Travel day to Switzerland

We had another unbelievable bus trip today, we sat in the front row with all the comforts of home and a bird's eye view. Everyone has single rooms here at Hotel Lowen in Wattwil (Pronounced Vhat Veal). We drove over two passes similar to the Dolomites, passing through Liechtenstein making this a 5-country trip.
I filled my iPad's capacity to download photos, so will post photos later.

Free day, getting ready to leave Austria

A wonderful relaxing day with everyone saying goodbye, some heading to U.S. and others to Switzerland. Carol and Barbara flew off the mountain.

At the farm--Last painting day

With the road cleared from the washout and being a warm and sunny day, it was a gorgeous day of painting at the farm of our very gracious hosts Maria and Hans Rogen and their very industrious son, Gerhardt, and his wife, Sandra. The countryside and view of the mountains and glacier from the farm were very inspirational, and evidencing the life on the farm with a peek into their daily lives, extended family, little ones, sheep being herded and cattle escaping their fields, made for an incredibly peaceful and rewarding day. A hardy lunch of barley soup and variety of homemade breads, wines and beers, served on the back of a wagon and cake and coffee later on kept us well fueled. The granddad lead the little ones up the field with a tarp and cushion and RAN down dragging the SLEIGH behind much to the delight of the children. Carol went hiking and tried out the new poles. The exhibition of everyone's masterpieces occurred during dinner and had our final gourmet meal with everyone in attendance. A few left today and tomorrow one part leaves for the U.S. and the other for Switzerland.

Last Austria travel day

It was a home run today with three great spots--an early Austrian farm museum, a shopping spot, and a spectacular castle. The farm museum was built with authentic buildings moved to this spot and reconstructed. The oldest was from the early 1400s. Our guide was very informative. The old city of Rottenburg was very pretty and I got a lot of good deals. Our lunch was very good as well. Then we went to Tratzberg Castle, up a high hill by train. We had a good audio headset-guide through the nicest castle on the trip. It is hard to qualify this comment as they are all excellent in their own way.

Painting day confusion

We were all set, come hell or high water, to travel to the farm to paint--so there was a land slide that blocked the road! Margaret did a demo at the hotel for the group while we waited to head if the road was clear (no pun). After several alternatives were investigated, none of which appealed to me, I hit the trail again, and it felt good immediately when we started out to climb another waterfall. I also got an hour of rest, a first for the trip, before going to dinner. After dinner we were serenaded by the Stubaier Freitagsmusig 3-piece band. Many painters painted on the deck or in the dining room.

Top of the Dolomites-Italy

Driving to Pietra Alba Monastery in St. Petersburg, we traveled on the new Brenner Pass and on the old one on the return trip. The high point (at about 10,000 ft) was on the Rosengarten in the Dolomite Range. A shopping stop at the quaint old town of Stertzing rounded out the day. 10 1/2 hours.

Well, another non-painting painting day.

WIth the low lying cloud cover, our visit to the farm was postponed, and I decided again to join the non-painters and we took the local bus to the end of the valley and first hiked up a waterfall area (2 hours straight up--mud and rocks) then went to the Stubaier Gletscher (a glacier)--taking the cable cars to the Top of the Tyrol (10,560 ft.) We had a very full day.

Castle, Oberammergau, church

We spent a lot of time in the bus but went to very nice places and went winding through forests very high above valleys far below. The sides of the road went straight down. More pics later.

Day 7, Hiking and photos

This was really a painting day but after doing some drawing Carol and I headed up the mountain across from our hotel. The views were outrageous. The night before we attended a local orchestra.

Austria, day 5, Saltzburg

Holensalzburg Fortress and sightseeing and shopping in the old section of town were today's activities along with 6 hours in the bus seeing outrageous scenery. This was the home town Mozart. The weather system moving through has provided good opportunities to study clouds and that effect on high mountains. Last night after I posted we went to a performance by the local orchestra. Tomorrow is another painting day and we are headed to a farm that overlooks this valley.

