Landscape Re-Visit

One of the things I observed in studying

Georgia O'Keefe was that she often painted the

same landscape scene over and over again

searching for new ways to present it.

I find this a fascinating way to closely examine the elements.

So I've decided to re-visit some of the photo references I've used in past work and perhaps look at them slightly differently...at least in size and color if not a different representation all together.

My Father's World, tobacco barn

24 x 24, oil on cradled board

I love this lonely barn sitting atop a sloping hill with not much else around it. There is a bit of an implied path up to the opening so maybe it is still used for some work. It feels friendly and welcoming of visitors.  This kind of scenery makes me start writing mental stories about all that the place has seen and experienced.  My husband chose it to hang in a small condo we have.  

But a revisit on a larger canvas started out differently:

Note that it is no longer a square shape and that it appears even lonlier as there are no trees planned.  It feels "closed off" as you cannot see sky through the main door. And there is more emphasis on the drop off of the hill in the lower R corner.

Somehow I cannot get away from that red foreground!  I was actually trying to go from yellow around the color wheel through orange on its way to red....ahhh, but the painter loves reds apparently.

There is some amazing depth of texture in this piece which the former lacked.  And the colors are not blended but more abrupt in their changes.  And there is no worn path leading up to the open door while the sky is darker and less cheerful.  It feels sealed up and not welcoming to wanderers.

 24 x 30, oil on canvas, untitled

And...it is done!  Not a long way from the first version but changed enough to capture a different feeling.  Somehow the reds to yellows seem so vibrant that this barn feels proud, not lonely or abandoned.  Still standing with dignity (which could be a title?)  

I think my assignment now could be to do it all in blues and grays attempting to get a totally different mood...perhaps one of sorrow or loneliness, a feeling of abandonment and disrepair, aging?

Let's see where that might go.  Hope there are some folks interested in buying barns with personality!! Stand by...and thank you Ms. O'keefe for this exercise in studying the landscape.

REVEALING THE RED,

Cindy

Tobacco Barns & Days Gone By

Sometimes I give myself a painting assignment

just to up the ante in my process.  This time

I chose to paint in two layers: the first

would be rendered in yellow, red and white; in the

second I could only use yellow, blue and white.

Tobacco barns are a familiar sight in the western North Carolina area.  No longer used for their intended purpose, many of them stand empty and sad, slowly disintegrating before our eyes.  The evils of tobacco notwithstanding, I have an affinity for these old structures and often pause wishing I could know the tales they hold in their old weathered boards.  Now and again I am able to get a decent photo...too many are located on fast moving roadways that preclude pulling off to explore.  But when I do get a pic, I have fun painting them in a variety of ways.

Limiting myself to a strict palate of only what I could mix with yellow, red (primary colors) and white if needed, I made my first pass at the scene with an acrylic underpainting.

I actually liked the feel this gave and left it for a few days as tribute to the warm and humid days when the tobacco hung.  I was also contemplating what I might do with my next selected colors.

So I switched to oil paints and put away the red adding the third primary blue.  Now I could mix these two for green and/or put glazes of blue on top of red for purples or on oranges for...so I got to work.

I was tentative in the sky because I really liked the yellow overcast but worked on clouds while deciding just how blue to go.  I also wanted the attention to flow up the hill and thru the barn so did not want to provide too much distraction in the orangish foreground.  Restraint was called for even with so few colors to work with.  I had to rely on brush stroke, temperature and perspective to get my message across.  

My Father's World

oil, 24 x 24, on cradled board, $325

And even though my father's farm did not grown tobacco, this was of his era so the name felt appropriate.  I would give anything for an afternoon of stories from this barn, and even more so, from my Dad.  Meanwhile, the structure sits alone, a beacon of days (and economies) gone by.

PRIMARY COLORS,

Cindy

A Painters Quilt

In the mountains of western North Carolina there is a wonderful

movement to place quilt patterns on old barns across the landscape.  These are painted and

range in size from 8 feet x 8 feet to a smaller 2' x 2' depending on their placement.

Artists recreate some of the vintage patterns and tie them into the wishes of the landowners.

Sometimes folks want a custom pattern that reflects their family or lifestyle.

It was the latter that inspired me to see if I could create a pattern of my own.

You may remember my grid and planning I did killing time on an airplane:

I had decided to use the shapes of wine bottle and birds as those represent two of our

favorite deck 'activities.'  Everything must be gridded as if you were to plan

a pattern for straight line pieceing of materials.

Next I had to transfer this pattern to a canvas carefully marking off a similar grid and sticking to the formula.  The pink color has nothing to do with my plan...it was paint used to

cover up a painting-gone-awry so I could recycle the expensive canvas.  I painted in the "muslin" color to get me started in visualizing where I was going with color.

Slowly and carefully I painted in each square, or portion thereof, and later I went back and did some of the background "fabric" in a slightly different tone just so it would have the look of cloth.

Obviously my canvas was not square so I had to fill it in and write the name of our home as well as the name I gave the pattern on the space below.  It took about 2-3 coats of paint over everything.

And ta-da!  It's not on a barn for sure but it is in the mountains of western Carolina.

I think we will enjoy knowing that our "Bottles & Birds" can be added

to the quilt tour...in our neighborhood at least.