Aquarius Takes Out the Compost

I have been in a rut for a while, and this is the first painting I've done in more than a month, I think.  Things are busy, and I've been a bit directionless, or maybe too involved in the novels I'm reading?

I really like my parkland series (see summer posts), but they were more of a technical exercise than an expression of my whole creative mind. I think my true "style" has a bit more abstraction and symbolism in it. But what, how, and how much?  The more techniques and approaches I learn about, the harder it is to find my voice.  But I like the start I've made with the painting below.

This painting emerged from a sketch I did when I was relaxed and unpressured. In fact, I have a bunch of sketches of myself (essentially) that I might parlay into a new series.

Aquarius Takes Out the Compost:  11x14 watercolor, $100.

I like the scratchiness, the lines and swirly shapes, and the ethereal quality. I think I am inspired by fall!
I hope you like it, too.

Malakoff Diggins

OK, so this series has expanded way beyond Zion NP.  Maybe I should call it my American Parks series.  This scene is from Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Since Harry was one year old, we have spent a camping weekend here every September to celebrate his birthday.  The Diggins, depicted here, is a massive valley created by feverish hydraulic gold mining of the 1800s and early 1900s. Miners reduced a mountain to a ghostly canyon of white rock where now mineral pools glow with weird colors, where willows grow and bears forage among rusting mining equipment. See the high line of trees on the horizon? That was the ground level before the miners came. The park centers on the ghost town of North Bloomfield, where apple and pear trees grow wild and where the park rangers, a married couple, lead visitors in ice-cream churning and candle-dipping.

Malakoff Diggins.  11x14 watercolor. $500. 10% of the proceeds of this sale will be donated to the California State Parks Foundation!  Go to www.etsy.com/shop/joyfulmind to purchase.  Thank you to www.painttheparks.com for organizing artists and art lovers in defense of our natural places.

The really sad aspect of this image is that, after this Labor Day, neither our family nor yours will ever see this sight under the stewardship of the people of California. This is a protest painting.  Our short-sighted leaders have put this park on the chopping block, to save a few pennies. The price will be the death of this public resource. All over the state, the greatest idea and a defining characteristic of America is being sold out for short-term gain.  I guess it's ironic that our modern politicians are showing the same irreverence for the same land that the miners who created the Diggins showed. Maybe someday we'll have a State Historic Park there, enshrining our own foolishness.  I doubt it will be as beautiful.  Ooof, I really want to cry! 

I have spent this series doing pretty realistic (slightly impressionist) paintings of favorite places. The places carry the paintings. I am going to do a few more like this, and then slowly, like a swimmer who knows the water is cold, I am going to start getting funky again.  :)




BTW:

HEATHER OGSTON OWNS THE SOLE COPYRIGHT FOR ALL THE IMAGES ON THIS BLOG.

Among the Giants

This painting is loosely in the same series with the Zion ones, but you'll notice I've changed locations, harkening back to a family vacation we took near the giant redwoods of northern California.  I've deliberately used a rainbow of colors to evoke the textures and patterns of redwood bark, some of which is burned almost black. The little girl is, nominally, my niece Annabel. I am hoping her inclusion adds a sense of scale, as well as a feeling of wonder, to the painting.

Among the Giants.  11x14 watercolor.  $100.

High Refuge

This one is for Philip, my husband's brother.  Although he provided the reference photo, I have also passed this tree several times on the way up to the summit of Mount Lassen, a dormant northern California volcano in the Cascade Range and the namesake of one of our favorite National Parks.  The tree provides a rare spot of deep shade on the exposed, rocky slope of the mountain.  It's probably located at about 9,000 feet above sea level. The trail takes the hiker up 2,000 feet in 2 miles, ending on a treeless, windblown summit at 10,000 feet.

This tree was difficult to render in a painting, which is why I jumped at the challenge. The unusual form defies most mental Platonic forms of "Tree" and makes the image harder to read.  The deep shadows became shapes of their own against a pale background. On top of those considerations, the dominant "real" colors of this landscape are concrete gray and dark brown-green.  So, as a painter, I added my own emotional feeling for this place through the use of color, as well as by playing with the forms a little to create a working composition.  I like how the shade worked out.

I think I have returned to the technical roots of watercolor painting with this latest series (doing washes, starting with light values and adding darker values, etc.). While I love some of my recent, more abstract work, I felt pulled in different directions by different technical approaches and levels of abstraction and surrealism.  What I have kept from all my exploration are two jewels:  pattern and texture. I like to score and scratch and drybrush my paintings, and I like landscapes and other subjects with unusual and intriguing patterns of line, detail, and form. 

Please let me know how you perceive this latest series; I would enjoy your comments and critique.

From Bryce

Here's another painting inspired by our Southwest trip:  this tree was perched just so in Bryce Canyon National Park. I've always been enthralled by trees...such personality! Trees such as this are so tenacious and wise-seeming. 

Here's another vocabulary word for you:  krummholz.  It is the term describing the growth form of a windblown, stunted tree in difficult environs.  Love that krummholz!

Tenacious.  Watercolor 11x14.  $100.

Desert Under Sea

I just worked on this painting some more. It's the first time I've posted something to this blog without being sure it was done. That's a lesson for me to sit on my hands a little before I put something out there for everyone to see.  Anyway, I've left the version 1.0 up, so you can see the contrast between it and the "final" product.  Maybe I'll do more and post a 3.0!

BTW, this is a perfect opportunity to introduce one of my favorite words to the world:  "Bonnarding." The French painter Bonnard had the honor of seeing his art hung in the Louvre during his lifetime. But he wasn't satisfied, ultimately, that the painting was truly finished, regardless of the opinion of the Louvre's curator.  He arranged a distraction for the guards, and "finished" his painting surreptitiously as it hung on the wall in the gallery.  So the act of (over)working a painting when it's already done is called Bonnarding.  I do this all the time!

Version 1.0:

Version 2.0 (new!) is below. Note the warmer colors, deeper values, and addition of more detail.  Plus better photo resolution.

This is the fifth in my Zion series, titled "Desert Under Sea." It's more abstracted and close-up than the previous paintings in this series. It depicts two elements of the high desert particularly special to me:  sagebrush and fossils.  The fossil shell represented is one that Frederick found on a stone lining the Rim Trail of the Grand Canyon's south side.
11x14 watercolor. $100.

High Desert Eden

Here's my fourth in the Zion series.  I just finished this one today and am quite pleased with it.  This scene is from the Watchman Trail at Zion NP.

High Desert Eden.  11x14 watercolor.  Price unframed: $100.