Solo Show at Stonehenge Studios in Portland

Yesterday the first solo show I have had in a decade was hung. Tomorrow night is the opening. I am in that "what if nobody comes" phase which will heighten progressively throughout the day until 5:30 comes and I'm talking to visitors and old friends who show up.  Then for the next few days I will wonder why so and so didn't come. Didn't they get the announcements? Do I have to re-do my entire email list? Such a silly cycle. Oh well, it's all part of the game.

I wrapped these painting up two days before Thanksgiving when we drove to Portland for our annual feast with family and friends. Having not seen them for over two weeks I wondered how I would feel as they were unveiled in the gallery space; not bad as it turns out. I really do like this group of paintings, twelve of which I have completed in the last six months. And, since we have been hanging out in Portland all this time I am ready to get back in the studio and make some more as soon as we get home.   I don't have any shows booked but I got a glimpse this time of how good it feels to be able to pick and choose my best work to exhibit instead of including the not-so-greats just to fill a show.

If you are in the Portland area or know someone you think would enjoy this exhibit here's the info and a preview.

Everyone who comes Dec 9 -Jan 4 can enter to win one of my giclee prints of their choice so come on down to SW Corbett and throw your name in the hat! If you mention that you heard about it on my blog you can enter twice and double your chances.

Garden of Earthly Disasters

This summer Dennis and I were asked to participate in a project initiated by the Jefferson Nature Center in Medford called Shifting Patterns. Eleven artists attended an intense education on the subject of Climate Change and then were asked to respond with a piece of art. The intention was to possibly convey the subject in a way that was more "right brain" than charts and graphs and dire climate models. The pieces were presented by the artists in a series of public forums last month.
I had a lot of ideas about artistic metaphors that might express my alarm over what I had learned, but when it came to put brush to canvas I realized what I really wanted to do was rant. The result is below, and after that some close ups of different sections. The painting is 34 x 24 oil on canvas, mostly done with a pallet knife.

 I feel like the subject of Climate Change is so overwhelming that most of us prefer to put bags over our heads rather that confront it. The text reads: WTF? / idk!

 And who is left to try to hold the whole thing up? The youth of today and their subsequent generations.

Corporate board meeting and recycling truck spewing trash. I rather enjoyed this venting of all my pet peeves!

If you'd like to see this painting in the real I have sent it off to the benefit show for SITKA Art and Ecology Center that will be at the Forestry Center in Portland next weekend. Info here.
When I get it back ( I guess I should say if) I think I will add two more panels on either side; one on the left in sepia of the scene pre-industrial, and one on the right a drawing in blueprint of the future where the challenges are being met by those future generations.

More figure studies

Figure studies at Gabriel's

There are 6 other still life studies from last term but I'm more interested in sharing the figure studies we are doing in this 8 week session. What a joy to be working from a model again! The first week we did drawings only- big loose gesture drawings and a few 20 min. poses.

The 2nd week Gabe encouraged us to paint small -5 x7 ish and concentrate on form, not detail.This first 50 minute pose I used a larger panel and wasn't too excited about the pose:

The second pose had more dramatic lighting and I chose to create a smaller format on my panel. I like the way I could then let part of the drawing creep out beyond the boundary but keep the painting inside.

No class next week but I'll keep you posted. I'm working on some of the unfinished earlier paintings as well.

Still life painting at Gabriel's studio

Back to oil painting!!

A new eight week session at Gabriel Lipper's studio has begun. This time we will be painting "ala prima" (all at once) one small still life in each of our eight 3 hour classes. We are to bring our own set-up so on the way out the door last Friday morning I grabbed an eggplant, an onion and a half a lemon from the 'fridge and off I went. This was step number one towards a really bad painting: not thinking about what I was going to paint. Why I thought this combo would work is beyond my second-thought self. Even adding a metal pitcher from Gabe's stash did not help and down the hole of frustration I went... I didn't like what I was painting and it looked that way!

 On the way home I realized under this muck was a perfectly good canvas primed in red and I would use it to make a better painting. I snapped a photo and scrubbed it all away. Whew.


On Saturday I went to watch Gabe do a demo for an art event.

On Mother's Day after a nice chat with my daughter and making a rhubarb pie, I began again.

 Establishing the planes of the pear and napkin folds with changes in value and color temperature.

Checking the values.. see how in the painting the pear is much darker than it really is?

 Hmmm. That hard horizontal line of the napkin right above the pear was not working for me.

Is this better? Sort of looks like a pear that sprouted plaid wings. Dennis said it looked kind of desolate, when before it was sort of "cozied" into the napkin.

I tucked the pear in again but darkened the background to soften the horizontal line.

