Homage to a Hero

Well, a painting hero of mine, anyway!

Nineteenth century American artist Thomas Moran created many paintings showing Toll Gate Rock and other formations in what is now Green River, WY. I had an opportunity to visit the area myself last year, and the attached image shows MY rendering of Green River.

Like Moran, I didn't make an exact copy of what the place looks like. Each of the formations exists and is accurate, but not all of the formations are present in the same view. But, also like Moran, sometimes going for the feel and the spirit of a site is more important than a mechanically-accurate approach. In this case, I agreed with Moran.

It's a special place, and I hope to do more paintings of it as well as go there again (hopefully in the afternoon next time-- the lighting would have been nicer then) so I can do even more paintings!

Art and Horses

This weekend The Wiffee and I went to the Los Angeles County Fair , a fair that is larger than most state fairs and certainly larger than most/all county fairs. One can see and do all kinds of things there, but my personal favorites are the art show (no duh!!!) and the draft horse show.

This year, the two shows had something in common -- the art show featured artwork about horses! So besides spending hours watching those big boys and girls trotting their stuff around the ring, we saw many examples of horses depicted in various art forms. (I guess I'll have to do some paintings of horses some day).

The photo on the left shows a horse that is not a draft horse but happens to be in my favorite coloring -- a paint horse (appropriate for a painter like me!) The other picture appeared in the art show and is a reproduction of horses from cave paintings in Lascaux, France.

Art and horses -- the best of this world!

More About Surrealism

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I paint mostly Western landscapes, especially desert scenes. But I'm a surreal sort of person, too. I used to paint in a surrealistic style, and have always like the works of early 20th century surrealists like Salvadore Dali, Rene Magritte, Paul Delvaux and Yves Tanguy.

The last artist in that list holds a special fascination for me. I used to use electron microscopes a lot in my science days (grad school and jobs), and one type of scope -- the scanning electron microscope (SEM) -- produced images that looked very much like Tanguy's paintings: a microscopic world inhabited by bacteria, teeny-tiny fragments of bone and other hard-to-describe features.

I've made a few paintings that combined Tanguy's look with things I've seen under the SEM. I've posted one example of this above. This is what one might see if shrunk down to microscopic size, with bacterial cells of E. coli and Staphylococcus strewn all around. (Of course, I doubt our eyes or anything else would function if we were reduced to a micrometer in height, but that's beside the point!)

If we could see with God's eyes...

Autumn Equinox Time!

Ahhh...welcome to autumn!

As I mentioned in a previous post, fall seems to bring out the artistic impulses in me -- something like a migratory instinct, I guess, except in my case, it's a desire to immerse myself in the beauty of autumn.

During fall (and Christmas, too), I decorate out living room with all kinds of autumn stuff. This year, I added some orange Halloween lights to the display. They were made in China, as are so many consumer goods these days. One warning printed on the box had me a little concerned: the insulation on the wires contains lead. The instructions even recommended washing one's hands after handling the wires.

Good grief! What is it about Chinese companies that compells them to manufacture items using toxic materials?

Well, anyway, the decorations are up and, IMO, they look good. I consider decorating for the holidays an extension of what I do when I paint.

Gambling...Sex...Art

The wiffee and I (yes, I call my wife "wiffee"!) ran off to Las Vegas, NV this weekend. I've always wanted to look into the art gallery scene there, and an art trade show, Art Expo Las Vegas 2008 was going on this weekend, too. So it seemed like a good opportunity to answer some questions I've had about whether or not Vegas galleries are a place for an emerging artist like me to make a few $$$.

The Art Expo was sort of fun. They had an area devoted to individual artists who paid something like $2500 to be there (that included a room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino where the Expo was held). I knew one of the artists there who lives in the low desert, but I never heard of the others.

The Expo also featured booths featuring art print publishers, Iris printers (for making one's own Giclee prints) and galleries, most of them from outside the area. Only one publisher carried western/realistic art prints, so I left some information with them.

Afterwards, we made an effort to find some galleries we could visit and, if it seemed to be a good "fit," talk with them about possible representation. Only one problem:

I don't think Las Vegas galleries want you to find them!!!!

Trying to find information about them -- ads, word of mouth, special advertising publications like "Gallery Guide" or "Art Scene" -- seem to be of little interest to this crowd. Maybe the locals know where to find the galleries, but if you're an out-of-towner, try to find one of these galleries. Just try. If you look them up in the phone book and try calling them, you likely will get an answering machine. We did connect with one gallery person over the phone, but after about the first 15 seconds, he hung up on us.

I doubt I'll be approaching any galleries in Las Vegas. I don't think they're really interested in selling art.

The photo is of the Fremont Experience area in the older part of Las Vegas. In the evenings, they put on a sort of gambling-themed light show on the canopy/roof structure. (We also saw a man with a sign warning everyone of God's judgement on those who indulge in gambling and/or sexual diversions. I think we were safe this time).

Disaster Recovery Efforts

As I mentioned in my last post, I was having trouble painting in the sky in my homage to Thomas Moran and his series of paintings entitled (with some variation) "Cliffs of the Green River."

I've painted in a new sky and a different set of clouds -- perhaps a type that lends itself more to a smaller piece like this one -- and I'm much happier with the sky.

So on I go to the other elements of the landscape. Obviously, it won't be ready to post for a while yet, so here's version #2 of Moran's "Cliffs of the Green River."

A Disaster

In my last post, I briefly mentioned artwork in progress can turn out to be disasters.

Yesterday was a day for disasterous painting. It's a piece I just started. I finished the sketch of the important elements (Toll Gate Rock and the other cliffs in Green River, WY), painted in the blue sky, and THEN!!!--I started on the clouds.

It would have been OK if I would have known when to stop, but I kept re-working and re-working the clouds and ended up with something truly hideous. So I ended up painting them out and trying again until after midnight last night. This time, the clouds were even worse!!

Since the painting is on panel, this morning I did some sanding, trying to reduce the thickness of the paint film and the numerous glazes I had applied by this time. And I discovered using an electric sander on acrylic paint doesn't work the way I was expecting. The friction of the sandpaper produces enough heat to melt blobs of sanded-off dry paint into the remaining paint film. I had to hand-sand those spots until the blobs were gone and I had a basically smooth surface again. Si-i-g-g-h-h-h...

Well, in the meantime, I'm preparing the surface again, and by tomorrow, I should be on my way. So for now, I've posted one of 19th century artist Thomas Moran's many paintings of the cliffs of the Green River. My painting will be similar, but it'll definitely be my own. (For one, I was there in the morning, so my light will come from the right. Moran's afternoon light comes from the left).