New Lobby Window Display of The Gallery at Redlands
Afternoon Watercolor Class in the Gallery
5 x 7″ Demo for the Class
18 x 24″ Sacred Heart Church across the Street, in Progress
Good evening reader friends. I’ve wanted to write since I arrived at 9 this morning, but the day has been endlessly busy. Now that it is pouring rain outside, things are quieter and I’m afforded the opportunity to get some painting done in the Gallery. I just wanted to post pictures of the day’s highlights before I close at 10 tonight and make the two-hour journey back home. I’ll try to blog tomorrow to catch you up on what’s happening in this part of our world.
Sorry, friends! Just now having car trouble and it’s in the shop for today at least. I will be unable to make the 2-4:00 Gallery time I had scheduled for today. 😦
Sacred Heart Church across the Street from Gallery at Redlands in Palestine, Texas
Imagining a youthful CSN&Y Jamming in Palestine, Texas
Wednesday morning has me already anticipating good times this afternoon in Arlington’s new Studio 48 at 4720 S. Cooper Street inside Gracie Lane Boutique. This will be my second gallery work day from 2-4:00. I plan to make this a weekly Wednesday affair, since I offer watercolor classes there once a month (next one is June 14).
This afternoon in Studio 48, I hope to finish the CSN&Y watercolor above. If I do, then I’ll move on to the Sacred Heart Church painting that I haven’t touched for over a month. I’m still excited at the luminosity of the some of the colors and hope to bring them out yet more. I really enjoyed the gallery space last Wednesday and anticipate more of the same today.
Saturday I will return to Gallery at Redlands in Palestine, and intend to devote the entire day and evening to painting in the Gallery. Our Saturday hours are now 10-10:00.
Working on watercolors while it pours rain this evening
There’sa pervasive myth, shared by artists and non-artists alike, that art is a product of genius, madness or serendipity. Wrong. Art is not the chance offspring of some cosmic (or genetic) roll of the dice.Art is mostly a product of hard work. When you look back on the results of a lifetime of artmaking, even the role that talent played is insignificant. Living life productively, however, is very significant. If you learn to live your life productively, your artwork will take care of itself. If you do not live your life productively, nothing will save your artwork–not even talent. One of the less-advertised truths about artmaking is that it’s more important to be productive than to be creative. If you’re productive, your creativity will take care of itself. If you are not productive–well, if you’re not productive, then how exactly is it you intend to be creative?
Ted Orland, The View from the Studio Door: How Artists Find their Way in an Uncertain World
Occasionally I sit in a rocker and stare at the memories I’ve gathered over the years
Today, Sunday, was restoration day for Sandi and me. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we only managed three hours sleep before rising Saturday at 5:30 a.m. to journey two hours to Palestine for the Dogwood Art Council’s monthly Art Walk. We arrived back home last night around midnight. So, today, after a long sleep, we decided to take a road trip to Thurber, Texas and enjoy a meal at the Smokestack Restaurant.
Returning home, still tired, but hunger satisfied, we napped into the late afternoon, and now, with a driving rainstorm outside my Studio Eidolons windows, I’m ready to relax into my next adventure. I have French-pressed coffee and poured it into my Stanley for an evening of coffee and art-blissing in the company of my studio companion Paddington.
Paddington will always drop into the studio for a visit
A 16 x 20″ watercolor started a month ago, still waiting for closure
Years ago, I took Ted Orland’s words to heart which I’ve quoted at the head of this blog entry. Now enjoying my senior years of retirement, I no longer have to worry whether or not I’m good enough to be making art to put on the market. And I now compete very seldom in art circles; I don’t need the prize money, the recognition, or the headache of wondering whether of not the judge will value my submission.
About ten or so years ago, I registered for a conference at an airport to listen to Jason Horejs, gallerist from Scottsdale, Arizona. I wanted to be successful, hanging my work in galleries. Jason looked at the crowd and emphatically testified that the most important information for a gallerist reviewing a portfolio was the question: “How prolific are you? How many works do you crank out in a year? If we sold your entire portfolio to one collector, how many pieces do you have in reserve, framed, and ready to hang?” I sat there stunned. I knew the answer to the first question–I was creating about ten watercolors a year. I set a goal that day to finish the year with thirty. I finished with nearly eighty. Since then, I have easily created a hundred pieces per year, from 5 x 7″ to full-size. I now have enough work to hang in a number of galleries. I can easily enter an art festival and fill a 10 x 10′ tent with my work without stripping the pair of galleries that now carry my work. I have a public library show scheduled for September/October of this year and already I have set aside the framed pieces I’ll hang in that show.
