New Work: Yellow Day, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

Exhibiting: Saks Galleries
$5250. framed
 
One of the joys of being an artist, particularly one that loves color, is the freedom to make chromatic arrangements and let the colors go where they lead.
 
I do like this line of trees and the arrangement is very useful for a variety of color experiments. For this oil, the idea was to create a yellow line of trees, but what of the other elements and  their contribution to the finished work? 
 
As this piece evolved, I put in hints of blues behind the trees to make something happen. It  created an immediate statement and it was as if the blues were insisting on more. So to make a more interesting subject, I laid in purples on the right and to create an interesting flow and separation, aquas were added at the center.
 
After a break of a couple of days, I was considering the idea of making this a soft, poetic piece but I pushed on with a stronger yellow for the field. Once everything was in place, it was a matter of how bright to make the oil. With each successive studio session, small accidents were added, with the sky as a combination of very pale colors. The idea was to turn the yellows loose against that bright sky and wedge the blues in between the trees and field. With that, all the colors would be at their maximum intensity, but somehow making a believable forest. 
 
In the end, it was a happy, yellow day in the studio.

Video: Ken reviews and comments on some of his works at the Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

In the studio with works in progress

Ken reviews and comments on some of his works at the Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

click to view

It's always an interesting exercise to look back on a body of work and take the time to remember the many paths that brought those works to completion. In the studio, there are times when everything falls away and the artist is left with the paints and artistic problems to solve.

Looking at this video, I'm happy to see that all the puzzles were resolved at last and that the paintings are now out in the world to enjoy. After this little break, there are more canvases to make.

Grateful Notices: Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

My thanks to the collector for purchasing my work and to Sorelle Gallery for gracefully making it all possible.

A bit about this oil:

The goal here was to do a forest with blues woven into the composition. I wanted something subtle without the blues being primary. It's easy to use blues to make trees but it's difficult to make them believable.

All of the colors are greyed down, even the darks and lights, allowing the different blues to gently glow in the background. The numerous trunks and branches create a lot of complexity, all to create a veil for the blue hues. The line of trees is bordered with that bit of sky and the muted orange below, a bit of reality to bring it all together.

Finally, the foreground was muted even more, allowing the other subtleties in the painting a chance to be noticed.

Grateful Notices: Turning Autumn, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Turning Autumn
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, private collection
Exhibited:   Gallery 89, Steamboat Springs, CO

My sincere thanks to the collector that purchased this oil.

This painting works on numerous levels: the light running in from the right, delicate foliage helping to create depth, the verticals of the tree tops, and the deep blues happily contrasting with the yellow foreground.

That's a lot happening in this canvas, but the 4 foot square format provides plenty of creative room and there is plenty to see. The eye travels from the bright foreground all the way up and back to those atmospheric aquas at the very top. It's a very satisfying slice of the forest.

New Work: Forest Placido, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Forest Placido
oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Saks Galleries, Denver, CO   $6750 framed
 

As this painting progressed, more atmosphere seemed to circulate in this forest scene. I really didn't notice right away because I was more focused on working out a variety of aquas and blues. The color changes not only added more interest - more to see, but it also created the effect of diffused light coming in from the side and the top.

This is a complicated work and it's interesting that all the while, I was striving for more simplicity! 

For this oil, I began with a lot more detail and then began subtracting between the tree trunks by adding those background colors. 

The entire color palette is a bit subdued with very few spots of full-strength color. There is so much of the 'back and forth' to create this - brush to paint, paint to canvas and repeat, look, brush to paint again. It's a very calming routine despite having a lot of problems to solve along the way. 

As it often happens, this painting went through a lot of changes. In fact, it's painted over the top of a previous oil with a Lot of Problems. It felt really good to cover it up.

In the last painting session, the oil was not quite right so I used purple-blues to paint over most of the existing bright green grass at the bottom. It changed the feel of the entire oil, creating a calming, unifying effect, leading to the Italian title, Placido. In classical music, it is an instruction to play the passage in a peaceful, calming way.

