October 12 show and sale

Willow sunrise

I was asked to participate in landscape show at the Accola Gallery, in Wisconsin, and this is one of the pieces I will be sending. (accolagallery.com) The show runs from October 7 through Thanksgiving. Jean Accola (owner) does beautiful watercolors and oils, and we share an interest in the prairie landscape of the midwest.

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Morning Trees

I painted this a few weeks ago and I think it will be the last really green painting of the year... one of our maple trees already has a lot of orange and the grasses are shades of gold and flax.

There is a new excitement in the air as the warblers are beginning their migration and arrows of geese are moving across the sky.

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Two Strawberries

Some of you may already know this but my sister and I are planning a studio sale here at the farm on Sunday, October 12, from 1-5 pm.   I will have paintings and ceramics on display for sale and my sister Mary  (check out marylogue.com)  will  have her hooked rugs and silk scarves that she hand dyes with local botanicals.  Everyone is welcome so feel free to pass on the information.  This week Mary and I will be designing a mailer that will have more information, including directions, and I will post it here when it is done.  I will be busy between now and the show with framing and getting this place in shape so I may not get a lot of painting done but I will try to keep posting once a week (on Mondays) so please check-in.  I hope everyone is out enjoying the amazing Fall weather!

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Hosta VI --- sold

I have still been thinking about the hosta and painted this one a few weeks ago.  Who knows exactly why some things pull at you?  

Pine Creek II

This is another piece I did while visiting my sister in Wisconsin.  Again I used a limited palette and this time instead of a palette knife I used one brush (I usually have a handful of brushes going!) for the whole piece.

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Montana

Just returned from my Montana trip,  I stayed at my cousin's place, www.LastChanceRanch.biz

outside of Helena.  He does wagon-ride dinners and the second night I was recruited to drive a team of Belgians and a wagon with 18 people in it because his regular driver was not able to make it - fun in spite of rain and hail and 43 degrees (in August!).  The tepee where dinner was served had a fire going and was very cozy.  Check out his website, its a great place up in the mountains surrounded by National Forest.  I was busy with family and the outdoors - did not even bring my paints.  Will get back  at it this week.

Prairie hill --- sold

We have been busy preparing the last 15 acres for prairie planting this November;  maybe I will post  before and after  planting  photos so you can get an idea of what it's like.  During much of the process we were so frustrated and at times wondered if it was worth it...  but now watching all the birds and bugs and other critters who will have an undisturbed pesticide-free home, we would go through it again.  Chimney swifts and swallows are having a great time swooping over the grasses and catching grasshoppers.  I will be in Montana this week so will not be able to post again until the last week of August.

Accola Gallery landscape show

Prairie coneflowers

I have been re-visiting a favorite book of mine, Zen in the Art of Archery.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Eastern philosophy or mind training.  In the forward, D.T. Suzuki writes:

"One of the most significant features we notice in the practice of archery, and in fact of all the arts as they are studied in Japan... is that they are not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind;  indeed, to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality.  If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough.  One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an "artless art"  growing out of the unconscious."

To use a western phrase, being in the flow.  The painting paints itself.  Something to strive for.

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Prairie with silos

Here is another palette knife/limited palette painting of our prairie. I recently read this quote by painter George Inness which hit home to some of what I have been trying to get at:

"...I had begun to see that elaborateness in detail did not gain me meaning... I could not sustain it everywhere and produce the sense of spaces and distances and with them that subjective mystery of nature which wherever I went I was filled."

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Purple Cone Flowers

These coneflowers are in a bed in our front yard, they are not native to our area.  The past days have been some of the hottest and muggiest this summer,  I try to get up and out early to paint and with the tall grasses get covered with dew.  I have been reading Peter Matthiessen's book End of the Earth,  Voyages to Antarctica.  A funny feeling reading about frigid temperatures and Ice bergs and blue and white, while here it is green green green and hot and humid. 

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prairie in bloom

Here is a recent photo of our prairie in bloom.  The photo shows mostly Black-eyed Susans and Daisy Fleabane;  there are other flowers blooming including vervain, bergamot, coneflowers, and blazing star.  The grasses are up to my shoulders in many areas! 

Pine Creek I

I went to my sister's place in Stockholm WI. for a few days last week.  There is a new conservation area there that has been bought and restored by the Western Wisconsin Land Trust.  It is called Pine Creek Natural Area and they have turned an old cow pasture with a down trodden eroded creek into a pristine trout stream with native prairie - its beautiful!  This piece is a continuation of the palette knife and limited palette exploration;  for this I added venetian red (along with white, black, and yellow ochre).

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Our Prairie

I have been working on some larger pieces and doing a bit of experimenting - that's why I haven't posted in a while. This piece came out of my landscape trials. I have been thinking about editing and simplifying, getting down to essentials. I decided to limit myself, and for this piece I took away all brushes and just used one palette knife. I also took away most of my paints and only used white, black, and yellow ochre. My thoughts were to not get caught up in details but to try to get at what is important about this view. It was freeing to not have so many options!

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Yellow Coneflowers II

I have been painting the micro and the macro - flower studies and landscapes. Its such a different process that I find I am having difficulty making the switch, and have not been happy enough with many of my landscapes to post them. I have been thinking about landscapes and the fact that here are acres and miles of land that are being distilled into a few square inches of canvas... to try to get to the essentials without getting caught up in specifics.

