| My
painting to date would fall mostly into the old fashioned
category of landscape oils. It gives me great pleasure
to choose sites to paint which have a special feeling
at certain times of day. The way the light falls is more
important to me than how big the surf is. A glimpse through
the window can be as interesting as an impressive vista.
It is my job as an artist
to recreate that special sense of place so that a viewer
may see what I saw. I start en plein air with sketches
in pencil to set the composition. Then I go straight
to paint and finish the sketch to lock in the colors
that I want to use to capture that specific day. I note
any particularly unusual juxtaposition of color or highlights
both in paint and in pencil notes to myself on the side.
I take several photographs to bracket the scene and
be reminders of what I saw. I use the photos to correct
architectural aspects if I haven’t drawn them
in detail, and to confirm spacial relationships in the
final drawing.
The rest of the work is done
in the studio. I will do at least one and sometimes
as many as three or four small paintings of the same
scene, during which I solve any compositional problems
and work out the pallette for a larger painting. When
I do the finished piece, it can go very quickly, actually
faster than the sketches, because I’ve already
made decisions and worked out the problems.
Paintings
with people as part of the landscape have always drawn
me. The human figure adds motion to an otherwise stagnant
scene. I have begun to try to work in figures, not posed,
but as a natural part of the whole. These are not portraits,
but sometimes I find the people are recognized by their
body language even when you cannot see the face. Catching
someone mid-stride gives a sense of movement and purpose.
The viewer’s eye finishes the movement automatically.
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