More About Indirect Painting - DMFA Video Series

Indirect Painting - DMFA Video Series

Summer Gold...the newest in the Golden Hills Series. I'm just getting my feet wet with this color. Golden fields are so very difficult to paint. I have a new palette of colors that have helped but the glow could be so much more intense. We'll see where we go from here.

Art of the West article

Here's a look at the cover... See our feature in the May/June issue and the Greenhouse Gallery ad on the back cover. Every little bit of press helps. My thanks to the publishers and everyone on the staff. They did a great job. It was an honor to be included.

Another "Rung" in the ladder

On the way to a successful painting career there are many ups and downs. I like to say that "Today's mountain peak is tomorrow's foothill climb." Just as you acheive one milestone there are endless challenges ahead.

This month I was approached by Art of the West magazine about doing a feature for the May/June 2012 issue. This will be a great honor and much appreciated exposure. Art of the West

I've been so focused on just painting these past years I haven't worked the marketing side of the career much. Articles like this will surely help find an audience for the work.

My primary effort during this economic down turn has been to bring the best art I can to market and then let the work do the talking for me. It has been the one thing that I've had control over. I believe that quality art will sell, even in a tight market. It seems that strategy is starting to pay off.

Notwithstanding, there can still be endless second guessing in this profession. Have I choosen strong subjects? Will there be an audience out there when these paintings are completed. Will anyone notice what I'm trying to say? Will I be able to communicate the emotion in the works that I'm feeling as I paint them?

You can't think about these things while you work. Just let the brush run. Make honest and trueful marks on canvas each day. Put your heart and soul into every brush stroke and leave the rest to the viewer.

And then look up...for that next mountain peak.

Learn to paint by looking at paintings...

You can stand in front of nature for hours but if you want to really learn to paint...look at paintings. Put yourself in front of the best master works possible but choose carefully. Even the greatest painters made mistakes and you don't want to copy them.

You learn to paint trees by observing how the great masters painted them. Learn their language in paint. See how they treated edges and structure. Look for the simple shapes depicted. Observe how they showed the light coming through foliage, the openings and their design.

Vernon Nye used to tell us, "You're not trying to educate people with what trees look like...trying to get the species right. Just suggest them."

To put it another way, paint how you feel about them. Sounds a little esoteric but in fact that is what we're trying to do with the entire painting.

Your Signature...continued

"...it all started with drip paintings on the floor of my parents garage."

That signature is your personal voice or statement. It's not necessarily something you need to develop. It's evident in your work now whether you see it or not. Of course there are ways to increase that visible amount. This can be the elusive thing. We want our work to be distinctive, to have a unique style.

Some have said that if you want to be truly unique, you shouldn't look at work by other artists. Then from that place of isolation, your own personal view will emerge. That is virtually impossible.

When I was twelve or thirteen, I started producing drip paintings, using my little jars of model paint dripped onto pieces of cardboard laid out on the garage floor, letting the paint splatter and drip into abstract patterns and lines.

I've thought about those projects for many years. How did the idea for that process come to me? I have been born to this profession but I'm just not that brilliant. I seriously doubt it was a result of a cosmic, mind meld connection to the spirit of Jackson Pollack. I must have seen an ad or article or television clip about him and the way he was working. I have no such memory but I'm almost certain that the exposure occurred at some time prior to the creation of those drip paintings in my garage. Even during those years, long before the information superhighway, I was undoubtedly effected by media.

We are heavily influenced by what we see and have seen. Today, mass media imagery, and content is crushing us with tsunami force every millisecond of the day.

Let it wash over you, embrace it. You brain is a wonderful filter. Learn to trust the mainframe in your head. You've already done enough 'seeing' in your lifetime. If you never looked at another tree, you would know how to paint one. Now it's just a matter of getting all that information out onto canvas. If you embrace your experience, you can find your way through this maze and create with your own personal view.

In a future post, I will describe a working process that has allowed me to inject more of my personal handwriting or unique voice into my work. Stay tuned...