Phantom Peaks - New Painting

Peaks Climbed, Peaks Remembered, Peaks Only Imagined

Left Behind

Left Behind

30” x 48”

Acrylic on Canvas

2023

Painting En Plein Air and Then Some

Working on a painting of an aging, well-used metal and wood shed on the East Side Art Institute property near my home in Colorado.  Starting with a sketch of the shed and then getting that image onto the canvas before the canvas was hauled out to the site and the actual painting begun.

It’s a larger canvas, 30”x48” so the process needed to be a bit fast since it being a hot day and the acrylic paint I was using had to be applied rapidly before everything dried.

That was it after working on it for two separate days.  Now for a session in the studio.  

 Almost there.  I’ll go back through it and add some detail.

The Big Fish

Recently my wife gave me this collection of writings on and by David Lynch.  Since I'm a big fan of Lynch it was great being able to start browsing through these as soon as I got them.  My favorite one at the moment is "Catching The Big Fish", mainly because it deals with creativity and how Lynch approaches the whole creative process.  A dedicated practitioner of TM he puts great emphasis on using meditation as a vehicle to go within and catch ideas or fragments of ideas where they live, or dwell, or develop, however you want to look at it.  His writings give you the confidence to trust the process and go with it to see your ideas come to fruition as you slowly dial back the noise, stress and distractions of life.  One of the clearest explanations of working the creative process that I've come across.  Lynch, along with his work in cinema is a  painter and advocate of the "Art Life" and being dedicated to that life and the work that it entails. I highly recommend this book. I also have it on Audible so I can listen to while I drive.  Great stuff!

I Love Robots

 

A Time and Place

I recently became re-aquainted with the paintings of Winston Churchill. Not an artist by profession, mainly self-taught, he did his paintings as a form of self preservation to ward off the "Black Dog" of depression as he called it and the pure love of "Brushes and Paints".  Churchill had a studio at his home, Chartwell, but he spent a considerable amount of time "en plein air", painting outdoors not only at his estate but wherever he traveled in the world. There is a memorable painting he did in Marrakech during WWII that he gave as a present to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Winter Sunshine, Chartwell

My favorite painting by Churchill is "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell 1924/1925".  His home is portrayed in almost blinding sunshine reflecting off the snow in the landscape.  The colors of the brick at Chartwell gleam in the light.  The brushwork is impressionistic and bold.

Churchill Self Portrait

I have not spent much time plein air painting but I plan to amend that.  To be able to sit immersed in a landscape, be part of it at a specific time and place seems to me to be a fantastic way of being fully engaged in this world and as Churchill a mode of finding some peace in a very challenging time.

Past Meets Present

Came across this haunting image of a nurse during the Influenza Epidemic of 1918.

The similarity of preventative advice is also striking.

Edvard Munch
Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu 1919

I'm reading Katherine Anne Porter's short story that takes place in in Denver, Colorado during the influenza epidemic of 1918.  Porter contracted the flu while living in Denver where she wrote for The Rocky Mountain News