I miss working on it already, but it's back to the studio tomorrow where more experiences await.

Grateful Notices: At the Pond's Edge, Emerging Spring, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

At the Pond's Edge, Emerging Spring
Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 Private collection
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

I'm drawn to the intersections of sky, land and water and particularly how the trees come into contact with each of those elements. An amazing amount of hours that went into the making of this one. There is a great deal of texture as a result of successive ideas, starts and stops appearing as subsequent layers upon layers. This oil first had an incarnation as an autumn scene but I became enamored with the blues and slowly brought them to prominence, shifting the painting into spring.

This painting is evidence of considerable sessions in the studio with innumerable color experiments and before you know it, a fall painting became spring.

When viewing it close up, it is a painting with literally thousands of lace-like marks with each color uniquely contributing to the whole. Everything is done with restraint and a light touch.  The end result is a line of trees with substantial mass.

Except for the base of the trees, all of the foliage and sky edges are delicate and barely there with the early spring light diffused everywhere.

My thanks to the collector that took this home.

Grateful Notices: Blue and Green Progressions, pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches

Blue and Green Progressions
 Pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches    Sold, private collection

Forests are extremely complex settings for making artworks. For this pastel, I opted to use a sparse group of trees in the foreground and back it with a virtual wall of color. It's a setting I often use and the possibilities in this wood are infinite.

The list of creative possibilities is large and there are options within each one: light, color, composition, contrast and more. It was a pleasure to explore them all, layering one idea over another, moving forward, backing up, and watching it all come together, bit by bit. These were not the colors I had originally intended, but the forest had it's own ideas.

My time in this wood was a pleasurable one.

New Work: Blue Wish, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Ken Elliott Blue Wish oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches  $5100 framed

This is truly an oil that painted itself. Last week I was out in a Colorado park with friends and I got a number of useful photos. This image is a pure fantasy, a tiny fragment from a larger photo of the sun setting over the ridge that day.

There isn't a single color or shape that is native to the photo and just as well. Once I began laying out the basic design, I kept to 2-3 blues and purples. Next, the faint, setting sun had to go in and that's when things really got interesting. 

Up to that point, this was a monochromatic winter scene but when the warmer tones of the sun appeared, it prompted the use of pinks, rust and grey-green. Everything began to fall into place from there. It was very tempting to continue to 'polish' it up a bit, but I was very happy with the rougher look and open brushwork.

New Work: Rain Moving Across, oil on canvas, 30 x 48 inches

Rain Moving Across, oil on canvas, 30 x 48 inches
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT   $5400 unframed 

It is fascinating to observe the edges of rain coming to the ground. Once I began to sketch this out on the canvas, there were some gaps in the land patterns and it struck me to turn those gaps into reflective ponds or marsh areas.

The abundance of reflective surfaces opened up the center of the painting, created more depth and made the rain effect even more pronounced. The dark areas at the top and bottom of the oil help to carry the light into the far distance.

And for good measure, the strong diagonal, other cloud forms and the waterways all point to the falling rain. It's theatre - a stage is set for the rain to make an appearance.

Grateful Notices: Waters Edge in Blue, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Waters Edge in Blue
oil on canvas, 36 x 36   private collection   Exhibited: Arden's Gallery, Houston

My thanks to the purchaser of this oil.

I love these rocky, coastal views and for this painting, the blues after sunset caught my attention. Each of the cascading land forms has a color of its own. Some of the rocks are in an atmospheric glow and the darker rocks express a substantial mass. It's interesting how the reds add the illusion of weight.

All of the elements here, the haze on the land as well as the water and sky are indicating motion. The color combinations flow across the oil with the last light yielding to the encroaching blues. There is a feeling that time is quickly passing and all that is aglow now will soon be gone. It is that perfect, blue moment.