 

Signed off! I enjoyed doing this painting; I hope it shows.

And here's the lesson about that distracting napkin shape applied to the painting of Dennis and Liam:

Here's the last image I posted for that painting. I've been working on it but the changes didn't warrant posting. I'll update you on this work soon.

See how distracting the peach color of the chair is? I didn't, until Gabe encouraged all of us to look for shapes in our paintings where there was too much contrast in value or color in places that weren't important to the center of interest.

 

Changing the chair to melt into the background allowed the faces to be more important.  Just like changing the background to minimize the contrast with the napkin helped bring focus back to the pear. 

I hope you are enjoying these "learn-along-with Leslie" posts. Let me hear from you on my Leslie Lee Art page on Facebook. (and please hit the LIKE button!)

Until next time...

What happened to May?

Oh the Month of May that went away! It was a busy time, mostly due to getting ready for and attending Ceramic Showcase, a show Dennis and I have done every spring for over 25 years. Since I'm not doing ceramics anymore I participate by painting with under-glazes on cups that Dennis has made. In this photo they are not yet fired.

 It's a lot of fun to do these and they are very popular, priced at $40 to $50 each, so I know people are appreciating the paintings and not just looking for a coffee vessel!

Portrait expanded

Looks like I missed posting what happened in last week's class. I was busy re-working my application for the Hallie Ford Fellowship which was due last Tues. Considering who was selected last year I may never be "out there" enough to be in the running for these things but it didn't cost anything to submit and it was an online application which made it easier, so why not? Composing my Artist's Statement did make me think long and hard about what I do and why, especially when it needed to be condensed to 2000 characters. In fact, it's so short I will share it with you:

"I have been a professional artist of all my adult life. I was the last of four girls and the Wild One so my parents let me choose my own route. I chose “artist” early, made lots of messes and continued on to earn a BFA in graphic design at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri returning to my native Portland, Oregon to begin my career.

 When I married and was temporarily relieved from having to earn a living I began taking classes in ceramics, which had been a favorite medium as a child. Having time for this steady focus propelled me into 25 years as a ceramic sculptor, recognized in 1994 by a Ceramics Monthly cover story.  By then I had (re)married a potter whose home we later sold to build new ecologically conscious studios and a home in southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley.  In the middle of this adventure I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. During chemotherapy I did not have the strength for clay work and began painting, which was the silver lining of my cancer experience.  I never returned to clay.

As a painter my aim is to draw the interest of the viewer with appealing imagery which then invites, through metaphor and allegory, considerations of the individual, the family, society and the natural world. My interests range from confronting global concerns, to simply capturing beauty I think may be overlooked. I paint from life or use reference photos I have taken myself. The stories are always my own.

The success of my work lies not in my competent handling of oil paint (so far I am self taught with much to learn), but rather because people react to how my images illuminate their life experiences.  Nothing delights me more than to have a viewer interpret a painting in a different way than whatever inspired me.  I have witnessed hearty laughs from some and spontaneous tears from others viewing the same image. I am fascinated by this universal/individual response which I intentionally go after by providing not the script of a story, but the seed of one."

So I suppose my desire to start a story is what has moved this painting of Dennis and Liam away from a straight portrait and into something a bit more intriguing.  Remember when I said I liked the dots that showed up in the background from lens flare? That sparked an idea of having images floating around in all that darkness in the background. Somehow the long neck and face of a giraffe wanted to join in and the title "G is for Giraffe" presented itself. So then where are ABCDE and F?  Ape, butterfly, cat, dog,elephant, frog all heading out after their page was turned.  Here's how the idea got onto the canvas, sans ape.

 White chalk was used to sketch out the animals. This was about the 4th try.

 Next I sketched them in with paint so I wouldn't loose them.

 I also worked on the baby's face, added his hand and clarified his stocking feet and the folds in Dennis' jeans.  This is where the painting was before class today.

This is where I ended up after class. Gabriel and I discussed the fact that the baby's face had been brought out of shadow and was now competing for attention, which is a problem with double portraits. I had raised his hood to do this, so I brought it back down which also helped the proportion of his head and cast shadow again.

Then Gabe had me mix a gray that looked dark on the palette but light against the background. This gray is my "white" for the animals. It's a cool color so we warmed up the darker colors with ocher so I'd have two temperatures to work with in defining the animals. My goal here is to have the animals be "there" enough to make someone seeing this painting from a distance want to view it closer. It might then take much longer to get the alphabet bit - a fun surprise, I hope. 

These last photos were taken in natural light on the porch, so they look different than the shots taken in the studio.

This child is not Liam. With luck I will still find him in there somewhere.

It's supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow so my gardening plans  may be out for the day and more painting in .