Tag: Painting

  • The Project from Hell

    The project from hell is the one that has at least 27 more steps to it than initially envisioned, and each step consists of 1 step forward followed fairly quickly by 1.9999 (or sometimes 4.999999) back. So, take 20 miles of a dry lake bed, Summer Lake, seen in September from a relatively inaccessible spot…

  • Playa, September 17, 2013

    Sept 17, Tuesday I had an exciting morning. Went out with Rachel at 6:30 A.M. — this meant getting up at 5:30 because I’m a nervous nelly –  and I needed to heat up a cup of coffee so I could pretend to be human. We walked up to the bone yard, where Pepper looked…

  • Playa: September 15 & 16, 2013

    Sunday morning, Sept. 15 I am outside on the Commons deck, where the lawn and ponds and playa are quite beautiful and the laptop is almost readable in the sun. It’s only 11 AM but I’ve already worked on a large painting on-site up by cabin 1. Cabin 1 from the front. The back looks…

  • Playa Residency, September 11 through September 25, 2013

    [Note: The dated entries to the residency journal were done on-site at Playa, but because of restrictions on the bandwidth at the site, none were uploaded until I returned home at the end of September. I will be posting those over the next month, starting with the one done on the first day.] In this…

  • Paintings from Pine Creek: Issue 3

    18 x 24″, oil on Masonite, 2012 It was a long and fraught winter, with annoying bouts of vertigo that often stopped me completely. Earlier, I had committed to a charity auction, so most of my upright time was spent getting a small end table painted and presentable for the Community Warehouse Chair Affair. However,…

  • Paintings from Pine Creek, Second Issue

    It’s now November and I have left the north-central woods of Pine Creek, had a brief visit with relatives  in Lancaster County, spent four days in Philadelphia, mostly at the new Barnes Museum, and am now back in Portland Oregon. Here’s some links to my non-painting adventures: the Saga; the Crick; the hike up Gamble…

  • Dateline: Mitchell, Oregon, Day 6, Sept 11, 2011

    Today Jer went to Paulina, Post, and Prineville, where he got milk and cereal and gas. I stayed at Hollyhock Cottage and worked on the three partly finished paintings. Here are the paintings, in the order of today’s workings: JOU, Basalt Formations at Picture Gorge, Sept 2011, 30 x 40″, oil on canvas JOU, The…

  • Paintings from the Sandgren Workshop

    [Ed. note: this is a re-posting from the southeastmain blog] By june I’m finally ready to post the paintings from the Sandgren Workshop, not because they are fascinating and wonderful, but because, well, because it’s time. I did six paintings in three days, and then I reworked them in the studio. Five of the paintings…

  • Benton, Pollock, and, um, Underwood

    As I explored in previous posts (here, here, and here), I’m continuing my quest for compositional methods and ways of seeing that can give me a framework for my mostly intuitive working. Thomas Hart Benton and scholars discussing his work have dissected his use of vertical spirals, collage-like murals, and falling-into-your-lap figuration. Thomas Hart Benton,…

  • Wonky PDX Cityscapes — a Review by Sam Underwood

    [Ed. note: The following are the images from and a commentary about the wonky cityscapes exhibit shown at the Full Circle Gallery, May, 2011. Sam Underwood is a Portland-born, long-time observer of the city as well as an intelligent observer of paintings. Disclaimer: he’s also related to me. The paintings have been grouped by the…