West Texas Watercolor Excursions

Coca-Cola Ghost Sign in Lubbock, Texas

Drawing and color are not separate at all; insofar as you paint you draw.  When the color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes.  When the color achieves richness, the form attains its plenitude.

Paul Cezanne

I responded to an invitation to journey to Lubbock, Texas this weekend, and celebrated the end of the school year by drawing, painting, reading, journaling, antiquing, and conversing with a kindred creative spirit.  I posted my earlier attempts of a watercolor sketch of this ghost sign on one of the main drags of Lubbock.  I’m still not quite finished with it, as there are a number of accents I still wish to put in–brick details, more power lines, and window detailing.  I’m still not quite satisfied with the Coca-Cola logo or the tree in front.  But I’ve laid it aside for now.  I have two workshops to conduct in the next ten days, and it’s time to switch gears.

My friend planted this idea of traveling northward to Amarillo Palo Duro Canyon for some plein air activity.  So, I opted to stay an extra day and spend Monday in the canyon.  The temperatures reached 105 degrees, and I was astounded to find out that I could not work wet-in-wet!  Impossible!  The high winds felt like a hair dryer, and the water dried on the paper as fast as I could apply it.  No matter how wet the wash, as soon as I put the brush into the palette to reload, the “puddle” on the watercolor block had disappeared.  This was indeed a different kind of experience for me.  Both sketches posted below were done very quickly, as I knew it was unwise to be out in the direct sun under such harsh conditions, and it was difficult, keeping my left hand on the easel at all times, knowing the canyon winds were trying to turn it into a kite.

Amarillo Palo Duro Canyon in late afternoon

I keep thinking I may re-work this composition, and try to detail the trees and rock textures better.  It was hard making those kind of decisions under intense sunlight.

Amarillo Palo Duro Canyon in Early Evening

I was abe to stand more in shadow as I worked on this bluff in early evening.  But the winds worsened, and I could not let go of the easel for fear it would fly out over the canyon and descend somewhere into its depths.  I may return to this in the next week or two, look at the photos I took, and see about adding more texture to the rocky facade.  I would not have traded this pair of plein air attempts in the canyon for anything, even if the heat was intense and unpleasant.  I was fascinated at the dynamics of the rocky facades with the winds chasing the cloud shadows across the craggy faces.  I felt that French Impressionist plein air tension, with Claude Monet on the one hand captivated by the fleeting effects of light playing off surfaces, and Paul Cezanne on the other extreme, contemplating the eternal form beneath the changing light.  It was Cezanne who said he wanted to make of Impressionism something enduring, like the art of museums.

Thanks for reading.  I’m not sure how effectively I’ll be posting during the workshops, or how accessible Internet services will be in either place.  But I promise to store up the photos, the memories, the stories, and bring them online as soon as I can.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel that I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Watercoloring in the Quiet Morning

Continuing the Ghost Sign

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse.  I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happines of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the espeically ticketed ways.

After all, the object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

I awoke at 6:51 this morning, without an alarm, and I had to rise from my bed, because I had Robert Henri on my mind, and felt that I needed to keep an appointment with him.  Long ago, I had developed a daily habit of keeping some kind of a “morning watch,” a time in which I read from my Bible, kept a journal, and tried to prepare myself to live the day to the fullest.  I still maintain that “watch” much in the same way Immanuel Kant devoted the first hour of his morning to sitting in his chair and contemplating.  I always have the journal out, and something significant to read.  And Henri has been my muse of late, stirring me in the same manner that he did “The Eight” when they gathered in his studio apartment at 806 Walnut St. in downtown Philadelphia at the close of the nineteenth century.  He read to them from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, from Emerson, from any creative spirit he thought could ignite the artistic fires in his disciples.  And now, as I read this collection of his letters, addresses and private musings, I feel my own fires rekindling.

