Thinking and Working Warm

"Wooded Lane, No.3"

oil painting - © Bruce A. Morrison 

My first post of 2018...where does time go?  A perpetual question I know I'll have on my mind until my last breath...

It's been drier than usual and fairly cold the last couple weeks, but all-in-all not really so bad for winter here...oops should not say this out loud!  I have been trying to start work once again in the studio, I guess you could say I've been goofing off - too many things to distract me, but I have been earnestly trying to decide where to begin and what to start.

I have a yet "unofficial" solo exhibit coming up in 2019...to make this work I will need to be productive this year and into the next!  I say unofficial because the invitation was given me and a date has yet to be set or even officially agreed upon. But right now I am proceeding with beginning the process that this requires.  I last had two solo exhibits in 2012 so haven't been pressed with this responsibility for a while.

I began my work toward this process with the above oil painting, still drying on the easel as I write.  "Wooded Lane, No.3" is a small oil landscape painting of a location about 10 miles south of us, as the crow flies.  It is the same location I painted at for a plein air show last August.  This was done from some photo studies I took at that time.  

My wife asked me a very pertinent question when I talked of posting the image on social media, one I had already contemplated.  That was "Should you be showing your work before your solo exhibit?"  Good question and as I mentioned, given a good deal of thought.

I guess I replied something like this (don't remember my exact response) - "If I show no work on social media for the next 18 months it would be like dropping out of art...if I am an artist, I think I need people to know I am still working; although I am taking an 18 month hiatus I shouldn't give former collectors and clients (and  friends) the idea I have "quit" working all together.  I really feel that once all the work I endeavor to produce over the next 18 months hangs together in a gallery/museum setting, the work should take on a new life.  Besides - seeing work "in person and in the flesh" is much more interesting than the paintings, drawings and photographs "teased out" online over the next year and a half!"

Also I need to let people know that these works are for sale, as always...I don't collect my work, I do it because this is my profession.  But obviously things have to be worked out in sales of this painting or any other works produced for an exhibit 18 months from now - so please do not hesitate to express your interest in any artwork I am creating at this time and into the future!

I hope you enjoy seeing what I'm up to...that means the world to me!  Please stop back and visit this blog when you have a moment, and better yet - don't ever hesitate to visit the studio and check in on me!  I love to visit with folks who soon become my friends, its a blessing.

I hope this painting helps warms you now in mid January!!!  Take Care.

 

Racing Summer

"Morning Glow" - © Bruce A. Morrison

oil painting - 9X12"

(click on image for a larger view)

Not only have I been behind on my blogs, but in keeping up with this summer as well!  I have been working in the studio and out trekking the valley below much of the past 3 weeks since my last entry...and racing summer!!!  It is tough staying at task; too many things are tugging at my sleeve nearly every minute of the day.  The sky is drop dead amazing as I type...should I drop what I'm doing and run outside with the cameras??!  Its been that kind of a summer; so much going on and too many distractions otherwise.

The painting featured above was finished a couple hours ago.  It is not a large painting but it required every ounce of my attention. It is, once again, a painting of my favorite little prairie stream Waterman Creek.  But, as I've insisted many times before, it could most certainly be just about any little creek in the area.  This particular painting depicts a walk I took along the creek several weeks ago - this was before this summer's drought brought the little creek down to a small trickle.

I walked the Waterman about a week ago...a different piece than I had in the past, and was hard pressed to come up with even a photograph.  That mile section of the stream was so low that I almost could have walked the whole thing in slip-on rubbers and not have even gotten my socks wet!  That's "Low" for around here!  This is a summer I don't think many of us will miss - I just hope it doesn't revisit next year!!!

Summer paintings can be very difficult.  About 30 years ago I heard one painter I admired very much, say how summer "greens" were the nemesis of many a landscapist.  Summer is a season of green here, and most everywhere...green has to be tamed, or at least work with you, and that's not usually the easiest task.  

This summer morning had an impressive "glow" to it and I wanted to maintain that impression of this early hour walk down the creek. I used the creek itself as the "threshold" to bring the viewer into the scene.  I find reflections in the water as being darker than the place it reflects...that does help in anchoring a composition like this.  The small rapids breaks up the foreground some, helping keep things more interesting, and the darker shrubs in the left middle ground help keep the viewer's eyes from simply straying off the edge of the image.  The path of the composition is basically an oval or circle...about the most simple design possible in a landscape I think...just not always easy to carry out.

Breaking up the middle ground and background with a dirt embankment made it possible, in my mind, to relieve the potential monotony of the palette of greens.  A leaning toward the raw sienna in the exposed dirt created a "near" complimentary relief as well.

I hope you enjoy this painting...that the summer has been kind to you.  My heart goes out to everyone that has been racing summer, particularly if you haven't been exactly winning the race!

Nearly September

 "Nearly September"

8X6" oil on mounted canvas
© Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

If  you subscribe to this blog, the title will seem "late"...you'll likely receive it "in" September!!  The last hours of August are upon us and we sit and wonder when time will slow...but it was fun while it lasted (I think) and the mosquitoes are getting closer to being zapped away by the eventual first hard frost!  Ya, OK I'm getting too far ahead of myself!  Let's enjoy September now and not look too far ahead.

The small plein air painting I'm posting was done several days back; I'm even late posting it. It was named appropriately (at the time) "Nearly September".  This was one of the last summer skies we had in August, and the goldenrods and sunflowers were beginning to overtake the prairie, bringing the rust and yellow hues of late summer to the grasses of native pasture ground.

I'm very far behind on everything, in the studio and in the field.  I actually missed the peak on our own summer liatris bloom here.  That's just sad!  But we gotta do what we gotta do and that's that.  More framing and printing ahead through September to reach the Artisans Road Trip deadline.  Looking forward to a very nice autumn ahead!  Hope to see you here at the studio in a few weeks!