I've arrived in Asheville

I'm here to take a painting workshop from two painters who I really admire; Ken Bachkhaus and John Budicin. This is a gift I've given to myself following the work I've done for my last show and some large commissions. I was on the waiting list and there was a cancellation so I found out rather late I could get in.  I have a ton of work to do to get ready for my new studio opening, but I decided to go for it any way. I haven't taken a workshop in a while, but as an artist there is always much to learn. I never want to get to a point where I think I know all there is to know. As long as I can stay filled with wonder and curiosity I know I am in a good place. I have held a short list of artists in mind whose workshops I feel would be of benefit to me. But as a working artist, it is hard to find the time to travel all over the place to take classes. The opportunity presented itself with TWO artists I admire, and I couldn't pass it up.

My drive into Asheville was stunning. If this isn't the peak week of autumn here it has to be pretty darn close. The mountains were dressed in a kaleidescope of fall colors. Weather has been spotty so there were some large storm clouds clearing away in the sky as the sun set over the mountains. I drove due west straight into the most spectacular sun and cloud displays I think I have ever seen. I wished I hadn't been driving so I could have at least snapped some pictures! As it was I had no idea where I was going so I had to pay attention to the road and catch glimpses as well as I could. Any way it made me feel excited to be here.

We are in for a chilly week. I have a low threshold for the cold so it should be interesting, as this is a plein air excursion. The forecast is pretty "iffy" so far, but it looks like we will get at least two or three days with some sun. Tomorrow is supposed to be windy as well. I'm game though. I intend to learn some things and I have no doubt I will. I hope to post my work on the blog (the good, the bad and the ugly) as I develop it while I'm here. 

Painting in the mountains for a few

I'm heading out tomorrow to do some plein air paintings in the mountains of North Carolina. I hope I will be able to catch the autumn leaves at their peak! I'm bringing my computer so, barring any technical difficulties I plan to continue blogging while I'm gone.

Art Books

I have begun to compile a list of Art Books that I have enjoyed or gotten a lot out of. I went to art school, but landscape painting was NOT the focus there. So after I started painting landscapes I went about furthering my own education, primarily through art books and experimentation. I also took a workshop here and there as I got more involved, but books have always been an important componenet in my art studio. Follow this link to see my art library. I only just begun, but will be adding more to this as time allows. Tags: art painting landscape painting art books plein air 

Mixing Greens

I live in Virginia, and one of the most beautiful things about this area in the milder months is the vast arrays of greens.  As a landscape painter this is also one of the most challenging aspects about painting in this area! In my opinion it is a good idea to try and mix your own greens as much as possible. It is easy to spot a painting that uses a lot of out-of-the-tube greens. It's not that tube greens are bad (and I definitely carry at least one when I paint en plein air because of the need for speed.) But painters can become over-reliant on them to the point where the same green is used for everything (trees, grass, shrubs, etc.) and the painting lacks nuance or variation.

The possibilities for mixing greens are seemingly endless. Here are some of the combinations (for oil painting) that I use often:

• Warm blue (like pthalo)+ cool yellow (lemon) gives you a strong, kelly green
• Cool blue (ultramarine) + warm yellow (cad. yellow) yields a duller, muted green
• Cobalt blue is a true blue, and will yield a little cleaner green than ultramarine because ultramarine blue has red in it.
• Experiment mixing warms and cools and you'll get greens that fall in the middle of these two extremes!
• A good replacement for Sap Green: try mixing Prussian Blue or Pthalo Blue with Indian yellow. This will give you a similar dark, transparent green.
• Lightening your greens can get a little tricky. Add too much white and your greens appear chalky. White also cools your colors considerably. Add too much yellow and your greens get brighter and warmer, which may not be what you're going for. The key is balance and a lot of experimentation (a.k.a trial and error!)
• For distant greens, like at the horizon line of a distant field, try mixing white with a touch of blue and orange, and blending that into your greens as the field recedes.
• Alternately, you could gray your greens down ever so slightly with a touch of a complimentary color like Alizarin crimson plus white.

Mixing greens is definitely a practiced skill, so my best advice if you are a landscape painter is to practice! It helps to create your own color charts with all of the various combinations of greens that you can mix, labled with the paints used to achieve each mixture. Within this chart, also try and mix a value scale, to see what the green mixture would look like lighter or darker.

