Category: Oil Paintings

When I begin a new painting, it is ugly. Messy. Rough. Weird.

Those are discouraging words, here at my home on the range.

However, after oil painting for more than 10 years, I’ve come to accept that the start to an oil painting is ugly. Gotta start somewhere! My method of layering, called “glazing” (are your eyes glazing over yet?) brings improvement with each pass over the canvas.

Honestly, it is fun sometimes to just slap paint on in any old way and think, “So what? It’s a long process, and it will get better, so who cares?”

This attitude and approach is probably causing some of you to twitch, and would cause some of my former art teachers to palm their foreheads or bash something or yell at current students.

Payback, you former mean art teachers, payback. I never did like mean teachers who yelled or criticized, but always loved the ones who taught. (Thank you again, Mr. Stroben!)

Now I get to be both an artist, and a drawing teacher. Always helpful (I hope!), honest, and ever so slightly weird, but never never mean to my students.

Anyone want to sign up for drawing lessons?

Happy Birthday, Judy-O!!

Have you heard California referred to as “the land of fruit and nuts”?

If you take the statement figuratively, it is referring to people in the state.

If you take the statement literally, it is referring to the vast amount of food produced here in Central California.

As a Central California artist, it is my duty, nay, my calling, to portray these things.

There are fall shows coming, and these require items to sell. When I do shows in places other than Three Rivers, paintings of fruits sell well. They sell steadily all year, and definitely do better down the hill than the mountain scenes.

That lower painting? It was this:

It has been collecting dust since January. Chances are good that if I didn’t like it enough to finish painting it, no one would like it enough to write a check for it.

I asked my boss and she said I could cover it with pomegranates.

It’s good to be the boss.

Last year I did a little oil painting of a backcountry scene whose location was a mystery. I didn’t know who lent me the photo, and I didn’t know where the scene was.

Since last September, I have been working with Louise Jackson on her upcoming book, Trail of Promises. I edited about 200 photos, and later she and the subjects of the book pointed out that I was partial to a particular peak.

Last week I was looking through photos of completed paintings, and recognized one that stopped me up so short that I almost flew over the handlebars. It was that same peak that I kept choosing to use in Trail of Promises!

Have a look at the painting:

Now have a look at a photo of Banner Peak by Mike McGinnis :

Well, saw off my legs and call me Shorty!

I called my painting “Backcountry Lake”, but it should have been titled “Banner Peak”.

That’s half the mystery solved. The other half is Where Did I Get That Photo??

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