I’m very excited to be included in a new exhibition called “IMPRESSIONS: Paintings by the artists of Plein Air Austin”, happening at The Hive in Bee Caves, TX. This show celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Impressionist painters. If you don’t know much about the Impressionists, even if you don’t like the style (weirdo!), the history is fascinating.
In short, the movement, as it were, was actually facilitated by an American painter, John Rand, who in 1841 invented… wait for it… paint in a tube! Over the following years, some artists started to take their hobby outdoors (thanks to their tubes of paint) and began capturing the scenes of the world around them, a major break from compositional structures of the time, and emphasizing light and color to give a sense of place.
The debut party for the Impressionists is what’s marked as the anniversary, which occurred in 1874 in Paris at a show called “The Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers”. This group of arty-farty rebels included some of the (now) most recognizable names of the art world, including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas and Cézanne.
One final fun fact. The term “Impressionists” was initially an insulting critique from the press, who hated the style, calling one of Monet’s paintings “Impression, Sunrise” and comparing it to wallpaper.
Back to the opening, where 6 of my pieces will be included in this fantastic group show of plein air works. Opening reception will be Saturday, April 6th, 2-4pm. Swing by if you’re so inclined and meet some artists who love the outdoors and have created some amazeballs artwork! Let me know if you plan to drop by and I’ll keep an eye out for you.
COMMONS FORD RANCH BARN | Oil on Board | 9×12″ FISHERMANS POINT | Oil on Board | 9×12″ BREAKWATER MARINA | Oil on Canvas Board | 8×10″ SPRING POINT LIGHTHOUSE 1 | Oil on Canvas Board | 9×12″SPRING POINT LIGHTHOUSE 2 | Mixed Media on Board | 10×8″ GREENWICH VIEW | Oil on Canvas | 20×16″ 6 Paintings in IMPRESSIONS Show
Building off my most recent still life, SMOKY OLD FASHIONED, I wanted to finish another piece with smoke effects so I could refine the process and build on the original. SMOKY ON ICE changes some core compositional structure, none of which is hard to miss, but obviously the focal point is the massive ice cube. The challenge, in addition to that pesky smoke, was making sure the other key elements worked the viewer back to the ice.
First, let’s talk about that ice cube. Even clear ice cubes have flaws, but they’re hard to see in standard light. Ironically, if you drop one in a low ball of whisky and incorporate some mood lighting, the imperfections will jump out. And these imperfections are the coolest part of a clear cube!
The cherries hovering over the glass, immersed in smoke, are a design decision to keep the proverbial “you” in the glass… with the imperfect ice cube… and all that tasty whisky (GlenAllachie for me, please)… you’re welcome! Lastly, I used a palette knife for the cherries to give them a different texture. It also worked out better with manipulating the red colors into the smoke without smudging, which was hard to avoid when using a brush. The ice cube was done with thinner paint and brushes, ensuring a smooth, glassy look. Thanks for reading!
SMOKY OLD FASHIONED is a recent commission piece, something I love doing, especially when it’s for a gift or something sentimental. In this instance, the painting is for a gift for someone who apparently has everything. Painting to the rescue!
My process for custom work involves a number of preliminary discussions followed by sketches that give compositional options. Just like blocking in the value structure of the actual painting is key to a good outcome, with a custom piece, coming to an agreement on the core elements and structure of the composition is vital.
I’ve painted a number of libation-based still life compositions, but nothing with smoke. It required me to investigate if painting smoke was similar to creating fog, mist, or larger fire-based plumes.
The answer, it turns out, was an emphatic NO! It seems that once you pump smoke into a cocktail glass, weird shit happens and it becomes lifelike and animated. Looking at reference photos further complicates matters, introducing possibilities of upward windy smoky tendrils, or smoky bits that spill over the edge toward the table. Come to discover both of these considerations are smoked red herrings! Smoky tendrils are “fresh” burning anomalies, and the only smoke that sinks seems to be dry ice based smoke, which you can imagine is in a lot of cocktail glamour shots.