Here's an idea if you want even more of a challenge: Try limiting your palette to Permanent Alizarin, Ultramarine or Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow Light, and Titanium White, and see if you can execute the whole painting with just those colors. When you've practiced this for a while, add Phtalo or Windsor green to your palette. This is what Kevin Macpherson suggests in his excellent book Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color.

Do you have a favorite green color mixture for your landscape paintings? Share your ideas by leaving a comment!

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist Virginia landscape paintings plein air 

Check out my Squidoo Lens

A few weeks ago I was e-chatting with plein air painter Jan Blencowe and she mentioned that she was becoming addicted to Squidoo lenses. Addicted to huh? Never heard of it. Then after that conversation I seemed to hear about these lenses every other day. Must be a sign!  What is a lens? According to Squidoo,

"A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and thousands of products from hundreds of other trusted merchants. You can pick whatever content you want to put in your lens to bring context to your topic. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. It's a place to start, not finish."

So I decided to investigate further and play. My first Squidoo lens about landscape painting is now online.  I am still thinking about more things I can include in the lens, but it is essentially up and running. Check out my Squidoo Lense here! 

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air  

Zinnias

I went back to the Tuckahoe Plantation yesterday to paint the zinnia garden. They've got these wonderful rows of zinnias planted in the same spot every year, and I was happy to see that they were keeping up the tradition when I was there the other day.  I'm getting hooked on the square format canvas, but I'll have to stop soon because I'm running out of square frames! This is another 12x12". People wanted to chat yesterday so I still have to finish the crepe myrtles and add a few more touches elsewhere. I had to wrap it up though, as the sun was getting too high and hot towards the end and I was losing all of my lovely shade:

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Plein air in the garden

Yesterday I went out to the Tuckahoe Plantation here in Richmond for some morning plein air painting. Once one of the boyhood homes of Thomas Jefferson, the plantation is now a private residence. Visitors can visit the gardens for a small fee. While the grounds aren't large, they provide hundreds of  possibilities for paintings. 

 It was a fun morning. The only glitch was that once I got going I saw that I had exactly three paper towels! I use paper towels to constantly wipe my brushes off and keep my strokes full of clean color. Having only 3 tissues was....interesting. I think by the end of the session I had more paint on me than on the canvas!

Here is my painting as it appears after my morning plein air session, with no revisions. I will call it "Summer Roses". It measures 12x12", oil on canvas. I will probably go in with a touch or two here and there, but I like the freshness of this little piece, so I won't want to change it too much.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Toning a canvas

I've mentioned in previous posts that I sometimes work with toned canvas. I especially like a toned canvas when painting en plein air, as the bright light of the sun can make a bright white canvas hard on the eyes. I've worked with both a neutral gray toned panel and a tan toned panel. Since I am more attracted to warm colors, the golden tan tone appeals to me a little more. From what I've read the Impressionist Claude Monet also liked working with what he called a "blonde" canvas.  It gives a nice under layer to both skies and ground alike.

I like to tone my canvas in advance so that the toning doesn't muddy up my paint layers when I start painting. To do this I will use a raw sienna oil paint and apply it very thinly to the canvas by "scrubbing" it in with an old brush. With this method, a little goes a long way, because I want to keep the raw sienna transparent. I don't apply it in an opaque layer as that would make the canvas too dark and the canvas would likely not dry to the touch overnight. 

Alternately if I am too impatient to do the scrub in method, I will do a wash of raw sienna thinned with solvent.  You can really play around with the wash and add a dab of white to the mix if you find the raw sienna to be too dark. It is really personal preference. The point is to keep it thin so that it can dry overnight and be ready for painting the next day.

I've also painted on canvas toned on the spot when I haven't had the foresight to tone them the night before. But again, it can muddy your colors unless you apply the paint strokes a little more thickly and leave them be once you've laid them down.

Plein air tip: If you've done any plein air painting you will probably have noticed that you have to clean your palette more often so that you have space to mix your paint. As a result, you can have scrapings that turn to mud due to all of your color mixtures combined with white. Before you wipe off that ugly mud, think twice! Save your mud in a mud pile on the side of your palette and you can use it to tone your canvases later. 

