King of the Hill

A 14x18 oil of an alpaca who stands on a rock before a much taller unattainable mountain in the background (Mount Greylock).   A friend asked me yesterday if I was still under the sway of "alpaca madness".  I only have a few more to do.  It's an interesting situation for an artist to have, to take on a self-imposed project, like deciding to run a half-marathon.  There's a point where you have to see it through but it has its lessons.

Back Side

A 14x18 oil of the back side of the barn, with its stacks and sap tank, devoted to making maple syrup.  Not an alpaca in sight.

White and Black

A 9x12 charcoal drawing.  I had the hardest time getting these two to stand still!

Three Alpacas

A 9x12 charcoal and pastel drawing, part of a continuing project.  It's like Degas' dancers and horses, except they're alpacas.

Under and Through the Roof

Another 14x18 oil of the Sweet Brook Farm.  This is the opposite view from the painting below.

Alpacas, Barn Yard and Monet's Taches

Another 14x18 oil painting of alpacas in the barn yard.

I've been reading, among many books, Monet: Nature into Art by John House.   House writes that Monet instructed Lilla Cabot Perry to paint with taches or touches of paint (I call them 'marks'), thus: "When you go out to paint, try to forget what object you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever.  Merely think, there is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you."

Sweet Brook Farm Alpacas

The top oil painting of alpacas and house is 14x18.  The bottom two 9x12 drawings are charcoal and pastel.  Yes, I am temporarily alpaca nuts.

Moving Inland with Monet

A 14x18 oil.  I have moved inland to continue my other project, though I might sneak out to the coast occasionally.  This is a view of the Hopper from the Sweet Brook Farm.

Lately, I have been reading the catalog The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings, which has a lot of information about Monet's early years, which is not available in most if any other Monet books.    The writers, James Ganz and Richard Kendall, make the case that Monet's early and extensive caricatures substituted for his not attending an art academy.  "Representing the opposite of the academic ideals of classical beauty and proportion, and concentrating on the unique features of the modern face rather than the idealized anatomy of the nude body, they nevertheless display the draftsman's proficiency in modeling the tones of flesh in black and white."

Irregular

Another 9x12 oil on mdf panel of the coast line, though the line is irregular.

A Close and Distant View

Another 9x12 oil on mdf panel of the Ogunquit coast.

Rocky Morning and Monet's Plein Air Pain

A 9x12 oil on mdf panel of the Ogunquit coast.

In the Monet catalog cited earlier, Richard Thomson writes about Monet's visit to the Creuse area in 1889, "Reviewing his many canvases after four weeks' work, Monet was shocked to see how sombre they were... But this gloomy character was in part the result of the seasonal rainy weather, which made continuous work impossible... Monet was evidently beginning consciously to think of his paintings forming series, though as yet his understanding seems only to have been of a group of the same motif with varied effets, not a harmonised ensemble to be exhibited together.  The variety was the result of both light and weather conditions shifting and so requiring another canvas--on a single day, 11 May, Monet worked on no less than eleven canvases--but also seasonal change.  As he wrote to Alice on 24 April, if bad weather prevented work on a canvas for a few days, on going back to it he would find the foliage had notably advanced.  In early May Monet was even forced to pay two local labourers to defoliate the oak at the confluence in an attempt to perpetuate a passing motif."

A Coast and a Tree and an Excerpt from Wallace Stevens

The 9x12 oil painting on mdf panel is part of a continuing series of seacoast images.  This one depicts a spot on Monhegan Island, where I was five years ago.  The pencil drawing of a tree on the Delaware and Raritan Canal located two minutes from my home was done this afternoon.

As I try to lower the pile of NY Review of Books, I came across an article by Dan Chiasson on the John Serio edition of Wallace Stevens Selected Poems.  He quotes the following from "Description Without Place":

Description is revelation.  It is not
The thing described, nor false
  facsimile.

It is an artificial thing that exists,
In its own seeming, plainly
  visible,

Yet not too closely the double of
  our lives,
Intenser than any actual life could
  be...

It struck me that these words might describe a landscape painting.  A painting is not what it depicts, but it is not false for that, but, though a painting allows one to reflect and imagine, could it be more intense than what it depicts?  Maybe in the sense that it might be easier to revisit the image than the actual place.  The image can also have more emotional meaning captured by the artist.

Sea, Rock and Monet

A 9x12 pastel and charcoal drawing.

From the catalogue, Monet: 1840-1926, a quote from the essay Seascapes in Normandy by Anne Roquebert: "His connection with nature was not conventional, as he shows reality through a process of analogical reference, appropriating a universal style."  Interesting way of saying that Monet had generalized and unfussy way of painting.

On the Edge

An 8x10 pastel of the rocky seacoast.  A seacoast is a beginning and an end, yes?

Al and His Pal

Here are two 9x12 pastel and charcoal drawings of alpacas at the Sweetbrook Farm, part of a larger project I am working on.  They've been shorn, so are a little thin below the face.  They have interesting personalities.