Weeks 17 & 18. Final Paintings

I tweaked this one a bit and it's done. Dark mood. No weird little hidden things. Just blue/black/white and a blurry photo.

This one was supposed to be a blurry side of the road photo. I am thinking it will be a bit too subtle for the AIB people, but we'll see. There's a small projectile in the upper left. The construction fence, etc.

I call this one Wil-o-the-Wisp. Trying to get that blurry, ominous side of the road image with the small unnatural globes of lights. See detail below.

That's a wrap for the 3rd semester. I hope I get to go to school in January.

Weeks 15 & 16

This one is done. It's a larger UFO one from the last residency. it's 22 x 28 and Oscar felt it was one of my strong pieces.

I think I'm getting close on this one. It's dark and moody with lots of layers. it's also still fairly wet and glossy, so i might have to varnish or something after the residency

this is a newer one. Just finished reading Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition, it was a great book and inspired me to work with this. Not sure how it will be received.

This is another UFO one, but I am also doing it a bit more in the style of Richter and his blurry photographs. Not too much to say at this early stage....

Weeks 13 & 14

Finished writing and researching about Gerhard Richter. I was very inspired by his room at the new Modern Wing at the Chicago Institute of Arts! This above painting was originally intended as an underpainting but when I blurred it.... well, it really was fascinating. I touched up some details but left a blurry, hazy atmosphere. It's dark but not as dark as the photos. Included a detail below.

Detail of the bottom of the Richter inspired piece. Painting very dark this semester and it's hard to photograph.

My last bird one... for now. I told my mentor April the last one from a few weeks ago was it, but I forgot I was already working on this one. I think it's done and I think the bird flocks are done. They lost that uncanny/paranormal/extraordinary sense to me.... I guess I feel they are now familiar and I'm ready to move on.

My UFO pieces at the last residency were small. 8 x 10's mostly. I feel a couple of these deserved more consideration so I'm redoing this one larger. You can go find the original somewhere in the Semester 2 blog. This one is around 30 x 24.

This one is exciting to me. Just the right amount of ominous and beautiful. Working on lots of layers and I really like the light vs. dark interaction on the edges.

Weeks 11 & 12

This week found me traveling to Sag Harbor, NY to meet with Super-Mentor April Gornik. She is very insightful and gives awesome critiques that are very helpful. I know some other people have had some difficulties with their big name mentors and I am very lucky and grateful to April. I told her the bird picture I sent out (as seen on the previous blog) was the last one. I forgot I had already started this one.

I think the birds above and these trees are heavily influenced by my paper about Gerhard Richter. I am playing with that soft mostly grey palette. Very eerie indeed.

This UFO painting is coming slowly, but I want it done right. It's been a while since I did a traditional landscape background (blue further back, yellow closer up, etc.). I'm a little rusty with this one.

This last one is an under painting for a new winter scene. Under painting in the compliments didn't help me so using relative colors might.

Weeks 9 & 10

These two are as done as they are going to get before visiting NY mentor April Gornik next week. Layers, layers, and more layers. I need to let them dry, ship them, etc. for a meeting with April on 9/21.

I don' t know about the colors, but this is as far as I can push it before this gets shipped.

On to new stuff, well, newer. I did this image last semester. It was 8 x 6 inches. At the urging of both April and last semester's advisor Oscar Palacio, I am doing this one again but bigger. It's 24 x 20 or so.

This is the start of my last bird flocking painting. Wanted to try one more. It's large and I wanted it all grey. Which leads into my last one below.

This originally started as the under painting for a bamboo forest, but I'm very excited about it. I'm also researching Gerhard Richter. The grey and the fuzzy made me think I was channeling Richter so I'm going to go back into this and make it more like one of his.

Weeks 7 & 8

Had a great phone meeting with my mentor yesterday. Even looking at JPGs online she is extremely insightful. We talked about how to make sure I'm engaged for the entire painting and where and when I am not.

This is a larger one that came together fairly quickly. It's part of my flocking birds series. It's 36 x 24 inches and I'm thinking it's just about done. I have one more bird one planned but I think I might be done with this series.

Still working slowly with layers on this figure in the water.

Working slowly and steadily on this bamboo forrest. Mentor and I agreed to push this one as far as I can and I am still doing trees. I will go back in soon and do all of the little bamboo knots in the trunks.

