Transfer of energy to canvas

This is a detail of a large canvas 44x48 that I am working on.

Since I paint with abstract expressive color using an impressionistic style rather than working to create a likeness as a realist might, it frees me maybe more to let the energy I feel transfer to the canvas.

This detail shows how in a combination of brush strokes and palette knife I am able to make the energy transfer. The color also helps because it creates visual textures.

A break is often good

Due to all the graduation parties, my daughter Hannah getting married and the usual spring fix-up chores and gardening chores -- painting time each spring suffers.



By mid June things settle out and my routine news -- hopefully it will be like previous years where after a break I am refreshed and approach my subjects with a new energy.



This 24x36 inch painting --oil on canvas -- was done from a photograph in the studio. I was on Blue Herron trail in the Mississenwa State recreation area when suddenly the trail went through a stand of pines. Most of these were in perfect rows, probably some state conservation project, but now they were tall and the lower branches all dead from lack of sun. They appeared to be shaking hands with one another.



This was done with a wash of color that was then balanced with the addition of color added with brushes. Finally, texture and interest was added with multiple sized pallette knives.



"Pines shaking hands" $1,000 Framed. To purchase this picture see contact us at http://www.avonwaters.com/

Size does matter: style can transfer to larger formats

"Up in the Sycamores before the Spring Bud" -- $400; if you wish to purchase this 20x24 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/, contact us or click on the Etsy.com button on the right of this blog.

I've finally figured out a way to convey the style and textural richness that I create with my smaller works into larger sizes. While in Bogota Colombia, I bought some interesting small and oddly shaped palette knives.

Up until now my style has been schizophrenic, my smaller pieces having a heavy impasto and my larger pieces having more broad thin paint. More recently I managed to be able to add interest to the areas that had of broad color by adding brush strokes of a small brush on its side, but this painting is truly a break through because it uses the heavy impasto of the palette knife that I use in the smaller paintings using the pallet knives from South America. They create a brush-like pattern when held one way and can create the familiar tonal smear when used more broadly.

The obvious revealed: exaggerating light

"Dead Pine in the Woods" -- $140; if you wish to purchase this 9x12 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/, contact us or click on the Etsy.com button on the right of this blog.

This painting is of a dead pine tree I found in the woods at the Mississinewa Lake recreation area in Indiana. Forty years ago, I remember riding in the back of the car into this area as the dam was being built. The houses were abandoned but not yet torn down to make way for the new flood control reservoir.

Had I not made those trips, I would have not been able to recognize the significance of this pine tree and several other pine trees that were in the middle of a thick woods. This is really the reminisce of what used to be someone's home and the pine was part of landscaping around the circular drive. In the woods I came upon a slight clearing. The circular shape told me that this pine was once the landscaping in the center.

The style I picked was once again the use of a palette knife. The challenge was creating contrast. In the deep woods, the light is very subtle and this painting exaggerates the light source to create more contrast and interest.

Using color to create depth perception

"Fence row" -- $140; if you wish to purchase this 9x12 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/ contact us or click on the Etsy button on the right.

This is an experiment in perception using my love of intersecting plains. Here, a row of trees creates a natural divider or fence row between two small open fields. Behind these horizontal planes is a vertical plane of trees greening in the spring and bathed in light.

The use of the cooler blues with the lavender creates the depth perception I wanted. It looks easy, but in reality it is very difficult to get the fields to recede against the much warmer and more intense greens of the trees. To do this, I have had to play with the color saturation by graying the paints and using small amounts of white. Then there's a yellow green scumbled over the lavenders and pinks.

Shadows and Shape as inspiration

Shadows and shapes inspire
"Barn on curve" -- $165; if you wish to purchase this painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/ contact us.

This 12x16 oil on canvas is a study I've wanted to start for a while – barns. Indiana and the Midwest are full of barns of all different shapes and sizes. I've been doing woodlands and still am inspired the shapes created by the shadows cast by the tree trunks and the shapes of intersecting planes where the ground meets the woods or the sky meets the tops of trees.

But when I saw the interesting shadow cast by the overhang of the roof on this barn, I had to try and do something. At one point I had ¾ of the barn on the canvas and wiped it off. By zooming my point of view in closer and letting the barn take up the right third of the canvas, I felt the shape of the barn then became a kind of visual anagram to the shadow and the negative space the barn created against the trees and sliver of forground.

I will be in the woods most of the summer but I'm sure I'll revisit structures more this year if I find the shadows that inspire.

Every painting experiments with something

"The greening of spring" -- $165 To purchase this painting, go to http://www.avonwaters.com/ contact us.

This 12x16 oil plein air on canvas was inspired by one of the few warm days on a weekend walk to the local state recreation area and reservoir.

It is my first landscape since returning from Bogotá, Colombia and it was inspired by the contrast of the light and shadows on the bright green grass. Seems like in the spring, the grass has a very unique green. Even the green in the lawns is never the same after the grass has been cut the first time and that is what I wanted to try to capture here.

For me, what keeps me painting are the problems each painting presents and the little experiments I can do in them. This one had more experiments than I normally try. Often, if I experiment too much, and things don't go well, disaster strikes -- I got lucky this time.

I also wanted to continue trying to translate the bright abstract colors that I do in my 20x24 and larger pieces, into the smaller canvases – I think I'm making the transition. Up until now, they have only had hints at the expressionist and abstractness that I seek.

The thick impasto paint is also an attempt to carry through with ideas I have about breaking up broad areas with interesting elements. I find if I focus on the spaces between the objects of interest, the painting is more interesting – it's the negative space that creates the interest for the objects.