Blank Canvas

Hello! Anybody out there??

2012-01-27T08:47:00.004-07:00

"Day's End, Midwinter"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2011

Sooooo.... It's been a while! Anyone still out there reading this?

I've been thinking about resurrecting this blog for a while now, but just haven't gotten around to it. Seems like things are always coming up, and I keep up with all my artist friends via Facebook for the most part. But part of me thinks it would still be nice to post some coherent thoughts about painting here every once in a while.

I've been working on a new catalog of my work, and as I was writing up some text for it I thought it might be nice to also share some of what I wrote on the blog. So, as a way to get this blog moving again, I'm going to take the topics I wrote about in the catalog and expand on them here in the next few weeks.

So, stay tuned!

Taking a Break

2010-04-09T09:01:00.003-06:00

"Aspens at Sundown (Commission)"
Oil on Panel
20x16"
2010

Sorry for the long absence, but I've been having to neglect the blog in favor of getting some actual painting done! In the interest of getting work done for galleries and shows, I think it's probably going to be a few months before I can think about blogging again. In the meantime, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and check my website for new work.

I get a lot of emails from people who read my blog and are encouraged by the fact that I'm juggling being a mom and a painter, and I want to thank all of you so much for that. It's rough, but possible to do both, and having this blog has been a nice way to keep in touch with others who are in the same position. Keep in touch!

Style

2010-01-27T20:23:00.005-07:00

"Almost Winter"
Oil on Panel
24 x 18"
2010

Fellow Colorado painter Dan Schultz posted a thoughtful blog today about developing one's style, and it got me thinking about my own style. I've only been painting landscapes for about six years now, so I've seen my style evolve pretty significantly as I improved my skills. Recently, I feel like my paintings have been getting more refined as I spend more time trying to get things right. I used to be all about thick paint everywhere and bold color. Now I'm more interested in the contrast between hard and soft edges, thick and thin paint, and the use of greys to make the important color notes pop.

Yet however my style has evolved, I feel as though my paintings still look like mine - they still have a bit of my own signature style. I guess it's a bit like handwriting, in that I can't really pinpoint the elusive quality that makes my paintings mine, and I don't spend much time thinking about it. It just IS.

What do you think about style? Do you think a lot about your personal style, or do you let it be?

2009 In Review

2010-01-05T18:51:00.004-07:00

"Bandit"
Oil on Panel
18x14"
2009

Well, it's a new year and I'm not even going to begin to attempt to status my 2009 goals to see how I did. That train derailed quickly when I got pregnant, and there's no point in beating myself up about what I didn't get done this year!

Instead, I figured I might as well make a short list of some of the things I DID manage to do this year, just to make myself feel a little bit better (even though I'll still be internally beating myself up). So, here are some of the things I'm proud to have accomplished this year:

Had a painting accepted into the Salon International show
Participated in the Colorado Governor's Invitational
Survived 5 months of all-day "morning" sickness
Managed to keep my art business afloat despite aformentioned morning sickness
Got invited to join a great new gallery
Had a successful two-person show in August
Moved into the gorgeous new house my husband built
Started working in my roomy new studio
Gave birth to a beautiful baby boy (sans drugs!)
Sold more paintings than I painted
Had my work featured in and on the cover of the local tourist magazine
Had my studio featured in the American Artist "Studios" magazine
Awarded "Best of Show" in the November FineArtViews Contest

Overall, 2009 was a tough year for me, mainly because I had a rough pregnancy and couldn't physically do a lot of things I wanted to do. It was totally worth it though, and I know I can get things back on track with my art this year. I'm thankful for my kids and my health, and thankful that I get to do what I love for a living, so in the end it's all good.

Time Out

2009-12-29T14:10:00.004-07:00

"Willow Study"
Oil on Panel
8x10"

Sorry I've been MIA for the past couple of months. I tend to blog in my free time, and there just isn't much free time when I'm trying to meet all of the needs of a three year old and an infant and keep up with painting! I also apologize to those of you who have emailed me who I haven't had time to respond to. I love hearing from people and I feel badly when I don't reply quickly - hopefully I'll get caught up in the next couple of months.

Luckily, Owen is in that nice not-yet-mobile-sleep-half-the-day-away phase right now, so I have been painting. I had sort of planned to take an informal three month leave from painting so I could just enjoy the baby phase, but a few weeks after he was born I was all excited about painting again so I got the studio all organized and got back to it. Given a choice between cleaning house or painting while the baby sleeps, I think I'd choose painting anyday.

I've been busy getting caught up on my mailing list and financials, which I've totally neglected for months, and I'm working on some goals for 2010. Mostly though, I'm just trying to do some good paintings when I have the time, and experimenting with some new techniques and ideas.

Most artists will tell you that you should paint everyday, or as much as possible, so you don't get rusty. I agree with this for the most part, but I've also noticed that my art tends to grow when I take time off for big life events. When I had Aspen, and now having Owen, the time I took off gave me more appreciation for my art, but also a different sensitivity for things when I returned, and my style shifted a bit accordingly. I don't know how to explain it, but it makes returning to the studio more fun.

Anyhow, hopefully I'll be posting more regularly in the new year. In the meantime, this is a tiny little painting I did a few weeks ago. It's just a color study, and I was also working on edges a bit since I tend to keep everything a bit too sharp sometimes. I'd love to make this into a bigger painting - I love the contrast between the hot sunlight hitting the willows, and the coldness of the snowy landscape.

He's Here!

2009-11-03T12:51:00.002-07:00

Just wanted to announce that our little boy finally decided to make his grand appearance! His name is Owen Matthew and he was born on October 26th at 5:09 pm, and weighed in at 7 lb 13 oz. I'd been staying at my parents house that weekend, since I was so close to my due date and we live so far from the hospital. Nate managed to get down the mountain just in time to get me to the hospital with a couple of hours to spare. We're all happy and healthy - I'm just resting and recovering and adjusting to a new routine with two kiddos.

I'm sure I'll be taking it easy on the art (and blogging) front for a few months, but I'm already itching to hit the studio. We'll see if I can squeeze in a few hours of painting sometime in the next few weeks!

Balance, or the Lack Thereof

2009-10-14T14:44:00.002-06:00

"Gothic Road Aspens"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2009

Being an artist and a mom takes a lot of focus on keeping things organized and balanced - on a good day I struggle to get things done, but I seem to have completely lost my balance lately.

I'm due to have this little guy any day now, and the waiting game is about to drive me insane. I'm ready to have a cute little baby to snuggle and take care of, and to have my body back and start moving forward with my family and my career. Not knowing what day he's going to make his grand appearance is making me crazy, and I'm just trying to keep myself busy so I won't get too impatient.

This has been a tough year. I've struggled to keep up with the art side of things -between 20 weeks of morning (ALL DAY) sickness and a handful of minor complications that kept me heading down to Denver for doctor's appointments, I've just been trying to keep my head above the water and keep the few commitments I had made earlier in the year. I missed deadlines for a bunch of juried shows, declined participating in some other invitational type events, and haven't been providing all of my galleries with new work like I should. I managed to prepare for my two person show in August and keep up with demands for work from galleries that were selling well, and that's about it.

It's easy to beat myself up about what I missed this year, and worry about whether it sets me back, but I keep reminding myself that it's just a season, and that I have to stick to my priorities. Fact is, this is probably the last kid I'll have, and I want to spend some time enjoying him as a baby just as much as I want to make sure I don't miss a thing about Aspen as she grows up. My priority this year has been my kids, and as tough as it is to swallow, I know my art will be waiting for me when I get back to a point where I feel well enough and have enough time to really focus on painting again. In the meantime, I'm doing the best that I can, and trying to enjoy the process along the way. It's not easy, but at least it's always rewarding!

Weekend with the Masters

2009-09-14T16:56:00.004-06:00

When I heard about Weekend with the Masters a few months ago, I was pretty excited that so many fantastic artists were going to be teaching in Colorado this year. I was all excited about signing up for the whole thing until I realized I might not be totally up to it while eight months pregnant - kind of a bummer. Anyhow, I ended up registering for a few of the individual weekend events that didn't involve hauling painting equipment out into the wild. We headed down to Colorado Springs on Saturday and hung out at a hotel with Aspen (fun - elevator and pool! what more could a 3 year old ask for?!?!), and then I attended a couple of sessions on Sunday.

I have to say, after looking at everyone's pictures on Facebook and attending a couple of classes myself, I'm pretty envious of those who got to attend the whole event! It was really well organized, and the group of instructors was top notch.

On Sunday morning I attended Scott Burdick's lecture on using photographic references for painting. For those not familiar with Burdick's work (www.scottburdick.com), he paints fantastic figuratives of people he encounters on travels throughout the world. His work are lush and full of life, so I was curious to hear more about his process and his view on using photos to work from.

The lecture didn't disappoint. Scott showed hundreds of slides of his work, as well as some of the photos he worked from for particular paintings. He stressed the importance of working from life on a regular basis to gain the experience needed to allow you to provide info that a photograph can't, but also stressed the importance of using photos to paint certain types of subject matter or locations. Here's a snapshot of a plein air painting he used to illustrate the color subtleties that a camera can't capture:

The thing that struck me viewing the slideshow was how luminous and energetic Scott's paintings were compared to the actual photos he painted from. He takes very good reference photos, but when he paints he takes the reference further and injects life and emotion that the photos lack. I work from a combination of photos and studies, so seeing his slides gave me something to strive for - if I can't be improving on the photo in my painting, I shouldn't be painting it!

In the afternoon, I attended a critique session with Kevin MacPherson. There were about 25 artists at the critique, and we had all provided one or two digital images of our work for Kevin to review prior to the session. Kevin had spent a lot of time preparing comments for each person's work, and interspersing images of our work with examples of masterworks that showed what he was trying to say. It was really valuable to hear the critiques of everyone's paintings as well as my own, and Kevin has a great sense of humor that kept us all entertained through it all.

The first painting I submitted was one of my personal favorites. I had entered this painting in a couple of juried shows and been rejected, and wanted to know what was up.

Kevin's critique of the painting was mainly that it had too many hard edges all over. There are also some issues with repetitiveness in the pine trees on top of the cliff, and competition between the two front cliff faces for attention (he suggested possibly darkening the cliffs in the middle ground to make the front cliffs more important). Overall though, it was all EDGES EDGES EDGES.

Looking at the painting, I totally agree. I think it's taken me a while to get to a point where I could absorb this critique. A year ago, I might have fought similar comments, thinking that the hard edges are a part of my "style". Over the past few months, I've changed my thinking and have been starting to incorporate more variety into my edges and brushwork, so I was in a good place to hear this critique.

The other I submitted was a larger painting of aspens that I did earlier this year for the Colorado Governor's Invitational show. I was proud of this painting and it has received a lot of compliments, but there were some things about the foliage that had been bugging me, and I could never put a finger on exactly what my issue was.

Kevin liked the painting but got down the main issue right away - the foliage of the aspens on the right was mimicking the hillside angle, and the cloud on the left was mimicking the shape of the aspen foliage. It was like an aha moment to me - I'd been so stressed about getting the colors and foreground of this painting right that I didn't even notice the issues with repetitive shapes up top! He also pointed out that he liked the lost and found edges in the aspen on the far left, and suggested that I incorporate some of that into the rest of the painting (again - EDGES EDGES EDGES).

Overall, I came out of the critique with an understanding of some of the bigger things I need to be working on, and it gave me a little bit of a kick in the pants to continue to work on improving my work.

Now that I've been all inspired, I just need to find some quality time to paint before this little one makes his grand entrance in about a month!

Studios Magazine

2009-09-14T16:49:00.003-06:00

Just wanted to share with you all that American Artist Magazine's special issue on Studios is out now! You can pick it up at a bookstore or order it online here.

There's a little blurb inside about my studio (well, my studio in our last house), but more importantly there are articles about a ton of other artists' studios and the many ways different artists have adapted to their spaces. It's a must read if you're looking for ideas for your space.

Overwhelmed

2009-09-02T19:59:00.004-06:00

"Gore Range Sunrise"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2009

Wow, I'm surprised I even remembered my blogger login - it's been awhile!

We've been moving into our new house and I've been preparing for a show, and on top of that I've been busy chasing a toddler and trying to survive my third trimester of pregnancy. It's been a bit chaotic and I'm a bit tired, to say the least. Now I have a cold - ugh...

We had to move out of our other house before we had the official certificate of occupancy on this house, so we moved all of our stuff to the new house, but have been sleeping at my in-laws house for a week. It's all been a bit transitional and I've been looking forward to having a home again. I'm slowly making progress on the unpacking, and tonight we're finally sleeping in the new house, so maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel?

I took a couple of pictures to document the chaos. This is what it looks like when your husband takes away half of the living room furniture while you're in the middle of framing for a show. I figured I might as well take over with my paintings since the couch wasn't taking up the space anymore:

This following picture is my defense for why I drive a gas-guzzling SUV (well, other than the fact that I actually live somewhere where it's necessary to have four wheel drive a good 6 months of the year). This is my car all packed up with 17 paintings for my show. When it comes time to deliver paintings, I'm always thankful I can fit a 30x40 framed painting in the back of the car with ease. Heck, I could have fit twice as many in there!

Anyhow, that's all I've got for now. Electrical went in up in my studio last week, so stay tuned for some in-progress shots as construction finishes up in there. Right now my easel is taking up half of the soon-to-be-nursery, so I've given my husband a deadline for finishing the studio.

Okay, time to go get some sleep now (yay!).

Pricing for Geeks

2009-07-30T20:29:00.002-06:00

"Wildflowers"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2009

Tony Moffit had an interesting post last week about an artist who had priced their work per square inch, and had a gallery lower the price of their larger works. Tony correctly stated that the gallery had no right to force the artist to change the price of their work, but I disagreed with his statement that pricing by the square inch is correct. Since then, Clint Watson posted his own opinion on the Fine Art Views blog, and sparked a great discussion in the comments about pricing practices. If you haven't read either post, read both - they're great!

Pricing can be difficult for an artist, especially when starting out. It's easy to see the appeal of pricing work on a simply per square inch basis, but it results in very cheap small paintings and very expensive large paintings.

When I got accepted into my first gallery, they set my prices at something like $3/sq. in. I made next to nothing on my smaller pieces, but my larger work was at a good price point for an emerging artist at the time. My paintings started to sell faster than I could keep up (those were the days!), and the gallery and I quickly figured out that it was time for an adjustment. At the time, we increased my larger pieces by 10% and the smaller ones by up to 50% - in the end, my small paintings were priced much higher on a per square inch basis than my larger paintings, and they've stayed that way since. I keep track of this graphically because it helps me make sure that none of my prices are out of line. Here's what my pricing looks like for a wide range of sizes:

You can see that I range from about $9/sq. in. for a 6x8" painting, down to about $4/sq. in. for a 36x48" painting - not a small difference!

Nowadays, I set my own pricing, and adjust my prices when I feel a need based on demand. In the past, I've raised my prices 10-15% at the start of each year when I felt that I was having a hard time keeping up with my galleries, with an occasional bump in prices when I won awards or got magazine coverage. This year, I didn't raise my prices because I didn't feel that the current market warranted it, and I stand by that decision for now.

One thing I do to make sure my prices aren't unreasonable is to compare with a selection of other artists with similar resumes. I pick a handful of artists in this region who paint similar subject matter, show in the same tier of galleries, and have been in some of the same shows as I have, and I record their prices for a range of sizes. I put them all on a graph together just to make sure my prices are following the same trend, and aren't too far off in magnitude. Here's my graph for the last time I did this:

You can see that my prices tend to be on the low side compared with this group (I'm the bottom line), and I'm comfortable with that. A lot of my peers raised prices this year, so I'm left looking a bit cheaper than I used to be. My paintings are still selling well, so chances are I'll raise my prices a bit at the start of next year. In a market like we have now, I'm okay with being patient and just trying to do good work.

My Favorite Things - Web Edition

2009-07-14T10:15:00.004-06:00

"October on the Colorado"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

A while back I posted about the materials I prefer to use in the studio, but didn't touch on any of the other things out there that are indispensable to me as an artist. I was just thinking the other day about how thankful I am for some of the online tools and stores that I use to make my job easier, and thought I would share some of my favorites. Oh, and for the record, I'm not getting paid to share any of this - I just love these companies so much I wanted to pass them on!

1) FineArtStudioOnline.com (or FASO) - www.fineartstudioonline.com

I don't even know where to start - FASO is the company I use for my website, and I can't even begin to describe how simple it has made the web component of my business. I signed up for my FASO website in 2006 and haven't looked back. The FASO software makes it easy for even non-computer geeks to put together a professional looking website that's easy to update.

As an artist, I think keeping one's website updated with new work and events is of the utmost importance, and FASO allows me to update my website in minutes. I can't even fathom what a pain it would be to deal with a web designer to make all the updates I make on a regular basis.

On top of that, the service includes email, blog capability, an email newsletter system, and statistics. I couldn't ask for more, and Clint and his customer support staff have always responded to every question of mine promptly. If you're frustrated with keeping your website updated, or just getting started, I can't recommend FASO enough.

2) Constant Contact - www.constantcontact.com

I just signed up for this newsletter service recently, and I honestly wish I had done it months ago. Constant Contact makes it easy to send out a very professional email newsletters and announcements, and keep track of your mailing list. I finally got around to sending out my first email newsletter yesterday, and I'm astounded at the response I've gotten. People have been impressed at how professional the newsletter looked, and I've had people click through to my website that had probably forgotten my work existed.

The most useful feature for me is the reports - after 24 hours, I can look and see what % of my recipients have opened the newsletter, I can see how many have clicked through to the web links I included in the text of the letter, and I can see how many bounced back to me (one) or opted to be removed from my mailing list (none). That sort of input is valuable in figuring out what should be included in the newsletter month to month, and how people are responding.

I can also easily decide which people get which types of content - for instance, I may send acquaintances event announcements, but not notifications of new work - Constant Contact makes it easy to make sure the right people get the right info.

I procrastinated about paying for a service like this for a long time, but at this point I think it's definitely worth the small monthly fee.

3) Dick Blick Art Supplies - www.dickblick.com

I live in the sticks, so I can't just run out and buy art supplies at the store on the corner. I order pretty much everything I use online, and at this point I buy everything but my paint from Blick. Their website is easy to use and organized, their customer service is fantastic, and they pack things so well that I've never had an item show up damaged (this can be a big deal when you paint on hardboard panels like I do - a lot of places don't pack them well and they show up with cracked corners!). And the icing on the cake is that their prices consistently beat out most other online retailers for the items I buy.

4) Utrecht Art Supplies - www.utrecht.com

I have to give shout out to Utrecht simply because their oil paint rocks. It's high quality artist grade paint that comes in big tubes at prices that beat most of the other paint manufacturers. It's the perfect consistency for me (I find other brands either too oily or too stiff), and the pigment load is great. I haven't been disappointed yet by the quality of this stuff.

5) Bloglines - www.bloglines.com

I read a LOT of blogs. There's no way I can keep track of them all, so a feed reader is a must if I'm going save my sanity and a lot of my time. I know a lot of people use Google Reader - same thing, essentially. I assume most people who read this blog probably use a reader of some type - if you don't, you need to because it will make your life much easier!!

Anyhow, that's all I can thing of right now. Anyone out there have any can't live without sites?

Shameless Self Promotion

2009-07-09T20:12:00.004-06:00

I just wanted to pass on a link to a new article about my art that's just out in the current issue of a local magazine. One of my paintings is on the cover - you can read the article text here (or pick up a copy if you're in the Winter Park/Grand Lake area).

It's kind of weird to walk into the grocery store and restaurants everywhere in town and see my own painting staring back at me from the magazine stands!

Weaknesses

2009-07-05T20:43:00.004-06:00

"Study, Afternoon Sparkle"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2009

One of my big painting goals last year was quantity - I wanted to paint 100 paintings in 2008 to make sure I was putting in sufficient brush mileage to improve. This year I decided to go for quality, and I've been working on larger pieces and taking my time trying to get things right.

One thing I've noticed over the past few months is that I really don't like to work small. Pretty much anything smaller than 16x20" gives me fits, and paintings in the 24x30" to 30x40" range have been feeling the most comfortable for me. I think the reason is that the bigger panels allow me more room to play with brushwork and color within the main shapes of the painting. I've found myself really struggling to abbreviate things well enough in the smaller sizes.

At first I just figured I'd go with my gut and work on larger stuff. Then I found myself getting requests from galleries for smaller work, and ended up struggling through a bunch of smaller pieces anyhow, fighting the process all the way and telling myself I'd give up the small stuff when the economy improved. But this past week I realized I was giving up a bit, and decided to change my attitude.

I already limit my subject matter by painting landscapes, so why limit myself further by saying I prefer to work in a certain size range? I decided maybe I shouldn't be imposing more limitations on myself, and that maybe I should rise to the challenge and figure out what it is about working small that bugs me. I think it's a lack of control - in an 8x10" painting, each brushstroke and color has to be in the correct spot or things get sloppy, and I have a hard time controlling things well enough. Turns out my distaste for the small stuff is highlighting a big weakness.

So, I'm going to approach the small stuff with a better attitude, and see how I can improve my brush control and drawing by working on smaller studies. Hopefully I can get it right, and learn something along the way.

Do you impose limitations on your work to ultimately hide or ignore your weaknesses? I think it do it more often than I know!

A Couple of Favorite Quotes

2009-06-20T13:48:00.004-06:00

"Fall Grove"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

Well, for a while there I was bad about posting because I was sick and not painting and had nothing to say. Now I'm feeling better, but I haven't been posting because I've been swamped meeting deadlines after two months of getting nothing done! If it's not one thing, it's another I suppose.

Anyhow, I just wanted to pass along a couple of quotes by William Wendt that I wrote down when I was reading through the catalog for last year's show at the Laguna Museum. Wendt is one of my favorite landscape painters, and I would have loved to see the show. Alas, I have to be happy with the catalog, which, luckily, is fantastic.

"Nature had more to say than can be caught in a minute, she has lessons for us that may take a lifetime in the learning and I believe she intended that we landscape painters should mix brains with our paint."

I love how he speaks of landscape painting as a lifetime endeavor, and dismisses the idea that it isn't intellectual. I also love this one, which explains so well why I love wilderness and landscape painting:

"Here, the heart of man becomes impressionable. Here, away from conflicting creeds and sects, away from the soul-destroying hurly-burly of life, it feels that the world is beautiful, that man is his brother, that God is good."

