At Seal Rock we enjoyed friends and taking pictures

Watching at the window an ever changing beach front. Rain and Farm Boss and my husband Don counting the wild life before us.

We were awed by the northward migration of the Pelicans riding the air currents just above the waves.

Don kicked back and relaxed watching the sunset.

Rain in a thoughtful mood.

Rain enjoyed being in Farm Bose's lens. The ocean is a healing place.



Rain and Farm Boss walked towards Seal Rock in the distance.

Rain photographing calm and turbulent waters.


A bedroom patio door at Seal Rock.

Even though I am a quick painter, I felt I would miss something while painting. So I outdid myself in photographs. I don't have the patience though to manage the photographs when I would rather be out painting. But I just had to capture the moment this way. The room looks like a a Matisse painting. The good feeling bedroom and the beautiful coast made me want to take picture after picture.

Paintings at Seal Rock

Sheltered Pools, watercolor and watercolor crayon in sketch book, 5" x 9", $90

Here are some paintings exploring the journey towards non-objective paintings done from the window in the rental house. Then when I painted outdoors in the sand and cool, the usual urge to illustrate the primal gestures of rock and water over shadowed my trial direction towards paint for paint's sake springing from inspiring nature.

Green Life Center, watercolor and gouache, 6" x 10", $120


Two Rocks in Water, Gouache, 5" x 11", $80

In the well stocked library at the house where we stayed is a small paper back volume, "The World View of Paul Cezanne, A Psychic Interpretation", by Jane Roberts, Introduction by Seth. I wait until another visit to read the entire book, but I did find a quote that validates my old journey in painting. P. 118

Nature's vitality must be suggested through the artist's strokes and squiggles of color each seemingly alive, rising up from the canvas as, for example, the stem from the ground - not all at once with its final thickness and height, but in strokes mimicking natures own rhythms as the stem grows invisible but vital inches at a time...So the brushstrokes must capture that invisible thrust.

I have talked about energy movement in earlier posts. Rhythm of strokes that grow with invisible thrust has been a focus for so long I started to paint as I have been doing adapting the manner of Cezanne.

Boughs after Cezanne, gouache, 6" x 15", $90

I have also admired Winslow Homer. It wasn't my intention. I just didn't know as usual where the painting would go and the wet atmosphere on the sandy beach prompted me to paint this way because I was enjoying the granular softness.

Rock Stands Against Sudden Wave, watercolor and gouache, 8" x 10", $90

Photograph Abstracts

I love color and texture and paint for paint's sake. So when I see color and texture in nature I reproduce it in photographs. Digital photography makes it possible for me to quickly crop and publish my found inspiration. Now I need not use these photos for painting inspiration for abstracts. I am free to work from immediate experience and emotions. Very likely my photographs will influence my painting subconsciously.

Painting process inspires photographs

I had results applying the idea that my painting objective is not to reproduce the landscape but to use the landscape as a springboard to a journey. I painted the pines with the ocean in the background. Then I took more photographs of the pines. As I was painting I noticed the red color of the new rowth in the tops of pine trees.

Some more ideas from Diane Hoff's methods of intuitive process

Warm ups are always good for getting into a state of mind ready to accept playing off of what is happening rather than rigidly controlling. The door way watercolor in blue and red was done while wearing violet colored sunglasses revealing new ways of seeing. The white doors grouped themselves with a cool zone. When I wasn't looking at the paper the pencil working on the paper's resistance caused the forms to be shaped in the calligraphic strokes of some Hebrew alphabets pointed out Diane Hoff. The resistance, I believe, of the quill nub on velum has much to do with the calligraphic strokes in the Hebrew alphabet. All written alphabets take on their shape from the medium taking character from the brush or stone cut letters for examples. When you are not looking at the paper you do not fight the medium and the drawing flows like calligraphy.

Diane Hoff's pastel and dualchrome mica painting workshop

This was a day of eye candy and play with important lessons on what I could be doing to improve how I paint. I do criticise my work and that keeps the intuitive under a lid. We were given many tools to give our creative selves permission. Diane has just two more work shops left before going to Scotland where she will build another teaching studio.

