Tomorrow I’ll show you today’s work on the mural.
Meanwhile, you can enjoy some photos of a recent half-day field trip. Trail Guy and I went to Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park for a little cross-country skiing. It was the day after a cold storm, and it was clear, cold, and beautiful.
Once of the most dreaded tasks of an artist is having to write a biography. However, this is a piece of cake compared to an “Artist’s Statement”. I have no idea what this actually is, in spite of having read about them numerous times and having tried to wade through such things as written by other artists.
Look at the type of Artspeak that fills up Artists’ Statements.
I’m constructing a framework which functions as a kind of syntactical grid of shifting equivalences.
Or try to digest this one:
Imagine the possibility that painting might take root and find a place to press forward into fertile new terrain.
In reading a blog by artist Lori Woodward recently, I came across this sentence with which I agree completely. I have had this thought this many times:
Representational works need no explanation – they either resonate with the viewer’s life experience, or they don’t.
Here is a piece of art that I hope just speaks for itself:
And here is the link to Lori’s post: Lori Woodward
I returned to painting Sequoia trees while I waited for more information on the Kaweah blacksmith shop and for it to dry a bit.
After helping the color bullies my advanced drawing students with their paintings of Sequoia trees, I wanted to paint my own.
This was the first time I have painted since we got Samson. (painting these the same day I began the Kaweah blacksmith shop). He was very busy, but didn’t attack my feet or the paint brush, or tip over the turpentine, or run across the palette.
I got this far:
Helping my drawing students with their Sequoia oil paintings helped me with mine.
Thank you, Color Bullies, Advanced Drawing Students!
Please excuse me for shouting, and for publishing an extra blog post off schedule.
The latest coloring book has arrived, and boy is it a good one, if I do say so myself.
I did say so myself.
This has Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park designs, including Mineral King (of course – did you expect any less?). There are a few repeats from previous coloring books – this means you’ve had practice.
Want one? They are on my website here and will be made available on Amazon when I am able to navigate all their hoops, tunnels, jumps and clicks.
Visual information is necessary to an artist. In the olden days, artist did sketches. Cameras came along and made things easier. Digital cameras showed up, and now the visual information is quick, easy and abundant.
I am working on a coloring book for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, to be titled Heart of the Park. Those of us with ready access to these places call them “The Park”. It is 2 parks that overlap in several areas and are administered by the largest employer in Three Rivers. (That would be SEKI, AKA The Park, AKA National Park Service.)
My friend and I took a field trip so I could get the final photos needed. These were all in Kings Canyon, so we went through Sequoia to get there. I’ve spent quite a bit of time there, but most of it was in Wilsonia, working on The Cabins of Wilsonia. My photos were inadequate for the task at hand.
Told you it was a busy week! So busy that I forgot to post.
I received a “Call to Artists”. This is ArtSpeak for “Hey, wanna put your art in a show?”
The point of the show is to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service.
The duration of the show is August 1 – September 30.
The location is the Courthouse Gallery in Exeter.
The deadline for entry is JULY 14!! Tomorrow!
The entry process was a little vague and somewhat complex, and with the short notice, I was scrambling. I have plenty of art of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, probably enough to fill the entire Courthouse Gallery all by my lonesome, but it has to be framed, the size determined, a price set, titles assigned, and photos or scans taken. This is part of the business of art.
Suddenly instead of working on the Exeter coloring book, I was pulling drawings from drawers, taking frames from storage and off the walls, digging through a box of mats, retouching drawings and occasionally reshaping them so they will fit in available mats and frames.
Tomorrow I will describe my framing process. Prepare to either laugh or start snatching yourself bald in frustration.
Are you aware that coloring books for grownups is a huge fad?
Huge! HUGE! Written up in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and even the Visalia Times-Delta. . . I have friends telling me they love to color. These are adults. And just over the weekend, the subject was in the Fresno Bee.
I hesitate putting the word “adult” in front of “coloring book”, because the word has been, well, adulterated. The word “adulterate” sort of means the same thing as polluted. You probably don’t need an explanation about this.