New Work: Summer by the Shore, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Summer by the Shore, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

Patterns are intriguing and helpful when painting flat landscapes. I was first attracted to the shape of the summer clouds but once that red-purple band was painted in, the rest of the oil became a playground of pooling water, strips on land and vegetation.

Everything merged together, unifying the painting and creating interesting things to see in every part. 

New Work: Light Beyond, pastel 18 1/2 x 22 3/8 inches

Light Beyond
Pastel on sanded paper,  18 1/2 x 22 3/8 inches

This started as a pastel demonstration a number of years ago. I came across it when I was clearing things out of my studio and pulled it out to work on.

I still remember being a bit stumped at the time of the workshop, working carefully while talking to the class. Once I saw it again, the solutions poured out in rapid order.

For the most part, the moves were about boldness, adding complexity and insuring that every part of the pastel has its own interest while adding to the whole. The piece surprises me with the iridescent blues and how they move. As I added blues, it was if they were in a conversation with each other, instructing me to push more and bring more blue to the party.

Care was taken to preserve the dark masses at the top to better frame the light play in the back of the scene. I love pastels...

New Works: Sun on Snow I and II, oil on panels, 24 x 24 inches

Sun on Snow I, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches

Sun on Snow II, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches

I have been doing a lot of traveling in snow country lately, particularly in vast, open landscapes with unlimited sky in all directions. The simplicity of these snow covered fields called out for interpretation and I happily took up the task.

As a colorist, I was free to explore the possibilities but I still wanted to keep to a somewhat limited palette. That doesn't mean that the sky has to be blue or the snow is always white, but whatever the result, my goal was for the oils to be stark but nonetheless interesting.

It was a pleasure to sign these and share them with you.

New Work: Cloudswept in Blue, 0il on panel, 24 x 24 inches

Cloudswept in Blue
Oil on panel, 24 x 24 on panel    $2450 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver

Looking out over the snow covered fields, I became enamored of the many of blues in combination. Compositionally, I was looking for something interesting in the stark fields when I noticed that the cloud forms held an array of blues as well.

The clouds were a perfect counterpart to the simple landscape below and more interesting than the fields on their own. It was a very still and quiet day with the sunset just beginning to add the yellows and pinks to everything. With those warm colors added in, the scene came to life, making a place where all of the blues could gather harmoniously.

New Work: Saccades XI, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Saccades XI, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches  $7550 framed
Exhibiting:  Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art

The Saccades Series is something I invented for myself. It is a way to use the randomness of the forest to create abstracted patterns and color combinations without limits. Each one presents a number of problems and opportunities that I haven't encounterd before and that's the point. Saccades is an optical term that describes a condition where the eye can't rest on a particular spot.

Here's an earlier blog about the Saccades Series

In this case, there is that obvious blue trunk in the foreground, but it's not enough to create a real  focus. The colors are arrayed in subtle ways and the light source is diffused, creating the overall effect of that soft yellow-green light enveloping everything in the background.

The color palette shifted on this one numerous times but I did want the blue to be somewhat predominant. The light changed as well, from a darker, grayer forest to one with a more intense light coming through, but that was discarded as well.

It is often said that the painting will tell you want it wants and over a series of painting sessions with this one, I was getting an earful. The oil and I opted for the soft poetry of a forest with the soft light nearby.

New Work: Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas 40 x 40 inches

Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas 40 x 40 inches   $7550.
Exhibiting:  Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art

The goal here was to do a forest with blues woven into the composition. I wanted something subtle without the blues being primary. It's easy to use blues to make trees but it's difficult to make them believable.

All of the colors are greyed down, even the darks and lights, allowing the different blues to gently glow in the background. The numerous trunks and branches create a lot of complexity, all to create a veil for the blue hues. The line of trees is bordered with that bit of sky and the muted orange below, a bit of reality to bring it all together.

Finally, the foreground was muted even more, allowing the other subtleties in the painting a chance to be noticed.