Photographing Oil Paintings

2009-06-14T12:47:00.006-06:00

Photography ranks near the top of the list of things I don't like about my job. Getting good photographs of my paintings has frustrated me since the day I started painting. Unfortunately, the further I get in my career, the more important it is to have quality images of my paintings.

I used to have a perfect spot in my house to photograph my paintings - indirect light, no glare, just perfect. Then we moved (three times), and every time we moved I found myself scrambling to find a new "perfect" spot.

I've tried every spot in the current house with indirect light, shooting outside on a cloudy day, shooting outside on a sunny day, shooting inside the studio with my daylight flourescents, shooting my paintings at an angle, and whatever else you might suggest. No matter what, I seem to end up with glare on some part of the painting. I use thick paint, and I find it next to impossible to to take a photo without the light catching on some brushstroke, and it drives me insane. For big paintings, it's not a big deal - hardly noticeable unless you blow up the painting full size. For small paintings, or paintings with a lot of dark values, it can make getting a decent image virtually impossible.

So, I started looking into having my paintings professionally photographed last year. Problem is, most photographers who know anything about photographing 2D art charge $50-$70 per painting, which adds up quickly if you're at all prolific. Also, I live in the mountains, so add in the hassle of transporting my paintings two hours to a photographer in Denver, then having to make the same trip to pick them up. I'm cheap, so this doesn't really appeal to me - I'll probably only do this if I ever start to make giclees or prints.

A few weeks ago, Carole Marine recommended this new ebook called "Exposing Yourself: The Artist's Guide to Digital Imaging". It's written by Jason Smith, a photographer who does all the photography for the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, TX (if you want to see his work, just go click on the high res image of any painting on their website). Every year I'm impressed with the images of my paintings that show up on the Greenhouse Gallery website for the Salon International show, so I figured I could probably learn a thing or two from him and bought the book.

The book covers everything from cameras to lighting to computer editing and printing, but I was mostly focused on the lighting. Like most of the local photographers I've talked to, Smith recommends using polarizing filters on the lights and camera to eliminate glare. Unlike most of the photographers I've talked to, he actually explains how to do this in enough detail that I was able to order the equipment and try it myself!

So, long story short, it worked. I'm actually totally impressed at how easy this was after all my frustration over the past few years. The picture I put up with my last blog post is the poster child for all of my frustration.

Here's the "before" shot:

If you click to enlarge it, you can see that I had some serious glare on anything resembling a vertical brushstroke. It looks okay small, but full size it's fairly atrocious. And since it's a small painting (11x14"), it's really obvious that the photo is lacking.

Here's my "after" shot (click to enlarge):

You probably have to see these images full-screen to really see the difference. First of all, NO glare - yay!! Second of all, more saturated color and accurate values. I took this photo and uploaded it to my computer and immediately felt that every penny I had spent on lighting and filters had been worth it (and wished I had figured this out two years ago).

Also, for the record, the "before" photo took me about half an hour and twenty photos to get the quality you see here. The "after" photo was my first shot after setting up the new lights - that's about 29 minutes worth of frustration avoided! This is just an average example, but I've had some paintings with darker values that were a nightmare to photograph without having glare messing up the values, and I can tell just from this photo that this setup will solve those problems completely.

Overall, I had to spend about $270 on equipment. I bought a polarizing lens for my camera, an adapter for the lens since my camera isn't an SLR, lights, bulbs, stands, polarizing filters for the lights, and filter holders for the lights. That cost translates to the price of having about five paintings professionally photographed, so I figure it'll pay for itself quickly. Also, now that I know I can successfully eliminate the glare myself, I'll feel more justified in eventually buying that nice new DSLR that I've had my eye on for a while!

Anyhow, I just wanted to share this, and say that if you have any questions about photographing your paintings or editing the digital files, I'd highly recommend getting Smith's book, Exposing Yourself. It's a simple upload, and worth every penny at only $19.95.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go re-photograph every painting in my studio!

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

2009-05-28T08:25:00.007-06:00

"Last Light, Monarch Lake"
Oil on Panel
11x14"
2009

My fortune at the Chinese restaurant last night said, "Chance favors those in motion." I read it to my husband and we both laughed - after all, I've spent the last few months trying to move as little as possible!

Isn't this common sense, though? I think of it as "making luck" - making the effort required to position ourselves where we can take advantage of new opportunities. I'm painfully aware that when I'm not working, I'm not in a position to go anywhere with my art but down. The more effort I put into making and selling my paintings, the more likely I am to get results. Being an artist is not an easy job - it requires commitment and elbow grease.

Alyson Stanfield touched on this in her Deep Thought Thursday blog last week, asking her readers how many hours per week an artist should devote to his or her career, referencing Michael Shane Neal's suggestion of 12-18 hour days.

I usually love reading the responses to Alyson's Thursday questions, and this one was no different - the answer was obviously that there is no answer and that it depends on the artist. I think most agreed, however, that the more time you can put in given your circumstances, the better. But there was one post that implied that anyone who thinks of their art making in terms of time is not an artist, and it got my blood boiling a bit. I might have even fired off a hasty response without taking the time to cool down - hehe...

Suffice it to say, I totally disagree. First of all, it's downright insulting to say someone else is not an "artist" simply because of their working habits. We could argue all day about what is "art" and what is not, but I daresay it has very little to do with whether the artist works 9-5 or in the dead of the night. Second of all, I think this type of attitude can be very dangerous to those who wish to start a career in the arts. There's a misconception that being an artist is fun and relaxing, and the minute things get tough a lot of young artists run for another career.

I know a lot of artists in real life, and they all have different work habits. Some are very regimented and schedule every hour of every day to optimize their art making time. Some are more laid back and work different hours every day, depending on what else is going on. But regardless of style, every artist I know who actually makes a living from their art (meaning does art full time and makes enough money to support themself and often their family) works damn hard. A lot of these guys paint more than 40 hours a week, and then spend 20 hours more working on business and networking. They take their art careers as seriously as anyone else who runs a small business, and it shows.

I have yet to meet an artist who got worse by putting in more hours. Have you?

More Progress

2009-05-19T21:24:00.006-06:00

I'm 17 weeks pregnant tomorrow, and I'm torn between thinking this morning (all day) sickness is going to go away any day now, and being resigned to the fact that it might stick around for 23 more weeks.

I'm terrified that the latter is the case, to be completely honest. I have a new gallery to supply with paintings and a show to prepare for in August, and while I have a head start on both, I'm still panicked about how I'm going to get things done. I'm at a place where I'm determined to squeeze in easel time where I can, even if it means only painting for an hour or two at a time.

So, anyhow, I felt like crud today but managed to get a couple of hours of painting in, and got the rest of this 16x20" painting blocked in. I'm not expecting a masterpiece here - just trying to get back in the groove with a paintbrush!

It needs some work, especially in the foreground trees and bushes, but it's a covered panel and that's great compared to the nothing that I've been doing! Sorry for the glare - I was having fits trying to get a decent photo of this one since it's still wet. Once I finish it and get a better photo, I'll re-post it.

So, baby steps - I'm hoping 2 hours can turn into 4 hours next time and a full day eventually. I don't feel like myself when I'm not painting, and that's motivation enough to get to work.

Progress, Finally

2009-05-14T19:47:00.005-06:00

It's been an unproductive two months, to say the least. I've had all day "morning" sickness since the start of March, and it's put a big kink in my painting schedule. Standing at the easel just isn't all that fun when you're dry-heaving, you know?

To be completely honest, it's been a bit of struggle for me to accomplish next to nothing day after day - I've spent more than a few days feeling sorry for myself, which I know is totally useless. I've had a couple of good days over the past week, so I'm really hoping that means I'll start feeling better soon. In the meantime I'm just going to force myself to do as much as I can.

So, I painted today for the first time in weeks. I only lasted three hours at the easel before I had to take a rest, but I got about halfway into a 16x20" painting, and I felt like myself for the first time in ages. It was just so nice to finally PAINT!!

To prove to y'all that I finally did something, here's my in-progress picture (color is way off - sorry). It's got a long way to go because I'm a bit rusty, but I don't care because it was just so nice to finally work on something new.

On a totally unrelated note, I found a bottle of liquin in my studio that I hadn't touched in a couple of months, and was kind of appalled at how nasty it was. I took a picture just to show you all why I try not to use this stuff much in my paintings. See that cloudy yellow congealed nastiness inside? How would that look if it were mixed in with light paint in a painting? Ick. (p.s. Not trying to knock anyone who uses liquin normally - I'm just always surprised at the things this stuff does in the bottle!).

Anyhow, that's all I've got for now. If all goes well, I'll post some more pictures of this painting as I work on it next week.

Pegged

2009-05-13T08:10:00.002-06:00

"Summer Grove"
Oil on Panel
30x24"
2009

I've painted a lot of aspen trees this year. It started out as a challenge - I struggled with them, and since they're everywhere in Colorado I figured I should work on it. And they're fun to paint - every grove is different. Also, the galleries love aspen paintings, because tourists buy them, and I can't complain when they're paying my bills during a rough patch in the economy. But this is the point where I get a little bit wary of being pegged as a painter of very specific subject matter.

Do I want all of my galleries to be begging for aspen paintings for the rest of my life? Probably not. I like painting them, but like everything else, only when I feel like it!

The best artists out there sell regardless of what they paint. It doesn't matter if Richard Schmid paints a figure or a landscape - he executes all of his paintings so well that his collectors see value. And since he's painted a variety of subject matter throughout his career, his audience doesn't expect to see only one thing.

I paint purely landscapes, so my subject matter is already a bit limited, but I like painting different scenes, seasons, and moods. I used to paint a lot of big vista mountain paintings, but since I've moved to the mountains, I find myself painting the more intimate scenes - the corners of the landscape that you see when you spend more time in a place. I think that expanding my comfort zone has improved my painting.

It keeps me on my toes to paint different things, so there's a fine line to walk between keeping the galleries happy and painting what will help me grow as an artist. I think this is something a lot of artists face when they sell through galleries, and sometimes the best thing is to find a gallery that is run by owners who truly appreciate good art (vs. "sellable" art). I tend to have the attitude that if I improve enough that anything I paint is a knockout regardless of subject matter, it won't matter what I paint so much as how it's painted. To get to that point, I have my work cut out for me - I won't be getting bored any time soon.

Another Poll

2009-05-03T13:24:00.007-06:00

Hey all - my husband is working with a designer on a new logo for his homebuilding company, and wants some opinions on his current options. I know this has nothing to do with art, but I know you all have good taste, so would you mind taking a look and voting on which one you prefer? Pretty please???

FYI, he builds modular homes in the mountains of Colorado. The logo goes on his marketing materials, advertising, and website, and also on his truck and equipment etc. One of these is his existing logo, and one is the proposed new one (I won't say which is which), and he's not sure he wants to make the change to the new one. If you have any opinions on what could be changed to make either one of them look better, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Sorry these are cropped so tight - use your imagination =)

Here's Logo #1:

Here's Logo #2:

Thanks a bunch. I promise I'll post something about art this week - I have a new painting to show!

Materials Safety in the Studio

2009-04-26T11:44:00.006-06:00

"Sunrise Study"
Oil on Panel
6x8"
2008

I’ve gotten a lot of emails over the past few years about what changes I made in the studio when I was pregnant with Aspen, and I’m getting them again, so I figured I’d put this out there for anyone who might be interested. I’ve got a degree in Chemical Engineering, so I’ve done a lot of research on the chemical properties of oil paints and mediums, and made what I think are some educated decisions about what’s safe and what’s not in the studio during pregnancy. For the record, I don't know everything and I know there will be people who disagree with some of this, so take this all with a grain of salt!

1) Paint

Regular oil paints consist of pigment in a linseed oil base. Linseed oil itself is not a health concern – actually, a lot of people take flaxseed oil (same thing) supplements for their health. The pigments in the paint are another story. The earth pigments are okay (sienna, umber, ochre), but the heavy metals (cadmium) can cause health problems. Luckily, heavy metals such as cadmium are mainly a health concern if inhaled, as they are generally not absorbed by the body by ingestion or absorption through the skin. If you were to ingest cadmium paint, for instance, it is likely that your body would pass it through without actually absorbing the form of cadmium that is used in the paint. For the most part, the paint itself is safe; however, I do take the precaution of wearing gloves at all times when I’m painting, to prevent the chance of anything absorbing through my skin. I also don’t have food or drink in my studio, just as an extra precaution.

A lot of people have suggested that I use walnut oil paints, water-soluble paints, or acrylics to cut down on health concerns. Just to clear things up, walnut oil paints are the exact same thing as regular oil paints, only with walnut oil substituted for the linseed, so this doesn’t provide any health advantage on its own. Water soluble oil paints scare me because I don’t know enough about what chemicals they put in them to make them water-soluble. Also, acrylics and water soluble paints can still have dangerous pigments in them. Oil paint gets a bad rap, but I maintain that it’s the mediums and solvents we use with the paint that are dangerous, not the paint itself.

Oh, and I won’t go near pastels when I’m pregnant. Sometimes I like to play with pastel in the studio, but the pigments in the pastels are so easily inhaled that I won’t mess with it when I’m trying to keep a healthy studio. A lot of pastel artists have air filtering systems in place in their studios to keep things safe, but I don’t work with them enough to bother.

2) Solvents

I normally use Gamsol mineral spirits to thin my paint for washes and block-ins, but I don’t like to have any solvents in the studio at all when I’m pregnant. To keep my studio solvent-free, I substitute walnut oil for my mineral spirits, using it to thin paint occasionally and clean my brushes (this is where the health advantage of walnut oil comes in, btw – not in the actual paint).

I will admit that I actually hate having to do this. When you use oil to thin paint, your washes are very oily and you can’t paint over them easily with thicker paint. The paint takes ages to dry, and honestly, the oil isn’t that great for washing brushes. I end up using twice as many brushes just to keep things clean in the painting. I usually end up painting thicker (not a bad thing), using less washes, and washing my brushes with soap and water more than I normally would. I end up having to change my familiar technique and working methods, and it’s not easy - I miss my mineral spirits!!

3) Mediums

I don’t really use mediums normally, so this doesn’t make a huge impact for me. I occasionally use liquin when I need something to dry quickly, but the stuff makes me feel sick on a normal day, so I completely eliminate it from my studio when I’m pregnant. I’ve talked to a lot of artists who have had weird reactions to liquin and other alkyd mediums, and they stink so bad that I’m convinced they can’t be all that healthy. Also, the MSDS sheet for liquin actually suggests the use of a fan, fume hood, NIOSH mask, and barrier creams when using "large quantities" of the stuff or working in an unventilated area - makes me a bit uneasy.

4) Varnish

I usually varnish all of my paintings with a Winsor and Newton retouch varnish as soon as they are dry to the touch. The stuff is solvent based, and will stink up my entire house in a few minutes, so in the interest of having a solvent-free studio I won’t use it indoors while pregnant. I haven’t found a way around varnishing my paintings, so I wait until I have a batch of paintings ready, then I go out on the back deck, put on my gloves, and varnish outside where the air is fresh. I leave the paintings outside until they’re dry enough to not stink up the house – I figure it’s not good for any of us to be breathing the fumes.

Knowing that these changes make my studio a healthier place for me, I’d love to say I stick with these methods even when I’m not pregnant, but I honestly don’t – there are some things I do when I’m pregnant that drive me nuts when I’m painting (the walnut oil), so I’m usually excited to get back to my normal materials when it’s just me! Anyhow, hope that answers questions for some of you. I’m sure there are folks who will disagree with me, but I figured I’d put it out there for what it’s worth.

In other news, I'm still seriously digging to come up with paintings to post here - time to get busy in the studio (if only the dry heaves would subside...)!

Cat's Out of the Bag

2009-04-16T09:25:00.004-06:00

"Front Range Fall"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2008

(Wow - this painting looks sort of atrocious on my blog background. Sorry about that. I don't think it looks this contrasty in person?)

Well, I was at the Governor's Show for all of five minutes the other night when my friend Sallie asked me if I was pregnant. I was kind of hoping I could keep it a secret for a while, but apparently not!! So, there you have it - my excuse for only finishing one - yes ONE - painting in the past month and a half.

I'm three months pregnant (due Oct 29th), and I think I've been sick for about six weeks straight now. I didn't really have this with Aspen, so I've been kind of a wimp about it. It's been hard to do anything requiring movement without gagging, so standing at the easel hasn't really seemed appealing most days. I did finish a 30x24" painting the other day. The only reason I even got that one done is that I needed something decent on the easel for a photo session I had for an article in a local magazine. Once I started it, I had to finish it, so I managed to get it done.

I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, but not really succeeding. When I was pregnant with Aspen, I was working fulltime and painting for a new gallery, and even though I was tired I was getting things done. This time around, I feel like a sloth. My main priority has been to use what energy I have to be a decent mom to Aspen, so my art has really taken a back seat. I'm in a position where it's okay, since this is a slow time of year for my galleries, and the economy is slowing things down too. I have a decent number of paintings in my studio and in my galleries, but I just feel guilty for not putting out the number of paintings I did last year.

So, here's hoping that I feel better now that I'm nearing the end of my first trimester, and that I can get productive soon! I'm really digging for images to post on this blog (this one's old), so I know it's time to get to work.

Anyhow, assuming the weather folks in Denver are wrong and there is no blizzard tonight as forecasted, I'll be heading down to Phoenix with Nate tomorrow morning for a long weekend of laying by the pool reading and relaxing. Hopefully I'll get enough sleep that I'll return refreshed and motivated (and hopefully with less gagging) and ready to paint next week!

Shows this Weekend

2009-04-09T08:39:00.002-06:00

"Aspen Grove"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

Hey all, I just wanted to spread the word about a couple of shows my work will be in this weekend.

First, the Colorado Governor's Invitational Art Show and Sale opens this weekend at the Loveland Museum. I'll have four paintings available in the show - Aspen Grove, December, Aspen Gold, and Red Rock View. The show opens on Saturday, starting with a demonstration by Mchelle Torrez at 2:00 pm, followed by a catered reception from 5:00 to 9:00 pm where the paintings are sold by draw. Tickets to the reception are $55 and include the full color catalog. The show is then open to the public through May 17th.

If you're in Colorado, I'd highly recommend stopping by the opening, or at least making sure you see the show while it hangs. The Governor's Show is a great art event, and includes some of the best painters and sculptors in Colorado. The opening is always packed, and is a great place for collectors and artists to chat. Nate and I will be heading up to Loveland to attend the opening on Saturday night, and would love to see you there!

Also, my painting Silence will be hanging in the Salon International at the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, TX. I know a ton of artists who are in the show this year, and wish I could make it to the opening - Salon International is always the same weekend as the Governor's Show, so I have yet to make it to the opening of this one! The Salon Show is a collection of over 300 works of some of the best contemporary representational painters out there. If you're in Texas, be sure to check it out. The show opens with a reception on Saturday from 5:00 to 8:00 pm, and runs through May 1st at the gallery.

Shaped by the Landscape

2009-04-02T09:11:00.004-06:00

"January Sky"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

(This painting photographed horribly - all the photoshopping in the world couldn't get the colors quite right, and now it looks all dark - grrr!)

Sometimes I get all into my own head and start to wonder if my paintings have enough meaning or not - whether or not pure landscapes are as worthy a pursuit as something more abstract or narrative. Usually, I don't think like this for long, because the fact remains that I have no desire to paint anything else. I paint what makes the biggest impact on me, and that happens to be the landscape around me.

I just started reading the book "Why I Came West" by Rick Bass, and he touches a bit on the landscape and its impact on the artist. I thought I'd share some of his words, because he says it so well.

"One often hears about how an artist sculpts or shapes his or her work and how, sometimes, the artist's work then helps shape or direct culture. It seems to me that we hear less often how the artist's subject sculpts the artist."

I love how he words that - the way that the artist is actually sculpted by the landscape. Now that I live in the mountains that I paint rather than being a casual observer from the city, I feel that force in my own life. I know how the landscape can shape a person - how the seasons become metaphors for seasons in your own life. And of course, Bass says it better here:

"I am as entwined in the rhythm of the weather and seasons as any of the other plants or animals. I have become a part of my subject, enmeshed in it. I am no longer on the outside of it, an alien observer."

I think that knowing what I paint is making me a better landscape painter. I'm no longer just aiming to paint pretty pictures - I'm trying to paint the essence of the landscape around me. And I've got a long way to go.

One last thought from Bass, that might be obvious but should be said:

"As an artist, I find it deeply important that such places, such wild places, be protected wherever they are still to be found."

Easier said than done, of course!

Thanks!

2009-03-25T08:12:00.003-06:00

"April Thaw"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

Whoa - it's been a while!!

First, thank you so much to everyone who voted and left comments on my last post! The poll was about 2 to 1 for "Aspen Grove", and the comments leaned heavily toward the same painting. So, "Aspen Grove" it is - I'll deliver it, along with three other paintings, to the Loveland Museum next week. I'm crossing my fingers that it shows well. This show is an invitational of some of Colorado's best painters and sculptors, so it's a lot of exposure and I like to make sure I don't embarrass myself! The other painting is with my local gallery since it's a local scene - hopefully it sells.

Anyhow, I apologize for not posting much this month. I haven't been feeling well for a few weeks, and as such have had little motivation to stand at an easel. I haven't touched a paintbrush in two weeks (well, except to varnish a bunch of paintings), and most of my effort has gone to varnishing, framing, and delivering a bunch of paintings. April and May are slow times in the resort towns where I sell my work (mud season = no ski traffic, and no summer traffic), so I'm not beating myself up too much over taking some time off. Hopefully I'll be feeling good enough to get back to painting tomorrow.

Thanks again for all the insightful comments and opinions!

HELP!

2009-03-10T20:08:00.007-06:00

Hey all - I need your help!

I've been working on some larger paintings and need to pick which one is going to be in the Colorado Governor's Show next month. The show is held at the Loveland Museum, and my work will be hanging alongside some beautiful work from 50 other Colorado painters. Needless to say, it's the type of show where I try to have one larger painting that will make an impact and get the attention of collectors.

