Outbuildings

I saw an article in the NY Times this morning about how photographers flock to Yosemite National Park one week in February to capture El Capitan when the light hits the granite perfectly.   If you're an artist, you probably obsess about the light too. 

One of my favorite times is sunset in Cincinnati (or the midwest) especially in the spring and the summer when the evening light seems so clean, clear, and golden.  I have a theory that the light is equally lovely at sunrise, but morning is never my best time.  You'll see where I've posted about sunset paintings here and here.

I have a second paining I did from our trip to MO at Thanksgiving--captured at sunset in IN.  Land of field farms, and beautiful light.
The title is Outbuildings.

Upcoming Essex Art Walk

Essex Studios March 2013 Art Walk is fast approaching!  The theme is Scaped, and will feature art from over 120 artists.  If you've never been down for one of the walks, it's a fun night out.  There's a wide variety of art and artists from abstract to realistic in all kinds of media.

The Art Circle (Studio 122) will be open both nights from 6:00-9:30 pm.  Fourteen of our 16 artists will be represented, and we'll be telling some of the stories behind our 'scapes.  (We'll also have some food and drink, and are always happy to chat.)  I'll be there on Saturday night--hope to see you.

Sunset over Cincinnati, A study.

 

Sunset and sunrise are beautiful times to look at the sky in Ohio.  Never more so than in the spring and fall when the sun must hit the atmosphere at exactly the right angle and everything is bathed in a clear golden orange light with streaks of reds and pinks and oranges.  In southern OH, it's not big sky like you'd see when the land flattens out over glacier till.  Instead, the horizon is interrupted by trees and hills and dips and divots.  It's still beautiful though.  And, when the sunset if framed by storm clouds it's exquisite.

If you were outside last Sunday night, after the storm passed through, you saw a peach sky framed by blue grey storm clouds at dusk.  It was riveting.  

Finding the painting inside the painting.....

 I started painting in 2001.  Over the years, even though I haven't always painted consistently, I have accumulated quite a number of paintings.  They are stacked in a drawer and on a shelf in the basement.  For the Northminster Fine Arts Show, I decided to see if I could clear some of my shelf space and salvage some of my older paintings.  A lot of them are what I would call watercolor sizes.  A full sheet of watercolor is 22 x 30 inches, and watercolor artists frequently paint on a half or quarter sized sheet.  None of these sizes fit neatly with a standard gallery sized frame.  Custom frames are expensive, so I began to consider how I could crop my paintings.  I started to look for the bast painting within a painting.

I bought two sets of standard sized mats (8 x 10 inches with a 5 x 7 inch opening and 16 x 20 inches with a 10 x 14 inch opening) from clearbags.com and here are two results.

The original painting was about 15 x 22 inches (half sheet), and the cropped painting is 10 x 14 inches.  Painted c. 2006.  Sunflower Bouquet. Sold.

In the original, the background and "busy" space are evenly divided across a diagonal, which weakens the composition of the painting.  In the cropped painting, most of the background, surrounds emphasized the sunflower, which made it more the focal point of the painting. 

This original painting was done around 2004 and was about 11 x 14.  It was never finished.  The cropped painting is 5 x 7 inches. I think the center section makes a nice loose interpretation all by itself.  Glass Vases.