Yesterday I mentioned several things that I have painted from Sequoia National Park. Want to see? Some have sold, and some are currently available. (Every once in awhile, I show items for sale because I am supposed to be running an art business here, not just chit-chatting to my friends.)
“On the Easels” isn’t exactly accurate; it is a euphemism for “paintings in progress”. It has been awhile since you have seen what oil paintings I am working on. With the annual Holiday Bazaar coming up on November 18 (sounds far away but is actually now closer to us than summer was), I have to be ready to fill my booth with little items that folks like to buy for Christmas gifts.
Yes, there will be 2024 calendars.
These current paintings are all about Three Rivers, because what doesn’t sell at the bazaar will go to the gift shop at St. Anthony’s Retreat Center. This is a new location for my paintings. With the Silver City Store closed over the summer, it is prudent to find new outlets.
People often think that an artist must be “inspired” to create work. Maybe. But must a baker be “inspired” in order to keep the display cases full? Must a farmer be “inspired” to keep the trees irrigated, fertilized, and pruned?
Inspiration comes from many sources. Sometimes mine comes from a particular quality of light, sometimes from not knowing what else I could do to earn a living, and sometimes it comes from the fact that Fernando has 248,000 miles and won’t last forever. An artist I greatly admired used to say that his inspiration came from the bills in his P.O Box.
This is 8×8″, using a photo taken last spring somewhere on the BLM land above our house. Some people call it Case Mountain because it is below Case Mountain (mostly privately owned and gated closed). Some people call it Salt Creek because Salt Creek runs through. We call it BLM, because it is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. It used to be relatively unknown, and then along came The Google and everyone’s need to announce everything to the entire world. (STOP IT!)
Would you believe me if I told you that it will look better when dry and scanned, and even better in person? Yeppers, it’s true.
Obviously, I could use a little help with titles here.
“Oranges in a Blue Bowl” is too obvious; maybe I can think of a title that has to do with the fact that orange and blue are complementary colors. This means they are opposite one another on the color wheel—”complementary”, not “complimentary” such as “Oh my goodness, you are looking gorgeous today!”
Normally we think of ducks being in a row (WHY??), but I could call this “Citrus in a Row”. Nope, too obvious. “Citrus Variety” is boring.
Any ideas for me??
I know these aren’t just generic fruits, but the alliteration was too big of a temptation to resist.
All these orange oil paintings are for sale at the Mural Gallery in Exeter, whose address might be 121 South E Street, and hours might begin at 11 a.m. but not on Tuesday, possibly not on Wednesday. Maybe you’d better call 559-592-3160 before just showing up, because clearly, I do not have solid information other than the fact that there is a boatload of great art in that tiny building.
Phew. Take a breath, Central California Artist.
These have more detail and are larger than the 4 small orange paintings I showed you last Friday.
That one is almost finished. It could be considered finished, but I don’t think it is as good as it could be. I’ll need to contemplate it for awhile.
This one will require quite a bit of drawing with my paintbrushes. I like to draw with pencils, and I like to draw with my paintbrushes when they cooperate.
It helps to see the shapes more accurately when things are upside down. This is not an option when painting from real life. Thank goodness I am a studio painter.
The blue bowl and its reflection will be a good challenge. I am really liking this one so far.
There are a lot of orange paintings to get done, dried, scanned, and distributed to two different places. Let’s go!
Four down, two to go.
Altogether now, “These will look better after they are dry and always look better in person”.
There is a marketing outfit for citrus, at least I think it is for marketing purposes. They have bought many pieces of orange-themed art from me through the years and are a pleasure to deal with.
Their annual banquet is coming up, and someone in the office asked me to lend them orange-themed art to decorate the lobby leading to the banquet room.
My 30+ years of experience tells me that my art won’t sell there. When the artist isn’t present and people are simply mingling, art does not sell itself. I am not invited to the banquet, and most likely I would decline the invitation. I have run out of the internal fire to schmooze and chit-chat in a loud room with the hopes of making connections that may or may not turn into work, and doing it in the town 30+ miles away at night when I am ready to park my patoot with a book and some knitting.
But this organization has been good to me, so if they want to borrow some art, my response is, “Certainly! How many pieces would you like?”
I took inventory and found 8 available pieces (one has to be borrowed from a gallery which is never open on the day when I am down the hill, but I will figure it out somehow). These are all similar scenes, and I decided that eight is not enough.
Here is a sample piece of my normal citrus scenes:
And here is what I need to paint, title, scan, and deliver DRY in time for the event:
This is a 10×10″ and a 6×18″, both a little different from my regular orange still-life paintings. Those regular ones sell steadily, but I bet most of the attendees to the banquet will have seen, bought, or received one of these already.
Untitled Sequoia trees, 6×12″, oil paint on wrapped canvas, still wet, $125 plus tax.
There are actual spider webs on my easels after a summer off.
I didn’t take the summer off on purpose; there simply wasn’t any reason to add to inventory.
Now there are reasons to paint: the Holiday Bazaar will be November 18, St. Anthony Retreat has requested small paintings to sell in their gift shop, and the Mural Gallery in Exeter recently sold a few paintings.
These little beginnings await layers.
These sizes have been chosen, along with photos/subjects to paint. Most of the photos will be cropped or several images will be combined. I always feel the need to state this in case you think I am strictly following photos. I don’t have the ability to copy photos perfectly with those imperfect paintbrushes, and in The Art World, it isn’t considered a good thing to do that.
Sometimes I try anyway, so there. I am not in The Art World; I am your Central California artist, using oil paint to make art you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.
Yes, there is a pair of pumpkins begun behind the 2 lake photos. Yes, you have probably seen both of the Sequoia scenes painted by me before along with the 2 lake photos. Okay, fine, yes, the Alta Peak/Moro Rock too. Not a problem, because new people will be looking at the new paintings.
I used up the paint on my palette to get a first layer down on the canvas.
Then I took another photo of the 2 that I am now considering to be finished. I added a bit more detail to the foreground grass on the buffalo, titled “Ed’s Herd” (because the buffalo herd belongs to Ed) and added a bit more sky under the sunset-colored (NOT FIRE!!) clouds, finally signing that one.
