In the San Francisco Bay Area lightning storms are very infrequent. Good thing, because with climate change those thunderstorms are a major cause of wildfires every year across the Western US, now adding Canada, Hawaii, and even Europe.
Though spectacular to watch when safely sheltered, nobody wants to be out in one in the open - far too dangerous. There we were in between rare storms out in the Wavecrest Open Space District in Half Moon Bay one day, when a freak lightning squall swept over us rapidly from the Ocean. Standing out in an open field as the tallest thing around, especially with metal easels, is crazy hazardous, so we all hightailed it to our cars. I had started a painting in Nupastels, which are less messy to use inside a car, so I finished it that way. The sketchy marks lent themselves to the electricity we felt in the air. See if you get that feeling too.
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Often when out with my plein air group, having finished a painting, I'll have extra time on my hands. That's when I'm partial to doing a "quickie" or experimenting. After all, if artists only worked on masterpieces, nothing would get done, because they wouldn't be out learning anything new.
Up in the hills of La Honda, I had less than half an hour to lunch time. I decided to let loose and do things I almost NEVER do. I broke out some dried up gouache I rarely use, a big mop brush I have rarely ever used, and decided to paint something I almost never do, an animal. Having seen a herd earlier that day that was now gone, it would have to be from memory this time, something I haven't done in a long time. So I splashed around some paint, which is not the way I normally work, and lo and behold I captured something of the famous "Purple Cow" of childhood poetry. "I never saw a purple cow. "I never hope to see one. "But I can tell you, anyhow, "I'd rather see than be one." Moooooooooo But not forever! Just one more week of my two paintings hanging in the Coastal Art League's juried annual Plein Air Show in Half Moon Bay, titled "Seasons". Ends on August 28th, so this is your last chance.
The two of mine that the jurors chose both feel soft and sweet to me. Not just because they're soft pastels. Rather because the emotion of joy in the coming of Spring is what I felt and feel I captured. They're moving but restful. Here they are for your enjoyment after the show ends. Fortunately, that enjoyment of a moment and a feeling captured in a painting never ends. God, how everyone loved that box of Crayolas the first day of school!
The kid with the 84 colors was top of the heap, but however many filled your little box, each one was a treasure. The colors were a doorway to delight. You could forgive the pen for those nasty cursive lessons, as long as you had your true colors in their jaunty cardboard case. Today's fine art "crayons" might feel the same at first, but they are light years ahead. "Trees Like Dragons" was painted - yes painted - with Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons. They scribble on like Crayola's richer cousins, but once you use some H2O, they spill over into vibrant watercolor effects. And, puff, a tree turns magically into a dragon. By the way, can you see the dragon? There's a certain quality of daylight inherent in every season of the year, indeed, to almost every month. You know it when you see it and poets have lavished volumes on this. Painters are highly sensitive to these changes, of course. We write with light.
Summer is a very special time of year for me, having grown up in a country seasonal resort town. We measured the passage of that brief period each year in emotional statements: "here!", "half gone", "almost over". Half gone was the beginning of August (life was nailed to our school year, not the Gregorian calendar.) In the day's heat I was brought back sharply to those memories when painting one early August morning. You can feel the heat in the bright warm colors radiating off the dry grasses in this painting. And you can sense the summertime "clock" at high noon marking the transition. My summer was half gone, but I "...sang in my chains like the sea," to quote Dylan Thomas. |