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: At the Creeks Edge, oil panel, 24 x 24 inches

At the Creeks Edge
Oil panel, 24 x 24 inches  $2150 unframed
Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

This small group of trees in the meadow got my attention. The foreground had a small path running through it and the background was a large line of darker trees. Everything was green and from the start, I set out to create something more interesting.

The painting was ‘completed’ 4 or 5 times and after each try, I noticed an opportunity to make the oil even better. All of the changes might sound frustrating to some, but the chance for improvement is very appealing to me.

One of the early changes was to convert the path into a creek that made a reflective ribbon, dividing the grasses in the foreground.

The background went through many alterations with each change, more complexity and color intensity emerged. It is easy to overwork these pieces as the painting went forward, I took care to add intricate layers and interest to the trees, not diminishing their appeal.

Finally, everything was made brighter and the colors were enriched. It felt good to put my signature on this one.

New Works: Soft Summer Light and Summer Song, oils on panel 30 x 30 inches

SOFT SUMMER LIGHT
Oil on canvas, 30 X 30 inches $3700 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

SUMMER SONG
Oil on canvas, 30 X 30 inches $3700 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

Summers produce an abundance of green and considerably less color options than a colorful fall provides. The challenge set forth with these two oils was that they would have summer in the title and that they would have to be compelling works, despite the solid green summer fields and trees.

So, what’s the plan? 

When I was a newly-minted painter, I would use the few greens I had purchased and invariably, my works would be too green, too much the same and not very attractive. Greens are a trap for many landscape painters including myself back then, so to be a better painter, other strategies had to be developed as quickly as possible.

In this oil, a variety of greens in muted tones are put into play. The landscape can be awash in green but the overall effect is subdued. The colors are a bit more muted and the overall effect is softer and it allows the other interesting colors to share the space.

Summer just got a bit more interesting.

Video: At the Ponds Edge, Emerging Spring, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

At the Ponds Edge, Emerging Spring, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Exhibiting: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

Ken describes how the 4' x 5' oil, At the Ponds Edge, Emerging Spring evolved. This work took about a year to make as it went through a number of changes.

Video: 2 minutes

New Work: Jeweled Forest, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

Jeweled Forest   oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches  $1575

This is a small work for me and I enjoyed the process. Since I'm typically working in the 4-6 ft range, it is amazing how rapidly things happen in a two foot world!

There was an older oil under this panel that had been sitting around in the studio for about a year. Now that 2018 had begun it felt like a good time to have another go at that image. 

My first thought was to improve the existing oil but as soon as the first brushstroke was applied, I realized that I didn't want to just tweak what was there. Now I had an opportunity to do something much bolder and that's were the orange background came in. 

I'm typically working with 1/2" width brushes and they cover canvases quickly, even at 5 or 6 feet.  In this case, it was like having making an acre of orange forest in minutes with the painting asking, "OK, did that, now what?" 

I was great fun to 'locate' the green trees rather than representing them in detail. The bright greens held their own against the orange background nicely. The yellow foreground in the bottom right is all that remains of the original painting and I used that area as a bright inspiration for everything that followed. 

There are always a lot of options for sky besides blue and that was my plan. First I put down a bit of blue and purposely left remnants of the original oil in the sky. My intention was to bring in another color over the blue creating something different. Hmmmmm, those remnants are nice with those random bits of yellow mingling with the blue... an unexpected surprise that made a common blue sky a lot more interesting. OK then, add another, brighter blue to the mix and create a glowing sky - push the blue.

From there I added more dark, contrasting areas in the trees and it was done.

...now to figure out those other 4-6 foot canvases waiting for their solutions.

New Work: Glittering Forest, oil on canvas, 48 x 36

Glittering Forest, oil on canvas, 48 x 36  $5800 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

I can assure you, it took a lot of sessions in the studio before any glittering appeared in this oil. The difficult part about painting is to keep it fresh (if that is the goal) and the more time spent on the canvas, the easier it is to loose the spontaneous look. It also increases the odds of any number of bad things happening.

This painting went through 5 or 6 big changes and once the composition came together, I declared it finished, photographed it and declared it a good day.

When I returned to the studio the next morning, it was apparent that something had been lost along the way. As it often happens, I think my just-finished oils are really good until the next day.

That's OK, because it's an opportunity to take the painting further, and I jumped right in with much brighter colors. Since I was painting over a slightly duller background, those brights began to sing! Additional colors were added to the mix and while I was putting on the last strokes, the title came to me, Glittering Forest!

New Work: Green Dream II oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Green Dream II oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches  $8950 framed

Sometime you just want to push the color! This is a larger version of the 24 x 24 oil on panel that was created from a 'mistake.' I really liked the smaller version and it encouraged me to start a larger version and take the greens further.  More about the creation of the smaller oil here

Green Dream, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches  $2450 framed

The larger oil is a composition where the color comes first. The light and shadows are unnaturally placed to create more contrast and intensity. Some of the brights are too bright and the shade doesn't always follow the usual contours, given the so-called light source, but it is all part of the theatre.

The entire effect is a bit surreal and intense. As I was painting this it was a bit like throwing on more logs to make a brighter fire. Surprisingly, there is a balance in this but the solution came slowly, over a number of painting sessions. At first the greens and yellows were just too bright, but I didn't want to sacrifice their power. The stand of trees was a bit chaotic as well, so other colors and shapes were added for support: light blues, lavenders, cobalts and the orange foliage.

Finally, everything came together to create the right chord, not one you hear everyday, but it is made to be played loud!

New Work: Green Dream, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches

Green Dream, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches  $2450 framed

Some years ago, I purchased a number of wood panels. The idea was to experiment with more abstracted ideas. As experiments go, some worked out nicely and the less successful ones were stacked in dark corners, waiting for another day and better ideas.

A couple of months ago I pulled the worst out of the stack and painted over it quickly, using less detail but with the same, experimental idea in mind. It was a horizontal band of trees, unbroken from left to right. At least I changed things but still wasn't very compelling. A poor start is not what I needed.

So back in the corner it went, but visible to me every day now. It was a reminder to do better and to get there by any means possible.

Thinking back to my original plan with these panels, I had planned on using whatever oils were on the palette at the end of the day to make some small scale, interesting starts. Instead of throwing the paints out, they could be applied to the panels without a formal plan, creating interesting challenges to work out later.

It was the end of the painting session last week and I had just added a bit of Oriental Green to a large canvas. Looking across the studio, that 24 x 24 panel was calling out for something new and this powerful green might be just the thing.

Bring the panel to the easel, I took the green and quickly put in the dark line of trees, fading it out as it moved downward to the right. It made me smile because I was reminded of the chef on the cooking shows, "Boom." That's more like it!

At the end of a painting session days later, another unplanned move resulted. I was clearing the palette for the day when I noticed I had a good bit of white and yellow left. Putting the panel back to  the easel, I started putting in the right row of trees with that yellow and white.

The light color was picking up a bit of the almost-dry green from the days before and giving the yellow-white an other-worldly glow in places. I decided to play it smart and stopped for the day.

The original painting still showed through in the sky and foreground areas, so I painted over them but not completely, trying out various color ideas. All of the colors experimented with are visible, but to various degrees and it adds a nice complexity. In the sky a pale, acid green was used but it struck the wrong note. However it was very useful as an interesting remnant when overpainted wth the lavender tones. Finally, the oil was finished after a long journey of about 2 years.

That felt good. 

I took a little time to go back over the process, took a break and came back to the studio with a pre-stretched 48 x 48 canvas. On to the palette I squeezed out large amounts of Oriental Green and Perylene Black (a green-black), then started work on the bigger version. 

That felt really good.