Studio Visit & Interview With Paula Tillman

In late February Paula Kornye Tillman, owner of Galerie Kornye West, and gallery assistant Kelli Cotten traveled to northeast Texas for a studio visit and to see Lennox Woods. The following video is an excerpt of an interview filmed by Allen Phillips. Paula discusses the project and why she feels it is important.

Paula Kornye Tillman interview from Deborah Paris on Vimeo.

Paula and Kelli visited the studio to see work in progress, a few finished pieces and talk about the project.

After a delicious lunch in the studio provided by Steve, we headed out to the Woods for a few hours.

Later that evening, Steve and I hosted a sit down dinner at the historic Lennox House in Clarksville. It was a festive evening with several paintings on display and Allen's Ancient Forest video playing on a flat screen in the sitting room of the house. Steve and our "foodie" friend Anne Evetts cooked a delicious meal for 15 guests including presidents of the Historical Societies for Clarksville and Mt. Vernon, a trustee of the Lennox Foundation, Paula and Kelli and other guests from Clarksville.

It was a wonderful kick off for the project and a good opportunity for Paula to see the Woods and to understand my passion for this project.

Bare Trees

Edge of the Woods - Dusk

18 x 24

Spring is coming to Lennox Woods. A light haze of budding out branches envelops the Woods in a shear whisper of pale greens and reds. But, I am still painting autumn and winter. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be painting at least a season behind for the next 18 months or so. Of course, I am gathering reference in the form of drawings and studies with the season, but finished studio work moves at a slower pace.

So even though the trees in the Woods are budding out, those in my studio are bare. Or, they are autumn trees losing their leaves rather than leafing out. One of the challenges I worried about was how to depict nearer bare trees without noodling them to death and perhaps spoiling the mood and look I am after. The answer was found in drawing them (like the answer to so many other things!).

All images can be clicked on for a larger view.

Well, not just drawing, but it starts with drawing. The treatment of the nearer trees really is more of a drawing issue. You want to show the roundness of the tree by making sure your limbs and branches come out from the trunk in all directions. You have to think carefully about the smaller limbs and twigs and really design them as well. I will usually leave that until I have painted the sky a couple of times and I am getting toward the end. I will also then, scumble back over them to keep them soft but not obliterate them. And the edges, while soft, aren't completely lost.

What I found was that drawing them really helped because I got comfortable with the form and their gesture, then when I needed to simplify and edit out all the clutter I had a much better idea of how to do that.

As you go back into the picture plane and you are massing the trees, then the solution becomes more of a painting issue. In that case I will often have to come back in and put the tree tops back in after painting the sky, then glaze and scumble over the whole thing once its dry.