See my blog titled Diane Widler Wenzel to view my latest paintings of Talking Water Garden, Albany, Oregon.

Steve Carpenter, painter of world renown is giving back

Steve Carpenter is a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, Portland, Oregon. He is an example of when your high school teachers and friends believe you can be an artist to the fullest depth of the word, the seed of the dream can materialize with work and focus. In high school Steve's biggest dream was to be an illustrator like Norman Rockwell which he accomplished early on in his career. He was a commercial artist for Disney as part of a rich art journey taking him to Europe where he was a fine arts painter. Recently he returned back to the United States to give back to the arts by creating a school in New York. Steve says anyone can learn to draw and learn from him by watching a four hour long video on building a portrait.
Below is his painting "Cosmos Dialous I".

Below Steve's teacher, Henry Heine's demonstration from years ago has sharp differences and faint similarities.

"The Mechanical Birds" by Henry Heine was part of his lesson. He showed us a number of examples of cubist painters and talked about the history of science impacting the artists of the early 20th century. Artists learned from science that there were more ways to see. Mr. Heine, also, demonstrated the process at work. He applied the paint with a sprayer and used printing techniques as well as brushes. He demonstrated an energetic attitude and promised us a break through where we would let our hair down, feel freedom, and promised it would be great fun for us when we make a break through where creative expression would flow. During the 60's there was a movement in art education to paint from our own notions and disregard the tradition of representational painting. This philosophy produced practitioners of painting who complain. Many felt misguided because they don't know what they are doing when painting abstracts. During the three years we were with him, Heine gave us an understanding of abstracting the essence and directional guides based on art history in many of his assignments.

Henry Heine somewhere in the cosmos is very proud of Steve. To learn more about Steve click on the links in blue and underlined above.

Inanimate things or people the most difficult to paint?

I find no difference in difficulty whether I am painting something alive or inanimate. I paint their gesture and energy. When I am painting the rocks I feel myself as a rock. The gesture of the rock comes from its skelton-like creation standing up to water and wind. When I am painting the ocean water instead of picking a still moment. I do a dance of gestures as though I were to paint. I feel slish, slosh, kazame of water moving into the rocks pushed by weather and tidal forces. My muscles do the planning in a state completely in the moment. Theoretically my goal is to live in tha moment.
The end results do not always flow. But when they do I am pleased.

February 3rd, Seal Rock Sunset

Seal Rock - 60 degrees F.-slight breeze - 10 foot swells

Wishing to correct for the scale of Seal Rocks and the early morning sun light on them, I painted over the on location experience. I think this one was a learning experience.