The Flats, par terre

Last month, we drove back from Hot Springs heading south into the Flats as the evening light cast long shadows across the meadows and lit the mountain ridges in deep blues. In that moment, I decided to paint that view using a 2- by 6-foot canvas I had originally stretched for a Delta scene. I scouted a location at Fox Town Road and then went to the studio to rough things out using a brown monochrome scheme. The next day was a bicycle race that passed through the Flats. To work on a painting this wide with so heavy a stretcher frame, I had to load up and use my studio easel, so I went out early to set up ahead of the racers. As the cyclists passed by, I took photos and a few videos so that later I could add them to the painting. The cyclists waved and gave thumbs up as they passed me, and I returned the gestures. It was a cheerful moment, reminding me of the waves from the shipyard workers on the tugboats across the channel in Coden, Alabama.

I switched to a monochrome blue as I began the scene on site. It produced some vivid passages of color, making me wonder if it was too much to hold together. Keeping the right amount of those early perceptions is valuable, something I often don’t fully appreciate until I reach the end and realize something was beautifully captured and then whittled away. The mountains at first were an ultramarine blue intensified with some cerulean blue and alizarin crimson. The lines of trees were a very sweet set of greens that nicely played off the violets. The foreground had a nice yellow-green with rusty red undertones peeping through. Before the cyclists appeared I saw a young deer in the field and quickly sketched it in with charcoal.

I came back later that day and saw the shadows stretching across the meadow. I worked on these and experimented with ways to differentiate the foreground trees from the mountains behind them. I had a few visitors on this day, including one of the neighbors across the street and some of the residents of Fox Town Road. I began to worry that I was getting bogged down, so soon into the project. I was recalling a line from Picasso In His Own Words that went something like, “The beginning is the most important part of painting, afterwards, it’s already the end.” (Of course, I couldn’t find it and instead I saw a contrary quote -typical for him- “Nothing is worse than a brilliant beginning.”) Part of the dilemma of this painting was “correcting” the color after the initial perceptions which too often kills the color or the color plus the gesture of the paint stroke.

Early on, a woman stopped and asked me for directions to a local college where a puppet convention or symposium was taking place. We visited a bit. I thought, what a wonderful line of creativity puppets are, especially how they mainline directly into a child’s fantastic imagination. This made me remember puppet creations of Klee and Calder - both so wonderful.

While I waited a few days for the painting to dry and the clear weather to resume, I did a few sketches of the cyclists to get a sense of how they were constructed.

Next, travel to Mississippi interrupted this piece for 10 days, and on my return, I was further interrupted as we adopted a large old standard poodle. When I got back to this piece, I wanted most of all to get the middle of the painting completed satisfactorily so I could let all that dry and then put in the cyclists. I worked on the stone buildings housing the community center and the line of trees on the right. I worked right to left, showing the character of each of the trees lining the road in the foreground. This stage below has perhaps my favorite state of the mountain ridges.

I let all this settle in and then tightened up the mobile home and house on the right. At one of the last site visits, I was working on the sky and to stop it from dripping onto the mountains I turned it upside down. A nice fellow pulled up to chat and said, hey, your painting is upside down! I replied, went to college didn’t you? We laughed and he said he was also a plein air painter who was moving down here from New York. After he left, I got a clean and mostly uniform sky in place and put it aside to dry.

Back at the studio, I looked again at the photos and videos of the cyclists and put in a group of three. It continues to amaze me how fine a brush needs to be to carry enough paint to work but provide the fine line required for work at this scale. I made do with what I had, but one day I will find the right combination of brush and paint to get that fine work done right.

