I painted these two loons because loons have been on my radar. Haven't yet seen them this Spring. I do data entry for a Loon Survey and when I read the data this image pop into my head-here is the oil. The pair is obscure, elusive, together and drifting. They are grounded in the icy water, which I see as the ice recedes on Vermont ponds.

Cow Canyon Trading Post, in Bluff Utah, handles my oil paintings and of course, I have to put it in paint. I work with mountain ranges and so this image with lots of objects instead of space challenges me to keep them in scale to each other. In the mountain ranges its more important to show what mountain is in front so they are not linear, but have form. Composition is what tells your story and therefore frustrates painters when it doesn't represent what they saw. Re-scale your objects or mountains. Get it right!

Here is the Howe Covered Bridge in oil paint on a late winter day. I was inspired by a great oil painter, Aldo Hibbard from the 1920's. He was a Vermont painter and excellent at capturing the very low light which occurs all year in Vermont! He allowed objects to have similar values, but different colors and this way his "edges" are sublime and so subtle.
Look at the blue house and the tree at its left side, or
the tree and the bridge.

Here is a painting that is all about the paint. And color? Its about the complimentary colors. Twenty-five percent warm colors and seventy-five percent cool colors! Complimentary colors are any conbination of "blues and ochres." If the colors feel good they are complimentary. They may not be exactly across from each on the color wheel, but one hue and its complimentary neutral! 

Come join the fun in Burlington, VT at UVM OLLI, Saturday, Mar. 16th. I will teach two classes-take both! In the morning we will Paint Trees with Beautiful Brushstrokes and in the afternoon we will Paint Dark Rich Colors.
This Ponderosa Pine stood in Yosemite. I saw it from the car and "memorized" its shape, color, and value changes. When I had time to paint it, I used the best brushstrokes to shape and add color to a tree on paper. Then I quit and let the painting rest. It was only later that I realized I was finished. Be sure to look at each painting as a finished painting, not an endless project!

On my way to Pt Reyes and a new class on Saturday, Feb 23rd: California Impressionism.
Here is an oil that follows in this tradition. It has strong dark and light values but is colorful, with warms and cools, for maximum "light". American painters in the 1920's used this method and only today do we appreciate their efforts. Their paintings are powerful.

I will travel to Pt Reyes next week and will teach a class-join in and learn about California painters who lived for beauty and truth in paint and were very successful! I put distance, with warm and cool colors into my landscape to replicate the breadth of scenes that blow our socks off.