The Challenge of Skies and Paint--story

Almost. I've been staring at the blank canvas for a few months now, trying to get the nerve to challenge myself to try something that large. 

"Before the Storm," 24 x 30 acrylic on canvas, palette knives and brushes, 

Finally, the weather improved enough to set the 24 by 30 canvas up on the easel on the back porch. I'd recently sold an 11 x 14 of clouds moving across the Great Plains, from a photo I'd taken a few years ago.

I didn't want to try to copy that painting, because that just adds to the stress, and I'm uptight enough. But the idea and the colors seemed appropriate for a large canvas.

The painting is almost done, but like any journalist with time, I've learned its best to sleep on a project before putting the finishing touches on it, making final touch ups (editing). It's taken several days to get to this point. 

Today I tackled the foreground, which always intimidates me the most, and where I have ruined other paintings.  I picked up the brushes, mixed some colors and just started working.

So here it is,  first titled "Angry Skies,"  but now I think "Before the Storm," tells a better story. And here are the stages, the reference photo, and the previous painting.

The Colors of Western Skies

"Western Skies, " 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas panel, palette knives, brushes

"I love mixing paint," I told a friend recently.

Long ago in my first watercolor class, one of the first lessons was that you don't need many colors, that you can mix the ones you need.

Then an artist in an oil painting workshop I attended said he could have entire lessons on mixing colors.

When I started trying to teach myself acrylics, mixing colors became essential, but there was a difference--palette knives.

I've always admired palette knife paintings, but picking one up and mixing colors became a new tactile experience. You can get lost in trying to get the colors you want, and feel for a painting, even before touching the canvas..

Just as when you're painting, the rest of the world goes away. These are problems to be solved, to my satisfaction.

Those a some of the stories behind this painting, trying to capture the mood of the skies in my beloved Southwest. And then, something else happened  that I didn't intend, but came from mixing colors because you never know exactly what you'll get. . As with previous paintings, I ended up using complementary colors, emphasizing opposites--yellows and purples, blues and oranges.

This has resulted in brighter colors and contrasts, and will also influence my future watercolors as well. No wonder I love mixing colors.  

Cimarron Sunset

"Cimarron Sunset," 9 x 12 acrylic on canvas panel

"Out here is the sky," has become my motto the longer I paint. Growing up in New Mexico  and living most of my life on the Great Plains, I've always noticed the skies, but art has intensified that interest.

At first, I thought the saying was Willa Cather's comment about the skies in "Death Comes for The Archbishop." It's not, and hers also resounds with me in painting as I study and try to capture the vastness and beauty of wide open skies in wide open landscapes.

"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”--Willa Cather

Long ago I canoed down a stretch of the Cimarron River during daylight, captivated by the silence, the moods, the solitude of the river--where human time doesn't apply. I hope this painting captures some of those impressions, reflecting the ever-changing colors of those skies at the end of day.

Soon available at In Your Eye Studio and Gallery where I'm a member artist in Paseo Arts District.

West Texas Red

"West Texas Red," 5 x 7 birthday card

Out in the Texas Panhandle, or elsewhere on the Great Plains, where the horizons are long, and the land vast, the skies are even more dramatic and colorful in all kinds of weather and seasons, and especially near dawn or sunset.

When I get cooped up on a cloudy day or in urban life, I often think of the freedom of that landscape and skies.

Thus, today's watercolor, keeping with the red theme for February's show. But this is just a birthday card for someone who has grown up out there. 

Summer Shadows on the Great Plains

"Cloud Shadows on the Great Plains," 14 x 20, 300 lb d'Arches cold press paper

When you live on the Great Plains in the summer, the heat and humidity build clouds of all shapes and sizes.
When you can see a long way out there, across the rolling rural landscapes, the clouds  ever-changing shadows dance across the fields and hills in a windy, moving symphony of shapes and color.
Today's watercolor, the largest I've painted in a long while, is a larger version inspired by by the previous one, "Room to Breathe." That became sort of a "study" or warm-up by the intimidation I feel when working on large paintings.
Given the pandemic and the racial crisis we're trying to survive, 
I  thought of  T.S. Eliot's lines from "The Wasteland" that capture some of the truth we're living in now. 

