Not Always Successful

6.5" x 4.5" Green In South Carolina 5

I was trying out my oil paint paper -- Arches -- again today, trying to capture that green, sunny South Carolina summertime feeling again. I got the trees and the distant sunshine in ther and even ALMOST got the color scheme right, but it just did not come together for me today. Perhaps when I come back to it later I'll feel differently. It doesn't really bother me too much when this happens, but it seems senseless when it does.

Green in South Carolina 5

What I mean by that is that I'll have an idea of what I want, I'll be working it out as I go and it will be progressing well, then suddenly the paint is not going on like I want it to. I wipe some off and try again. Nope. It's not behaving. I persist. Eventually I get to a stopping point, but the mood that I was trying to capture has eluded me. I think I may come back to it another time, but I may not. Sometimes it's better to just drop it and move on. Perhaps I'll do a few studies that will help me to better understand how to get the effect that I'm going for . . . those trees on the right and the close-up tree . . . the folage is just not right. And the sun doesn't look like it is shining through. Okay, enough. Move on.

Christmas Day, 2014
Later, I did go back to this little piece. Here is the result. I'm much happier iwth the depth and the sunlight shining across the trees.

Seeing Through Artist's Eyes

16"x 20" Green Orchard, Oil on Canvas

I'm over half a century old, and I've been making art of some kind or other for most of that time. Yes, there have been times when I did not make art; that comparison of how a practicing artists looks around her to, well, how a non-practicing artist looks around her. In those times when I have been regularly drawing, painting, collaging, everything I look at is seen as colors, textures, patterns; I'm thinking of how to get that effect, how to express that moment.

The feeling comes first: wordless, eyes widen, breathless. Then comes the smile, a feeling of great satisfaction, wonder. Next, the translation begins, as I described above. It's not even done in words. It's more of a wordless thought process. For me, it is connected to, flows from, my beingness. I'm being myself, an artist; I'm doing what I do, seeing and changing it, one foot in this shared world and one foot in my own, personal world; How can I bring this world into that world? How do I share this?

This painting is a window into that early morning, patterned colorful world of my childhood.

"If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul." Paul Cezanne