Pastels and Mileage

I've been in the studio working on a new grouping of pastels for my upcoming shows, the first show in Astoria, OR in June. I'm trying to balance my need to have a given number of pieces for the with a great desire to experiment with some new subjects. I've managed in some cases to kill two birds with one stone by introducing some structures in a few pieces. I'm happy with the results. However, I've also done a few figures in interiors with result that I don't feel are quite ready for prime time! It's difficult to do both; explore and produce. I hate to put it those terms and reduce my work to production. That's not quite how I think of it, but at least for me there is a reality that when I'm making a living as an artist, I have to make a certain amount of art. So, I press on trying to find that balance and I can't ever find anything bad about the act of just painting, so it all seems to work out in the end.

Here is one of the new pieces. It is are based on a trip I took to Fish Creek, Wisconsin where I taught for the Peninsula School of Art,(I'll be there next year too). I was attracted to the soft evening light. This is the cottage where I stayed while I was there. It's a very peaceful and private place and I really wanted to paint it for a long time. The piece is done on Wallis museum and it has a fluid acrylic under-painting that was done with really saturated color. I used a ton of different greens on that foreground over a very red under-painting. I relied heavily on Terry Ludwig's neutral greens and some Nupastels for the bright/saturated greens.