Here’s the newest painting, a little road that takes one down to the edge of the river, another scene that could be almost anywhere. Most of us have memories of places like this, of hearing the buzz of the insects in the woods, of kicking up little clouds of dust, of anticipating how cold the water was going to be when we stuck our toes in it.
16×20, gouache on cold press Crescent board
When I changed WordPress templates a while back, I lost my blogroll. I’ve finally gotten around to just creating a “Links” page so I can highlight a few people who are special to me. It’s at the bottom of the “Pages” section on the right.
Sometimes they just don’t go well. If I had a bigger ego, I probably wouldn’t post this, but hey, it’s supposed to also be educational, right? I have yet to paint a good gnarled, twisted old tree. This was sort of an opportunity, although it’s not one of those really cool twisted trees, just a little wobbly in places with a couple of dead branches. I wanted it to be sort of mixture of Corot and 19th century Russian landscape. The colors were headed in the right direction, I think, and the brushwork was starting to come alive. But the longer I work on it, the less I like it. I think it’s the composition. This is actually a tree/fence line along a dusty back road that leads to the park I’ve painted at in the past. But I don’t like it.
So… even though it’s only partly done, it does have some interesting color and some cool, very wet-into-wet, almost watercolor-ish spots, so I’m going to post it to feed the blog. It really did seem like a good idea at the time. It’s 16×20, gouache on cold press Crescent board.
While I enjoy experimenting with subject matter, as with the recent street scenes, I find myself returning to the subject matter I really love… simple, peaceful landscape scenes. I wanted to do something a bit larger than my norm, and I found an 18×22 frame stored in the closet. (Funny how we arrive at decisions sometimes.) So why not? I’m finding that I really do enjoy working a bit bigger these days. I found the photos I took nearly three years ago of a creek near my home. It was fortunate that I took the reference photos when I did, because this entire area has been changed drastically. In the open field you see in the painting there are now streets, a scattering of upscale homes and a lot of empty, unsold lots. As always, there are still a few touchups and tweaks to be done, but here it is.
18×22 ~ Gouache on cold press Crescent board
I’ve been experimenting a little with a palette knife. Here’s another street scene that’s a combination of knife and brush. I’ve included a detail that shows some fun texture and color from the knife.
5×7, gouache on cold press Crescent board
And the blowup/detail:
Every painting has become an experiment, a laboratory for exploring color mixtures, brushwork, light. I’ve been studying the reference photo for this for quite some time, agonizing over how I was going to paint it. Finally, the other day, I just attacked it. There’s some touching up to do, but here’s where I ended up when I finally put down the brushes.
11×14, gouache on cold press Crescent board
Today is my 66th birthday, and for some reason, I find myself reflecting on why I continue to work so hard at being an artist. Certainly, I need and want to sell my work, because the income is important, but that isn’t the driving force. Fame? If that was it, I’d be working harder at self-promotion, instead of pulling back from certain activities that consume more of my time than I like.
There is a clue in something my wife said recently… that I simply have to be doing something creative, something artistic… all the time. She said it matter-of-factly, not begrudgingly. This is the woman who, twenty years ago, encouraged me to bring a drawing pad and pencils with me when I came to sit on her couch and watch TV with her. This is the woman who, after a meal, would say “Go draw.”, while she started cleaning up the kitchen. The one whose first Christmas present to me was my now cherished limited edition copy of Robert “Shoofly” Shufelt’s “1000 Mile Checkup”. The one who sacrificed so much during the failed Ruidoso years. Trust me… she knows what she’s talking about. Today, in between writing this article, setting up some digital displays of photos of grandkids, and trying to figure out what the current painting in progress needs, I will probably step up for five minutes to the keyboard sitting against one wall of the studio, and play a quick but soulful improvisation of “Summertime”. The itch has to be scratched.
I retired from my regular job a year ago. But “retired” is the last way I would describe myself. A few years ago, Nell said I didn’t have any “toys”, and agreed to the purchase of a digital keyboard that I salivated over at a music store. I spent hours at that keyboard on weekends, eventually producing a somewhat amateurish CD of several songs. There was never any thought of becoming a real musician. I did it because I loved the doing of it. Years before that, I wrote three novels. Never got to the hard editing part. Never attempted to get them published. I know now that it was just simply the doing of it that was so important to me.
Maybe it’s “the doing of it” that makes me work so hard today at painting. And the sharing of it. We did 11 art festivals in 2009. We sold 26 of my little landscape paintings. My prices are low, so we’re not talking about a lot of money here. But the fact that total strangers like my work enough to pay for it, regardless of the amount, brings a great sense of accomplishment. And yet… why do I feel that need to “accomplish something” at this age?
While I did a few paintings nearly twenty years ago, most of my work consisted of drawings. I mark my “official” start toward becoming a painter at three years ago. Once I started truly focusing on painting, everything else took a back seat. One of Nell’s sisters, after hearing one of my simple music CDs, said “if Ralph would focus on just one thing, he could really become good at it”. I have since accused her of being responsible for my current obsession with painting. When I started painting, I was 63, and as I looked around I realized that if I was going to become good at it, I needed to go into overdrive. Over a two year period, while working 40 to 60 hours a week at a regular job, I put in an additional 20, 30, sometimes 40 hours a week with a brush in my hand.
I have nothing to prove to anyone. I put in my years at the grindstone, and earned the right to relax a bit. I could spend my days puttering around the house, watching the History Channel, and helping Nell by keeping the cleanest house in the neighborhood. But I suspect that if that were to start happening, she would start to worry about me. Today, I live, breathe, eat, sleep and dream art. Nell would say that’s nothing new… that I have been that way for as long as she has known me.
So, maybe it’s just who I am and who I will be until I start drooling and eating the paint. I say that only partly in humor. My mother died of Alzheimer’s disease. She was in her 90’s. I live in fear that I inherited the gene, so I find myself racing the calendar. My hope is that I can stay ahead of it at least into my nineties. Maybe by then, I will have become a good enough painter.
So… I have to paint. It’s an itch that needs constant scratching. Oh yeah… I also need to start setting up the 2010 art festival schedule… and get some of those little street scenes framed… and find a cargo trailer… and work on figures more… and do a couple of winter paintings… and another river scene… crap, it’s almost noon and this article is all I’ve accomplished so far today…
I’ve spent so much time painting city streets lately, I decided I’d better paint some trees just to keep my hand in. This is a little road that runs beside a waterway in Ohio. It’s gouache, 11×14.
The street scenes have been an interesting exercise and a challenge for me, and using Italy as the location has made it even more fun. Here are two more, done last week, and tweaked a little over the weekend. Are they finished? I’ve decided they’re never finished; we just finally decide to sign them and stick them in a frame at some point. One could continue to pick and tweak and add or change, but eventually, it’s just time to stop. So, here they are…
Street Shadows ~ 8×10 gouache on cold press Crescent board:
Tourist Season ~ 11×14 gouache on cold press Crescent board
Everything seems to be an experiment right now. This was an exercise incorporating some limited use of a palette knife. It made for some interesting effects on the building and the front wall. I found that even a small amount of knife application seemed to keep my brushwork loose as well.
This is 8×10, gouache on cold press Crescent board
