Yeah Yeah...

Yeah yeah…I haven’t posted in a long time.  Nobody’s been begging for more blog posts, so I’m not very sorry about slacking off.  Truth is, I’ve been a little overwhelmed with, well, everything.  School started since my last post, which has a way of making time a little harder to come by.  I’m pretty good about keeping my school work at school, but that doesn’t mean I come home every afternoon ready to crank out a dozen paintings.  When I do come home in that mood, it obviously leaves less time for me to blab about myself online, which is a good thing.  A lot of stuff has happened in the past couple months, so I’ll be trying to catch up with my posts on a more regular basis.  The good news for me…if you’re reading this, I assume you like hearing about my latest work and are willing to indulge my thoughts and ramblings on the day-to-day.  The good news for you…this will soon be the only place online where I “post” anything…so, you can say you were the first to truly “follow” me.  To top it off, you’ll be able to do so without viewing my latest work sandwiched between bad political memes and sunglasses advertisements.  The bad news...well, it might be the same as the good news for some of you.  For whatever reason you’re here, thank you.  

Thanks To My Model

"Phenomenon"

oil on canvas

24" x 24"

I just got back from a vacation.  I consider it "vacation" because I didn't take any paints, but I certainly found some new subjects for future painting trips.  I could go on and on, but to sum it up, we rented a convertible and drove through a good chunk of California...Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Central Valley, Monterrey, San Francisco, and everything in between.  It was a phenomenal trip.  

I was happy to discover I had some good luck while I was gone.  Both of my paintings were accepted in the 92nd Annual Hoosier Salon Exhibition won awards.  The painting of my wife, pictured above, won "Best Figure".  She's a babe.  She also puts up with me, which is a tall order.  I'm a lucky guy.  

Lilies

"Lilies"

oil on canvas

30" x 40"

I'm running short on time today, so I'll just leave you with this...

I started on a painting of those plastic trash containers I love so much, found myself admiring my neighbors flowers, decided to do this large floral thing instead.  I don't paint pretty stuff too often, so this is a rarity.  It was fun, so I might do a few more...or not.  Have a good one folks!

Love at the Lake

To break up some lengthy posts that don't have much to do about painting, I figured I'd blab for a bit about last weekend's painting excursion at Lake Wawasee, Indiana.  My wife and I had been planning on spending a weekend at the lake for a while now, as we have some friends with a great little cottage on the water.  We ended up planning it out so that we'd be there during the Indiana Plein Air Painters "paint out".  I painted 16 paintings over the course of a couple days and only ended up coming home with 4.  On top of that, a couple families have invited me back to complete some commissions that I'm pretty excited about.  It was a very profitable weekend, but the best part was being with my wife and some great friends.  Typically, when I go out for a weekend of painting, even at the busy plein air events, I spend quite a bit of the time by myself...which I actually enjoy quite a bit.  But, having my wife along with me while painting is a real treat.  She understands that I can't help but paint for most of the day, but she also encourages me to take breaks and relax.  We spent a lot of time swimming, taking boat rides, and just enjoying the company.  Weekends like that serve as a great reminder that my "work" affords me the opportunity to travel, but my travels should be treated as much like vacation as possible.  Thanks to IPAPA, George and Peggy, Bill and Lisa, Courtney and Abby and Barrett...but most of all, my sweet wife, Brittany.

"Phil & Kelly's Place"

oil on canvas

18" x 24"

"Phil & Kelly's Place" is probably my favorite from the weekend.  I was pretty happy with all of my paintings, but this one just happened so easily.  I love it when you can sort of go "autopilot" on a painting, just slather on the paint and watch it come together.  Don't get me wrong, I typically find plenty to struggle on, and I'm usually stubborn enough to work through it and produce things I'm happy with.  But nothing beats the satisfaction of producing a decent painting that more or less painted itself.  

I'm off to buy some kayaks...

