Wu, the tree planting general and volunteer for Fish and Wildlife

Shivering Daffodils

I am keeping my eyes open for inspiration. This morning brought a snow shower and the daffodils hung their heads as a snowy wedding veil covered their too early to bloom petals. In past years I noticed daffodils blooming in March always were followed by snow. It isn't even March yet. I must paint this one.

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.

Painting from Accordion Folded Photo, Watercolor Study

There are many ways to use accordion folded watercolor paper books. They make great greeting cards. They store well in a shoe box along with photos for keeping memories. Here I will talk about how in the studio they stand up like a card next to my paints and pallet as an inspiration. I walked to a North Albany field a half of a mile from my house. I was traveling light with a camera and paper and field painting supplies. The stubble grass and distant shapes were similar to the free images Martha Marshal shared on her blog, Artist's Journal. She offered images as a starting point for others to use as inspiration. With just my camera and my Koi Watercolors Pocket Field Sketch Box I worked around Martha's photos pasted to my accordion folded watercolor paper. The object was to compare the photos to what I was seeing. Then I worked at matching the colors and textures and linear qualities employing the Koi set of colors and a brush containing a reservoir of water. Later I added photos taken on location to the collage. Finally I painted lines around the parts of the study that appealed to me. I wanted to find emotional content for a painting in progress of dream clouds. I will in a few days publish the dream cloud painting.My experience with going lightly in the field and more will be the content of my hands on workshop. All supplies are furnished free. The watercolor workshop at the Fall Creek Festival is just a week away. There is still time to register leaving your choice of work shops and vegetarian preference for lunch at 541-487-5512 or e-mail oregonhatchery.researchcenter@state.or.us

November 7, 10:00 AM to 4 PM. This year the family friendly workshops also has special children's activities in addition to workshops in leather working, fish printing, card making, wire wrap Jewelry, and basket Making in addition to my watercolor exploration.

Picture wire stem, paper wiped in acrylic rose

Happy accident with one of the tall Golden acrylics! I mopped up the patio glass table with a paper towel and left the wipe out overnight. When it dried it looked so pretty that I fastened a wire to it and now have a rose. Maybe I should not trow away my paint rag paper towels and make them into flowers as an environmental consideration.

Woodlot Mother and Grandson at Bond Butte Pond

Tomorrow my new painting will be due for "This Everlasting Valley II" at River Gallery, Independence, Oregon, May 5 through July 5.

The day before it is due I started making a small change and ended up repainting most of the painting to pop out the figures while establishing a path for the eye to explore and come back to the figures.

The purpose of my painting is to paint an update on the painting, "Mother Thinning Woodlot" my other painting that will also be on exhibit.

Celebrating volunteers and donations for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wild Life my painting is of Woodlot Mother sharing the pond where her trees are now embracing a hatch of warm water fish at an I5 Freeway pond. The pond was dredged out to build up the highway over the wetland farms. The painting is nearing completion. Next the submerged tree will embrace the fish like the grandmother embracing her grandson.

Diane Widler Wenzel’s Journey in Paint

All my paintings put together chronologically are a pictorial journal of my life. For 44 years some of my journey is Willamette Valley farming, forestry and fisheries starting from when I helped my husband to be, Donald Wenzel, plant trees near Vernonia, Oregon. I painted us trout fishing from a row boat among the flooded snags at Quarts Lake. At the Cooper Mountain Wenzel Farm I painted him on the antique family tractor putting up hay bales. Then we married in 1965 and moved away. Twenty years later we moved back to Oregon. We settled in a North Albany neighborhood with farm pasture and forest in our back yard.

Our neighbor, Dian Gerstner, is a true stewardess of the earth as she cares and tends her overgrown Christmas tree lot, harvesting firewood, and removing dead trees. She is the Mother of the Woodlot, the subject of my painting of 1999.

I painted a series telling the story of how we sold our pasture lot in 2007. The fir trees were cut down to make way for a house.

One of the paintings was a dream that did not materialize with our trees. My dream was that the root balls were placed in a pond where the tangled roots provided shelter for small newly hatched fish. This painting may have helped to inspire my husband to volunteer his logging skills.

April 2008 many of Mother Woodlot’s pine trees had dead tops and the lower branches of the trees were thick masses of dead dry fuel – a real danger for a possible hot wild fire. The cleaning up of the fire hazard was a must to ensure the safety of the encroaching urban development. Mother Woodlot donated some of her smaller trees and brushy branches to enhance the fish habitat on Bond Butte Pond near Halsey - a large freeway lake where gravel was dredged out to raise the I5 Freeway above the wet lands. My husband volunteered his logging skills working more than full time for over a month. He chain sawed out dense limbs. He pulled out less healthy trees with the tractor and put them in big piles for hauling. He arranged for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to hire a logging trucker for the purpose of knocking down larger trees and transporting three loads to streams.