It did not take me long to lay the Henri volume down, pick up the brush, and return to this ghost sign that I found and photographed day before yesterday.  The quiet and sweetness of the morning has provided the perfect sanctuary for me to pore over this composition, think thoughts of art, philosophy, literature, life, and wonder what exactly this new day, this new gift, could reveal.  I so love the summer holiday from school (though I will resume teaching summer school very quickly).  Time evaporated yesterday, as I stood with my fly rod, looking into those waters, and recalling the words of Thoreau: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”

I am indeed on the same page as Henri, concerning the artist.  I believe everyone has that potential to live the artful life, to think the artful thoughts, and make constructions that are unique to his/her inner life, and to express them, whether in visual art, music, journaling, blogging, or conversing artfully with the friends around.  I believe everyone has the artist within, and that that artist deserves feeding, nurturing.  This blog is part of my outlet.  But my intake today has been the words of Henri, and the visual stimulation of this commercial building standing mute with its layers of memories enfolded.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Finished My Third Windmill Watercolor Sketch

Windmill Watercolor Sketch Number 3

The wisdom and the mistakes of the past are ours to build on, and the picture painted yesterday, now hanging on the wall, is alreadyof the past and is a part of our heritage.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

I relaxed behind a fly rod yesterday evening, enjoying the scintillating breezes of an unseasonably cool evening.  This morning, my first waking thought was the watercolor brush.  I’m still experimenting with a commission I’ve offered of a windmill.  The image sent me is a Google image.  I’m doing the best I can from the photo.  I have been tipped off of where I could travel to paint windmills on sight, but it’s a pretty good drive from where I am and there are other things I’m involved in.  So, meanwhile, I keep trying to solve the problems of a dynamic watercolor sky stretched out over a neutral subject.  I’m enjoying very much the drybrush experiments I’ve been putting in the brush.  The photo submitted is just a silhouette of prairie grasses, but I don’t want to paint a silhouette.  And I’m always fascinated with the challenge of drybrushing terrain.  The dynamics of the sky are still proving to be my biggest challenge.  I’m finished with this third sketch, but certainly not finished with my subject.  And, in the spirit of Robert Henri, I’ve spent considerable time this past week looking at my prior attempts of the windmill beside my current one, constrasting, evaluating, recording in the journal, all the time trying to find the grail.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel that I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Plein Air Workshop with David Tripp

Plein Air Workshop with David Tripp.

Yesterday, not knowing how to post this video, I posted the link.  I hope, this time, that the actual video is loaded for anyone interested to view.  The Eureka Springs School of the Arts was gracious enough to put it together, and I’m extremely proud to share it.

Eureka Springs School of the Arts (http://essa-art.org/) has provided for me the most perfect plein air workshop environment I have ever known.  This is the fourth year I’ve been afforded the chance to teach the five-day workshop which  is scheduled to begin one week from Monday, June 17.  We still have availability, and if anyone reading this has any interest in painting a mountain Victorian town replete with 19th-century architecture, cliffs, flowerbeds, quaint store facades, and the most lovely sunlight available, then please sign up and come spend a week with me.  I guarantee an experience you’ll never forget.

Working on Some Windmill Sketches

Windmill One

Windmill Two

I want to begin by thanking the dozens of friends on the blog and on Facebook for all the comfort extended yesterday and today.  I buried my cat yesterday, and have since then been getting used to a house and studio with Kramer no longer lounging about.  I had no idea what a difference it was going to make.  Working in the Man Cave this afternoon yielded an environment inwhich something significant was missing.

I’ve been offered a commission to create an 8 x 10″ landscape accented with a windmill.  I’ve looked at watercolors of this subject my entire life, but have never once created one myself.  The experience has brought something back into my life that has been missed, and I’m glad to be doing it once again.  One is the practice of the watercolor sketch.  Sometimes in plein air I can say that I am doing a watercolor sketch, but when I’m in the studio, working from photos given me by a patron, I tend to go straight into the painting composition, and avoid the preliminary,quick sketching.  I’ve really missed that.

I’m using a material I’ve never tried before: Fluid Watercolor Paper.  They are marketing a block bound on only two edges.  The dynamic of the surface of this cold-pressed paper is not the same as the D’Arches with which I’ve become accustomed.  But I like the way it’s working so far, and plan to continue to explore its qualities.