The first painting we did was with two colors - a warm and a cool. We looked at the stimulus object in nature but not the paper. I chose a doorway with a chair and planter jars. The purpose of using the non-dominate hand is that you really look and experience nature more fully in a tactile non-verbal awareness. To make this experience different from what I ordinarily do in abstracted painting was to use some architectural angles in the doors and chair. I used the angularity as a opposed to organic form without trying to reproduce the scene.

We picked two colors that we didn't like - Thalo green and lamp black. Also a watercolor pencil . I hated the result until I dripped some dualchrome green and gold to extend the thalo green to another sensation.

On a prepared paper with iridescent gold and mauve tinted paper I used a weathered tree stump for the linear detail and form. The color perole orange was a favorite choice unrelated to the subject. The stump was not important as an object for the painting.

These two paintings on Canson watercolor paper were done playing one off the other. Some dried Fennel pods were the springboard for a beginning to stimulate an inward intuitive journey where playing was the rule of the day. Well the word rule is poor because we were encouraged not to try to make something that fits in preconceived formula. We were trying to shut out the critics in our head and learn from new adventures. These two were done using iridescent pastel and water. I loved the paper and wished to play the paper against the pastel brushed like paint.

Iridescent and duochrome acrylic on dark gray Spectrum toothy sandy paper. The fern texture came from blotting it on another paper pictured below.

Iridescent acrylics on Spectrum pastel mixed media paper from Australia.

Two Intuitive Paintings - Cherry Blossom Iris, Ship of State

Further journeys of "The White Blushing Iris" started yesterday at Jim Beecroft's iris test garden, mixed media and collage, 23" x 22", $150.

When I start I do not try to copy nature but work towards the feeling I get and let the intuitive take over.. I didn't know that the flower would keep getting larger and that I would want to add more paper to the top. So today I pasted watercolor paper to the top and added some torn pieces of watercolor paper. When working intuitively I need to let this rest before deciding if this is the energy I want to have in this painting. I think I lost some of the fragile paper thin petal quality. The second painting of the flower did not hold my interest.

When working intuitively some paintings happen and I don't know how they do. One example of a train of thought that is to me beyond my usual consciousness is this painting of a naval cargo ship hull.

March 23, 2003, "Ship of State, Our Burden - Liberating Iraq", mixed water media, 22" x 30" , NFS.

My husband and I went fishing and crabbing in Yaquina Bay by Newport, Oregon January through March 2003. We use to jig for herring bate by the old derelict World War II Navial Cargo ships used as a wharf. The ferro-cement hull was eerie and became a springboard to abstracted images. On this one I intuitively saw the old military supply ship as a means of communicating about war at an emotional level that all faiths including Islam could look at and see.

The ships I wanted to use as a symbol is falling apart. In recent months there is a plan to use government stimulus money to mitigate the danger of stored oil leakage and at best the entire ferro-cement hull will be removed. At the time of painting these ships I saw the rust as the blood of our best men leaking the strength of our country. I started writing my thoughts as they randomly entered my mind. The hope I had for the Iraq war was this: That we would be responsible while not becoming the imperialist. I hoped that we would learn that we were not better than other countries. I wrote "I do not think about whether we were right or wrong to invade Iraq. We are committed to succeed beyond winning or loosing or somewhere between. Win or not our crystal image will transform - evolution of our self awareness as citizens of the world will have to be mankind's goal. Imagine a world where no one feels the need to terrorize. Yes, we can. Yes, we will. We will demonstrate all kinds of people with strongly held opposing ideas can live together in respect!!!

We are not going to wake up one morning in the next year or so and find we have entered a world without fear. But when we compare March 23, 2003 with today, our president is reaching out to all countries and to all our citizens although we are completely different.

Albany Painting Enthusiasts at Iris Test Garden on Independence Hwy.

I took these pictures because we have iris and the grass has bloomed since I painted it last. And I want to paint them in the breezy morning. Maybe tomorrow!



Today I drove to Jim Beecroft's Test Iris Garden on Independence Hwy. and met with fellow artists from Albany.

"Energy of Blushing White Iris" watercolor media and watercolor crayon in process, 15" x 22", $150

Cherry Blossom Iris

This morning was a little breezy and cool. I loved taking pictures of the grass in my own back yard and was having some separation anxiety but I put the effort out to pack a lunch and head for this wonderful garden that Michael and Billie Moore was able to get permission for us to paint. I am so fortunate to be a part of this group. It was fun to have a bite of lunch and visit.