Wednesday, Oct 20

It's hard not to be seduced by the drama of nature. I'm stuck on that today.

Or then I'm disappointed by the lack of drama when I need it.

A day of looking, and some drawing....

Notes, October 19

I had a great couple of hours of drawing time yesterday afternoon, the light was so dramatic. I was drawing in a very familiar location, but I very much tried to just respond to what I was looking at, rather than make it conform to some pre-conceived notion I might have of what the drawing should look like. I still think I was holding on to expectations a bit, but it will take practice.
I'm thinking about roadways, pathways, driving in a car, stuff moving into the distance and the distance coming at me. Red and green and orange, about drawing marks…how might I start to better translate some of the drawing marks, the excavating that happens, into my paintings?

Painting notes | October 18
I have been meaning to write more about my painting/process/thoughts, and figured that maybe by posting to my blog, I'd have more motivation to keep it going. Here's what I'm thinking about today, really me talking to myself, but then again not...

These ideas keep popping to the surface: layers, excavation, revealing secrets, but also to hide information. To make it more work to get at the heart of the matter, less obvious, to obscure, be elusive. Sometimes I feel that my paintings have become too obvious. And the landscape isn't obvious. Or when it is, it can hardly be painted. A sunset. Flaming fall color... a rainbow. Right, not so much.... It's the subtle that is really fabulous. Might be that summer is past and that landscape can be over the top in as far as color and just general brilliance goes. I'm ready for the fall color to move on.....

I need to both engage my eye and imagination, but also my hand. Brain, heart, hand? Can i abstract paintings from the plein air paintings/sketches? There are definitely recurring elements in the paintings to consider: horizontal bands. treelike in distance. sky. roads/pathways. clouds.

Drawing: must draw today. Must draw every day. Richard Serra said so.