Reflecting on my art journey's direction

A website about Discovering Your Ju Ju is for me a reminder I must think about finding where I am going with my painting journey. The rain is falling hard on my umbrella and navigating around my studio and home is slowing me down.
I was looking for a couple of flutes I traded for a painting in October. I thought I put them in a closet and I went there first but did not see them tucked behind everything else. I frantically started looking in every nook including my studio where behind stacks of frames and finished painting piled in front of bins on wheels full of more painting behind which is a closet with more shelves stacked with paintings. When there is hardly room to walk safely into my studio, it is time to make some changes. Finally my husband found the flutes on the shelf where I thought they should be but I just couldn't see them because of all the knitting projects and table clothes crammed tight in front of the flutes.
The article speaks of pieces only you could do. I will keep what is truly me and recycle what is not. I have already started to donate seven 8" square Masonite blocks to the acrylic painting class at the Grace Center. Secondly, I am exhibiting about 50 to 60 paintings at the Albany Public Library over the next three months. And I have about 15 at a local business on rotating loan for a decade now. With these paintings out in the community, I will have time and space to retire ones that someone else could have painted. Retiring means recycling them.

Acrylic painting class Grace Center day care for adults

Tuesday seven participants painted 8"Masonite blocks. These two were a demonstration of Negative positive areas and painting with rags, sticks, variegated scrapers as well as brushes.
The class remained engaged for well over an hour.

"Fish Story" exhibit at the Albany Public Library December and January

A free class in painting watercolors, a family event, at the Albany Public Library. Time and details to be announced next week. Below is a painting that will be on display.

"Spawning at the South Santiam Fish Hatchery" watercolor on a full sheet, image size 22" x 30" This is a key painting in the exhibit, "Fish Story" all about volunteers including Boy Scouts helping the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. This painting is donated to Oregon Hatchery and Research Center

December through February Exhibit at the Albany Public Library

"Humbug Creek Revisited after 42 Years", Breitenbush, Oregon, 2002, acrylic on stretched canvas, 55'x 40". The small stones and still waters shaded by vegetation has been flooded away down to bed rock, the big mossy bolder remains. Although my mother's prophetic view of forests and fisheries is partially true, I have paintings telling optimistic stories of volunteers working the Department of Fish and Wildlife to reclaim nature's bounty.

My mother and I did art work on a camping trip. Hers is pencil on watercolor paper, 22" x 18". I did not understand her work then. Now I see she was drawing the future of idle fishermen waiting for the fish to return. The eroding deforested hills with corny fields of planted trees. Mine was of the stream in a corridor of woodlands by the creek. Humbug Creek, Oregon, 1960, oil, 24" x 18"

Alsea River, Acrylic on Museum wrapped canvas, 40" x 55" These paintings ar edonated to Oregon Hatchery Research Center.

Accordion Folded watercolor of Rocky Creek Wayside

This 9 1/2" x 4" painted on location has some information that a photograph did not. My eye saw more color and textures. I tend to exaggerate them and the camera made the whole more smooth.

November 6, 2010 watercolor workshop

"Drift Creek Falls" (7 1/2" x 4 ")

In September I painted on a hike to a newly reopened trail. The falls was greatly changed from last year because the face of the cliff fell covering the pool below. The cliff is clean basalt columns and gone are the mossy sides with water seeping through.

the painting was made from under the suspension bridge. These falls are to be found off of Hwy 18 after the Van Duzer Forest Corridor, turn left onto Bear Creek Road part paved, part gravel for 8 miles to a newly paved parking lot. The picture is from my accordion folded watercolor journal, painted on location. This is a sample for my workshop next month at the Oregon Fall Creek Fish Hatchery and Research Center.

For specific information of the workshop not at the waterfalls but in a class room with a window looking out at a bubbling stream. See the next post below for more details.

Workshop at Fall Creek Fish Hatchery and Research Center

This will be the fourth year that I have taught watercolor at Fall Creek Fish Hatchery and Research Center. It is free but pre regestration is necessary. It is the first Saturday, November 6. To secure a place call Joseph O'neil at 1-541-487-5512. Below is a student's work from last year.

In the afternoon it was dark and rainy outdoors. I tried to find an activity that did not involve going outside to paint.


Here is one result " Fort Hood" rendered by a gentleman who took up my idea of expressing your emotions and the perception of all your senses. Looking through my collection of photographs he selected one as a starting point. It was a sunset over water with grass in the foreground. For his "Fort Hood Flag at Half Mast" he preferred to paint on pure white paper slightly sullied by the folded grid for a book. The paper had been folded into 16 square pages but not cut. I don't know if the gentleman was aware of the symbolic significance of his heart felt memorial painting. I see this as an expressive work.
As a teacher I don't feel I had much success in convincing my students that they really have so much art inside them.
For the most part I had some very appreciative students learning some basic possibilities for carrying watercolors outdoors. I heard some wonderful questions on techniques. In hind sight I have additional things I want to share at the Fall Creek Fish and Art Festival, 2010.






I received this question. What specifically can I do to improve my style in watercolor?