I'm sort of terrible at making decisions like this about my own art - I see it so much while I'm working on it that my opinions get skewed by the time a painting is finished. So, I thought I'd put this one out there and get some opinions. I have it narrowed down to two paintings, and I'd like to know which one you like best (i.e. Which one grabs your eye first? Which would catch your attention in a crowded room?).

Here are some larger images of the paintings (you can click on them to enlarge a bit). After you've looked, either vote by clicking your choice in the poll below, or leaving an opinion in the comments. Thanks so much for your opinions!!

1.) "Aspen Grove" - Oil on Panel, 30x40"

2.) "First Snow, Berthoud Pass" - Oil on Panel, 30x40"

VOTE:

Going With the Flow

2009-02-26T19:53:00.005-07:00

"High Altitude"
Oil on Panel
22x28"
2009

Since I finished my mentorship in January, I've been slowly re-adjusting to having 100% of my working energy devoted to my art again. My galleries are somewhat stocked and I have no homework now, so I've been in the position of painting whatever I want for the first time in ages. Quite honestly, I've been floundering a bit about what I should be painting. Should I be doing small paintings or large paintings? Working on stuff that will sell or stretching myself? Recently I've gotten into a groove of just selfishly working on whatever I want on a given day, and I've gotta say it's been really great!

I spent most of January working on show entries and commissions. I've spent the bulk of this month letting loose on three 30x40" paintings (starting the fourth tomorrow). I'm taking advantage of the economy being a bit slow to spend some time working on what I want to work on, and right now that means larger panels and different subject matter than I usually do on a large scale. It's been a ton of fun to move paint around with large brushes, and work on the subtle variations in color and value that are less noticable in small work. I tried to do an 8x10" at the start of the month, and I hated working on it so much that it was a dismal failure. So, I pulled out the big panels and got to work, and haven't touched a small panel since.

It occurred to me that it's good to have some time like this, where I'm not responding to deadlines or gallery requests or commission deadlines. It's good to have the time to experiment and have fun, and try new things just for the sake of moving some paint around.

When I used to be all into triathlons, it was really immportant to build a rest day into every week of training. Without that one day of rest, I'd inevitably get injured or burned out or sick. My body and my brain just needed a break. I think my art is the same way - sometimes I get all wrapped up in a schedule and the discipline of producing, and after a while I get a bit burned out. It's nice to have a break every once in a while when I can give it all a rest - just enjoy the process without the pressure of it being my job.

Anyhow, I haven't photographed anything recently, so this is one I did back in January. It was one of my OPA entries, and was sadly rejected from the show. That's okay though - I've learned not to take show rejections (or acceptances!!) personally. I knew this was a unique subject, and I did my best with it. It was fun to paint, and I learned from it, and I happen to really like it. Who knows, maybe I'll frame it and keep it!

Inspiration

2009-02-18T12:13:00.003-07:00

"November Stream"
Oil on Panel
12x9"
2008

I've been trying to spend some time looking at good art lately. Living in the mountains makes it tough to get to openings and shows on a regular basis, but I think it's good to get out and see what other people are doing, and get out of my own little world. I think it would be an understatement to say that it's always inspiring to see a beautiful painting - makes me want to shut myself in the studio and paint away.

For Valentine's Day, Nate and Aspen and I drove over to Steamboat Springs and checked out Clyde Aspevig's show at the Steamboat Art Museum. If I hadn't had a two year old with me, I would have spent all day there (actually, I'm planning to drive back over on my own someday soon - the show was THAT good). If you live in or near Colorado, you really need to make the drive to see this show before it's over in April. And if you can't see it in person, at least order the catalog, even though the images come nowhere near to the power of these paintings in real life. I just got lost in the layers of color and texture in the larger studio paintings that were in this show. I know I've said this before, but the guy is really a master - best living landscape painter out there. After seeing the show, I've been waffling between a state of inspiration and state of unworthiness (why paint when I have so far to go???) - hehe...

I also just got the catalog for the William Wendt show that was at the Laguna Art Museum this winter. I really wish I could have seen it in real life, but I just couldn't swing the trip to California while it was hanging. The catalog is fantastic though - 300 pages and packed with beautiful color images. Even though the California landscape is fairly foreign to me, I love the work of the California impressionists. There's just something about the bold color and brushwork of Wendt and Payne that makes me think that that's what a landscape painting should be - I love it! So, check it out - this catalog is definitely worth the $30 or $60!

Anyhow, just wanted to pass along a couple of things that have gotten me all fired up about painting lately. What inspires you?

Words You Can Relate To

2009-02-08T08:47:00.004-07:00

"The Valley Floor"
Oil on Panel
30x24"
2009

I posted this quote on my Facebook page last week, but figured I would post it here as well - I think a lot of artists who have been at it a while can relate to this idea:

"Painting is easy when you don’t know how,
but very difficult when you do”
- Edgar Degas

When I first started painting, I knew that I had a long way to go, but I didn't really think of painting in terms of difficulty. It was a hobby - it was fun! As a beginner, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised when anything turns out well, and I would be thrilled even if only a portion of my painting turned out the way I wanted it to.

Now that I've been at it for a few years, I've lost a lot of that naivete. The more I learn about art, the more distance I see between my current abilities and where I'd like to be. And as time goes by, my standards for what goes out the door get higher and higher (the cringe factor, I guess).

I find myself painting slower. I used to pride myself on the fact that I could knock out an 18x24" in a day, or a small study on location in an hour. Now I'm more aware that it's the quality of what I paint that matters, not the quantity (especially in this type of economy!). I find myself spending a week on a 24x30" or 30x40" painting that might have taken me half the time a year before. I scrape things more - rather than being satisfied with "almost" I try my best to get things right.

Painting is still fun, but it has become more of a challenge, and as such has also become that much more rewarding. I just have to find balance between striving to improve, and getting down on myself for not being where I want to be. The former is constructive, while the latter can be frustrating and completely detract from my efforts when I let it affect my mood. It's a tough thing to balance, and sometimes I let the negativity win.

This was a tough week for me - I was tired and cranky and had to remind myself not to get down on myself too much. I had to remind myself that if I'm being critical of my own work, it's probably because I'm improving. I found a bit of comfort in this quote - knowing that I'm not the only artist in the world who struggles with these things made me feel better, get out of my head, and step back up to the easel.

My Other Blog

2009-02-04T20:51:00.003-07:00

I just wanted to let you all know that I've started another blog on my actual painting website - you can view it here, where I've posted about looking past the obvious to find better painting compositions. I'm still going to keep this blog, and will continue to post here at least 1-2 times per week. I'll probably only update the one on my website every other week or so.

I've never viewed this blog as a marketing tool, but rather as a way to connect with other artists. When I started blogging, I didn't know any other artists, and reading the blogs of others was a great way to get a glimpse into the working lives of people doing what I wanted to do someday. Now that I'm painting for a living, I like to use this blog in the same way, and hope that my thoughts or experiences might be useful for other artists starting out. As such, I like to be fairly honest and transparent about things like goals, and rejection, and my struggles with the painting process. Because of that, I've never promoted this blog on my actual website. I figured I would feel more guarded if I knew I was providing a link for potential collectors, which I know is silly since a google search of my name and "art" brings up this blog directly below my website (and I've had folks who own my work comment on here regularly). It's just a weird mental thing, I guess!

Anyhow, I got to thinking recently that I wanted my website to have more content to hold the interest of potential collectors and bring people back on a regular basis, so I decided to start the blog over there for that reason. The posts will be mostly discussion of the painting process - e.g. what I was thinking when I painted a recent painting, what I was working on etc. My posts here will still be a mix of whatever I feel like rambling about, whether it be goals or musings about being an artist.

Who knows whether either one is worth reading, or whether my ramblings will ever be useful to anyone else, but for what it's worth I thought I'd share anyhow!!

Something Completely Different - DONE!

2009-01-29T21:52:00.003-07:00

I made a few teeny tiny adjustments to the Monhegan painting - mainly cleaning up some lines on the boats and making the water sparkle a bit more. The next step is to wait for it to dry so I can sign and varnish it, then frame it and ship it.

Normally when I do a commission I send the client photos of the painting in a couple of different frames so that they can choose which they prefer. I'll typically pick out a dark frame, and some sort of gold frame. Seems like the dark frames are in style here in the Rocky Mountains, but not everyone loves them. However, this particular painting looked horrible in a gold frame, so I only gave the client this option. It's a custom frame from Front Range Frames (I use frames with this finish for most of my paintings these days):

Oh - this painting is 22x28", oil on gessobord panel as usual. Not sure I mentioned the size before.

For a commission, this was a ton of fun to paint. Now I need to plan a painting trip to Maine!

Something Completely Different - PART II

2009-01-27T19:53:00.005-07:00

Thanks to everyone from Maine who commented on the first part of this demo. It was good to hear that I'm not completely off track in my depiction of this landscape!!

When I stopped yesterday, I had painted the sky, buildings, and rocky parts of the Monhegan Island painting. Next up was blocking in the two boats and the water. I started off by painting in the general shape of each boat with thinned paint, mainly to block in the major shapes and values. I also started to place some of the darker values in the water. If you look closely, you can see that I decided to move the boats up a bit from where I had originally sketched them, and adjusted the size of the sailboat to be more accurate.

Next, I used a thin wash of paint to indicate the general value and color of the water. It doesn't look that great, but this was mainly so I could judge if the value and color of the boats were accurate and working with the rest of the painting as a whole. Without the water painted in, the boats were off by themselves in a big white area, and it was hard to judge how they worked with the painting as a whole.

At this point I have to apologize for forgetting to take progress photos for a few hours! Once the water and boats were blocked in, I went in with thicker paint and painted the boats, and defined the water and reflections more accurately. I used a tiny brush and palette knife to indicate some of the details on the sailboat. Once the water was done, the shape of the foreground rocks was distracting, so I made some changes to the rocks. I also cooled down the foreground grasses a bit - it doesn't show well in these photos, but the reds I had originally blocked in were detracting from the overall harmony of the painting.

So, that's pretty much where I stopped. I made some final adjustments to the boats, and sent this photo to the collector for approval:

Sorry for the glare on the lobster boat and foreground rocks. This one was a bugger to photograph without any glare on the wet paint.

At this point, I'm waiting for the painting to dry so I can go back in and clean up some of the lines on the boats and touch up some things that are bugging me about the water and foreground. These should all be minor changes, but once they're done I'll photograph it again in its frame and post it here as done.

Something Completely Different - PART I

2009-01-26T12:05:00.004-07:00

The last two demos that I posted here were of aspen trees, so I thought it would be nice to mix things up a bit and post some in-progress shots of something different than my usual subject matter. I've been working on a commission of a scene from Monhegan Island, Maine, and since it's got some elements in it that are new to me, I thought it would be fun to talk through some of it here.

First of all, when I do commissions I typically insist on using my own on-location studies, sketches, and photographs. Rarely do I agree to do a commission from a collector's photos, unless I see them ahead of time and know I can work from them, and also know that the collector will allow me to call the shots artistically. I've worked with this particular client before, and know that he's willing to let me make the decisions that I need to make to paint a good painting. In this case, he sent me a CD with around 500 images from the island, and essentially let me go through the images and come up with a painting based on what I thought would be the most fun to paint.

After looking through the photos, I was drawn to a grouping of pictures of a sailboat and lobster boat in the late afternoon. The light in the photos wasn't optimal (skies too light, rocks and buildings too dark), but I loved the way the evening light was hitting the boats and water and knew I could make something of it with some tweaking.

I haven't actually been to Monhegan Island before, but I've spent some time in Maine, and a lot of time in Nova Scotia, so the landscape wasn't completely foreign to me. I remember spending an evening down by one of the bays in Nova Scotia with fading light and fog rolling in, and these pictures reminded me of that kind of evening. As I painted this, I kept that memory in my head, and exaggerated the colors in the landscape to set a similar mood. The photos were used to compose the image, but I relied more on memory and feeling when it came to making decisions about color and lighting.

So, the first thing I did was sketch out the general composition with charcoal. I haven't painted buildings in a long time, and I'm not sure I've ever painted boats, so I just wanted to indicate the size of everything before starting in with the paint. I wanted to move the horizon line up, move the buildings over a bit, and give the boats a bit more space, so the sketch allowed me to work out some of those issues.

Once the sketch was done, I started in on the sky. Since I wasn't copying the photo, I felt that the best way to set the mood for the piece was to get the sky painted in the color and value I wanted, and use that as a measure for everything else. From this point on, I was constantly asking myself if what I was painting was lighter or darker, or warmer or cooler than the sky. These decisions are important, because I didn't have a field study and the photo wasn't good enough to allow me to copy color and value.

I'm not following my sketch exactly at this point. If you look closely at where the sky is painted around the main building, you can see that I've chosen to move it to the right and decrease the amount of space between the two buildings. I felt like it was a bit distracting to have a big space there.

Once the sky was done and some of my darkest dark blocked in, I started to paint the dock and the buildings in the background. I was finishing as I went, putting on each brushstroke with the intent to leave it as it was. The dock and the buildings are old and weathered, so I had to make a conscious effort to make them look that way (lines aren't straight, posts are uneven, nothing is too smooth).

Once the buildings were finished, I moved on to the rocks and grass in the foreground. This part was a bit challenging because I kept wanting to paint the rocks like "Colorado" rocks. I had to remember that the rocks along the coast are a different color and shape than what I'm used to. Also, since the reference photo was very dark in this area, I had to pay attention and really compare my values and color temperature with the parts of the painting that were already complete.

I think I'll leave it there for now since this post is getting long. I'll post the rest tomorrow!

Defining Interest

2009-01-24T13:50:00.008-07:00

"Study - Sundown"
Oil on Panel
6x8"
2008

$125 + shipping

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is defining what each painting I do is about. I have a tendency (especially with larger works) to gravitate towards scenes that have it all - mountains, a stream, some trees, a field, wildflowers! And while that can be okay if it's done well, sometimes it results in paintings that have a bit of an identity crisis (is it a painting of a mountain, a painting of a stream, a painting of wildflowers?).

I'm trying to make sure that I ask myself what I'm drawn to every time I start a new painting. Am I interested in the light on the mountain? The scale of the mountain? The reflections in the water? I answer that question first, and then I work to make sure that every decision I make in the painting serves to highlight that thing that drew me to the scene in the first place. That way, the foreground stream doesn't end up drawing attention from the mountains that caught my interest, or the trees don't pull the eye away from the reflections in the lake, or the clouds don't steal the show from the mountains.

Asking these questions means I can't copy what's in front of me. Sometimes I have to change the way the light is hitting a part of the landscape, change the size or location of a clump of trees, or exaggerate the scale of that mountain I'm interested in. These decisions are a lot easier to make if I know what I'm after, and I don't find myself getting off track as much as I used to when I'm painting outside.

The study above is from one of those places that just begs the artist to paint everything. Monarch Lake is a small lake with a dramatic mountain backdrop, and sometimes it's hard to decide what to paint. The reflections can be beautiful on a calm day, the mountains can be dramatic in the afternoon, and the trees are interesting on their own. I did this quick study after I had painted another in the same spot. The sun was going down and it was hitting the mountains so that the early season snow was just glowing. I wanted to keep the trees and water in the painting for compositional reasons, but I wanted to make sure that they were downplayed enough to make that snow the star of the show.

Doing a study like this can be invaluable when preparing for a larger painting. If I hadn't done this study, I probably would have done a larger painting without thinking through some of the decisions I made here, and it could have been a large-scale failure. Doing a small study allowed me to take some risks and change some things that I might not have tried on a larger panel. Finished, it's a good indicator of whether a larger painting would or would not work, and a good guide to use when making that larger painting.

This and That

2009-01-21T20:12:00.002-07:00

"March"
Oil on Panel
14x18"
2009

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately - life seems to have gotten in the way. I've been working on two paintings for show entries, a 22x28" commission, and finishing up my mentorship. In the meantime Aspen got a nasty stomach flu that kept me out of the studio most of last week, and then we went down to Denver for part of the weekend which meant more time away from the studio. But I'm back on track now - got the show entries done and I'm making some headway on the commission. Actually, the commission has been a lot of fun for me, as it's a bit different than my usual Rocky Mountain scenery (I'm planning to post a demo this weekend or next week).

While we were down in Denver, we took Aspen to the National Western Stock Show so she could see the cows and other animals, and I snuck off and spent some time looking at the paintings in the Coors Western Art Show. I was supposed to go the opening of the show a couple weeks ago, but they closed the pass for wind that
day and I got stuck in the mountains - I was pretty bummed out to miss it.

Anyhow, the nice thing about going later is that there are way less people looking at the art than the opening (always packed), so I could study paintings as long as I wanted. I was a bit sad to see that a lot of good paintings in the show didn't sell this year, but there were some beautiful paintings to look at by some of the best painters in the West.

My favorite painting in the show was Len Chmiel's "An Elegance of Erosion" - it doesn't show that well on his website, but it was so subtle that I could have stared at it all day. Skip Whitcomb was the featured artist this year, and he's one of my favorite painters so of course I loved his work. My favorite of his was the painting "Fraser Valley Ranch", mainly because the Fraser Valley is home to me, and he captured the local landscape so well. Other favorites were some small gems by Matt Smith, and a great looking body of work by Glenn Dean. Anyhow, the show was worth braving the weekend crowds to see.

Well, that's all I've got. Once I finish this commission I'm working on, I'll post some in progress pictures here.

Making a Living

2009-01-11T19:17:00.005-07:00

"Jackson Lake December"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

There's been a bit of discussion over at Escape from Cubicle Nation about whether or not creative types are doomed to be "starving artists" for eternity. When I read the initial post, I immediately jumped in with my opinion that it's actually quite possible for artists to make a living selling their art, and that believing the myth that it's impossible is quite likely to be the downfall of many a talented artist.

I know a lot of artists who live off of their art, and I guess I just feel like a combination of really good work, serious discipline, and a whole lot of marketing effort can indeed pay off for artists. It may not be easy, but it's possible, and I think that difficulty is what makes it necessary us to find mentors who have been there and can guide us through what works and what doesn't. Of course, not everyone agrees with me! Maybe I'm naive about this, but I'd like to think that my naivete, and my unfailing belief that I can make a living at this, are necessary components of my success.

Anyhow, go check out the original post and the following comments, then come back here and tell me what you think. Is it possible to make a comfortable living from fine art alone? Don't we need to first believe it's possible in order to make it a reality? Am I out of touch (and selling out) because I paint landscapes?

The Comfort Zone

2009-01-05T15:57:00.004-07:00

"New Year's Day, Lake Granby"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

I stumbled across an old post from Clint Watson's blog the other day, titled, "Be the Outside Zebra by Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone," and it got me thinking about comfort and security, and how sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do to get where you want to be.

I readily admit that I'm a "security freak" at heart. I gravitate toward the stable - I like having a stable job, a stable family, reserves in the bank for a rainy day, etc etc.

The funny thing is, when I look back at my life so far, the only decisions I would make differently if I did things over again are those decisions that I made to maintain my comfort zone.

I went to engineering school instead of art school because it would land me a good job out of college. I majored in Chemical Engineering because I knew the average salary out of school was good. I accepted a job in Houston with big oil because I wanted to have a job lined up before Christmas of my senior year (!?!?). The list goes on... (Disclaimer: this is not to say that I really truly regret those decisions - they've actually served me really well - but that's another post!)

When I look at the pivotal moments in my life this far - those that have made the most positive impact - they are all the result of big decisions I made that took me out of my comfort zone (way out of my comfort zone). These are the decisions that kept me up at 3 am, worrying whether I was making a big mistake.

There was the time I quit my high-paying job with big oil in Houston to take a lower paying but more fulfilling environmental engineering job in Colorado. There was the day I found out I was pregnant with Aspen, which happened to be the same day I got into my first gallery - a sign I took that it was time to give up engineering. There was the day I told my bosses that I wouldn't be coming back to work, that I was going to do the art thing full time. There was the day Nate quit his sales job to build houses, so that he could be at home to spend more time as a family. And there was the night Nate and I sat up late, drinking tea and watching the snow fall outside his parents house in Granby, and decided we could move to the mountains, that nothing was stopping us.

None of those decisions were comfortable for me, but they sort of had a domino effect. The first one wasn't that big of a move outside of the comfort zone, but it gave me the courage to make the next big decision. And that next decision gave me the the courage to make the next. And once I made a few of those decisions, taking control of my life became sort of addictive. So now here I am, living a life I used to joke about eight years ago, because it seemed so improbable. I used to tell my coworkers at Exxon that I was going to work five years, then quit to have kids and drive around and paint in the mountains. I wasn't really serious at the time (I had never painted a landscape, for starters), but I made it, didn't I?

That's not to say that I don't still embrace my inner security freak, and that it doesn't work for me sometimes. I didn't move back to Colorado until I had a job lined up. I didn't quit engineering until I knew I could make money with my art. We didn't do the self-employed thing until we had a certain amount of reserve in the bank to carry us through the hard times. I didn't move to the mountains until Nate had already built three houses up here. And I still have my moments where I look at the daily news and wonder if we're completely crazy for trying to make it this way in this type of economy.

But I know that being uncomfortable is one of the best ways to get where I want to be, so I'm committing myself to leaving the comfort zone every once in a while, in my life, and in my art.

So, what would make you happy? Would getting there be uncomfortable? Is it worth it?

Y'all Know How I Love Goals!!

2009-01-01T21:31:00.004-07:00

"Trinchera Morning"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

I freaking love New Year’s! Not the whole New Year’s Eve party thing (I’d rather be asleep at midnight, honestly), but the whole idea that it’s a new YEAR, with a fresh, clean slate, and oodles of potential!

There’s something totally appealing to me about the idea of packaging my life into neat one-year long increments, and measuring my progress against time. I think it must be the analytical engineering side of me, ignoring the fact that sometime life is messy and that the most important things in life aren’t measurable.

So this year, I’m going to do my “resolutions” in two different ways. To satisfy the numbers-driven engineer in me, I’m going to set some goals for the year like I always do. These are things that I can measure and status and use to make me feel like I’m making progress. To satisfy the sensitive artist in me, I’m going to follow the suggestion of Christine Kane and choose a word to live by in 2009 (inspired by Lisa Call’s successful year in 2008).

