Garden of Lynn

Somewhere the critic Northrop Frye wrote that all art is based upon trying to find the way back to the Garden of Eden.  

Learning the Garden

This is better, but I feel that I have a way to go.

Still in the Garden

I am still in the garden, and at the same spot.  This is closer to what I wanted.  Wallis paper is amazing.  I used a vacuum cleaner to clean off the painting for re-working.  Not much pastel comes off!  

I have been looking at a good book, The Painterly Approach by Bob Rohm.  I am most sympathetic to this approach.  However, the success of a painting depends upon the initial foundation.  I started this pastel outside without a sketch, which is a big mistake.  One never knows where the edges are.  You can't pretend that the painting will not have edges.   The Wallis paper has edges!

Tilling the Pastels

When working everyday, you win some, you lose some, and some are just so-so.  They all have to be made.   This is in the so-so category.  Gardens are tough.  They are like landscapes in your face.  

Lynn's Garden

I have wanted to start a series of paintings of my neighbor's garden.  This is the first one, a bit experimental.  I am barned out for the moment.

Not Yet Done

I still have a few more barns left.

Barney

Just call me Barney.

Barnstorming

I am barnstorming, but always at the same barns in the same town.

Recently, I mentioned the book on Gustav Klimt's landscapes.  When painting outdoors, he would often use binoculars or a telescope to view his landscape.   This gave him unusual vantage points.  It's similar to today's practice of using a digital image, which one can enlargen and trim on a computer.  

This weekend my wife showed me a cartoon by Dave Coverly, which appeared in Parade, an insert usually found in the Sunday papers.  It shows an artist working at his easel painting a still life.  He is looking at a table to his left, which holds his laptop.  The laptop has an image of a still life!  

On the Road

This is a mid-morning view of Stratton Road facing south.  Not much one can say: bright, country, birds, dust.  It's another variation on green.  I like that tree with the palm like look.  8x10 on colourfix paper.

Variation on Barns

I know barns are a cliche, but some things are worth repeating.  This pastel, 8x10 on Uart paper, has many 'hidden' formal elements.

Another Early Morning View

Another early morning view looking north on Stratton Road towards the Dome.

Stratton Road in Early Morning and Infinity

This is more to my liking in terms of the painterly qualities that I am after.

I am still working my way through John Ruskin's Modern Painters. Here's an interesting excerpt: "One...of these child instincts, I believe that few forget; the emotion, namely caused by all open ground, or line of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the sea. It is an emotion more pure than that caused by the sea itself...I have ascertained it to be frequent among those who possess the most vivid sensibilities for nature; and I am certain that the modification of it, which belong to our after years, is common to all. The love, namely, of a light distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon...It is not...by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light...that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is--Infinity."

Not Barn Again

This is the last red barn for a while.

Closer to the Barn

This view is full of interlocking wedges that appear to separate out nicely.  A barn is one way of using red to make green work.