            “Between the idea
        And the reality
        Between the motion
        And the act
        Falls the Shadow”

It's interesting to me how often I think of poetry and literature when I'm painting, and our national mood seems to be a metaphoric wasteland. 
To offset that, I wanted to try to capture the peace, beauty and vastness of the Great Plains. To me they're also a metaphor for our freedoms and future. I hope this painting approaches it. Can't wait to get it framed.
The colors on this photo are not exact, because it's taken outside and reflects some of the blue of the sky, but it's close. My signature is under the big fence post, which the camera lost the detail on.

Magic in the skies

"Windy Oklahoma Skies," 8 x 10 no-brush watercolor, 300 lb. d''Arches cold press

Need some magic? Cooped up, depressed and stressed by this pandemic pandemonium? 

One of the salves for my souls, medicine for my moods, is right outside the door.

When you grow up on the Great Plains, and live most of your life in Oklahoma, the ever-changing colors  of the skies are full of magic. 

No wonder as kids we'd look up at the clouds and see what shapes we could find. The wind, the  clouds, the light, the shadows--a continual drama for the imagination and mood.

Thus today's no-brush watercolor, part of a series on magic in the pandemic.

Creation

"Where creation began," 5 x 7 watercolor card

"Out here there's the sky," has been my slogan and inspiration in painting watercolors.
It's part of growing up in the West and on the Great Plains where you can't help but notice, and admire the ever-changing skies in a spacious land.
I've only actually seen the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, long ago, on a cold winter's night in Iowa, but I'm captivated by their brilliant color, by their unearthly eeriness, by how small and insignificant they make you feel.
They remind me of creation:
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." --Psalms 19:1, David

Sky student

When you live out here, you study skies, and try to paint them.
Painting them is a great challenge, but I find watercolor especially fluid for our fluid skies. 
I also, thanks to the Internet, get to study how other artists, around the world paint them...drawing ideas and inspiration and education, including my astounding Oklahoma City friend David Holland and his oil  Skyscapes.
All appropriate as I try to meet today's World Watercolor Month daily challenge prompt, "Clouds." 
We'll see.
Here is recent work by some of my "teachers, "--Posey Gaines is up near Tulsa, the others are all English.

David Holland

"Out here there's the sky"--today's proof

Beautiful day for a walk in Hafer Park. Perfect for looking up and enjoying the ever changing drama of our skies

.

"Out here there's the sky"--adventures in gray

"50 Shades of Gray," 9 x 12 watercolor, 140 lb. d'Arches cold press paper

How can you not live out here and not be enchanted by the skies? Willa Cather had it correct, and my motto has been "Out here there's the sky."
Today's ever-changing unsettled skies prompted this attempt. For me, it's an adventure in mixing grays--so many ways and tones possible with just a few colors--trying to match some of the tones I see in our clouds, and knowing, somewhere there's a sky like that. 
I'm always trying to figure out ways and colors to obtain some of those wonderful grays. There are about eight different colors used here, and none of them are labeled "Gray." That tube of paint seems dull to what I see overhead.

Desert dreams

Desert Sunset, 11" by 14" watercolor, 300 lb. d'Arches coldpress

When you grow up in an arid country, a land of dry air, the light and land can overpower your senses. 
Your world is full of vast skies and sharp-edged landscapes, undiluted by humidity. Scarce moisture arrives only in spurts, from clouds as dramatic as the land  underneath, quickly changing its rugged contours. Then the intense sun and wind return to the work of ages, sculpting the desert.
Many consider the desert as "god-forsaken," but when you live there, it becomes part of you, just like the weathered wrinkles on your face and hands.
In studying watercolor, I find many books and teachers come from humidity-rich locales, and they are souls of those worlds as I am of the Southwest and Great Plains. As a lover of skies, I still learn from them in painting atmosphere, but I'm more at home, in life and with a palette, with my desert dreams. 

Freedom, in the skies

Freedom, Taos sky, 9 by 12 watercolor, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico

"Out here there's the sky"

                                                                                                 --Clark

Readings, of freedom...as an introvert, or as a falcon (Quiet, the Power of Introverts, by Cain, or Falcon, by Macdonald)...
Dreams of New Mexico, where, as Willa Cather wrote, the sky is, it determines all. 
Back after a drought of writing and painting, the call of freedom, found only in the spirit of the skies.
Thanks to Susan Clark and Mary Carver for prodding, when yhou didn't know you were.

