Check out this little bastard! It was one of those paintings that painted itself. Some paintings seem to just flow like magic while others fight for it. My friend Ginny came over to paint with me yesterday and the painting just emerged. It is a 9x12 on a panel, the name is "Crescent Lake," the unframed price is $175. The subject is a beautiful glacial lake in Olympic National Park, captured one evening in October as the sun was setting. My friend Melissa and I were returning from the coast and I almost wrecked the minivan in the process of pulling over when I saw the light on the lake.

Among my other works in progress now I am hoping to work on a small series of miniatures about this size. I'm thinking birds and landscapes alternating for a small installation.

The murder continues--it is on the verge of being genius or being overworked, once again it is hard to tell. ("Murder in Progress," my previous post involving a painting of crows.) I will show and tell when it is finally done.

Happy Holidays!
Dawn

Murder in Progress

Bwahahahaha! Murder on the Sound! Ok, so I'm inordinately pleased with my blog title. (Wasn't "Murder in Progress" a Goya painting?)

Yes, I am in the process of painting a herd of crows which, technically, is referred to a murder. After the last piece ("Bird, Reborn") I felt the need to bring more birds into my recent landscape series. I superimposed various crows over the landscape image, working to create movement and direction in what is otherwise a very still piece.

This is a work in progress. As you can see from the detailed pictures the birds are still very rough. I particularly like the last image I posted here because they look like poorly formed pterodactyls painted by a two year old. Yay!

The refinement process involves me working on the birds with some detail then pushing the negative space into the birds to help shape the contours. It's the taffy pull of oil painting, that back and forth in the figure ground relationship.



(See what I mean about these birds? It takes a skilled and creative artist to call these little lumps of paint crows, but no fear. We are, in fact, on track with these buggers.)

Bird, Reborn

Here's a new technique for you. I wanted to work on a different underpainting technique in response to my new environment; basically I wanted to start with less chroma in the underpainting and keep adding subtle color layers as I built up. In other words completely different than my usual underpainting which starts out technicolor and gets toned down with each layer. The result is this quiet introspective piece. I am very pleased because the emotion and atmosphere are exactly what I was reaching for.

To add to the newness of the technique I used a new-to-me product by Holbein. It's one of their foundation colors, a fast drying line of color they make just for underpainting. This one is Foundation Greenish. Holy crap--this stuff was made to paint the light effects of Washington State. (And, presumably, those of Japan as that is where Holbein is produced...)

I did not take pictures of the process--sorry! I will try to do so next time I employ this technique: I was just so excited by the results I plowed right through.

Title of this piece is "Bird, Reborn." If you look closely you will see a little bird sitting on one of the poles; it was a total accident of paint that made it appear, or, spiritually speaking, the bird wanted to be in the painting so it appeared. In any case, it made the piece. The bird is a very powerful image for me right now; the fact that the bird is reappearing as a living entity is a very good thing for me to see and actualize.

18x24" on archival panel

PT Gallery

Here are some of my seascapes hanging at Port Townsend Gallery. It is always good to get the work out of the studio and into the public sphere; it changes the work when it is no longer exclusively mine. This works when I post things online as well, but it is interesting to see the work in different lighting.

I am currently working on an underpainting that is exciting but I don't want to jinx it so will wait to post! Heading out to the Pacific again today to get more inspiration and images.

Dawn

I love being a painter

I am so excited about this idea! Okay, so this is a diptych titled "We Begin to Remember." Usually when I use photo reference to create panoramic images, I take two pictures side by side, then use my artistic prowess to smooth out the edges where the two images will meet. In other words I fudge it so that it becomes one united piece for the painting. In this case, the waves were coming so fast that by the time my camera recovered so I could take the adjacent shot, things had changed drastically. Here's where the cool idea comes in: instead of smoothing it out so that it would look like one solid image when I went to the painting, I kept it separate. Look at the waves as they go from one panel to the other and you can see that they do not sync up exactly. To me it speaks about the power of the waves, and the element of time.

My work is all about fleeting moments. What is exciting about this piece is that a.) it is still about capturing a fleeting moment, and b.) totally speaks to how impossible it is. Caught in the web of time and all that jazz.

This piece is unified by the sky, but it is a chaotic piece. The image is from the trip to LaPush a couple weeks ago. In the next piece of this series I am going to completely change my method of underpainting so as to bring the chroma down a bit.

Exciting! Excited artist here!