One more pass today to take into account things I noticed while putting down this account. I deepened the near ridge to a darker blue, reinforced some of the colors that had washed out in earlier stages, and painted a better deer. So here is the antepenultimate provisional final state, subject to further revision at any moment….

antepenultimate

penultimate

ultimate

The Flats

This beautiful vantage point sooner or later will be someone’s mountaintop refuge. Our realtor told us to check out the view. We wound up Rock House Road past ever more remote cabins and homes until we got to the top. Our ridgeline and Rock House Road are obscured by the trees on the right side. The distant road below, Highway 209 passes straight through a valley nicknamed the Flats, Nearly all the rest of this road consists of hundreds of serpentine twists and turns along a steep gorge for miles in both directions. It’s very popular with groups for motorbiking, cycling, and sports cars. About midway down the Flats is a left turn that takes you to Max Patch, right on the edge of the Tennessee-North Caroline line.

I did a preparatory sketch and rough tonal study before I went out to paint it. I chose a vertically oriented canvas, not typical for a landscape. Here is what that looked like.

I put a long, enjoyable afternoon into laying out the basics of this painting. I braced the canvas with one hand while painting due to strong mountaintop gusts, and the pulses of wind reminded me of sailing on the Mississippi Sound. The first pass turned out well and I might have stayed with it. I liked the foreground and the general softness of some of the foliage a lot. When I got it home, though, I began to ask myself, where are the clouds casting those shadows on the valley? Other details called out for improvement.

Just as when I painted Max Patch, I questioned whether the mountains showed the atmosphere of the Smokies. So after laying down the first version, I took it down the road to look at it overnight. I went up the next morning and refined things along the way. This time the wind had laid down and I was able to work with both hands so I got a lot done in a shorter time. I got more precise on parts of the meadows in the Flats. I also laid the sky colors in more carefully and built up a dark blue shadow on the left side of the foreground which really excited me. It reminded me of the blues Matisse used in his North Africa scenes. I also shaped the horizon line more accurately - these are subtle things that aren’t always captured well the first time out. On both days, I was working from paint laid out on my palette, plus a hand-held paper palette for mixing with the larger brushes. Again, as I did with Max Patch, I went into the foreground with a thin brush to put in lines of grasses and foliage to strengthen the look of the areas of color painted with a big brush.

I put this aside and started another version of the same scene in a very flat, almost stained glass abstraction. It was fun to do in the moment, but I have put it aside for now.

The remaining details to tidy up were to extend the dark blue on the left foreground up the length of the trees and foliage, to add the clouds, and to go over the road and suggest the turn at the top. With these done, I was happy to put it aside. What an incredible location, and it was right up my road!

Boat Yard

At last month’s Dauphin Island Paint Out, a plein air event whose boundaries extended to Bayou la Batre, I did two studies at Master Boat Builders in Coden. Ellen Langford joined me for the second day and I also saw the event judge at work nearby. But I was there first! In the middle of the first day, a couple of the shipyard workers came over to see what I was doing. It was a lot of fun to hear their reactions and enthusiasm for the scenes. The next morning when I showed up there were 6-8 workers looking my way from the rail of the center tug. I waved at them and they all waved back and then we went to work- solidarity! I finished these up and submitted them to the wet paint exhibit at Dauphin Island Gallery. I really enjoyed doing these. Still, I was feeling cramped about the small size canvas we were required to use - no larger than 16” x 20.” Sharing these online let me connect with Pat, Cody, Ricky, Colton, and other boat yard folks. This was my favorite thing about the experience.

I wanted to stretch out on this scene. So, when I returned home I pulled out two 3’ x 4’ canvases, sketched out the scene from a reference photo, and took it over a couple of weeks later. If I could complete this it would be the largest view I have tackled to date.

When I got back on site, the middle tug was no longer there, so I painted the scene from life and worked on the missing tug from memory, the field study, and a reference photo. The workers and I had short, shouted conversations and waves hello and we got to work. There was an older man fishing right at the entrance of the channel, but he left when they weren’t biting. Also, a man came up and walked past me to watch a shrimp boat slowly coming up the channel. Its bow was crushed and bent upwards, like a broken nose. The man said the captain had left the wheel and the helmsman had drifted off to sleep until it hit a rig.

