A Summer Idyll

I continue to work steadily on the Lennox Woods body of work for my solo show next spring. There will be five large scale paintings - 48 x 60 up to 72 x 96-  and a total of about 42 paintings in the show. I started with the smallest of the "BIGs" as I call them, and am working my way up in size. I am working on several of them at the same time, plus others as well- usually about 8 to 10 pieces at a time. 

In January of 2012 when I first started on this journey, I was out in the Woods one day with Steve and Allen Phillips (the filmmaker for the project). Allen and I managed to wander off the trail. I didn't know my way around the Woods very well back then and neither did Allen. But, he had a GPS on his phone and we knew if we kept heading north we would hit the dirt road that runs along one side of the Preserve. So, we kept going instead of doubling back to find the trail. It was winter so bushwhacking through the Woods wasn't too hard and we got back into some spots that would be hard to find in any other season.  Pretty soon we came upon a small pond. It was a big surprise because the only water I had seen in the Woods was Pecan Bayou and the small streams it spawned throughout the Preserve. This pond looked self contained, although Steve thinks it is fed by a spring on adjacent property. Anyway, having found it, I knew I wanted to come back.

Here is a study for the 60 x 72 painting I am now working on.

A Summer Idyll

20 x 24

I started with lots of sketches, working out my ideas. This is my preferred way to work- hunting for motifs, then using drawings to work out designs and to gather reference materials.

Once I had the design organized and the field reference I needed, I started the 20 x 24 study.

I made a grid of the study and traced the main shapes and lines. I gridded the large canvas with proportional squares with vine charcoal, then drew in the composition.

Here is the studio with the large canvas on the left, the grid in the center and the study to the right of that. Just to get an idea of the scale, the painting on the easel behind the grid is 36 x 48!

The Morning Room

There are places in Lennox Woods which have the feeling of a separate space - a room if you will - that one can enter and inhabit apart from the larger surrounding Woods. Of course, it's not true, but it feels that way. One spot like this is beside a small stream which is part of Pecan Bayou, the watershed which nourishes and makes the Woods possible.

I often take a sketchbook and camp stool here and I particularly like it in the early morning hours. So, it wasn't a surprise that when I got the idea for this painting, its title -- The Morning Room - came with it.

This is a study for a larger work (30 x 40) which is in progress now. My photography, as always, doesn't capture the hazy morning light very well. But, you get the idea, right?

The Morning Room

18 x 24

detail

detail

Coming to the Woods

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Walden, Henry David Thoreau

When I first went to Lennox Woods although I was entranced with the beauty of the place, I could not have then anticipated its effect on me. After all, I spend a lot of time in woods and fields, outdoors, looking. But, within the forest there is something new to be learned. So I returned, and will continue for all the reasons Thoreau did and for some of my own.

Nothing happens there of any importance, at least by the standards of the world. It is quiet, but not silent, and within that quiet is a constant hum of energy and life. You just have to listen and look.

That's what I did at first, to the exclusion of everything else. It took a while to hear the sounds and actually see what was there. Slowly, the Woods started to reveal themselves to me. This took some time. At that point I began to sketch and look for motifs to paint. But, still mostly just looking. The season was changing from summer to fall and every visit offered new ways to look at the Woods and new color harmonies. Even the sound of the Woods changed with the season. So I kept looking and listening.

value study, graphite

pen and ink

sweetgum trunk study, pen and ink

Then I started to draw. Drawing is the way I introduce myself to a place. It's the way I study it and try to understand it. And because it slows me down, I always learn a lot about not only what I draw, but the place, and what I want to say in paint about it.

oil study

The drawings have a life of their own as works of art, but of course they also form the basis of paintings- ideas for paintings and reference for individual elements. I hope to have them and the ideas they represent stacked up like cordwood, keeping me warm and productive in the studio for a long time to come.

Autumn Sunrise, Lennox Woods

18 x 24