Getting there, fourth try

Watercolor is always an experiment in learning...I won't duplicate the photo,but I'll try to capture the essence

"Out here is the sky..."

So wrote Willa Cather in "Death Comes for the Archbishop." If you live in Oklahoma, on the Great Plains, you gotta be fascinated by the sky.
First storm of the season arriving now...thunder, lightning, threat of hail, wind, threat of tornadoes, and beautiful clouds.

Out here there's the sky, and the clouds

Oklahoma thunderhead, by David J. Holland

When you grow up in the home of an artist, walls covered with paintings and drawings, you don't buy much art. 
Years later, as I attempt to  paint, I'm still not much on buying art. I do have an art collection, mostly small works, from Native American and others you've never heard of. I've picked them up over the years...sculpture, carvings, pottery, paintings, masks, weaving.  So you know it's got to "tickle my fancy" for me to want to buy art. By that I mean, really grab my attention and emotions, and meet exacting standards I always measure against my Dad's work.
So it's no wonder I am pleased to have a painting from an artist I recently met, fellow Oklahoman David Holland. Check his web page for more info and samples of his artwork. I first saw his work on Facebook, and was instantly grabbed, because he has a unique vision, and he paints subjects that are dear to my heart, and my art..skies, and particularly, clouds. We went to see his show at Acosta Strong Fine Art at 6420 N. North Western, just north of 63th. Susan told me I needed to buy one to help inspire me.
I purchased this 5" by 7" of his recently, after viewing his work in the gallery and striking up a conversation. I wouldn't afford the big ones, and didn't really want to spend money on the smaller ones I saw--two on the website I liked were already sold. David then painted this specifically for me...saying it's the fifth time he's painted this storm.
I went to pick it up a week ago, and we got to chat  for about 30 minutes. What a treat, and what a story that I must try to tell sometime soon, hopefully in print.
He paints oils that will stun you with his vision. We agreed that perhaps you have to live in Oklahoma and the Great Plains to get the stories he's telling, because these clouds are not fiction, but part of who we are. Like me, he stands outside taking photos of clouds. 
His show, part of the "New West" show,  continues through Aug. 30. Go treat yourself. My treat is hanging on our wall. My photo doesn't catch the full range of colors  and textures, but it gives you a hint.
Here's a view from the gallery with his paintings.

Skyscrapers

In anticipation...8 1/2 by 7 1/2 watercolor, handmade Indian paper

Equinox nears, and spring will be here officially, and with it the probable return of the skyscrapers of the Great Plains, cumulus clouds rising thousands of feet in the humid air, bringing rain, and an infinity of ever-changing shapes, colors and light. 
I'm fascinated by the skies out here, and in the west, where mountains are their roots. It's good to enter the seasons of the clouds.
Today's painting, in anticipation....
              “God is a cloud from which rain fell.”
                    ― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

Oklahoma skies...of wonder and terror

My artist statement refers to the skies, quoting Willa Cather. I don't know how you can live in the Great Plains and not be enthralled.
And like others, terrified. Like my blogging friend Alan Bates of Tulsa http://www.yogis-den.com/ I was "thrown for a loop" by this weeks' storm...silenced, and depressed. Only by going back to what I know--media and teaching and art, could I finally try to write something of relevance. Then Nathan Gunther of Oklahoma Today, one of my editors, wrote this piece for CNN. Nathan nails it. Read it.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/21/opinion/gunter-okies-tornadoes/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook

Small paintings for spring art show

I've recently had several smaller watercolors framed, getting ready for the April art show in the Donna Nigh Gallery at the Nigh University Center at UCO, along with some real artists. I'm fortunate to know the curator Zina Gelona, and also that she named the show  "Blue Skies," right is right up my alley.

More details later, but here are four of the small ones, now hanging on the walls at home. Excuse the reflections, can't help it.

"Stormy Night" -- painted this after a stormy night looking up at the sky in our backyard, bare branches of post oaks. size, 9 x 11 framed.

"Prairie Rain" -- I love skies and the Great Plains, and this is 11 by 15

"Ice storm_ 18 by 14, inspired by last year's blizzard and our bare trees

"Winter cabin"--10 by 13, Fantasy