My most recent portrait is in the style of Jan van Eyck. It's a very diminutive work and the composition is simple. The head sort of floats in the dark and the red turban is vibrant against the black back-ground. While painting this I was reminded of the scarcity of blues in paintings over 200-300 years old (the master work that inspired me was painted in 1433). Reds and blacks were plentiful though, mostly in the form of Earth Oxides. I am lucky to have Cadmium at my disposal for reds. The black I used is Chromatic black, a mixture of green and red pigments.

This is the first portrait I've painted using oil in the last 13 years or so, and in those past portraits my marks were more loose and spontaneous. With this work I wanted a more polished, finished look, like that of Northern-Renaissance painters. I had been using Gouache and acrylic for my smaller portrait work lately, due to the easy clean-up and quick dry time, usually painting using glazes. By using Gamblin's alkyd-based oils I was able to blend the brush strokes and produce gentler textures. I was really encouraged by the experience of doing a portrait this way and will most likely paint most future portraits with oil. I have yet to make a frame for this picture. I'll get some moldings from the local hardware store and try to recreate something like the frame on the van Eyck original. I did something similar in my last portrait, where I tried to recreate the frame on a recently auctioned Da vinci.

Painting a master copy always comes with many lessons. Trying to re-create something in the style of another artist teaches you about composition, color mixing, and breeds appreciation for the work of others. It's also empowering to complete a decent approximation of what's considered a masterpiece. After each picture I complete, I get more ambitious. The hardest part of any painting for me is having the patience to study the original/source material through drawing and actually working through the revision process that is painting itself. If I settle for my first attempt at a picture, I'm usually being dishonest with myself and sacrificing quality. Painting really is laborious if done right.

Zion is was one of my favorite parks to visit this summer. There are plenty of places to go hiking and for me the geologic history is fascinating. Each layer of rock tells a story of past conditions and events. The whole park is a record of Earth's history and one can still see the forces in action today that formed the topography over tens of thousands of years. 

This location really lends itself to representation with a complementary color scheme. The greens and reds of the scenery play off each other nicely and contribute to the overall vibrancy of the composition. 

Not only do green and red complement each other visually, there is a geochemical/biological connection in nature between the two. These two colors are intimately related in that the green chlorophyll of the plants makes photosynthesis possible, which itself produces oxygen as one of its products. This atmospheric component was/is responsible for rusting the Iron that went into the rocks we find all over Zion. These rocks tell us a history of ancient climate/atmospheric conditions and indirectly tell us what life was like on Earth so long ago.  

Driving through Yellowstone, one is almost guaranteed to see several kinds of large mammals. I've seen Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Bison and Elk all from the road. On one occasion I was fortunate enough to snap a few pictures of Big-Horn Sheep, which are imposing and impressive in many ways. These creatures have a large set of horns made for running into things. Plenty of reason to keep your distance. Luckily we saw them from the car about 100 feet off the road. 

One of the challenges you face in painting Wildlife and Landscape in the West, is communicating colors in interesting ways. For this painting I chose to increase the vibrancy of the colors from the photo. The source colors for this composition were rather dull, but lent themselves to complementary & split-complementary color schemes.

Yellow and violet are complements on the color wheel and on either side of yellow are green and orange. Adjacent to violet are red-violet and blue-violets. These opposing colors harmonize really well with each other helped me by placing constraints on my color choice. Using a color scheme and limiting one's choices like this is analogous to composing music in a particular key or selecting certain chords to create the effect. Cool purples, blues and greens tend to recede in this painting while warmer oranges and yellows provide contrast and move forward visually. 

I once again used my preferred medium of Gamblin Fast-Matte Oil to paint this picture. After about three days of drying I will protect the work with Krylon UV-blocking Gloss varnish, which is easily removed. 

Prints of this work are available Here. 


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Recently, my El's Clay colleague Maribel and I, performed at the Terakedis Gallery in downtown Billings. Our show consisted of three hours of live dance and drawing (see the short clip below). This type of venue/performance was a first for us. Our last show consisted of both drawing and dance, but not simultaneously, so we both learned a lot. 

