Pastels at Twilight Summer 2013
- In Art Adventures Blog
- Post 13 May 2013
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Abstracting a landscape suggests a simplification of form, while maintaining a clear sense of a landscape space...a horizon, a ground line. We will also look at expressing aspects of nature along with eliminating an obvious ground line and/or horizon. Taking this step places your artwork in abstract space, which has its differences from landscape space.
Painting Outdoors in New Mexico
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- Post 20 Mar 2013
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Today is the first day of Spring. I am ready to paint outdoors again, now that it is getting warm. There are many painting spots that I love in Santa Fe. I often bring my students to these great plein air painting locations for pastel classes.
Plein Air Painting-Bananas in Costa Rica
- In Art Adventures Blog
- Post 22 Jan 2013
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This image is a detail from a pastel painting I made in Costa Rica. It took a few days to get someone to help me carry plastic table and chairs up to my painting spot on the wild banana mountain. I went up there every day (almost). I preselected my colors and carried them in my back back. I had a light weight folding easel to carry over my shoulder. I loved painting on banana mountain. It was the opposite of what I love about New Mexico - New Mexico with its ancient mesas and the intense stillness of the sky. Everything in Cuidad Colon is moving. The banana trees I especially loved. They are mostly diagonals, and they point and wave and curl and the shadow and light are constantly changing.
The Entrance to The Play With Scale is Through the Eyes...
- In Art Adventures Blog
- Post 30 Oct 2012
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In both my large scale studio work and my smaller work, the eyes are the beginning. When paintings are taller or wider than I am, my peripheral vision is filled and my body is enveloped within the piece. I traverse, not only the surface, but also the dips, glides, tilts and tunnels of the space. As my work proceeds towards abstraction, it no longer homes towards a vanishing point, rather it ventures deep, or down inside slices of landscape, without a horizon or ground line for reference. Sometimes there is an experience of dream space with no fixed place to land. Shifting references to representation stimulate the imagination, but I don't want recognizable imagery and traditional perspective to overtake goal-less roaming in space.
Road Trip - Rock, Forest, Ocean, Sky, Rock
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- Post 19 Sep 2012
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From Santa Fe, our route west was a diagonal to Idaho and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve - a 52 mile long volcanic fissure. We camped there amidst the black lava rock and then continued west and north, diving our car into the verticality of Oregon forest. Next, we laid back in mist, sea and sand of the Oregon Coast for eight days. At the end, we headed back towards rock again - auto-ing for over four days on two lane roads. We drove a route through Utah that passes Arches National Monument and got out of the four wheeled vehicle to use our legs. We scrambled and rambled through stunning red rock arches. Arches, like Craters of the Moon, is an area that needs citizen vigilance to maintain its protected and nearly unmarred status.
Art, Imagination and Repetition
- In Art Adventures Blog
- Post 08 Aug 2012
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Jennifer is sketching. The photo above is from a plein air painting class at Ghost Ranch, NM. Jennifer was one of 11 participants. The assignment was to make three charcoal drawings of the same scene before beginning to work in color. Repetition is a very exciting and useful part of the creative process. Repetition helps in "seeing" and opens up the imagination.