Wednesday 2.14.24 - 20 years of Art, Illustrated, Part 3 of 5

In today’s newsletter I’m sharing works 20 to 27 of 34 works chosen for a recent grant application, following twenty years of art making, 2003-2023, and a bit about each work:

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply to this email, email me at David@DavidOSmithArtist.com, or use the Contact Page of my website.

I included “Raven” as a prime example of the kind of intense optical painting we were practicing while studying at The Ryder Studio in Santa Fe.  I went to Santa Fe in February of 2021, intending to stay for six weeks, to take Tony Ryder’s Portrait Painting workshop.  We were to paint from one model in the morning, 9:30am-12:30pm, Monday through Friday, for the entire six weeks, to create a six week portrait.  In the afternoons, 1:30-4:30pm, the model would rotate weekly, so we would be working on six one-week portraits as well.  “Raven” is the result of my morning sessions, a six-week painting (about 90 hours total) of the wonderful an semi-famous NYC / Santa Fe model Raven.  During these six weeks, I made the choice to add on an additional six weeks following of still life painting, as well as move to Santa Fe for a time.  All in all, I spent six months drawing and painting in Santa Fe, before moving back to Seattle Fall of 2021.  This portrait was made in stages, beginning with a small “poster study”, a very approximate sketch of just the colors of the light, followed by a charcoal drawing on the linen, then a diluted oil sketch to replace the charcoal, followed by an underpainting of diluted paint (still visible on part of Raven’s neck and shoulder) followed finally by a full-saturation layer of opaque oil on top, giving the painting that deep, rich, fully-saturated color feeling.  Although I struggled a lot during the making of this painting, I am so grateful to have gone through the exercise of seeing the color of the light, and painting that light in oil.  Without this work, the other portraits, the still life painting afterwards, I don’t think my vision would have ever been open to seeing what is really before me.  I owe Tony and his wife Celeste so much for their kindness, their generosity in sharing their insights, as well as their hard work to establish and maintain an environment where artists can learn to expand their practice.  Also most noteworthy from my time in Santa Fe was meeting and befriending Maxwell Forrest Roath, now one of my closest friends, who was in the Ryder Studio at the same time, learning as much as he could.

This watercolor plein air painting was a breakthrough piece at the time.  I had been wondering, since returning to Seattle from Santa Fe, if it was possible to apply my optical way of seeing (introduced / developed during my time in the Ryder Studio) to plein air watercolor, to break through the kind of limits I felt in my work, to really be able to paint what I was seeing, no matter how challenging to pin down, no matter how fickle and elusive.  I had been painting a ton, especially plein air, since returning to Seattle Fall of 2021, but it really wasn’t until I made this, one searingly bright and chilly January afternoon, squinting into the hazy sunlight blasting my balcony view of South Rainier and 23rd, that I felt that the paintings I’d dreamed of making were maybe possible.  I simply looked at what I saw, as hard as I possibly could, and tried to mix paint to match that.  I worked top to bottom in successive layers, not letting the layers dry completely, so the scene could have a kind of overall visual coherence.  The rainbow effect in the sky is not accidental, but one of the benefits of not completely mixing multiple hues in watercolor - as the pigment shifts on the paper, it occasionally separates out like an oil slick on a lake, generating the same kinds of spectral patterns and colors found in the flare of the sun.  For every piece that I would consider a “breakthrough” like this one, there are probably 50 or 100 that aren’t - it’s a deeply motivating moment when one does stumble across a very successful painting, but I don’t expect them when I paint, I just keep up with the discipline of trying to do the best job I can, in the moment, every time.

This piece was made one hot summer night, after walking all the way around Seward Park going counter-clockwise on foot, carrying my heavy portfolio, painting board and supplies all the way.  When I finally arrived at the heavy gravel beach on the West side, the rust hues the sun was throwing off were astounding.  I am proud of this piece as I worked mostly blinded by the sun - and I could not really see the painting I was making as I made it.  This piece was new and experimental for me - the largest I’d worked at that point, using the biggest brush, and using much, much more paint than I had previously, to get a thick opacity out of watercolor, usually thought of as a transparent medium.  I tried as best I could to really see what was happening, optically, with the far shoreline, the wave shapes, the subtle change of the hue of the lighter parts of the water, blue at the top near the horizon, greenish closer to shore (look for it - the water is not all “blue”).  I hadn’t yet bought and used the 30 x 42” sheets that are now a regular practice for me, so this piece at 26 x 37” felt “big” to work on.  It would be another few months before I stepped up in scale again.