Several visitors stopped in over the course of the evening and many paused outside the gallery window to look in. One of our goals as an organization is to bring attention to the Billings Art Scene and this performance succeeded in that respect. There are many creative people in our city and they often go unnoticed. By putting on performances like this we hope to connect more people with art and artists and build a richer sense of community. 

I ended up completing three more-or-less life-sized drawings (see below) while Maribel danced. Periodically she paused for extended poses so I could work on the composition. Each drawing is about 4x5 feet in size. I had not drawn for this kind of extended period since college, so I was reminded of how taxing it can be. Maribel was tired as well, but remained graceful and energetic through the end. She definitely worked harder than me and is truly a professional dancer. 

The next El's Clay event will be at the First Congregational Church UCC in Billings on August 4th as part of the Billings Artwalk. We will have live poetry readings, drawing and dance at this event as well as information about El's Clay. This event will run from approx 5:30 to 9 pm with refreshments provided . We hope to see you there. 

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I hadn't painted in 5 months or so, then I picked up oil again for the first time in about 8 years. I found myself reliving (and reviling) the technical challenges and frustrations that go with it. But a challenge isn't always a bad thing. Most of these works are 8x10 to 16x20 inches, and the last one in the slide show is a pastel I did in 30 minutes at school one day.

It's easy to forget how important creating is until after a period of "inactivity" (in-other-activity) I make something again and am conscious of the thing taking shape before me. Be it painting, collage, drawing or printmaking, I have a need to do this. The idea of forgetting you have a need is strange, but it happens to me. I need to create visual art like I need to be a teacher. I forget my love for them both until I'm thrown in again. I enjoy the time away but I'm drawn back again, inevitably.

Both teaching and painting help me understand what's going on inside. They are both ways to reach people and hopefully change them for the better. I know each novel encounter changes me. Erwin McManus says something to the effect that "we are all creating futures" so whether the medium is paint, ink or a relationship, we are all always creating.

Both painting and teaching make me more aware of the world and others. Each is an occasion to study phenomena and behavior. In each sphere there are problems to solve and lessons to learn. I find myself in two streams of continuous, inexhaustible novelty.

In the last week I've painted four new works. The large one above is a view of the Rim-rock looking North, as is the first of the three immediately below. The second is of Grand Prismatic hot spring in Yellowstone, and the right is a sunrise from about a month ago. The large work is 16x20 and the three smaller paintings are 8x10 inches, all pastel on ampersand pastel-board.

The snow in Montana is very different than NC. Here it is very powdery and doesn't pack together well. What I find most interesting is how radically different the landscapes are in winter, compared to summer. The temperatures are consistently cold enough for the snow to stay around for most of winter. This makes for interesting warm-cool relationships between the local sandstone rim and the snow on the ground, which reflects a myriad of blues and purples.

Last week my wife and I found ourselves in Yellowstone National Park, then in the Tetons. Both locales were exciting, wild and invigorating, while still affording us much relaxation. Upon our return I decided I would try something new with my pastel work, I would include wildlife.

On our trip, we had the chance to visit the National Museum of Wildlife Art outside of Jackson Wyoming, which served to catalyze my interest in painting an animal. This place was great and I recommend it to any one visiting the Tetons or Yellowstone, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed myself there. The artworks were not the trivial or cute sort one often associates with animal art. These were serious paintings of beautiful landscapes.

My main pastel painting interest up to this point has been landscape. The great thing about animals, is that they almost always show up in a landscape, so I figured painting a scene with a Buffalo was a win-win. When we got home, I was eager to start, as I had recently received 6 pastel panels in the mail. I chose the photo above as my source image. I took it on our way to Old Faithful at one of the many pull offs along the road in Yellowstone.

