Burnt Bridge Cellars Artworks Display

Starting in October and running through November I’ll have ten artworks hanging in the tasting room at Burnt Bridge Cellars at 15th and Broadway downtown Vancouver WA. If you visit the tasting room you’ll find an eclectic mix of images ranging from Fall Birches to Wine themed compositions. There are Linoleum block prints featuring Fishing vessels and Seaside harbors. Please list the Cellars to taste great wine and view my artworks, while relaxing in a friendly well appointed space for wine tasting and art appreciation.

My New Art Book

In my Blog entry titled “A Lifetime of Art” my focus was on the feelings that were aroused in me by remembering the events in my life that influenced my artworks. Those paragraphs in that post became the Forward for “A Lifetime of Art'“ I did not give details regarding the actual book and it’s contents other than to say it contains images and text about those images. This was intentional as the pages of the book were being edited and combed over for any and all errors and inconsistencies. The actual compiling of all the elements which I poured into the book had to be thought out, chewed over and somewhat pulled from the abyss. Looking back over 55 years was challenging to get the sequencing and proper order of events somewhat to where they made sense. In the writing, there where choices to be made like the Bob Seger lyric “what to leave in, what to leave out” Luckily I hadn’t discarded many of my artworks over the years and to this day find it hard to throw away something I’ve spent time creating.

Linoleum Block Printing Process

In this video I show a very limited snippet of the Linoleum Block Printing process in 6 steps. Each step has to happen in its appropriate order once the actual process is begun of your carved block. In this video I talk about my two favorite steps out of the 6 mentioned. The order in which each step takes place enables the next steps success. There are many variables within each step not discussed in this presentation. Take for instance the very first step drawing or transferring the image onto the block. Because linoleum block printing is a relief printing technique the image you draw onto the surface of the block, linoleum, will print opposite directionally than drawn. What does this mean? images will be reversed on your paper from what you drew on your block. If you draw an object with a right facing orientation it will print facing left. This becomes very evident when trying to print words. You must draw a word backwards onto the block for it to print readable as you intended. Once you understand this principal of relief printing you can plan your drawing accordingly for success. In another of the steps “inking the block” applying the ink with your brayer is at first a learning experience because getting just the right amount of ink onto the block is learned with practice. So expect that you will have some trail and error sessions at first. Too much ink, and your print will lack detail and crispness, too little ink and your result will be spotty ink coverage and incomplete areas of ink. It is only after taking note of what you did correctly when inking your block that you will start to acquire a method for inking correctly each time. And even then you’ll have mishaps with your inking at times. Don’t let that deter you, the satisfaction of learning and mastering each of the 6 steps shown in the video becomes more gratifying each successive printing.

Harbor Colors

Harbor colors this new series of acrylic paintings is inspired by the need for joy and color in our lives as we recover from last year’s pandemic. My current works are bright and colorful depictions of fishing vessels located here in the Pacific Northwest. I paint these subjects, their shapes and lines, to expose the intricacies of their rigging and sweeping lines of their structures. I want my viewer to see them not only as working vessels, but also as beautifully configured objects, showing their grace and endurance.

In these paintings reflective surfaces play a supportive role in visually enhancing the intricacies of the vessels’ working parts. The contrasting surfaces of the water, it’s movement, and the stationery complexities of the fishing vessels’ rigging, nets and pulleys play off each other to create contrasting elements. It is this play of moving reflections in the water and elegant lines towering over the vessels’ hull that informs my construction of the painting. The idea of contrasting elements also works in my recent foray into Linoleum block printing. In exploring movement in positive and negative space.

