Wildflowers, creeks, & the usual suspects

I've been able to take advantage of some of the better weather, as it has been landing on the weekends. 2 weeks ago I went up to Table Mountain to paint with Ernesto Nemesio and Sharon Calahan. It is an eroding mesa of lava above the town of Oroville. There were a lot of wildflowers strewn across the gently sloping plateau. Poppies seemed to prefer the southern slopes and hovered near rocks. Lupine stuck to the northern slopes, and a yellow flower that was quite small but made huge swaths of color, surrounded lava outcroppings and ran like rivers across some areas. We painted from mid morning until sundown.
Here's 3 pieces:


Mid-morning, looking south. I wandered around a long time before picking this. Its one thing to go look at wildflowers, another to figure how to compose an image with them. By looking up a small slope I could get an oblique angle to the ground to condense the colors more. Most of my wandering about was trying to find other elements that would line up with a good view of the flowers. I found some tree shapes I liked that added depth and scale, and the foreground rocky patch held some interest.


Late afternoon poppies nestling near a small bluff. I painted a couple of rocky views like this.


End of the day. More rivers of color, everything getting hit by warm light.

It was a long day, and a 3 hour drive back to the bay area, but worth it. Nice to be out painting again.

This last weekend Ernesto and I drove down to Pinnacles to try our luck with the wildflowers again. Different terrain and we mainly observed clumps of poppies in a rocky floodplain on the east side. Near the end of the day we drove up to one of the trailheads, and hiked up about a mile or so and painted a few quick views before sunset.


Chalone Creek runs across a rocky plain with clumps of poppies scattered about. I spent a long time on this, and really struggled to get the main masses corrected and refined enough to make sense, and it is still not as 'relaxed' as I would wish. I think the water is too broken up, for one thing. It was much more of a drawing and composition problem than I figured on. Needs work!


After taking a break in the shade, I tried painting what looked like a clump of rosemary growing in the middle of the extremely shallow creek. I was attracted to some of the twig arcs, the trapped shadows, the colors of the water reflecting the sky, and the rich ochre of the creek bottom. Perhaps not enough to hang a painting on, but sometimes I'll just see if I can make sense of the 'triggers' that compel me.


At the end of the day, after hiking up the trail a ways, and realizing we were losing all our light, we finally had to pick something and get to work. These last two were quickies, which was a relief after banging on the creek painting for several hours.


All the foreground light was gone, but the next range of hills remained in light for awhile. This was about a half hour's work or less. Fun to paint with no expectations after 'warming up' all day.

Lastly, here's a few 'usual suspects' painted on the route to work, a eucalyptus trunk in front of a thicket of foliage that had some interesting color on the far side of a shadowed space, and a view of the steep slopes on the east side of the Caldecott tunnel at the end of the day.

Group show opening in San Francisco

The group exhibit of 4 Pixar artists that I've been a part of at the Holton Frame Studio is traveling across the bay and will be opening at the Northpoint Gallery in San Francisco this Wednesday night. As the show has sold well, we've all had to contribute a few more pieces for the new venue. Here's a work that I painted last fall off the side of Redwood Rd., looking into a tangled mass of bay laurel, eucalyptus, blackberry vines, as well as the trickling headwaters of Redwood Creek.

Watershed
8.25 x 12.25
Pastel on Canson Paper

It is interesting to have contemporary work by living artists who paint landscapes hanging in a room surrounded by 19th century work of the same subject. We are from different centuries and spheres of influence, yet certain aspects of nature and light are constants in both. I'm tempted to say the 'epic vision' has been replaced with a more personal viewpoint, but that is not entirely true. One aspect one can observe from local landscapes of the past is the immense amount of growth and development around the bay, well exemplified by a painting by Thomas Ross of Fort Point and the Marin Headlands, painted in the 1870's, some 60 years before the Golden Gate Bridge was completed. It is comforting to see that the Headlands remain entirely recognizable 130 years later.



For a more intimate viewpoint from the past, there's one beautiful example by Jules Tavernier shown below:


The opening reception is from 5-7 this Wednesday evening, and I believe all the 'living' artists, Sharon Calahan, Ernesto Nemesio, Dice Tsutsumiand myself will be there. Perhaps the rest will be there in spirit! Hope to see some familiar faces.