Painting on Mattawoman Creek

Lotus at Mattawoman Creek, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12." 
SOLD

My friend Linda sent word that the yellow lotus on Mattawoman Creek was blooming, so last weekend I went down for a visit. The hundred-degree days of the previous weekend had moderated somewhat--we figured it was safe to take out the kayak to paint the lotus from up close.

It was a beautiful morning, still cool, when we rigged the double kayak up on my car and drove down to Indian Head to the boat ramp at Mattingly Park. I had brought my Guerilla painter box and canvas supply bag to work on a small oil painting, and my camera. Linda took her watercolors, a sketchpad and camera. With all this gear, extra water and our lunches, it was a wee bit crowded in the kayak. We lathered on sunscreen and bug spray, and started paddling with our stuff wedged between our legs.

The tide was high and allowed us to paddle into a shallow inlet to pull up close to the flowers. Wild rice was blooming in the marsh. We tied to a clump of Pickerel weed and proceeded to set up for painting. Once again the knob of my Guerilla box had come off--it must have fallen in the trunk of my car but I hadn't noticed it until it was time to set up. It took some maneuvering to balance the paint box on my thighs and wedge the lid at the bow, thus holding it open. More maneuvers to prop the solvent jar upright by one leg and the brush holder on the other side. At one point a couple of brushes fell overboard, but the handles being wood, they floated and I was able to retrieve them. Ah, the things one endures to paint in nature!

Linda wasn't having such a difficult time: watercolors and paper are much lighter and easier to deal with in the field, though I don't find the finished product as satisfying. It took about two hours to complete my small oil, at which point we were both burnt out and stiff from our cramped quarters. My thighs were dripping with sweat and had the imprint of the rubber feet from the paint box on them. The tide was starting to turn when we pulled out onto the main channel.

It was now time to cool off with an afternoon dip and lunch--we paddled a bit farther to another channel where there is a high gravel mound and pulled the kayak up on the shore. The water felt great, even if the hydrilla growing thickly underneath tickled. There were wild hibiscus plants with white and pink flowers around the shore and a huge roost of swallows on one tree. A pair of ospreys circled overhead. It's hard to believe a pristine marsh like this can be found only thirty miles from the hustle and bustle of downtown Washington, D.C.

All too soon it was time to start back, grungy and tired. Back at the house Patrise was  cooking the baby-back ribs I'd brought for our dinner. We showered and rested a bit and then went to an evening performance of a colonial wedding enactment at National Colonial Farm. We enjoyed a delicious picnic before this fascinating look at what a wedding in the 1750's would have been like, with wonderful period costumes.

Lavender Fields Again

Lavender Fields in Provence, oils on archival linen panel, 12" x 16." Contact artist for price.
SOLD

I sold one of my remaining paintings of the lavender fields of Provence last week, and that made me wish I could go back to France right away, to paint some new ones on location. Since that was not possible--at least not this year--I went back to look at all the old photos from my two trips to the Luberon. Both of those trips (2002 and 2004) took place before I owned a digital camera, so the photos I have are limited in number, and not all are suitable for paintings.

This spot was one of the highlights of our trip, taken one afternoon when we went out painting with our artist friend from Rousillon, Francoise Valenti. The lavender in this field was not quite in full bloom yet, but a little imagination helped. I recall painting a watercolor there which sold very soon after our return.

The challenge here was to capture the spirit of plein air and apply all of the lessons about color to a work created from photos. I think my colors appear realistic, giving a good sense of depth and distance. Provence is such a lovely place... I wish I could paint there every year!

Red-Hot Bouquet

Red-Hot Bouquet, oils on canvas panel, 16" x 12."

Last weekend I went to the Olney Farmer's Market at its new location--Montgomery General Hospital's Thrift Shop--and the market was better than last year. The new location has some trees and grassy areas and there seemed to be more vendors, including a few new artist's booths. It's an improvement over the treeless parking lot of the Town Center where they used to convene.

I stocked up on farm-fresh veggies and fruits including corn. The sunflowers in particular were irresistible--splurging on these three and a stalk of peach-colored lilies, I set up this still-life in the dining room. The red background happens to be a wonderful scarf one of my nieces gave me a few years back, set against my company blue tablecloth.

The painting may be too bold a juxtaposition of colors, too fauvist (I need to start collecting cloths of interesting colors for backdrops, at the moment my stock is very limited), and I may knock back part of the background to a darker, more subdued shade later on. For now I'm enjoying experimenting with wild color, just to see what happens. Is the effect too disturbing, or just exciting enough?

Basignani's Vineyards

Basignani Vineyards, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14." Contact artist for price.

I signed up for the Falls Road Plein Air sponsored by MAPAPA and St. Paul's Schools in suburban Baltimore. The designated painting locations lie along the Falls Road Scenic Byway, an area I am not too familiar with, so I thought to explore it this weekend. Friday was too muggy to make being outdoors bearable, but Saturday, although just as hot, seemed a little less humid--I loaded up my gear and set out in search of a good spot to paint.

There weren't many places to pull off along the road, but just as I was reaching the end of the designated limits, I saw a sign for Basignani Vineyards. I turned into the driveway and followed it up a hill where there was a house surrounded by several out-buildings. One of them was the winery and tasting room. Beyond one could see neatly laid out rows of vines rising over a hill where there were some trees for welcome shade. I walked up to check out the view and yes, it had the makings of a nice composition. There were only three other cars in the lot but no one immediately visible, so I went into the tasting room to ask permission to paint in the vineyards, which the owner granted.

