Snow Tracks

Tractor Tracks, Williamstown, MA. 6x8 inches, gouache on mixed media paper.  I like examining tracks in the snow to see if I can identify the creature that made them.  Here we have the domestic tractor.

On A Summer Evening

The long barn on Luce Road in Williamstown, MA on a summer evening.  18x24 inches, oil on linen canvas.

Despite The Heat

Despite the heat, I went back in the afternoon to paint another view of the barn.  12x12 inches, oil on linen panel.

Splotchy Shadows

The tractor road goes downhill below a high overhanging tree on the right so that what is visible on the ground when looking back up the road is a mix of grass tufts, gravel, rocks, and shadows.  It's hard to have all this make visual sense when the tree is not visible in the painting.  Camille Pissarro was criticized for placing across the bottom of his paintings the shadows cast by trees themselves not visible in the paintings.  In his case, his shadows are more uniform than my splotchy ones.  9x12 inches, oil on panel.

Accepting Chaos and Clutter

In his book Learning to Paint Bernard Dunstan writes:

"Choosing a motif from the chaos and clutter of the visual material that surrounds us is, obviously, the essential decision in all painting based on nature.  What is not always appreciated, though, is that once you've made this choice, you'll probably have a greater chance of creating an interesting design if you accept all the accidental oddities that your motif contains, instead of trying to tidy it up by leaving out elements which seem unessential or tricky to handle...

The desire to label everything in a picture--this is a tree, that is a fence, and that is a house--can be a very limiting approach to selecting a motif.  Don't forget that leaving out invariably means making blanks, which your imagination or memory will the have to fill.  Most painters, experienced ones as well as beginners, aren't nearly as ingenious as the accidental effect of nature at producing formal relationships that are lively and interesting."

Apropos to those words is the accompanying painting, which I painted yesterday afternoon at the farm at the end of Hopper Road in Williamstown, MA, while hearing thunder claps slowly approaching.  I didn't want to paint the wagon by itself, so I moved slightly to the left to include a portion of a tractor (a wheel with a piece of plywood behind it).  Old farms always have equipment and junk strewn all over the place.  The painting is a 9x12 oil on panel.

Squish, Squish

With the prospect of rain later today, tomorrow, the day after that, and then the next day, I went out to paint even though the sun was fading away.  I found myself in another field, in a wet lane used only by tractors, which leave ruts deep enough to gather and hold water.  Besides water, there's a lot of green around too. This is a 9x12 oil on panel.

2N

This afternoon I painted the other tractor, a 2N Ford, parked up Hopper Road away from the other tractors,  at an entrance to a field where it was left a while back.  This is the one that is not as "elegant" as the 8N.  It's still a likable machine, especially in the midst of its unmachinelike natural surroundings.  This painting is oil on an 11x14 panel.

An Actor, a Tractor, On Stage

I could only laugh when I saw this one developing.  It looks like a tractor on stage.  I wanted the Hopper as the background, so I just started to paint.  I decided to just keep going.  A blue tractor against a dramatic green background will look odd no matter what.  It's like an actor, except it's a tractor.

Elegance

Since this was "tractor week" for me, I went back for one more tractor painting this morning.  I held off until I could talk to the farmer, who was out mowing, with another tractor, to make sure he wasn't going to use this one.   This one is the 8N Ford that I painted yesterday, and painted again after knowing it was not going to be moved.  Its in the same location as yesterday, except I painted it from a different angle.  I talked to the farmer about the N2 parked up the road, which I may paint someday, and he said the N8 is "more elegant."  My experience has been that the people who use these tractors really appreciate their virtues.  I just paint them.  This painting is an 8x10 oil on panel.  

8N

This is, as I learned, an 8N Ford tractor, which has a following among the connoisseurs of tractors.  I find it kinda cute.  I'd like to call her 'Ennie' or 'Annie', if I may, since I see her all the time.  The painting is a 10x10 oil on panel.  As I was painting it yesterday morning, a group of around fifteen Williams freshmen appeared on the dirt road.  They were carrying gear that indicated they were staying overnight on the mountain.  They decided to sit and have lunch behind me.  I must have looked scary since none approached to see what I was doing.  After I had packed up, I went over to wish them a great year in school.

Made in 1942

I was going to post a Brooklyn painting that I completed this week, but this afternoon's tractor turned out well, so I'm posting it instead.  Sorry.  I talked to one of the farmers about it (he calls himself an "antique farmer").  He said that the tractor, a John Deere,  was made in 1942.  That's seventy-three years ago.  They take good care of their tractors.  The farmer said that he was also made in 1942!  He's still getting around.  The painting is a 10x10 oil on panel, made this afternoon.

Tractor Week

Looks like tractor week.  This tractor was parked next to the trees at the edge of the field, its work done for the day: an 8x10 oil on panel, which I painted on site yesterday afternoon.

Painting A Tractor

Trying to get back into the rhythm of studio and plein-air painting, I kept thinking of Brian Sweetland, the superb outdoor painter, whose memorial retrospective I saw last year at the Southern Vermont Arts Center.  He loved painting farms, and there was an entire wall devoted to small paintings of tractors.  So I went out and painted a tractor.  Haley Farm at the end of Hopper Road has six working tractors that were all available yesterday afternoon for any painter who happened to come by.  The above is an 8x10 oil on panel.

Not a Green Tractor

At this time of the year, maybe it's all summer, the results of painting outdoors in the green landscape seem acidic, garish, loud, hot, and just too green.  It becomes hard to tell what's going on and how to deal with it.  Today I tried adding red to tone down the green, but I'm not sure of the results.   This little 8x10 oil on panel, done yesterday, has the least of these objectionable characteristics of the work I've done in the last couple days.  I did have a choice of doing a green tractor but passed on it for the moment.

Hopper Barn

A large painting, 18x24 inches, oil on canvas, of the Haley Farm barn at the end of Hopper Road.  You can see the barn in the painting showing the whole Hopper area done a few days ago.  I was struck by the sunlight illuminating the barn, but also by the ladder going into the barn.  You can see the old truck on the left just above the cute old tractor.

I've been reading an essay by the poet Robert Hass on the landscape photographer Robert Adams.  Hass writes, "We live our lives, each of us with differing but usually deep attachments to place or to an idea of place, while forces larger than our lives are changing those places faster than we live them out.  There may be places in America... that have not changed much in our lifetime.  But for most Americans change and loss are part of the landscape we hold in mind and have anesthetized ourselves to.  Many of the forces of change have been destructive.  Some, at least, have made a possible life for people excluded from the pastoral romance of an earlier republic.  It's our task to make of this as we can what we can.  But first we have to be able to see it."

The Hopper is a locale that has changed much, but still gives the impression of being old and stable.  I spoke recently with a park ranger, who was on his day off and planning a quick hike up the Hopper trail.  He talked about the feeling of an old place evoked by the Hopper, but then he told me that the barn was fairly new, the old one having burned down.  New or old, there is so much to see.

Back to the Second Walk

On the second walk this past weekend to reach the abandoned barn and the abandoned house, I had to pass an abandoned tractor about halfway up.  At the height of summer the tractor is buried in tall weeds, but right now is cleanly visible.   The oil ix 11x14 and the charcoal drawing is 9x12.  I will return to the first walk tomorrow.