Iowa Corn-Golden Treasure

I think corn fields are beautiful and I am always inspired to paint them this time of the year. The above watercolor was inspired by the morning sun shining through the leaves.  Green corn fields topped with a haze of yellow ochre tassels cover the state in late July. I think it is difficult to paint the fields from a distance, but a close up study like this one was fun to do because I could concentrate on the negative spaces. I don’t use white paint, so everything that is white or light colored has been painted around. That lets the light pass through the paint, bounce off the paper back through the color thereby giving watercolor its luminescent quality.

Below is a photo of golden corn kernels making an abstract impression. There is gold in the state of Iowa. 

1000 Paintings

I like to play “what if” games with myself. I spend a lot of time overthinking things. Take those two facts together and that is how I began playing “what if I can only paint 1000 more paintings before I die”. What would I really want to make sure I painted?

So recently I looked through my last ten years of reference photos and started to make lists of things I wanted to paint. I also made a list of subjects I have thought about painting but don’t even have photos of. Then I looked at paintings I have done, whether sold or still “in the collection of the artist” and assessed them. The questions I asked myself were “Do I want to repaint this now that I am better technically able?, “Would this painting inspire me to do a series?”, “Do I love the painting?”, “Should I burn this painting?” and so on.

The questions I did not ask were “Will this sell?” or “If I paint this then what will I do with it?” I guess I’ve come far enough along that road that I trust those questions are in a higher power’s hands. I always keep in mind that God has those things under control, my job is to do the work and recognize the opportunities when they come up and act on them.

An interesting thing came to light for me as I did this evaluation process. On the one hand, were my commission pieces that I work on in the studio for several hours and by definition are sold before I begin. On the other hand, I realized that the rest of my output was being accomplished  in a rather slap dash manner.

I tended to go to plein air with a group to sites that were chosen more for convenience of a group consensus than someplace I was passionate about painting. I would arrive on location, look around and paint what was presented. Now this can be a great creative exercise added to a regular studio painting schedule. I love  that challenge and I love the social aspect of the group, and I will always go to the outings, but on a more restricted basis.  I have decided it is time to really focus on the paintings I have more thoughtfully  chosen to do.

Since then, I think my work has improved and I feel much happier with my progress than I have for some time now and the work has been selling. I am getting old enough to realize that I only have a limited amount of time left (hopefully  long enough to do 1000 + paintings ) but I want to make sure that I am using my time as deliberately as possible.

Foreshadow

In my part of the world we have barns. We also have pole barns and right now we are in the transition time between the two. So many of the old wood structures of late have found their final rest. It seems that, like lightbulbs, they are all going at once to be replaced by the modern metal sheds that meet the needs of today’s crop farmer.

This wonderful barn used to be up the road a ways from me, with the Loess Hills as a backdrop. I put the Turkey Vulture on the peak as a foreshadowing of what fate had in store for this once central part of a farming operation. Even though I had painted this barn as a plein air piece in the past, this watercolor was a studio work. The idea of encroachment of nature, time and age, and our disappearing farm heritage is becoming a central focus of my work in art and photography.

Plein Air Confessions

I have to admit the truth to you. The painting you see in the photograph of my set up is not the finished painting you see above. In fact, it is not even the second painting of the Soldier watertower I did. It is the third.

Now, I was “trained up” as a commercial artist so when I start a painting I feel like I can fix just about anything that goes wrong. I have probably worked on a lot of lost causes that I should have given up on. Any sane artist would have cut their losses on half of the ones I just couldn’t let go. So when I admit I did three paintings to get one finished, it is rare. I am thinking that maybe this is a positive step for me.

The first painting on location, in some ways had good things going for it. Done in the hurry that plein air requires, it had its perspective flaws though, but that was not the reason for the do over. I did something that I really never (or hardly ever anyway) do. I painted the subject first instead of the sky. I wanted to capture the subject because of its obvious complexity and I wanted to capture it in the moment. Once back at my temporary studio, I dutifully masked all those guy wires and completed the watertower. Then I masked everything and expected to whoosh in the sky. But right in the middle of the paper, appearing like a secret message under lemon juice, was a big splotch. It was some sort of previously undetectable flaw in the paper. There was no fixing that.

So round two. Having learned quite a bit about my subject from round one and the photo reference I had before me on the laptop, the drawing and masking went a lot faster. I did the sky first, needless to say.  Then on to the subject, starting with the roof.  I somehow managed to run my sleeve across the wet paint and smear red across the sky. Now, if there is one thing I have learned, it is that there is no coming back in transparent watercolor from recovering a fresh sky after dragging red across it. I cut my losses.

It entered my mind that maybe I wasn’t meant to paint that watertower, but I dismissed the thought because I am stubborn I guess. Round three didn’t happen until I was home. Things didn’t go very smoothly even then, but I did persevere the result was the watercolor above.

I think painting on location brings something to the painting that you don’t get from a photo. For example, the birds flying around and perching on the railing. If I would have just stopped and snapped a photo, I would have missed that.   I also referred to my plein air study as much as the photo when I did the studio piece. I also had the practice of painting it before. Don’t miss out on the experience of plein air. Painting outside is a valuable tool, even if you end up repainting it again. And again.