Harbor Colors continued

My “Harbor Colors” series has generated several sales from local galleries and also through the website. The intensified color scheme seems to resonate with people adding another dimension to the complexity of the fishing vessels riggings and sweeping shape of the vessels themselves. Comments have been “I love the colors”, “The detail in the rigging is spot on”, “Love, Love the reflections”, and “I’ve seen that boat in Ilwaco” to name a few. One of my sales was to a couple that knew the boat owners of one of my subjects and bought it as a gift. I had a gentleman that saw one of my boats on the website and contacted me directly to purchase it to give as a Mothers Day gift to a friend that lives on the peninsula. My linoleum block prints, that I have hand colored, have been popular and continue to sell both matted and framed. As I continue to add to this collection I search out new and interesting subjects from several sources and plan on expanding my search to other harbors through out the Pacific Northwest. I have a studio in Vancouver WA. where my acrylic paintings are created and a studio in Ocean Park WA. on the Longbeach Peninsula where my Linoleum Block Prints are created. Sales are great although that is not my only goal, I really enjoy people who let me know that they really love a painting that they have purchased or would like to own. The joy that they have in owning one of my creations is a joy that I share with them, as I part with my painting that I have grown to love. Ever the early 70’s, when I first saw the fishing vessels of Gloucester, MA. coming and going from their harbor moorings, I have been bitten by the bug to paint them. I also read about them and study as much as I can about their journeys’ through their working lives. I have visited the East Coast many times and have used photo’s from those trips as reference many times over. Now residing here in the Pacific Northwest I have acquired a large photo gallery of these western style vessels and have successfully continued my goal of painting many of them. A good friend of mine, who just visited my wife and I in Ocean Park, who is a retired Captain told me he really likes that I spend time on filling in as many of the rigging lines that I can. I feel this practice gives these paintings some authenticity in their portrayal as a record of their existence as working vessels, as the machines that they are. Making them colorful and as beautiful as I can accentuates their already impressive appeal as wonderful vessels of the sea. Unlike cruise ships and pleasure craft these hard working vessels are challenged each trip out of port to catch enough sea bounty and bring it and crew back safely to earn a living. They depend on their guile, grit, experience and bravery to battle the seas they ply for days on end. Their fate in the hands of their skipper, their own will and the will of God. “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever” Jacques Cousteau 

A Life Time of Art

For the last several months I’ve been compiling what is known as a Catalog Raisonne, a complete inventory of an artist’s work throughout his lifetime. This oeuvre has been assembled from my files and encompasses works from my high school years to my current works to date. Looking back in time to the periods in which I created these images can be challenging to one’s psyche because analyzing one’s artwork can bring up long passed emotions. Art work, I feel, should evoke an emotional response from its viewer whether that reaction be pleasing or not. I feel artworks evolve from one’s soul, either pouring out, or being pulled from that innermost place where ideas about ourselves and our surrounding world converge. Being lost in one’s self is often equated to the act of creating art, all the arts I believe, not just visual arts, which are my focus. When you hear a musician say, “The melody just came to me”, or an actor describes becoming the character he or she is portraying, that is testimony to the fact that forces laying beneath the surface of our perceived reality are at work in the creative mind. With my creative process, it is often planned and thought about for a time before jumping in, or in many circumstances inspired by that uncontrolled spark of inspiration that comes out of the blue, to use a well turned phrase. When in the throws of creating in this manner, I often say to myself “Who’s been driving while you were gone?” This means to me that my hand and mind have been controlled by a force not consciously realized but rather driven by a deeply intuitive or instinctive knowledge of my intensions. This is summed up by saying it was a spontaneous act. But was it? Can it be that in the area of the brain where we store learned behavior the raw data for these forays into subliminal creation is always just there under the surface waiting to burst forth and onto the paper, canvas or other surface. Something to think about, but not too hard! One does not want to lose the ability to sustain this spontaneity.

That brings me back to my statement that analyzing my earlier artwork can evoke emotional memories of its origin. I was always searching for images that reflected my surroundings. I found worthiness in ordinary objects and scenery. It’s all in the interpretation of what you are seeing and how you choose to convey that feeling or emotional connectivity to your psyche. Being young and happy to be with my art making, tools and subjects, propelled me a long way toward developing the skills needed to render drawings and create pleasing results. That said, struggling with expectations can hinder any artist’s ability to reach the level of desired accomplishments he or she feels attainable. Those impediments were something that I never experienced for very long. I was always able to accept my limitations and focus on what I perceived to work for me. I could draw and learned the disciplines of perspective, life drawing and accurate rendering. These skills, to this day as a seventy-five year old artist serve me well. From those initial drawing skills comes all else that was to follow in my lifetime of art.