Another practice that had been discarded is the notion of drawing for the pure enjoyment of drawing.  For years, drawing only furnished me with the skeleton of a watercolor composition.  I noticed with amusement this past week in Waxahachie that I never spent more than fifteen minutes drawing before pulling out the watercolors and immediately going to work on the plein air painting.  In this commission, studying the windmills has given me an excuse to re-visit drawing as a serious discipline and see how far I can push the medium.

I still have two days of school left.  Hopefully, once I bury those, I can return with gusto to painting watercolors daily and doing what I enjoy most.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel that I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

My First Hamburger Stand Painting

Oma’s Jiffy Burger, Waxahachie, Texas

What do you think an artist is?  An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, ears if he is a musician, a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, only a few muscles?  Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate, or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image.

Pablo Picasso

In the early 1990′s, when I determined that I wanted to master watercolor, I knew then that I wanted to paint scenes and objects that resonate with my past.  I named my company Recollections 54, because it is my birth year, and because I am fascinated with the relics of the 1950′s that stay with us.  OK, granted this hamburger stand was established in 1970, it still looks like a “fifties” joint to me.  As Picasso vehemently stated it, an artist is affected by the events in the world, and finds himself/herself shaped in their image.  For the past few years, I have wanted to paint an old hamburger stand or a roadside fruit stand, whichever one presented itself to me first.  I saw this establishment in Waxahachie, but noticed that other painters had already painted it, and I did not want top compete with them with regard to subjects when the judging happened.  So I left this one alone.  But today, I noticed buyers snatching up the hamburger stand paintings, and decided I could go ahead and paint it now, no longer trying to elbow another artist out of the way.

The sun got hot this afternoon, and the past rains turned the atmosphere to a sticky level of humidity that I could have done without.  Nevertheless I did not rush this painting (it is only 8 x 10″) and am glad I saw it through.  However, by the time I finished it, I no longer had the desire to push for a second painting in the same day.  So this is today’s contribution.  I have priced it at $150 in the 11 x 14″ mat, and it is now in the Chatauqua Auditorium with my other paintings up for sale.

Painting in progress on my easel

When I returned to the Chatauqua Auditorium with my new painting, I was delighted to find another one had found a new home.  The one with the misspelled “antiques” sign has been purchased:

Waxahachie Silence

It’s been another good day in Waxahachie.  Tomorrow the show closes at 4:00 p.m.  My plan is to go down there and complete at least one more painting before calling it a week.

Thamks for reading, and thanks so much for all your encouragement this week.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Finishing an Earlier Waxahachie Plein Air Painting

Waxahachie Silence

In America, or in any country, greatness in art will not be attained by the possession of canvases in palatial museums, by the purchase and bodily owning of art.  The greatness can only come by the art spirit entering into the very life of the people, not as a thing apart, but as the greatest essential of life to each one.”

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

I am posting the completed Waxahachie plein air sketch that I began last Saturday aftenoon, but aborted because of fatigue (the misspelling of the “antiques” sign!).  Today I went back to work on it, before heading south of town and going to work on the trackside shanty.

I love the Henri quote above.  The joy I experience in Waxahachie this time a year comes from the sight of so many kindred spirits about town, set up with their easels, painting architecture, flowerbeds, landscaped lawns, city parks, street life, and many, many other subjects.  I have not seen the count of this year’s ensemble, but in years past, as many as fifty-five painters have converged on this scene to Paint Historic Waxahachie for a week.  I do love the sight.  I love watching others engage their artistic faculties, in visual arts, musical arts, literary, performing–whatever it is that moves them and moves their audience.  And I am proud and humbled to play a role in this arena.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

An All-Day Plein Air Paint-Out in Glen Rose, Texas

Barnard Mill, 1860

I apologize in advance for not posting an articulate blog.  I’m still weak from my recent illness and I completed an eight-hour paint-out in a day that reached 91 degrees in Glen Rose, Texas.  I did manage to kick out three watercolors in that span.  That’s not very fast by my standards, but I’m a bit rusty, still a bit tired, and really was in no hurry.  This is the old Barnard Mill.  I was blessed to receive Honorable Mention for this piece, which took me just under two hours to complete.  I am very attached to this structure and cannot wait for my next opportunity to return to Glen Rose and do another study of it.  I really believe I will one day do a large full-size watercolor of this magnificent old structure.

