned piece, not an extremely intense piece, but one that still is good quality and represents ones workmanship, supplies picked ahead of time and separated.  If you have practiced painting the piece and know you can complete it in the time frame; you are already ahead of the game because  you have that confidence before  you start the event!
As far as the quick draws that allow an hour or hour and a half...you get to work slower, compose a more complex study and visit a little more with those gathered around!  I still go through the same steps...knowing that I can complete a specific work in the time frame; isolate my chosen palette, have all my supplies organized, etc. 
Quick draws are fun; gets your heart rate going and the adrenalin pumping.  People watching love them because they can see a piece of work materialize before their eyes.
The two quick draws in Joseph, OR are held in an old bank building.  It is a very interesting log building with two floors and lots of windows.  But, this quick draw is an evening event, so the windows are not a source of light and one must bring some lighting...which can add to the warming up the temperature of your work area in a hurry.  This venue is a fun one to go as well.  The event includes music, drinks, treats; a real event for the people buy a ticket for the event and come to watch and bid on the works.
I like both set  ups and have a great time doing quick draws.  It's the challenge, I guess, to get a painting done, get it done right; get it done with a time limit!
That's my take on this!  Happy painting....

More dust...

After spending a few days in Joseph, OR for their Festival of Arts, I thought anyone following this blog should be able to enjoy some of the scenery from there as well.  This is a beautiful, lush valley next to the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon.  It is rich in color and beauty.  Early June seems to bring the rains and the colors of green are endless.  It's a little early for much of the wild flowers to be blooming, but there is a hint of color out in the prairies to the north and east.  Joseph is a destination with a history of fine bronze foundries, art galleries and recreation for many with a beautiful lake snuggled up against the mountains, lots of trails to bike and hike and ride.  This has been an "art town" for quite a while.  There are fabulous artists living and working there.  The arts council is an active one and they sponsor an annual festival of the arts that draws artists from across the US and some international artists as well.
I started attending the event 5 years ago and look forward to it every year.  I look forward to seeing friends there and participating in the events offered by the festival such as the plein air and quick draw events.
The scene of the tepee was one of the sites of the plein air paintings.  The town of Joseph is relatively small, but there are good places to have a meal, some great shopping and wonderful to just walk around in.  On many of the street corners there are life sized bronzes of a variety of subject - from a pioneer woman to some wolves to a bronc rider on a bucking horse, to a mare and foal and more...So if one is looking for something to do the first weekend of June...check out Joseph.  The festival has a Facebook page "Wallows Valley Festival of the Arts"; the town has a website that lists the events of the year.  It's a great destination! Some of my favorite spots to go...BeeCrowBee - Will makes his own lotions, oils, soaps etc.  Fabulous product.  Will is an artist as well and does some amazing work.  The shop is great and must stop.  To Zion is another fun store for clothing and great, really great jewelry.  Wolf Fleece is a great store for fleece vests, shirts and more.  And they have some of the nicest lines of women's wear, shoes, handbags and jewelry.  Kelly's Gallery on Main is a fun gallery with tons of art and jewelry.  Kelly hangs my work and has lots of great things from bronze to oil paintings to pottery to paintings of feathers.

This week I will take art to Sandpoint, Idaho for their summer artwalk.  This is a long standing art show that hangs for a month in venues throughout the town.  Sandpoint is another wonderful place to visit in the northern "panhandle" of Idaho.  I was happy to have been accepted as one of the artists this year to participate.  My work will be at the Panhandle State Bank and Tango Cafe'...I am looking forward to seeing my friend Sheila who is a fellow artist who does amazing art quilts and lives in Sandpoint area. Look forward to also seeing Al and Sharon, friends who moves to Idaho a few years ago.

PastelNews.com is my favorite site to find out information on almost anything related to pastels.  Mario hosts that site from Croatia and it is a wealth of information for artists ans art lover.  He just included a collage of the Series of 100 in it and he did a great job of putting somewhere around 50 of the the images together!  Check it out.  And if  you haven't subscribed to that page on FaceBook, do.  It's great info.

In the next blog I will talk about competitions and shows.  And I am working on a couple of new pieces which might have images by then! 

