I just got back from a trip to the Madison Valley with members of the Montana Painters Alliance. Finally we were blessed with warm temperatures and sunshine. The Madison valley is a stunner and I can’t wait to work in the studio from some of these studies! I’m posting them as is- I will work on some back in the studio- but I thought it would be fun to show them as they are. I managed eleven studies in two-and-a-half days, starting each day at dawn and often finishing after the sun had set. Now I just want to nap! What a blessing to be out there using a language that speaks of light and air. Not to mention the blessing of good company!

Here’s an unusual setting for me:

I’m teaching eighth graders in Pella, Iowa. I spent two days working with art classes at Pella Christian High School. The school had commissioned me to do a large pastel, and rather than shipping it, I drove it out. I had a great time with the kids. The first day I did a charcoal drawing with the help of the students. I’d call up a terrified volunteer and hand them a piece of charcoal. Then I’d direct them: “Fill in the dark of this tree shape” or, “Erase out this area to bring some light into the clouds.” The idea was to help the kids approach a landscape in terms of shape and form. At the end of each period I’d finish the drawing for the class. On the second day I worked on a oil painting for the high school. I did a little each period while we talked as a group about the purpose of art etc.

From Pella we headed to Chicago to visit family and relatives. I spent a day with humanities and art classes in a high school where my Mom teaches. I showed them my website and worked on a painting a little each period. (I’m donating the paintings to the schools.) Part of my motivation was simply to let kids know that it is possible to be an artist. When I left home for The Art Institute I had never met a working artist. Not one! People told me to be practical- get a graphics degree, or here’s my favorite: get your teaching certificate so that you have something to “fall back on.” Sorry, teaching is a noble profession, and no one should “fall back” on it. Kids deserve better.

I had a great time working with the kids. They asked great questions and really engaged in the process. I also developed a great appreciation for the teachers that I met in the schools!

I leave you with a couple pictures of rural Iowa. There is beauty everywhere! (Just click on either photo to see enlargements.)

I have a deep dark secret: I enjoy suffering. It’s taken me years to realize this, but there it is. The worse the weather, the happier I am. Here is a fine example:

The sun is now shining, but notice my paint box. It has drifted over in the two hours since I set up. I could only paint facing east, with my back to the wind and my tripod set into the bullet hard drift. It’s just stupid not to give up and go home! But here’s the portrait of a happy fool after a painting session:

I don’t think it’s some cheap Hemingway man’s man great-white-hunter crap that makes me so happy. I don’t feel at all like I wrestled nature and won. I just showed up and, as Robert Frost said, “that made all the difference.” It’s not merely nature that I’m after, it’s what happens in nature:

I look at this picture and I can hear the wind ripping through the willows and pushing me up off of my heels. I can remember ground blizzards blowing snow into the paint and turning it the consistency of frosting. Occasionally the entire landscape would be whipped into a white nothing, and I’d just wait for the snow to blow through. Can I mix an intensely personal experience into reds and blues? Can I describe the feel of January wind and the thrill of watching a snow devil spin a path across the hillside with a brush? Hardly. But what a privilege it is to try:

“January Squall”
9×12. Oil.