Heritage Park

I next drove to Heritage Park and looked over all the historical structures that had been moved there.  But it was high noon, and the light wasn’t that great.  The heat was starting to wear me down as well.  After breaking for a quick lunch I set to work on this stone structure, but couldn’t really get what I wanted on the paper, though I enjoyed scrutinizing every detail of this building.  No matter how I worked, I just didn’t seem to be solving this one as well as I had the mill earlier in the morning.

Barnard Mill Door

After a second refresher break (I must have downed about eight bottles of water today!), I returned to the Barnard Mill with about 90 minutes left until the cut-off time.  I decided to give a shot at one of the doors below the composition that I painted first thing this morning.  I thought it would be somewhat easy, since I’ve painted quite a few abused door in my garage over this past winter.  It wasn’t.  I found myself fighting this one as well.  Again, I chalked it up to heat and fatigue.  When it was done, I was glad to know that I had eked out three paintings in a day.  And then a bonus–this one got purchased!  So I was glad to come home with some money in my pocket in addition to the Honorable Mention ribbon.

Glen Rose is a little over sixy miles from where I live.  The drive down this morning (I rose at 6:00) was very scenic and serene, and by the time I arrived, I was ready to paint.  But by day’s end, I was dried up, had to wait an hour for the judging to run its course, and then the reception and art sale was scheduled for another hour.  So I got home a little after 7:00 this evening, made dinner, and now, with one eye open, am pushing out this blog.

I think I hear my bed calling out to me.  I don’t know when I’ve been more ready to crash for the night.

Thanks always for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Today, I Proudly Accept the Liebster Award

Not long after the midnight hour, I discovered that I had been nominated for the Liebster Blog Award, and wish to express a heartfelt “Thank You” to Zeebra Designs & Destinations ( http://playamart.wordpress.com/) for this honor.  I have been a follower of this site for awhile now, and marvel at the energy this creative artist exudes in day-to-day designing.

Contingent to accepting this award, I have been asked to submit five random facts about myself:

1. I turned 59 years of age April 20, and though I have a Ph.D., I regard myself as a “gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought” (“Ulysses”).

2. I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Art in 1976, but went to work in various professions, from pastoral ministry to law enforcement and ultimately to part-time university and full-time public school teaching.  I returned to art in the late 1980′s and chose to focus on watercolor, the medium I loved the most, but could never seem to master.  My guiding spirits are Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer and J. M. W. Turner.

3. I am an avid fly fisherman, wishing I could live in the Colorado mountains.  My breathing changes the moment I step into a crystal clear mountain stream, and see rainbows and browns lying in the current, watching the bugs go by.  When a trout rises to sip at my dry fly, my pulse flutters.  I don’t know how many times I have read the novella A River Runs Through It, or how many times I have watched that film.  There is nothing like fly fishing in a mountain stream.

4. I perpetually suffer from Wanderlust.  I love going on road trips, have read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at least once all the way through, and could not begin to count how many times it has been read to me (I have the 10-CD set on audiobook, and I play it on long road trips).  My lifestyle is to take my watercolor supplies on the road and record the places I go, the things I see, in watercolor.  I am an avid plein air painter.

5. I love to read and keep a journal.  As a teacher for twenty-four years in Philosophy, Art History and the Humanities, I have always had a Faust-like obsession to search out everything that is out there, to pick the minds of the best writers and thinkers throughout the centuries.  I love reading Greek and translating the ancients.   I love American literature.  I love poetry.  I love the essay.  My patron saints are Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Carlos Williams, Henry David Thoreau, Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Tillich.