Dawn

oh yeah, this piece is on archival cradled panels, each piece is 18x24 so total overall size 18 x 48

One day this past week I was working on the computer when the power went out; I decided to lay in an underpainting instead. I opened the blinds as far as they would go on a darkish rainy day. I laid in the entire underpainting; the power came back on, and I realized that I had the values down perfect but some of the most bizarre colors I have ever mixed. The biggest challenge in this piece was trying to get the colors toned down to neutral as I had the light where I wanted it. Finally succeeded! This is not the most flattering picture of this piece as I took it at night and was relying on artificial light.

The subject matter is from LaPush Washington. Record waves that day; there was an atavistic component to my emotions that I was wanted to capture with this artwork. LaPush is on a rough edge of the Pacific, a small town, the home of the Quileute Tribe. Typical little box houses you see on so many reservations; this little village huddled on the edge of nowhere. It is hard to imagine life in this small town during the storms of winter. The title is "We Begin To Remember." It is 36x60" in size on canvas.

My Landscape Has Changed

Hello--and greetings from the Pacific Northwest! I needed a change of scenery so this summer I decided to move to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. The water called me up here--as did the trees and the mountains.

Finally got the studio set up to work; here is a new piece titled "Breathing." When I walk along the seashore and listen to the waves, it is the sound of the world breathing. Where two worlds meet; very powerful place.

Breathe! Paint!

Dawn

Troubled Waters

Deconstruction of a painting... Beginning with the finished piece and working back through the process. Post-modernists should love this.

This is a very emotional piece for me. When I began it I was feeling fiercely jubilant and wanted to create a piece celebrating life and wonder. (I was listening to Beethoven's 6th at the time, that symphony usually has that effect on me!) Life events occurred in the meantime as I was working on the piece and let's just say I finished it listening to Mozart's Requiem. Basically the piece conveys an array of emotional upheaval in my life and, thus, is a bit confused. It is kind of subtle but what I like about the finished piece is that it has both sides. At first it feels like a happy little landscape, but if you look closer it is actually a little disturbing. There are not a lot of quiet moments in the piece.

The title is "Troubled Waters" and it is 30x40 on an archival panel.

Wax Job

I have had so much going on in the studio lately I have not been able to keep up with my computing! I'm posting a little encaustic work I did awhile ago to keep things moving until I can post more of my process-oriented articles. I have two new large-scale sepia toned pastels I am in the process of finishing right now, as well as a brand spanking new don't-brush-up-against it oil painting. Another large oil painting on the easel as well--like I said, lots to do, lots to do!

This little encaustic is about 9x12. Encaustic is one of the oldest media, combining pigment with beeswax. It is a fascinating mercurial pursuit, combining all of the elements in exciting and sometimes infuriating ways... (will talk more about studio accidents later... actually that could be its own blog.)

Now get off the computer and go draw something!

Dawn

Rocky Mountain PBS

So a couple weeks ago I got a call from our local PBS station. They have a feature called "Western Bounty" where they interview Colorado artists; apparently it runs several times during a month and I am their February artist. You can also view it online (if I did this correctly, anyway...) by following this link or by going to rmpbs.org and putting my name into the search engine on their site.

http://www.rmpbs.org/panorama/?entry=392

The image I was working on at the time is a big train hub here in Grand Junction. It was very difficult to work on while being filmed, even worse than painting for a demo because of the lights and the big freaking camera! Also, I work very quickly, layering the entire substrate rather frantically. At one point the camera man asked me if I could "just stay still for a minute." He was having difficulty focusing...

The Four Directions

This is a new work titled "The Four Directions," part of the traffic series I've been working on. I like the formal elements of this composition as well as the idea behind it, that we subconsciously pay homage to the Four Directions whenever we drive a city that is laid out on a grid.

The bigger studio news of the day was that PBS came out to conduct an interview and take footage of me working yesterday for a segment they'll run in February. I believe it will be on statewide for Rocky Mountain PBS here in Colorado but I don't know for sure yet. I will post the times when I know them, as well as a copy of the video itself I hope!

Other than that I am teaching at Mesa State College again; we started last week, as well as a few classes at St Mary's hospital (the Pastel Society of Colorado teaches classes there for people undergoing cancer treatments and their caregivers--always a terrific bunch of students,) and a watercolor class at the Art Center. I'm also conducting a workshop on pastels at the Art Center which is going great! All my classes have fun people; that helps.

Happy painting!
Dawn