Painting Water

Two things I like painting very much are interesting light effects, and water. So often the two can be joined and unified in a single painting. The painting above is an interpretation of Glacier Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO. By interpretation, I mean I have adjusted the image both to fit on the canvas better, and be more interesting. I’m not trying to paint every rock or molecule of water, I mearly suggest movement, and light. By not spelling all of the detail out, I allow you, the viewer, to come to the piece with your own visual vocabulary and the life experiences you have around similar subject matter. The light in the painting guides the eye in and around the cascade. There’s just enough surrounding interest to satisfy the eye that there is indeed a forest that this creek is flowing through, without compromising or detracting from the Main Event.

To the right we have a creek making its way under the snow, “Snowy Creek.” Painting snow is most enjoyable in the feild because the contrasts that are created are too much for a camera to adaquetely pick up. There are so many colors that either get overexposed or under-exposed when shooting snow with a camera. I love the way snow unifies a composition. Very little information is needed in terms of shape for a snow painting to “read.” The most information comes in describing form with color, value, and temperature relationships. 

The painting at left, “Alberta Falls” is a field study from the ’07 Plein Air Festival in Estes Park, CO. For that particular painting, I took 2nd place in the festival to my good friend and excellent painter, Jill Carver. I started the painting at about 7:00 AM and it took me about 3 hours to paint it. I was standing in the primo place for this composition with a cliff to my left and the guard rail to my right. Many an eager photographer was, no doubt, silently annoyed with me.

To the right, “Everett’s Marsh” depicts an icy shallow marsh with some blown cattails. One of the interesting things is the surface quality of this piece. I’ve been considering surface quality more and more the longer I paint. I like to suggest form in my work with value, color, temperature, shape, edge, and texture. There is a certain sculptural craftsmanship that I’m exploring with the application of paint, and this painting is a great example of this.

Below is a painting, “First Snow” I did in the field along Clear Creek in Anderson Park in Wheatridge, CO. I was struck by the warmth in the background trees next to the the cool hues of the snow. I pushed the cool colors of the meandering creek so that they could vibrate against the yellow grasses sticking through the snow. You get some subtle reflections in the rippled surface of the creek, while in other areas, particularly in the eddies, the water reflects more clearly. All of these elements come together in a rather pleasing arrangement of warms and cools.