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Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Ken Elliott Fine Art Newsletter February 2022
Last Sun over the Snow Fields, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Exhibiting: Breckenridge Gallery, Breckenridge, CO
About this oil:
The last light is setting up a very subtle, but colorful effect. When we really examine it, snow on the ground is much more than just white. Besides, there are so many ways to represent a scene like this.
How about a Delft blue in the line of trees and why not create a predominately mauve sky with touches of pinks, greens and pale cobalt?
Once it was done, the piece comes off looking simple but that was not the case with this one. Sometimes it's the austere compositions that challenge me further to try out new ideas. The simple composition is very responsive to small or large changes on the canvas and it dares you to keep pushing things around.
After all of the work and the parade of changes, the gentle calm still comes through.
New work: Colors on the Diagonal, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
$5700 framed To purchase
About this oil:
I set out to do a landscape and cloud painting with a lot of layers and colors. A number of hues were applied at the start without trying to calculate how they would work together. My challenge was to make each of these layers interesting, and somehow bring it all together in the end.
At the start, the sky was full of clouds with too many having similar shapes and angles, but that could be worked out later. The land masses followed and it was there that I began to set up the first bright colors and the inclusion of reds.
Everything was coming together a bit too quickly, so I took a number of short breaks the first day and later, I put days in between the sessions. It was in those last two days that I began to get a number of ideas to bring this artwork to a good conclusion.
Primarily, it began to come down to opening up the cloud forms and introducing areas of light behind to create depth, drama and a variety of patterns. At times, it was like watching the sky outside as clouds and colors came and went.
The painting was really coming to life, almost as if it was painting itself. Finally, I worked the paints to give the impression of atmosphere. Care was given to leave the bottom landscape slice as it was first blocked in, rough and organic. As the scene moves upward, the paler blues and purples create more complicated forms, airiness and by their presence, harmonize all of the colors in the oil.
New Work: Cloud's Reward, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Framed, $5700
To purchase
Exhibiting:Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art,Santa Fe, New Mexico
About this oil:
This idea arrived as a gift. After recently completing the oil Sunset: Cascading Color, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, I prepared cropped closeups for posting it on my website. One of those image fragments caught my eye and the next day I began a new oil from that idea.
As always, there was a lot of paint on the palette from yesterday’s session and I began with those colors. I was out for something fresh and more abstracted. I began to work over the top of an oil from years ago that I had given up on. There was a lot of texture on that older oil and covering over it required even more paint. It went on thick and since I was more interested in just blocking it in, the oil took on abstracted qualities immediately.
Once that lipstick red went in at the lower center, everything changed and the oil took on a distinctive personality and direction. The pinks at the top followed and then the golds to hold it all together. I was pushing the color and giving the painting what it needed. It was very satisfying to push all of that paint around and watch that colored atmosphere develop.
This oil will be the first of a series and a permanent reminder of the joy of discovery that day and of being an artist.
New Work: Tangerine Evening II, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Currently exhibiting: in the studio
$6650 framed To purchase
About this oil:
Coming across this scene, I was drawn to the challenge of creating a painting with very little in the way of composition, making its success dependent on other factors.
There was that sun of course, and it opened up a lot of opportunities, most I shunned out of hand, rejecting realist options.
The idea of late evening colors did appeal to me and when laying out the oil, I shifted the palette into the tangerine range. It was a delicious place to begin and right away, the painting came into form with that strip of abstracted land separating what evolved to be two sets of color combinations.
Everything is pattern here but in a non-descriptive way. The sky, land and water is expressed, not illustrated and it gives the artwork more power. The sky is not ‘accurately’ reflected below and there is very little of patterns in the water forming into ripples.
The pale sun is illuminating everything in a subtle way, resulting in a sense that everything is fresh and alive. When the oil left the studio, a lot of life and light left with it. I need to summon up more!
