The Process of Creating

Here's a quote from Judy Dunn's blog Artrepreneur that's worth repeating. It's good advice for artists, whether you're just starting out or you've been in the game a long time:

The process of creating is precious. Protect it from the critics. The product is just product. It is not precious. It is not us. Let the critics come out and have their say when you are ready to pause. Listen. Notice. See it as a way to learn and grow. And then thank your critics for their input, and tell them to go back in their closet. And get back to having fun creating, testing, playing, experimenting..... Own the process. It is sacred. And control the critics, their words can be valuable tools or deadly weapons.

I think that's really great advice. Every critic has their own opinion, whether it's your mom, or an arts reporter from Art in America. You can listen to them, but don't forget that your opinion counts too. Be true to yourself, follow your own path, and enjoy the process! I think Robert Henri was talking about the same thing when he said:

The goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. Art is a result. It is a trace of those who have led their lives.

The product is not us, but it is a reflection of us - and that's only true if we follow our own path rather than trying to please critics. The important thing is to live your life, and enjoy the process.

A Plein Air Painter's Checklist

"Otto's Barns"
11x14 oil on panel

I don't know of anyone at this farm is actually named Otto, but it's across the street from a place called Otto's Farm Park and it sounded like good name for a painting.

I'm enjoying painting outdoors on location again, now that the weather is so nice, and thought it might be interesting to share my checklist - the list I check carefully before leaving the house to go paint somewhere:

Paintbox items
paintbox	It's hard to forget this, but it may as well be on the list. I have a few different boxes to use, the EasyL from Artwork Essentials is my current favorite.
tripod	One of my paint boxes has a built in tripod, but 2 others mount on a separate tripod - just a sturdy camera tripod
umbrella kit	I used to paint without one, but since I got an umbrella that mounts on my paintbox tripod, I can't live without it. If the sun shines directly on your your painting or palette, it's very difficult to work. Dappled sunlight hitting your canvas is even worse. The umbrella from Artwork Essentials is really nice and well thought out.
palette	Built in to 2 of my paintboxes, but a separate item with another box.
paint: big tube of white warm & cool blue warm & cool red warm & cool yellow transparent oxide red a few others for variety	I paint with a pretty limited palette and just carry a few essential colors plus a few extras. White plus 2 reds, 2 yellows and 2 blues is what I consider essential - with these you can mix almost any color. But other colors have their place too. I often start a painting by blocking in with transparent oxide red - a beautiful red earth color which has a transparency I can't get by mixing my other colors. I love to use this color for underpainting. I also like sap green, dioxazine purple and yellow ocher.
turpentine or mineral spirits	for cleanup and for thinning the initial coats of paint
a painting medium	I mostly use the standard mix of linseed oil and tups, but have been trying out some faster drying alkyd mediums like Gamblin's Galkyd and Neo-Meglip.
palette cups	to hold the turps and medium
canvases or panels	something to paint on!
double ended push-pins	to separate canvases when carrying them around - I'll explain this more some other time.
brushes	Once I drove 30 miles and set up to paint, only to find I left all of my brushes at home. That's the day I started this checklist.
palette knives
pencil & charcoal	for the initial sketch
rags & paper towels	oil painting can be messy
short rope	On windy days, a bit of rope or cord can be very useful for securing your gear. Canvases and sun umbrellas make very good wind-catchers!
small pliers	for stubborn paint caps
small carpenters level	I like to insure that my paintbox and canvas are perfectly level. When painting buildings and other man-made structures, I can sight along the top of my box or canvas to judge angles. It helps me to get the drawing down accurately.
small adjustable carpenters bevel	No, I don't do carpentry out in the field, but I find this tool can be useful when drawing structures with complicated angles. Holding the bevel in front of me, I can set it to the angle of a complicated roof line, then transfer that angle to my canvas. I don't use a bevel very often, but sometimes it can really help.
sketchbook	Doing thumbnail sketches first is a good way to decide how you're going to paint something.
plastic bags for dirty rags	oil painting can be messy
small plastic baggies	To wrap around wet paintbrushes when packing up. I'll clean the brushes back home.
Miscellaneous Items
camera and spare battery	I like to record the scene that I'm painting and get more reference photos of the area for later studio paintings.
penknife	Comes in handy for many things out in the field
wide brimmed hat
sunscreen
water bottle	For drinking, not for painting
food	I rarely take anything to eat along with me, but I do keep this on the list.
cell phone
wear socks	I often don't when at home, but when romping through the woods, socks helps prevent poison ivy.
wear a non-white shirt	Wet paint is very reflective, and a white shirt can cause a lot of glare on your canvas and make it very difficult to paint - especially if the sun is hitting your shirt. Same with bright colored shirts. Dark blue is good, a neutral gray is best I think.

That may look like a big list, but it all fits into a small backpack that's easy to carry around. And there's nothing worse than setting up to paint somewhere far from home, only to find you forgot something essential.