The trick with this piece was clearly… smoke! But before getting to that challenge, there was the issue of compositional tension. Technically, an Old Fashioned isn’t so much a cocktail as an origins story of composition. The Meehan’s Bartending Guide, my personal true North for all things cocktail, notes “the cocktail was first defined on May 6, 1806, in The Balance and Columbian Repository as ‘a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters’. By the time it showed up in a professional bar manual for the first time in Theodore Proulx’s 1888 The Bartender’s Manual, it was already “old-fashioned”.” My personal preference is rye whiskey, simple syrup, bitters, 1 cherry and an orange twist. Now back to the painting…
The request for this piece was to incorporate Luxardo cherries, orange peel, and a large round ice cube. Figuring out how best to structure this as a piece of art was trickier than I thought, even without the smoke. Once you put all that stuff into a lowball glass, it’s impossible to not notice the tension of so many things jammed into a small space. To tackle this problem we simply talked through various sketches that presented different solutions, and we ultimately landed on cherries on a toothpick, angled into the glass, orange peel also on the toothpick but above the whiskey line, and lastly a demotion of the round ice to the background. As a pleasant surprise, once the smoke was added, it significantly improved the compositional structure because it broadened the view and seems to have further reduced the tension, essentially granting the viewer a larger viewing room.
Lastly, the smoke technique. I still need to refine the approach, so stay tuned for more smoky cocktails, but the core approach seems sound. The smoke is not white, that’s the first thing. Turns out it’s about 20 variations of gray, leaning warm (cad yellow deep) above the glass, and a little cool (lemon yellow) below the rim. The brushwork boils down to a lot of push and pull between the light grays and the black background, using a lot of scumbling with an oversized round brush. As the smoke expands above the glass, it was important to make sure there was a very thin layer on the outside edges of the core smoke to lend it a sense of movement. The person who commissioned this piece has a cocktail smoker top, which sits on the top of the glass and is then pulled off in a flourish when the smoking is done, which pulls some of the smoke up and out of the glass. It’s all very entertaining, until you try to paint it!
Gallery! Welcome to Winter(ish)! I’m honored to be included in another group show at Art for the People Gallery in Austin. I’ll have 4 paintings in the show covering a wide range of topics – beaches, mountains, dogs, rowing, and champagne!
Ready for the ShowMIMOSABEACH DOGFLATIRONSMORNING ROWFalling into Winter show
The show runs October 28th, 2023 – January 5th, 2024, opening reception Saturday, November 4th, 12-4pm CDT.
Reach out if you have any questions, or better yet go to the gallery and check out all the arts:
MIMOSA | 12 x 16″ | Oil on Canvas Board | $400
MORNING ROW | 9 x 12″ | Oil on Canvas Paper | $275
The coast of Maine is one of the most beautiful in the country. Needless to say it provides plenty of inspiration for painting. While this is not a plein air piece per se, I did a study sketch plein air and spent hours on Fishermans Point enjoying the cool sea breeze and beautiful views.
The inclusion of the home on the sea cliff is not only intentional in this composition, but it is the name my wife gave the house, “Winners”. We have no idea who they are, but we’ve strolled by 2 Bay Road often and we know what we would do if we won the lottery.
This piece is a study of sorts, in large part because it’s a very tricky subject matter for me, combining all the hard things into one painting – boats, complex architecture, and rocks. Man, the effing rocks! I can say, however, this turned out pretty well and the learning experience was very rewarding. I also had the good sense to setup the time lapse camera, both as entertainment for all of you dear readers, as well as a way to remind myself how I went about this painting when I decide to do something similar.
In celebration of brunches everywhere, I present MIMOSA! This was one of those pieces that everything just came together almost effortlessly. I thought this would be one of those still life works that lingered in the studio for weeks or months, starting and stopping as new challenges popped up, taking time to experiment with technique to get things figured out. Nope, nothing like that with MIMOSA. I should have known it would flow easily from the moment I threw together the sketch, which was done in about 5 minutes, nary an erasure mark to be found. Yes, there are imperfections, but relative to initial expectations it was a delight.