Each decade seemed to define my artworks in their subject, quality and quantity. John Lennon’s saying “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans” is a very apt summation of circumstances weighing on my life’s expectations.

An early marriage and first child, a son, were a challenging time, putting constraints on my planned art career. I would work, drawing while sitting in the driver’s seat of my car in the parking lot on my break at night, using the steering wheel as a support to brace my drawing pad. I worked at a General Motors plant to support my young family while my college plans were put on hold. So I adapted. I drew and created when I could steal time for my passion. Sitting in my car in that parking lot using the illumination from the lights on the light poles soon became a nightly practice. Using a number 2 pencil and a kneaded gum eraser I created a series of drawings depicting the belching smoke and pollution from that factory setting. On my drive to that afternoon work shift I would pass farm fields and a barn that I would later draw a series from. I once again used as my subjects what was available to me. During this period I also drew scenes of domestic surroundings such as a couch with my toddler son’s shoes sitting on the arm. My wife’s figure, drawn from the floor view, as she sat on that same couch was another.

Into my mid twenties my father in-law encouraged us, as a family, to travel to Massachusetts where on Cape Cod I found a life long desire to paint subjects from the Cape’s maritime offerings. Fishing Vessels, lighthouses, and marsh lands became a go-to for my watercolors. At this period in my life I was living in a landlocked situation and the travels east to Cape Cod became a yearly vacation locale, beckoning me all year long. My son, and later my daughter, both loved those early vacations, and now my son lives in Massachusetts, a move he made because he, too, fell in love with its charms. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest where I have many opportunities to visit local coastal communities where I garner subject matter for my paintings. My wife and I visit our son and his wife, when possible, in their house in Watertown, MA. They have a cottage on the Cape in Chatham, MA, where we all visit when in their company. That connection keeps me continually supplied with fresh subjects for my art.

Watercolor works seemed to be the perfect fit for my art going forward during those years and I enjoyed giving some of those artworks to family members. I was encouraged by those same family supporters throughout my artistic journey. In the following years, and decades that followed those early times in my artistic development, I experimented with many different mediums of art materials to create images. Watercolor continued to be a favorite, which later led to pastels and then combining those two mediums into collage work. Mono type printing became interesting to me as an element to go with the pastels, watercolors and torn paper with its rough edges for contrast. Collaging became very intuitive for me, with the placing of different medium elements next to and over each other in a dance of compositional importance: what needs to be more prominent, what needs to recede in order to let a more interesting component come forward, what will catch your eye and give some semmblance of order. Collage in a lot of ways informs the work that I do today in so much as which elements within a given painting need to jump out at the viewer. That dance of prominent and receding values, colors, shapes, line weight and perspective lead the viewer through a painting, circling the viewer from top, sides, bottom, middle and back into the top again starting at one point of interest and continuing throughout the artwork.

In my late forties I went through a divorce with my wife and mother of my children, which hit me harder than I realized at the time. It was hard when it happened, but had a more lasting effect on my psyche and subsequently my art than I understood at the time. Using collage to express my feelings in my art was a natural progression at the time. That art is mostly figurative, mixed with collaged, xeroxed, and monotype elements. The results were eye catching although somewhat dark or mysterious in nature. It was work that helped me process my feelings of rejection and lack of self worth.

On the verge of my fifth decade I had overcome the turmoil of the divorce, moved out of my home state and relocated to the west coast. With a new outlook on life and my artistic endeavors I flourished in my new surroundings. I ventured into a more crafty collection of art objects, paintings and objects d’art. Once again adapting to my circumstances, I created art works influenced by my new living conditions and locale. A lot of lodge subjects, fish (trout in particular), bears, salmon, pine trees, even making some rustic furniture became my venture.

I held down a job at a local newspaper where I learned to use a computer doing advertising ads. Once my time was done at the newspaper I moved again, this time from Oregon to Washington state where I reside today.

Into my seventh decade now I continue to paint in Watercolors, Oils and Acrylics, I consider myself settled into a good vibe using vibrant colors to elevate my mood and hopefully the viewers attitude also.