April on the South Branch

Well now that the weather is warmer, I finally got back outdoors with my paintbox. Here's one I did last weekend - it's on the South Branch of the Raritan River near Three Bridges, NJ:

"April on the South Branch"
8x10 oil on panel

It's funny, even though I've been painting in the studio all winter, I feel pretty rusty painting en plein air. In the studio, all your supplies are nicely laid out and organized (relatively speaking). Out in the field, you carry a pretty minimal paint kit, and setting up your spot to paint isn't always so simple. Here there was a rocky cliff to my right, and very little flat ground to stand on so I placed a big flat rock in the river, and painted with one foot on that rock, the other on solid ground. This was pretty near the spot where I setup:

Besides finding a more comfortable spot to stand, there's a certain rhythm of work you develop when painting outdoors: packing your supplies and not forgetting anything important, choosing your locations, setting up your easel and laying out supplies, working in the confined space of your portable paintbox, painting quickly since the light changes so fast, chatting with canoeists as they paddle by (one thought my painting was awesome!) and a myriad of other things that add to the challenge.

I'll be painting outdoors primarily now so it will all come back to me, but that painting on the South Branch might be the last one with bare trees for a while because it's greening up very quickly around here. With the April showers here this week it almost seems like you can watch the buds opening, things are turning green so fast. Spring has definitely arrived!

Pinot to Picasso - Vintage 2008

The Arts Council of Princeton is having their annual fund raiser Pinot to Picasso this Friday, April 25. It's a wine tasting / art auction to raise money for the Arts Council. Local artists donate paintings which will be raffled off in a tombola style lottery. This is the painting I donated - it's a scene at Coventry Farm, on Elm Road, just outside of Princeton, NJ:

"Coventry Farm Boardwalk"
8x10 oil on panel

Tickets to the event are still available, details are on the Arts Council of Princeton's website. And I just love that title, Pinot to Picasso - Vintage 2008!

Winter Drive

In honor of spring, and the warm weather which finally arrived, I painted my first snow scene of the year! I regret letting another winter go by with no outdoor painting, but there was very little snow around here this winter, so I did this one from a photo of one of the few light snowfalls that we did have. It's looking down my driveway towards the street:

"Winter Drive"
24x18 oil on canvas

Here's a closeup of how I painted the drive - click this one for a larger image - I love to pile the paint on sometimes, and that seems to work well in snow scenes like this:

The Ferry House

You might have noticed that I like painting tree shadows on roadways, but this isn't a new painting, it's a new place where I'm showing my paintings:

The Ferry House
32 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
map and directions
Reservations: 609-924-2488

The Ferry House is a very nice restaurant in the heart of Princeton, NJ. My paintings are up now and should be there for a few months. I've never painted right in the town of Princeton but I'm showing some paintings that were done very nearby.

I'll have 15 to 20 paintings on display, here are a few of them:

"Rockafellow Road"
8x10 oil on board

"Clayton Park"
16x20 acrylic on canvas

"Wertsville"
20x16 oil on board

"Montgomery Windows"
11x14 oil on board

The Ferry House can get pretty busy, so reservations are recommended. Owner and chef Bobby Trigg is doing pretty well for himself and will be opening 2 additional restaurants in the area soon. If you've never been to The Ferry House, it's worth a visit.

And maybe I will paint that tree shadow across Witherspoon Street in front of The Ferry House someday...

October on the Raritan River

"October on the Raritan"
16x20 oil on canvas

I know it's March, but I just painted this October scene. It's another view of the South Branch of the Raritan River a few miles from my house. I did a small plein air study here last year on Halloween Day, and based this studio painting on that study.

It's been a few months since I've painted on location, but it's starting to feel like spring and I'm looking forward to getting outdoors again with my paintbox.

Artists Gallery Group Show

The Artists' Gallery, the 18 member artists' co-op that I belong to, is having a group show at the Hopewell Frame Shop Gallery:

Artists' Gallery Group Show
March 11 - April 26, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday March 15, 6 to 8 pm

Hopewell Frame Shop & Gallery
24 West Broad Street (Rt 518)
Hopewell, New Jersey

It's also going be the last show hosted by Abby Frantz, gallery owner. After 32 years of picture framing and almost twenty nine years of running her shop in Hopewell, Abby has decided it is time to move on. During the run of the show, the Hopewell Frame Shop will change ownership, but the new owners will continue to run it as a frame shop and gallery.

"September at Three Bridges" is one of the paintings I'll have in the show, painted on location in the town of Three Bridges, NJ this past September.

Here's the scene I started with:

And her are the steps in my painting process, ugly stages and all. (There are always ugly stages.) Right from the start, I thought the silo looked better with a rounded top on it:

The finished painting:

"September at Three Bridges"
11x14 oil on panel

Abby has been very supportive of the Artists' Gallery and has hosted shows for many of it's individual members over the years so it's sad to see her go, but we all wish her luck in her future adventures. Please come out to the opening on Saturday, March 15 and give Abby a warm send off!

