milwaukee/leavitt

8" x 10", oil on panel.

Sometimes these days I feel like I just wait for it to be gray and rainy around here. Lucky (?) for me I usually don't have to wait too long. But I absolutely love the mood found in paintings made on these types of days, and I especially love the way the streetlights/stoplights/headlights look. Another added bonus I've discovered if one is willing to put on her raincoat and go stand on a street corner and paint in the rain is that there are many fewer people out and about, so concentration is easier.

coconut

8" x 10", oil on panel.

I've been thinking a lot about edges, as I always do. The edges are such an essential, and yet such a subtle, component of a painting. Aside from being able to communicate a sense of believable form of an object, they can signal the type of light being cast onto that object.

In this painting I kept the edges relatively hard so as to convey the sense of bright light shining on the coconut pieces and the lime.

limes

9" x 12", oil on linen.

After I got done serving up all of my eggplants, a color change seemed in order, but a color still full of vibrancy. So, limes...and margaritas.

more eggplants

11" x 14", oil o panel.

Another study of eggplants, this time a few of the different varieties I found at the market. I was also interested here in objects that had a common color running through them, and how that color subtly changed from one object to the next.

eggplant

8" x 10", oil on panel.

I decided to do a second study with the eggplant because I was interested in further exploring what I'd found particularly interesting about the last couple of pieces: that idea of contrasting neutrals with bright pops of color. I like this idea of reserving color, of subduing the majority of a piece and saving the saturated hues for very small and concentrated areas. I also loved that almost-translucent violet of the Chinese eggplant's skin.

red pitaya, opened

8" x 10", oil on panel.

When I got home with my strange little fruit, I was delighted to find that the inside was just as interesting as the outside of it, and fairly tasty, too...similar to a kiwi in flavor and texture.

the unknown fruit...

11" x 14", oil on panel.

...is a red pitaya, and caused a bit of puzzlement when I brought it to my still life class. I couldn't resist it's unusual appearance and fabulous (pink!) color when I spotted it at the market. It deserved to be the star of its own little painting.

susan's pot

8" x 10", oil on linen.

Susan always has interesting still life objects around which she then generously lends to me, like this tricky little pot...what color is it?! It's metal, it's old, it's bluish, it's blackish, it's greenish...see Susan's versions here and here. This painting felt good to make to just loosen up, with free brushstrokes and spontaneous application...a good anti-dote when one has the tendency to over-think and tighten-up.

goose island

9" x 12", oil on panel.

The perfect follow-up paintings to the end-of-summer paintings must be what we're now in for: gray. I'll restate my love of gray light, though, as it always lends such a moodiness to pieces. Here I tried to think of keeping everything as a simple mass, and then when I put in the wires, it seemed to add just enough detail.

This was done on Goose Island, the only island in the Chicago River.

the end of summer paintings: das dutchman essenhaus mural

8" x 10", oil on panel.

Okay this is it, really, the last of the summer paintings. I could not resist posting this one because by now all of these colors are gone, of course. It was done in Indiana at one of the sites of the Quilt Gardens Tour , which is a tour of a series of flower murals that have been inspired by Amish quilts and are scattered throughout Elkhart county's Amish country.

I was fascinated here by the challenges of (1) not painting individual flowers, and (2) getting the perspective to read as this mural went simultaneously up and away from me over the hill.

the end of summer paintings: lake albert

9" x 12", oil on panel.

Back at my favorite Lake Albert for one last summer-like painting...

the end of summer paintings: indiana farm

9" x 12", oil on panel.

I have a few paintings that I made right before the weather began to change and I, with great sadness, retired my flip-flops for the season. I have just begun to look outside and notice the changing colors, which of course will afford their own beautiful scenes, but these next few paintings for me have just a little bit of nostalgia, because they still feel like they have that summer air in them.

empties (foster beach)

8" x 10", oil on panel.

The Plein Air Painters of Chicago have an exhibition that we opened last night at the Edgewater Historical Society here in Chicago. All of our paintings were of the Edgewater neighborhood, on the north side of the city, and this is the painting I put in the show.

This is one of those ones where I was standing at the edge of Lake Michigan thinking Well of course I'll paint this beautiful lake, and then I turned around and saw this unusual little scene that immediately commanded my attention and won out over the lake.

humbolt park field

8" x 10", oil on panel.

More time in the fields, because it's good for the soul, even on a gray day.

field

10" x 8", oil on panel.

It's good to have some days away from the cityscapes and in quiet fields, too. This is one that I started out not liking, but then began to value it because I noticed it had those soft edges that can be so elusive.

under the el

10" x 8", oil on panel.

It had been a while since I'd been out on the streets painting, and so the shock of being in the middle of one of the craziest intersections around (the six corners of Damen/North/Milwaukee) was a bit much: the sirens, the business and noise and "visitors" to my easel, and, my personal favorite, being called an a**hole over multiple lanes of traffic because I refused to acknowledge one respectful man's overtures. Ah, plein air painting in the city! The first painting didn't go so well. At the next outing I retreated into an alley, where the aromas and garbage at my feet were preferable to the goings-on in the street.

387 strokes

6" x 8", oil on panel.

Have you ever counted how many brushstrokes you make in a painting? I decided to try that in this little painting of a canary melon (which I'd never seen before but was very delicious), and it was quite an enlightening experience.

So in this piece I started with a white ground and no underpainting, which is rare for me these days, and laid down each stroke so that it was final...no fudging, smearing around, or half-assing it...if it was there, it was there to stay. It was interesting that counting my strokes made me acutely aware of the necessity, or lack thereof, of each piece of paint that I was laying down. It made me really slow down in the painting process and required a surprisingly huge amount of mental focus: Does this sstroke really need to be put here? Is this one stroke the right color, value, and shape? How will I control the brush to achieve a particular type of edge? How can I most efficiently describe what I'm seeing with only one piece of paint? It also made me realize that the further along the painting got, the more strokes I seemed to be making in that tendency to noodle around towards the end of the piece.

Finally I decided that going over 400 strokes on such a small painting and simple composition was something I just didn't want to do, so I stopped. Next thing will be to try this with landscape painting.

dark painting #3

6" x 8", oil on linen.

...getting darker still, more austere, trying to see how empty the foreground can stay.

dark painting #2

6" x 8", oil on linen.

Naturally my previous dark painting led me to the questions of How dark? and How empty? So here I tried experimenting with going as dark as I thought I could everywhere except in the focal area, and keeping the space as empty as I thought possible.

I also tried to open up some of my edges in order to allow a flow from one radish into the next, and to keep the piece somewhat "imperfect".

post vegas slump, or, turnip

8" x 10", oil on panel.

After my return from Vegas I experienced my usual post-Vegas slump as I settled back into my routines... going back to work in the morning rather than going downstairs to peruse the day's odds in the sportsbook with mimosa in hand is never quite as fun...and so my paintings after my return kind of reflect this mood a bit.
I felt like making some paintings that felt austere, empty, and dark.