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air 

Landscape Values- Part III

Here are some things to consider when working with values in a landscape. Sometimes when observing the play of light it can be hard to decipher subtle value differences. These are  not hard and fast rules, but hints that may be helpful in creating the illusion of light and shadow. First, I'll start with a simple illustration:

1. The sky is the source of light, so it is usually the lightest area of the painting.
2. The flat plane of the ground is usually the 2^nd lightest value in the landscape, because it is the earth element most exposed to the light source (except when in cast shadows.)
3. Slanting planes (like the slopes of mountains) are typically the 3^rd lightest value. They still get a lot of light, but they are more upright than the flat earth planes.  Mountain values can have undulating cast shadows as well. They are still fairly light in value however. They are also cool in color temperature, due to normally viewing them from greater distances.
4. Cast shadows on a flat earth plane will be the 4^th lightest value. Shadows generally appear cooler and lower in value than lighted areas, but be wary of painting shadows too darkly (a common problem when painting from photographs.) Cast shadows in nature will still have light and color in them because in most cases they are reflecting the light from the sky.  Also note: Overcast days when the light is generally cooler and more diffused tend to have shadows that appear warmer and more diffused. Sunny days when the light is warmer tend to have shadows that appear cooler.
5. Upright structures, such as tree trunks and certain trees like cypresses will generally show some of the darkest values because there is less surface area for the light to hit. Be aware though that most trees will still have some slanting planes in the foliage on the side where the sun shines. There may also be darker values than the upright ones occurring on the undersides of your trees and bushes. 
6. Values can get tricky once you start working with color, so it can sometimes help to squint your eyes in order to check your values. Making quick thumbnail value drawings is extremely helpful as well, as a preliminary to your painting. These “hints� are especially helpful when working from photographs. Note that there are always exceptions (like rising and setting suns), so use your observing eye! Nature often has her own ideas. When working from Nature, be open to exceptions, but also be prepared to use your “hints� if you find it helps you to make a more convincing painting!  

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Italy travel

Landscape Values- Part II

If I want to take it a step further than the small sketch, I can lay out a value sketch on my canvas, using a mix of alizarin crimson/ultramarine blue thinned with paint thinner. This is done very thinly. I use a rag to rub off most of the paint and just give me my drawing with the values as a stain to the canvas. Alternately you could use burnt sienna for the value sketch, but I don't typically use a lot of earth tones on my palette.  Here's the canvas value sketch I've done as the first stage of my painting:

I won't always do this detailed a drawing to begin, but since this scene is more complicated than my straight landscapes I thought it might be a good idea. When painting en plein air, it is a good idea to sketch out your composition and suggest some values perhaps, but the light changes so quickly that I wouldn't do this much detail at the beginning stage unless I could return to the same spot at the same time of day on subsequent days.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Italy travel

Landscape Values

My mom was here visiting with me recently and I asked her about a watercolor class she had signed up for not long ago. "It wasn't so hot," she said. "We didn't learn much of anything. The teacher just kept saying 'remember your values'. We didn't know what we were doing, and we didn't know what 'values' she was talking about!"  

I had to laugh. Family values? Stock values maybe? I guess it's understandable that someone who has been involved in art and painting for a while would assume that everyone knows what "values" are in painting. But not everyone has that clear understanding, so I thought I'd write some of what I know about values here and in a subsequent post or two. (Mom, if you're reading, take notes. Pop quiz later!)

Values in painting are essentially the range of lights and darks in a composition. Seeing values in black and white is somewhat easier than seeing values in color, so a lot of times it is beneficial to create a value sketch of your subject first if you are having trouble discerning how light or dark something should be.

The trouble with values in color is that you now have color temperature thrown into the mix and judging values can be somewhat more confusing, especially when painting en plein air.  What's lighter, the sky or the ground? The rooftops or the side of that bright yellow building?  Understanding a little bit about how the light plays across a landscape can help to create a more convincing scene. 

That is why creating value studies before you jump into painting can be very helpful. Here is a very quick value study I did of a Lake Como scene I am getting ready to paint. I don't always do this, but for more complicated scenes it can be helpful:

This little study will help me to internalize my lights and darks so that I can "remember my values" when I start my work with color.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Italy travel

Bellagio Trip Report, cont'd

One of the nicest things about our room was that it looked out over an old fishing village called Pescallo. From where we sat we could see the rooftops and the fishing boats sitting on the glassy water. It was a beautiful scene from above, so I imagined that it would even be more beautiful up close! The day after our arrival we followed a very long narrow, sloped stairway (a little street- Bellagio style) that led to the village of Pescallo.

It is my understanding that at one time Pescallo was the location where they held an open air fish market. Today it is a quaint, sleepy little lakeside town. We went down there several times to sketch and just contemplate the beauty and peacefulness of the place. This pen and ink/watercolor sketch is a 6x8" image on 7x9" watercolor paper:

On two different occasions I was fortunate enough to meet a couple of the elderly villagers who were living out their golden years in Pescallo. They were so gracious and kind- and patient! They urged me to speak in my broken Italian and just smiled as I undoubtedly butchered their beautiful language.

