A WINNER

Third Prize “Best of Show”  a the Carson Valley Art Association’s Scholarship Exhibit and Sale.

FIRST “ONE MAN SHOW”

Being a member of the Dusty Roads Artist at the St. Mary’s Art and Retreat

Center in Virginia City I had the opportunity to have an entire third floor

to display my work.  The reception was on an auspicious Friday 13^th which

was also stormy.  Despite all that there was a good turn out and lots of

interest.

The work will be up through October 2013.  Would appreciate your

thoughts on the show.

For more information contact St. Mary’s Art Center:   http://stmarysartcenter.org

Every New Day is Unique Filled with Opportunity……..

I am fortunate to witness sunrises and sunsets behind two magnificent mountain ranges.  The winter months are easy to witness sunrises since they occur at a civilized hour of about 7am.  During the summer one needs to be diligent to rise at about 5am to catch the show.  Most of our summers are cloudless so when there is a chance of a show I drag myself out of bed and try and focus and not be blinded by the morning light to see if there is something interesting.

Even a sky lacking clouds has a subtle change of color and light intensity leading upto the sun light piercing over the mountain peak shooting it’s ray’s in every direction to celebrate the day.  The dramatic mornings are amazing.  Cloud formations, the diagonal jet streams highlighted,  stormy clouds forming,  God light beams –  OMG !!!!

Some artists do a daily painting as a  discipline.  I have begun doing little 6″ x 8″ paintings  almost daily.  Not so much as a discipline but it becomes almost spiritual practice.  They are small because I have to work quickly to capture “that moment” that struck my heart.  Sometimes I have to do two because the colors and clouds have drastically reformed.  Every day is unique.  Every moment is different.  It becomes a celebration of the exact moment, appreciation of the glory of a simple daily occurrence that we can easily miss most days.   I have developed an awareness :  we can create a new and wonderful day for ourselves to enjoy, every moment is precious, there is so much beauty around us and on and on.

It’s amazing  what can be instilled in my soul by doing a simple little painting. Hopefully these little sketches capture some of those powerful moments for you to enjoy if you can’t manage to get up early enough to witness this magnificence first hand.

How great to do something you love and benefit a great cause. Scenic Nevada advocates maintaining a beautiful environment and has the annual paint out and sale to raise funds for their various projects.   One of their ongoing projects is to stop installation of additional billboards and from billboards becoming digitalized.  Hopefully we won’t get to look like Vegas!!  This years location was at San Raphael Park.  The painting I did that day was a view of Peavine from the pond.

An Artist’s “50 Shades of Grey”

No this doesn’t have to do with creative sex or whatever we now associate with this title.

Boring, disappointing? But read on.)  My thoughts legitamently are about greys in relation to color.

We perceive and identify color mostly as primary colors; red, blue and yellow or

secondary colors: green, orange or purple which are made from combining two of the

primaries.  As a painter one of my challenges was to learn the subtitles of colors.

Watching and listening to the demonstrators at the Plein Air Conference really stressed

that concept.  Every one talked about the “grey” and pushing/mixing it to make

a “red”, “blue” , “green” or other color.  But grey not being a mixture with black.  To keep

colors vibrant mixing of an opposing color mutes the primary.  Some artists mix up a pool of grey to add to all colors to keep a color “harmony”.  Another method is to mix up what is referred to as the mother color, the major color of a scene that will be added to

all the other colors to achieve that harmony.

Green is the most challenging color with which to work.  Straight out of the tube or even

a mixed green of blue and yellow can be garish.  Mixed with red, the opposing color starts to tone it down and makes it more appealing.  Manipulating the color further such as adding blue we can make the colors recede to show depth and distance in our paintings.

Every so often I stop and do some experiments mixing colors especially to get different

greens.  As  the exercise progresses the most beautiful greens which are actually greys are created.  They are so beautiful they can create an intense emotional response. (can be almost orgasmic)!  So maybe this does relate to our known “50 Shades of Grey”.  So next time you look at a painting look for those beautiful greys.

But maybe it should be done when no one is around?