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.)

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.

What a quiet, subtle, and peaceful corner of the West! I’m starting to work in pastel on location again, and I’m really enjoying switching back-and-forth between oil and pastel. The moonrise piece was especially satisfying. I finished it with the aid of a headlamp, so I really had no idea if the piece worked. Currently I’m working on some larger pieces based on a couple of the studies, so I will post those as soon as they are done.

I thought I’d throw in a picture of Robert Moore. Here he is, working on a 30×40 on location!

I managed a 9×12, but I was still happy. It’s hard not to paint well with Robert. He is generous, kind, a great critic, and he can paint with two brushes at the same time! And he does a great imitation of a Russian painter contemplating the beautiful reflections in a mud puddle.

Much of this happens right in Mammoth, a little tourist town in the Park.

It’s a strange backdrop for one of nature’s most magnificent dramas, but it’s a great place to sketch elk. A sculptor friend, George Bumann, invited me down for the show. I’ve never sketched elk from life, and it shows:

As you can see I mostly sketched napping cows. Don’t look too closely. The proportions are all off, but I was having a great time! George knows his animal anatomy inside and out, and he offered occasional suggestions to help me correct problems in anatomy.

After lunch I’d had enough of the “urban elk” so I drove up past Mammoth Terraces and set up my easel in an aspen patch. What a joy to be there! Autumn colors, elk bugling just out of sight, and I have my brushes!

Here’s a study that I did that afternoon:

After the painting session I hiked cross-country and scared up a solitary bull from his bed. I caught glimpses of him running through the brush and over the hill. I ran parallel and stole another look as he trotted across a sage-brush hillside and disappeared into an aspen-patch.

I want to paint that brief pulse-quickening encounter!

Why? Because I’d rather let you in on a private experience than impress you with all the drama of bugling bulls.

A term popped into my head as I walked back to the van: Experiential Realism.

A wildlife painter can get all the photo reference he wants on some game preserve, but meanwhile George Bumann is somewhere in Yellowstone filling another sketchbook. He’s chained himself to the spotting scope and he knows what the animals do and why they do it.

And he’ll be the better artist for it.

It’s far more comfortable to paint in the studio from my trusted photos; I have thousands. But photos don’t smell of damp leaves and rain. Clouds never interrupt the fine afternoon light. And I’ve never heard elk bugling just beyond the studio. More often than not I come home from the field with what I affectionately call “scrapers.” Failed paintings. But the failures add to a collective wisdom that I bring back to the studio. Though I am not a narrative painter my paintings are infused with stories, experiences that deepen the expression. Without returning again and again to the field I just start making pretty pictures. Anyone can do that. I’d rather speak of my experience, my reality, because there is beauty in it. That’s Experiential Realism.

Contrast this with another self-portrait, this time in sunny pleasant July:

Notice that I’m standing in the river. It is 100 degrees and the mosquitoes are trying to suck blood from my eyeballs. I’m thinking that I wish it was winter so that I could be more stylish and less hot. The light and the reflections helped me to ignore the conditions, and I came up with this study:

Any day that I don’t scrape the paint off the board is one to celebrate! Back in the studio I was still interested enough to try my hand at a larger pastel painting:

The Problem with Solvents:

In May I met up with members of the Montana Painters Alliance for a paint-out on the Rocky Mountain Front. The MPA is a of Montana based artists that get together twice a year to paint and drink Mint Juleps. Or more accurately it’s a group of people that spend 90% of their lives alone with solvents. It’s good to get out once in a while.

In July I taught a four day workshop in Yellowstone National Park through the Yellowstone Institute. We stayed in cabins at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch and painted on location in the mornings and evenings. Between sessions I taught in the classroom. A little disclosure: I spend a lot of time thinking about art, even when I’m not painting. Occasionally I have to not talk about art or I start to annoy my wife. When I teach a workshop people want to hear me talk about art. They even pay me to talk and talk about art. Amazing! This makes me very happy!

Yellowstone itself makes me happy, even ecstatic. If the painting session is a flop, stop and watch the elk, buffalo, coyotes, etc. etc. To share this wondrous place with thirteen enthusiastic students was a privlidge. So think about taking this class next summer- I’m going to be shameless and say that it’s a great experience for all involved.

Glacier National Park

In August I had paintings at a show at the Two Medicine Gallery in Whitefish. The family came with me for the opening and we camped in Glacier. I thought it would be fitting to end the summer’s recap by showing two forms of inspiration:

Both pictures were taken within a few seconds of each other. I didn’t have my easel, but sometimes it’s good just to sit back, feel the glow of the setting sun and watch my boy throw rocks into the lake.