The WHAL Student/Faculty Exhibition

I hope all of you who are taking my landscape class will submit something to this years WHAL Student/Faculty Exhibition. This is a great opportunity to show your work, meet new people, and to celebrate all of the hard work that you've all put in. I know I'm not always the easiest person to have to work with but I'm only hard at times because it's the only way I know how to show that I care. So grab a piece that you're proud of and bring it down to the club house gallery on the 3rd. See you at the reception!

Dennis Sheehan Painting Demo

Dennis Sheehan. If you even mention tonalist landscapes, especially in regards to current painters, this guy is the man. I absolutely love Dennis' work and the influence definitely shows, maybe a little to much at times, in my work. I feel I was able to learn an awful lot by watching this video and wanted to share it with you. There's a few more of them floating around on YouTube, just type his name in the search box. Enjoy!

Stephen Brown's Landscape

I posted a long story of my relationship to with Stephen on my main Blog which I won't get into here. Here are some landscapes by Stephen Brown. Stephen loved color and his paintings are LOADED with colors. Stephen was able to sneak all kinds of colors into his paintings because of two things:

1. His values are spot on.

2. He "worked" the paint into the surface.

(I can show this in class better than I can explain it here.)

More Works by John Francis Murphy

John Francis Murphy studied with George Inness. He's far lesser known but I think his paintings are just fantastic. I know that the museum in New Britain has one or two that I think are on permanent display, but it has been a nearly a year since I've been there. (It's so close to, I might just go today....anyway.) What I enjoy about the pieces of his that I have seen up close is the quality of paint, and his surfaces.

I saw one fairly small panel of Muphy's, shame on me for not remembering the title, that was dated over a three year time period. I'm assuming this was something that was lying around in his studio that he would work on, then abandon, and return to from time to time. There was no dramatic sunset, there was no "ooohhh aahhh" hook to catch your eye. I didn't even really care to much for the image. What I went "gaga" over was the layers upon layers of paint, the scratching, the removal and addition, the push and pull. The surface contained so much tension I was absolutely captivated.

I think my point here is that paintings speak on different levels. I'm well aware I'm guilty of making a pretty painting or two but I believe as artists we need to strive toward a certain sincerity in our work. I'm not there yet, but I'm trying.

Plein Air Trip to the Florence Griswold Museum

We are going to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme on Saturday, March 20th. I'm going to be there no later than 9:00 am to start painting. Bring everything you'll need to paint but don't pack your studio, let's keep it light. I want you to bring at least two canvasses that are toned and ready to be painted. The museum opens at 10:00am and the cost of admission is $9.oo.

I'm packing my own lunch and I suggest you do the same, I'll have a bottle or two of a Cabernet to share but if you need more or if you don't like red wine... BYOB. :) I want to keep this on the informal side but I would like to do a tour of the museum together at 10:00, followed by a little demo for painting outdoors and then we'll have the rest of the day to paint. This should be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

For directions on how to get to the museum you can click HERE or send me an email.

Some photos from class.

George Inness

We can't talk about this movement without talking about George Inness. His works, especially his late works, are a poetic response to the landscape. These paintings are not about the land being depicted, these are not plein air works. In many of his late works Inness was working solely in the studio. The landscapes became completely imaginary. Inness is using the landscape as a vehicle to depict man and his relationship to the natural world.