Boreas Sanctus
Dappled Light
August 9th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20 in
I’ve been busy teaching and posing for figure classes and have had no time to paint, so I was happy to finally get to Essex for a day of painting. I stood in the shade and looked up the path that initially was in full sun but eventually settled into a nice pattern of shadow and light which I tried to capture. Pleased with the way it came out, after what felt like a long hiatus.
May 26th 2014
Chestnut Tree, Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvasboard, 14 x 18 in
It was overcast and I tried to focus on the blossoms on this chestnut tree. I can’t get a great photo of it as of yet, there’s too much glare. Some days I show up to paint worrying about many non-paint related things. Sometimes I can shut these out and focus outside of my brain in in my eyes, sometimes I can’t. If I can’t resolve my thinking I strain to resolve the painting. On to the next.
April 5th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvasboard, 9 x 12 in
(sold)
It was a beautiful day but very windy, and I was not in the mood to paint. I only had an enormous canvas and I spent the first hour and a half just ambling around looking for something that would strike a chord and wake me up to painting. The search was confined to a very small area, because it was so windy most of the area was unfit for painting, especially with a canvas as big as mine, and an easel as light. Ultimately, I decided to give up the hunt – when a kind fellow painter offered to lend me a small board to paint on. I’d sooner ruin a small canvas than a large one, so I focused on the only thing that seemed interesting to me – the tiny blue flowers _ Squill or Scilla – that had valiantly shoved themselves up among all the dead leaves and grasses, and strove towards the sky. Small scale is difficult with the knife, it’s a study / sketch – on to the next.
March 29th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex, MA
Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 in
(Unfinished)
(sold)
It was one of those early spring days the forecaster suggests could get almost as high as 50 degrees, so you don’t bother to bring a jacket, or wear an underlayer, and go out ecstatic to start soaking in the balmy spring. Except you chose a spot to paint that cleverly exposes you to an icy ocean wind from all sides, and though the temperature in sheltered spots gets as high as 42, where you have chosen to stand might just be cresting 34 – and you, clothed in ill-informed enthusiasm and little else to warm you, do your very best to cover all 482 square inches of canvas, but the amount of shivering and dancing you have to do to try and stay just this side of hypothermic eventually render painting impossible, with about 6 square inches to go.
Final as of March 24th, 2014
March 22nd, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20 in
SUNDAY: The frustration of yesterday has been fruitful and multiplied. I’m posting a detail of a section that I like, though it may no longer look like that. One fusses. Again, I went to work on it outside in the sun, and within half an hour it was overcast again, and everything looks so dank and dingy in the dregs of smothered out sunlight we’re left when clouds decide to assert themselves. I’m in A Mood.
SATURDAY: I posted these two photos (below) from different stages of my painting to illustrate how drastically the color of everything can change when the light changes. In the second (above) photo, I highlighted the area I was focused on to paint. I began by laying in all the dingy undertones and was looking forward to laying in* the warmth and light – but the sky clouded over, a wind came up, and the rain came. I was really miffed when that stupid rain came and stayed. I really felt like this was going to come alive. I’ll try to finish it tomorrow, but I fear it won’t be the same. The more finished painting above is still only about 1/3 done in my eyes.
( *I mean “laying in” like “slapping on” – though I would probably have been amenable to if not an actual nap at least a good read on a dock in the sun if I had the choice which I did not.)
March 15th, 2014
Windswept
Great Marsh, Essex Greenbelt, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20 in
(sold)
It was a beautiful day, warm (50 deg.) and bright. The sky was overcast when I got there and started painted but was magnificently moody late in the day. My intention was to learn how to paint these stands of reeds without using all lines. I can’t get an even or narrow line with the knife, and I don’t think that we focus on clusters of lines anyway, but instead the shapes that they create out of the surrounding masses of snow or land. There’s some reflection on the surface so the colors look duller than they are, I think. Will retake tomorrow. Incidentally, the scene behind the painting is not what I was painting, but a view off to the left.
March 8th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 in
(sold)
Not only was it a balmy 50 degrees, but the sun was out, there was almost no wind, and there was still lots of snow. An ideal day to paint. I went to a part of the reservation I’d never before been – the area that abuts PT Farnham’s and rt 133. Initially I had chosen to paint the landmark grey farmhouse, but after filling about 1/4 of my canvas with that, I decided I was painting the wrong thing and instead looked north (?) towards the great marsh. (There are a few things to tweak on this but on the whole it’s done – and if you think I’m exaggerating the color of the shadows on the snow, look in the top right hand corner of the photo at the shadows on the snow in the background. Same color. — March 9, 2014 – tweaked, done.)
January 25th, 2014
Cox Reservation Essex Greenbelt, Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 12 x 16 in
I’m pretty sure I did roughly this exact same view around this same time last year. The reason is not that I am captivated by the scene particularly, so much as that there is a nice wooden bench there, out of the wind. Sitting on a wooden bench is much warmer than standing on ice or a freezing rock for hours at a time. It was cold and there were a lot of branches and there was a lot of wind. If the term “tone poem” weren’t so repugnant, I might suggest this is more in the nature of one of those than an attempt to get all the linear details exactly right. I riffed on the colors and lines, and while I could still walk I called it a day. I’ve changed a little bit since (this photo was taken before last revision) but on the whole, this is what it is.
January 20th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex Greenbelt, Essex, MA
Oil on Canvasboard, 16 x 20 in
(sold)
I was fortunate to be able to join up with ‘The Posse’ and paint today. The earlier part of the day (when I did the ice) the sun was much brighter so there was a lot more contrast. As you can see, the atmosphere moved in and make my foreground seem darker than the foreground it’s supposed to resemble. I stopped simply because I was too damn cold. I was standing for a few hours on ice, in a stiff cold wind. I’ll examine my results tomorrow and either fix it or take a proper picture of it and move on. (NB- Jan 21 – have taken a better picture, though still consider it unfinished.)
January 13th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex Greenbelt
Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20 in
(sold)
It was a bright, mild day (though not as mild as I had dressed for – just because it’s above freezing does not necessarily mean you can go without a jacket.) David had been to the Sargent exhibit at the MFA, and noted that only rarely did Sargent paint sky. I was thinking of all the paintings of his I’ve seen, where you know what kind of day it was by the reflections of the sky you see on the leaves, buildings and clothing of people in the painting. The snow is kind of a “painting without sky for dummies” tool – because wherever the yellow light of the sun is cut off by a lump of snow, there lies a nearly perfect reflection of the sky color directly above it. You can achieve balance by including the reflections throughout the piece, which do in fact occur, if less perfectly, in shadows on stone and branches.
I decided not to change much from what I had in the first picture. Was painted with a lot of gusto – decided to keep the energetic feel of it rather than strain to make every detail perfect.