To see my oil paintings of Lake Como and other places in Italy, visit my website here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Italy travel

Bellagio Trip Report

What a magnificent trip! Arrived home a couple of days ago, but the jet lag hit me a bit harder this time. Still not feeling entirely "on my game", but it was worth the spent energy to be sure! I thought I'd share some of my wonderful experiences about our trip here on the blog, since for me, travel is such a huge part of what inspires me as a painter.

We based ourselves in the village of Bellagio, which is a beautifully situated hillside lake town that looks out over the three arms of Lake Como. If you look at the lake from an ariel viewpoint, it's shape forms an inverted "Y". Bellagio sits right in the middle of that Y, and it is truly the jewel of the lake.

The only difficulty with staying in Bellagio, for us, was getting there without a car. Even with the super-efficient public transportation systems in Italy, there is no direct route to this town. If one has a car (and arguably a lot of nerve), one can drive along the very winding roads and into the village of Bellagio itself. But we opted to be without a car for this trip, since the ferry systems, once there, are excellent. Also the streets in the village are tiny; in some places barely fitting one car, side mirror to side mirror!

So our route was to fly into Malpensa airport (outside of Milan) and then to take the Malpensa express train, change in Saronno (the town famous only because they make the Saronno amaretto cookies) and then arrive in Como. From Como we then took the "rapido" ferry to Bellagio. Even with all of that we still ended up arriving in Bellagio fairly early- around 12:30 local time.

Our hotel pick was Hotel Belvedere, which is situated on a hill at the top of the village. I was initially worried about it being too high up and too far out of reach from the center, but Bellagio is so small that there was no reason for such worries. My only word of caution for those of you who do not pack light, is that Bellagio is a hill town and some of it's "streets" are actually long flights of stairs. In order to get to the hotel from the pier where you are delivered by ferry, you have to either get a cab or lug your luggage up these steep streets.

We opted for the lugging, as we only had two carry on bags and purse and backpack. This way of packing is new to me, and frankly it was a miracle compared to how I have traveled before. But with a week-long trip, it was totally do-able, and I was incredibly grateful on the train, ferry, and stairs!

We were rewarded for our climb with a lovely hotel and a room with a marvelous view and balcony. We both really loved having the balcony. I would get dressed in the morning and go out and sketch and paint, and then Dave would have his time to perform his morning routine before going down for breakfast.

...No, we weren't drinking wine before breakfast! This photo was taken in the early evening before dinner, which was actually the best time to paint because I was completely in the shade. There were a few interesting views from our balcony. This little watercolor sketch is a view looking out to the left side of our balcony, over a marvelous terraced landscape. It is small- 6x8", pen & ink/ watercolor:

To see my oil paintings of Lake Como and other places in Italy, visit my website here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Italy travel

Leaving for Lake Como Today

Today is the day! We will be heading out shortly for a most beautiful Italian destination. I plan to do some painting while I am there, but since we are going to be going to a lot of different little lake towns, I've decided to carry a minimum supply of art materials. I'd love to bring oils when I can stay for a longer period, but this trip I will bring my travel watercolor set, similar to the one shown here, (except mine has alot more pull-out palette space). In addition to the pan colors, I'm bringing a small selection of Windsor & Newton professional grade artists' colors in tubes.

Other supplies:

• cotton rag
• small selection of brushes
• watercolor journal
• watercolor papers
• tape
• small painting board
• waterproof ink drawing pens
• pencils, HB graphite and softer
• eraser
• sketch pad

Almost all of these supplies, plus my camera can fit in my big black tote (the same I took on my last trip to Italy). I am having trouble uploading images to the blog today, but you can see the bag in this picture. I couldn't fit my folding stool in my carry-on luggage, so I will just have to wing it and hope I can paint in areas where I'll be able to have a seat somewhere.

No blogging while we're gone, but I plan to post some pictures when we return. Ci vediamo!

To see my oil paintings of Lake Como and other places in Italy, visit my website here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist

Countdown to Lake Como

I have been so busy lately getting ready for the Atlanta art show and attending to some home and family matters that I find it hard to believe I will be in Italy in 3 days! On Saturday we will leave for a fabulous trip to visit the lovely hill towns of Lake Como. I will bring my paints and do my best to record my impressions of the splendor that will surround me.

