Sounds to Paintings
April 7th, 2013Wolfgang Heitmann improvised music on keyboard, viewing my paintings of Sleeping Bear Dunes and South Manitou.
Here is our 13 min youtube .
Wolfgang Heitmann improvised music on keyboard, viewing my paintings of Sleeping Bear Dunes and South Manitou.
Here is our 13 min youtube .
This painting will be published in a book ‘Art of the Sleeping Bear Dunes’ and also exhibited in the Dennos Museum, Traverse City, MI, next fall.

45 cm x 60 cm, oil on maple panel
Artist statement: The Sleeping Bear Dunes are shaped by wind, waves and snow. Their sandy surface shows intriguing textures – parallel ripples of sand, circles from wind-blown grasses, designs painted by glittering shells and black sand. Even their major form subtly changes with every storm. It feels good to greet a new day from the Empire Bluff looking at the Great Lake and Living Dunes. My mentors: Karl Zipser, Painting; Troels Jorgensen, Geometry.
oil on wood panel
The sun reflected off a building in New Jersey at 7 am in early April 2012, as seen from the 21th floor of building on Riverside Dr/125th street in NYC.
As discussed in artandperception, drama in a painting can be achieved using
differences in tone, light versus dark
complementary colors
diagonals
contrasting warm and cool colors
contrasting the way objects are presented, strong versus weak
and finally, the color yellow which holds saturation when diluted.

Oil on wooden panel, 45 cm x 45 cm
This picture is shown in a juried exhibition at the Dennos museum in Traverse City, MI until April 1st celebrating the museum’s 20th anniversary year.
The ‘seascape’ below was done as a study for the painting shown here.

oil on maple panel, 40 cm x 50 cm
Improvised from a photograph taken near Otter Creek in the Sleeping Bear Dunes