The anticipated challenges with MIMOSA were:
1. No reference photos. Everything was going to come from my head. I didn’t have a bottle of champagne available, no champagne flute that fit the idea I had in my woefully lacking imagination, and no motivation to go sift through the rotten produce at my local HEB to find a picture-ready orange.
2. No experience painting foil, much less the symmetrical foil of a champagne bottle.
3. No experience mixing / creating gold hues, as seen in the aforementioned champagne foil.
Most of the challenges noted above were more about the unknown rather than issues from past works. As it turns out, I have a better imagination than I thought it did, and patching together a still life setup is something I should consider doing more often. As to the foil and gold color mixing, either I got very lucky or it’s not that difficult.
One thing that helped quite a bit was the use of broken color, specifically in the mimosa and the gold foil of the champagne bottle. I used the same brush size and stroke direction intentionally, so as to connect the mimosa with the champagne bottle. As it turned out, my persistence of using broken color in other compositions seemed to coalesce in this piece, at least the outcome is something I really enjoy.
Lastly, I tried to fold in some subtle pieces that bring the composition together. The crisply folded white linen represents the formal occasions typical of champagne, contrasted with the faded, dusty look of an old, very valuable bottle of champagne. The orange, more obviously, to provide insights into what’s being quaffed, namely mimosas. And finally, the use of a tall, very slender flute that invokes elegance and formality, contrasted with the more informal, pedestrian offering of a drink mixed with orange juice, the mighty MIMOSA!
SPRING POINT LEDGE LIGHTHOUSE | 6×8”| Oil on Canvas Board
Finished! I’ve posted a couple of progress related updates regarding this composition and I’m happy to say the 3rd time is a charm… this one’s done! If you look at the previous progress post, you’ll notice the removal of the tiny island fortress of Fort Gorges, an extreme application of artistic license. It was giving me fits compositionally, in part because the intent to use it as a balance with the lighthouse on the right was more of a distraction than something complimentary. I was going to simply mute the greens of the trees and push it back in the scene, ensuring the lighthouse was the focus, but what I discovered was that it’s such an unusual structure that it took over the composition as the viewer is sucked into wondering “what the hell is that?” I mean seriously, how often do you see an old fort on an island with a miniature forest growing in the center? I tried to convince myself that I painted it so realistically and thus it was a distraction, but in reality it’s simply weird to see out of the full context of Casco Bay, so I wiped it out… in the interest of artistic integrity.
The fort was easy enough to wipe out, but the issue it was meant to address, namely a well balanced composition, was still a problem. Not a pro at just dropping shit into a painting out of thin air, this seemed like a good scenario for practice. I’m pretty happy with the result, but it took a conscious effort to ignore details and simply work in some loose brush strokes. I also incorporated some of the ubiquitous lobster buoys found in and around Casco Bay, and lastly some distant sailboats to give the sense of an active afternoon on the water.
As to the focal point, the final result of the lighthouse and the complex stones of the jetty came out pretty well given my relatively minimal subject matter experience. As any of you artists know, tackling new subjects can be a reminder of the impossibility of knowing how to paint anything and everything equally well. The process was very enjoyable and satisfying, so there will be more lighthouses in the near future. I might expand my new found rock painting knowledge to some coastal scenes, too.
SPRING POINT LIGHTHOUSE | 8×10”| Oil on Canvas Board
Presented with a sketchy weather forecast for the coming few days, my need to get out and tackle this lighthouse painting got the best of me and I made a rare late afternoon plein air session happen. Nothing about the timing or the weather made sense for an outdoor session, but when the temperature is in the lower 70s that’s all the motivation I really need.