Here is the current list of Artists' Gallery members, all of whom will have artwork in the show:

Beatrice Bork, Gail Bracegirdle, Jennifer Cadoff, Merle Citron, Rich Harrington, Charles Katzenbach, Joe Kazimierczyk, Alan Klawans, Sheila Letven, Florence Moonan, Taylor Oughton, Alla Podolsky, Marc Reed, J. Stacy Rogers, Doug Sardo, Carol Sanzalone, Stacie Speer Scott, and John Treichler.

Hunterdon Life

For folks not familiar with this area, Hunterdon County is the region in central New Jersey that I paint most often. The first week of each month, the Hunterdon County Democrat newspaper contains an issue of Hunterdon Life magazine, and the March issue of Hunterdon Life contains an article about me:




Sorry about the full page picture of me, and I usually don't walk around with a handful of paintbrushes - that was the photographer's idea. All kidding aside, I think the photographer, Ben Scheetz, did a really nice job and I can't thank the reporter, Lillie Dorchak, enough for writing such a great article.

You can click the above images for a larger version, or visit the Hunterdon Life website for a more readable version of the article. The images reproduced on that website are way too intense in color saturation, but the images in the magazine and the photos above are pretty close to what the paintings look like in real life.

I believe that the article about me in Garden State Town & Country Living is still out on newsstands if this one isn't enough for you.

The Buttinger House

I don't know if the 'Buttinger House' is really the name of this place but I have to call it something. The house is at a nature preserve managed by the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association near Pennington, NJ. It's a park I paint at pretty often. I did these paintings from some photos I took last summer - they show the front porch and a side door to the house.

"The Side Door"
16x20 oil on canvas

"The Front Porch"
24x30 oil on canvas

For an interesting bit of history: the house and land for the nature preserve were donated to the county by Muriel Morris Gardiner Buttinger, who is a pretty fascinating person. Besides studying psycho-analysis in Vienna and being analyzed by Sigmund Freud, she was active in the anti-fascist Austrian underground during World War II and later wrote about those events in "Code Name Mary: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground".

Artists of the Mills II

"Prallsville, Beginning of Summer"
11x14 oil on canvas on panel

The 2nd annual "Artists of the Mills" invitational art exhibition at the Prallsville Mills is coming up soon. I'll have 3 paintings in this show, including the one shown above. Just like last year, artists who won awards in previous "Images of the Mills" shows were invited to participate in this invitational.

The show runs from Wednesday, Feb 20 to Wednesday, March 5.
Opening reception is Friday, Feb 22, 6 to 9 pm.

The mill is located on Rt 29 in Stockton, NJ, just at the northern edge of town.

A portion of the sales will go to benefit the Delaware River Mill Society, who is responsible for the restoration an maintenance of the Prallsville Mills complex.

Along Reaville Road

"Reaville Road Barns"
12x36 oil on canvas

This group of barns always catches my eye and it seemed a good subject for the 12"x36" canvases that I've had for a while. I've been wanting to do a series of wide, panoramic format paintings but the right subject never presented itself. I think this barn grouping works, but my next challenge will be framing it. (Odd formats usually require custom framing.) Nevertheless, I think a series of paintings in this format would look good together. Now I just have to find the right subject matter...

New Hope Arts, Inc.

My solo show at the Triumph in New Hope is over, but the sponsors of that show, New Hope Arts, Inc., wanted to hold onto a few of my paintings to show in their permanent gallery space across the street. So I'll have about 6 paintings there for a couple of months at least.

New Hope Arts mainly shows sculpture in their gallery but fortunately there is some wall space for a few 2 dimensional works. The show going on now through Jan 12, 2008 is "Works In Wood" - a national juried show that is well worth seeing.

New Hope Arts is located at 2 Stockton Street, New Hope, Pa - it's on the corner of Bridge and Stockton Streets.

One of the paintings I'll have over there:

"Larsen Road Barns"
11x14 oil on panel

Poets and Artists Reception RESCHEDULED

Due to inclement weather, the Poets & Artists reception for "The Road Not Taken" which was schedule for tonight, has been postponed until Tuesday evening, Dec 18, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

It's been a mix of snow, sleet and rain all morning, and ice is starting to build up on the trees and wires - a good night to stay home!

Just a reminder, that the show runs until Jan 11, 2008 at:

D&R Greenway Land Trust
at the Johnson Education Center
One Preservation Place
Princeton, New Jersey 08540

"Winter Over Amwell Valley"
12x24 oil on canvas

Starling Migration

Totally unrelated to painting, but I was pretty amazed by this: If you've ever seen a mile long cloud of birds migrating in the fall, I felt like I was in the middle of one of those migration paths the other day. I noticed the light flickering outside my window, which was odd because there are no trees there to cast shadows. I looked outside and like in a Hitchcock movie, my yard was being invaded by birds - European Starlings, I believe. They were streaming in from north to south, and stopping in my back yard for a break. I've never seen so many birds in one spot before. This kept up for about a half an hour, then it was quiet again. These photos are from my dining room window: