Alberta Landscape 2018-5

Three friends painting at Sibbald Creek.  Look at that lovely vista!

I did not like the lovely vista.  I painted something more simple.

But I think my painting is not boring.

1. sketch

2. midway

3. Completed

...

All our paintings together:

left: Frances Vettergreen, mixed media on paper
centre: my painting, oil on panel
right: Russel Mang, watercolour on paper

When we had done painting, we had a picnic supper of bread and olives and two kinds of hummus and cheese and meats and cut veggies and grapes and probably some other things as well which I have forgotten. 

Before we painted, we went walking in the woods and around a little lake.  There were many wildflowers.

It was a really terrific day with good friends.

portraits of RM

Portraits of RM, made in the summer of 2015.  About five weeks ago we received news of his death.

Making portraits is very interesting to me.  Often in the finished work I find I have caught something of my sitter's personality that has not been apparent to my conscious mind.

One thing I like to do when looking at portraits (drawings, paintings or photographs) is to cover first one half and then the other, looking at each side separately.  I find there are usually two personalities contained in every face.  Of course there are many more than two sides to a person, but it seems at least two are evident in almost every portrait.  Maybe two sides of the artist as much as of the sitter.

print this

Above: Drawing with acrylic molding paste on 3  pieces of leftover MDF.  Maybe I'll try making a print off them all together like this.

Below: Two paintings from 2015, reworked last week.  I think for the better :)

BREATHE - 65x34 in.

PULSE - 65x35 in.

The last 4-5 weeks have contained several friend & family's health & life upheavals, an intense spate of teaching work, me getting laryngitis - and my studio was sidelined a bit in the midst of it all.

So it felt really good to get in there and tidy things up, take stock, let my mind wander through some possibilities.  Even small pockets of creative time can bring some soothing calm into life.