The drawing session from last week proved very helpful with this composition. I knew exactly how I wanted to orient everything, which in this case was the jetty, NOT the lighthouse. I need to remember this for future works, namely to find the piece of the composition that’s going to serve as the anchor for all perspective and measurements and start there, noting that this isn’t always going to be the focal point. The vertical orientation of everything on the horizon and the width/centering of the lighthouse relative to the jetty was also key. This made things move very fast so I could get to the business of putting oil on canvas.
Starting with the sky and working forward was my approach this session. I’m ultimately ignoring the very gray, muted light because I know what this looks like on a sunny day and the plan is to polish things up in the studio or return to this location to finish it off with better contrasts. However, I’m very happy with what I finished today in just over an hour. A part of me says I should leave it as is and simply shore up the lighthouse details. Maybe I’ll put myself on an hour limit and refine whatever I can within that time constraint? Something to think about.
Side note, a family with a young girl come by to ask if they could check out the painting. Apparently she likes to paint and seeing someone doing it outside on a day like today was either very cool, or just weird. Either way they seemed to be entertained and were very appreciative of our brief chat. I’ve never understood plein air painters who get so bent out of shape when people ask to check out what they’re working on. Doesn’t bother me, especially if what I’m painting doesn’t look like garbage.
This is a follow-up from the Gaggle of Geese post a few weeks ago. The finishing “touches” for the studio ended up being a little more like finish “construction”, but I finally got to a point that seemed good enough.
Let me admit, I don’t like this composition, but I really like parts. Others might see something more appealing, as art tends to work that way, but it seems artists trying to sell works tend to force themselves into liking everything they paint. To the uninitiated, know that they’re lying. There’s not an artist out there who likes even most of their final pieces. At the end of the day, our compositions tend to have really cool elements that we love, and various faults that distract us to no end.
MILL CREEK POND was a joy to paint. If you’ve read the previous post and seen the video of the geese, you understand why. In terms of the studio work, I was really focused on simplifying the trees. Apparently I ignored a few basic compositional tenets along the way and ended up with two trees perfectly aligned left and right, meeting in the middle of the canvas. So annoying, but that’s what happens if you don’t step back frequently at the beginning and take the time to ensure the layout works.
Regardless of the “amateur hour” compositional oversights, I had a lot of fun learning how to simplify the masses of the trees, especially the purple oak. Living in Texas, there are no purple oaks, and everything that’s green has a coating of yellow cedar pollen, so things skew very warm. Painting a very dark purple oak tree with huge leaves that gather in numerous masses is, well, an awkward endeavor and hard to create on the first go. Ultimately I gave up, said it’s good enough, and pivoted to the warmth of the setting sun on the trunks, grass, and lily pads.
Hope you enjoy the final product regardless of my self-critique. It worked out in the end… kinda. Thanks for reading!
In an effort to up my “en plein air” game, I’m going to do a few sessions this summer focused on simplification. The plan is to either find scenes that are lacking details and complexity, or zoom in on the focal area of a detailed scene and cut out the noise in an effort to simplify.
The Preble Shed is an example of the former approach, namely it ain’t complicated… it’s a shed. However, I spent a lot of time also streamlining the background, almost ignoring what trees were actually in the background. I also made a point to blend, perhaps even muddle, the tree edges into the sky. I think it worked pretty well and added atmospheric perspective, something that has eluded many of my previous efforts. Progress!
Not surprisingly, the shed itself was the real challenge. It has a thick coating of paint because there were a number of re-dos as I struggled to find a good light and dark color pairing. I noticed that so many professional artists who do sun-drenched urban landscapes tend to focus on white or very light yellow, using a contrasting blue-purple for the shadowed sides of the structure, which works really well, but honestly strikes me as a little boring. My goal with the shed was to use some hues that could be incorporated into other elements of the landscape – namely the flanking tree in the foreground, the fence in the background, and the sunlit grasses. I went with orange, about the 50th attempt, and can’t tell if I stopped there because I was satisfied or just worn out trying.
Art Bern 