New Work: Saccade XII, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Saccade XII, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches $10950 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver, CO

It's good to have a number of paintings going in the studio to work with. In this 12th Saccade, a very textural painting developed because I worked over another oil from 4-5 years ago. The heavy impasto that resulted took me back to those Monet works. It was a joy to create a forest with all of that ready-made texture.

The purpose of the Saccades is to create a painting without a singular point of interest. Doing so presents a number of problems, first being that all the areas on the canvas are equally interesting. This is a good practice for most paintings anyway, so this oil puts that idea to task.

There is the additional game in play here and that is depth. The viewer gets the impression of being in the darker part of the forest looking out. The light is there, but nothing much is revealed. 

There is a considerable forest pattern effect across the 4 x 5 foot space. It has an abundance of complexity and just enough depth to be an intriguing presence on the wall.

About the Saccades Series shown here:
"Since the late 19th century, researchers have been aware of the phenomenon of saccades, the rapid movement of the eye as we shift our attention from one thing to another. As a result, vision itself is discontinuous. We construct a “map of reality” from saccades much as a film editor puts together a scene from individual camera takes." From an article by the film maker Errol Morris, NY Times

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."

Grateful Notices: All Over Sunset, Study, pastel on paper, 13 3/8 x 17 7/8

ALL OVER SUNSET, STUDY
Pastel 13 3/8 x 17 7/8 Private collection, Vancouver, Canada Exhibited: Page Waterman Gallery, Wellesley, MA

A very good friend in Florida sent me a photo of a sunset through the trees while on her walk. I kept coming back to that image and finally, I gave it a shot in pastel. The trees had a nice vertical aspect and they were very close together, a great set up for a more abstracted piece.

As the image progressed it became a playground for different colors. At first, it was all in warm tones and as the pastel moved forward, the blues and reds created more interest and interesting contrasts.

When it was done, I wanted more of that composition so, I started a 4 x 6 canvas and it worked out to be a very successful painting.

My thanks to R. who supplied the inspiration and to the collector in Vancouver that contacted me. It was very satisfying to make the sale and the conversation that followed was remarkable. Many thanks to you as well.

Commissions

Bight Patterns    Oil on canvas, 48 X 60     Collection, Columbine Country Club, Denver

Throughout the year, Ken is involved in a number of commissions for a variety of clients, private and public, across the country.

He was worked on sizes suitable for residences and as large as 6 x 18 feet for public spaces. 

His works have also been used in major motion pictures and TV productions.

Email Ken to begin the conversation or call 303-995-1611

6 x 18 ft continuous canvas commission for a prominent East Coast Hospital

Double commission for Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

For that special and unique artwork, consider Ken for your private and corporate commissions

Collections: partial listing

Hewlett Packard

Coopers and Lybrand                        

Kaiser-Permanente                    

Ritz Hotel, Denver

Four Seasons Hotel, Denver

St. Anthony's Hospital, Denver

Panhandle Eastern                   

National Dairy Board                

Grubb and Ellis, Denver

Marriott Hotels

Holland America Cruise Line

Stanford Cancer Center, Palo Alto

Tufts New England Medical Center

Pinnacol Denver Hospice, CO 

Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Gaylord Rockies Resort & Conference

    Center Aurora, CO

Vail Mountain Club, Vail, CO

Yampa Valley Medical Ctr, Steamboat Springs, CO

Vectra Bank, CO

Blue Shield

Hitachi

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Glenmoor Country Club, Denver

Project Energy

  St. John’s Mercy Medical Center,

    Creve Coeur, MO

Rose Medical Center, Parker, CO

Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital,

     Grand Rapids, MI

Magnet Bank, Atlanta

Ford, Harrison Law, Atlanta

Lowry Medical Center, Denver

Town and Country Hospital, Houston

Jones and Keller, Denver

Raychem

Birch Hill Investment Advisors, Boston

Avista Hospital, CO

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.

Happy Holidays 2019

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.

Grateful Notices: Water, Land and Sky in Flow Oil on canvas, 36 X 60

Water, Land and Sky in Flow
Oil on canvas, 36 X 60   Private collection, CT
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

The way light plays on the surface of lakes is a constant fascination to me. With this oil the lake is a factor but it is equally weighted with the bright, yellow trees in the distance.

This is likely the 5th or so version of this arrangement. As the painting progressed through the different trials, more glowing colors emerged and the overall look of the oil continued to get brighter. 

Each trial yielded a completed painting but after a few days of viewing what I had, those brighter shapes called out for more to be done. In this final version, there is movement everywhere, carried along by the changes in colors and in the way that the mass of the trees and cloud bank are surrounded by the atmosphere in the upper sky its reflection on the lakes surface. 

As it turns out, the painting titled itself. 

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 Work: In the Colorful Forest, oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches

In the Colorful Forest
Oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches   $9950 framed
Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

Creating this oil was pure joy. It is all about patterns and color and the combinations are endless. A lot of moves were made here. The forest was much less populated in the earlier versions and the colors more subdued.

As I added more trees to improve the composition, the painting called out for more color. Additional density was added to the background leaves along with a bit of aqua to the upper right.

Once the aqua was in place, it made the rest of the oil seem a bit duller, a happy problem that was solved with brighter color and more of them. Every color was taken higher and as they were added,  the forest came alive.

Who would think that a bit of aqua would require changes across the entire 6 foot expanse? That is how I see things and it is a delight to be an artist.

Grateful Notices: Summer Haze, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Summer Haze oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches
Private collection, MAExhibited: Saks Galleries, Denver

My grateful thanks to the Massachusetts collector and everyone at Saks Galleries, Denver for making this acquisition possible!

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


 

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.

New Work: Summer Sunset, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Summer Sunset, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

The plan was to paint this sunset in an uncommon way, forget the realist aspects and use colors as I wished. It seemed easy enough and the painting did come together quickly, but I wasn't quite satisfied after I had declared it finished.

As it turned out, this oil was 'finished' two more times. I was a bit too timid the second time, so lesson learned, the third attempt began with colors pushed further and additional attention given to the edges everywhere. Last, I added more subtleties to the dark foreground and that small amount of tweaking created a surprising amount of depth.

Finally, the painting hit the mark with the high-contrasts at the bottom giving way to the paler atmosphere at the top. The effect sets up the horizontal bands with their various colors nicely...it almost sings at times.