So, I’ll start with the goals. Last year I made a commitment to status these here on the blog once per month throughout the year. It kept me on track but felt like overkill after a while, so this year I’m going to commit to reporting my status quarterly. Anyhow, in 2009 I would like to:

1. Get comfortable with working larger.

I really want to get to a point where larger paintings are a more important part of my studio output. At this point, I haven’t worked larger than 30x40”, but I really enjoyed the process of doing some larger paintings this summer. In 2009, I’d like to concentrate on getting more comfortable on a larger scale, and brushing up on all of the skills necessary to successfully complete a large painting from a small study. I’d like to complete at least 10 30x40” paintings, 2 36x48” paintings, and 1-2 40x60” paintings.

2. Find one out of state gallery to show my work.

This is pretty self-explanatory. I’m extremely grateful to be working with four galleries in Colorado right now, but that’s pretty much the upper limit of what I’m comfortable with in the state. Right now all of my galleries are in resort towns and sell mostly to tourist and second-home clientele, so I don’t feel as though they are competing with each other, but I don’t think I can do much more in Colorado without my galleries encroaching on each other. So, I need to expand my representation out of state. Specifically, I’d like to be able to place my work in one of the larger western art markets – Santa Fe, Jackson Hole, Scottsdale…

3. 10 commissions/studio sales.

I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to have such great galleries representing my work, and pretty much every decision I make in this business begs the question, “Will this affect my gallery relationships?” As such, I don’t sell much from my studio (I’m not a natural salesperson), but I’ve realized this year that I really love the interaction that comes from working one-on-one with a loyal client, and that sometimes I miss out on that relationship when I’m depending 100% on my galleries to sell my work. So this year I’d like to increase my commission business, just to increase the amount that I get to work with collectors. I rarely do commissions through my galleries, so I think this is a way to increase studio business without stepping on toes, and simultaneously make my art business more people-oriented.

4. Increase my yearly profit 25% over 2008.

Self-explanatory. I have a dollar amount that I would like to reach this year which would be about 25% more than what I made in 2008. Ambitious, but achievable.

5. Branding - update website and associated materials.

I’d like to do a better job at branding my business this year. That’s going to entail an update of my website template/design by someone more qualified at design than me. I love using FineArtStudioOnline for my site, and intend to maintain my site through FASO, but I need to figure out a way to give it a facelift and some individuality (I can find tens of other artists using the same template as me) while maintaining the functionality that I love. Once this is done, I need to get business cards, letterhead, and notecards that match my site design.

6. Get/stay active!!

I don’t think I’m going to make any big fitness related goals this year. I live in the mountains now, and I just want to maintain enough of an active lifestyle that I get to be outdoors on a regular basis, and that I’m in shape enough to be enjoy skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, etc. without my fitness limiting me. So I’ll aim to workout a few times a week, but it’s nothing competitive.

So, those are my goals for 2009. Just enough to keep the engineer in me on track and happy!

For the side of me that knows that life is often more nebulous than all of my plans would have me believe, I’m choosing a word to live by in 2009, and that word is “open”. I thought long and hard about what I want this year to be about, and what I think has held me back in the past, and I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to be reserved in 2009 - I want to be open.

I want to be open to new experiences, new adventures, and big changes. I want to be open to God’s guidance in my life. And I want to be open to people and relationships. I want new people I meet to see me for who I am – present myself openly, rather than holding back like I so often do.

So, there it is – 2009 holds a lot of hope and possibility, and I plan to make it a good one!!

2008 In Review

2008-12-29T18:31:00.008-07:00

(Sorry - I was feeling too lazy to dig up a photo of a new painting, so all you get is a gratuitous shot of the mountains from a trail a couple miles from my house. Don't you wish you lived here?)

Well, the year is just about over, so I guess it's time to status my goals one last time for 2009. At the start of the year I set a bunch of goals and told myself I was going to publicly comment on their status every month to keep me on track. Holding myself accountable on a monthly basis really kept me motivated, but by the end of the year I felt like a broken record so I didn't update the last two months. Anyhow, here's the final update!

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

DONE. I started showing at two mountain galleries in early summer, and am also showing my work at the gallery in Ft. Collins where I had my show in October.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

DONE. As of today, I've painted 116 paintings so far this year! I did a lot of small plein air studies during the last half of this year, which helped me reach this goal quickly. I'm really happy that I was able to meet this goal. Pushing myself to produce a lot of paintings has really improved my skills, and given me the confidence that I can supply multiple galleries. Mileage on the brush never hurt anyone!!

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

DONE. I really wanted to feel like I was contributing to our household finances this year, and I feel like I was able to do that. Since we're both self-employed and don't have a "regular" paycheck, every bit helps!

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

DONE. This might have been the most useful goal I set for myself this year, because it forced me to look at my numbers every month and thus hold myself accountable for my progress.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

Yeah, this didn't happen. I did run one five mile race this summer, so it wasn't a complete failure!! But for the most part, I didn't get back to the fitness level I intended, which is a bit of a bummer. Guess I'll have to try harder next year.

The thing about setting goals at the beginning of the year is that you don't know where life will take you in the year ahead. That's why I love Alyson Stanfield's idea of listing one's accomplishments at year end, as a way to take stock of the things you DID do, regardless of what goals you did or did not meet. So, here are the things I'm proud to have done this year:

Participated in Colorado Governor's Art Invitational Show for the first time
Had two paintings accepted to the Salon International Show at Greenhouse Gallery
Had one painting awarded Jury's Top Fifty at the Salon International show
Participated in the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters National show/paint out in August
Got invited to submit work to the Mountain Oyster Club show and sale in Tucson
Participated in a 6 month mentorship with Jay Moore
Met a bunch of great painters through PAAC, RMPAP, this blog, and the mentorship program
Moved to the mountains - a life goal that I wasn't quite sure I'd ever get to!!
Tripled 2007 profits from my art
Doubled number of paintings sold from 2007 to 2008
Most important, had fun and maintained balance in my life while doing all of the above!!!

Overall, 2008 has been a good year. I feel like I managed to get my art career back on track after floundering a bit in 2007. I've had a ton of fun living in the mountains, painting for a living, and spending quality time with my husband and daughter - couldn't ask for much more!

Mentorship

2008-12-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Silence"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2008

I’ve mentioned in passing here that I’ve spent the last six months participating in a mentorship program with artist Jay Moore, and I’ve had a bunch of you ask me to share more information about what I’ve been doing, so here it is. Bear with me if this gets really long – I might ramble (not like that’s anything new), because what I’ve been doing is important enough to me that I’ve devoted half a year to it, so I might have a lot to say!

Why I Needed This

I’ve had the occasional friend or family member (and even a couple of artist acquaintances) look at me like I was kind of crazy when I said I was doing this mentorship, so let me start by saying this:

As a professional artist, I’m acutely aware of my shortcomings.

Yes, I have the occasional day where I’ve sold a few paintings or been accepted to a big show, when everything is great and I get this feeling that I’m a decent painter. But most of the time, I’m aware that I have a long way to go to become a great artist, and I know that my pursuit of excellence is one that will be with me my entire life. I think that the death of many artists is complacency, and that those who have long and successful careers as artists always seem to me to have a willingness and desire to seek out learning experiences, no matter their level of competency.

I have a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering (which was no easy feat), but my art education has consisted of four 2-3 day workshops and a couple of figure drawing and painting classes. I’m painfully aware that I am lacking in the art education department, no matter how many books I may have read or paintings I have examined. Seeking out learning opportunities is important for me, because I don’t want this to hold me back in my career.

About a year and a half ago, I was just getting the wheels moving on my career as an artist after officially taking the leap when I had Aspen. I felt like I was floundering a bit and seriously needing some guidance from someone who had been where I was. I didn’t want to sign up for another workshop, because I wasn’t interested in learning another artist’s technique, and what I needed was more than I could learn in a week. I wanted to find someone who would mentor me on a more long term basis so we could see what I was learning and build on it, and also cover some more business related topics. I wanted to improve my painting skills, and get some input on some of the new decisions I was having to make about where to go with my art business.

Who I've Been Studying With

I had taken a couple of short workshops with Jay Moore way back when I was just starting to paint. Actually, I took my first workshop ever with him – I had never painted a landscape, and was totally out of my element, but I came away from that first outdoor painting workshop convinced that I was going to drop portrait painting and paint landscapes from that point on. I remembered that at the time he had talked about a six month mentorship program he was doing with more serious artists, which seemed sort of perfect for where I was at last year.

Now here’s the thing – not all artists are good teachers. And I wanted to make sure I was studying with someone who could TEACH, not just paint well. Because I had studied with Jay before, I already knew that he could teach well, and I knew that his teaching method would be good for the level I was at. If you haven’t had a chance to take a workshop with Jay, he’s got some great videos out that teach some of his big ideas about seeing the landscape. He’s not the kind of guy who picks up your paint brush and shows you how to paint a tree, or a rock, or water – he’s more focused on the fundamentals of what makes a good painting than teaching technique, and to me that’s a good thing at this point. I don’t want to learn some other artist’s technique, and have everyone say, “Man, Stacey really paints like _____” – I want to learn how to paint like ME, but make my paintings as good as possible!

So, I called him up and asked if I could do the mentorship. Turned out that he had a five year waiting list for the one-on-one mentorship, and was tossing around the idea of doing the mentorship with a group this year and video-taping the sessions to make an in-depth teaching series. I said “Sign me up!”, and then waited (not so patiently!) for a year until we started.

What It's All About

The six month long mentorship started in July, with a group of artists of different levels meeting every two weeks for a lecture/critique session. In between each session, we have assignments designed to improve skills in different areas, and it’s been fun to do the program as a group and see how each person has different strengths and weaknesses, and learn from each other’s critiques.

The lectures have been videotaped during every session, and Jay is working to put them together with demos of the assignments to make a series of DVDs that will be available for sale toward the end of the summer in 2009. He’s spent 15 years of his career putting together the material for this mentorship, and has put a lot of thought and effort into the concepts that make up the curriculum. Now that I’ve gone through it, I can say it’s been immensely valuable and that I’m glad that he’s been willing to put forth all this effort and share so much of what he knows. I think that a lot of the material we covered is unique for a painting class, yet valuable for any artist. As soon as the videos are released, you all can bet that I’ll be reminding you they’re available, because I know they’ll be really good!

So, every other Monday night, I drive down to Denver, go to class, and drive back the next morning (thanks to a supportive husband who has no problem playing Mr. Mom when I’m gone). And when I get back, I spend the next two weeks juggling my assignments (often 10-20 hours worth of work) with my other painting commitments (galleries, shows) and trying to be a good mom. It hasn’t been easy to get everything done, considering I only have two full days a week to paint and do the rest in the evenings or when Aspen is napping. It was especially rough in August and September when I did the RMPAP plein air show and had to prepare for a three-person show in October. Luckily, things have slowed a bit since then, and I’ve been able to focus more on the mentorship, and a bit less on the studio painting.

The lectures and assignments have run the gamut of topics, from painting and drawing to advertising and dealing with galleries and collectors. I’ve learned a lot about my shortcomings as an artist, and I feel like I have a lot of ideas and knowledge now that are going to help me throughout my career. Some of the specific assignments are things I know I’ll repeat in the future to brush up on certain skills, and a lot of them have helped me come to some important conclusions about my goals and what decisions I need to make to go where I want to go. I’m a little bit stubborn, so I know that a lot of the lessons I’ve learned in the past six months won’t sink in for a while. The cool thing about that is knowing that even when the mentorship is over next month, I won’t stop learning, and I’ll have the tools I need to critique my own work and learn for years to come.

Doing the mentorship has pushed me to do some things that are outside of my comfort zone, which I’m convinced is making me a better painter. I’ve been doing more plein air painting, doing paintings of subject matter and/or compositions that I wouldn’t have considered before, and working on skills that I might not have thought were important. I’m becoming more conscious of things that didn’t even cross my radar screen as being important in a painting before, that seem to have a huge impact for me now. In the end, I haven’t seen my style shift, but I’ve seen my skills improve, and I think I’m going to be a lot more effective at really saying what I want to say with my paintings once all these lessons have some time to sink into my thick skull.

More than anything, I think it’s been helpful to have someone critique my work on a regular basis. Jay doesn’t let things slide, and he can spot a shortcut or laziness from a mile away, so we don’t get away with a lot – I always come away from our Monday night sessions with my head full of new ideas and things to be conscious of. And sometimes what I think is my best work is met with the most criticism, which has actually been great because I haven’t gotten a critique yet that I didn’t agree with once I thought about it. Of course, now my standards are higher, and I find myself groaning when I look at paintings that I thought were good just a few months ago (the cringe factor, magnified)!

The mentorship is over in a few weeks, and I’m kind of sad because it was such a good learning experience, but kind of happy that I’ll have more time to start applying some of what I learned to my studio painting. As it comes to a close, I’m totally glad I’m made the time to do it – it’s been really valuable. As the economy has screeched to a halt over the past few months, it’s become clear to me that we artists need to focus on quality now more than ever, and I think that this has come along at just the right time for me. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to participate in a program like this, and thankful to have found someone so generous with their knowledge to help me on my way (thanks Jay!!!).

Demo - Fall Aspens, Final

2008-12-20T13:38:00.005-07:00

"Aspen Gold"
Oil on Panel
24x18"
2008

No real progress on this one - just wanted to post a better picture of the final painting than the one at the end of the demo. There should be less glare here.

Demo - Fall Aspens Part 2

2008-12-15T20:33:00.005-07:00

Okay, so when I left off yesterday (see my previous post for the start of this demo), I had just finished blocking in the major shapes and color for this painting. I'm sometimes leary of painting subject matter like this - the aspens are so bright in the fall that it's easy to go too far when painting them. One thing on my mind as I'm working this painting is to make sure that the yellow leaves of the aspens are contrasted by greys in the background and trunks. Without the use of more neutral colors, the leaves wouldn't appear to be as bright as they are, and the whole painting could be overwhelming. Anyhow, so here's where we left off:

Next, I start to work back into the dark knots on the trunk, giving them more shape and adding some darker twigs and branches.

At this point, the aspen foliage is a bit blocky and lacking in dimension, so I start to work back into it, starting by adding some more color to the darker areas, and defining the shape of the trees more accurately.

Next, I add some lighter values to the foliage to give it more dimension and light. At this point, I'm using more paint and using texture to give the leaves some visual interest up close.

The last major area that needs work is the grass in the foreground. As with the other areas, I work into the hillside with darker values first, then lighter values, trying to soften this area a bit so that it doesn't compete with the aspens for interest.

So, that's where I've left the painting at this point. Here are a few closeups (sorry for the glare):

I'd say the painting is about 97% done at this point. Looking at it now, I can see a few things that are bugging me - the lower right hand corner is undefined, and the strong diagonal of the grassy hill is leading the eye right down and out of the painting. There's some funkiness going on in the mid-left. I'll wait a few days and go back in to rework these areas, and I'll post a better final photo then.

Demo - Fall Aspens Part I

2008-12-14T13:55:00.006-07:00

Anyone who has been following my blog for awhile or looked over any of my previous painting demos might know that I used to have a pretty analytical studio painting approach that involved painting over a complete and dry oil or acrylic underpainting. Over the past few months, I've done so much plein air painting that I've gotten used to a more direct method of painting, and completely changed my studio technique as a result. I figured I might as well take some progress shots and post a new demo of a current painting.

I was working on a batch of underpaintings one day when it occured to me that I HATED the process of underpainting. So, I stopped doing it. Now I do my studio paintings wet-on-wet, with the exception of minor corrections at the end, and I'm loving the process of painting so much more!

So, I'm trying to get some paintings done for a few spring shows, and for this one I wanted to do something with bright fall aspens. I'm doing this painting on a 24x18" Ampersand gessobord, and using a palette of titanium white, cad yellow lemon, cad yellow light, cad orange, quinacridone red, perm alizarin crimson, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue. To start, I sketch in my composition using a thinned mixture of alizarin, ultramarine, and white.

Once the drawing is done, I block in the yellow foliage of the aspens using paint thinned with mineral spirits. I like to get these in first in a painting like this so that the color is nice and clean from the start. At this point, I'm using a 1" hog bristle brush to keep things nice and basic.

Next, I start to block in the background around the aspens, still using fairly thin paint. I want to reserve thicker paint for later stages of the painting, and leave the background thin so it recedes.

I continue to work forward, using slightly thicker paint as I block in the foliage in the foreground. I'm mainly trying to put down major shapes, colors, and values at this point, still using the 1" brush.

Once the background is blocked in, I start to paint the aspen trunks, first indicating the placement of the dark knots. At this point I switch to a smaller (size 6 or 8) brush so that I can go a bit smaller with my brushstrokes.

Next, I start to paint the darker side of the aspen trunks, trying to make sure I have the values right in comparison to my background, and using different colors and values to indicate the curvature of the trunks. I work with flat bristle brushes (still the size 6-8), and use the side of the brush to block in some of the thinner branches.

Once the darker part of the trunks is complete, I go back in and paint the sunlit side of the aspens. I use a palette knife or small liner brush for the highlights on the background trunks and smaller twigs.

At this point the block-in is complete and I'm ready to start refining different areas of the painting.

This is a good point to stop, so I'll post the rest tomorrow!

Catching Up

2008-12-08T20:32:00.004-07:00

"Calm Waters, Endo Valley"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2008

Well, I went on vacation for a week and when I returned it was like winter had suddenly come to our little town in the mountains. I'd say we've gotten six inches of snow since dinnertime tonight, and it's still coming down. The good skiing opens up at Mary Jane tomorrow, and it's looking snowy right in time for Christmas!

I love painting in the winter. There's just nothing better than padding into my studio on a snowy day, all cozy in my slippers and sipping a nice cup of tea while I paint. Winter slows me down, and I like having the time to work on larger paintings and try new things in the studio.

I have a bit less pressure to produce for my galleries right now, but I always have a slew of show deadlines in January, so I'm busy working on larger pieces for those, and starting a new commission. I've also got to finish up my work for the mentorship I've been doing the past six months. I've been keeping up with my "homework" for the most part, but I've got a few assignments to redo before I'm done, and I've fallen hopelessly behind on my drawing assignments. One thing I've learned in the last six months of painting "bootcamp" is that I'd much rather paint than draw with a pencil anyday - I procrastinate so badly when it comes to working on paper. Obviously something I need to work on!

Anyhow, it's been two weeks since I picked up a brush and I'm totally excited to lock myself in the studio tomorrow. I'm rested and recharged from vacation, and ready to go!

Yay for Vacation

2008-12-04T20:49:00.002-07:00

I'm currently wrapped in a cozy down comforter, watching 30 Rock, and chilling out after a day of doing pretty much nothing here in Jackson Hole. We were itching to go on a road trip, so we figured we'd check out Jackson before the winter crowds hit. So far, we haven't done much - checked out some art galleries, took a drive to check out the tetons, read books by the fire, ate a lot. This is my kind of town - good art and great mountain scenery!

I'm ready to get back to painting though - a week off and I'm ready to get back to work. And I miss my little Aspen. It's nice to have some kid-free time, but I can't wait to see her on Saturday. It's kind of nice to go on vacation and look forward to getting back home. A few years ago, I would have dreaded going home and having to go to work.

A Close Call

2008-11-28T12:46:00.006-07:00

"Red Rock View"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2008

Everyone reading this blog do yourself a big favor and back up your computer files ASAP if you don't already do it on a regular basis!! Just a little reminder from a moron who didn't and almost lost everything two nights ago...

You would think I would know better than this. I've lost hard drives before, and it's never pretty. I've been saying for months that I need to backup my files, and when my computer started acting suspicious a week ago, I knew that I really needed to get on it. I kept having certain songs freeze up in itunes, and I suspected that the files were corrupted. I had Nate get me an external hard drive when he was in Denver on Wednesday, and planned to back everything up that night.

Unfortunately, by the time I got the drive my computer was not recognizing any of my USB ports, so I couldn't download anything to the drive. I decided to go with plan B and burn DVDs of all my data, but that didn't work either since my computer got hung up everytime it found a corrupted file, and apparently there were a lot of them! So, there I was finding photo after photo that were corrupted, and panicking because I couldn't get any of them onto another disk - not good at all.

It was at this point that I realized how dependent I, an artist, am on my computer. I have 3,000 photos from this year alone, categorized on my computer as possible reference material for paintings. I have another 2 GB of photographed paintings from this year alone, which are the only visual record I have of my paintings, other than the photos on my website. I have a database with information on every painting I've ever done, in addition to collector contact information and notes. I have multiple spreadsheets of my financials, including the one I keep up-to-date for my taxes. Some of this could be replaced, but the photos could not. And so I spent Wednesday in a state of panic - I hadn't backed up my files in over a year - eek!!

Luckily my Dad was here for Thanksgiving (yay for computer expert Dad!!), and he reminded me that I could run Windows check disk to find and mark all of the corrupted files. I bit my nails for 5 hours while it ran (and while I watched it flag photo after photo as corrupted), and said a prayer as it rebooted. Luckily, it had removed the bad files so was able to burn DVDs of everything left, and also back everything up to external drive. I spent Thanksgiving breathing a gigantic sigh of relief (and ordering a new hard drive).

So, if you don't have backup of images of your paintings, database files, contacts, or anything important, DO IT NOW!

Tagged

2008-11-20T19:49:00.004-07:00

"Study - Berthoud Pass View"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2008

Well, this one's been spreading through the art blogs like wildfire, so I suppose it was only a matter of time - I've been tagged by E. Floyd and Theresa Rankin, and here are the rules:

1. Put a link in your posting to the person who tagged you.
2. List 7 unusual things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 other bloggers at the end of your post and comment on their blogs to let them know

I've done a couple of these before so I have a feeling I've probably already covered most of my unusual qualities, but here goes another attempt:

1. I'm terrified of spiders. It's totally irrational, and I know it. Every once in a while I'll have a dream about spiders and jump out of bed screaming - Nate has learned to grab me once I start to jump so I won't pull all the covers off the bed. Luckily, this only happens when I'm really stressed out, and I don't get all that stressed now that I don't have a corporate job.

2. I'm a total clutz. During the RMPAP plein air event in August, I dropped my tripod in the Colorado River while I was painting in Rocky Mountain National Park. So I had to take my shoes and socks off and wade out into the freezing river to get it, and a fly fisherman across the river was totally laughing at me. Maybe instead of laughing he could have waded out there in his waders and gotten it for me?