Weeks 5 & 6

"From the shores of Gitche Gumee..." these first two works are a step back, or sideways. I have to admit I feel great pressure when I paint and it is almost never enjoyable. I don't know if it's school or the idea of showing my work to one of the greatest living landscape artists alive (to my mentor's credit, she never ever comes off this way, she has been nothing but helpful and insightful), but it is a daily struggle. It might be just the difficulty of continuing to push myself.... regardless, I am painting at least 20 hours week, usually more, and continuing to work bigger, with more layers/glazes, and trying to build on the success of last semester. So these first two works are more like what I was doing in the second semester. I wanted to find out what I enjoyed about working like this, and what can I bring to my more "school-minded" works. The work above was totally inspired by one of April's paintings from my visit in July which featured a large centrally placed full moon. Mine is waning... or perhaps waxing.

Magic hour on Lake Calhoun.

Jeffrey Ebeling was kind enough to provide me with some small canvases to experiment on. It's oil ground on linen and canvas respectively. Hannah Barrett provided the small gessoed panel. How better to explore the different surfaces than to do the exact same painting on each?

The figure and the bamboo forrest continue to move slowly and continue to be a challenge. These are more like what I want to have ready for school in January. Ominous. I understand in these more what April talked about to me in July. In her works she talked about a certain "speed" things had. Some parts moved faster, some slower. These are both very slow. Solemn. Maybe too slow. I am not sure how to speed them up as it were.

Weeks 3 & 4

The fire tornadoes are almost done. A group show for the Hinckley Fire Museum gets hung in the middle of the month and this is my entry. My photos aren't looking great with the wet paint/light glare, but hopefully you can get a rough idea.

Continuing to paint slowly and meticulously. Lots of small brushes. It's a much slower, more demanding process.

I like this one a lot. In all of these I'm working on lots of layers. Especially for the fire, the water, the leaves, etc.

Still not quite sure how this one is going to work out, but I do like the general color/mood. This one has probably been the most difficult and is the least finished.

Semester 3: Weeks 1 & 2

The first week of the semester had me driving down to Long Island, New York to visit Semester 3 mentor April Gornik. Gornik was every bit as brilliant as I expected and we had a great visit. She gave me a lot of notes, but to do a short summary here we talked a lot about under painting, avoiding perfunctory areas of my canvas, and looking at light and speed in my work. She was extremely generous and took time to critique every work I showed her. She had amazing insight and picked out numerous things I had not seen myself.

The following works are from weeks 1 and 2. April and several professors in my program inspired me to work larger, slower, and push these further. These are all under painted in compliments and I'm working with a lot more layers and glazes.

These two are both from the perspective of being underwater. Some one told me at the residency that there wasn't anything to fear in contrails or a blue sky. They said that if they were trapped underwater than they would know to be afraid. The figure is new. I haven't painted a figure in several years. It seemed necessary to the narrative.

This fire painting is early in the process, but I like it so far. It's for a group show in Minnesota, and I don't think it will make it to the residency, but it's something I wanted to do. The fore ground is going to be very difficult to photograph it's all black or off black trees.

This last one plays more toward the beauty than the fear in the sublime. It's going to be a bamboo forrest, but this is the second layer of the under painting and I think the colors capture my signature mood.

Week 16

This one is smaller but it is done. It's a dust devil in front of an abandoned stip mall. I like the tones, and it fits into that UFO series a bit.

I'm really happy with these two. Sort of following and breaking selected landscape rules. Also keeping that weirdness and unusualness that both David and Oscar wanted. My last meeting with Spring Mentor David Feinberg was last night. It went very well and we agreed about focusing on our formula for my work: Graceful, deepspace, bit unusual, and timing. I think this last one is the best and I think it hits all of those things.

Week 14 & 15

Finally finished these up. There are 12 in all. Took sort of a photo approach with this at the beginning of the semester. There might be the hint of a narrative. I'll have to play at the residency with what I want to do about the actual arrangement, but there is a wide range of views, colors, times of day, etc. Don't know if the format holds them together.

Week 13

I finished up those 3 bird flocking paintings this week. I feel very good about them. (Can't usually say that!) I think they follow David Feinberg's formula we worked out together. Unusual/Graceful/Timing/Deep Space. These are the 4 things when they are in good balance work well in my paintings. I like that they're definitely a series, but there are each their own painting and not a production line like a lot of the New Yorkers. I also was able to work in that flying saucer shape in a palatable way.

This small one was on the smaller 8 x 6 format of the UFO paintings, but it's not quite the same. It's a dust devil behind a strip mall. Still in progress.

This one is inspired by Minnesota Point and also the show LOST. It's to be finished next week. 

Week 12

So I'm not sure why I insist on reinventing the wheel every week. I feel these are 2 subjects that were successful and I wanted to explore them a bit more. The 3 above are in various stages and deal with flocking birds.  I think it's fascinating that we are not sure how or why these birds are doing this. The two shots below are in progress and they are pond reflections. They go in the series, and I am hoping to come to the June residence with at least 12 of these done that form a loose mural.