The Adventure, Part 3, The Desert

When I left Grand Canyon, I prepared myself for a few days in the desert.  I had already traveled through north central New Mexico and Arizona, but I knew the desert landscape was soon to become even more desolate and harsh.  I found a nice little town to stop for lunch.  They had a Wal-Mart, so I decided to get an oil change.  My trusty Subaru started burning oil several road trips ago.  I love my Forester, but the recent discovery that oil consumption in vehicles like mine is a common, potentially disastrous, and practically unfixable, left me a bit paranoid about the reliability of my most important asset on the trip…my transportation.  My owner’s manual suggests oil changes every 5,000 - 7,500 miles, unless you’ve been driving in “extreme conditions”.  At the 100,000 mile mark, I can tell you, driving at 70+ mph for 10+  hours a day is what they meant by “extreme”.  I estimated I was burning a quart of oil every 1,000 miles or so, which wasn’t the most comforting thing to have in the back of my mind.  I purchased 5 quarts in addition to the fresh 5 they put in, bought some beef jerky, and got back on the road.  While waiting on “Tire & Lube Express”, I organized my CD’s for the upcoming few days.  I still listen to CD’s.  I love my music and I’m a big fan of “the album”.  What I mean is, I love songs that are arranged in a purposeful order by the artist, to be listened to from beginning to end.  I know you can do this with an MP3 player, but the physical act of choosing the album and placing the CD into the player is one of those romantic things that I love…super romantic on a trip through the desert.  Fortunately for me, a lot of the music I listen to isn’t geared towards the pop single and often from a time when entire albums were played on vinyl, with sides and stuff…which I think is more attuned to a beginning-to-end listening experience.  Anyhow, I enjoyed organizing a “playlist” that included Jackson Browne (ultimate road music, especially after a stop in Winslow, AZ a couple days prior), Drive-by-Truckers (I was inspired by the last song on English Oceans, Grand Canyon), Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Wilco, T Rex, Nick Drake, Otis Redding, Little Feat, The National, Pavement, Howlin Wolf, Neil Young, Screaming Females, Whiskeytown, Jason Isbell, Sam Cooke, The Black Crowes, Lightnin Hopkins, Waylon Jennings, Bad Religion, The Replacements, John Lee Hooker, Sturgill Simpson, Grateful Dead, My Morning Jacket, Cat Power, Sylvan Esso, and probably a few others I can’t think of at the moment.  Funny enough, for the amount of music I designated as “desert mix”, I ended up having to break into another CD binder thingy before moving to less arid landscapes.  I love having new experiences while with good music blasting through the stereo…I think it helps me remember those experiences like scenes in a movie or something. 

I was on my way to Las Vegas.  I hadn’t really intended to stop there, but my schedule made sense of it.  I wanted to end up in Death Valley the next morning, and Las Vegas was the most logical stopping point.  So, with Vegas as my evening destination, and a lot of brutal heat left in the day, I decided to take another break at the Hoover Dam.  It was over 100 degrees by this point.  The combination of the canyon and enormous amount of concrete held the heat like an oven…it was quite unpleasant.  I awed at the scale it all.  I took a tour and a selfie, then got back on the road.  Seeing that much man-made wonder is a weird thing.  On the short trip from the dam to “the strip”, I thought a lot about the lifetimes spent building…roads, cities, monuments, and the like.  There is a certain type of irony at play while standing on an enormous, man-made river obstruction, listening to a tour guide describe the millions-of-years-process nature used to carve the canyon dwarfing everything within it.  As I pulled into a parking garage behind a huge man-made replica of a huge man-made French monument, I started to feel like a real sleaze ball.  I was in Paris.  The Paris Resort that is.  I was in Las Vegas…the capital of sleaze.

