Category Archives: painting

painting

River that flows on…

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Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, oil on wood, 24 x 24 in

River of life that flows on, Troels said looking at this painting.

The body of water depicted here is called North Bar Lake. Currently, it is  flowing into Lake Michigan which caused its water level to drop about a yard, thereby widening the curve of the sandy beach, here covered by snow.

A decade ago, someone filmed different spots around the globe for the full 24 hour day without naming the locations. Videos were projected in Times Square, NYC. North Bar Lake was one of the locations.

This is my first snow painting using as a motif one of the memorable spots around the world.

art history, painting

Canoe paintings – mine and Peter Doig’s

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In 2009, when I posted my painting ‘Yellow Canoe’

oil on wood, 12 x 24 in
on the now dormant blog artandperception.com, someone told me about Peter Doig‘s canoe paintings.
Peter Doig, 100 Years ago, (Carrera) 2001

My painting was based on a montage of three photos: a Northwest Pacific canoe, New Mexico clouds, the clouds and their shadows reflected on the backdrop of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

My painting expresses energy and Doig’s painting expresses the unease of drifting.

Quoting Nicholas Serota (former director of the Tate) : Doig’s paintings have a kind of mythic quality that’s both ancient and very, very modern. They seem to capture a contemporary sense of anxiety and melancholy and uncertainty. Lately, he’s gone more toward the sort of darkness we associate with Goya.

Others ‘go more toward’ love and joy.

painting

Diving to the bottom of Lake Michigan

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Usually I don’t show a painting in progress to my artist friends.  I wait until it is more finished before I invite constructive comments. But yesterday, I showed this painting to an art buddy who commented that it is finished. That took me by surprise because I have many ideas of how to continue working  on what I merely considered an ‘underpainting’ of a girl diving to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Girl diving to the bottom of Lake Michigan, montage of 5 frames of a video taken by the girl’s brother. aluminum panel, ,24 x 48 in, oil

Earlier, during our lunch, some of the artists had discussed the difficulty to know  when a work is finished. The danger being that one could overdo it, thereby destroying it. With that in mind, rather than continuing working on my painting,  I decided to do the same motif over but then experiment with further ideas. 

Do you know when your work is finished – painting, writing, sculpting, designing your garden, inventing a new cooking recipe…?