Grateful Notices:Yellows Across the Lake oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Yellows Across the Lake  oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Private collection, Seattle

Many thanks to the person that purchased this oil. 

I put the pressure on myself by filming myself painting it. As I mentioned in the video, this idea sprang from a teeny pastel sketch I did years before. I remember staying up very late at night with that pastel, struggling very hard with it. In desperation, I scratched it all out with a razor blade and quickly reconstructed it. Out of the ashes came a very nice pastel. 

Years later, it became this oil that that is now hanging in a private collection, a great honor.

View the 13 min. video of Ken creating a 40 x 40 inch oil on canvas from start to finish

Narrating as he paints, Ken describes his methods as the painting develops.

Video credit:
Marianne Pestana Media Services


 

New Work: Light in the Forest, oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Light in the Forest, oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches
Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM    $6400 framed

I went through a couple of permutations with this oil, including a discarded version. Starting on a new canvas the second time, the focus became the color red with an eye toward simplicity.

This composition is essentially 3 bands of color with a lot of moves to keep things interesting. About a third of the way into the creation of this oil, the yellows in the center began to take on a life of their own. It would be simple and perhaps even more dramatic to increase the amount of yellow in the background, but the painting seems to project something mysterious with the unnatural, yellow glow emerging from the forest. 

The leaf colors are saturated, unusual hues intentionally placed to add a random pattern and to further accelerate the effect of the reds.

The painting has a nice presence and it contains an interesting mystery unsolved.

New Work: Summer Patterns Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches

Cloud Layers, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches
$9500 framed  Saks Galleries, Denver

Sunsets create fascinating opportunities for artists and I never tire of them. I use them to play out different color combinations and shapes without the worry of trying to represent a realistic scene.

This is a 'soft' sunset, purposely created without the usual bright contrast to indicate the sun's position. As the painting developed, a glow started to appear in some of the blue clouds along the bottom right quarter of the oil and it influenced the rest of the painting. 

The other clouds and the landscape strip along the bottom are all modulated back, using just enough contrast to hold the scene. The overarching idea here is to create a large expanse of land and sky, full of patterns, without any of them being dominant. 

It's bordering on the abstract, a serene view into the distance.

Video: Ken Elliott and Casey Kahn Teaching

This is a casual video with visual bits and phrases captured from our class. The video is not a tutorial, just a bit of fun. However, some good information is scattered in.

There are quotes from Picasso, Wolf Kahn and Jean Cocteau.

Many thanks for the artist and videographer, Natalie Raffield for putting this together.