3. Now that I live in the mountains, I crave chain restaurant food - like, sometimes I really wish I could have salad and breadsticks from the Olive Garden, or chips and salsa from Chili's, or a Chipotle burrito. Of course, living in the mountains MORE than makes up for the lack of shopping and chain restaurants here. When I've been in Denver for a weekend, I breathe a huge sigh of relief as soon as I hit the top of the pass and look down the valley toward home, even if there is no Chili's within 90 miles.

4. I still have my baby blanket, which I call my huggy. I would seriously be devastated if anything happened to it.

5. I hate taking medicine of any type. I'd rather whine and be miserable than take cold medicine or a pain reliever - I don't know why, I just don't like to take meds. I was really bummed this year to find out that I have an underactive thyroid, which means I'm stuck taking a pill every day for the rest of my life - ugh...

6. I like to drive - nothing's better than a long road trip and some good tunes.

7. My least favorite part of my job is coming up with titles for my paintings. I'm so boring - I think I just name half of them using the following formula: time of day + location = painting title. Sometimes I substitute this formula with: weather phenomenon + location = painting title. You know, just to mix things up a little.

Now I'm supposed to tag seven other bloggers, and I'd just like to state for the record that this is not an easy task considering how many wonderful blogs I read, and considering how many people have already been tagged. Anyhow, here they are, and I'm sure some of these folks have already been tagged, but I tried to find people who hadn't done this yet:

1. Susan Carlin
2. Frank Gardner
3. Michael Lynn Adams
4. Cynthia Guajardo
5. Brian Kliewer
6. Peter Yesis
7. Mike Bailey

Studio Music

2008-11-14T12:44:00.007-07:00

"Willow Creek Reflections"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

Most artists I know are pretty particular about what they listen to when they paint, and I'm no exception. Unless I'm outdoors, I have a hard time painting unless I have good music playing. I can't listen to the radio because commercials and talking just kill any flow of creativity/thought that I might have. I have to be listening to music I'm fairly familiar with - I love finding new music, but when I'm painting I like to listen to tunes that I know. I can't listen to anything that's distracting at all, even if it's distracting in a good way. For instance, I can't listen to classical music, because I used to play the piano and when I listen to classical music I find myself thinking about it too much. And I have to make sure that whatever I'm listening to won't end in the middle of a complex painting passage, which means that most of the time I just have iTunes playing in continuous shuffle mode on my computer.

When I'm working on something difficult, I'll switch over to my "Studio Tunes" playlist, which is basically a bunch of songs that I love that I know won't annoy me while I'm trying to problem solve. A lot of them are favorite songs from the past - songs that make me happy by association with good memories. A few of them are newer songs that get me moving. Some of them are mellow songs that help me reflect and think. I change the list every few weeks to keep up with my mood - here's what it looks like right now:

"See the World" by Gomez was my favorite song when I was pregnant with Aspen. "Let it be Me" by Ray LaMontagne is a more recent mellow favorite. "Rain" by George Winston gets me thinking, and reminds me of being outdoors. "Rock and Roll" by Eric Hutchinson gets me moving and excited. They all have a purpose.

I love to hear about other artist's working habits - I know one artist who listens to books on tape (I could never paint at the same time!!) and another who listens to NPR only, and another who always has the TV or a movie playing in the background.

So, what do you listen to in your studio, and why?

HGTV Might Have Redeemed Itself Today

2008-11-09T12:06:00.005-07:00

I have to confess that I have a slight addiction to HGTV - there's just something about home remodel and decorating shows that sucks me in, and I often find myself writing blog posts or responding to emails while I listen to HGTV in the background. And just about everytime I do this, I find myself getting all riled up when the subject of art inevitably comes up. A lot of the shows on HGTV are all about design on a budget, or doing it yourself, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen a designer on the show set up the homeowners (or carpenter or dog or whatever) with an enormous canvas and paint and have them make their own piece of art to "match" the new room design (the "art project" segment of the show, if you will).

My issue with this is twofold.

First is the obvious assumption that there is no point in purchasing fine art, since anyone can do it. While I agree that anyone can throw some paint on a canvas in colors that will match the couch/chair/entertainment center, etc., I disagree with the underlying suggestion that this is fine art. To me, the artwork that I have in my home is deeply personal - each original piece that I own resonated with me for a certain reason, and having the work of other artists in my home recharges and inspires me.

Second is the assumption that artwork is just a design element, or a decoration. As a landscape artist I know it would be unrealistic to assume that my collectors never give any regard to whether or not my paintings match the couch they'll hang above, but in a perfect world I would love to have that not matter - I would love to think that all that mattered were the person's initial gut response to the painting. My favorite piece of artwork in my house doesn't match anything, but I could still stare at it all day, so it always hangs where I can see it when I'm going about my businesss all day. It's the impact that matters to me.

Anyhow, I don't mean to rant, I just mean to say that collecting art is about something deeper, and that sometimes I feel like these shows don't do much bring the masses to a greater appreciation (which is not their goal, btw, so that's all right).

SOOOO, I was pleasantly surprised when I caught an episode of "Deserving Design" today, in which host Vern Yip actually commissions the deserving couple's favorite artist to do what is ultimately a really fantastic original piece of art work for their living room. Not only that - he visits the artist in his studio and gives a short talk about how purchasing an original from an acclaimed artist is a great investment, financially and emotionally. There's no talk about the artist using colors that match the design, or anything of that sort - the final painting has an emotional connection to the couple who own the house and their story, and is the centerpiece of the final design for that reason alone. How great is that?

Of course, then it took me a good half an hour to find James Way's art online, since the network didn't bother to include him in the credits or link to him on their website, but I guess I can't expect too much all at once!

Goals and Studies

2008-11-05T20:48:00.008-07:00

"Study - Lynx Pass Aspens"
Oil on Panel
8x6"
2008

SOLD

I'll bet nobody noticed, but I've been slacking on statusing my 2008 goals here. Oops!

I know I said I would do it monthly, but it just got boring to me because I felt like I was reporting the same thing every month. And since I'm actually making good progress this year (yay!), that seemed to be overkill, so I decided I'd only comment about the goals when I had something new to say.

Anyhow, I was updating my painting database today (see, I'm still sticking with the goals, even if I'm not reporting!), and I was surprised to see that last month I surpassed my goal of 100 paintings this year! I'm at 102 paintings as of October 31st, which I almost can't believe. When I made this goal, I thought it would be a stretch, and for most of this year it has been. However, I've been doing a ton of plein air work and studies for the mentorship I'm doing, and the numbers add up quickly when most of the work I'm doing is smaller than 11x14" (I did 20 paintings in September alone). I haven't worked on anything larger than a 12x16" in about a month and a half, which is a bit odd for me (I'm actually chomping at the bit to work on some bigger stuff!), but I've been learning a lot that I hope will eventually transfer to my larger work.

Through all of this, I've been learning the value of the small study. I'm using these small works to test out new ideas and compositions, and figure out what it is that I want to say about each scene. I'm hoping that doing small studies more routinely will prevent me from having to scrape or trash unsuccessful larger paintings, but only time will tell if that's the case.

The only downside to doing all of these small paintings is that my studio is overflowing with stacks of small panels! The painting above is one of them - I did this quick sketch for this painting, which sold a few months ago. This was probably the first time I've ever done an in-studio sketch as pre-work for a slightly larger painting. In the months that have gone by since I did this one, I've learned how invaluable these can be.

New Portfolio Book

2008-10-28T20:47:00.006-06:00

Stacey Peterso...

2008 Portfolio

By Stacey Peterson

Book Preview

I've been wanting to print a small portfolio for a while now, mainly to give to potential collectors or those who buy my work. I did some research, decided that Blurb seemed like the easiest way to put together a small book, and went ahead and put together a book of what I think are the strongest paintings I've done this year. I wanted to keep it small, since I plan to include it when I ship out paintings, and Blurb's 7x7" format is just perfect. I got my first printed copy today, and I think it turned out pretty well - it looks professional, and the photos inside are fairly accurate.

If any of you are looking to self-publish anything, and need a quick and easy way to do it, I'd highly recommend Blurb. The software is easy to use, and the product is professional

For anyone who wants to check it out, use the link above or the one I've added to my blog sidebar. Thanks for looking!

My Latest Studio

2008-10-25T18:31:00.005-06:00

I almost have my studio put together - yay!! I waffled back and forth about what to do for a studio in this new house. It's only three bedrooms, so I wasn't sure whether I should take up a whole room for myself or squeeze into the corner of what would be the guest bedroom. In the end I realized that A) I have way too much stuff to NOT have a whole room and B) I work much better in a dedicated, peaceful space.

Two weeks ago, this is what my studio looked like - a big mess!!

I hate white walls, so I decided to paint the room a neutral green color to darken it up. Here's a view of the room after I painted and organized a bit (those are Aspen's first watercolors on her easel to the right!):

Right now I have my palette on a table that Nate threw together in five minutes with some scrap wood. I'll eventually replace it with something that has some shelves underneath and doors so I can store all my extra paint/mineral spirits/brushes somewhere out of sight:

This house has 10 foot ceilings, so I can extend my easel enough to do a 30x40" painting without having to adjust any knobs (I still love my easel, by the way), which is really nice.

My frames are stuffed in the closet and leaning up against the wall, along with finished paintings that I'm getting ready to send out to galleries and shows. This is the part of my studio that I hate - I'm not a big fan of clutter. I'd love to have a studio someday that has a separate room for framing!!

I recently bought some vertical organizers at the office supply store to put small finished paintings in. I stole this idea from another artist who had these in a studio picture, and while I don't remember who the arist was, I'm really grateful! They're a good cheap way to keep plein air studies organized while they dry.

I keep one up on a table that I put wet panels in as I finish them - the great thing about these plastic ones is that they don't touch the panels anywhere where they're wet.

Anyhow, that's my studio. Here's the view from the window - lots of big, blue sky!

I'm thrilled to have a studio inside the house again! Working in the garage at the condo was functional, but a little bit demotivating (who wants to spend the day in a garage with no windows?).

Moving... Again...

2008-10-21T21:17:00.002-06:00

"Study - Cottonwood Pass Aspens"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

Sorry I haven't been around much lately, but we've moved (AGAIN) and I've been busy unpacking and trying to get back into the groove of things. I feel like a broken record...

I figured out the other day that in our eight years of marriage, Nate and I have moved seven times. We also tend to do our moving in spurts. When we moved back from Houston, we moved out of our house into an apartment, then into an apartment in Colorado, then into a house in Colorado, all within the same year. In the past year and a half, we moved houses in Denver, moved into a condo in Fraser, and now just moved into a house in Granby. We'll eventually finish building "our" house up here (we moved into one of Nate's spec/model homes), and move again within the next year, so getting all settled into this house seems sort of like a waste.

But after spending the last six months painting in a garage, I'm ready to have a decent studio space again, so after we moved last weekend I spent a couple of days painting the walls and organizing in the room that will be my studio while we live here. I know that I can paint better when I'm in a space that's comfortable enough to not be distracting, so I'm trying to set up a studio space that will be nice and cozy as we head into a long, cold mountain winter.

So, I haven't been doing much studio painting, and I've been spending most of my painting time doing work for the mentorship I'm doing. Mostly, I've been doing small plein air studies, trying to capture the fall colors while they last. It's snowing now, and today was the first day I've had to work on a studio painting in probably three weeks! Anyhow, I'm looking forward to spending some time in the studio in the next few weeks, and finishing some larger paintings that I've been planning for a while. Time to relax a bit!!

Style

2008-10-09T09:53:00.006-06:00

"September Reflections"
Oil on Panel
30x24"
2008

I think that an artist's personal style is mostly the result of covering a lot of canvas outdoors or in the studio, and doesn't require as much deliberation as we artists tend to think.

I also think that any artist who is trying new things and working to improve is going to have their style evolve over time. When I was uploading pictures of my recent show paintings to my website last week, I realized that my work has been changing a bit over the past year as I try different things, and it was interesting to see where I'm at right now and think about where I want to be.

In the past year, I've transitioned from using canvas to using smooth panels almost exclusively. I went through a phase at the start of this year where I was really focusing on greys and lower contrast. I've gone from using all thick paint, everywhere, to using thick paint more sparingly and using transparent passages for contrast. More recently, I've been going a lot brighter and higher contrast again, which I think is more of a natural inclination for me.

So, who knows where I'll be a month from now, but I know I'd like to work on utilizing more greys to offset the brighter colors in my paintings, as a way to move the eye throughout the composition. I'm experimenting with some different types of linen as possible surfaces for larger paintings too, so we'll see how that goes. One thing I'm also doing is small studies to prep for every painting. I want to decrease the number of scrapers I do, and planning beforehand is key.

Now, if I could just find the TIME to try all these things!

Interpretations - Group Show

2008-10-03T09:52:00.007-06:00

"When the Day is Done"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2008

Phew!! It's been a busy week. My sister got married last weekend (congrats Shannon!!! I'm working on your present!), and I've been getting everything ready for a group show that opens tonight. I know it's a bit late, but if anyone is in the area, feel free to stop by the opening tonight or check out the show throughout the month.

Here's the official spiel from the gallery:

"We are proud to bring together the work of Robert Spooner, Stacey Peterson, and Steven Hileman. While these three artists share many similarities—all left careers in other fields to take up full-time gallery painting, all paint in oil, all express themselves with boldness and exquisite control—their works clearly reveal three distinct personalities."

The show is at Roundhouse Gallery in Fort Collins, Colorado and the opening is from 6-9 pm tonight with the show running through the end of the month. Robert Spooner and Steven Hileman are both great painters, and I'm humbled to be in a show with them both. You can preview my paintings for the show on my website here.

Just Another Day at the Office

2008-09-22T22:08:00.003-06:00

"Morning Aspens"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2008

Saturday was the Oil Painters of America Great Paintout for Colorado, and the location this year was Estes Park. I've been stuck in the studio lately finishing up paintings for a bunch of upcoming fall shows, so I decided to get outside for once and meet up with the group for some painting in the park.

The drive to Estes from here is a beautiful one, but it can be long depending on tourist traffic. I left home at 6 am and drove over Trail Ridge Road as the sun rose. It was gorgeous so I had to stop a few times to take pictures of the sun hitting the mountains. Of course, every time I pulled over I had 5-10 cars pull over behind me thinking I saw a moose or something. I felt like I should have a sign on my car that said, "Sorry folks - no wildlife here, just scenery!!"

I got to Estes and met up with the group. A few friends were there, and a some new faces as well. It was a gorgeous morning, and I managed this 9x12" study of some aspens before the nasty afternoon weather started to roll in. I had planned to paint in the park all day, but the weather looked iffy and I wasn't looking forward to driving back over the pass in a snowstorm, so I left after lunch.

On the way home, I took Old Fall River Road to the top of the pass, which is an old one-way dirt road that winds its way up above treeline. I've never driven it, and I'm glad I did. The aspens were changing up high and it was raining, and it was just a beautiful, slow drive through the mountains. In the end I didn't get as much painting done as I had hoped, but it was a great day anyways.

Have I mentioned that I love my job?

Eye Candy for Artists

2008-09-10T09:20:00.002-06:00

Want to drool over some really beautifully executed landscape paintings? Then go check out the preview of T. Allen Lawson's upcoming show at Simpson Gallagher Gallery.

I could stare at some of these all day. If my sister wasn't getting married that weekend, I would totally be driving up to Cody to see this show in person!! (See Shannon, the things I sacrifice for you?)

What is it with August?

2008-09-07T21:49:00.004-06:00

"Still Waters"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

Man, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel of paintings to post here. This is one of the smaller paintings I did for the RMPAP plein air show last month and this photo is terrible - I don't think I've photographed any new paintings since then, which means I'm way behind and need to have a serious photography session this week!

Anyhow, I don't know what it is, but I always seem to be a little bit "off" with my art every August. Seems like every year, I have a few weeks in August when I'm really struggling with my paintings and having a hard time finding motivation. This year was no different, and I'm happy to say that after a few bad weeks in the studio, I'm starting to get my painting mojo back (good thing too, because I'm preparing for a few different shows and I need all the motivation I can get).Considering my creative drought last month, hopefully you'll bear with me if the following has nothing at all to do with art, and everything to do with life outside of art!

This week has been a roller coaster for Nate and I as we tried to decide what to do with building our house. We'd been originally planning to try and have it move-in ready by Thanksgiving at the latest, and extend our lease on the condo we're in until then. This week it dawned on us that we might as well just move into one of Nate's spec homes and take our time building our own house. The spec has been taking a while to sell due to the housing market problems, and it just seems silly to leave this beautiful house sitting empty while we live in a rental and rush to finish the other house, so it looks like we'll be moving at the end of this month. I'm still looking forward to eventually moving into the house we've designed on the lot we picked out, but in the meantime it'll be nice to be in a house again no matter what.

At this point, the foundation is in for "our" house on "our" lot, and all the plans are done and ready to go at the factory (Nate builds modular homes, so the bulk of the house is built offsite). Here's the view of how it looked a week ago - what you can't see very well here is the beautiful view we'll have of the pond and wetlands behind us:

But, it'll probably be next year before we have a house there. In the meantime, this is the house we're moving into (which was professionally photographed, btw - I'm not this skilled at photgraphing anything!):

Can you tell it's modular? I'm proud of Nate for building this house. It's really cute and has that mountain feel, and while it's a bit small (I'll be using the guest room for my studio), it's got a great floorplan and location. I really think he's found his calling in building houses. Here's a view of the divide from the front yard (I've painted a winter version of this view multiple times already):

So, that's where we'll be a month from now. A big change from where we were at a week ago, but I think a good one for now. In the meantime, we decided to get out this weekend and just enjoy living in the mountains. Some friends came up from Denver to visit, and we took the kiddos horseback riding at Nate's parents' house. Aspen is an old pro at riding Bandit now - check it out:

We also took a hike around Monarch Lake and threw rocks in the water. It's one of my favorite spots to paint, and also just hang out:

When we get all bogged down in the day to day details of running two businesses and working working working, it's always nice to take some time out and remember WHY we're living up here and doing all this!

August Goals Update

2008-09-03T22:44:00.002-06:00

"Moraine Park Summer"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2008

Is it really September already? It's been cold up here the past few mornings, and I feel like summer disappeared as Labor Day weekend came to a close. I've been so busy that it seems to have passed me by!! Anyhow, I guess it's time to status my goals and see where I'm at now that we're 2/3 of the way through 2008. It's been a crazy week around here, so bear with me if I ramble.

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

I'm sort of feeling like I'm done with this goal for now. I don't particularily need another gallery at this point, so I don't want to waste a lot of effort on it. I'd rather focus my energy on making sure my existing galleries are stocked with good paintings!! I do have a three-person show in October at a gallery I don't currently show with. If that goes well, I would consider showing my work there, and then I could check this off of my goals list. But right now, I'm happy with where I'm at.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

Painted seven this month - well, I guess I painted eight, but one wasn't very successful and is still in studio waiting to be fixed. Most of these were fairly small, so it wasn't a very productive month for me. I had a bit of post-show burnout after the RMPAP show, and then that stomach thing knocked me out for a week. Anyhow, that makes 66 down, 34 to go.

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

The original point of this goal was to make me take my art seriously and feel like a contributing part of the household finances, and it's been really effective. It's been a good year for me up to this point, and that's been a really big blessing given the state of the economy. Nate's business is homebuilding, and he's taken a bit of a hit this summer, so anything I can contribute is more than welcome right now. I've already met this goal for the year, and at this point I'm just looking to go beyond that to help out where I can.

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

Done. Still very useful. I was going to blow this off this week, then I realized I'd be kicking myself when I eventually had to catch up. It's nice to keep the business side of things up to date by doing it on a regular basis.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

This is so not a priority right now! I'm registered for a tri this month, but I've got so much going on that it's totally been pushed to the back burner and I think I'll probably skip it. I am going to make sure I go for a run or hike every morning before I paint, mostly for my mental health, but that's where it ends.

So, there they are for the month. Considering how much we have going on these days, I'm happy to see that I'm on track with my goals for the year. In the next few months we'll be moving and it'll be interesting to see how that affects things. At this point we have our foundation done, but we're putting our house on hold and thinking of moving into the spec home we have on the market. I'm sort of bummed about that because it means I won't have my dream studio right away, but the house we'll move into is actually really cute and nice, and has a great view from the front yard that I've painted a couple of times already! And I can wait until next year for the dream studio, I suppose... Anything's gotta be better than the garage I'm painting in right now (which is starting to get cold as the weather turns)!

Be Careful What You Wish For

2008-08-26T22:18:00.003-06:00

"Grand County Sunset"
Oil on Panel
24x36"
2008

So, you know how my last post had to do with needing a break? Well, shortly after arriving home from our weekend in Aspen I came down with a really nasty stomach bug that kept me in bed for two days and prevented me from eating anything other than toast for about five days. Not fun at all, but I suppose it forced me to rest for a few days. I said I needed a break and I got one, right? Apparently God has a sense of humor!

Before we left for Aspen I was having a really bad week in the studio. Nothing was coming together the way I intended, and I was really struggling to do anything decent. I thought taking a break would help, but when I finally stepped back up to the easel at the end of last week, I had another rough day, and started to get really frustrated.

Luckily, I was able to get outside and hike a bit this weekend, and the time outside restored a bit of my landscape painting mojo. I started five paintings today, and almost finished two of them. With a few touch ups, they should both be decent, thus ending my streak of unsuccessful paintings. Thank goodness!!

It's funny how I forget time and time again what I can do to recharge my creative batteries, so to speak. For me, spending time outdoors is a must. If I'm not outside enough, I get grumpy and stressed out and since I paint landscapes, my painting suffers. Nate's been married to me long enough to know to send me out for a run or hike if I'm being completely intolerable. You would think I would know this too by now, but I never learn.

So, that's the point of this post - to remind me at some time in the future when I'm frustrated and cranky and struggling that I need to get my butt outside. After all, that's why I live in the mountains.

How do you recharge? I'd love to hear what others need to stay productive and keep the flow going in the studio!

Sometimes I Just Need a Break

2008-08-15T20:27:00.002-06:00

"A View from the Top"
Oil on Canvas
30x40"
2008

Being an artist and working from home is great - my schedule is flexible, I do what I love, and I get to spend lots of time with my daughter. But sometimes working from home has it's drawbacks - when things get busy and stressful, there's no escaping the "office".

