New York...these streets will make you feel brand new...

Alicia Keys -  "Empire State of Mind" is a such a fabulous song. I could listen to it over and over again (and I do). I believe I have a girl-crush on Ms. Keys.

Just came back from 7 days in NYC. Fantastic in every way - even the annoying things were great. I love that city - the energy, the noise, the smells (sometimes really really bad), the lights, the traffic, the art, the endless supply of good food and fantastic restaurants, and above all, the people. I have been to the city maybe a dozen times total, and every time I go I am surprised by how different it is from Boston. People actually talk to you in NY and I am amazed at the humanity and kindness. That is counter to the stereotype of NY but I find Boston to be very cold and aloof, while NY is warm and engaged. Just don't piss them off.

I was there to take a painting workshop with Karin Jurick. I learned so much and I am re-energized. Karin is incredible, the art-changing thing that I took from the class is that I need to trust my instincts. Karin paints what she loves and in a way that makes sense to her. She is so completely honest in her approach to life and it permeates everything she does, including her painting. I found it unbelievably freeing. I have read so many books on painting and agonize over the "rules" to the point where they paralyze me. I used to be a bit of a rebel but I eventually succumbed to what I thought I was supposed to do. Conforming works ok for my day job but does not work for art and I need to get the freedom back if I want to be the kind of artist I hope to be.

I only painted two paintings at the workshop. Here is the first painting - I will post the second in a couple of days. We all painted the same subject - I like this a lot, and I was able to just place the paint down without agonizing. Of course it helped that I got to watch her paint first.  The second painting is completely different from anything I've ever painted - it feels like a bit of turning point. You'll have to wait and see - I guess you'll either love it or hate it.

Summer Shack

I am almost finished with the painting that I started two weekends ago. I worked on it last weekend a bit, and this weekend I only had one day to paint and I painted non-stop for 8 hours (after I did my required 1.5 hour procrastination). That is what is so great about painting - I get totally lost in what I'm doing and time goes by unnoticed. Impossible for me to think about anything but what I'm working on.

My So Called House
Oil on 9x12 Canvas

There are a few things I still want to do - break up the cast shadow in the foreground so it doesn't look like a big triangle, darken the front shadow on the house, straighten the basement door and do a couple of things on the trees in the upper left. I also think I'm going to connect the light sections of the leafy tree on the right. I may put the rungs in the porch railing - I needed it to dry a little so it didn't get all muddy.

Working from one side of the painting to the other worked well for me because I was able to keep control of the color and not get all confused like I usually do. I'm pretty excited about this painting because I finally "got" some stuff that I've been trying to do for so long - simplifying the color shapes, minimal blending, and capturing light.  I also left out stuff that I didn't think worked in the composition. That was one of the things my painting teacher kept telling me last year - just because its there, doesn't mean you have to paint it.

The giant palette was really fun - (in the previous post I talked about Karin Jurick's recommendations). My favorites were radiant lemon, radiant white, indigo blue, portland grey medium, violet grey, horizon blue - the coolest colors that really made a difference for me. Also used cobalt blue for the first time which is an awesome color and one that I see on lots of other artist's palettes.

A new approach - Karin Jurick style

I'm taking a workshop in May and I received the supply list a couple of weeks ago. The artist teaching the class, Karen Jurick, has a list of paints that must be at least 30 tubes. I was missing many of the colors she requires so I ordered a whole bunch of new paint that came on Friday - 24 tubes.

This weekend I decided to try to use some of the new, very cool colors. Colors like "radiant lemon" and "violet grey". I was nervous because normally I keep my palette very small so I don't get confused. For example last week's raft painting used only 5 colors and I mixed what I needed from those. I found a video where she lays out her palette and it is amazing how many colors she uses.

This is an example from her Painting a Day blog :

Everything she does breaks all the rules from all the books I've read, and from what I was taught in last year's painting class. Not only does almost every book say use a limited palette - red, blue, yellow, white - with 2 of each (warm and cool) and a couple of earth tones - I've also been taught that you should  work the entire painting evenly. The rule is to move all over the canvas and not focus in one area.

Karin breaks those rules. I found a demo of her painting technique .She sketched out her scene and then began filling it in. Her sense of color and light is incredible and she seems to just understand the value she needs automatically. If you're interested take a look at her from the link above- I love her brush work and color.

This weekend I used a big palette and tried her method of painting from one side of the canvas to the other. I didn't sketch out the whole composition first, I just focused on making sure that the cottage was accurately drawn because of the perspective challenge. I also didn't paint on a dark ground as she does - I'll try that on the next one.

So far so good. I thought all the colors and the method of painting from one side to the other would screw me up, but it is working out pretty well. This is a painting of my house and is about 9x12. I'm only half-way done but I like where its going. The only negative is that I wanted to keep painting and I have to go to work tomorrow! The photo makes the colors a little too yellow and the contrast is too severe,  but otherwise it is pretty accurate. I will finish covering the canvas and then I will go back to deal with the light and shadow.

A Yellow Raft on Blue Water

Michael Dorris wrote a wonderful book "A Yellow Raft on Blue Water" that I read a long time ago. This painting makes me think of that, and it makes me sad. Michael Dorris was a great writer but a very tormented man - married to and then divorced from Louise Erdrich. He had a sad life - as a single guy he adopted Native American kids, and then learned they all had fetal alcohol syndrome. One was hit by a car and died. Later one of his other kids accused him of sexual abuse, and he killed himself in 1997.

So now that I've cheered you up with that lovely tale...

This is a painting of a raft on Long Sought For Pond (the greatest name for a pond EVER). It is another small one - 4x6 and painted on gessoed watercolor paper - and it was a quick one to warm up.   I may do another one on canvas and a bit bigger and see if I can do a better job on the water.

Teeny Tiny Paintings

This weekend was open studios at WAS. I don't open to sell anymore - or at least for the next 6 months or so. My door is open periodically throughout the day just so I don't seem completely anti-social but I do find the whole open studios thing incredibly distracting. It is busy and loud and its hard for me to focus so this weekend, instead of working on the big flower painting,  I painted 2 small paintings. And I mean really small - 2.5 x 3 inches. I took a picture with a pen as reference so you could see how small they really are.

 It was a lot of fun. I felt no pressure at all, I could do it with people milling around and talking and it was so satifying! I did one of the tulip vase and another of some peaches. The peach painting is a small version of one I did last fall.

That was Saturday, then today I did a couple of small paintings from my imagination so I could relax and enjoy the paint. So much fun!!

All and all it was great painting weekend. Which is bizarre to me, because I was not in a very good mood - the day job unfortunately was getting in the way.  But at the end of the weekend I remembered why I took the job in the first place and things were put back in perspective. Strange how the cosmos take care of you, isn't it?