Painting in the Park in the Dark
Today I hurried off to finish out a Sunday painting in the park- one I'd started a few weeks back but figured I could develop better, and the light was just getting right- sunset, and sort of a dimness over everything. A busy day with bees, and as soon as I got the last hive buttoned up I loaded up and headed down there.
The town where I live has lost a lot of its soul- everything is cleaned up, lots of new people with their dogs and bikes and running gear- lots of folks speaking Hindu and Russian (not that they aren't a welcome addition), and its just different. In the same place I go now, when I used to paint,there was no trail, just a tunnel in the Salmonberry that you'd lean down and follow a long ways until you came out on the river, and there would be a 12 year old farm kid there fishing in a chair with a fire, throwing catfish on the fire to kill them, trying to catch Steelhead in this slow water, and there was just a little strip of sand.
Now its dogs and people in outfits, or with earphones, and they have no idea, it seems to me, of the great heart of the place. None of it is on the internet, for any little town.
What they might not see it the way the sun gets low, but can't get too low, as there is the valley wall in the west, and so its like this angled light- maybe 10 degrees- and never totally horizontal, and then it disappears, and then there is this amazing glowing time- a half hour or less, when the sun is still technicality "up"- the sky is lit- but there is no sunlight. And the valley glows, in blues and warm lights, like a canyon, and a blackness in the shadows that's hard to paint. Actually, it's all hard to paint.
I have painted this same river for 40 years- and that's no exaggeration. 40. Not all the time- but in my studio I have a painting I did when was 20, and its of part of this same river up by North Bend, when I and my GF Mary took a road trip in the back roads in my primer black '65 VW bus(fondly remembered), and I painted. I can't recall what she did- its not like she was the sort of person to hang around and watch.
It's a better painting than I can do now. I never got better.
It's like, as you get older, and don't really practice like a violin player should, you might get smarter, but what you paint loses touch. Its no longer fresh, not exploring, not brand new in the world, try as you might. As it can't be- you can't reinvent yourself, you continue to seek the same motifs despite yourself. And if you try to break with it, unless you are a very serious and very good artist, no one likes it. Even yourself. You are drawn to certain things, and unless you spend the time you need to with them, even years, you don't get to go through the next door-as those things are the way you get there. I don't of course know this for a fact, but its how I explain to myself why its always the same motif.
Maybe an analogy would be your signature. Its just a few letters, but to change how you write them, they subtle slants and loops, is almost impossible without extreme effort. It's called a signature as it is you- and painting is very much about making your signature, in every line, and in the motifs. You can't do otherwise even if you wanted to.
Today I sat in this small wood trying to paint the last light on the trunks of trees, while seeing the green of the grass between them. There were dried orange leaves on the ground- but not Fall leaves, just those that had dropped in summer. There was an orange light-or so I thought- but the trunks seems to glow with green- and then there was a purple in them- and all was so dark and grey and getting moreso- it was very hard to get right (which I totally did not).
And this was round two on this painting- which is such an incredibly difficult time- so hard to try to move this from a lively sketch to something more solid- but yet not as solid as a real painting should be. Usually- easily 90% of the time- I find this to be a disaster. You can't go home again. Painting over a sketch is what separates the men from the boys. I am a boy.
Its getting late in life to think I'll ever gain it now- so I need to keep it simple.
I showed this painting it to a friend, who has some of my work, and they said "yes, that looks like your work, I could identify it in a lineup, same lines and colors". That's pretty much as good as it gets these days, compliment wise, but I'm OK with it.
The town where I live has lost a lot of its soul- everything is cleaned up, lots of new people with their dogs and bikes and running gear- lots of folks speaking Hindu and Russian (not that they aren't a welcome addition), and its just different. In the same place I go now, when I used to paint,there was no trail, just a tunnel in the Salmonberry that you'd lean down and follow a long ways until you came out on the river, and there would be a 12 year old farm kid there fishing in a chair with a fire, throwing catfish on the fire to kill them, trying to catch Steelhead in this slow water, and there was just a little strip of sand.
Now its dogs and people in outfits, or with earphones, and they have no idea, it seems to me, of the great heart of the place. None of it is on the internet, for any little town.
What they might not see it the way the sun gets low, but can't get too low, as there is the valley wall in the west, and so its like this angled light- maybe 10 degrees- and never totally horizontal, and then it disappears, and then there is this amazing glowing time- a half hour or less, when the sun is still technicality "up"- the sky is lit- but there is no sunlight. And the valley glows, in blues and warm lights, like a canyon, and a blackness in the shadows that's hard to paint. Actually, it's all hard to paint.
I have painted this same river for 40 years- and that's no exaggeration. 40. Not all the time- but in my studio I have a painting I did when was 20, and its of part of this same river up by North Bend, when I and my GF Mary took a road trip in the back roads in my primer black '65 VW bus(fondly remembered), and I painted. I can't recall what she did- its not like she was the sort of person to hang around and watch.
It's a better painting than I can do now. I never got better.
It's like, as you get older, and don't really practice like a violin player should, you might get smarter, but what you paint loses touch. Its no longer fresh, not exploring, not brand new in the world, try as you might. As it can't be- you can't reinvent yourself, you continue to seek the same motifs despite yourself. And if you try to break with it, unless you are a very serious and very good artist, no one likes it. Even yourself. You are drawn to certain things, and unless you spend the time you need to with them, even years, you don't get to go through the next door-as those things are the way you get there. I don't of course know this for a fact, but its how I explain to myself why its always the same motif.
Maybe an analogy would be your signature. Its just a few letters, but to change how you write them, they subtle slants and loops, is almost impossible without extreme effort. It's called a signature as it is you- and painting is very much about making your signature, in every line, and in the motifs. You can't do otherwise even if you wanted to.
Today I sat in this small wood trying to paint the last light on the trunks of trees, while seeing the green of the grass between them. There were dried orange leaves on the ground- but not Fall leaves, just those that had dropped in summer. There was an orange light-or so I thought- but the trunks seems to glow with green- and then there was a purple in them- and all was so dark and grey and getting moreso- it was very hard to get right (which I totally did not).
And this was round two on this painting- which is such an incredibly difficult time- so hard to try to move this from a lively sketch to something more solid- but yet not as solid as a real painting should be. Usually- easily 90% of the time- I find this to be a disaster. You can't go home again. Painting over a sketch is what separates the men from the boys. I am a boy.
Its getting late in life to think I'll ever gain it now- so I need to keep it simple.
I showed this painting it to a friend, who has some of my work, and they said "yes, that looks like your work, I could identify it in a lineup, same lines and colors". That's pretty much as good as it gets these days, compliment wise, but I'm OK with it.