Back in my engineering days, if I had a stressful day at work I could at least come home and sort of forget about it for a while. When I've had a long day of painting, I come in from the studio to a house full of more work stuff. I've got framed paintings in the front room, works in progress on the mantle, my computer on the kitchen table, etc etc... Same goes for Nate since he works from home, and it's all magnified by the fact that we're living in a condo while we build our house, which means no dedicated office space for now.

Anyhow, the point is that it's been a busy month, and I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with various committments and just needing a break. I had some deadlines to meet this week and just felt like the paintings I was working on were a complete struggle, and I realized I just needed to get away from it for a bit. I think it's important for me to realize that my work can suffer when I get tired, and that especially in art, it's necessary to recharge sometimes to continue to do good work.

So, we booked a hotel room last minute and took a little drive over to Aspen to relax for a couple of days. It seems kind of funny to take trip to a resort town when we already live in one, but I just wanted a change of scenery, and Aspen is a familiar town where we can just hang out and chill for a couple of days.

So far, we had a lazy dinner and took Aspen swimming in the hotel pool. Plans for tomorrow include more of the same, and maybe a short drive or hike to take in the scenery. I'm debating whether I even want to visit any art galleries while we're in town, but I'm feeling the pull - that's why it's hard for me to actually take a real break from art!

Oh, and btw, it's funny to be here and have to explain to everyone that no, I did NOT name my daughter after the TOWN of Aspen, thank you very much. I mean, it's nice here, but really...

July Goals Update

2008-08-05T21:09:00.002-06:00

"Fall on the Yampa"
Oil on Panel
14x18"
2008

Phew! Last week was completely insane. I painted outdoors all day each day, then there were artists dinners to go to at night, followed by the opening on Friday night and the quickdraw and other events on Saturday. Needless to say, there wasn't much time to be updating databases and checking on goals!! The funny thing is, it really bugs me now if I don't do this status check at the end of each month - it's become a habit that I depend on to gauge how my career is progressing. So, here we go for the month of July:

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

Same as last month - two down, one to go, and I'm taking a break from the gallery search for the summer. Right now I'm letting things settle and seeing how things go with three galleries.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

Painted thirteen this month, which had to be a personal record. Seven of those were plein air pieces I completed for the RMPAP show last week, but the others were all decent sized studio paintings, so this was a productive month for me! That makes 59 down, 41 to go.

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

Done for the year - yay! My new goal is to earn enough to pay the mortgage (well, rent) AND our health insurance (not cheap - the joy of being self-employed).

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

Done. I might have to start doing this every couple of weeks as I get busier - it's hard to remember where everything is when I only update at the end of the month.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

Did a 5 miler last month, and I'm officially registered to do a sprint triathlon in September. My sister-in-law talked me into it and I'm sort of questioning my sanity given my current workload. Oh well - I know I can finish it as long as log some time in the pool this month!

So, that's it for this month. Sorry again if these posts are totally boring to everyone, but this has been such a good motivational thing for me this year that I'm making myself stick with it.

I HEART Clyde Aspevig

2008-08-04T09:59:00.003-06:00

"September at the Pond"
Oil on Panel
24x30"
2008

I could be the president of the Clyde Aspevig fan club (seriously), so I was totally excited to see an interview with him in American Artist last month. You can read the whole thing here, and he gives some good general advice to painters, but it was his last statement that totally resonated with me as a landscape painter:

"I’m trying to be the best that I can be as a human being. Art is the vehicle with which I have the best chance of leaving behind something of worth. I hope my paintings will always inspire people to become a part of nature rather than a force that manipulates and destroys it."
Sometimes I have a hard time verbalizing what I'm trying to do with my art, and what it all means, but he says it so effortlessly here. Not that I'm surprised!

Bug Bitten and Sunburnt

2008-07-30T20:12:00.006-06:00

"Sunset Over Byers Peak"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

This week is officially arts week in Winter Park, and the main event up here in Grand County is the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters paint out and show. The plein air event is an invite only type of thing, and I've been bugging the powers that be to get me on the list for a while. I made it onto the alternate list, and I lucked out Monday and got a spot when someone didn't show.

So, I'm pretty excited - I've wanted to do this show for a while. It's a good group of artists, I already know it's at a good gallery (they do a great job selling my work!), and when you have a toddler it's definitely more convenient to participate in an event like this if it's in your own backyard.

The only drawback? Getting into the show Monday meant finishing seven (good) paintings on location in just a few days. So, I've been in a plein air painting frenzy for the past two and a half days, and it'll continue with more painting tomorrow, the show opening on Friday, quickdraw on Saturday morning (eek - hate these!!), and a couple more events on Saturday afternoon.

All in all, it's been a busy few days, but it's been great to get back outside with my pochade box and paint with some other great painters. The painting above is the one I just turned in for the show preview - it's a little bit simple, as are all of my plein air paintings - guess that's my style! I've painted this scene a couple of times before, and I knew it would be a great sunset scene.

Anyhow, if you're in the area (or live in Denver and want to drive a bit to see some good art), the show opens Friday evening at Elk Horn Gallery in Winter Park. Visit the RMPAP website for more info on the official schedule.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to head out to my studio and sign, varnish, and frame some paintings. The work doesn't end!

Working from Photos

2008-07-25T09:30:00.003-06:00

"Last Light on the Pass"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2008

I really wish I could paint on location more often than I do, but having a toddler makes it necessary to work from photo references in the studio. The problem is that even a good camera can't see as well as the human eye, especially in the light conditions that tend to make for good paintings. I try to remedy this by spending a lot of time outdoors just observing things, and taking notes about scenes that I think might make good paintings.

This particular painting is one I just finished, and I worked from a pretty terrible photo so I thought it might be a good example. We were driving down from Rollins Pass at dusk last week when I saw these trees on the side of the road with alpenglow on the continental divide behind them. I didn't have my painting stuff with me, and Aspen needed to get home and go to bed, so I had to settle for snapping a bad photo from the window and driving home. Here's the photo:

It's blurry and washed out, and no amount of photoshopping would bring the colors back to how saturated they were in real life. When I shot the photo, I made some notes about the colors on the mountain and trees, and tried to make a mental picture of the mood of the scene. Then I made sure that I started the painting within a couple of days so that I wouldn't forget.

When I did the painting, I used the photo as reference mainly for the composition, but pushed the color based on my memory and my notes. I also defined the shape of the mountains in the background better, since they're fuzzy in the photo. I look at these particular hills every day, so I know every nook and cranny and could paint them from memory if I had to. I also took the liberty of adding some knots to the aspen tree to make it clearly the center of interest.

One risk I took here was putting the center of interest almost directly in the center of the painting. I wasn't sure about it, but I think it works?

On a totally unrelated note, I apologize in advance for the fact that my blog posts are probably going to be fewer and shorter for the next six months. I'm officially getting my butt whipped into shape with the mentorship program I'm doing, and keeping up the business and learning as much as I can in the next six months are my priority. I'll still post here, but I'll probably be less wordy (might be a good thing!). In the end, I'm hoping I'll have more to say, and that my paintings will be that much better - in the meantime, I've got my head down and it's time for hard work!

Getting OLDer

2008-07-17T21:15:00.003-06:00

"September Gold"
Oil on Panel
30x24"
2008

I've been doing a lot of larger aspen paintings lately. I love the way they look in all seasons, and it's sort of fun to work on a series of them all at once. A few months ago, I would have shuddered at the thought of painting a 30 inch tall tree trunk, but I'm making some progress as I paint more of these. Practice, practice, practice...

In other news, tomorrow is my birthday - I'm turning the big 3-0!! I would have thought that turning thirty would kind of freak me out, but I'm actually just sort of content about it. After all, I have the cutest kid in the world, I live in the mountains, and I'm an artist. If you asked me ten years ago what I wanted to accomplish in life, those would be my big ticket items. Can't complain about that, right? I still feel a bit old though... Thirty just sounds so much older than twenty-nine!

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

2008-07-13T12:45:00.002-06:00

"Rainy Day Aspens"
Oil on Panel
24x36"
2008

I know I say this a lot, but things have been crazy busy lately. When things are busy, it's always a good thing from a business standpoint, so I can't complain, but it's leaving me with very little free time!

It's tourist season in the Colorado Rockies, which is prime selling time for the galleries in mountain resort towns, meaning that I feel the need to keep them all stocked as well as I can for the next couple of months. That means no finished paintings sitting in the studio gathering dust. It also means I'm framing and sending things out the door a few days after I finish them. Which means a bit of added stress and a lot of me running around acting frazzled all the time... Making a living as an artist can be hard work!

In addition, I'm doing a mentorship program with painter Jay Moore for the next six months, which means I'm driving down to Denver every other Monday, and doing lots of homework in the two week periods in between. There are seven other artists in the program, and I can already tell it's going to be a HUGE learning opportunity for me, so I'm totally excited. I'm also a tad bit overwhelmed trying to figure out how the heck I'm going to find time to do everything.

I usually have two full days to paint while Aspen is in daycare, plus another half or full day that she spends playing with Grandma. I do a lot of my business stuff/framing/painting prep during her naptimes on other days and after she goes to bed every night so that I can spend her awake hours with her. Now I'm going to be using a lot of that time doing work for the mentorship. I think I'm going to be cutting out all of my wasted TV/reading/relaxing time for the next few months...

I'm also trying to figure out some new framing options. I usually use ready-made frames, but I'm getting to a point where they're a bit cheap for my price level, and other artists at my level are using custom frames. It's presentation issue, and I love the quality of a good custom frame, but I'm a procrastinator at heart, and tend to order frames at the last minute, making ordering custom difficult since the wait is often close to four weeks. I'm starting to realize that I need to bite the bullet and start to build a bit of an inventory of standard size custom frames, so that I have them when I need them. I'm crazy cheap, so shelling out the bucks for a bunch of frames is a stretch for me, but I've got to do it at this point.

So, I'm a little bit overwhelmed right now, but also excited because I feel like the next few months will be a good push to take my work to a new level. It'll be a lot of work, but it'll be worth it in the end, and luckily I happen to love my job so it should be fun along the way.

In other news, Aspen has learned the word "paint" and likes to come out to my studio and paint on my paintings (of course, I only let her do this in the beginning stages). Every time she walks by the door, she says, "Mommy paint!" - cute, no?

June Goals Update

2008-07-05T19:41:00.003-06:00

"The End of August"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2008

YAWN - I am officially sick of checking on the status of my goals... The commitment to revisit them each month this year has really kept me on track, but it sure is getting old! Anyhow, we're halfway through 2008 now, so I guess looking at them again is a good thing and here I go:

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

Two down, one to go, and I'm taking a break from the gallery search for the summer.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

Painted five this month. I was focusing on completing some larger paintings, so I didn't really care about quantity - I was just feeling like I needed to push my work a little bit, and working bigger is where I wanted to go. That makes 46 down, 54 to go.

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

Done so far. Although we sold the house in Denver so I guess I don't officially have a mortgage to pay right now (we're renting while we build the house up here)!

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

Done. I'm finding that this is really important now that I have more galleries - it's good to be on top of the database so I know where everything is.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

A friend and I ran in a local 5 mile race today, which was a big confidence booster. I had to take a couple of walk breaks since I'm not really up to running 5 miles at this point (a 5k would have been a better length), but my time was decent and I'm making progress!

Maybe I'm getting bored with statusing these goals because I'm actually making decent progress? I don't know... Anyhow, we've had a tiring two days of fun in the sun for July 4th, so I'm going to go to sleep now at 8 pm. Does that make me old?

Taking the Leap - Revisited

2008-07-01T19:51:00.004-06:00

"Meadow Creek Spring"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

WARNING: long, rambling post ahead... Sorry!!

Nate and I took a long walk in the woods last night, and while we were talking we realized that this week marks a year since we became a self-employed family!! I've been at it longer than he has, since I quit my job when I had Aspen a year and a half ago, but when he quit his corporate job a year ago it upped the ante for my art business. My art officially became one of the ways that we pay the bills, and we both embarked together on this crazy journey that we like to think of as following our dreams.

I'll admit that there have been ups and downs, and I've had my moments of lying awake at 3:00 in the morning wondering what the heck we've done, but I don't have any regrets, and I'd do it all over again if I had to. I've been a bit stressed out lately, mostly because the news is so negative these days - in my darkest moments I wonder if we made the right decision to do all of this. In all of my other moments, I KNOW it was the right decision.

I've been slowly going through the archives of this blog and categorizing my posts, and it's been a really positive experience to look back over the past few years and see where I've come from. When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I was lead process engineer on an $800 million scrubber project for an oil-sands refinery in Canada. I was frazzled with the stress of being in charge of the process design phase of such a huge project (hello - those are my initials on every drawing and calculation!), managing people for the first time, and dealing with the pressure of being the only female engineering lead on the project, not to mention the youngest by about twenty years. My life was defined by my climb up the corporate ladder, and I was heading for a nice job in project management. I made a lot more money than I do now, and I was completely miserable.

For reference, here I am, enjoying the scenery in the middle of an oil sands mine in Ft. MacMurray, Alberta (and this was a day with a GOOD view - normally I was sitting in a cubicle staring at a computer):

Actually, if you REALLY want to see how far I've come to get to this point, maybe I should rewind to my days working for big oil down in Texas. Here I am getting ready to inspect some equipment during a chemical plant shutdown in Baton Rouge, Louisiana - you know your job sucks when the chemicals are so dangerous that you have to dress like this:

Of course, we also spent a lot of time being really bored in the construction trailers, which was also not the best way to spend a day:

I was working for ExxonMobil at the time, and my job (when I wasn't inspecting equipment), was to design computer programs that would optimize the amount of money the plant would make on a given day, depending on things like oil prices, chemical sale prices, etc etc. It was incredibly unfulfilling, and I hated Houston, so we moved back to Colorado and I got a job designing pollution control systems for coal-fired power plants. More my style, but I still wasn't happy, and I started this blog to rant a bit about my job and talk about some of the things that made me happy, and it morphed into the art blog it is today.

When I look back at the girl I was then, I'm thankful that I was able to see how unhappy I was, and that I knew exactly what I really wanted to be doing. Before I got pregnant with Aspen, I had decided that I wanted to try and make it as an artist, and I started to get serious about taking the right steps to make it work. I think I first started talking about taking the leap in the two posts here and here. At the end of the first post where I talked about making a career change, I said the following:

"I don’t want to play it safe forever. I don’t want to have a long list of excuses someday. I’d rather aim for brilliance and fail than say I never tried for fear of exiting my comfort zone. I want to move forward - I want to choose experience over excuses."

When I read those words the other day, I was in the midst of a stressful day and they immediately gave me a sense of peace. I realized that over the past year and a half I've left the comfort zone and challenged myself, and I've had more wonderful experiences than I can count. I love my job with every inch of my being, and I'm content with my life. I have a beautiful, sweet daughter, a wonderful husband, and I'm living where I want to live. I'm surrounded by beauty every day, and I'm following the dream I've had since I was a child to be an artist. And in following that dream (and working with Nate to achieve his), I feel like I'm being the best role model I can possibly be as a mother. I'm blessed to have this opportunity, and I'm going to try my hardest to do my best at what I truly believe I'm meant to be doing.

Now, isn't it a good thing that I have this blog to remind me where I've come from? Nothing like a little reminder of my past life to move me from a place of stress to a place of peace!

Working Larger

2008-06-29T21:07:00.003-06:00

"Under a Big Sky"
Oil on Canvas
30x40"
2008

I've had the luxury of working on some larger paintings for the past couple of weeks. It's always more of a challenge to make a composition work on a larger scale, but I love the impact a bigger painting can make if done well.

This painting is an enlargement of a 12x16" study I did at the beginning of this year. I posted it here along with the Willa Cather quote that originally inspired my to paint it - the gist of it is how big the sky is out West, dwarfing everything below it. I liked how the study turned out, and wanted to explore it a bit further. In the bigger version, I pushed the idea a bit further, increasing the scale of the sky compared to the mountains below, and exaggerating the curvature of the clouds to add more movement. I also added a bit more complexity to the foreground and added some more of the city lights, just to underscore how small we all really are here.

On another note, this was the first painting I've done on canvas this year, and I HATED the surface. Guess my obsession with smooth panels will continue - now I need to find something suitable for bigger paintings...

I've got a few more of these larger paintings on the easel, and after a weekend of relaxing I'm chomping at the bit to get back into the studio and work on them!

Demo - Enlarging a Painting PART II

2008-06-19T19:33:00.005-06:00

So, when I left off yesterday I had just finished a block-in of the major shapes and colors in acrylic paint. A lot of people ask me about the acrylic whenever I post these demos, and I know it's a bit unconventional. When I do smaller paintings, or paint on location, I usually do a block-in of the major masses with thinned oil paint, then build up texture and detail on top of that block-in. I think a lot of artists work this way - it's pretty normal. When I'm working on larger paintings in the studio, I often use acrylics instead for two reasons. First, the smell of oil paint thinned with mineral spirits gets to me if I'm working on a large scale, even though I use the best mineral spirits I've found to date (Gamsol). The acrylics don't smell, and I can work on top of them with oil paint without any problems. Second, I like the fact that the acrylics dry immediately. I can work over them right away without having to worry about mixing with the paint underneath, which allows me to change and refine how I want.

Anyhow, once the block-in was done, I started to rework the painting in oil. At this point, I was using oil paint straight from the tube for the most part, using OMS and res-n-gel to thin the paint as needed. The first step was to put down the dark shadows of the pine tree:

I often work from back to front when I'm doing a large painting, but when I'm doing a more organic subject like this, I sort of go from dark to light and skip around the canvas a bit. So, once the dark shadows of the tree were down, I started to bring in the mid-tone greens on the pine branches and the general masses of the red tree behind it. I was blocking in major masses at this point, and wasn't too concerned with allowing the sky to show through the tree quite yet:

Next, the "solidity" of the pine tree was distracting me, so I decided to go ahead and paint in the main tone of the sky, working the sky color back into the edges of the trees, and adding some sky holes throughout the mass of the pine tree:

Now that the top half of the painting was taking shape, I started to work downward into the foreground vegetation, starting with the willows at the top of the hill:

Then moving on to the foreground grasses:

Next, I painted in the rocky trail, and started to refine the foreground a bit by adding some of the red twigs/bushes:

At this point, I decided it was time to paint in the aspen trunks before refining the foreground any more. When I paint aspen trees, I often paint everything around them before tackling their trunks. I don't really know why I do this, but I do know that if the painting is working around the trunks, it will only look better once I complete them. I usually paint the knots on the tree trunks first (dark to light convention), but in this case I decided to paint the light mass of the tree bark first:

Then I added in the knots on the trees, which are what really give aspen trees their character:

At this point, all of the main masses in the painting were complete, and I set it up on the mantle above the fireplace for a couple of days so that I could spot the problems before finishing it up. The uniformity of color of the red bushes in the foregound was really bugging me, and the rocks on the trail at the bottom of the panel were too black. I brought the painting back into the studio and did some rework on the trail itself, added some color to the rocks at the bottom of the painting, and brought some varying colors/values into the foreground grasses and bushes to add dimension:

I took a final photo of the painting at that point, and decided there was too much sky showing through the pine tree on the left and that it was a bit distracting. A bit of work to make the pine a more solid mass, and the painting was done:

So, here's a picture of the OLD 16x20":

And here's the NEW 24x30":

I prefer the new one, just because I think it's painted better (a year makes a difference!), which is what I would hope for. I also think I achieved my goal of giving the composition more room to breathe, and painting the branches of the aspen trees so that they have a more lyrical quality and aren't so stilted. Nate says he still likes the old one better, but we don't actually have it around to compare, so who knows!!

Demo - Enlarging a Painting PART I

2008-06-18T19:40:00.009-06:00

We all know I'm too lazy with photography to do demos of my work more often, but I've been working on an enlargement of an old painting for the past couple of weeks, and I actually managed to take some photos along the way that I thought I'd share.

I did the original painting about a year and a half ago, right after Aspen was born. Nate decided it was his favorite painting I'd ever done, so I kept it and it hung above our fireplace until about a month ago when a collector saw it on my website and got my gallery here in Winter Park to convince me to part with it. Here's the original 16x20" oil on canvas:

In the meantime, I had mentioned to the gallery that I wanted to paint the same scene on a larger scale and they had some interest, so I decided to go ahead with the larger painting. In enlarging this painting, I wanted to open up the composition a little bit to give the trees more room to breathe, and make the branches more lyrical.

I started with a loose sketch on 24x30" gessobord - nothing too detailed, since the subject is fairly organic and I'm wanting the painting to stay loose:

Next step was to start the block-in. I used a thin acrylic wash to start this one, mainly because I wanted it to dry quickly to I could start working over it with thicker oil paint the same day. One of the main reasons I do a block in with thinned paint is to eyeball the composition, and I like it to be dry before I continue so that I can fix any issues without having to fight wet paint underneath. Anyhow, in this case I started with the darkest darks:

Next, I blocked in the midtones in the pine tree and foregound grasses, keeping things simple and loose:

Then I painted in the trail and the lighter grasses in the foreground:

Once the foreground was in, I blocked in the sky, indicating where the sky holes would be in the pine tree to give it more shape and dimension. At this point, I was just trying to get things in the right place. I wasn't super concerned with my color and value being right on, especially since I was working with cheap acrylics!!

Finally, I blocked in the aspen trunks, indicating their main shape without doing much modeling, and locating where most of the knots would be. In reality, these trees had people's initials carved into them all over the place. I could actually read the name "RON" on one of the trees in my reference photo, but I obviously decided to ignore it in the name of artistic license!

So, at that point, the block-in was finished and I was ready to start refining things in oil. And that's where I'm going to break for now - the painting's done, but "So You Think You Can Dance" is over (I'm SOOO addicted to that show) and it's my bedtime, so I'll continue tomorrow.

Oh, and sorry about the shadow from my easel at the top of the painting in all of these photos. That's what I get for having my studio lights almost directly above my head...

A Few of my Favorite Things

2008-06-15T10:14:00.004-06:00

"Approach to Lake Isabelle"
Oil on Panel
24x18"
2008

Every artist I know has a bit of an addiction to art supplies, and we all have our favorite paints, brushes, and surfaces. I'm probably not as knowledgable about art materials as I should be, but I get a lot of emails that ask specifics about the materials I use. I thought I might as well put my answers out here all at once, so that anyone who might be interested would have them... Sorry if this is long and boring!