I planned on splurging a bit in Vegas so that I could have the total “Las Vegas strip experience”.  Turns out, I didn’t have to splurge at all…hotel rooms are dirt cheap.  I ended up with some snazzy suite with a view of the Bellagio for $80.  Okay…not dirt cheap, but significantly less than I figured I’d have to spend.  I guess I owe all of you slot machine feeders, buffet eaters, and desert oasis entertainment connoisseurs a thank you.  I walked around for a couple hours seeing the sights.  One of the major thrills was seeing at least a thousand “adult calling cards” stuck in the vertical metal teeth of an escalator.  It was a beautiful sight at a distance…little moving bits of neon and flesh moving towards the sky.  No doubt, there was a lot to look at.  After some exploring, I had the great pleasure of meeting two former students for dinner.  Social media and text messaging brought us together over a thousand miles away from our hometown.  We had a nice meal and laughed a lot.  I was pretty excited to see people I knew after several days on my own.  Moreover, I was ecstatic that my students would want to “hang out” with me while on vacation, as they actually drove quite a distance to meet up with me.  It’s pretty cool that they’re getting to see the country at such a young age.  Both students are super smart, mature, and motivated…they’re going to do great things.  I worried about them making it back to their lodgings for the evening while roaming the streets, watching the performers, paying too much for drinks, and pretending I was George Clooney or any of those other cool guys from Ocean’s Eleven while standing in front of the Bellagio’s fountain show.  I got to bed relatively early in preparation for the next morning.  I checked out and hit the road as many were getting back to their rooms after a long night of whatever you do all night in Vegas.  What a funky place…I think I’ll go back to watch the magicians.  

I started driving northwest so that I could make a turn to the southwest.  It wasn’t long until I was in California.  I planned on driving through Death Valley as the sun came up.  The further I drove toward my goal destination of Badwater Basin, the more alien the landscape began to look.  The mountains began to glow orange and the temperature began to rise quickly, even though the sun hadn’t actually broke into my view yet.  I passed several “wild horses” and wondered why they chose to be wild in one of the most brutal places on Earth.  I came to the conclusion that being free involves some type of sacrifice, in this case, learning to survive a place where they probably shouldn’t.  I eventually got to the lowest point in North America.  Of course, there was a roadside pull-off to appreciate the landmark.  I got out of the car and walked through the salt, beyond the shadow cast by the ridge behind me, and continued until I was just shy of a mile away from any type of shelter from the elements.  I sat down in the salt and listened to the least amount of noise I’ve ever heard.  I’m guessing the absolute isolation and extra atmosphere gained below sea level contributed to the lack of sound.  Whatever the reason, it was an experience I won’t forget.  I had a lot of “spiritual experiences”, for lack of a better term, on this trip and Death Valley definitely took me to a different place.  I think there’s a certain amount of “prove it to myself” mentality when taking a trip like this, and the slight dangers associated with traveling alone in relatively untraveled areas become addictive.  For about an hour, while sitting in “hell on Earth”, I really started to feel a weird sense of accomplishment.  I sweat through all of my clothes and walked back to the car.  I was on my way out of Badwater Basin by 8:30 am, but it was already over 100 degrees.  I pushed on through the Mojave Desert.  I saw towering dunes, lake-like mirages, and even lost the road a couple times in an apparent windy area.  The temps continued to climb and I became increasingly uncomfortable in the car.  I really think I began to love the desert for the same reasons I hated it.  It was too hot to inhabit, void of most living things, and continuously threatening.  I found a great thrill in driving through a place I knew I couldn’t survive, should some catastrophe occur.  After sweating through another shirt (I rarely turned on my AC during the trip…I’m a windows down type of guy), I made it to Baker, where I was greeted by the world’s largest thermometer.  It read 112 degrees.  I stopped for gas, hopped on highway 15, and imagined I was driving a 1971 Impala convertible with bats chasing me (some of you might get that reference).  I was on my way to Bakersfield, where I’d then turn north towards the High Sierra’s.  

Plein Air Preparedness

I'll get back to posting about my road trip next week.  Today, I thought I'd share something painting nerds might enjoy as I prepare for a plein air excursion this weekend.  For those of you that are plein air painters, especially those of you who are too industrious for your own good, you might share some of my struggles...too many paintings, too little room, and a constant, nerve-racking game of Tetris while loading/unloading the vehicle.  With all of the plein air events I attend, and the weekly deliveries I make to galleries and shows, my mid-size SUV just wasn't cutting it.  Last fall, I added to the LeGrand fleet and purchased a Fort Transit Connect...basically a miniature sprinter van with two seats, air conditioning, and not much more.  The "cargo area" is large, unobstructed by bulky wheel wells or moldings, and accessible by double doors in the rear or sliding doors on either side.  The only thing it was missing was a storage system that allowed me to to take advantage of the height of the vehicle.  So, last week, I bought some plywood and built the rack pictured above.  After some light math, heavy use of the table saw and nail gun, and a few visits back to the drawing board, I built a relatively light weight (it's actually darn heavy, but as light as my engineering skills allowed), removable storage unit for frames and wet paintings.  It's not pretty, but it accommodates my typical frames up to 24" x 36", keeps paintings from banging in to one another, and most importantly, allows me to find a canvas, paint a picture, frame that picture, and store the whole kit and caboodle with ease.  No more moving 10 wet paintings to get to a canvas and frame that I have to return to the bottom of the stack upon finishing.  And...if I plan ahead a little, I can store and transport three times as many paintings and frames as previously possible.  I played around a little and discovered I can comfortably accommodate 60 frames and panels, sizes 5" x 7" - 24" x 24", with no fear of smudging any wet paint.  As you can probably tell, I'm pretty excited.  So if you have a Transit Connect, and need more storage for your paintings, I....won't make you one...sorry.  But, I'd be happy to give you my plans.  Now, to put this thing to use!