It is wonderful to paint from a well-developed drawing. It let me leap straight into the fun parts, picking the right colors, getting the right brush strokes, and “playing” with the paint. I am especially happy with the sky and water in the left panel. Things like that are the equivalent of a song captured on the first take. The left panel overall had the great advantage of standing alone successfully as a painting. Not so for the right panel. Although I liked the soft colors and brushwork of the foreground and the vivid sky, in both cases, the right panel came up short when put up against the left panel.

I put this project aside for about 10 days to deal with other things and then a window of good weather opened up ahead of my trip to NC, so I went back a second time on site. I had to take shelter behind my vehicle against heavy winds that would have blown down these large canvases. Once more, progress was better on the left side than the right. I liked very much how the buildings and foreground had shaped up. I also very much liked the light on the propellers. A word about these propellers. They are rudder propellers pivoting powerfully in a wide swath, just what a tug needs to maneuver a much larger vessel into close quarters. On the right panel, I sketched in the cranes with an unsteady hand and an uncooperative brush. I knew later I’d have to start that over. I brought the right panel’s water more in line with the left panel and attempted to link up other elements between the two, such as the tree line and the boatyard ground. But I ended up running out of time so I packed up and promised myself I would finish it in NC.

paintings, plants, and pet packed in my car en route to NC

About this time Christina sent me a link to a Washington Post story about communities coping with flooding that ended with drone footage of this very boat yard taken a few months earlier. It was simply thrilling to see this bird’s eye view of the scene I had been painting that pulled back to reveal the empty lot where I had worked on the scene.

In NC, I had several days by myself where I made good progress and then Christina joined me up here and I continued to work on it for about a week. There were a lot of details to iron out on both panels. I was committed to adding some figures doing work on the vessels, even though they would be minute. I was so struck by the pride the boat yard workers took in their work. It makes me nostalgic for the WPA era of industrial and agricultural art themes.

So I worked from reference photos and the studies to get the two pieces more in harmony and iron out the kinks that I usually overlook or quit caring about. I wanted this to be better than usual. I reworked the right panel sky starting with a big pile of blue sky paint that was a blend of cerulean and ultramarine blue with zinc white and some other ingredients, and then I had a period of reverie painting that sky. It was a wonderful afternoon. I took some of that blue and blended it into the sky of the left panel so that they linked up. I tightened up details in the left panel, added the stairs, and put in some worker figures. At that point, I was pretty well done with it and very happy.

The right panel continued to be my challenge. I tightened up the cranes at either side of the tug, touched up the wheelhouse, deepened the hull colors, and got the propellers in better shape. I added a welder at the bow and a few workers at the rail. Moving over to the hull, I repainted the entire thing, working from a deep blue/crimson ground out with grays to create the sheet metal and steel ribs. I repainted the cranes behind the hull and reworked the water more times than I can count, never satisfying me, and then I went one more time with a much larger brush and got the look I wanted. Use the right tool for the job, the welder would say. I added some work sheds and a set of stairs to climb onto the hull. All this was done with small bright brushes.

About 2-3 weeks later, I turned back to the right panel, intending to add more shape and detail to the foreground, improve the water surface and reflections, and strengthen the cranes behind the overturned hull. Also, I needed to raise the boatyard ground to be in better perspective with the left panel. The water took the longest to get right. I finally resorted to a more simplified color scheme and a palette knife to get sharper edges in the reflection. I added a section with the texture of wind rippling over the water surface just above the tugboat reflection. I decided to take out all the cranes on the right side of the right panel and let the eyes land on the hull and the sky. This worked out better than I expected.

I am very happy that I could carry this project to conclusion holding on to the perceptions from plein air painting while bringing the rigor of studio painting where it’s needed. It’s the biggest painting I have done, so far.

