Pandemic paintings, positively

Deadly as the pandemic is, and has been for six months, it has also spurred creativity around the world, in poetry, writing, in music, in all kinds of art including painting--reactions to quarantines and hard times. 

These are times when art is needed more than ever, to be antidotes of humanity to gloom, doom, and insanity.

 For me, it was a personal challenge, a fight against depression, against powerlessness, against being cooped up. Thus in these months, I've found solace and meaning in trying to paint consistently, rarely negatively, but positively, bringing color and light into these dark times.

Beginning this Friday, and through October, at In Your Eye Studio and Gallery, where I am one of 10 member artists,  in the Paseo Arts District, you can see, enjoy, and perhaps purchase, 28 of my watercolors and three oils, of my beloved New Mexico. But it's free to look. They're not all new, but many of the most colorful are, landscapes of Oklahoma and the southwest, and some whimsical ones of cats, birds, barns and more. There's a special corner where framed 5 x 7's are priced from $69 to $89.

I'm sharing the monthly show with Jim Reznicek, terrific photographer, and the back part of the gallery.

The gallery is open from 5 to 9 Friday Oct. 2 , and from 5-9 Saturdays. If you want a personal appointment, you can contact me starting Oct. 5 at tmclark@gmail.com. View much of my art also on my webpage: www.tmclarkart.com.

Here are some photos of the show, hopefully to  whet your appetite. Hope you enjoy.

The West , where landscape becomes a feeling.

"The West," 8 x 10ish #watercolor, 300 lb. d'Arches cold press paper

The West always beckons me...land of dramatic landscapes and colors, of vast and vibrant skies, of moods and memories.
Thus today's watercolor...painting what I feel, not what I see., from traveling New Mexico and beyond.

Why I paint

Art...I've been around it all my life, and it seems I've only recently began painting. Glancing back through old black and white photos makes me realize that's not so. 
I remember getting in trouble in grade school in New Mexico for drawing in class rather than paying attention. But it's only natural, growing up in the home of my Dad Terrence Miller Clark, who was an uncanny portrait artist from Oklahoma who could draw anyone and anything, and a landscape painter. His work hung all over our house when we grew up, and my brother and I still have much of it hanging on our walls or in storage.
I still have his old metal paintbox, with some aged oil paints, out in the garage and Susan has been urging me to try oils rather than just watercolors. I suppose that is in the near future. I do so love the smell of oil paint.
But I know I chose watercolors a few years ago because the opportunity arose to take lessons, I needed therapy, and I wasn't in "competition" with my Dad's work.
Still, I'm sorry it took me so long to "come back" to art...getting away from the type-A career-oriented workaholic I was. 
I found this 3" by 4" photo, dated 1947, of me with watercolors at age three and four in Fort Worth, Texas, , painting. And then here's Susan's 4.5" by 6.5" sketch of that. They both hang on the wall in front of me when I paint. 
I guess that's why I paint.