Another painting completed in the Gartan Mother's Lullaby!  (I think.)  This one backtracks to a previous line that I'd postponed painting:

"Alean-ban-o, my child, my joy, my love and heart's desire...
the cricket sings its lullaby beside the dying fire."

I like the slightly Byzantine halo effect around the mother and child.

"My Child My Joy." 11x14 watercolor. NFS.

Sweet Bells

I've returned to my Gartan Mother's Lullaby project,  illustrating each line of the 110-year-old Irish tune.  When I started, I imagined making only 6 or 7 paintings, to go with two stanzas. Putting these together in a mock-up book, I realized it was too little.  I turned to the last stanza of the song, which, for me, is out of character with the first part, having a more Christian cast, rather than a mystical pagan feel.  The last stanza is:

"Faintly sweet doth the chapel bell ring o'er the valley dim,
Tearmann's peasant voices swell, in fragrant evening hymn.
A leanbhan-o, the low bell rings my little lamb to rest
And angel-dreams, till morning sings its music in your breast."

See what I mean? The first part of the song refers to Irish fairies and the Green Man, and this part is about chapels, hymns, and angels.  But it is all written by one person as one song. I decided to attempt a set of paintings for this last part, and unify it with the first two stanzas through the art.  The fairies and the angels co-exist.  How modern of me.

Anyway, here's the painting for the first line. Find the fairies!

Sweet Bells.  11x14 watercolor.  NFS.

A Family

This is the first time I've painted flowers since I was a kid.  I just don't have much to say about flowers that hasn't been said already, that isn't said by a million contemporary fine artists in very skillful ways.

So, that being said, I painted flowers today.  I decided to make a painting as a gift for a very good friend who is going through a hard time. My feelings of grief for her were not supportive, so I decided to channel my love and sorrow into a beautiful painting that she could take strength and peace from.

The composition and subject are simple.  The colors are mostly complements and the neutral colors between them. But hey, the easiest formulas for pleasing art tend to produce...pleasing art.  Hope you like it.

A Family.  11x14" watercolor. NFS.

Mono Lake Magic

Here is #4 of my dragon series.  This dragon is a lot more subtle than the last, and its presence is like a signature on the painting, a way to possess this landscape artistically.

Mono Lake Magic. 16x22 watercolor. SOLD.

I find that my process differs from that of most watercolorists. It might even be hard to identify my paintings as watercolors sometimes.  I can read and learn about color theory and color application, but instead of planning how my colors will work and putting down clear, glowing layers of pure pigment, I tend to put down many many layers, and scrub them off, and try again.  I can't get it right the first time, but fortunately I have some instinct that tells me when it's wrong, and to keep working on it. So my watercolor paintings are textured, worked, sometimes dense, sometimes opaque.  That's me.

Forest Treasure

This is #3 in my dragon series. The idea behind the dragon series is to embody, through the fantastical figure of dragons, the mystery, ferocity, and wisdom of nature, and the personality of special places.  I have just begun a fourth painting, set at Mono Lake.

Forest Treasure. 16x22" watercolor.

My last dragon, in Mountain Morning, was a huge dragon occupying a whole canyon. (I am happy to report that Mountain Morning has been sold---thanks Ellen!). This dragon is minute, embracing a sugar pine cone and defending it with affection.  If you have ever collected a beautiful rock, feather, mushroom, or pine cone, perhaps you can relate.

6-24-12 Update: Good news! This piece will be auctioned on TV or online, in September, for our local public television station, KVIE. It is no longer up for sale.

In Defense of Parks

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. SOLD.

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.

Mountain Morning

Continuing the dragon series, this is called "Mountain Morning."  I worked on this a little about a month ago, and I loved the shadows and lines so much that I got painter's block! I had to leave it propped up for weeks, just looking at it, before I knew what to do next. Even then it was baby steps, and a lot of looking.  If I look long enough often enough, a painting will tell me where its flaws are.

  Mountain Morning.  16x22". Watercolor. $250. SOLD.

I also developed a new technique for myself: I take a photo of the work-in-progress, and then print a few copies of it on my black-and-white printer. I can see the values better in B&W.  Then I can play with the printouts using a pencil, and see where to add darker values or pick out a light value.  Fun.