Lake Como is the deepest lake in all of Italy. In terms of its expanse, however, it is the third largest, following Lakes Garda and Maggiore. The lake, framed by a ring of pre-alpine mountains, is blessed with beautiful Mediterranean flora and formal gardens, deep azure water, and gorgeous villas along its shoreline. It is no wonder that it was a magnet for the nobility of Lombardy ever since the 18th century.

There are numerous and frequent boat services that link the lake towns to one another, and this is how we plan to navigate the area. This area is known for its magnificent villas and gardens. It is a veritable dream come true for the landscape painter! I know I say that about a lot of places, but anyone who has seen pictures of this place knows in an instant that it is hard to beat in terms of beauty.

My task in the days ahead will be to try and pack all of my personal items into one carry-on bag, and my all of my art supplies into a satchel if possible.

To see my oil paintings of Lake Como and other places in Italy, visit my website here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist

Beach Sunrise

Today I finished a painting of a sunrise scene from last summer when I stayed at the beach in Nags Head North Carolina. For some reason I was intent on seeing the sunrise while we were there. We saw a number of gorgeous sunsets in the evenings but the sun sets over the sound and the sun rises over the ocean. So I nagged my husband to get up with me one morning and catch the sunrise over the ocean. Why I couldn't go alone is beyond me now; but for some reason, he HAD to come. Unfortunately in my exuberance we were about an hour early, so my romantic vision of togetherness under the morning sun soon turned to sitting on the beach in the dark and listening to Dave grumble and shuffle around, trying to find a spot to lie down and finish his night's sleep. Eventually, however, we were rewarded with a beautiful soft misty sunrise over the clouds. Here is the painting inspired by that morning:

I painted this scene with a limited palette (alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow pale, ultramarine blue, and pthalo green, plus white.) This is a scene that called for using a lot of "colored grays". Colors that may even read as "mud" in other paintings, created the soft, barely there light that I was going for. At first I thought I'd have to dip into my arsenal of more vivid colors (like permanent rose and cadmium orange) to get the sunrise effect, but because so much of the painting is muted and soft, my crimson and yellow mixtures really popped. My favorite part of this scene is the way the light skips across the water.

I painted this little study en plein air, and since that time I have been wanting to create something similar, but larger and more dynamic.

I used a very limited palette on this one too, mainly because I was under such limited time constraints and didn't have time to squeeze out a bunch of tube colors. One thing I learned from this little painting is that when painting sun/sky paintings on location you really need to keep your brushes and turpentine clean. You also need to paint extremely fast. Screaming at the changing light doesn't really help, but it may possibly make you feel better.

Traveling with oil paints

From time to time I receive emails from other artists asking questions, and I thought it might be fun to try and post responses on my blog (the idea being that if there is one person asking, there may be more wondering also.) Here's the question:

I am traveling to Tuscany in June, 2007 to paint for 2 weeks. I have always used either pastels or watercolors, but this time I plan to bring oils. What paints and mediums do you bring and how do you pack them for the airlines? I don't want my stuff held back! Thanks for your help, S.P.

Ever since the tightening of the airline regulations, I have battled with this same question. When I last painted in oils overseas, my solution was to pack my easel as a carry-on and everything else (brushes, panels, palette knife, empty containers for mediums, etc.) went into the suitcase clearly labeled as artist materials. I did not pack my paints, mediums, or solvents, however. Instead, I did a bit of inquiring prior to travel to find out if there were any art stores in the vicinity of my destination. Fortunately there were and I bought my paints, mediums and solvents overseas.

Shopping for art supplies overseas can be a lot of fun. There are things that are familiar and also some wonderful products that I hadn't had the opportunity of seeing before. I felt like a kid in a candy shop and I actually ended up delighted with my purchases. I found Rembrandt oil colors in tube sizes I hadn't seen in the U.S. They were small enough to make my load a little lighter, but large enough to last me the two weeks of my stay. When I was in France, I found that the art stores only had small, expensive containers of paint thinner, so I learned how to say "turpentine" in French, and then asked for it at a hardware store. So, it can really be a fun adventure if you're up for it. However, if you are limited on time, you may prefer to just take the chance and carry your paints overseas. With that in mind, I am including a couple of articles that do a good job of addressing some of the issues that might arise:

