Painting Wildflowers

July 10th

June

I've painted several paintings of the wildflowers over the last few weeks.

The first was when they were mostly Bachelor Buttons. Now the Bachelor Buttons are not very prominent - there are a lot of Black -eyed Susans. A few white and purple Coneflowers. Not as many Cosmos as usual - probably because it's been relatively cool. I left a lot of the daisy fleabane.

I haven't been painting the birdhouse - because it's not really about the birdhouse.

Great Smokey Mountain National Park

Update: I returned in May and painted 3 more paintings

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Photo of painting next to Juney-Whank Falls...

I had a great week of painting last week (April) in Tennessee at the GSMNP. I had not been down there in mid-April before and it was great to see the masses of Nodding Trilliums, Painted Trilliums, Yellow Trilliums (which I had not seen previously) as well as the other spring ephemerals, dogwoods, redbuds, and other flowering things.

The weather was fantastic. The day we arrived there was snow in the higher elevations of the park - 4000+. It made an interesting scene to see the greening of the lower parts of the hills going up to less green and then to snow.

I created 4 24"x30" over the course of the week. Of waterfalls, primarily. There is a dogwood in one and some rhodedendrons not blooming yet in others. I had been painting the waterfall in McCormick's Creek and it was great to have more falls/rushing water to paint.

Two paintings were "official falls" (the "Sinks" and "Cataract"), 2 others were from near "Roaring Forks" road. I was looking for "The Place of 1000 drips" - but didn't find it until later - and even then it seemed to be designated differently by different entities. I could paint there for months and have all different views.

I went around the Artist's loop road they have. There were a few nice things and a lot of stuff. One thing I noticed were prints of paintings about the size that I was painting for $1400 m/l.

Sycamore Land Trust Paint Out

I was painting today at the Sycamore Land Trust Paint Out "Art for all Seasons" at the The Touch the Earth Preserve.

It was a pretty nice place and a beautiful day. As it turned out it was rather a windy day as well.

This has been the longest lasting Spring that I can remember. It's mostly a matter of not getting hot. It seems that often - a normal Spring around here lasts a week at most. The leaves start to bud out and then it gets up to the 80's or so and that brings the leaves out. I always really liked the stage where the leaves are starting to come out and there are many shades of light greens and such. It's also the time of redbuds and dogwoods. It's been great to have this state of nature continue a little while.

Anyway - I went to the paint out. I didn't see anyone else out there painting. I did talk to the lady who lives across the street and saw her lady slippers and such. She showed me the pawpaws in bloom at the SLT property.

I settled on painting in the open field. In the morning I liked the view toward the cedars - which were practically in silhouette with the white-budded bushes (autumn olive?) in front and a few Springy looking trees scattered around in the background.

It went pretty well - I managed to catch the painting more than once as it nearly blew over in wind gusts.

After that one was done - it took about 3 hours - I decided to paint another one since I was out there. I was painting fairly small - 18x24". So I went back and took the opposite view - toward the hill. This time I got the easel anchored better - got through the whole painting - and then as I was trying to position it to take to the car - a wind gust blew it over on my head (fortunately I had a hat on). So I had to try to fix it. I ended up fixing it up a bit more after I got home.

Rising Sun / Cincinnati

I delivered a couple of spheres to an art show in Rising Sun last Friday. It was interesting to see the town - as I had heard about how there was an effort to make it an "art" town.

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The county has some nice rolling hills, streams and old farms. And then there is the river - the Ohio river. The waterfront has been landscaped into a place where people may want to hang out. There seemed to be more restaurants on the main street than there would have been without an effort to remake the town.

The main art thing seems to be the Pendleton Art Center. There is a large exhibit space on the ground floor and the rest of that floor plus the 2nd floor have been divided up into artist studio/galleries. Some artists use them as work spaces - but more of the spaces looked like mini galleries. Some of the art was not bad. I looked through pretty quickly.

At Rising Sun - artists can have their little galleries and there is a person who can sell their work for them Wednesday through Sunday. There is a casino there - and presumably there could be people stopping by as somewhere to go. There are a couple of other galleries and it looked like another art center type of place was in the works.

From there I went to the Newport Aquarium and painted Jellyfish for awhile. Newport also has an exhibit space for artists who have studio/galleries at the Pendleton Art Centers. There are also Pendleton Art Centers at Cincinnati and Ashland, KY. The Cincinnati and Ashland versions are only open to the public on the "Final Fridays" (Cincinnati) or "First Fridays" (Ashland and Rising Sun) and the following Saturday. And all sales go through the artist.

I went to the "Final Friday" event at Pendleton Art Center/Cincinnati after stopping by the Over-the-Rhine area. There are 8 floors there (and the elevator seemed out of order) and approximately 75 studio/galleries. A few of the people that have studio/gallery spaces are pretty inexperienced (I talked with one man who seemed to be self-taught) - but most are seasoned artists. Some pretty good. It was interesting to see the place.

I especially like the art of Barbara Ahlbrand

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and Paul Wolven who has some nice cityscapes of Cincinnati.

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One thing on my mind has been a comment by someone on an art blog that I had noticed last week - that was about putting down artists who are "pseudo-impressionists". I don't know exactly what she meant by that - but it's possible that she might include people like Paul Wolven and myself. There are a lot of people who like to do Plein Air painting - it's a good way to make experiential art - and I think it's superior to making art from photographs. I suppose that it could seem so nineteenth century to paint on site of actual scenes. But I like it for the experience and for the results.

Inside/Outisde (Winter)

I was going through some stuff and came across this that I wrote a couple of weeks or so ago:


Sitting in a heated room with fluorescent lights,
chairs of wood, tables of wood particles
covered in wood-grain plastic,
plastic covered floors,
cement walls,
fan blowing, people sitting
working...
thinking about sitting in a cold woods with sunlight,
bright snow, rocks,
water flowing,
plants growing among the dead leaves,
birds flying and singing,
fresh air,
working (painting)

Jellyfish in Newport, KY

A couple of weeks ago, I headed over to the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky, which is across from Cincinnati.

I had arranged and gotten permission to paint the jellyfish there on a Monday - when it would be relatively quiet. Being winter, it was a nice, warm place to paint some wildlife - and I particularly like jellyfish.

Besides looking interesting - I am intrigued by the fact that they are doing so well adapting to human activities. Most of the things ending up in the ocean are detrimental to fish and such, but jellyfish are thriving. They don’t mind it being warmer, being more acidic, having fertilizers thrown in. Plus people have eliminated much of their competition, while leaving them be.

So I packed up my paints like I always do, making sure I had a dropcloth, prepared panels, and all of the right colors that I would need. I spent the night in a cheap motel room (with hardly any heat!) so I could be there when they opened.

It was a good day. I created 3 smallish paintings. Plus I painted jellyfish on 2 larger panels that I finished the backgrounds on later after I brought them home.