Austria, day 4, painting day

After breakfast I did some drawing then Carol and I went hiking. It was a rainy day and had lots clouds hanging on the mountains. We are catching up with the jet lag.

Day trip to Innsbrook

We visited Ambras Castle that was excellently restored and had what may have been the world's first art museum. Then we had a shopping spree in the 15th century section of town/Innsbrook.

Sweet sweet sleep

After missing two nights sleep tonight will be so nice.  We arrived today into Munich and had a three-hour bus trip to arrive here at Hotel Roger, Stubitail Valley near Innsbrook. I'll write tomorrow.

Blogging from Europe

I'll be leaving soon for Austria and Switzerland with a one-day in Venice.  I am pretty excited and want to try to blog from my iPad so I'm trying to figure out how to attach photos to the blog, but I'm fairly certain that blogging text will be straight forward.  Maybe I'll stop in at the Apple Store and see if they can help me.

Snow in Summer

Diptych 18x24" original oil on canvas, Bear Hill Road Series,
Cutter House Show, Arlington MA, November 2012

Maybe painting snow on a hot day helps.  This view of Bear Hill Road last winter was after our biggest snowfall, maybe 4 inches--very unusual for us up here in New England to get so little.  This diptych, consisting of two stretched canvas panels 18x24" each, tries to portray late afternoon on a cold cloudy day.  My favorite scraggly trees are in the far distance and there is a slight indication of the setting sun on the horizon.  I'm still working on the snow in the foreground.
I didn't post the picture I last talked about with the dual focal point predicament because I've worked on it since I took the last photo and need to take another one to post.

Oh gosh, now gouache

Whew....it's been a while since I posted, sorry.  I have been busy painting but nothing is finished yet.  I'm having a little dual-focal point problem.  I'll go into that tomorrow and post a photo.  I really need HELP.

In the meantime, I'm going on a trip and thought that doing sketches with gouache might be a nice way to get the gist of things, a quick pencil or pen sketch and add a little color.  A couple of days ago I went to AWS and loaded up on gouache and various papers.  I bought Winsor Newton and read the detailed information on this medium.  I read articles and watched videos on-line.  Now I'm ready to go on my maiden cruise into the land of painting with gouache.  If you have some experience with this, be sure to pass it on to me. (I'm editing this a few days later: I tried it and so far I love it!  The brush moves smoothly and quickly over the surface.  I've tried several brushes and papers, and a acrylic medium as well.) 

Yesterday I went to see the totally fantastic show at NSAA Gloucester, MA to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of its founding.  There are many wonderful paintings and sculptures of the original founding members on display as well as many works of other famous members who came along shortly after.
I hope to be able to furnish a better link regarding this show soon.  NSAA web link.  It looks like the Facebook page is now their new "go to" page for information but it's not there either.

There was a mesmerizing painting by one of the original members in gouache that I would like to post here for you to see.  I'll find it.  Keep checking.

  

Off and running again

Bought and installed new lighting system using the 5000 kelvin 84 on the index tubes suspended about 2 feet out from above my 4x8' easel.  The test was that I put one of those big paintings I was so disappointed with on the easel and it looked like it did when I brought it downstairs, so now, the way I look at it, the lighting conditions under which I paint will allow the painting to look correct in other lighting.  If not, I'll just have to get other bulbs.  They make 6500 kelvin bulbs but they definitely have a blue cast.  I think I'll start on a new painting and see how it goes.

Felt like disaster

After working on two large paintings for about a month now, I brought them downstairs and was shocked to see that the colors WERE GONE.  All the subtle colors were colorless.  This is the result of the wrong studio lighting.  I have been painting for quite a long time with these lights and why didn't I notice this before?  There was a time when I didn't think lighting was all that important, then I became convinced that daylight effect was the correct lighting and set up my studio to that end using blue gels over my lights recommended by Qiang Huang.  Last night at a painting demo in Rockport by Stapleton Kearns, he mentioned his preferred lighting setup.  After much research today, I'm off to Home Depot to see what I can find.  This information looks very useful:  lighting information.  I'll be sure to let you know after I revise my lighting situation.