On a final note I must say good bye to a venue that has treated me very well and has produced good sales.  Raphaels in Pendleton, OR is closing at the end of the month, sadly after 25 years.  Raphael's is a restaurant of excellent means and have used some of their walls as sales gallery for artists.  I was honored to be asked to hand work there.  Rob and Raphael are entering a new chapter of their lives and seeking out adventure in a different area.  There is a promise of returning in 3-5 years and re-opening one of the best restaurants.  In the meantime I am honored to have one of my mono prints hanging on their walls with some of the most important Native American artists like James Lavadour.  My best to Raphael and Rob and a huge thank you!
Happy painting...

The series of 100 is complete

The series come to a close with the completion of 100 small works.  So what did this prove?

• think outside the proverbial box
• one can maximize paper/pastel combinations
• the same composition repeated 100 times can be totally different in appearance
• color plays the important role of determining depth and temperature

I think the biggest thing for me was to persevere through 100 different paintings of the same composition and to create something different with each.  I experimented with a variety of papers, using different brands of pastels.  Some combinations worked better than others.  I only scratched the surface of these combinations of materials however.  There are so many great products to use in today's market.  I really only used materials that were readily available to me and stock on hand in my studio.  Because I worked in a very small format (basically 4x6 inches) I didn't employ some techniques that I might have on a larger scale.   

So what I have learned in color is how different the same colors of pastel appear on different papers; how some papers react to different fixatives in the process of applying color; how not to think about “shouldn’t” and “can’t” in the process, but instead step outside the box of conventional technique. Because I now have  come up with at least 100 variations; I got bold with color and combinations and as I tacked these on the wall, it turned into a huge mosaic of little paintings, each individual and unique, but also a broad body of work that allowed me concentrate on a significant project and yet not spend a large of amount of time on each study. It is a lesson of tenacity, of pushing the limits and keeping things interesting and it’s about satisfaction…knowing that you can push yourself confidently to achieve a desired goal.

So, many of these little paintings are in shows, some have sold.  They look great hanging in a grouping - they are similar, but so different.  The next question is what to do with the paintings not framed; I think they will get put in a  flat file inter leafed with glassine - for a time.

I encourage others to do this experiment in their chosen medium.  You will learn. I don't think  you have to do 100.  50 would be a good number.  It is a fun process and you will learn from it!

More pastel dust...

I can see the finish line from here!  With the completion of these paintings, the number is now at 95. 

I have varied my size of the images a little, using scraps of paper and form board.  The top two were done on Wallis and the snow, the dark and the autumn with black undertone were all done on black Canson paper.  The pastels were mostly Unison and Diane Townsend.  With the Canson paper I also used some Nu pastels after the softer Unison and D. Townsend ones.  I like to create texture with using the hard pastels in a burnishing manner in certain areas of the painting and then leaving some of the color of the paper coming thru to give a sense of a path or trail.  The DT pastels work well with the Canson paper, particularly the Terrage' ones because of their grit.  I've said this before, but worth repeating because it makes using the Canson paper easier and the results are interesting and easy to come up with.

The end of the month brings the Willow show to a close.  It was a good show and some things sold.  A fabulous artist, Katherine Treffinger from Cove, OR will be part of the mix of June-July artists at Willow and I encourage people to stop in and see the show. 

The middle of next week I go to Joseph, OR to the  Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts and take part in the plein air event, the quick draw and the  juried show.  It is a favorite show.  One hopes for great weather because of the plein air events, but it will be what it is and regardless of the weather, it will be a great time!

Tomorrow I am going to paint on some pastelbord.  I haven't painted on it before, but my friend Denise swears by it, so I am giving it a try...

I am planning by the end of the weekend to have finished the series of 100....that's my goal, anyway!  So in the meantime...happy painting!

Sheep markers...WHAT???

