thinking about directions

This is the first stage of a landscape. Its from a photo that I took from inside the moving car after it snowed. I started with a red covered canvas because I wanted to stay in monochrome, but I coudn't help trying to warm it up. I put the photo through some experiments in Photoshop and came up with a posterized version which I used to paint freehand but using the photo as a reference. The painting is the same size as the landscape that I did before of Los Molinos, in 'plein aire,' You get a different feeling when you are outside and working directly from life. But hopefully this will be a painterly painting, interesting for its shapes and colors, not just its subject matter. The thinking I'm doing these days is to go in 3 different directions. It will probably prove to be too many and too much. Appealing to different 'audiences.' They are landscapes, never a strong area for me, but now that I know more about painting I know they don't have to be all boring green. Then nudes, because I'm starting to go to a Bellas Artes taller in Madrid. Drawing and painting figures from life has always been a favorite activity and brought good results. Third is the expressionist abstracts, the way that my work is really heading. And I forgot the Daily Paintings and white faces... So much to do in so little time...

Small abstract paintings on paper inspired by the Mediterranean Sea coast

I once did a series of abstract paintings on paper inspired by a Japanese man who did very small abstracts on paper, sitting on the floor at his table with the snow outside the windows. The ones I made at that time got lost in my travels, but I've been making new ones, different of course.

A small size allows for concentration and depth. Larger size tends toward grander movements and more initial impact, but small works have a meditative quality that is not easily found in larger works.

That said, my larger paintings also have depth and intricacy, just on a different scale.

Smaller works on paper inspired by the blues of the Mediterranean Sea, sand and sunsets:

Square abstract on paper 4.5 inches or 12 cm

Acrylic Mixed-Media Abstract on Paper 5.5 x 4.5 inches or 14 x 11 cm

1 of Triptych Acrylic Mixed-Media Abstract on Paper 5.5 x 4.5 inches or 14 x 11 cm

Raoul Dufy Painting and his brother Jean Dufy

Since it has been awhile that I've been painting (been traveling, sketching, observing, and writing),
I am studying and practicing to get back into the flow by making small paintings in Raoul Dufy's style, as well as Matisse, Vlaminck and others. Dufy did a lot of fabric design; he was not accepted as one of the "real" artists because his work was considered decorative.

Raoul Dufy, who lived the same time as Matisse, the Fauves and neo-impressionists, had a brother named Jean, who was also an artist and whose painting is a lot like his older brother Raoul's, but interestingly different. Raoul asked younger brother Jean to help him on a large and important project for an exposition in Paris, so Jean came and spent several months doing work for the exhibition, but when it was over Raoul never mentioned the considerable assistance and participation of his brother. They never spoke to each other again.

Here is a book cover from Art Info online  http://blogs.artinfo.com/limitededition/2013/05/31/jacques-bailly-on-jean-dufy/

Here is one of (more) famous brother Raoul Dufy's seaside scenes.

small size Oregon landscapes done outside in "plein aire"

Oregon landscape painting in plein aire, 5 x 7 inches. Acrylic on canvas board.

Here is what I've been doing since I got back from a visit to Spain for a sumptuous family wedding where I spent almost a month and a half. On return I took about a month to recuperate.

Plein aire, small size. This one is 5 x 7 inches. Acrylic on canvas board.

The Oregon landscape in summer has fields of flowers grown for seed.

Organic Abstract acrylic and mixed media painting exhibit

Organic Abstracts Exhibit 

The exhibit is up
(in Silverton Oregon at the Arts Association gallery at MacClaine-Coolidge park)
and the reception was excellent, with a respectable crowd, some from Salem (the largest nearest town, capitol of Oregon).

I got to talk to people about the paintings. One visitor said that my work was spiritual, which was the best compliment of the evening, and someone bought a painting that was one of the crowd's favourites.

I explained Organic Abstract as shapes that were evocative of land masses or human figures.

I realized that these follow in the series that I began my abstracts with -- of the colorful geometric shapes floating in a cyan blue sea -- shapes that are like beings that float and want to meet and touch, but never do.

What are organic abstracts?

Today I went out for a Saturday evening drink with my next door neighbor. We can walk to a popular place nearby that she went to everyday for 6 years before she had to give up drinking.

I gave her one of my business cards for fine art painting. Looking at it, she says "What's 'organic abstract'? which is what the card says that I do. Humm I thought, that's a good question from someone who isn't into art of any kind.

Abstracts I know, she says, but I thought organic was for food. I was a bit mystified as to how to answer. Makes me think I should have done some market testing before I used that description for my work. Well, I said, they are abstract cause you can't recognize trees or something in particular, but look like they could be... and just gave up and pointed to the card-- they look like that.


Except the image on the card is turned sideways so that it looks more like a landscape than the paintings do. Unless the sky is on the sides, which it is in the paintings. A white sky, on both sides.

The Zen Garden gone whiter

The Zen Garden painting, has changed to become more in the spirit of the new organics. See it down on the page in its original form.

I painted the background, the white part, whiter than it was before. Now it is more in sync with the other organic shape paintings. Changing a painting after it is done is really difficult and almost always results in having to re-do the whole thing. This time it worked though, and I like it better, even.

This painting is large, making a striking and yet subtle statement.

Fiinding my painting voice

I did about 3 or 4 posts about the process of the snow tree painting, and at the end I didn't like it.

The sky was almost white and the rest of the painting was very dark.

I turned it sideways and painted the other half over with white, letting the tree-landscape emerge as an abstract shape down the middle.

It almost looked like a human, but made from the landscape. I thought that was interesting.

It has evolved into a "style" of my own and a direction. Comments accepted.

Beginning the Zen Garden painting

I wanted to stay with the Chinese or Asian idea that I had at the beginning with the first painting I did on this canvas with large confident calligraphy-like strokes.

So I went to an article that I had saved about the Ryoanji garden in Kyoto.

The Zen garden, in real life, is a work of abstract art. This is my beginning interpretation of the gardener in his garden.