1. Paint

I use Utrecht brand oil paint exclusively. I was lucky enough to receive a gift card to Utrecht as an award at last year's OPA national show. I tried some paint as part of my first order, and I've been addicted ever since! The Utrecht paints are cheaper than most other artist quality paints, but extremely consistent and high quality. They have a great buttery consistency that I find workable without being too oily.

2. Palette

My palette consists of titanium white (or utrecht white, which is a bit less stiff), cadmium yellow light, cadmium lemon, cadmium orange, alizarin crimson, quinacridone red, burnt sienna, and ultramarine blue. I occasionally use a bit of thalo green to get the brightness I'm after in a sky, but otherwise I shy away from having green on my palette. My workhorse colors are the ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, cad yellow light, and cad lemon. I keep the orange and sienna on my palette mainly as an easy way to grey down other mixtures. The quin red is only there for when I need to mix a brighter purple or orange. I lay all of these out in the same order every time I paint. I use a glass palette because I have problem with letting paint dry and it's easy to clean with a razor blade!

3. Medium

I typically start a painting using paint thinned with mineral spirits (I use Gamsol odorless mineral spirits), then work the rest with paint straight from the tube. If my paint is stiff and I want to loosen it up and maintain the texture of my brushstrokes, I use Weber Res-n-gel as a medium. It's thicker than liquin, less smelly, and as far as I can tell doesn't yellow. I like it because it makes the paint flow while maintaing thickness and texture. When I'm reworking a painting, I'll occasionally use liquin to get a wet-on-wet look when I'm working over dry paint (I paint a thin layer of liquin over the area that I'm correcting, then paint into it, allowing for softer edges). When I was pregnant, I pretty much worked with paint straight from the tube and used walnut oil for cleanup. It wasn't ideal, but it eliminated all the stinky mediums from my studio!

4. Brushes

I'm not much of a brush snob. I'm hard on brushes, so I don't like to spend a lot of money on them. I paint exclusively with flat bristle brushes, and I usually just order Blick or Utrecht brand brushes. I order Utrecht size 1 sabeline rounds specifically for signing my name on paintings, and use those occasionally for tree branches or detail. I don't think I've ever spent more than $10 on a brush, so I'm probably no help if you're looking for a great brush recommendation!

5. Surface

I've been painting on Ampersand Gessobord for most of this year. I don't particularily love the texture of canvas showing through my paint, so I prefer to work on a smooth surface. I like the smooth finish on gessobord, and I have yet to see one warp (I've used up to 24x36" panels), so it's become my preference when working on hard panel. For anything larger than 24x36", panels get heavy, so I still use canvas. I usually buy Utrecht pre-stretched cotton canvas (their stretchers are extremely sturdy, and the canvas is always stretched tighter than other vendors), and add a couple coats of gesso to fill in the weave a bit before painting. I don't have the time to stretch my own canvases or do a lot of panel prep, so I buy things ready-made. Gives me more time to paint!

6. Varnish

I'm often sending paintings out the door within a week or two of finishing them, so I don't have the luxury of waiting six months to put on a good coat of varnish. However, I like my paintings to have that "still wet" look so that all of the colors and values are as I intended, so I put a coat of retouch varnish on every painting before it goes anywhere. I like both Grumbacher and Winsor and Newton brand retouch varnish - they both brush on easily, dry quickly, and put a nice lasting finish on the painting without being over-the-top glossy.

I think that just about covers it - I can't think of anything else I use when I paint - if I forgot anything, let me know! Anyhow, hope that was helpful to someone out there. I'd love to hear from others about their favorite things!

Why Do YOU Paint?

2008-06-11T11:02:00.004-06:00

"Monarch Lake Morning"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

Sorry for my downer of a post the other day y'all. I was obviously a little bit overwhelmed! We're all still sniffling and coughing here in the Peterson household, but it's snowing out today (I KNOW, it's June!), so Aspen and I have been having a nice day snuggling on the couch. There's just nothing better than a good excuse to be lazy sometimes...

Anyhow, I've been filling out a survey for the mentorship program I'm doing, and one of the questions that I keep passing over is:

"Why do you paint? (Think about the answer, do not take the first thing that comes to your mind. Keep asking "Why" to your answer, until you get to the root reason)."

When I read this question, a bunch of things come to mind immediately. It's my job. It pays the bills. I want to communicate what I see in the landscape to others. I love the challenge. I find satisfaction in the feeling of a job well done. I like the process of creating. I love that art is an ever-evolving pursuit. I love the "idea" of being an artist. I love to simplify what I see into something that works as a painting. I love to paint.

If I keep going deeper and asking why to all of these answers, I get down to the bare bones fact that I just love the process of putting brush to canvas, or pencil to paper, and I always have. When I was tiny, I loved to color. In school, art class was my favorite hour of the day. Even when I got busy with college and a grown-up career, I always kept up with drawing and painting to an extent, because I just loved the process of creating a two dimensional image.

I've tried a lot of different hobbies - running, hiking, swimming, singing, piano, dancing, triathlons, acting, scrapbooking... Nothing gives me anywhere near the feeling of satisfaction that I get from the process of painting. Painting is fullfilling to me emotionally AND physically - I think this is why I enjoy it so much more than anything else I've tried. I know this sounds sort of touchy-feely-new-agey and all, but my soul just feels right when I'm painting. When I paint, I get into a flow where I'm not thinking about much of anything other than the painting in front of me. It allows me to stop thinking about life and about me for a period of time, and just focus on doing. And that seems to be something I need to be right with myself.

So, I don't know that I have a one-sentence answer to the question "Why do you paint?", but this is as close as I've gotten.

I'd love to hear the opinions of other artists on this subject. Why do YOU paint?

A Day in the Life as a Mom

2008-06-05T08:48:00.005-06:00

"June Aspens"
Oil on Panel
18x14"
2008

Ugh. This week has been a total disaster.

Aspen kicked things off on Monday night by waking up every 10 minutes. She's had a cold for a week or so and it got nasty this weekend and she had a cough that just wouldn't let her sleep. Because she was so sick, she stayed home from daycare on Tuesday. Nate's mom watched her for the afternoon so I could paint, but I ended up having to drive over and pick her up early to make an emergency trip to the pediatrician when she spiked a 103 degree fever despite regular dosing with Tylenol. Cue another long night of no sleep...

After a couple of nights of little to no sleep, my own cold got worse so I felt horrible yesterday on top of everything. Aspen was finally feeling a bit better on antibiotics, but still not sleeping so well. Nate decided to be a nice husband and take night duty and sleep in her room so I could get some rest.

I thought I'd get a good night's sleep and all would be well today, until I woke at 3:30 am to the sound of Nate puking his guts out in our bathroom. I'm seriously hoping it's a case of food poisoning from the hot dog he ate at the golf course, because if Aspen and I get the stomach flu on top of all this, I'm going to completely lose it!

So, I left Nate in our room and came out to sleep on the couch so I could hear Aspen. Of course, she woke at 6:00 am and wouldn't go back to sleep (she's a champion sleeper, btw - this is not like her). After about an hour she started sticking her fingers in her mouth and crying, and sticking her toungue out like she had eaten something hot. I started to worry she was having an allergic reaction, but she hadn't eaten anything since last night so it seemed improbable. Finally gave her some Benadryl just in case, and now she's sleeping. Meanwhile, Nate's still sick in the next room.

Today is my usual painting day, but somehow I don't think it's going to happen!! We were also supposed to head down to Denver tonight to finish packing up the house, but I don't think that's going to happen either.

The one good thing? I was supposed to deliver some paintings to a gallery today, but we changed it to next Tuesday instead. At least I don't have to worry about that!!

Anyhow, this sucks. Just thought I'd share...

May Goals Update

2008-06-02T21:37:00.002-06:00

"Last Light"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

How is it June already? It's like I blinked and suddenly the grass is green and it's summer! I feel like I just did my goals post for April yesterday, but the calendar is telling me it's June, so status my goals I must...

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

I'm now showing my work in a gallery in Breckenridge, and hoping things work out well there. I'm also taking paintings to another gallery sometime in the next couple of weeks. I have another that has expressed interest in seeing work in person, but it's not a sure thing at this point. And I have another that saw my work and offered to do a show to try things out. I actually like this approach (both the gallery and the artist see how things work out before committing long-term), but I didn't feel like I could commit to a solo show, so we talked about a potential 3-person show in the fall. Moral of the story? I'm slowly making progress on this one.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

I did ten paintings this month, and they weren't all tiny so I'm pretty happy with my time in the studio. That makes it 41 down, 59 to go...

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

Still on track here, which has been such a blessing. I expected things to be slow this month because it's the off-season in the mountains, but my gallery here sold a bunch of paintings in addition to some sales at various shows, and I had my best month ever. I'm really humbled by how well things have gone this month - I just feel so lucky when I'm able to make money doing what I love.

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

Done.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

I've been running a bit, started riding my bike. Wouldn't say I'm in shape, but it's progress!!

One of the things that's been really great this month has been the realization that I finally feel like art is a full-fledged career for me. I feel like I still treated painting like a hobby last year. I didn't have set days/hours for studio time, some weeks I didn't paint at all, and I didn't do nearly enough business stuff. This year I've been on top of things with my goals, and I finally feel like I'm putting in the effort that I should be, which is rewarding in itself.

One thing that I forgot to include in my goals this year is education/learning. I took a few workshops in 2003/2004 and then spent the past couple years working on my skills and developing my style on my own. For a while now I've been feeling like I need some outside input and teaching, and I've been trying to figure out the best way to go. Week long workshops aren't what I need at this point, and to that end I've committed to a six month mentorship program with a landscape painter whose work and business practices I respect. It starts in July, and I'm so excited I can't stand it.

Well, I'm sitting here watching Aspen sleep because she's sick and has a nasty fever, so it's probably time to stop typing and close up the computer screen. All in all, it's been a good month!

Moving On

2008-06-01T07:09:00.004-06:00

"Along the Yampa"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2008

In the midst of packing up our house in Denver this weekend, I had to take a trip downtown to pick up my remaining paintings from Angler Art. They're closing their doors for a year (or more), and it was a bit sad to have to pick up all my paintings for good. This was the first gallery that took me on and sold my work, back when I was still working fulltime as an engineer. They sold seven paintings the first month, and kept selling well from that time on. Last year they moved, and things got slower, but they did a show for me and we sold a good number of paintings and had a lot of fun. I'm in debt to them for essentially starting my career as a landscape artist, so even though I wasn't too surprised that they're closing, it's sort of sad. Had they not done so well for me that first year, I don't know whether I would have had the confidence to paint fulltime.

That's the thing about art - even though it's a business, you develop relationships with your galleries and the people you deal with. There's loyalty involved, and it's personal, you know? Or maybe it's just that I take things more personally because this job matters to me so much. It makes me picky about the people I want to represent my work.

Anyhow, some of the paintings I picked up are over a year old, and when I saw a couple of them I experienced the cringe factor that I talked about in my last post. My style has evolved so much over the past year that it's funny to see the older works and remember what I was working toward then (brushwork, color) compared to what I'm working on now (mood, atmosphere). Always evolving, I guess!

The Cringe Factor

2008-05-21T20:51:00.004-06:00

"Below the Divide"
Oil on Panel
24x18"
2008

In her "When Are You Ready" post last month, Lisa Call alluded to the phenomenon where you get to a certain point in your art career and look back and feel embarassed about the work you sold or exhibited previously. I like to call it the "cringe factor", and I'd venture to say that all successful artists feel this way at some point. The way I see it, if you're growing as an artist, you're going to reach a point where the stuff you're doing today is way better than what you did a year ago. It's a sign of growth and improvement, and it's a great way to measure progress.

Does it mean you should hold off on selling your work until you're sure you'll never cringe about it in the future? Absolutely not!! (If that was the case, I wouldn't be able to sell my paintings at all!)

I took my first plein air landscape painting workshop in 2003, and didn't really get into painting landscapes until I took a second workshop in mid-2004. Needless to say, the growth curve has been a little bit steep for me over the past few years. I look back at the paintings I sold when I got into my first gallery, and I can see why they sold, but I also see how much I've improved since then. I have paintings I did for my solo show last November that will probably go in the trash pile when I pick them up from the gallery next week (closing - a whole other story...) - and I only painted them seven months ago!!

Anyhow, one of my favorite ways to see how I'm improving is to tackle a difficult subject more than once, and this painting is one of those subjects. There's something about this location that I just love, but I've painted it three times now trying to get it right. I think it's fun to look at the images of these three paintings and see where I've come from. It gives me some hope about where I'm going!

So, here's version #1:

I painted this in the spring of 2005, roughly three years ago. I exhibited it in my FIRST juried art show ever. Even though it was just a tiny arts council type show, I was so excited to have three paintings accepted that Nate and I went to the opening in Steamboat Springs and had a fancy dinner afterwards to celebrate. I was still doing the corporate engineering job thing, so this was fun! The painting didn't sell, and to tell you the truth, I don't know where it is now. Probably trashed it during our last move? Anyhow, as you can see, it lacks subtlety. The colors are garish and repetitive - not so good. I remember spending hours trying to get that line of blue just right on the water - hehe...

Here's version #2:

I painted this a year later, in the spring of 2006. Same composition, slightly larger canvas. The colors are a bit more pleasant, the water is more realistic, and the brushwork is better. The trees are still a bit repetitive, and I can tell I still have green on my palette because all of the greens are the same. It's a better painting than the last, and it sold quickly. Looking back, I can see what I'd improve, but I also have to try to understand that the collector who bought it saw what they wanted to see in this piece. Hopefully they're still enjoying it.

This is version #3:

I painted it vertically this time to eliminate some of the pines since I wanted to the cliffs to be the center of interest. I'd like to say I've improved a lot in two years. It's subjective, but I do think there's more subtlety and variety in the color and brushwork. I've gotten over my need to always pile on the paint thickly, and started to use thinner paint in certain passages that require some more sensitivity in the edges (this painting probably isn't the best example of that, actually). The trees are better, and I allowed myself to paint the water more loosely so that it wouldn't compete with the center of attention. Overall, I think I did a better job conveying the mood and lighting of this location.

So, the moral of the story is that I may cringe at my older work, but that's a good thing - it means all the hard work is paying off! And I really hope I don't ever get to a point where I'm looking at a painting I did five years ago and thinking it was the best I ever did. As an aside, I had this conversation with a gallery owner once and he was telling me that a well-known painter he represents recently looked at a painting he did the year I was born and said, "That was a damn good painting!" All I have to say is that I can't fathom ever reaching that point, but if I do, it'll be because I'm really old or something. Call me critical, I guess.

Work Work Work

2008-05-16T10:39:00.004-06:00

"Last Light, Indian Peaks"
Oil on Panel
18x36"
2008

This week has been crazy, but good. We finally have our house in Denver under contract, which is great because if everything goes as planned, we'll be able to build on our lot up here this summer. Crossing my fingers that the inspection goes well and that we close next month as expected!

We also realized that to have our house plans approved at the June meeting of the architectural control committee in our neighborhood, we need to have everything submitted by Monday. We've thrown around some ideas for house plans, but haven't actually done anything with them, so we spent the past few days marking up drawings to submit to the factory (Nate builds modular homes). Nate worked from home all day yesterday, finishing the drawings and estimate, and arranging for the survey etc. I have to admit there were a few disagreements on the design front - I told him he's not allowed to have opinions on the functionality of the kitchen or my studio. Hehe...

I still managed to spend some quality time in the studio. Two of the three paintings I've been working on this week are scenes I've painted before. I was halfway through a painting one of them when I realized I had painted a similar thing before - oops!! Luckily, it doesn't look anything like the other version. The other one is a vertical version of a scene I've painted horizontally twice. I just keep thinking I can do it better. Once I photograph it, I'll post all three so you guys can see how terrible I was at painting three years ago!

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to a nice weekend in the mountains. Hopefully the sun will shine and the snow will go away for good - I'm ready for spring!

On Being a Mom

2008-05-11T20:38:00.006-06:00

Since it's Mother's Day, I was thinking a little bit about how having Aspen just lifts me up and brightens my life. On anything less than a good day, having a child just makes things better than they would be otherwise. Maybe it has to do with her innocence, I don't know... It's trite to say, but she's just changed my life.

This is all said better by one of my favorite bands...

Well there's far too many questions to ask,
To answer all of them tonight.
For I wear too many masks,
To tell if any of them are wrong or right.
And confusion casts a shadow upon me,
Like a great big cloud in the sky.
And now I pray for rain
Cause it's been so long since I let myself cry.

For so long, I've sang this sad ole song.
And it feels like my time is up.
For she came and landed in my arms
And she filled my half empty cup.
Yes she filled my half empty cup.

Now I look up above me,
And I thank that Great Old God in the sky.
For telling me my cup ain't half empty.
Just took my little girl to show my why.

There you are.
Right in front of me,
A brand new day,
Sunrise Over Sea ,
No longer,
My cup half empty,
Cause there you are...
You're Peaches & Cream to me...

All I know is
All I know and
I love you."

"Peaches & Cream"
John Butler Trio

Why I Love My Job

2008-05-07T16:32:00.002-06:00

"Crater Lake Cliffs"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

This painting was SO MUCH FUN to do!!

I've been putting off painting these cliffs for the past three years, thinking I wasn't good enough to do them justice. I finally got to the point where I just couldn't resist, and tackled them on a relatively small scale. And I'm so glad I did, because they were so much fun to paint! Everything came together, and this painting actually looked like I wanted it to look.

The funny thing is, as much as I love this painting, I haven't had an enthusiastic response from anyone else who has seen it. So, like I said in my post yesterday, you can never tell which painting will elicit the most response from people.

The cool thing is that it doesn't matter. I always love to paint, but it's the paintings like these, which are challenging and fun, that always keep me coming back for more. I talk a lot about goals and business on this blog, but only because keeping track of those things makes it possible for me to keep on painting as my job. And seriously, I don't think there could be a better job to have!

Another One

2008-05-06T19:01:00.004-06:00

"Willow Creek Spring"

Oil on Panel

8x10"

2008

I have to admit I was surprised at how many people liked the painting I posted last, probably because it just wasn't a favorite of mine. Maybe you were all just being nice? Honestly though, I find that I often have a hard time judging which of my paintings will elicit a response in others.

I think that my opinion of each painting is too tainted by my experience painting it. If I have to do a lot of rework, or I'm uncomfortable with a given subject, I automatically assume others will see my struggle. Conversely, sometimes a painting just paints itself and I fall in love with it immediately, and then I find that others don't care as much for it. So it goes in the subjective world of art!!

This is another little painting I did of a similar scene (and be warned that this photo isn't doing it justice). Same creek, same day, same shadows on the hillside in the background. I've done three paintings of this creek now - I was just completely taken in by the way the shadows were descending down the hillside in the background, and there was such a strong divide between sunlight and shadow. I think this one will look really nice once it's framed, but I'm still not sure I'm 100% happy with it. I do think it's a bit more my style than the other one though.

It's always fun to have the time to work on a series of the same scene. Helps to work the kinks out and really study the subject matter!

April Goals Update

2008-04-30T20:54:00.005-06:00

"Into the Shadows"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2008

I don't know about this painting - I like it better in real life than in this photo, but it just doesn't read how I want it to. Might be destined for a good sanding...

Anyhow, I'm sitting here updating all my financials and databases for April, so I figure I might as well status my yearly goals while I'm at it!! Is this getting repetitive yet? I apologize if my monthly goals post is too businesslike and boring, but this has done wonders for keeping me on track so far this year!

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

I finally got some time to devote to business this month, and contacted a few galleries. As of this week, I have two new galleries who have agreed to start showing my work for the summer season - I'll be delivering paintings to them towards the end of May, and hopefully they'll sell well! Nice to finally report some progress here.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

Painted seven paintings this month, even with a week off at the start for vacation/moving. One might be destined for the trash - it's posted at the top of this blog post - what do you think? I think it's just not "me". Anyhow, that makes it 31 down, 69 to go... I'm still having a hard time with having Aspen in daycare (even though she's just fine with it), but I do get a lot of uninterrupted painting time on the two days she's gone.

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

Still on track here, which is nice since we're still waiting for our house in Denver to sell!!

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

If I didn't have this goal, I would have totally forgotten to update everything tonight, so thank the Lord for goals!

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

Um, I don't know - I tend to completely slack off when things get busy, and this has been one of those months. I did a bit of running, but not enough. Ugh...

So, April was a good month for the most part. Things are slow in the mountain resort towns in April and May, so I'm thrilled to have sold some paintings this month and gotten stuff done on the business end of things - better than expected!

HELP - Camera Advice??

2008-04-29T08:13:00.004-06:00

"Below the Pass"
Oil on Panel
11x14"
2007

I'm totally scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find decent pictures to post here. I've posted most of my recent paintings, and the old ones don't look good enough. Luckily I've got eight paintings sitting in my living room just waiting to be photographed today!!

Speaking of photographing paintings, I'm starting to feel like I need to upgrade my camera. I use a 5 MP Olympus with a big zoom that I love for taking photos outdoors and in all lighting conditions. Problem is that I'm starting to feel like I need higher resolution images.

Case in point? I've been working with an art consulting firm who were pitching my paintings to a couple of hotels. One of the projects was for guest room prints. I almost lost the job because I don't have high enough resolution photos of older paintings for them to use to make prints. Luckily, the client loved the actual painting I sent as a sample, so I was able to get a good enough image and got the job. But you can see why it would be nice to have higher resolution images, right?

I'm looking at what's out there now and there are a lot of affordable cameras in the 12 MP range. I need a good zoom and I like a camera where I can adjust everything manually (no point and shoot), so I'm looking at a minimum of $400, but I'm wondering if I should take the plunge and just get a Nikon digital SLR. Does anyone out there have a camera they LOVE?? I'd love to hear what you all use to photograph your paintings, and if you'd recommend something similar. I love my Olympus because it almost always gets accurate color, even with bad lighting conditions, but I'm willing to branch out...

In other news, I finally updated my blogroll and template. Of course, in the process Blogger reformatted half of my old posts, so now they all look kind of weird. Argh.