I’m inspired by Andy Warhol’s “Factory” environment of the sixties, knowing that I always have a handful of watercolors in progress at the same time, and when I finish one, there are a number of others lying nearby, ready to be resumed. The church painting above has been waiting a month for me to return to it, and I just may get around to that one tonight.
Artist Steve Miller setting up for plein air oil painting in downtown Palestine
Completion of Steve’s second plein air oil painting
My own plein air set up for the morning’s activity
Watercolor in progress
The Art Walk yesterday turned out to be fun, for me. Steve Miller (we’re proud that he has joined our Gallery at Redlands) set up across the street from our gallery, and I set up on the corner just outside. I have known Steve since the days we both competed in Paint Historic Waxahachie. That was my introduction to plein air painting. Every May, about fifty artists would descend on the city of Waxahachie to paint for a week and compete for awards and enjoy brisk sales. Hundreds of paintings would fill the Chautauqua structure in the heart of Getzendaner Park, and patrons would overflow the center, taking out wallets, purses, cash, credit cards, and scooping up the paintings. Steve turned out to be a perennial winner, and took home a pair of awards a few weeks ago at the competition. He managed to sell his first painting off the easel yesterday to a family visiting Palestine from Oklahoma City. I’m seriously considering our city in Palestine hosting a plein air competition. I know a large number of plein air artists, and believe I could get answers to all my logistical questions by talking to the Waxahachie hosts. The Ellis County Art Association has hosted this competition for nearly twenty years.
I’m finally nearing the finish of my large watercolor posted below. The day David Crosby died, I decided I wanted to do a third painting of this Palestine series and insert a composition of the youthful Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young super group. These men turned my head as a guitarist in 1970 when I first listened to their debut album released the previous year. I had just acquired my first 12-string acoustic guitar and wanted to play and sing like David Crosby, and surround myself with voices comparable to that musical group. My dream has been fulfilled as I’ve immensely enjoyed performing “Helplessly Hoping” and “Southern Cross” with like-minded musicians years ago. I knew David was living on borrowed time for years, but I still was not ready for him to leave us. So . . . this watercolor is my loving tribute to him in appreciation for all the decades he enriched my musical life.
Nearing the finish of this full-size watercolor project
Working on two watercolors in Studio Eidolons this morning
Go into Nature raw and simple and just sit quietly doing nothing other than allowing Nature to become accustomed to your presence. Soon enough, often just beyond what you had taken to be the threshold of your patience and perception, Nature steps forward and begins to reveal its features to you. Rush it and you will never see it. Grab for it and it will give you nothing of its real self, only what you set out to grab. But wait a while longer, and the place begins to breathe audibly, to creep and flutter, beat, to speak in a thousand ways. You listen. That is today’s conversation.
Peter London, Drawing Closer to Nature
My reading enrichment of late has traveled two disparate paths: The Warhol biography drives me into his “factory” mode where I find myself churning out work and watching it roll off the assembly line. In the past two weeks, I’ve finished over a dozen pieces begun over the past six months. The other thread is the Peter London book that makes me stop, breathe, look, ponder, and then paint. Now that I’ve gotten past the scary part of painting four guitarists in a cluster, I’ve been looking closely at the color patterns and textures of the grasses running across the front of the old Pearlstone Grocery. Mixing the hues has been a very satisfying experience, as I’ve finally gotten the courage to experiment with blending colors that I haven’t used before. I like the new look it’s producing.
Tomorrow, Sandi and I leave early for Palestine to take part in the Dogwood Art Council’s monthly Art Walk. Our Gallery at Redlands serves as a staging ground as the city’s artists of the day come by to pick up their name tags, maps, assigned locations and words of encouragement. We’re proud that three of our Gallery at Redlands artists will be participating as well. Cecilia Bramhall be inside the Gallery with Sandi, working on her latest inspirations, while Steve Miller and I set up easels outside to pursue plein air experiments. Kathy Lamb will be set up with her easel at The Co-Ed Shop on 203 W. Main Street. The event will run from 10-3:00, but our Gallery will remain open till 10:00 that night. We’re looking forward to a dramatic day of making art and greeting visitors.
Recollections 54 The Art of David Tripp 