What an unexpected joy awaited me when I first visited Bond Butte Pond and saw how the pond is being transformed from a scar on the landscape to a park of great beauty enhancing the farm land of the Willamette Valley as well as providing recreational warm water fishing and abundant wildlife. Thus I have come a long way to paint “Grandmother and Grandson in the Fishery Created from her Trees – Bond Butte Pond.”

Diane Widler Wenzel Bio
Recording my Journey in Paint

Education :

1966 Bachelor of Science Degree with high honors in drawing and painting,
Portland State College, Portland, Oregon.

Solo Exhibitions
2009 May, Recent Journey, Sam’s Station, Corvallis
November ’08 – January, Of the Oregon Coast, Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport,
2008 “Hidden Dragons,” Sam’s Station, Corvallis
“Dragons Boogie Woogie,” Enid Joy Mount Gallery, Keizer Art Association
2005 “ A Vase of a Hundred Flowers” Pegasus Art Gallery, Corvallis
2003 “Trip to Tibet” Albany City Hall
2001 “Personal Symbols,” Footwise Window, Corvallis
2000 “Alaska Watercolors,” Boccherini’s Coffee Shop, Albany
“Robinson House Series,” Footwise Window, Corvallis
1999 “Watercolors,” Albany City Hall
“Waves in Abstract,” Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport, Oregon
1998 “Water Impressions,” Illustrated Garden Gallery, Corvallis
“Watercolors and Acrylics,” New Morning Bakery, Corvallis
1993 Good Samaritan Hospital, Corvallis
Arts and Letters Gallery, Albany
1986 Two Rivers Market, Albany
1978 The Nut Loft, Aloha
My Studio, Clover Bldg., Bellingham
1969 Interactive Painting with Installation, Magnolia Gallery, Bellingham
Parlor Gallery, Portland, Oregon
1968 Hamman's Gallery, Bellingham, Washington
1967 Courtyard Gallery, Illahe Hills Country Club, Salem
Lake Oswego and Beaverton Public Libraries
La Points Department Store, Salem
1966 The Loft Theater Gallery, Tucson, Arizona

Group Exhibitions

2007 acrylic paintings, “Four Women Seven Years Later”
Benton County Historical Museum, Philomath, Or
Feathers, Fins and Fire,” a group of three painters
La Selles Stewart Center, Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon
2006 This Bountiful Place, Portland ,Oregon
1999 13 watercolors and acrylics,
“Four Women Artists Celebrating the Seasons of Life,”
Benton County Historical Museum

Redwood Sapling

"Redwood Sapling" is acrylic on cradled wood board 12" square by 1 1/2" deep. Not for sale until the completion of my series on our urban forest is complete.

Reducing Fire Danger in Overgrown Christmas Tree Lot

My husband on tractor is pushing the burn pile together burning excessive branches.This picture was taken exactly a year after posting my environmental painting of birds and fish benefiting from a root ball in a pond. When I did this final painting of the series about loosing the fir trees I had no idea that I could continue the story this year. Pictured above is one of last years paintings, " The Dream, A Submerged Root Ball is a Fish Nursery." acrylic on cradled Masonite, 12" square by 1 1/2" deep, will be for sale when series is complete. This is an important series in my life work. More paintings will follow soon.

I am overwelmed that my dream came true. My husband is lining up trees to be transported soon to ponds which fill old rock quarries where gravel was dug for the I 5 Freeway that traverses Oregon between California and Washington. The stumps and root balls will provide habitats for fisheries thaks to volunteer workers like my husband.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wild Life loading fallen trees.

Thinned Overgrown Christmas Trees

"Thinned Overgrown Christmas Trees" is acrylic on a cradled wood box 6" x 8" x 1 1/2", ready to hang, no frame necessary, for sale $100 plus postage. For fire protection my husband is thinning a neighbor's Christmas trees grown to 45 feet tall. These trees are not of much commercial value so they are being donated to the Department of Fish and Wild Life. The tree with root ball will be placed in the old gravel pits left behind when they were dug out for the construction of I5 Freeway. These gravel pits have filled with water and will become better fish habitats with the addition of these spindly trees and roots.
This project came about after I painted a series on the trees cut down on the lot we sold. I imagined that their roots were placed in a lake and fish fry were swimming and taking shelter in the tangled roots. So this means I will continue the series started just over a year ago. http://umbrellapaintingjournal.blogspot.com/2007/05/fish-habitat.html#links

Invasive Ivy on South Santiam River, Sweet Home, Oregon

Saturday my husband and I fished between Foster Dam and Sweet Home. We were in our drift boat going down river. My husband lost a steelhead before the island. Near the take out on river left just before the park I could see two dead trees strangled by ivy. The painting, "Ivy Strangles Trees" is acrylic on a cradled board 12" x 9" x 1 3/4". This one is for sale for $99.