The Adventure, Part 2, Grand Canyon

"Duck Rock"

oil on canvas

14" x 18"

I had planned on camping at the Grand Canyon.  I knew the chances of finding a primitive site in the park were slim, but I wasn’t expecting for every campground in a 50 mile radius to be full.  I found a motel.  I became a real connoisseur of cheap motels during the trip.  I opted for camping when possible, but finding campsites in the late afternoon in scenic places can be a challenge.  I slept in my car a lot, but always kept my eye open for a Motel 6 or an America’s Best Value Inn…some of the finer cheap lodgings I can suggest.  Anyway, I made sure to be up and on my way to the park at 4:30 am to catch the sunrise.  I was not disappointed.  I spent a couple hours marveling, hiked around the rim for a particular vantage point, did two paintings of the canyon, wiped those two paintings off, drove along the rim to a few more vistas, and then recharged with a healthy portion of peanut butter crackers and trail mix.  I gave painting another shot, but was surprised at the difficulty of painting something so vast, and by that time of day, super subtle. 

I ended up with several paintings of Grand Canyon, but I’m mostly glad I had the experience.  Painting on the edge of one of the most impressive geological areas in the world is a reward in of itself.  But if there’s anything I’ve learned about painting western scenes, which I’ve grown to love so much, it’s that photographs are not good references on their own.  To those of you plein air painters out there, this is true in most cases.  But for me, the color, atmosphere (or lack of), distance, and subtlety of the western landscape demands quite a bit more study.  I’ve never really considered plein air paintings to be solely “studies for studio work”, as many painters do…but I’ve always used what I learned from the experience of painting on location to help me paint from photos, sketches, and my imagination while working in the studio.  More than ever, on this month long excursion, I viewed most paintings as exercises in understanding the colors and light of the variety of locations I painted at.  In total, I probably cranked out 50-60 paintings, the majority of which I’m considering “studies”.  This is a new approach for me, but I’m already feeling very confident in what I learned.  I guess what I’m trying to say is…I made some really good ugly paintings and I’m looking forward to using them as references for upcoming studio work.  I found myself very frustrated at times, but looking at the paintings at home, I’ve found a lot of things to love about them.  I’ve got a lot of ideas in store…I can’t wait to start pumping out some monster landscapes.  You know, I rarely paint pure landscapes here in Indiana….I think it’s something about the hugeness of the West really excites me.  That and the “wanna-be mountain man seeking adventure within his Midwestern means” sort of thing.

I spent the rest of my time at the Grand Canyon hiking.  I walked about 10 miles total…two scenic rim trails that offered anything you could ask for from a dirt path.  I finished the day riding the shuttles up to some of the scenic overlooks, taking photographs, and watching the sun set with my feet dangling over a 1,000 ft. drop.  It was amazing.  Oh, and I almost hit an elk…scared me to death.

The next morning, I got up at the same time and went back into the park to watch another sunrise.  I brought a guitar with me (I play guitar) to play should the mood strike.  It struck, so I played for a while before loading up and hitting the road again.  I’ll be going back to Grand Canyon soon I’m sure.  I really want to do one of the day hikes down to the river.  In fact, I’ve heard several people talk about the rafting trips through the canyon…and I’ve already started researching.  I’ve got a lot on my to-do list.

And then came the desert…