How to paint water...

Narrow Bridge   oil/canvas  36 x 24 x 1.5

is a concern for most artists as water reflects what surrounds it for the most part.  Frozen water.  Moving water.  Stagnant water.  Each creates its own problems to solve.  Here in America we don't often worry about a source for water.  Solidarites International is one organization making an effort to provide clean water for folks around the world.  Artist Clement Beauvais has illustrated this need on a vimeo film clip by drawing with water and dropping in ink on the surface.  Fellow artist Tom Auld has forwarded this clip to me....he was intrigued by the drop-in of pigment....one of the beautiful qualities of a water medium.  The film is both beautiful and haunting.

Matt Damon and Gary White have founded water.org here in this country.  Donations are accepted to help to provide enough clean water for a year for an individual.  It is estimated that 3.6 million people, including 1.5 million children under the age of 5, die each year from consuming water that is undrinkable.

Let water be the link for solving this global problem.  Donate.  Paint water.

Paint about what you know...

Narrow Bridge   oil/canvas   36 x 24 x 1.5

It is said that writing can best be done when you write about what you know.....the knowing.  I would like to further that notion by stating that, for me, I paint best when I paint what I know.  It is difficult to prop myself up with my easel in unfamiliar surrounds and try to tell a visual story....the story that combines the surround with the feelings that it conjures up inside me.  My feelings are inseparable from the view.  Likewise, when painting from an unfamiliar model, my results are correlate to my feelings about that model.  If he/she is someone with whom I have many positive shared experiences, the end product shows emotion and commitment.  Even a new model will yield positive results is I feel an emotional accessibility.  I have some pretty bad paintings of models who where whiny, stiff, or unable to relate some of their emotional selves.  This correlation presented itself after many years of painting.  And so, for me, for commitment, I chose subjects with which I have an emotional bond....landscapes, people or objects.  Those are the stuff of which I am willing to go the extra mile. "Narrow Bridge" is a scene that I pass several times a week....just down the street from me.  The scene may go unnoticed my many.  For me, it is home.  Pure bliss.