This was a great question and the class was almost over. I had spent so much time talking about how to be prepared for sun, and rain and hunger and thirst. I showed how to manage drying your work without a hairdryer. I fear especially for the beginning students, there is a need to know much more about getting the paint from the palette to the paper. What different possibilities does a round pointed brush have in contrast to a flat one? Where do you begin first with the forms or the spaces around?
The beginning point doesn't matter. Then proceed on the path of least resistance making what you do as simple as possible. To improve your sense of color and how you form and place your images there is nothing better than trial. Select what you like best. Keep painting and drawing into your paintings. I really like to tint the paper before I paint and then just a few lines on location makes for painting that tends to be tied together.
I wish all my students more exciting, memorable painting experiences.

Abstract from my Indian Summer Yard

This diptyic is oil on 12" square Masonite boards with supports 1 1/2" deep. Just enjoyed making one more oil painting day before trying to put them away for the season. I paint outdoors because none of my studio areas are well ventilated.

Water energy as seen in emotional symbols in abstract painting

Acrylic on Masonite blocks, 12" square.

At home touches to paintings made in Winnebago studio

I had a wonderful month painting in my outdoor Winnebago studio. I was on the bank of the Siletz River at the Coyote Rock RV Resort and Marina.
These canvases are 24" x 24". I will hang them up in my house to look at and think about. It was my intention to express my emotions in an abstraction departing from the objects in the picture until the subject was no longer important. But I just couldn't depart to the non-objective in these two paintings.

My touches to this first painting covered the entire canvas except the mountain in the back ground. The Sprightly Splash received some value changes in the splash itself. I do not like pure white from the jar.

Painting the kinetic feel of rock and waves

The self portrait is more finished than when I first posted it below.

From high above looking down painting the ocean at Rock Creek Wayside,
I hear power in waves roaring towards me like freight trains.
The joy in my heart is protected by the cozy cove of rock solid ribs and my gloved right hand.
The water energy slaps me in becoming a splash of energized droplets on canvas.

Munson Creek Falls on accordion folded watercolor paper

The most pleasing thing about this watercolor is immediacy and spontaneously. I didn't go back afterwards and make changes.the Munson Creek Falls are a true gem. a few years ago trees obscured the view. Now they are completely revealed.

Paintings from seeing high surf at Rocky Creek

My intention was to use what I was experiencing as a springboard to an abstraction leading to a journey. I feel these paintings were about the energy of surf that roared like freight trains rushing to a crash on the rocks. The water exploded. These two paintings are just a beginning. Another one could make a leap to something but I don't know what yet.

September painting inspiration on the Oregon Coast

Today it is raining hard and I am taking time to reflect on my husband's photos.

I'll put my paintings out in the dry of our motor coach to look at them more critically.

Motor Coach and RV Resort Art Studio on the Siletz

Remembering painting at Rocky Creek Wayside, I did some preparatory watercolors on an accordion folded paper. The paper was damp through and through by a drizzle. The black lines were drawn after the color. I was pleased at how the Prismacolor black pencil lines melted into a nice dark line like ink.

When it is too rainy or windy outdoors I can set up my easel in the Coyote Rock's partially enclosed patio.

Abstract diptych #1 from Siletz River Valley Inspiration

Rectangular diptych, Acrylic on canvas,

34" x 24"

The object here is to use nature as a beginning of a creative journey. The next two paintings will depart farther into my own emotions and imagination.

From the Oregon Coast

I am looking forward to days a little drier than today like the one in the photograph here. I am going to paint in the drizzle but our computer locks up when I try to download pictures. So until my camera is cleared of potentially harboring a virus, I will just paint more.

The way I paint and draw is very nearly the same.

For a month abstracts approaching non-objective content have been my focus on this blog. In addition I have been making pen and ink illustrations. To my great surprise I learned that my best most direct and expressive work in both is done when I am standing up. Even when I am working in 3 inch square area I need to have free movement of my arm.
Secondly, I learned that I needed to be in a certain moment when I had a whole over all awareness of what I was making. As soon as I fixated on a part of the painting that was not as precious as another, the changes were forced. I can be very good at finessing a spontaneous look but it is always very difficult and often I fail. Like in my paintings when I draw, I started changing small areas using white-out making forced areas in an otherwise precious drawing.
In both drawing and painting, I work myself up into an emotional state of what I am making. When I tried to copy analyzing the angles and sizes, the emotion and spontaneity was dead. The same death to my spirit occurred with tracing on a light table.
Today I am going to buy more sumi ink and nibs for my old fashioned pen. I love the way it responds to my slightest differences in pressure as though I was sculpting. As for the rags, I have been using on my paintings, I am going to fashion more paint shapers from rubbish I would ordinarily throw in the garbage.

Abstract Painting of the Color of Some News Broadcasts - Red Hype and Yellow Truth Twisters

These two 32" square acrylic paintings were first about the emotion of the ocean and clouds and not about reproducing a picture of them. The meaning I wished for my paintings became clear from a single comment of my husband on the news of another dip in the economy and general worsening of the world situation from small entities that make splashy headlines. I am very much for freedom of the press and demand more journalists out there with more stories and less hype and regurgitation.

progress on large dyptic

As yet untitled these two acrylic paintings are 32" squares on linen.