Hibernation

After several weeks’ delay, I started 3 paintings in about a week and spent several more weeks finishing them, all over December and early January. The first was a scene at the corner of the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi River. The second and third were scenes from our Christmas holiday in Taylor with our girls.

In mid-February, I went to Nashville for a workshop on painting the clothed figure with a terrific artist and instructor, Maggie Siner. She had been my teacher in Aix-en-Provence. Afterwards, I did a scene in Ft. Morgan and several weeks later, some scenes in Eden.

Highlander Homecoming '23

This painting was made possible by the generous contribution of an outstanding photographer, Seed Lynn, whose collection of sensitive black and white photos of this year’s Highlander Homecoming is viewable here. I began this painting on the Hill at Highlander during the gathering but I was almost immediately rained out so I had to gather and select images of attendees to populate the hill. I found some in my photos and the rest in Seed’s terrific portfolio of the event. Thank you Seed!

I started the scene in a monochrome brown underpainting and laid out the basics during the afternoon. I had a notion to add groups of people in the foreground and others climbing to and from the top of the hill.

The next step was to square up the drawing on the buildings back at the studio and apply a first coat of colors. I got to this point about a week later and then turned to other works for a while, so this had time to dry and rest.

I had an idea of some figures to include but not how to group them, so I did some sketches on paper, cut them out, and experimented with different arrangements. I also realized I needed more variety of people and postures. So, as I experimented with this, I put out word for the photographer whom I had encountered on the hill. Getting a reply took time, as these things always seem to do. But what great images to spark ideas from! In the meantime, we had visits from friends then I attended a terrific conference about Black Mountain College at UNC Asheville.

I next did some basic painting in of the figures I selected of which only 5 or 6 survived the revisions.

Progress on this phase was stalled by illness and work on other scenes. By the time I returned to this piece, I had come back to Gulfport. We spent several days on trips to the auction house and repacking the remainder of the contents of Jeanne’s home. I enjoyed working on the figures. Some were left in a very crude blocked-in state. I refined others to have better likenesses or gestures. In the future, I hope to blend figures more often into my landscape work. After the figure work was done I pumped up the hillside with a glaze of green I mixed using the last of my zinc yellow.

I finished the Highlander painting and delivered it at the board meeting this past weekend. Co-executive director Ash Lee was on site for the event and is in the center of the group in the foreground. Allyn, the other co-ED, was not, but I added him in to the right of Ash. This experience reminded me of how much I liked doing figure scenes back at Millsaps at CS’s and other joints in Jackson.

Chris, Allyn, Ash-Lee, and me

Upstream and Down

My last week here I started 2 paintings at the French Broad River just across the bridge from Hot Springs. There’s a path that passes under the bridge into a series of cabins and connects with the Appalachian Trail. I hauled my gear upstream across a rocky bed shielded from view by some woods and set up where I could get a good view of the bridge in one direction and the mountain range in another. It was clear and a little windy, great conditions for painting. I started with the upstream view of the mountain range and switched to a larger canvas to start the downstream view of the bridge. I had just sold a scene of this same bridge done from a different location and would have to deliver it to the new owner soon, so I wanted another scene of this site to replace it. Here are photos and initial state views of these works. The mountain scene was hard to do because the sunlight was so strong in the sky and as reflected in the river.

I was short of time when I turned to the bridge, so I got only a crude bit of drawing done and then filled in some basic shapes. I was mostly interested in the water and rocks.

I came back a couple of more days to work on both scenes. I also worked a good bit on the bridge scene back at the studio to correct mistakes out in the field and bring some order to the scene. Each day was as beautiful as the last. It was a real reward for having lost time to COVID and visits by guests. On the third day, two days before I’d have to drive home to Gulfport, I got out there in the afternoon instead of the morning. This resulted in a big change to the mountain scene, which I really enjoyed. The afternoon light cast long shadows on the mountain faces and changed the light on the river. I had several exciting stretches of painting there where I was reworking the original scene and the new scene fell into place so naturally. The shadows lengthened and I followed their path as they changed the composition and color. Working on the rocks in a broader set of colors was interesting. I added some rusty red to the rocks in the foreground and this worked well.

