8 posts tagged “oil painting”
The "Proscenium" series of oil paintings relate to five thousand miles of interstate highway travel across the American West over the course of ten months to care for my father on his own inevitable journey with cancer. The primary signifier centers upon recognizing the demarcations of the heavily industrialized world that slip into every view, and not allowing the "suspension of disbelief" that removes these important signifiers in favor of a romanticized West. This parallels the mindset necessary in caring for my father, who was iconic to those who knew him as a stoic and self-reliant Western cattleman and rancher- and his loss from himself as the cancer, radiation, and chemotherapy physically wore him down. There are ten completed Proscenium works to date.
Finished this one at last, and since it was still -20 outside with 50 to 70 mph winds, I kept going on the snow theme.
The wind blew hard enough to move the Mustang (that's usually around 80mph or better) as we made the pass. The tall orange flexi-rod attached to the highway reflector guides the snowplows in ground blizzards and heavy snowfall. As luck would have it, the best shot landed the pole smack in the middle of the composition.
You may not be thinking "Gunslinger", but he was a Deputy Sheriff in Yellowstone County and still has his 6-shot revolver and leather holster- much closer to "Gunslinger" than modern law enforcement.
This is from a photo of my sister and I with my father (at 42) when she was 12 and I was 10 in 1978. I started it yesterday afternoon and finished it this morning. Now I can see what is wrong with Karen's face...man. Really can't fix that without a major re-do. Maybe I'm the only one who sees it. yeah, right.
This afternoon I put in a few hours more and came up with this scene near the Idaho/MT border. The cold has settled in here in MT (-34!), perfect painting weather.
A final day spent color correcting the foreground, then 5 hours today of adding in fence-line, telephone poles, signs, trees, and highway details of the rumble-strip, white line, etc. Once again, the colors lose a lot in the transfer- even from iPhoto to vox.
the sun had set when I shot this latest version, so don't believe what you see for color here...just figure that it didn't go quite as poorly as it seems. Tomorrow I head back to the foundry for wax work, so it will be a few days before further changes occur. That should give it time to dry a bit.
Saturday I put in a few hours snowing a bit more on the central peak while E read out loud from our sheepy mystery: Three Bags Full. Today (Monday) I added in the power station and the row of bushes in the morning, then remembered I hadn't taken a picture of Saturday's changes.
The relative abstraction of the forms from the underpainting winding through the foreground are quite a nice contrast with the storm/peaks,
The storm begins to emerge from the underpainting...I introduced another blue to the palette.
The underpainting sets the composition and tonal notes. I mixed piles of neutrals with the pallet knife using brown, blue, ochre, and white.
It has turned a bit colder up at the ranch; -24 (as low as the digital thermometer goes) to (-55 with windchill in Great Falls) at night, with daytime temps hovering around 0. It is 90 degrees warmer here in Salt Lake City. These images are from the balmy days of late November, when temps were still near freezing. The paintings are taking 1.5 to 2 days to complete. The second painting is twice the size of the prior paintings, and shows 1.5 days work. The larger format really pushes the time frame. The image still needs a whole herd of cattle and a long run of fencing.
A few hours later, here we are with the fence and cattle added in.
A few hours later, here we are with the fence and cattle added in.
Elizabeth: "They are just too magical to show up well in a photograph- like a Unicorn ...or Sasquatch."
In the span of June-Nov I found myself driving from KS to MT, MT to UT, UT to KS, KS to UT, UT to MT, MT to UT, UT to MT, and MT to UT. This time behind the wheel moving across the amazing Western landscape juxtaposed itself with prior summers of mine as a mountaineer in CO as well as the time spent in the saddle or walking the vast expanse of the MT ranch. This past summer/fall road travel became my time in the landscape- in the summer with the convertible top down, in winter with the wind roaring through the old top as though sitting near a small waterfall- just enough to blur music to a background curiosity. There is an illusion that one is not really in the landscape, that the windshield is somehow similar to a TV screen or a theater stage; but an errant deer or antelope, or a patch of ice hidden in a tight canyon curve, or a tire going, or engine trouble, or a truck drifting into my lane- all possibilities of suddenly coalescing out of the odd spacial warp of time/distance, emerging suddenly from the false security of the illusory proscenium.
The colors are almost right above- though the dramatic warm spot of sun on the R doesn't read. The image below just does not capture the band of light through the trees and the contrast on the butte (or the fade of intensity to the middleground)- but it gives a rough idea. I'm creating these with a limited palette of Yellow Ocher, Burnt Umber, French Ultramarine, and Titanium White. For the highway yellow line on the top I put in a bit of Cadmium Yellow.
This comparison shows the range of how far the camera diddles around with an image. I went back into the image below for the road and brush, and a few subtle changes in the trees, oh- and the cow is darker. All the other changes are due to camera/computer/web diddle-gaps.
The art organization I used to direct here in town offered an oil painting class for adults, and the new director mentioned the classes while we were out for a coffee. The instructor is a great local painter, Brad Slaugh. The class met only about 6 or 7 times, but it was enough to get my head back into painting- which had been my undergrad major for my first two years of college till I abandoned it for sculpture. The work below is a color problem Brad set up, a magenta light from one side and a yellow light from the other; purple and yellow paper; beets and lemons and squash and etc. Our palette was Y & Purple (mixed from blue/red).
The art organization I used to direct here in town offered an oil painting class for adults, and the new director mentioned the classes while we were out for a coffee. The instructor is a great local painter, Brad Slaugh. The class met only about 6 or 7 times, but it was enough to get my head back into painting- which had been my undergrad major for my first two years of college till I abandoned it for sculpture. The work below is a color problem Brad set up, a magenta light from one side and a yellow light from the other; purple and yellow paper; beets and lemons and squash and etc. Our palette was Y & Purple (mixed from blue/red).
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