Advice from the Gamblin Website

Advice from Pochade.com

p.s. If you do decide to shop for supplies at your destination, keep in mind that European countries use the metric system, so their canvas sizes will differ from what our "standard" sizes are in the U.S. This is not an issue if you don't frame your work, but if you use only standard size frames, this will be a matter of concern.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Red Canvases

Since I put my first painting demonstration up on my website a couple of years ago, I have had a number of people ask me about the red toned canvas I used. That demo is a couple of years old. I should probably update that section of my site and add some newer demonstrations, but I just haven't had the time. I used to underpaint many of my landscapes with red (not architectural scenes, however). I rarely do this any more, except when I do my little minis. I used to feel some comfort in having something down on canvas besides the blank whiteness, and the red underpainting was kind of fun. But after a while I found it took too much time to apply the undercoat and I spent a lot of time trying to cover it up in the passages where I wanted it to be cool (such as in areas of far distance.) I think that the reason it still works on the little paintings is that the red undertone does make the colors pop, but with such a small surface I do not need to labor on covering it up for my cool distances.

I will still often tone my canvases with a rather opaque, neutral gray or a warm beige (a tone of raw sienna thinned and scrubbed in a translucent manner over the white of the canvas) when I paint out of doors. The neutral tone of the canvas reduces the bright glare. In the photo below you can see one of my gray-toned panels underneath the plain white ones.

Ideally your palette color should match the color of your canvas for accurate color mixing. In the studio I have a white palette and paint on white canvases. But outdoors my palette is either wood color or a neutral grey. It is not a "must" to match canvas and palette, but it does help to predict what the mixed color will look like when it's laid down on the canvas.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air

Thoughts on Cezanne in Provence

This week I took an out of town trip up to Washington D.C. with a friend to catch the Cezanne landscape exhibit. It was the last week that the show was on view and I am SO glad I had a chance to see it! It was a magnificent representation of his work, with galleries that seemed to go on and on. The show was devoted primarily to his landscapes but also included portraits, some still life, and his Bather series. Having seen (and been in awe of) his many still life paintings in previous exhibitions, the landscapes are what held my attention the most. I must say that no photo reproduction I've see does justice to his work. It was exciting to see the transition his paintings made when he began painting outside. His landscapes seemed completley transformed; going from heavy tonalist works to paintings full of light and color. But what was most striking to me was the incredible structure most of his paintings had. Many of his paintings were done from odd and unique perspectives, and his subject matter and compositional choices were not always typical of what the landscape painter might choose. And yet he had a way for line and composition that made the structure of his paintings feel almost sculputural.

Cezanne was interested in the formal elements of painting, and not really concerned with painting beautiful scenes, per se. For instance his paintings of the coast of L'Estaque did not depict an idealized harbor. Instead he chose to include an industrialized view of the smokestacks along the coast. He also did a number of paintings of the red rock quarries, which to me felt especially exploratory, as this subject lent itself very well to exploring his near cubist abstractions.

And yet there were so many paintings in that show that I found to be incredibly beautiful, both in the the choice of the subject and the handling of it. In particular the paintings of the countryside close to his home near Aix were so lovely. In addition to the well-known Mt. Saint Victoire series, there were many paintings of the rocky hillside villages and crumbling old farmhouses. In any event, I got the sense that he was always experimenting, exploring; perhaps sometimes frustrated (?), but never bored.

Cezanne had a light, feathery touch, and many of his oils were handled in a way that to me felt almost like watercolors. He had a masterful knowledge of color, though he used it in a subtle way. His greens were some of the richest I've seen, and within their shadows were hints of rose, blue, violet and lavender.

There was also an entire room devoted to his watercolors and drawings. These were light, sketchy things, but within them I could see the seeds of Modernism and the inspiration for the Cubists still to come.

It was our intention that day to catch the Cezanne show and then head over to the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle to see the Degas and the Renior show. But we both agreed that we wanted some time to just absorb all of the great Cezannes we had just taken in. It's kind of like eating a meal. If it is a great one, you want time to just sit with the delicious experience before you move on to desert. And if it truly is great, maybe you don't even need desert at all!

To see my own paintings of Provence, click here.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist plein air Cezanne

Painting in the mountains- continued

On that same mountain excursion I went back again to the beautiful orchard I had attempted capturing on that first afternoon. This time I selected a different view for my 9x12" canvas, using a great red barn as a focal point. I'm very happy with the way this one developed:

If I make any adjustments, they will be very little. I love this scene so much I decided to do a larger version in the studio. Here it is, still in the "blocking in" stage, using my little plein air as a reference:

painting landscape painting artist plein air