Five questions to answer:

1. What 3 words best describe you?  driven, multi-interested, curious
   
2. What is your most prized possession?  my Martin D-35 dreadnought acoustic guitar
   
3. If you had 10 minutes to evacuate your house what 5 things would you take with you (not including family members or pets)?  My five best framed watercolors (the only possessions that could not be replaced)
4. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?  When you entered this life, you were dealt five cards.  You played the hand you were dealt the best you could.
5. What is the one food item you can’t live without?  Sorry.  I just can’t take that question seriously.
   

My nominations for the Liebster Blog Award are:

http://coreyaber.wordpress.com/

http://lifeofawillow.wordpress.com/

http://lindahalcombfineart.wordpress.com/

http://photographyofnia.com/

http://theeffstop.com/

These are the five bloggers who really keep my work going, in addition to the five nominated already by zeebra designs.

I apologize that I don’t have new artwork to post today.  It was a four-hour state-mandated testing day at school today, followed by two hours of regular classes.  It wiped me out (again).  We’ll do this every day this week.  This afternoon when I got home, all I felt like doing was rearranging and reconfiguring my man cave, getting it ready for the next watercolor composition.  I hope to have that one set up and ready to paint by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks always for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

The Open Door. Imagination Preceding Technique

Completed Watercolor Study of Screen Door

There is the heart and the mind, the Puritan idea is that the mind must be the master.  I think the heart should be master and the mind should be the tool and servant of the heart.  As it is, we give too much attention to laws and not enough to principles.  The man who wants to produce art must have the emotional side first, and this must be reinforced by the practical.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

I wrote of some of this over the weekend when I discussed “Imagination vs. Technique.”  Henri’s words continue to thrill me as I read further into The Art Spirit.  He really fired up his disciples who became the nucleus for America’s Ash Can School at the turn of the century.  This book just crackles with intensity.

I really believe that I was more technician than artistic passion when growing up and pursuing my art.  From my childhood, I wanted to be good, wanted to excel in making art.  From the first junior high art class I took, on up through my college degree, it seems I tried to seize all knowledge, Faust-like, and translate it into technique to make better and better art.

Not long after the millenium turned, I became deeply dissatisfied with my art.  As I’ve reported in earlier blogs, I was moved profoundly by the offerings of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, feeling a deep-seated connection with their lives and interests, yet feeling that myown work was merely illustrative, merely exercises in technique and craftsmanship, and not truly art that would express my feelings or evoke feelings from observers.

Since the beginning of 2013, I have suddenly shifted to painting still-life compositions filled with objects that have stirred me from childhood.  Odd that I had not attempted a still-life watercolor since tenth grade, and the thought of trying it terrified me.  I started simply with one or two objects, and eventually grew to more complex compositions.  The transformation was slow at first, but now it is starting to make sense to me–I am painting things that truly “matter” to me, objects that stir my imagination, and bring to the surface, in Proust-like fashion, warm primal memories from my childhood, memories worth holding.  Passion is now driving my art, and technique just seems to be the tools in the box, ready and waiting for me to take up and use as needed.  Though I am not a mechanic, I think I feel some of the mechanic’s sense of satisfaction when he reaches for a socket wrench that happens to be the right size to fit the bolt that needs adjusting.  I too, feel a sense of satisfaction, when a particular brush is just what I need to scumble or glaze or detail a particular portion of the composition slowly emerging from the white plane before me.  I have the imagination burning, trying to give birth to an image, and the tools of the trade that have been taught me over the years stand by, ready for service.

Right now, in my endeavors, technique is serving imagination, precision is serving passion, thinking is following feeling.  It seems that this is the first time I have experienced this, in decades of making art.  And I like it.  I’m interested in seeing where this is going to take me.

Today after school, I put the finishing touches on this screen door composition.  I spent a large part of my day at school glancing at it (while students tested for four hours), trying to get a sense of what was still needing to be completed.  All I did was finish out the borders of the screen, texture the wood further, work a little more on the spring stretched across the bottom and re-do some of the area surrounding the door knob.  I’m ready to find another subject to paint now.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal because I am alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.