When I paint, I try to pull out and exaggerate colors I see in the photo so the resulting painting has a pleasing level of color and tonal contrast. I find that when I try to reproduce the exact colors I see in a painting, the result is more dull and unexciting. Another thing I'll emphasize when working, especially with pastel, is the mark unique to the medium. Using pastel sticks limits the visual "vocabulary" at my disposal. The primary marking options are broad strokes with the side of the pastel and lines with the end, as in drawing. This is good, because it forces me to do more with less.

I also used Panpastels on this painting, mostly for the under-painting stage, which consisted of  blocking in large areas of color, especially in the background. The foam tools used with Panpastels make a soft mark and are good for atmosphere and visually blurred or out of focus areas. I find more and more that a good painting will require the use of my Sennelier sticks and the Panpastels, each offering distinct advantages.

This painting signifies new possibilities and emphases on aspects of nature other than sky, water and earth. This was a great growth opportunity, something different and challenging. My eyes are opened wider now to the possibilities of painting.

Not having a dedicated space really isn't an excuse not to paint. I just have to do some rearranging and a bit more clean up now that I live in an apartment. I hadn't painted at all in Montana yet and figured it was about time to do something creative, so yesterday I set out to paint a scene I photographed on a recent trip to Glacier National Park. The waterfall I painted is in Avalanche Gorge on the way up to Avalanche Lake, itself a spectacular site.

I set up in a corner of our living/dining room on a bench. As usual, I first taped the pastel surface to a board. In my situation, leaning the surface up against the wall was the best way of supporting the painting. I sat on the same supporting bench and spread out pastels all around me on whatever flat surfaces I could enlist for the task. The painting took about three hours to make and measures 19x27 inches.

This was a good reminder to me of how easily external constraints can be overcome or worked with. It's good to remember that to make any art requires sacrifice and as your conditions change so does the nature of the sacrifice. I'm glad now to live in such a beautiful state with its many natural wonders to inspire a new body of work.

It's very instructive to shift the scale of your work and look at it with fresh eyes. It can be dangerous to venture into a bigger space because of all the unknowns, the terrain is alien. Lately I've had many occasions to look into the unknown. To help me through all the changes around me, I've painted, drawn and made collages. The painting above is a revisit of a smaller earlier version (see image at left) of a scene I painted almost a year ago (I wrote about it here). 

I decided to work larger this time, which I find produces effects in the work not possible on smaller scales. A lot of this has to do with how we make marks and how they relate to the bodily movements that produce them. The most recent version has a different presence because of it's size. I find that the bigger the landscape is the more it invites me into what I think the real space would be like. As though the picture has more to say to me for a longer period of time. Similarly, looking up a mountain is different than looking down off the same mountain into a valley. From that high vantage point you might even see that there are even bigger mountains, painted with grander more sublime scenes. It's easy to miss the rest of the world, when we're lost in the shadow of our near-by hills. 

A lot of what I've thought was safe in life turns out to be small or just familiar. It's easy to stay where you are, just don't do anything. But when you do this, you miss how wonderful and huge the world around you is. When you work out into the world you discover the beauty there on a scale you hadn't been able to see before. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with being where you are or something being familiar. What I want to emphasize is that that's not all there is. And those things that you know that are familiar and admittedly wonderful and beautiful are things you can come back to again and again. Your ties remain to those people and things that you knew so well and that left a permanent mark on you. But don't miss out on what you could know. And when you've explored that terra nova, you have a new chapter of your story to tell and an invitation to extend to others. 

It's been several weeks since I last painted. Overwhelming is a fine descriptor of the semester of teaching I just finished. I picked up an extra class this fall because of staffing shortages at my school and I began to feel the effects very quickly. One effect was a diminished energy level all around. Less reading, less exercising and sadly less painting. But during the Christmas break I have had lots of time to slow down, refocus and devote time to art. 

Every time I paint I'm reminded of how therapeutic it is for me, how it heals me from my wounds and exhaustion. I know also that the works I make will continue to have an effect on me and others down through time. This is my legacy. When I was ten years younger I hadn't an idea about legacy and its importance. Art is a way for me to contribute to culture, to make something with enduring presence and formative power. This knowledge of the future world I'll shape helps keep me going.