Black and White

I didn't have a colorful weekend. Have you ever wondered what you are going to do with all those black pastel sticks? They offer the opportunity to think in color without color. Even so, I don't see things in black and white.

Tree in the Back Field

After you go through the long back trail, you end up in a large field. The snow doesn't last long there.

Conjecture

Another conjecture on the back trail in the park. These sketches are on Canson paper.

Sketchy Conjectures

I didn't have much time, so I am just uploading a couple sketches. The square format seems to work best here. Probably would have worked better on the previous painting too. This is still on the back trail of the park.

Back Trail

This morning I walked this trail which travels along the western back edge of the park. I did spook a fox, or maybe a feral cat. Beautiful, but cold. 8x10 on uart paper.

Merton has some challenging words to painters from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (that's what I think I should call my paintings). He starts off innocently enough: "Looking out of the novitiate, when the winter sun is rising on the snowy pastures and on the pine woods of the Lake Knob, I am absorbed in the lovely blue and mauve shadows on the snow and the indescribably delicate color of the sunlit patches under the trees. All the life and color of the landscape is in the snow and sky...there is a great deal of pastel softness in the blue and purple shadows. There is no art that has anything to say about this and art should not attempt it. The Chinese came closest to it with their Tao of painting and what they painted was not landscapes but Tao. The nineteenth-century European and American realists were so realistic that their pictures were totally unlike what they were supposed to represent. And the first thing wrong with them was, of course, precisely that they were pictures. In any case, nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the imitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject: and that is something else again." I agree with him, but I would conjecture that any picture reflects the mind of the subject. After enough time has elapsed, even photographs look like images.

Field Edge

This is the northeast end of a large, mainly Tamarack tree stand in Washington Crossing Park. I was out early this morning and the sunlight was streaking across the rough grass creating blue shadows in the snow. There's a fox den in this stand, and deer love to hide in it as well.

Another Winter Nothing

5x7 view into a cold corn field. I continue to read Merton. He said, "Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand. It is wide open." I am happy he said it. The artistic perception has a chance to understand, at least sometimes.

Cold Piece From the Edge of the Road

This small 5x7 study is meant to be slight, quickly done, and sketchy. I briefly heard some piano music today by Erik Satie. The music was called Cold Pieces.

Another Cold Field

This is a 5x7 study of nothing. Rilke said that all art springs from necessity. I have a need to make these little paintings. Who knows, it might lead to something.

Another Prospect

This 8x10 is done on much rougher colourfix paper, but it works for snow. I like looking through trees. Not much to see. More fields of nothing much.

Prospect Looking Through Trees

This view looks through branches into a corn field with Mt. Prospect in the background. The picture doesn't do justice to the presence of the mountain. I am trying to be less deliberate than my two previous efforts. 8x10 on the new Pastelmat paper. Amazing paper. Hardly creates dust.

Two more fields of nothing

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and productive new year!

It hasn't stopped snowing since we have been up here. I keep peering into snowy fields. They look like nothing much, but deceptively a lot is happening (no pun intended). These are 8x10 on uart paper.

I am reading a book called Cezanne's Composition by Erle Loran. He says some intriguing things, such as that what Cezanne said, in his famous comments to Emile Bernard, and how he painted, do not agree. I have always wondered about Cezanne the theorist vs. Cezanne the painter. I will follow Loran's lead that one should only use the paintings as guides.

Little Pictures of Nothing

I have spent the last couple days doing small pastels of nothing much. Very difficult.

Snow's Gone

A little rain, two day's worth, takes away all the snow.

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! This is an 11x14 pastel of the view looking North at the end of Trimmer. The path is still covered in snow.