Borrowed Freedom
I am very honored and happy that my painting “Borrowed Freedom, Yosemite”, was selected for this year’s Annual International Exhibition of the American Watercolor Society in New York City
The Exhibition will be held April 6-25, 2015 at the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
On my recent trip to New York I took the time to paint as much as possible, but focusing only on quick sketches that capture the mood.
Once I had the essence of the scene in front of me, I would stop and move on. If I am there for painting alone with nothing else planned, I will attempt a ‘real’ painting, not just sketches. If I am pressed for time and can’t spend an hour or more on location, sketches are the way to go.
This decision is best made before the trip. For instance, if traveling with non painters or for other reasons than painting alone, I would pack differently than for a painting trip. For the trip to NY I would squeeze paints and just bring the palette, no paints! That would yield approx 3 to 4 small paintings/ sketches, no more. I knew I wouldn’t have time to do more anyways, so no need to bring all this extra weight!
As I said before, weight is a huge issue when painting plein air. It sounds really good when a manufacturers tells you their easel weighs less than 4 pounds. Those four pounds feel like lead after walking around a city center for two kilometers.
Just like in watercolor painting itself, when it comes to weight, less is more!
Last week I was fortunate enough to be voted into signature status with this, the most prestigious watercolor society in this country. Not only that, my painting, After the Ride, won the High Winds Medal award and also had a red dot on it when I walked into the exhibition! Life is good.
I have made many new friends during this trip and I also painted outside a bit. Below are some impressions in no particular order:
I am honored and happy to report that my painting ‘After the ride’, was chosen for this year’s exhibition of the AWS in New York City. My work has made it into this show three times in three years, that means I am being voted into signature status this year! An incredible achievement as this is the most prestigious watercolor society in the United States. It is a tough show to make it in! I feel so fortunate!
Thank you for everyone who’s reading this blog, thank you for your support over the years! This is a big milestone for me.
One of the pleasures as a volunteer at the National Watercolor Society is to be exposed to all kinds of watermedia art and to see lots of watercolor paintings in real life. While I have learned a great deal just by studying other artist’s works, there were also pretty sobering moments. For instance, it is disturbing to see how many artist’s ‘enhance’ their artwork with photo-manipulating software on their computer and their piece looks only half as good when you see it in real life! That, however is a topic for another post. Or not.
Composition: One of the most important aspects of a picture. There was a time when I utterly underestimated how important it actually is! Luckily, there were people who helped me along. My past teachers of course, but also a lot of studying on my own. A couple years ago I started collecting the catalogs of all NWS exhibitions since 1950 something and whenever I have spare time, I always sit down and analyse artwork of past shows. Surprising how much one can learn doing this!
I also have very good books on the subject matter. One of them by the late Jan Herring, given to me by her wonderful daughter Helen during a workshop. I think it’s out of print, the book title is ‘The painters composition handbook’. Jan talks about letters of the alphabet that can be used as a composition tool by placing them in your work as guidelines for major shapes. Not every letter works, but A, C, H, L, X, Z for instance all work. Then there are triangles, cruciform and other shapes.
Nowadays, I always try to at least apply some of these helpers to my work. Then I let it sit for a bit and double check if everything works before picking up a paintbrush.
These two paintings are almost identical in composition. The big difference is, of course, the light situation. It can’t be any more different, really! Can you see the triangle that I arranged the shapes in this one? To illustrate my point, I drew it on. It made a big difference in this piece. In fact, all the great techniques and beautiful washes etc. are all worthless if the compo is no good!
One last tip: Study great abstract artists like Elaine Daily Birnbaum and others and you’d be surprised to see how much you can learn from them, even if you’re a ‘representational artist’, like myself! I always say that my representational art is 80% abstract anyway!
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