Painting the "City Views"

Last week Cohen & Grigsby, P.C., a downtown Pittsburgh law firm, invited a group of the Associated Artists to paint from their deck. Their new offices are on the fifth floor of the CNG Tower. They were great - providing free parking, free lunches, and get this, free canvases! There were about 12 of us that worked throughout the week as attorneys, paralegals and secretaries looked on. To my knowledge this just isn't done. Most outdoor painters are used to being asked to leave rather than being invited for an entire week. The best part was watching each other paint and sharing the camaraderie with other artists. Above is pictured Kevin Kutz, Nancy Deckant, and Kitty Spangler. The painting is one of six I did there. An exhibition, City Views,  is planned for early October in the firm's lobby.

Roosevelt House, 20 x 45, oil on canvas

This is a painting I did in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh last summer. The woman reading shows the scale of these houses. She did not know I painted her in until later. Her husband commissioned the painting because they just love the kid-friendly street. I did it on location over a few days. And yes there were a lot of curious children.

On another note, Pittsburgh Winter, a large oil painting won the Clara A. Wittmer Award at the 100th Annual Associated Artists Exhibition held at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The AAP Annual is the longest running annual exhibition held in a major museum in the United States.
I'll be talking about the painting this Sunday from 2:30-3:30 at the museum. It was featured in the paper last week. Read about it here. in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Harbour Town Light House, 36 x 48, oil on canvas

Cathy and I were in Hilton Head last week so that I could do this painting for a friend. She actually took the photo that I worked from because the weather did not cooperate. I wasn't sure about doing a large painting of the light house because that's so ordinary and everyone else has already done it. Then it occurred to me that Edward Hopper did light houses and did them his way. So I tried a risky composition – centering the light house. The boats and trees were used in the foreground as an entry point and to offset the bullseye effect of the light house. These elements lead the viewer to the far left background. The hazy sunshine that saturated the scene required a lot of gray. You notice it in the water and sky. My palette knife was used to paint the entire sky. It created nice, soft edges to the cloud formations.

Winter Shadows, 30 x 40, oil on linen

How about a winter painting post for this second day of summer? This painting, which was in the Paint & Pixels exhibition at The Museum at Indiana University of PA, was recently selected by the museum board for their permanent collection. It is a good example of alla prima (done all at once) painting. It was done this past February in Indiana County. I started it mid-morning and worked on it until mid-afternoon. During that time the shadows shifted a lot so I had to decide at some point where they needed to live. I liked the idea of having to visually "step over" the near shadows to get to the thick tree and the deep forest in the background. The sun was so brilliant that I had a terrible headache by the time I finished. The entire painting process took about five continuous hours and that includes an 8 x 10 inch study done first. No further work was done to it in my studio.

Ghosted Sign, 24 x 30, oil on canvas, finished

Ghosted Sign, 24 x 30, oil on canvas

Students have often asked how my process evolves. Here is an attempt to show nine steps, start to finish. (I must say it is hard to concentrate on a painting and then stop to take photos at regular intervals!) I often look at something for years until I see it in a particular light and it triggers an idea for a painting. That's what happened last week when I drove by this old brick building. The wall facing west was illuminated by warm light and I could almost read the hand painted sign. There are a lot of these "ghosted signs" here in Pittsburgh. Sometimes you can read them, but most are just faded images. What were they and what are they still trying to say? To me they are grim reminders of the weathering effect time has on all things, especially us.

Brunot's Island, 34 x 64, oil on canvas

This is a piece I've been working on for a few weeks. It is from a photo I took from Mt. Washington. Describing how colors change over distance is something that has always fascinated me. In this painting I'm contrasting a dense dark, shadowed foreground with a cool softer background. The Ohio River splits as it goes around Brunot's Island and makes its way toward McKees Rocks and then on to Sewickley and eventually to the mighty Mississippi. I wanted to show the extreme distance that can be seen from this vantage point.