Art and Knowledge

2008-04-21T19:37:00.004-06:00

"Dusk"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2007

I read this quote by Scott Christensen in the February issue of Southwest Art, and I've been meaning to write it down ever since. In an interview, they ask him what the biggest misconception is about artists, and his answer is the following:

"That we just paint and it just comes flowing out of us naturally. But it has to be a learned thing. Knowledge precedes execution. Most people think creating art is a feeling. That’s like saying Yo-Yo Ma must have just picked up the cello and started playing it."

I love that because it says in so few words exactly what annoys me sometimes about the public perception of art. People assume that painting is this touchy-feely relaxing activity that requires no study or thought. I can't tell you how many people have (with genuine concern!) asked me if what I'm doing now is keeping me "challenged" enough after leaving engineering. Truth is, I love to paint, but I keep at it because it's a challenge.

Honestly, this is the hardest job I've ever had.

Every day I'm striving to improve my work and learn something that will take me to that next level. And I know that I'll probably never feel like I've "made it", because I'll always see something that needs improving. Add to that the challenge of actually making a living at art, and you have a helluva challenging job! It takes work, and it takes knowledge. And when it comes to the knowledge part, I've got a long way to go...

Finally

2008-04-14T21:26:00.003-06:00

Well, the sun finally decided to shine after what seemed like a week of snow! This is a snapshot from our walk this afternoon - now that it's warming up, things are melting and hopefully we'll be able to see more than the top rail of that fence in a few weeks... Anyhow, how's that for the view from my new backyard?

We headed down to Denver this weekend since I had to attend the opening of the Governor's Invitational on Saturday night. While I was down I stopped by Home Depot and picked up some color-corrected lights for my new garage studio. When there is no natural light, I like to hang a couple of 4 foot long 5000K flourescent lightbulbs above my easel - haven't found anything better for accurate color, and the lights are cheap and easy to find (unless you're trying to find them in a small mountain town). Now my studio is all set up and ready to go - I'm looking forward to a productive week of painting!

Springtime in the Rockies

2008-04-10T19:25:00.002-06:00

"View from Independence"
Oil on Canvas
30x40"
2007

It's supposed to be Spring, so of course it's snowing like crazy here in the mountains. Ten inches and more coming down, which made it a really nice day to stay inside and paint!!

For the record, putting Aspen in daycare proved to be far more traumatic for me than for her today. She had a great time, and even though I worried all day, I still managed to get four paintings started. The new studio space is working well, but I'm having some lighting issues. Nothing that can't be fixed though. Anyhow, it's nice to be painting again - I'm running out of new images to post here (this one's pretty old), so I'd better get some new stuff done!!

On another note, I've got paintings in a couple of shows that open this weekend. The Salon International opens at the Greenhouse Gallery with an awards banquet tomorrow night. I won't be able to attend, but if you're near San Antonio, it'll be a great show! Also, the opening for the Colorado Governor's Invitational Art Show is Saturday night at the Loveland Museum. I got to see a lot of the paintings when I delivered mine last week, and it promises to be a great show this year! If you're in Colorado, it hangs at the museum through mid-May and it's worth a bit of a drive to see it.

Mixed Feelings

2008-04-09T21:19:00.002-06:00

"Alpenglow Study #2"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

Well, tomorrow is Aspen's first day at daycare, and I'm totally dreading having to drop her off in the morning. She'll only be going two days a week, and she's old enough now that I know it will be good for her to be with other kids, but I'm still sad to leave her with someone other than family. Here's hoping it goes well, or I'm just going to be a big ball of motherly guilt tomorrow night!

On a positive note, it's dumping snow here, so it'll be nice to make myself a cup of tea tomorrow morning and shut myself in the garage (um, er, studio) with my easel for the day. I haven't painted in over a week and a half and I'm itching to get back to it.

I'll have to see how the new garage studio works out. I had to go buy lights today, and I have to admit it was a bit tough to find color-corrected lightbulbs in a small mountain town. And the garage, while heated, is not insulated so well, so I might be bundling up to paint. The good news is that is has high enough ceilings for me to properly use my easel with large paintings, and it's MUCH bigger than the loft that was my studio in our house.

Don't You Wish You Were Here?

2008-04-05T20:43:00.004-06:00

Ahhh - vacation....

What with moving to the mountains, selling our house, and getting work out the door for shows and galleries, I've been getting wound pretty tight and needing some time to de-stress. We flew down to Phoenix yesterday morning to spend a long weekend basking in the sunlight and warmth of the desert, and I'm already feeling 100% better after a day of rest. March and April always make me think I want to live down here - the weather is perfect, the flowers are blooming, and there's just something about the desert that feels like home...

While Nate golfed this morning, I spent a few hours perusing all of the galleries on Main Street here in Scottsdale. The Scottsdale Art Auction was today, and they were televising it in Legacy Galleries - I was amused to discover that high end art auctions sound the same as cattle auctions, fast-talking auctioneer and all! Because the art auction was today, a lot of the big-name galleries had Western art themed shows hanging. I'm not a huge fan of cowboy and indian art, so I was a bit disappointed, but there were still some gems to see.

At Trailside Galleries, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a Cyrus Afsary landscape - I think I stood there for ten minutes staring at it. He's quickly becoming one of my favorite painters - I just love the feeling in his landscapes.

Willow Gallery still had all of the sold paintings hanging from the Robert Coombs opening they held on Thursday night, and as usual his figurative work was just beautiful.

Scottsdale Fine Art also had a great figurative show hanging with works from C.M. Cooper and Nancy Seamons Crookston - two of my favorite female painters. While I was in there, I fell in love with a couple of small sunset paintings by Douglas Diehl - if Nate and I still had the dependable income of corporate jobs, I would have bought both in a heartbeat!

It was nice to just go and enjoy looking at art for the sake of looking at art. Now that I do this for a living, I often get caught up in the business of art, and when I visit galleries I'm often thinking about whether or not they'd be a good fit for my work, etc.... Sometimes it's nice to remember that I just LOVE good art, and that it was my passion before it was my job.

March Goals Update

2008-04-02T19:08:00.003-06:00

"Boreas Pass Gold"
Oil on Panel
12x9"
2008

You know you've moved to a small town when you're listening to the radio and someone is talking about the town's mayoral race and says,"And in Granby, Pierro won by a landslide with 264 votes!"

Anyhow, it's April, and I feel like I haven't gotten anything productive done this week so I'm going to status my goals from March to make myself feel better now...

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

Honestly, this really hasn't been on my radar this month. Too much other stuff to do!!

2. Complete 100 paintings.

Let's see - I'm pretty sure I painted 11 paintings this month, of which one was a definite trasher (I already sanded it down so I can reuse the panel!) and another two are questionable. None of them were too large, hence the bigger than usual number. That makes 24 down, 76 to go...

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

Still on track here, which is great. I know things will slow down a bit this month and next since it's mud season up here and I don't count on many sales in Winter Park, but I have a commission and some other stuff I'm working on in the meantime. Need to find a couple of galleries that aren't in seasonal markets!

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

I actually updated my financials early this month! So far, this has been the best goal I set this year because it's been doing me so much good to make sure I'm up to date on my records. There's no question about where I'm at, and that's great for keeping me on track.

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

Started riding my bike and running this month, and even hit the pool once, which is better than nothing!! Exercising definitely makes me feel 100% better, so it's good to get back into things. This next month I'd like to be more consistent...

Overall, March was pretty good. I think I was trying really hard to make up for getting so little done in February!

A Long Day

2008-04-01T22:41:00.002-06:00

"Alpenglow Study #1"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

Well, here I am, happily lounging on the couch of the condo we're renting in Fraser for the next six months. I just finished reading the guestbook in the condo, and thought how cool it is that I get to live somewhere where most people only visit on vacation!

Today was a marathon. I woke up and drove up to Loveland (and hour and a half one way) to deliver my paintings to the Loveland Museum for the Colorado Governor's Invitational Art Show. Dropped off the paintings, picked up my packet, took a look at the art, then drove back home. Got home and immediately turned around and drove over to my old office to pick up a couple boxes of personal stuff and textbooks (I know - it's about time!), and spent a couple of hours there chatting with my ex-coworkers. Drove home, cleaned house, and packed to come up to the mountains. Got in the car (AGAIN) and drove and hour and a half up to get here. Needless to say, I'm sick of driving!

We're only up here for a couple of days before we head back down to Denver and then fly to Scottsdale for the weekend. I'm looking forward to a couple of days of settling in here, then spending the weekend laying by the pool, reading some good books and soaking up the sun! I REALLY need the break.

And the Stupidity Continues....

2008-03-29T11:17:00.004-06:00

"Cloudy Day at Alta Lakes"
Oil on Panel
20x16"
2008

I swear, I don't know where my brain has gone!!

I painted this painting twice this week. To make a long story short, I ordered the wrong size frame for the first version, and with no time to order a new one, decided to paint the same scene again to fit the frame (I wanted it to go with another painting that it will hang next to in a show). I also did a plein air study of this same scene last summer - let's just say I won't be painting this area again anytime soon!!

Anyhow, this scene was a good example of how painting on location can be such a valuable tool. I don't do as much plein air painting as I'd like to, but spending time outdoors (painting or just soaking up the feel of a place) is a necessity for getting things right in the studio.

This scene was a bit difficult to do from a photo - it was a cloudy day with just a bit of directional light defining the form of the rocks. With the light as it was, my camera made all of the rocks look the same shade of blue, with little variation to show distance, form, or perspective. Luckily, I had done a small plein air study last summer, and remember the feel of the place well since we've been there multiple times. I used the photo as reference for the drawing, and improvised from there.

Still deciding which version I like the best. I'm feeling a bit partial to the original (smaller) painting... (For the record, the smaller painting is closer to the window in this picture, so it looks a lot lighter than the other - in real life, this isn't the case)

Re-painting and Stupidity

2008-03-25T20:11:00.003-06:00

"Aspen Interior"
Oil on Panel
14x11"
2008

In the past, I've only been willing to a certain extent to make changes to a painting after I considered it "done". I had a method in place that involved working on each area with thick paint while wet. Once dry, that was that. If the painting worked, it went out the door. If it didn't, I trashed it.

Lately, I've been really focused on improving my final product, and part of the process of improving has given me a willingness to mess with dry paintings more than I ever have before. If a painting is decent enough to send to a gallery, but has an area that's nagging at me, I'll put it back on the easel and do some more work.

This painting is one of those that just wasn't quite right. A few days after I finished it, I took the photograph above and noticed that the knots in the biggest aspen tree were uniformly spaced and all the same color/value (does anyone else find that photographs can point out things that you can't believe you missed in real life??). It started to drive me insane every time I saw the painting in my studio, so I finally put it back on the easel and repainted the entire tree trunk, in addition to touching up the knots on the tree to the right. I also ended up messing with the foreground grasses just a bit. Changing the spacing and value of some of the knots gave the painting more interest, and improved it to the point that is didn't drive me nuts to look at it.

The problem is that I sent it to my Winter Park gallery last week without remembering to re-photograph it! In a moment of supreme blondeness, I framed and varnished it and sent it out the door. Now the only photo I have for my website is the one that drives me nuts - grrr!!!

Art and Technology

2008-03-23T07:57:00.004-06:00

"Hanging On"
Oil on Panel
11x14"
2008

(For the record, this is a terrible photo of this painting - the value range is so close that I can't seem to get it quite right, even with lots of tweaking in photoshop!)

I'm starting to realize that I'll be moving to small-town America in a couple of weeks, so I've been trying to do all of the "city" things that I can before we move.

Yesterday we went to the Denver Art Museum to see the, "Inspiring Impressionism" exhibit. It was kind of a neat exhibit showing the influence of the old masters on the impressionist painters, with a nice range of work that I had never seen elsewhere. The only problem was the amount of people - it's kind of hard to walk up to a painting and check out the brushwork when there are six people standing five feet away listening to their headsets! I don't know what it is about the impressionists that seems to attract the masses...

Anyhow, I have a love-hate relationship with the Denver Art Museum. The new wing is neat, there are some cool installation pieces, and I like the comtemporary art collection. But I can't believe the Western American art wing isn't bigger - I swear it's smaller now than it was before they expanded the building (sad since DAM has such a great collection) - and it seems like there's a lot of wasted space due to the architecture of the building.

One positive thing I was noticing yesterday was how high-tech the museum is, which is pretty cool. The impressionist exhibit featured flat computer screens in the center of each room that allowed you to "touch" a part of a painting to zoom in on the brushwork - pretty neat. The other parts of the museum all have little nooks and crannies where they show video interviews with artists or have touch computer screens with interactive information on the work. They have a huge Daniel Sprick still life and you can go around the corner and hear him talk about his inspiration for the painting and find out everything you'd want to know about his process. They also have i-pods installed near the benches in most galleries where you can pick up the headphones and listen to even more information.

Aspen's favorite thing was an interactive installation called "Bubbloo." It's a fun little area where images of bubbles are projected floating across the floor, and the bubbles "pop" if you step on them or touch them. Once you pop all of the bubbles, a screen on the wall displays information about a piece of art in the museum, and a map of how to get there. Popping bubbles = hours of entertainment for a toddler!

We spend a lot of time visiting museums, and I think it's nice to see that the Denver museum is at the front of the pack when it comes to using technology to make viewing art an interactive experience. For the record, there were more people at the museum yesterday than I'd ever seen there on a Saturday before - good news!

Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Happy Easter to everyone!!

Taking Breaks

2008-03-18T22:11:00.005-06:00

I took a much-needed break from all things art-related and relaxed at my in-laws' house in the mountains the past couple of days. Well, I delivered some paintings to the gallery up there yesterday, and I guess that's technically art related, but I didn't paint, take photos, or do anything remotely business-oriented other than that, and it was REALLY nice to take a breather. Now I'm nice and refreshed and excited about what I'm going to work on next. Sometimes I forget how good it can be to have some time off!

Art as Something Deeper

2008-03-16T18:05:00.003-06:00

"Morning, Monarch Lake"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2007

I think that sometimes I get a little bit too cerebral about whether or not I’m doing what I’m supposed be doing with my life, or whether I’m doing enough or having enough purpose. I picked up a book last weekend that made me look at things a bit differently, and gave me a sense of peace that I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing right now, just by being who I am. It helped connect the dots between my passion for art and nature with my faith, and I thought I’d share it for anyone who might find it useful. The book is called "Wide Open Spaces", and in it, Author Jim Palmer says the following:

“I met a woman who enjoys photography. She said to me, “I meet God at the end of my lens.” She uses the lens of her camera as a reminder to become “more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him.” Her love for God is expressed as her love for photography. I hope you feel the freedom in that. God’s purpose is not fulfilled by doing a lot of religious things you may or may not want to do. The things you love doing, what you are most passionate about, are the most significant avenues through which God wants you to know him. You have a love for these things because God placed it within you. David wrote in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord for he will give you the desires of your heart.” In other words, as you experience the joy and satisfaction of knowing God, follow your desires because God will be in them.”

I love it when he says, “I hope you feel the freedom in that,” because I do. I’ve always been able to feel the presence of God in nature, and it’s a strong component of my faith that extends into the subject matter that I paint. I love that I’m being reminded here that my art isn’t just about making pretty pictures, but that it’s a bigger part of who I am.

How do your beliefs shape your art?

The Gift of Failure

2008-03-12T20:19:00.002-06:00

"Ready to Rumble"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2008

Man, what did I say the other day to scare everyone away!?! Hehe...

This is turning out to be a crazy busy month on the art front, and I've been feeling a little bit frazzled trying to keep up with the business side of things. Couple that with the fact that I painted two scrapers in the past five days, and I wasn't a happy camper at the end of today's painting session. So, I did what I do when I'm frazzled and cranky and went outside for a run.

While I was running, I started to think about how much it sucks to spend a whole day painting and have it be for nothing. Then, of course, the sun came out and I was reminded that success is having the strength to see the promise in our failures. If nothing I painted ever ended up in the trash bin, I wouldn't be learning or growing. Therefore, I need to view weeks like this as a gift, because my work will be better as the result of the struggle.

I learned how to ski in college, and I'm a bit timid and like to ski nice, safe blue runs. I never, EVER fall, because I like to stay in my comfort zone. Nate reminds me every time we hit the slopes that, "If you're not falling, you're not learning." Drives me insane, but I guess he's right.

Defining Success

2008-03-09T21:00:00.004-06:00

"Isabelle Glacier"
Oil on Panel
14x11"
2008

In her blog last week, Alyson Stanfield posted the following quote to spur discussion on Deep Thought Thursday.

“My only advice is to spend less time thinking about success and put all the energy into making art itself. Otherwise your relationship to your art changes. It becomes less genuine and honest. Art should not be born from a pressure of becoming successful but something deeper. This is always a danger and the cause for mediocrity in art…” – Shirin Neshat

A number of people agreed with the quote, but a number of people also vehemently disagreed, making the case that trying to make a living as an artist in no way diminishes the art itself. The discussion was interesting, and I thought it was funny how so many people on both sides automatically jumped to the conclusion that “success” in the arts was defined in financial terms.

I don’t define the success of my art in terms of money, so my response was a bit different. As a realist painter, I define success by the quality of my work, but if you asked me to write down a set of short-term and long-term goals to be benchmarks of success, I would have a laundry list of items that would include things like getting my work into a high level gallery, having a sell-out solo show, being invited to participate in certain high-profile shows, or having my work in the collection of a museum. These things aren’t on my list for financial reasons, but rather because in the very subjective world of art, these are some objective, measurable goals that I can use to gauge how the quality of my work is improving.

That said, does striving toward these goals take away from the quality of my work? I don’t think so, and I’d actually argue the opposite. Having these goals pushes me to improve my work where I otherwise might conclude that things are “good enough.”

If I were striving for success on financial terms, I might get to a point where my work was selling well and develop a formula for sells and what doesn’t, and stunt my growth as an artist as a result. But if I strive for success on my terms, I’m constantly striving to improve my work.

I’m not going to get into that high-end gallery, or be invited to that high-profile show, or have my painting chosen for a museum collection unless my work merits these things. Defining my success in terms of what others might think of my work is a positive – it gets me out of my own little world, and pushes me to seek out the input that will ultimately push my work to the next level.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing, do you?

At the same time, I like the statement at the end about art needing to be about something deeper than success. If it isn’t, what’s the point? As a representational artist, I spend a lot of time asking myself why I paint what I paint. Maybe I’ll post a bit more on that some other day this week.

What do you think? How do you measure your success as an artist?

February Goals Update

2008-03-03T21:45:00.004-07:00

"Backlight in the Garden"
Oil on Panel
8x10"
2008

I can't believe it's already March! February came and went and it seems like I spent the entire month sick and in bed - not so fun. Anyhow, I've finally been feeling better and devoting some energy to my art, and despite the added distraction of getting our house ready to put on the market, I'm starting to feel productive again.

And since February is over, it's time for me to take a look at my goals again. I know it's only been two months, but knowing that I'm checking the status of my goals every month has really been effective at keeping me on track this year. So, here they are, again:

1. Get my work into three more galleries.

I didn't send out any packets this month, but I have been working on this and I'm feeling good about things.

2. Complete 100 paintings.

To meet this goal, I have to paint between 8 and 9 paintings per month. In February, I only managed four paintings, since I spent the first two and a half weeks of the month fighting the flu. I figure that's a decent excuse, so I'm not feeling too bad, but I'm definitely committed to getting some extra painting done this month to catch up! Anyhow, 13 done, 87 to go.

3. Sell enough work to pay our mortgage.

I'm actually on track here, which is great. I know that there's a bizarre stigma attached to art and making money, but I think that making it my intent to pay the bills with my art this year has been a really positive thing for me. I've been very focused on the quality of my work in addition to productivity, and I feel like I'm improving as a result.

4. Update painting database and financial records monthly.

So far, so good. I updated both this weekend to keep me on track, and I'm finding that this is extremely helpful in knowing where I stand with both my productivity and my financials. One unfortunate side effect is that it's also making me cheap - I can see every expense adding up in that spreadsheet, which keeps me from buying frames or art supplies just for fun!!

5. Race in a minimum of three 5k's.

Um, not so much. The flu really did a number on me this month - there were days when just sitting on the couch tired me out! I've gotten back into riding my bike on the trainer in the basement, so at least that's a bit of progress toward getting ready for a triathlon this summer. Guess I need to work harder here - after all, being healthy can have such a positive impact on the energy I bring to everything else.

So, overall not so bad, especially considering how sick I've been. We've got our house on the market now, so I'm really going to have to focus this month on not getting sidetracked by showings etc. If I have to paint every night after Aspen goes to bed, so be it!

Blank Canvas

Hello! Anybody out there??

Taking a Break

Style

2009 In Review

Time Out

He's Here!

Balance, or the Lack Thereof

Weekend with the Masters

Studios Magazine

Overwhelmed

Pricing for Geeks

My Favorite Things - Web Edition

Shameless Self Promotion

Weaknesses

A Couple of Favorite Quotes

Photographing Oil Paintings

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

More Progress

Progress, Finally

Pegged

Another Poll

Materials Safety in the Studio

Cat's Out of the Bag

Shows this Weekend

Shaped by the Landscape

Thanks!

HELP!

Going With the Flow

Inspiration

Words You Can Relate To

My Other Blog

Something Completely Different - DONE!

Something Completely Different - PART II

Something Completely Different - PART I

Defining Interest

This and That

Making a Living

The Comfort Zone

Y'all Know How I Love Goals!!

2008 In Review

Mentorship

Demo - Fall Aspens, Final

Demo - Fall Aspens Part 2

Demo - Fall Aspens Part I

Catching Up

Yay for Vacation

A Close Call

Tagged

Studio Music

HGTV Might Have Redeemed Itself Today

Goals and Studies

New Portfolio Book

My Latest Studio

Moving... Again...

Style

Interpretations - Group Show

Just Another Day at the Office

Eye Candy for Artists

What is it with August?

August Goals Update

Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometimes I Just Need a Break

July Goals Update

I *HEART* Clyde Aspevig

Bug Bitten and Sunburnt

Working from Photos

Getting OLDer

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

June Goals Update

Taking the Leap - Revisited

Working Larger

Demo - Enlarging a Painting PART II

Demo - Enlarging a Painting PART I

A Few of my Favorite Things

Why Do YOU Paint?

A Day in the Life as a Mom

May Goals Update

Moving On

The Cringe Factor

I HEART Clyde Aspevig