Downtown Medford, Oregon

Well I have been very busy painting and working, I’m still finishing up the Smithfields series, I promise there will be some sort of splash involved.  I will invite you all to the opening, and then once the pieces are “unveiled” I will show them here.  In the mean time, I’ve just scanned some images of pieces I painted last summer.   As you know, lately I prefer to paint depressing semi-urban scenes, and because the traffic and pedestrians move too quickly, they can’t be included, so the pieces have this nice isolation with all the buildings and the sun, making it look like suddenly there are no people in the world.

Downtown Medford, Oregon

This painting available is for sale here.

The weather is now nice enough to head out doors, I’m looking forward to traveling to Klamath Falls, Oregon, a town a couple of hours drive over the mountains.  It’s high desert, lots of distance between trees, which I think makes for better paintings.  I just have to plan it.

I’ve been taking photography classes from Ezra Marcos as well.  I’m not trying to become a photographer, but I would like to have better photos for my Etsy shop and this blog.  Check out Ezra’s work, it’s fantastic, very fun.

Bear Skeleton

I’m entering pretty gory territory here.  Sorry if you’re squeamish or hate hunting or meat eating or anything like that.  My friend Gilbert is a hunter and recently killed a bear, which he removed the meat from and gave me the fresh skeleton, (minus the skull which he has buried in his backyard so that bugs will clean all the nooks and crannies of, so he can dig it up later and have a nice clean creepy and interesting object).  Anyway, Smithfields wants intensity and I think this will deliver – no?  The back ground elements will all be painted in grisaille, heightening the red and gold of the meat.  I have finished the previous painting for Smithfields, although I’m not showing them publicly until they’re all assembled in the restaurant and we can have a smashing unveiling.  : )  So, enjoy.

Bear Skeleton in Progress - By Sarah F Burns

Bear Skeleton Painting in Progress with the Actual Bear Skeleton

Ashland Painters Union

I’ve been exceptionally busy this year, working on the Smithfields paintings, working my day job and then I added a pet project with a group of painters  – Ashland Painters Union – we found a great space and simply wanted to put on shows that were curated by the artists.  Clean, gift free space to show art.

March 2012 Ashland Painters Union Opening

My Sister, Claire Clooney with her portrait, at the opening of Ashland Painters Union - Painting by Sarah F Burns

We had a lot to do, had a lot of fun at the opening, and everything was going well… until Monday March 19

Fire in the Stairwell directly under our gallery - set by homeless mentally ill arsonist.

In the cold light of day, we discover that our gallery has extensive smoke damage (although all the art work is okay – smells smokey, but not ruined) and worse, the support beams have been damaged, leaving us unable to safely occupy the space until repairs are done, which may take two months.

Ashland Painters Union Entrance After the Fire

There are some very informative articles you can read on our website – www.ashlandpaintersunion.com, plus take a tour of the show.

So I find myself with my usual busy schedule, waiting until we know more…

Just a Nice Piece That I Like

Rachel - a Value Study

 

From the PAPO Paint Out

I’ve been active in the Plein Air Painters of Oregon for a couple of years and they decided to do a Southern Oregon Trip, and being one of the only members living in Southern Oregon I was nominated to organize  the event.   Anyway, I set up painting in Hanley Farm, Central Point, downtown Jacksonville – a pretty corny old west themed little place with a pioneer cemetery, and then winery and finally paint out in and around Ashland, including Lithia Park and North Mountain Nature Park.

Anyway, the members are very lovely folks and I like meeting people who paint, but in the course of organizing this event, I have grown more and more aware of how I don’t like these kinds of events.  Mainly it’s because I hate painting at farms, wineries, wilderness areas.  They’re already beautiful – what do I have to add? I’m afraid this post is turning negative, but what is really important to me is that I’m actually finding a consistent theme that I like to paint – and am finding what about it turns me on.

You might think it would come naturally to an artist to know what they want to paint, but when you’re a student with an open mind you wind up absorbing a lot of stuff that helps, along with stuff that hinders.  When you’re a student in a classical tradition you don’t always get to choose your subject, you’re working a lot on technical issues and you can lose your way.  Eventually the creative liver has to send the good stuff to the blood stream the bad stuff to the colon.  So I’m at a point where I’m separating what I want from what I don’t want right now.