Retreat to Advance

Last week I went on an art retreat. Away from home and media, I just allowed myself to concentrate on producing art. I wrote the following on Wednesday:

I won’t let myself go home. Not until Friday, anyway. Art retreats are for retreating and making art, and the whole reason I am here is to paint. To paint in a place without the distractions of Facebook and E-mail, of cell phones and gardens, and especially housework and cooking. At least that was the plan in theory.

Go to the farm, stay by myself for the week and paint day and night. Think, plan, journal, read, meditate. This should be plenty to focus on and my productivity should flourish. It has, and I have painted, some good and some not so good. However now is the most dangerous time: three days in. It is the time when I start thinking, “what am I doing? Maybe I should just go home and check on things (I am not so far away that I couldn’t drive home and back).  I am feeling the withdrawal from all the busyness that keeps me from painting, the things that keep me busy but not always so productive. In a place where there is no television to watch and no internet to cruise, I am very noticeably aware of how many times in a moment of boredom or transition I think about checking my Facebook account, or E-mail. After all, I do business through those two venues so I do need to check them, but maybe not several times a day. I discover that when things get hard and the painting or the writing becomes difficult, I want to go find something else easier to do.  At home I am barely aware of the triggers that find me at the fridge, but here I am away from those habits. I am in a new environment and that means out of my routine. When things get hard there is nothing else to do except keep painting, so I keep painting.

That is when I start rebelling. It isn’t that I don’t get painting done at home, because I do, especially before shows or if I’m teaching. But not at the pace I set for myself when I’m doing the retreat. The fact that my time here is limited keeps my hand at the paintbrush and keeps my thoughts very focused on what I will paint today, what I plan to paint tomorrow, and the day after that. It is the only thing I have on my calendar. I left my ‘to do’ list at home where it should be. It reminds me of an exercise I used to give one of my photography classes (back in the day of film). They were to take 36 pictures of an apple tree. This forced them to look beyond the first and easiest shot, and by the end of the roll, the pictures starting getting much more creative. That is what I hope to do here. I hope to push past the obvious paintings to something else more creative but I have to paint my way there and to do that I have to stay and keep painting. I will stay until Friday.The white shed is a plein air piece I did on Retreat and the cedar grove is a studio piece I completed over the weekend started on location there. I was able to complete 5 paintings and got good starts on 4 others. I would call that an advance.

Poppies Trump All

“Poppies are my favorite flowers,” said the lion in the play the Wizard of Oz and I’d have to say mine too. Just like a cardinal draws the eye, the poppy lights up the garden. No wonder many Chinese lanterns mimic the poppy. They are so glorious, yet so fleeting. Poppy #1 and Poppy #2. Watercolor on YUPO paper

In painting, it has been said that value does all the work and color gets all the credit, and for the most part I believe that is true with the exception of the bright reds and oranges where color takes more than its share of credit. The strong contrast that value offers registers with the viewer and helps us understand what we are looking at, it distinguishes subject from background, important from less important. Our brains want to see something they understand and recognize. Contrasts of light and dark do this. Forming a good design of values underpins anything else you might do in the painting. Often we painters will make a value study or take a painting and Photoshop the color away to get an idea of how we are doing with values. This is all well and fine, and things can look really great until you throw in red and then it can knock the value study off the charts. It is an outlier. It doesn’t play by the rules in my opinion. It takes way more of the spotlight than its small dab of actual space in reality should account for.

I have iris, roses, daisies, anemone, violas, and rogue dames rockets, covering my side yard. I have one poppy. Just one. And what does the eye go straight for? The poppy. It takes all the attention in that whole garden for the 4 or 5 short days it unfolds those delicate bombshell petals no matter how much else is going on.

In a painting, small amounts of red and orange can, like hot pepper, light up your work just like that. I think every garden should have at least one poppy and every painting should have a dash of red or orange.

At the End of a Country Road

As a watercolor artist I have painted  on location for about 12 years with a group of plein air painters. There is a never ending source of subject matter out there and sometimes it is hard to find your painting in the mass of chaos.  Most of the time when I am confronted by the landscape, I  choose to paint something with structure.  I love old barns, corn cribs, churches, log cabins and all the rusty gold that goes with them. I have always felt more at home with simple ways of life. These ways of life, our Midwestern pioneer heritage is disappearing. Lately I’ve noticed several barns that have given up the ghost and lay in heaps waiting to be repurposed or bulldozed into the ground. I wonder if it is because they were all built about the same time and all go at the same time, much like the light bulbs that all burn out at once.

The watercolor painting of the old barn above is  in the Loess Hills not too far from where I live. The watercolor painting of the church is in the country near Soldier, Iowa. Both paintings were started on location.  I was able to complete the drawing and get some of the washes laid in. I then completed them at home where I could refer to photographs for detail. 

Welcome to my Blog-“Close to Home”

I’m excited to begin my blogging journey here so I can  share  my love of my home, my garden and the beauty that is Southwest Iowa’s Loess Hills and Missouri River Valley through my artwork, journaling and photography.  I am a full time artist living in the small “town” of California Junction, Iowa. It is almost 4 blocks x 4 blocks large, situated next to  railroad tracks and not too far from DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge. The seasons, wildlife, agriculture, trains,  gardening and of course, painting will be among my many creative pursuits that find their way into my daily life and into these future pages.

To view my artwork, see my webpage: http://www.pamcates.com