Responding

"Just do the steps that you've been shown
          By Everyone you've ever known
                   Until the dance becomes your very own"

-Jackson Browne, "For a Dancer"


One thing I love about landscape painting, especially painting outdoors, is the idea of responding to the world around you.  There's something immediate, direct, and visceral about it.  Not slavishly copying what you observe but almost more of a compulsory and expressive response like a dancer to music.

I'm a bit of a wall flower, but sometimes I get up the courage to sway to the music a bit.  This painting was from yesterday after work.  16 x 20 done in Acryrlic.

Verdugo Hillside

"Always, at the back of your soul, there is something that says to you, "Mortal, drawn from eternal life for a short time, think how precious these moments are." 

- Eugene Delacroix


Today after work I went up in the hills and tired out a new watercolor block that I got.  It gives me a little more room to work (7 x 10) than I normally have when doing these sketches in my moleskin sketchbook.  I really like the hot pressed paper too, it's smooth but holds up to washes and scrubbing.

A Morning in the Hills

I was blessed with a day off of work this last friday so I decided to make the most of it.  I got up early and went to the hills with two canvases, a thermos of coffee and more than a few butterflies in my stomach.  I always get so nervous when I go out to paint but once I get started I always enjoy it.


"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" 

-Vincent van Gogh

Evening in the Hills

"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing." 

- Vincent van Gogh

Direct Study From Nature

I recently read a article about Hudson River School Painter Asher B. Durand on the blog of acclaimed illustrator James Gurney.  Gurney writes:

Durand wrote that direct study from nature was the ideal way for the artist to transcend the limitations of tired compositional formulas, providing “the only safeguard against the inroads of heretical conventionalism.”

He defined conventionalism as “the substitution of an easily expressed falsehood for a difficult truth.”

Though I've never been particularly moved by the work of the Hudson River School painters, Durand's devotion to painting from nature really resonates with me and I feel a certain connection to his artistic convictions.  

Above are a couple of recent paintings done in the field as part of my continued attempt to grapple with those oh-so-difficult to express truths.  Though I'm not necessarily posting them because I think they are successful, but because they document the struggle and the journey.

Here's a link to the article:  Asher B. Durand

Seeing

"Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision- it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so."

-Charles Hawthorne

Reflecting

What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?

...You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

-Annie Dillard

Finding Time

My wife and I welcomed our second child, Caroline, into the world on Thanksgiving.  So needless to say my time has been in much greater demand lately.  Still I've been trying to get some painting and sketching in when I can, which has meant utilizing my lunch breaks and time when the little ones are napping.  Here are some recent attempts.

From My Drawing Table

Here are a couple more paintings done around my home.  One is the view out the window next to my drawing table and the other is some of the cluttered mess on my drawing table itself.  The view is 20x24 done in acrylic and the mess is 12x16 done in oil.  

Still Life

Here's a little painting I did at home last night.  I had planned on going out to paint by the river, but I had to work later and was loosing daylight (the time change has made things a little tougher on my outdoor painting lately).  So, my plans thwarted, I came home and painted this still life instead.  I haven't done too many still lifes, I suppose I tend to over think them, but with this one I just painted what I saw on our kitchen table.  It's 11x14 acrylic on canvas.