Tomorrow I will post painted abstractions from my memory of healthy trees on the South Santiam River.

Fish Habitat

The blue jays may have lost their nest of many seasons when the pine tree fell but the roots would make shelter for juvenile fish. Here I continued my 12" square block series of the fallen fir tree. The masonite block was sized with layers of gray tinted gesso. And after beginning to paint with watercolors I set the colors with gloss medium or painted spots with "Golden" canvas colored absorbent ground. The ground made the masonite board take paint as though it were paper. These mixed media applications satisfied my need to show the freshness of spring.

Nesting in a Painter's Motor Coach

When I am recuperated from surgery, my husband and I will go traveling in our Winnebago Coach. RVing is new to us and we are busy customizing our new home. I am preparing a soft sided cooler on wheels for my art supplies. Everyday will bring a chance to paint either inside in my passenger seat studio or outdoors. Managing my painting with as little impact on the environment, I may paint with acrylics on acrylic that I pour and dry. I do not want to use wood stretcher bars and discard cardboard and shrink wrap. Shrinking plastic is not good for the environment. The challenge will be the presentation. Wouldn't it be a kick to recycle throw away trash into something attractive and meaningful.

Thank you Martha Marshall for your comment. Yes low tech pencils and watercolors are good for traveling. I am open and appreciate suggestions on being an artist on wheels.

One New Tree in the Neighborhood

Acrylic on 12" square x 1 7/8" deep Masonite box.

This is the fifth painting of the tree life cycle series. It is a sequoia planted by a neighbor last week. The neighbors will also miss the view of the fallen trees and the sequoia will be wonderful to watch as it grows and will hold a great deal of the water and help dry the very wet ground here. In the foreground there is a twigs left behind from the trees fallen to make way for a new house. We also plan to plant some trees but will wait until our new neighbors build their home.

Trees' Life Cycle

The two jay birds' nest fell to the ground with the tree. I may need more detail showing that the tree is on the ground. This painting is taking me the longest to resolve because the blue of the birds did not show up until I popped them out by darkening the background. Today I began to recapture the magic of the tree top first revealed to me when I first looked at it on the ground.

My series is not done. The second one with the round cut tree was a disappointment when placed in the group. It is the only dominate round shape and looks like a distracting target. Today's painting of the newly planted tree is developing well. When seen with the group I see it needs cues to show it is the only close up picture. It could be mistaken for a mature tree when it is supposed to be a newly planted tree. Please click on the pictures to see a larger image.

From Fir Tree to Cooking Coals

At 2:45 this afternoon I set up my easel to paint the last coals from yesterday's burning. There was such a small pile now of aches from our two fir trees cut down to make space for the building of a new home. I wanted to contrast the burn pile and dirt piles with the earlier paintings I did of the standing trees. The fire was still hot. I put a clay sculpture of a head into the coals and then decided to get a Reynald's heavy duty pouch filled with our dinner. I watched dinner cook as I painted. The dinner cooked faster than I thought, so we had dinner at 4:15 P. M. After dinner I only two plates the aluminum pouch to clean up and I went outside and finished my painting.

Fir Tree Cut Down Today

To see a larger image please click on the picture.

Acrylic on deep cradled Masonite box, 12" square, 1 5/8" deep.

This morning I had every intention of painting the blue bird peaking at himself in our pick up mirror. I took more pictures. Today he was alone, the female nowhere to be seen. Then when I was ready to paint he was gone. Later this afternoon half of the two top fir tree was cut down. Because of the rain I just sketched onto the board with charcoal pencil and went inside to paint.

Burning Logging Slash

Fourty years ago I helped plant some trees in Oregon. Then moved away from the state: The trees were neglected. Many did not live but a few did grow to fourteen inches in diameter. Most of the surviving trees were felled this year. I had not seen the place since we planted the trees, and today I went back. It felt like a historic occasion. The snow covered the sore ground covered with debree by the loggers. Steam rose above the snow and burning piles. Taking a break from feeding the fires, I painted in my moleskin.