Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks, oil on board, 8" x 6"

These hollyhocks grow wild at the top of our driveway with enough confidence to take over the neighborhood. We've been here 20 years and we don't know where they came from but I love their chutzpah. I put them in an aluminum vase that has the same finish as the big milk containers on my grandparents' dairy farm (which is now Distillery Lane Ciderworks, by the way). This was painted plein air.

It's been months since the last post. I had to take a break to spend as much time as possible with my mother as she fought and lost a battle with breast cancer, after being in remission for 35 years. This was the first successful painting since we lost her, so this painting is for you, Mom.

Under the Live Oaks

 We set up one peaceful day at Ft. Fisher State Park, near the ocean in NC and I drew the live oaks above. The next day we set up again in their shade and I painted the other direction.  It was during a heat wave, but the ocean breeze and the shade made it pleasant. I was bitten by fire ants, but my cold stainless steel water bottle eased the pain. We inadvertently chose a special event day and we became another attraction, but I can focus. What made it Extreme Plein Air Painting was the civil war cannon they fired without warning every 40 minutes or so that made me jump out of my skin every time.

Shifting Light

Shifting Light, 9" x 12" oil on linen board

Plein air painting from Explore Park (BRP in Virginia) overlook, looking south. As I finished this, my husband, also a painter, pointed out a very large dark grey cloud to my right and we high-tailed it out of there in time. The miracle is that I had just enough time to finish. Plein air painting this summer has taken on the need for sophisticated logistics to paint between storms and finding places where you can stay close to your car for when the next deluge comes.

Plein Air Pastel at Rocky Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Rocky Knob is an National Recreation area in Virginia where the trails follow a bald ridge, thanks in part to grazing cattle. This means the views are spectacular, with endless possibilities for plein air paintings. I chose this angle so I could include the winding ribbon of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I painted this on Thanksgiving day, with my son, also an artist, painting beside me. Several people were getting their pre-feast hike in. They all asked me if my Thanksgiving turkey was cooking nearby. I told them my husband was cooking dinner, an hour away. My job was to do the pies, which I did the day before. So, thanks, Tim, for this beautiful pastel painting. 11" x 14" on archival sanded paper.  SOLD

Post-Przewodek Workshop

I spent a week in Eaton, Maryland at Easton Studio and School for a workshop with Camille Przewodek. Similar to Lee Boynton, she studied at the Cape Cod School of Art with Henry Henshe. I need repetition, repetition...before it really sinks in. I liked her direct style of teaching and I felt that I was getting in the flow in these two. Both are plein air, 12" x 9" oil on archival panel.

Plein Air Pastels

Sometimes I just need a break from hauling all the oil paints around. I paint plein air and that means on location, painting the light and atmosphere. This sometimes means hauling it all in a serious backpack on my back when I need to hike a distance. I also paint with pastels plein air, but they are easier to carry, even though I still need my easel and umbrella. They are also more direct. You can only mix colors on the paper itself, so you bypass the palette mixing. I use professional soft pastels (Unison, Sennelier) on archival sanded paper.

I approach pastels the same way as my paintings, as a colorist laying down large blocks of the color of light and shadow, making sure I have the values and color temperatures correct. Then I start breaking up the large blocks with the more subtle changes of color. I try to capture the "envelope" of light, which means the feeling of the atmosphere and type of light.

All three of these were done in the summer. The top was done from Rocky Knob, a bald on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which I had to hike a short distance to. Spectacular. It is kept bald by grazing cows who are part of the trail experience. This was an evening pastel painting, so the color is a warmer yellow than the one below to the left, which was hot partly cloudy summer day at a pond in the valley. The one on the lower right, also from the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooking Cahas Mountain, was an overcast day, which causes the ground to appear darker relative to the sky. We had recently endured an epic heat wave, so I escaped to this elevated site and actually needed my sweatshirt. While I painted a mother and daughter drove up, sat on the grass and read. What a peaceful place to read a book. We stayed for a couple hours until it started to rain. I hope that the painting has the feeling of "about to rain". The land becomes darker as the sky gets lighter...unless a big blue-grey thunderhead appears. I heard another plein air artist say once, "On an overcast day the sky is much lighter than the ground. If the sky appears darker than the ground, you better get the heck out of there as fast as you can." On an earlier painting outing on Rocky Knob, my husband and I hiked, set up and then heard thunder and the sky darkened on this high elevation bald. Although we tried to deny the approaching storm, once we saw the cows heading down, I told my husband, "Come on! We've got to be at least as smart as cows. Let's get outtahere."

