Canal, River, and Sky

This view looks across the canal, from the original tow path, over the railroad bed, which most people refer to as the towpath, towards the river.   I wasn't too sure about this symmetrical, horizontal, vertical composition, but I think, at least tonight, that it works.  This is a 5x7 pastel on Canson paper.

Delaware River with Setting Sun

The river, the river, the river.

Delaware River at Early Evening

It's probably time to pay more attention to the river, which is located at the west end of my street running parallel to the canal, which is at the east end of my street.  They call the place where I live "the island."  I tell people that I live on the west coast of New Jersey.

Old Park Ranger House

This unoccupied house is on the back side of the park.   Nearby there's evidence of other houses that have essentially disappeared.   This is a 5x7 pastel sketch on Canson paper.

Discoveries on the Road to the Nature Center

This is the way to the Nature Center, but going in the opposite direction from yesterday's pastel.

The discoveries were not found on the road, but while browsing the Internet this morning. I found a reference to color photos made in Russia between 1909 and 1915. The dates are correct. They are fabulous. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii. Then I did a search at commons.wikimedia.org on "pastel paintings," just for the heck of it, and found a fascinating artist with the great name of Lesser Ury who did pastels. His dates are 1861 to 1931. He was a German expressionist. Check out his work at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Ury .

On Road to the Nature Center

This is a view actually walking in the direction away from the Nature Center going slightly downhill.  Sunny morning. 8x10 on colourfix paper.

Park Back Side on A Sunny Morning

This is a view of Washington Crossing Park on the back side near the small pond, a seldom visited area.   It is 5x7 on Canson paper.

Williamstown Sketch

Saturday it was warm enough to go out for a walk.  This old garage is tucked away in a small residential neighborhood.

A Face to Forget

Soon I will move away from portraiture back to landscape.  But self-portraits are such a challenge.

Charles Reid, in his book Pulling Your Paintings Together, writes "...you must draw as if you've never seen or experienced anything before the moment you first see your subject.  You should literally be seeing for the first time."   This reminds me of the passage in the Letter of James, "A man who listens to God's word but does not put it into practice is like a man who looks into a mirror at the face he was born with; he looks at himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like."  Being forgetful and not forgetful at the same time is the challenge. 

Elsewhere Reid writes, "...a drawing is like a poem.  It suggests and implies, but it never tells a literal story."  I like to remember those words.

Trees and Faces

This small pastel is a view of the D&R canal looking northwest towards Church Street at Trimmer in Titusville, NJ.  The pastel above is a self-portrait of a moving tree.

Since I spent the weekend working on several self-portraits, I wanted to see again a video installation by Jennifer Steinkamp of a moving tree that goes through the four seasons.  It's at MOCA in North Adams, MA.  See  http://jsteinkamp.com/ , especially the tree projection called Mike Kelly.  Painting self-portraits is like trying to paint a moving tree.  Everything keeps changing.

Different Kind of Landscape

I am going to do a different kind of landscape.  I can work on site, since the weather doesn't interfere, and the scenery is accommodating.   The problem is that I have to get the hills and ridges correct, and avoid the glare.  But it will give me an opportunity to experiment.

Park Pond

Only two days ago the weather looked like this.

Symmetrical Idea with Variations

This is really a view of a small pond, not well known, near the edge of the park.  It's surrounded by trees and not visible except from a few openings.

Canal Series

It's starting to look like another series.  Every time I walk along the canal, I am amazed.  Yesterday there were two swans in the canal.

One last word from Sue Gussow: "...while the eye's focus is akin to a camera's focus, it does not record information in the same way.  Unlike a photograph, a drawing is made over a period of time, whether minutes or hours.  The eye focuses and refocuses as the hand draws."  

Shaped Vision, Clutter Pastel

This is another view of the same tree with the arching trunk in the early morning.  Trees on the other side of the canal are reflected in the canal background so they all seem to be on the same plane. 

More words from Sue Ferguson Gussow: "It is from the humble particulars of our daily lives that larger abstractions may be formulated.  In our observations we are confronted by a visual world of vast complexity and density.  To reduce this agglomeration of color, texture, detail, and overlap to coherent imagery, we shape what we see."  This is what she wrote when introducing clutter drawings,  drawings made of some found site,  left as is, which one "shapes" into coherence.  I suppose this is my clutter pastel.