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Yellow Coneflowers

There are so many things blooming in the prairie now, I will post a photo soon but I don't think it will do it justice.  The flowers are tall enough so I can paint standing up - my preferred mode, instead of sitting on the ground.  Last night we were walking thru the prairie trails (we had to cut trails because the grasses are nearly to my shoulders!), and we came upon a skunk.  It was a youngster, and was only a few yards from us.  A tough little thing, it started making false charges, pawing the ground with its front feet, backing up, and doing handstands (no kidding).  We just kept watching it and pretty soon it picked up a dead bird it had been eating and resumed; very cute but unfortunately for all the nesting grassland birds

and ducks very carnivorous.   

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Black-Eyed Susans II

I started this piece, got about one-third done, and it started pouring rain, hailing and storming... after an hour or so the rain stopped and the sun came out again. I went back out thinking my poor flowers would be all beaten down by the storm but they survived and I was able to finish my piece! These delicate beings are amazing.

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Black-Eyed Susans I

The weather has been wild.  When painting this piece I had to hold on to my easle with my left hand while I painted with my right  because it was so windy; I  almost quite a couple of times, it felt a little crazy being out there.  Plus I had a stray Brittney Spaniel that had become my best friend and was at my feet the whole time.  Finally the flowers are beginning to bloom in the prairie!

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Prairie's Edge

This is a painting of our prairie;  the flowers are starting to bloom, and it's full of birds and bugs.  It was one of those very heavy-atmosphere Minnesota  summer  days...

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Milkweed II

Usually I go for a long walk the night before or the morning of a painting day, and that's when I discover what I will be painting next.  Its  an emotional pull that I experience while seeing.

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Milkweed I

Painting milkweed has been more difficult than I expected. They gently sway in the wind and  are washed  in full sun;  not a lot of contrast, all soft and powdery.  They have a wonderful smell and very delicate tones.

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Frontenac Prairie II --- sold

                                                            

Frontenac Prairie --- sold

Here are two small field studies I did last week. In landscape painting it is very difficult to distill all you are seeing into a cohesive vision in a short period of time. You have to work fast because the light and weather change so quickly.   Also, dealing with bugs, sun, wind, rain, schlepping stuff around.... it was a great time!

Villa Maria

Here is a photo of Villa Maria in Old Frontenac where I was painting last week.  It is a beautiful site with woods, prairie, and bluffs overlooking the Mississippi river -  a perfect, secluded setting.  If you haven't been there I highly recommend visiting.  It used to be a girl's school and is now owned by the Catholic Church.

White Peonies --- sold

Single Peony

Two more peony paintings I did this week.

Tomorrow I leave for a painting week in Old Frontenac on the Mississippi river. We will be staying at the Villa Maria Retreat Center, which has 70 acres of land and is near a large park that has over 2000 acres.

Phoneless, computerless, choreless - yeah!

My next post will be next weekend.

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Red Peonies

Its funny, I really haven't painted flowers much before this summer;  now they seem to be really speaking to me.

"A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers..." Manet

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Hosta V --- sold

This is the last of the hosta paintings for now - I know I will return to them.  I am most interested in them when they are emerging and have deep inner spaces.  I have been painting peonies this week and will post them as soon as they are dry enough to scan.

our prairie

Here is a picture of an afternoon prairie walk that our friend Carl Hoffman took.  Two years ago this was a soybean field;  in two or three weeks there will be flowers blooming and  I will post another photo.

Peony Buds - sold

Nasturtium --- sold

Every morning the vesper sparrow and the warbling vireo have a singing contest - the former being most tenacious, and the latter winning in enthusiasm!  I couldn't wait any longer for the peonies to open so I painted the buds...  Sunday I noticed the nasturtium were starting to bloom so I was again sitting on the ground painting.  I prefer to paint standing up, your body doesn't get so sore and its easy to step back and squint for values, etc.  But when I paint small flowers I like to get right into them.

Hosta Interior IV --- sold

Couldn't resist doing another hosta,  they are almost fully opened now.  I have been re-reading a little book called In Praise of Shadows,  by Tanizaki.  In it he extolls the gloaming, murky, shady parts of our lives - love it! 

our garden

This is what I have been spending a lot of my time on - and the prairie, which I will post photos of when we get some good bloom action.  A strange garden year with the late Spring, everything is doing really well except the heat lovers - tomatoes, peppers, basil.

lilac --- sold

It has been very rainy and buggy here so I snipped this lilac branch and brought it into my studio to paint.    Now I am patiently awaiting the peonies!

Hosta Interior III --- sold

How do you make an all green painting interesting...

When asked what is the most beautiful in art, Ingres responded  "a colour adjacent to another which most closely resembles it".  Something to think about.  

When painting these Hosta studies I had in mind pieces that could be viewed from any orientation.

I just read "My Stroke of Insight"  by Jill Bolte Taylor.

I highly recommend it - if you haven't heard of her go to 

ted.com and type her in under speakers, there is a video of her that really blew me away. (thanks Amy!).

Hosta Interior I --- sold

These two Hosta studies are 5"x 7" .  I like the difference in experience between painting outside from nature, where the work tends towards looseness and speed, (previous post) and painting in the studio from reference and memory, where the work is more deliberate and thought-out.

Hosta Interior II --- sold

This week it was rainy so I was in the studio.  After such a long Winter and Spring, I feel overwhelmed by the unfurling of all the flora and all the green!  

Nodding Trillium

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Wood Anemone --- sold

Last week I was sitting on the forest floor painting wildflowers... that was pre-rain = mosquitos and broken toe/sprained ankle (horse incident).  The wood anemone and nodding trillium are two small pieces I did.