If you are interested in purchasing pastel paintings, please keep in mind that they need special framing that involves a spacer, double mat with the inside reverse cut and glass. There are several sites on the web that explain how to do it, but one of my favorite is this site because of the cutaway drawings. They also sell the spacers on this site: http://www.frametek.com/HTML/Articles/pastel.html

All of the above are professional soft pastels (the finest pigments) on archival sanded paper, 11" x 14", except the top one, which is 10" x 14". Click on my Daily Paintworks icon on the top right to order them.

Two on a Summer Afternoon

I painted these two on a warm June afternoon, trying to capture that unique summer sunlight. Notice the thunderhead peeking up over the trees in the top one. It turned into one of those intense summer storms with hail. You know, the ones that show up as a red blob on weather.com's satellite image.

The top image is 12" x 9" and the bottom is 6" x 6", oil on archival panel. If you are interested in purchasing either, email me or go to my Daily Paintworks gallery (see icon at top of this page).

Plein Air Still Lifes

Plein air still lifes are my favorite because of the challenge of creating a sensation of sunlight. I'm trying to create more casual arrangements, instead of formal compositions to give a feeling of the viewer being present.  This one is 12" x 12", oil on cradled hardboard, which means it does not necessarily need a frame.

Plein Air Workshop with Lee Boynton

I'm excited to be hosting artist Lee Boynton when he presents a 3-day Color and Light plein air workshop here in Roanoke in late June. Lee studied with Henry Henshe at Cape Cod School of Art and I thoroughly enjoyed taking one of his workshops last summer in Maine. Email me for printable copies of this flyer and an additional brochure, and if you have any questions And please spread the word about the workshop. Open to all levels. For more information, go to http://leeboynton.com/workshops.

About Lee Boynton:

The sea was the spawning ground for Lee’s art. He spent a lot of his childhood and youth “messing

around in boats” on Long Island Sound and along the coast of Maine. For fun, he would study the

works of Winslow Homer, Frederick Waugh and N.C. Wyeth, and yearned to paint the beauty and

drama of the natural world around him like his artistic heroes.

As an emerging artist, Lee spent hours sketching and painting the lobstermen and boatbuilders in

Maine. He saw these men, their boats and the sea as an intricate and colorful tapestry, just begging to

be painted. One of his first painting instructor gave him a copy of Hawthorne on Painting when he was sixteen years old. This was his first connection to the Cape School of Art in Provincetown, MA, where

he later studied with the renowned Impressionist Henry Hensche.

Henry introduced Lee to the idea that light has color and that the color of light changes hourly during the day as well as seasonally through the months of year. He impressed upon Lee the importance of painting convenient block studies in order to learn these effects. 

As a student of color, Lee began to discipline himself to paint the truth of what he saw before him. This exciting approach to seeing and painting color revolutionized his artistic direction. He took what he had learned in oil at the Cape School of Art and applied it to watercolor. In2004, Watson Guptill published Painting the Impressionist Watercolor, a book Lee co-authored with Linda Gottlieb, one of his longtime students. 

Lee is one of the founders of the Mid Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association. His oil and watercolor paintings have received top awards in east coats plein air painting competitions.

Plein Air Still Life

I love painting still lifes set up in the sun. This was a hot summer day and although I was dripping in sweat, I think I successfully captured the feeling of light bouncing everywhere. This is 8" x 8", oil on cradled board.