Once more I spent less time on the bridge painting but I did make some headway with it. While I was working a fly fisherman came along and tried his luck. That was great to watch and I grabbed a snapshot of him in case I wanted to add a figure later. I added a sky blue glaze and was very happy with how it turned out.

Back in Gulfport, I stole time to paint here and there and reached a really nice place with the upstream painting, especially the nearest trees on the right bank of the river. I worked into those trees to give them better shape and pierce them with sky and other background colors. I also spent a good while on the water, deepening the blue and catching the shapes the foam makes around the rocks.

I’m still at work on the bridge scene, just too many details and competing passages. It’s probably a couple of weeks out from being finished. Here is where it is right now. I have spent time on the perspective and the bridge rails.

It took effort to get the river bank in proper relation to the rest of the perspective. For some reason I continued to resist doing it as a straight horizontal line. I added the flyfisherman at the end, to keep a promise to add more figures into my landscapes in the future.

Hot Springs

A little more than a year ago, we came up to stay in our new studio, but until it was ready we had to stay in a little apartment above a store in downtown Hot Springs. To get there, we climbed stairs between two buildings and then more stairs to the landing of the apartment. The view west out of the kitchen the next morning was wonderful and so I started a scene there in acrylics. I really liked how it turned out and wanted to do a larger one in oils. So, a few weeks ago I sketched out the same scene onto a larger canvas and took it into town three mornings in a row. I gave it a very pale green undercoat.

I couldn’t actually return to the apartment window, so I had to settle for a ground level position. Still, I stayed with the original vantage point and simply looked around to fill in the colors and details in the foreground. It was easier than I expected.

The main task this time was to properly paint the stone wall of Gentry Hardware. In the acrylic scene, I copped out with a flat finish. This time, getting the colors right wasn’t hard, but it was hard to form the shapes and generate the texture of stone so that it still hung together. Things like this start messy and the task is to allow that and then move ahead to shaping and unifying it. So I did some touches all across that surface in various rust and ochre hues and then went back with pale lavender grey lines of mortar to shape and glue it together. I probably used too much oil to get this done, and it had too many beads of light in it. I spent some time on the windows with similar taches followed by shaping lines.

The foreground went pretty smoothly. I had a lucky outcome when I added dark cerulean into to the greens of the shrubbery and vines on the near side of the river. I also liked how the dirt parking area and the ridge line began. Here is where things stood early on.

The next stage was to start in on some details and the shadows . This was mostly done on the second day.

Back at the studio I worked on details in the windows, the quilt pattern in the green wall behind the hardware store, and the truck.

I got it to a good point by the third day and I could have called it quits here. I especially liked the washed out light effect of the mountain ridge and the sky. That very pale yellow in the lower part of the mountain is soft and sweet. But that nagging little voice in my head said, you’re in the Blue Ridge mountains, and that ridge doesn’t say blue ridge, does it? I decided one more trip to see what I actually perceived was necessary. Here is what I took in on that day.

In fact the nagging voice was right as far as perception went. The ridge was a darker hue and closer in color to the middle ground trees. So that led me to try a glaze with a darker blue green on top with a wide brush. The paint laid down in a funny rectilinear way that suggested the forest covering the mountains, and so I stayed with that a while. It seemed I needed to shape the mountain more than just a stroke or two to suggest direction. So I spent time on that. Finally I worked on the church, which also seemed under-developed. It reminded me of the “cheat” of drawing a person with hands in pockets because I couldn’t draw hands well. So, I spent time to make that little church do something on its own. I still am unsure that was the right move, but at some point there’s an infinity of moves and you need to stay with what you have. And this is what that ended up for this scene.