My new coloring book is pure and unpolluted. The title is:
Why? Because I have hidden a tiny heart in every picture.
See if you can find it in this one:
Hardly fair, is it? This is too tiny! Guess you’ll just have to wait until it comes out and get one.
. . . I haven’t figured out why a person would want or need to pre-order.
If you think that would be a helpful method of ordering, please comment and share your opinion.
When I was a kid and there were guests from out of the area, my folks would take them up to visit Sequoia National Park. I remember thinking, “Do we have to go to the mountains again?”
What a punk. A punk in the Park. A Park Punk?
Two very dear cousins of mine were here recently. We had family business to attend to, and then, we went to Sequoia! I wanted to go, and I really wanted to go with them. They had spent much of their childhood summers in Sequoia, and many of our memories were from times there together.
It had snowed several days before and the previous night. Our first stop was Beetle Rock, which involved some fun stories and binoculars for bird watching.
It was overcast and cold. Doesn’t matter. We were in the Park, and surrounded by Sequoia trees. I love this fence, even when there is no sun on it, even when the snow is tracked.
Cousin Joel seems tall to me, but not compared to a Sequoia tree. He has binoculars, because he sees a bird. Or maybe he hears a bird and is looking for it.
We walked up toward Tokopah Falls, stepping in the tracks of some previous hikers. Doesn’t this look cold? It was 34 degrees.
This is the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River. It flows through Lodgepole. Brrrrr.
It got so foggy we descended to enjoy the foothill part of Sequoia. This is the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River as seen from a suspension bridge out of the Potwisha campground.
Isn’t this a cool bridge? When I bounced on it, it was hard for my cousins to hold the binoculars still and identify their birds. I tried to not be a punk and mostly succeeded.
Isn’t this cool?
This is an old flume and provides water for hydroelectric power. Very clean energy, and nothing gets wasted. There were no birds in the flume, so the binoculars weren’t necessary.
For the record, this former punk really enjoys Sequoia Park. I am now a California artist who loves the special places of Tulare County, and that’s the truth! (Raspberry sound, but I can’t spell that)
Doesn’t that sound like a terse newspaper heading?
The Sequoia tree mural of a section of the Parker Group on one of my ridgey garage doors is now completed. Maybe. I signed it, but when I live with a piece of art, little corrections ask to be made. So, is it finished?
I spent 18 hours painting this in about 7 different sessions, the longest of which was 4 hours. Of course, I might keep fiddling with it, so there may be more.
If a customer wanted this exact mural on this exact surface and this exact size and I didn’t have to drive more than 1 mile to paint it (definitely rounding up because I drove no where to paint this), I’d charge $700.
I knew you were dying to ask, but there is this weirdness about art prices. . . the old “If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.”
No worries. The truth is what is spoken and written here and no one has any reason for embarrassment when he doesn’t know something. This California artist who paints Sequoia trees just wants to help you.
and Crescent Meadow.
The top painting shows the Mineral King valley from up on the Monarch Lake Trail as it appeared last September.
If I am hiking to Monarch Lake, it is the Monarch Lake Trail. If I am hiking to Crystal Lake, it is the Crystal Lake Trail. If I am walking to Timber Gap (walking because that one can be done without a pack, lunch or water if you hustle your bustle), it is called the Timber Gap Trail. If I am hiking to Sawtooth. . .
Never mind. I don’t hike to Sawtooth. But, I got off track there a bit (or off trail?)
The painting might be finished. I thought maybe I could get away with a quickly done painting as long as I used juiced up colors.
But Noooooo, I had to detail it to pieces.
Same with Crescent Meadow. This is how it looks after a second pass over the canvas:
Crescent Meadow is in Sequoia National Park, near Giant Forest and Moro Rock. The painting looks a little weird because it is wet and reflective. When it is detailed to pieces, dry and scanned, it’ll not only be not weird, it will be beautiful.
I hope.