Anyway, let me show you what I painted during the PAPO paintout:

Hanley Farm's Garden

What I like about this piece is the pattern and the feeling of light.  I like that you lose the specific items too.  However, I don’t like the crop.  I may saw this strategically.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I will. Or maybe not.

Roxy Ann from Hanley Farm

Okay – I like how easily this one fell into place.  It was painting number two of the day and I usually find that the second painting of the day is easier, that I’m more in the flow, that colors are mixed on the palette and so it’s almost effortless.  I like painting things in the distance – when they’re in the distance they can be read better.

Jacksonville Pioneer Cemetary

For the afternoon we moved to Jacksonville Cemetary and it was brutally hot, dry and I was tired. There was so much to see, everywhere you turned were shadow and light, blocks of graves and dappled bits from the madrone trees.  I did this very quickly, getting pretty lazy by then and not really inspired by the setting.

Sign and Street

The next morning we painted in a winery, and I did a painting that is so awful I won’t show it, and by that time I was TRULY over all the places we were painting, so instead of heading to Lithia Park for the scheduled afternoon paint out I went to Phoenix, my beautiful town of suburban decay and started work in a spot that’s been calling my name – and lo an behold – I’m happy with the painting.

So, live and learn.

Way Back Machine

I’m  ALWAYS tempted to get rid of everything I’m not using RIGHT NOW, but I’m sure glad I can control that sometimes.  While moving my studio I ran across these little pieces of personal history.

We’ll begin at the beginning.  I’m pretty sure I drew this before I started school…?  It’s me and my dad feeding the sheep.

I don’t remember going to this circus.  I do remember Mrs. Jones and her wonderful handwriting – See the “Very Good”?  She was really a dream of a teacher.  I loved her.

I thought Jr. High would stop being embarrassing to me by age 35.  Nope.   This is from 8th grade, I think.  I don’t remember the teacher’s name, but I do remember thinking her glamorous – she had bleached blond hair with a hair style after all.  This project was a scratch board.  I think we used crayons to cover the paper, then painted it with india ink, let it dry and doodled away…

I’d forgotten about “ROY”  – it was the name on a bowling shirt my hoodlum friend Annemarie had?  It seemed so cool at the time to me.  Annemarie – what was the story there?

Fast forward to high school.  I don’t know where my school stuff went – much went to friends and family – thank goodness!  (I painted huge paintings during those years.  What a hassle to keep around!)  Anyway, I went over to take Life Drawing classes in the evenings at the local college (now SOU).  This shows the influence of both the teachers I studied with – Bob Alston always wanted us to sit down and look waaaaay up at the model who would be on a really tall pedestal.  Later I saw his paintings at an art show and they were all of sky scrapers seen from the street.  The other teacher was Jim Muhs who had a zen approach – he wanted us to be convinced our brush and ink were actually on the flesh of the model and would travel over and around it.  His paintings were large and distorted but interesting.

After high school I went to Pacific Northwest College of Art for two years, until I dropped out to have my dear little daughter.   I have many fond and embarrassing memories of college.  The embarrassing ones I blame on the fact that I was gearing up for a nervous breakdown.  Anyway – I imagine I’ll regret all this spillage – but the recent studio move and a friend’s addiction problem is causing me to drop normal barriers today.  Here are some Life Drawings – this one is of Ed C H King – another student at PNCA.  He, our friend Jacq and I modeled for each other to make up for some classes we missed.  Look up their art on the links I posted – they are fantastic.

Here are some quick sketches where the model came wearing some striped long underwear and Tom Fawkes, our teacher, asked her to keep them on so we could draw them.  I borrowed this exercise when teaching kids at the Ashland Academy of Art.

This whole post kind of started – in a round about fashion this morning when I saw that I had written “Notan” on a file folder on the kitchen counter.  I’m pretty sure that was something Steve LaRose told me to look up because something I’d done at Life Drawing recently reminded him of  or something ?  -  (why is my memory so bad?)  Anyway – I looked up Notan and then went to go organize the stacks of old art work I had to deal with when I ran across this – an exercise from like Design 101 or something – I guess this was a Notan exercise.  I think the teacher was Christy Wycoff.