Trip to Currier in Manchester NH

Karen, Lynn and I had a very nice trip to see the Currier Museum on Wednesday.  We were excited to see the work of Eric Aho.  I was unaware of his work before this and now I'm definitely a fan.


Besides working on class materials to stay one step ahead of my private art lesson student, I've been painting large paintings for an upcoming show.  There are a couple of other shows coming up where I will submit one or two paintings.  The Newburyport Art Association's Annual Auction was a big success this year, a sell-out!

I find that I am enjoying teaching painting very much, as I thought I would.  I'm also getting better organized with information for my class, which will probably continue to accumulate as time goes on, and this will be helpful for my research as well for when I'm preparing to work on a new painting.

Best in Show!

Newburyport Art Association, 2012

Spring Members Open Show... Best in Show award goes to.....

What a surprise, it feels good!

Here it is...

This triptych of 18x18" panels with thin maple framing is an original oil on stretched canvas and is part of a series I'm working on called Bear Hill Road.  There will be 4 very large canvases and several medium-sized canvases and so far 10 small paintings of this wonderful area here in Merrimac MA where I walk in the mornings.  There will be a variety of paintings of all seasons of the year.

There is another painting of this scene that is 12x36" stretched canvas with a gold plein air frame.

2 more for Sage Gallery

5x7" oil on board

8x8" oil on stretched canvas

These two small original oil paintings will be added to many others I have hanging at the Sage Gallery in Haverhill, MA.  "Rocks are hard", a famous artist once said so I've been working on painting rocks.  I don't have many more small paintings to do for the "Bear Hill Series" I'm working on for November at the Cutter House in Arlington, MA.  The small ones will accompany larger ones, that at this time in the planning stage will be big sky paintings.  I'm starting one of those today--it's on the easel ready to go.

Refusnicks

11x14" oil on canvas "Where the Woodbine Twineth"

9x12" oil on canvas "The Old Boatyard"

I overcame one hurdle trying to enter the NAA Regional Show which is taking the photo of the paintings with the correct lighting and camera settings and  formatting the jpg correctly and doing the on-line entry form.  Unfortunately, I didn't get in. 

Gerhard Richter Film at MFA

One of the world's greatest living painters, the 79-year-old German artist has spent over half a century painting all kinds of experimental work.  I had a fly-on-the-wall perspective of his daily activities and painting sessions.  It was truly inspiring to watch him create very large-scale abstract canvases with oil paint and various large brushes and other things like squeegees, layer after layer, creating and deconstructing, seeing how he planned his shows, etc.  His oil paint comes in gallon and 2 gallon containers.Gerhard Richter paintings

My friend, Ed Lemay, and I attended the last showing of this film at MFA at noon today, a great piece of luck, since the second showing on the schedule was canceled.

Small ones for Bear Hill Road series

I'm painting some paintings that will go with my larger works for the Bear Hill Road series that I am presenting next November in Arlington MA at the Cutter House.  In the meantime, these small ones will be on exhibit and available for purchase at The Sage Art Gallery in Haverhill Ma until the end of June.

These were done in the past couple of days. 

1.  Rock on the corner of BHR and West Shore Road.
2.  Small red barn overlooking cornfield.
3.  Swing on old apple tree.
4.  Tree house overlooking large open field.
5.  Contemporary version of wheelbarrow and old barn.

The Crooked Shed

The Crooked Shed 6x6" stretched canvas original oil

p.s.  Watch out for Leprecons.

I need to have some paintings for the Sage Gallery in Haverhill for the next three-month exhibit and my plan for the Bear Hill Road Series is to have some  large ones (18" and up), some triptychs and diptychs (also large), and several small ones.  So I'm doing the small ones in time for this Sage Exhibit.

Bear Hill Road is a rural road that travels from 110 in Merrimac MA to Newton NH.