Sheep markers...what is THAT and WHAT do they have to do with painting???  Well...here is a little back ground and what has promoted this topic! When I lived in central Montana growing up, I remember an artist who lived in a near community, raised sheep, had lived in Paris and studied art, was married to a French woman he met in WWII, and was an author as well.  His art was abstract to impressionistic; certainly not the Charlie Russell/Frederic Remmington type of painting that was so popular among the western art lovers. 
I remember his work and thinking it was really interesting...that he was going out on a limb with his work and could only assume that he was painting for what he believed and loved.  Bill Stockton was a colorful figure - he was raised in Fergus County, MT but after WWII chose to go art schools in the midwest and Paris.  He exhibited nationally and his work is now part of the permanent collection at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings for one.  As an author he wrote a book, called "Today I Baled Some Hay to Feed the Sheep the Coyotes Eat."  I have not read it, but am on the quest to find a copy of it and read it.
One can google his name and read more details about Bill.  He lived in central Montana until his death in 2002.  A quote from Donna Forbes a former director of YAM sums up Mr. Stockton, " An outdoor man who loved his sheep, his gruffness belied a tender heart and exquisite sensitivity to the visual world. His sense of humor was apt to burst forth unexpectedly with a sharp bark of laughter at the silliness of life, particularly the "dudes" he would see traveling the western countryside looking for some authentic cowboys. Life was too hard for a small sheep rancher to tolerate phoniness of any kind."

A few years ago I did a solo show at the Lewistown Art Center and there were a few pieces of Bill's illustrations of lambs and ewes and some of his other sketches and paintings.  Some of the paintings were done with SHEEP MARKER!!  I had never known what "sheep marker" really was.  I had seen sheep with markings on them, identifying them in some form to their owner and it looked like a paint of some sort.  Occasionally you would see numbers drawn on horses and cattle at a livestock auction as well.  A few months ago, I came across some work in a gallery that was done by an artist and they were interesting, abstract renditions and  were accomplished with SHEEP MARKER!
I decided that I needed to give this medium a test drive and called the local farm/ranch supply store a call asking for sheep marker.  Nobody knew what I was talking about.  Well, I didn't either.  I wasn't even sure how this stuff was supplied (or how you applied it to cattle, sheep or canvas)!  So I put it on the back burner until last week when I was in eastern Montana.  There's a Murdock's Store there and they are an "everything" store from sporting goods to clothes, boots, hats, pet supplies, everything  you might need if you are a rancher from fencing supplies to branding irons to...When I got to the isle where the branding irons were I knew I would find sheep markers!  Well, they are called "Livestock Markers" and they are sticks of colored oil paint in very basic colors.  I don't think there is much in the line of quality control with color because there were several shades of green all with the same item number!  But here they were and less than $2 a stick and the sticks appeared to hold quite a bit of paint!  So, I bought several colors and brought them home.  On the stick it says to cut the tip off of the stick to expose the fresh paint...that's the instruction.  OK...so last night I got out a couple of smaller canvases, cut the tips off some of the paints, grabbed a knife and started putting some color to the canvas.  The above images are the results.  It was fun!  I put the stick directly on the canvas and used the knife and a piece of a plastic card as well to manuveur the paint.  I left them outside overnight and this morning they were dry.  Also of note...they are nontoxic.  Have no idea of their archival quality, but they are fun to work with and I think I might like to show some and put on the label of the painting:  "livestock marker on canvas"!!

More Dust...

With the completion of these images, I have reached 90 small works.  I intend to complete the 100 by the end of the month and I do think it will happen!  I had some fun playing with some really strong colors of oranges and yellows.  I also had a couple tiny frames that could use little paintings in them, so worked the really bright one in that horizontal format.  But the most fun was doing the twilight painting with some stars flickering in the sky.  How that one came about...I am sitting with my son and family in their living room in Miles City, MT and my spot faces a west window.  We were visiting and watching a movie about 930pm and I happen to look out the window at the last light of the day.  It was incredible!  The gradations of color in the sky could not be captured with a simple digital camera, but the image was imprinted on my brain.  At the horizon there was a pale greenish-yellow that gradually turned to a gray-blue and then almost a teal higher in the atmosphere.  A few stars twinkled and there was a sliver of a moon near the horizon.This little painting is close to what I saw, but the teal is not quite the same.  They call MT the "big sky country" and when you are out there in the plains, you can see forever and sometimes the night skies are really dramatic.  I always love to go out and look at the Milky Way when I go there because the intensity of it is so much greater than what I see in SE WA.  I am sure elevation plays a big part, but also the clearness of the air, I think.
All these little ones were done on the Wallis sanded paper and I used mostly the Diane Townsend pastels which are really brilliant. I like these pastels because of the grit in them and their ability to to be layered fairly easily. 
The next blog will take a detour from the series of 100 to a new experiment...watch for it!!!
happy painting...