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.