Not just a pretty picture

Every Afternoon, 2007. oil on panel 7 x 8

Here is another of my paintings from my Afternoon Sky series. In the summer the clouds build up on hot days in the afternoons and then the upper winds flatten the tops of the clouds off. It happens nearly everyday. I enjoy the luxury of seeing the same type of things on a repeated basis. It gives me deeper understanding of the landscape and the environment I live in. It is more than just a snapshot of a place, rather it is something that I hope is more truly and deeply felt.

Quote It

Early Evening, 2008. oil on panel 7 x 8

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With every painting comes a very complicated layer of memory.

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- Stuart Shils

variations on a theme

Afternoon Build Up, 2007. oil on panel, 7 x 8. sold.

Happy New Year to everyone!

This is small painting I did last year. It is one in an ongoing series of painting with large afternoon skies based my experience here in the valley. I find the subtle color changes and their seemingly endless possibilities fun to play with in these paintings. The sky in this piece in some parts is a greenish-blue, not what most would think as a normal sky color, but it works in this painting. I'll post some others in this series when I get the chance. I don't see this series exhausting itself anytime soon.

that's a lot a trees

The Home Place, 2007. oil on canvas, 60 x 60. sold.

This a large commission I did for a couple here in California. While this painting obviously fits within the kind work I do of the valley, it is unusual in several ways. First, I have not attempted to do this many orchards in years. I'll tell you why and I'll be blunt: it is stinking hard to try and get EVERY TREE in the right place so they both line up and lay flat and this painting has over 700 trees! I must have painted the large orchard in the foreground six or seven times before I got it right. Second, this is a specific piece of land the family owns. While most of my work is about particular places I often change things around to make the painting work so it may not in the end resemble the original place. But in this work it was important that work looked like the home place. That meant looking at the land over and over again (remember I rarely ever use photographs in my work), so I was driving out to their place numerous times to see the land and try and get the "look" and feel of their land. I would have not attempted this painting in years past because I wouldn't have felt I could pull it off. While the painting was a struggle at times to complete I was happy with the results and more importantly the couple was very pleased with the finished work. All's well that ends well.

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Soon after I finished this painting another family member inquired if I would be willing to do another larger painting of this property but from fifty years ago. But that's for another post.

The Other Three

Warm Twilight, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

Warm Twilight and Orchard Ranch were the first two paintings that I brought to The Vault. They were not a orginally painted with any thought that they would go together, they just happened to to be the same size and I didn't really think anything about it at the time. But shortly after talking them to the gallery, I get a call from the owner asking if I was planning to do any more paintings that size. A collector was interested in four paintings in the same format and liked the first two that were already at the gallery. I had no immediate plans to make any

The Orchard Ranch, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

other paintings that were going to the same size, but I did have two other panels o fthat size that were laying around the studio, so I started thinking about what I could do with last two...It was strange the first two were not suppose to go together and now I was making two more to go with the other two. It was Kris at The Vault who sort of suggested that I make the four seasons out of the four panels...so I just when with it. Cold Weather came first and then Around from the last post was the last to be finished. I think the four pieces work

Cold Weather, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

together, even if they were not originally meant to work together.

Recent Work

Around, 2007. oil on panel, 16 x 16

This is a painting that was the last in a series of four paintings that I did for The Vault. I am quite pleased with the sky since it was one that has been bumping around in my head for some time and could never make it work in my previous attempts. I couldn't figure out what color the blue had to be to make the yellowish/orangeish color work. It turned out that the blue wasn't really a true blue at all, but more of a green blue. Once that color relationship was established it then made putting the rest of the painting together much easier and it fell into place rapidly. It only took me four or five false starts to get to this painting, which is fairly typical for me when I am trying something new. That process goes like this: I see a color relationship outside and I think to myself, "Hmmm, that could make an interesting painting...I wonder what color I will have to use in order make a painting feel like this?" I go back to my studio and give it a go. At times I hit it right off the bat (but I can count those experiences on two hands)-others, like with this painting, I struggle to find the right colors that will work with what I have in mind. It's a funny process and not predicable at all.