This painting, 30 x 42”, was among the first I made at this scale, and I believe the only one so far in vertical format.  The clouds and sky were beautiful, but changing fast in the midday light - so I worked furiously, as fast as I possibly could, and finished in thirty minutes.  Sometimes a painting clicks and working fast like this is possible, but it’s not a process to rely on.  I might have gotten a bit lucky, but I was enjoying myself, and the day was a very good one for painting.

This painting remains one of the most dramatic weather conditions I’ve been outside to paint.  The wind was howling, coming straight at me as I worked, the sun gleaming off the waves yet its direct light hidden behind a giant glowing rain cloud.  Alki in the distance receded like a fading dream, with the islands beyond it mingled with the thick salt spray of Puget Sound.  More than once my painting board caught the wind and almost got away from me.  The gray concrete diagonal in the foreground is the sea wall I was perched next to, just out of reach of the droplets of saltwater from the crashing waves.  The color within the larger waves reminded me of painting in Hawaii, the aqua-blue indigo tint of phthalates blue, a color I rarely see in Seattle in any weather conditions.  Remembering this piece, I am grateful I was there that day to see this scene, as it is beyond anything I could have imagined or dreamed.

It’s impossible for me to remember this painting without remembering the cyclist who stopped to watch me paint the whole thing, start to finish, us conversing the whole time.  One of the processes that I’ve found can improve a work is for me to be speaking with someone else about what I’m doing as I’m doing it - the intent for each decision is that much more clear.  This painting was made as part of a larger project of rendering the Lakeside School Rowing Team for the alumni magazine.  Although rowing only appears in miniature on the upper right horizon of this piece, it was the assignment which prompted me to visit Kenmore in the afternoon (where the team rows on Lake Washington) many, many times in the Spring of 2023.  A lot of good work and great learning came out of that process of coming back to this dock in Logbook Park, over and over, including the conversation that helped inform this painting.

This is one of my personal favorite works of the last several years.  Almost all of the gulls in this piece are really the same, single gull, perched on a telephone pole outside the window of my old apartment in the Mt Baker / South Rainier neighborhood.  I had already been observing and drawing this gull (“Mr. Seagull”, as I named him) for over a full year, having completed a similar graphite multi-study drawing the previous year.  To make this, I’d have it attached to my drawing board, close at hand, while doing other tasks, usually business-related, near the window in my apartment.  If I happened to see Mr. Seagull on the pole, I’d grab my board and pencil and work as quickly as I could, either beginning a new sketch based on a new pose, or work on a previous start if he was in a similar position and light condition as before.  The most time-consuming of all the drawings on the page, maybe surprisingly, were the drawings of the gull in flight.  I’d have less than a second, sometimes, to see what his wings, body, head were doing before he soared away, so I would look, immediately shut my eyes, try to remember that still picture in my mind, almost drawing from (short-term) memory.  While it was always challenging to begin works like this one, I loved continuing to work on them, as you can develop a surprising amount of detail and refinement when you observe a single animal for months or years.  Included are a few other bird species, a few other gulls who occupied the pole when Mr. Seagull wasn’t in, and a bit of detail of the top of the pole itself.  Since I’ve moved, I miss this practice of drawing this gull.

While one of the least flashy or “spectacular” landscape paintings I’ve made, this is a personal favorite.  It was a very windy, wavy day, a day so characteristic of the north end of Lake Washington, the kind of day I remember so clearly from my years of rowing there in the spring as part of my high school rowing team.  I was in Kenmore to depict that same team, now working for the alumni magazine, but this piece was made more for me, after I’d already made the work needed for the article.  The extreme righthand glare of the sun on the water adds an interesting, almost candid or accidental effect.  I’ve not seen many paintings or even photographs frame the sun in this way, but it was as I observed it, and it felt right.

Thus concludes works 20 to 27 of 34 works demonstrating 20 years of continuous art making.  Next up for Thursday, I’ll go over works 28 to 34.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply to this email, email me at David@DavidOSmithArtist.com, or use the Contact Page of my website.

Cheers,

David