I set up under the shade of a cherry tree--there was a bit of breeze but at four o'clock it was still quite hot. The sky became overcast--I thought I heard the distant rumble of thunder--would I get rained out again? I wasn't going to stop painting unless it became really threatening. After about an hour the clouds passed and the sun came out again. The effects of the light became more interesting as the shadows lengthened, and all that was necessary was to shift their lines in the composition to cover more of the foreground and the rows of vines.

The afternoon brought back pleasant memories of the vineyards on the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary, where four years before I had spent a month as artist-in-residence. These grapevines were not as manicured as those in the vineyards of Provence, where vineyards are small family plots, but a real working vineyard in a surprising spot: Baltimore!

Blue Hydrangeas

Blue Hydrangeas: Homage to Margaret, oils on canvas panel, 12" x 9." Contact artist for price.

Last Sunday was the Fourth of July, and much too hot to be outside for any length of time. I wanted to paint a still life with a red-white-and-blue theme, but all I had on hand were the last of these blue hydrangeas from my garden: a lace-cap variety with deep blue flowers surrounding the foamy centers and an ever-blooming type with the classic light blue clusters.

Blue hydrangeas always bring to mind my mother-in-law Margaret--she used to have many bushes of this variety growing all around the shady yard of her house in DC. These hydrangea flowers vary in color from pink, deep purple to light-blue depending on the PH of the soil--the more acid the soil the bluer. Hers, growing under a blanket of leaves from the huge oak trees, were a lovely shade of sky-blue. She liked to cut the flowers to display in this graceful robin's-egg blue vase, where they made one feel cool in the wilting summer heat.

The yellow tablecloth, brought back from one of my trips in Provence, made a great backdrop for the flowers and vase--the colors just sizzle!

Summer Heat

Summer Heat, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14." Contact artist for price.

We got a short break from the heat last week--all of a sudden the air cleared, and the temperatures and humidity dropped to more pleasant levels. On Saturday morning when I went out, the temperature was beginning to rise again. I decided on Brookside Gardens once more--there in the shady path behind the pond I could paint the same gazebo on the island from a different angle.

At this time of the year, the crape-myrtle with its rose-pink blossoms contrasts nicely with a purple beech and the vegetation in a wide range of greens. I started painting at eleven in the morning and finished around two-- you can almost feel the heat of high noon in this piece.

Fay's Bloomers

Fay's Bloomers, oils on canvas panel, 14" x 11." Contact artist for price.

MAPAPA had announced an invitation to paint during an open house at a private garden in Davidsonville. As a garden lover, this seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me, but the day promised to be another scorcher--better get an early start. There were a few people set up in the driveway when I got there and buckets of tagged plants lined up. I gathered they were volunteers to help with plant sales, and  introduced myself as a MAPAPA member coming to paint.

Fay's Bloomers is designated as a display garden for the American Hemerocallis Society. The garden covers about 1.4 acres and is beautifully landscaped with hundreds of day-lilies of every imaginable variety and color, as well as many other unusual ornamental perennials. Well-placed statues of maidens made nice focal points for the flower beds, with whimsical ornaments like elves, iridescent birdbaths, and garden balls tucked in here and there for fun.

With so much beauty all around it was hard to choose what to paint. Eventually I found a shady spot on one side of the lot where the woods behind made a good backdrop for the riot of color in the flower beds. I wanted to give a sense of the expanse of the garden, so I exaggerated the rise of the slope a bit to make it more dramatic. The painting was finished around noon; I took it back to the car and got my lunch and another bottle of water out. It must have been over a hundred degrees inside the car parked in the sun--both were very warm.

I ate my lunch under an unusual Japanese maple shading the patio--was it "Palmatum Beni Kawa"?-- I forget. Fay and two other volunteers were sitting there and we chatted in between their attentions to the customers.

The heat and humidity were increasing but I wanted to make the most of this lovely garden, so I opted to stay for a second painting in the afternoon. I wanted to focus on just a few flowers, to treat them as a still life. I walked around looking for a variety that appealed to me the most and settled on 'Tom Wise'--one of the gentlemen there told me this was a relatively old variety hybridized in the 1980's.

'Tom Wise' Close Up, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12." Contact artist for price.

Its deep scarlet red overlaid with orange-yellow offered a wonderful opportunity to use my cadmium colors almost straight from the tube--but the plant was in a spot in the merciless sun. I worked as fast as I could, taking frequent breaks in the shade to cool off--the heat was unbearable--and managed to last long enough to come up with this. I left the garden around five, completely exhausted but happy with my day's work.

Old Crownsville Farm

Old Crownsville Farm, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12." Contact artist for price.

For our last class of the session we met at the same farm in Crownsville as the week before. It was a gorgeous June day: not too hot nor humid. We walked around for a bit, once again discussing the finer points of site selection for composition.

Sometimes as artists we can re-arrange the landscape a bit to improve a composition, such as moving a tree from one side to another, raising or lowering the horizon line, or re-arranging the line of a road or hill. But there are views and angles, no matter how interesting, that present problems too difficult for the painter to solve. These are best left alone--the artist can only invent so much, but when we get too far away from what our eyes can verify, our inventions fail to convince.

We picked this particular view because it has all of the elements for a great composition: a nice curving road to lead the eye into the painting, old ramshackle outbuildings in the foreground for a focal point, trees in the middle ground and a bit of distance in the background. We emphasized the distance by exaggerating the color differences between the rear plane and the middle ground, pushing the colors to the violet-blue spectrum.