Day 2 - Fleeting Glimpses & Memories

Last night While Pam and I were driving home late, I was looking at a scene that reminded me of one of my favorite places to paint. This particular spot has changed considerably over the last two years. A couple of winters ago, when we were inundated with one nor'easter after another, the barn collapsed under the weight of all the heavy snow. It's a pile of rubble now, but I couldn't help but think about how this place would look painted with last nights evening sky before all the calamity. A few sketches later along with some rummaging through of old photo references, I came up with today's studio painting.

It's pretty much an invented idea. While looking the sky last night, I was aware of how the stars sparkled and the sky glowed. The landscape by comparison seemed desolate and muted. I went with that and created this painting called 'March Evening'.

'March Evening' 9x12

Day 3 - Fleeting Glimpses & Memories

Today's painting, 'Winter Twilight' is of a place I go by all the time and I've painted it plein air a few times over the years. My first time painting it was with my dear friend and fellow painter, Charlie Parsons who passed away a few years ago. I am the kind of plein air painter who can sometimes drive by a perfectly good painting spot a whole bunch of times without stopping to paint. I think that I paint some of these locations in my mind for years before I finally get around to actually stopping and setting up my easel. Charlie was the kind of guy who wanted to stop everywhere and anywhere to paint and on this particular day he mentioned this location and we just drove there and got the job done. Charlie would drive up from Marion MA to Woodstock on a whim sometimes to paint and stay at his little fishing cabin in Eastford. He grew up in Woodstock and he had a real connection to the place and seemed to know just about everybody. I always enjoyed his company, although family obligations and workshop travels kept me from getting out there to paint with him as much as I would have liked.

When Pam and I drive home from the studio we usually don't pass this spot because I take shortcuts to make the drive shorter. This time I drove the main road and drove right by this, as the view heading home is not the 'painting' view. As we went by, I thought about about Charlie and I happened to glance in my mirror and caught a sliver of the early night sky. My heart stopped for a second and I turned around to have a better look and to jot down some notes.

The studio painting the next morning started out very disjointed and I almost scraped it. Then something clicked and I realized the landscape and sky were not in agreement with each other. In the next five minutes the painting just came together and it felt really good. 

Here is the painting. I hope you like it. More tomorrow! 

'Winter Twilight' 9x12

Fleeting Glimpses & Memories

I'm excited to start the 'Fleeting Glimpses & Memories' project! This is an adventure that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time. The idea of this project is to paint one 9 x12 each day for 30 days, of something that I've seen on my commute to or from my painting studio. I'm always traveling to the studio early in the morning and coming back around the time the sun is setting or after. I always see exciting things that I wish I could paint. They are fleeting moments and trying to paint them on location isn't really practical.
Night painting for me seems to affect my eyes. It's hard to judge color and the values are hard to control. I like the idea of working to recreate something in the studio from something that caught my eye for a moment in time. These paintings will be an exploration and there will be some inventing going on. I see it as a way to grow. I see it this way. If an artist works plein air, his skills as a plein air painter will grow. The same thing holds true for memory work. We get better at things we practice at! I'm even allowing you to watch me fumble and hopefully do some cool things with the landscapes that I will be painitng.

I really want to develop my ability to paint from memory, so this is the perfect way to do that. Using some rapid sketches to think about big shapes, some notes that I jot down about color and a reference photo to aid in the compositional plan, I will then dive into recreating what I saw and felt about the subject.

I'm fascinated about painting at twilight, the early or late evening, or even in moonlight. Sunrise is also high on my list of special times to connect with the landscape. More times than not, when it comes to sunrise paintings, I find myself standing in awe of what God can do with a morning and I spend more time looking than I do actually painting the view, but maybe this project will break that.

I know that I plan to take a hard look at intersections at night with traffic lights at some point during these 30 days as I am completely flabbergasted with the way the red, yellow and green changes in a traffic light influence the colors around it. There are many other thoughts going around in my mind and I am just going to take it one day at a time and see what inspires me as I go.

The paintings will all be 9x12's and sold unframed for $400 dollars. The paintings will be shipped at the end of the thirty day painting event. There is a $ 25.00 fee to cover shipping and handling. The paintings can be seen here; on FaceBook and also in Daily Paintworks, where they can be purchased.  

Click on the Daily Paintworks widget on my sidebar to be taken to the site.

It's my sincere hope that someone will be inspired by this project enough to want to attempt their hand at it and also that my paintings will touch someone enough, that they want to own it.

TODAY I painted a sunset (from the previous evening) of a stand of trees and a field in snow. It was exciting to try to reconnect with the scene in my mind and to just let the painting do its thing. In this one, I was intrigued by the combinations of muted yellow and yellow oranges against the gray purple snow

 More tomorrow!

'Last Light'  9x12