Another painting of the woods below Sprague Highschool, and another one of our favorite walks.
Posts tagged ·
people
·...
This is early morning on the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca, Spain. In a couple hours the Plaza will be full of umbrella tables. But right now the coffee drinkers are inside enjoying the warmth.
A look through the Chicago Art Institute’s doorway onto Michigan Ave.
There’s a reason why artists like to paint umbrellas. They are shapely and brightly colored. They add grace to the human form. We associate them with romance and romantic cities. And here I live in the Willamette Valley were it rains all winter, and yet I’ve never really painted umbrellas and now when I do it’s umbrellas used for shade.
Why? Because Oregonians hardly ever use umbrellas. We either ignore the rain with a macho sort of only wimps think this is rain air, or we wear sports gear with hoods. On the coast we have some excuse as the rain there so often comes with enough wind to invert any umbrella, but here in the Valley we hardly ever have real wind yet we don’t use umbrellas. Our family does keep a couple collapsibles in the car, but we tend to forget we have them.
These are Oregon umbrellas lent by the exhibit sponsor to the line of people waiting in the sun to see the Titanic exhibit some years ago. I embarrassed my young daughters by taking pictures of the line of people with all those beautiful umbrellas. One of my girls looked at the painting and said instantly that was when we saw the Titanic. She doesn’t remember being embarrassed, just the pretty umbrellas. My other girl is younger. She does not remember at all. Neither girl remembers many Oregon umbrellas. They associate umbrellas with London.
A couple days ago, I saw a friend’s painting umbrellas in Rome, and thought to myself, I wish I had some umbrellas to paint. And then I remembered how I had embarrassed my children by taking photos of people standing in line because the umbrellas were so pretty.
My painting doesn’t have the lovely rainy reflections Marsha’s does, but I do have shadows.
Or purchase a fine art print.
Florence in heat again. This time it’s the beautiful arcade running along the Arno between the Uffzi and the Ponte Vecchio.
We are just back from a fabulous trip to London, Rome, Florence and Paris. Our first museum visit in Paris was the d’Orsay, a fantastic art museum that picks up chronologically where the Louvre leaves off. Van Gogh Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Cezanne are all well represented. But this painting is not about the art in the d’Orsay, but rather about the museum building itself. The d’Orsay began it’s life as a train station. The gigantic clocks which once informed train passengers of the time remain in the building both inside and out. This clock is one of two facing the Seine River and the Tuileries Gardens. Outside the clock faces appear opaque. Inside it becomes obvious that the clock faces are actually windows Museum patrons are as drawn to the view through the clocks as they are to the artwork in the galleries.
To capture the feeling of the light through the clock, I primarily poured this painting, using removable masking and cups of paint instead of brushes. Only the final details and the view through the clock were added with a brush. I used New Gamgee, Hansa Yellow Light, Cobalt Blue, Thalo Blue, Rose Madder Quinacridone, and Windsor Red.
This painting has sold but you can still purchase an art quality print.