After many months of managing all the details of moving cross-country (not to mention retiring from my teaching job and building a new house), I am happy to say that my new painting studio is functional! As well, having now spent some months on Canada's west coast, surrounded by many new sights, sounds, smells, and textures, I am beginning to find inspiration in my new environment. In October, a cold fog bank hovered across the strait between us and Vancouver Island for several weeks, cancelling all float plane flights and limiting our view to a swirling mist. Finally one morning there were signs of clearing as the sun rose, and I spent an hour photographing the effects of the rising sun on the remaining fog that lay offshore. Hundreds of photos, dozens of possible paintings!

Here are two of the first from this series, then. These are painted in oils, which I am enjoying exploring at present (though a new set of Terry Ludwig pastels arrived this week in the mail, inspiring me to do some pastels in the coming days as well).

Obscured 24 x 24 oil on panel $650 unframed

Another inspiration has been the constant dazzle of sunshine on water. I experimented, in this piece, with an highly iridescent acrylic underpainting in an ivory tint . Over this, I painted the scene in oils, and then scraped back to the underpainting to create the ripples and points of light in the water. When viewed from different angles, the effect is similar to the actual sun-dazzle one experiences when looking into the sun, but without blinding the viewer or, I hope, becoming gaudy!

And here's my current project, a painting done almost entirely with a palette knife, in oils. The slow drying time of oils is changing my usual alla prima (in one pass) approach, causing me to slow down and consider multiple sessions and passes on a work. This piece has had one three-hour session, to the point at which the panel was so thickly coated with paint that further work was just muddying the effect. So, it is drying for a few more days, and then I'll go back in and clarify/soften/adjust with another layer...

Now that I have developed some momentum, I hope to begin to post here more frequently, again! Stay tuned for more posts...