So PNCA was big on printmaking – and during my last semester in school I made this wild thing – I was feeling exactly like this at that time.

And finally here is a self portrait I did at home – but during the time I was in college at PNCA,  I think it was right before I spun out of control.  It would be many, many years before I seriously took up painting again.  (Well, many years for someone who is 20.  Really I guess it was only 5 or 6.) I look like a boy in this piece – and that’s not the first or last time that my self portraits look masculine. weird.

Fast forward – This painting was something I made looking back at the time I’m referring to.  It’s supposed to be serious and sarcastic – painful and angry and funny.  It’s how it feels to know people are “worried” about you and how it feels to be grieving, how it felt to me to have embarrassing things get public.  Believe it or not, Judy Garland was an inspiration for this piece as well.  I painted this in like 2008 or something, not long after finishing four years in the Gulag.

OK!  Enough about me!  Share a memory or two in the comments.   Was adolescence embarrassing for you too?  And if you were there for some of the events above – please chime in.   oxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

PS – And the Gulag thing is a joke – and not as mean-spirited as it probably seems.  I learned a lot at that institution and I respect the instructor and classmates.  There was some unnecessary art-police brutality though.  That’s all.

Nocturnal Plein Air Painting

I’ve been wanting to try this for ages and the planets aligned for Steven LaRose and I to go out landscape painting as night fell a couple of weeks ago.

Motel at Night, by Sarah F Burns

We started out in a median as night fell.  By the end I could only vaguely see value differences on my pallet and was almost flying blind, relying on my memory of where I had placed each color to choose what I wanted.  The car lights coming from both directions got very annoying so we looked for a new location.

Nocturne, by Sarah F Burns

We were drawn downtown, and finally wound up in the lit alcove of the Art Center, looking across the street to this deliciously lonely scene.  Life as usual is jam packed with mile-long to-do lists, so I’m not sure when I’ll have a chance to have this kind of adventure again, but believe me, I am counting the days.

Workshop Piece

I took another workshop with Michael Grimaldi at BACAA this month.  As usual, the experience was extremely enlightening in pretty much every artistic way.   Structure, perspective, anatomy, light – natural light situations.   Here is the drawing I created during the session.

I had such a great experience that I am signing up to go back and take Dan Thompson’s workshop at BACAA in October.

Portrait of Adara

I have wanted to paint another portrait of Adara for years – ever since painting this first version when she was about 10 years old.

You may notice a serious expression on her face.  This is due to her EXTREME displeasure at having to sit still for 20 minutes at a time.  After this first painting several years ago, she has artfully avoided the experience – until now.  A well placed bribe along with a couple of threats have coerced her back into the studio.

She tried a few positions and finally settled on this one you see in the photo below. I told her she could sit anyway she wanted (except lying down asleep in bed, which was her first choice) and she settled on the pose you see in the photo below.

I tried a couple of sketches.

I like this one below very well.

I still need to work out a composition, but I”m looking forward to our next session.  And before you think I’m a terrible mother, after the initial irritation and resistance, Adara seemed actually to enjoy herself – a little.

(By the way – I apologize to those who get this post in their inbox – I inadvertently published it before it was ready.  I have a new smartphone and I can barely work it.)

Location, Location, Location Paint Out

I participated in my first Plein Air Painting Competition last weekend in Roseburg, Oregon for the Umpqua Valley Arts Association’s Location, Location, Location Paint Out.  I was surprised to find myself very, very nervous while painting.  I did not bring my camera – ?  – what’s wrong with me? – so I have no photos to show.  All three paintings I made for the competition are hanging in the show – two were given awards of distinction, which just meant they went into the good gallery where the prize winners were chosen from.  It was a cool experience, great to connect with painters from all over Oregon, they had a really nice dinner on the beautiful lawn of the Art Center with a great live band. The overwhelming feeling among the 72 artists involved was:  “Well Done Umpqua Valley Arts Association.”   The day after the competition there were three artist demos in a lovely park where the North and South Umpqua Rivers converge.  We watched the demos, painted and I had a great swim.  Here is my piece from the fun day paint out:

Oaks by the Umpqua by Sarah F Burns