New Work: The Light in the World IV

The Light in the World IV  oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches   Saks Galleries, Denver   $6650 framed  

With these Light in the World series works, my goal is to have the light permeate every part of the scene. In this sunset, the light is not a sun glaring through the clouds but instead, a luminous scene.

The painting went through a number of changes and as it progressed, I worked to add more radiance and interest. Many foreground changes were tried and rejected until I came upon the idea of a diagonal movement. It worked nicely with the horizontal cloud bands and gave the painting the added weight necessary and more depth at the bottom on the oil. It was a solution worth working for.

New Work: The Light in the World I and II, oil on panel and canvas

The Light in the World
Oil on panel, 40 x 40 inches    Saks Galleries, Denver, CO, $6650 framed

The Light in the World
Oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches
Private collection 

It was a great honor to have recently have toured the Holy Land with a group wonderful people from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Fortunately, we safely exited the country just before the virus began appearing there. There are so many good memories of the people, places and experiences.

Our guides kept us busy every day and although we took a lot of photos, they were mostly of the sights with very few that were the sort of scenes that I would be painting from. 

An exception to the daily travel photos was an evening in Jordan at a nice hotel on the edge of the Dead Sea. I was sitting alone with this long, unobstructed view across the water to Israel. It was a quiet evening before sunset and I had the long promenade to myself. As the light was changing, I began to shoot the scene. There may be art in this... As it turns out, I did the 24 x 24 study on panel and used to for the larger, 40 x 40 oil on canvas.

After my return to the U.S., I kept thinking about that evening and how to create a compelling painting from that idea. Ignoring the main color from the photos, I was struck by the tiny bit of orange-yellow of the sunset in a portion of the photo and I decided to create a painting exclusively with those glowing colors. I rejected the sunset portion by using a heavy crop on the photos, just leaving a portion of the long shoreline, sea and sky.

Once the painting began, the land mass became the compositional anchor and the place where the colors started to flow. As the painting progressed, the flow became an important part of the sea and sky as well. I didn't catch it at the time, but my insistence on this limited group of colors and movement in every part of the scene is what made it all come together in an interesting way.

As I was adding the last brushstrokes to the work, a title came to me, something that touches us all, "The Light in the World."

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: Just After the Sun Has Set, oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Just After the Sun Has Set
Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches $5100 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver

This is a scene from Castle Rock, CO near where I lived until recently. There were so many good sunsets looking west and I painted a good number of them. For this oil, the focus was split between the sky and land forms below.

Rather than focusing all of the color in the sky, I saturated the bottom half of the painting with the purples, reds, mauves and greens. The dark trees on the right set up a soft contrast as well as a border between the foreground and all that happens beyond,

It has a soft richness that I like. The water on the left was added last to create even more light effects, an improvement over the actual highway there.

Grateful Notices: Last Snow I, pastel, 8 3/8 x 12 3/8 inches

LAST SNOW I
Pastel 8 3/8 X 12 3/8   private collection
Exhibited: Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

When I first moved to Colorado many years ago, I was living in a snow climate for the first time. This pastel was done soon after my arrival and I had kept it in my own collection for over 20 years. Creating snow scenes was a bit of a rarity for me and because this was my view almost every day when I lived in Castle Rock, Colorado, I felt compelled to make a pastel of the scene.

Now that I'm living in Steamboat Springs and surrounded by snowy landscapes for many months of the year, I am creating more winter artworks rather than the one or two in each of the past years.

When Dominique told me that a Denver collector added this work to their collection I was delighted and encouraged to create more. Thank you!

New Work: Last Sun over the Snow Fields, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Last Sun over the Snow Fields, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Saks Galleries, Denver    $6650 framed

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 purple 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.

Grateful Notices: Lake Sunset, Color Dialog and Cloudswept in Blue, two oils on 24 x 24 panels

Lake Sunset, Color Dialog
Oil on panel, 24 x 24  Private collection
Exhibited: Saks Galleries, Denver

For this painting I wanted to do an evening scene without using the typical sunset colors. So rather than resorting to the use of bright, warmer colors, everything is shifted downward. The light is not intense and the palette is predominately blues and greens. A lot of color is in play here but in a subdued way.

In the last painting session I added the glowing highlights to the water in the foreground. The painting was doing well overall but the water was lacking something. Once the lighter accents were added the water began to glow and I was actually surprised at how much stronger it made the painting overall.… A very satisfying conclusion.

Cloudswept in Blue
Oil on panel, 24 x 24  Private collection
Exhibited: Saks Galleries, Denver

As it was the previous oil, I wanted to do another sunset effect without the usual warm tones. The colors here are severely limited to a number of blues and a couple of purple hues.

The upper part of the painting it is intentionally more opaque and dark. The snow field at the bottom is reflecting the light but it still has just enough density to allow the atmosphere in the center section to retreat backward and set up a glow the permeates the entire scene.

It’s a quiet piece, reminiscent of those silent, snow-covered fields, but if you look carefully, there’s always something a little unexpected and electric in the scene.

My sincere thanks to the collector who purchased these two oils.

New Work: Brilliant Forest, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Brilliant Forest,  oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches    $6650 framed
Gallery 89, Steamboat Springs, CO

Working on this canvas was like being in a candy store. There is a lot of color and form packed into this scene, like a big bowl of bright candy wrappers bursting with color and concealing the bright flavors hidden inside.

The bright trees in the back intensify the composition and care was taken to make the darks interesting as well. The shadows are also an important design element and their presence became a happy excuse for the application of even more color at the bottom of the canvas.

It was very satisfying to finish this oil since it was started about 4 years earlier. There were numerous changes and improvements along the way, and each alteration moved the work closer to the goal of creating this expressive forest.

New Work: Saccades XIV, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches

Saccades XIV, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches  $9850 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver

With this view of the forest, the colors are very unnatural but the result is believable and interesting. While painting this oil I continued to lay in new colors, pushing this forest view beyond the typical portrait of a place. This wood doesn't exist in nature but it easily recognizable for what it is, a stand of trees receding into space.

As the painting developed, different lighting options were tried out: color, brightness, shadows-no shadows and more. Finally, I decided on a soft, yellow glow that permeated everything, making it difficult to find the source of the light.

There is a bit of sky in the upper right, but it's not a focal point and that is the nature of this Saccades series. The composition draws the eye across the canvas in all directions without resting.

It's an interesting result seeing this oil on the wall because the entire canvas becomes an art object rather than a picture of a place. The large oil transcends the pictorial and becomes a glowing presence in the room. It was a satisfying task to create this delightful and intriguing place.

New Work: Forest Sequence I, oil on canvas 48 x 120 inches

Forest Sequence I, oil on  two, 48 x 60 inch canvases, total size, 48 x 120 inches  $2400 unframed

Sometimes you just want to go bigger with an idea. With this oil and the 10' expanse, I was able to create an expressive forest view where all is simplified and surrounded in a soft, colored atmosphere.

Care was taken to keep a limited color selection and also to subtly move the color across the canvas from left to right. There is a lot of atmosphere here and it becomes more obvious when the foliage is reduced on the right side. As the oil developed, I became more aware of the lateral possibilities and seeing back into the forest.

Staged installation

It became a painting of nuances, a sweeping view of trees plainly seen and many others receding into the background. It was a joy to watch this come to life on the canvas.