I began another inner visual remembrance painting a few days ago...This is the photo of how it was for awhile before I started trying to alter it to fit the movie of the inspiring events that go off in my head when I concentrate on that experience. Yellow and Blue liquids...Intensely illuminated from within...wrestling together, but not combining... How to catch a moment of that in 2 dimentions...That is the question and the problem....It is fun to try though.
My vision of where this first try at depicting this inner visual expereience would go was transmuted by the painting process into this piece that I'm not entirely pleased with, but which is somehow revealing in a more symbolic stylistic manner that to me evokes thoughts of representational forms...which is something that is difficult to stay away from granted our great asssociative human thought processes. Watching cloud shapes for instance...
This is why it will take way more than one or two trys to really get to what I want to capture in a painting of that radiation experience. Luckily I have lots of canvases at the moment.
Mahalo for your attention,
Timo
I've begun a new series of abstract oil paintings loosely based on the interior color display in my mind's visual center as I was being exposed to the radiation treatment during my bout with cancer almost two years ago.
This first one was started over an old painting of a pear that was given to me recently with a stack of canvases that were salvaged from an abandoned storage space by my friend that manages that facility.
Yellow is one of the colors that predominated these experiences. So I used that first to keep it rich and pure before I began the other dominant color which is blue.
The shapes aren't meant to represent anything in particular...just letting my rememberance guide my brush. The show going on in my head during the radiation exposure period was like two liquids interacting in a kind of brilliantly lit dance together, without mixing together as pigments would, but constantly moving in and out of each other as liquid light. Like a Lava Lamp.
Autumn vineyards here in Sonoma County California take on a wonderful spectrum of vibrant hues starting in the lower areas around the middle of October and spreading to the higher elevations as the temperature drops there. Until the all the vines are saturated with color and the show is just spectacular in some vineyards...Making for many opportunities to find good inspiration for paintings or photos. If you haven't seen this firsthand then you really ought to make a visit here during this season to come out here and witness the display.
Aloha a hui hou!
Timo
As I add more and more daubs of pigments to the canvas the picture begins to awaken and take on more of a life of it's own. Each touch with the brush adds to the illusion of seeing the morning vineyard through this small window of painted canvas.
Mahalo for stopping in.....
Aloha Ohana,
Timo
Some more color...Deep Cadmium Yellows and oranges...Warming it up. Stay tuned for some reds coming up next!!!
For those of you who are interested in keeping tabs on my work, please become "followers" of this blog and you'll be advised when I post (I think...)something new. Please comment too!
Mahalo Ohana.
Aloha,
Timo
As I add more colors to the vines they gain in the appearance of having volume. Painting in a realistic style is basicly about creating the illusion of three dimentions on a two dimentional surface. Attention to color is very important in achieving the sense of reality in the picture that brings it up to a place where your mind will fill in all blanks.
Mahalo for stopping in.
Aloha,
Timo
Continuing the shadow colors into the areas between the vines really defines the essense of the visual flow in this fairly simple composition. The shapes precede the colors of the grapevines so the perspective will be accurately rendered.
Stay in touch...
Mahalo & Aloha,
Timo
I underpainted the area occupied by the grapevines with a Naples Yellow Light to brighten the colors that will follow and then started defining the negative spaces between the rows of vines with a shadow inducing combination of Alizerine Crimson & Ultramarine Blue loosely blended together roughly half & half.
Lots still to do so come back soon and see how far it's come along.
Mahalo & Aloha.
Timo
A little more on the new Vineyard painting that I started a few days back...Visual information gathering momentum...The hillside beyond that at first appears to be the sky...A closer wooded hill almost totally obscured by the heavy morning mists...a wall and more trees emerging closer still on the left...
There is way more to come...!!!
Mahalo & Aloha,
Timo
Another painting session has brought London's Autumn Vineyard to this juncture. Much more to come on this piece...Stay tuned for all the changes that will bring this painting to the finish line!
Mahalo for stopping by,
Timo
I started a new painting on a 16" x 32" canvas of my own construction of an Autumn vineyard scene with the morning mist still hanging in the ravines from a photo that my friend London took. Much more to follow this posting...
Mahalo for seeing what's up.
Aloha, Timo
I painted this manufactured 18" x 24"canvas panel from a photo that my friend Rick had taken sometime before we arrived, of the gorgeous view looking down through the Kalalau Valley to the Pacific Ocean. I did it in a direct ala prima plein air style even though my reference was a photoprint. I did this painting in about 5 hours.
Doing a plein air portrait of my friend Rick's cabin at Kokee, Kauai. and the results.
This medium sized canvas (16" x 24") that I built myself was the support for an oil portrait of my friend Jeff's little (850 sq.ft.) stone French farmhouse on Sonoma Mountain near Glen Ellen, California. The first of three elevations he's having me do for him. The detail in this kind of architectural portrait requires many hours of painting to accomplish. I always work to satisfy myself as well as the client in every detail of a finished work.
Mahalo for checking in.
Aloha, Timo
I know... I haven't made a blog entry for well over a month, but I'll try to catch up a bit on at least the ART part of my life since my last blog-in. Beginning with this commissioned seascape that I just finished about a week ago. It was a lager version of an old painting that was done in the '90s when I was living in Jenner. The original work only had one shorebird, but the client wanted me to add three more because they have four children. We also changed the colorscheme slightly for this larger (28" x 40") piece using a photo of another painting that was already hanging in the room where it was to be hung for reference. We are all very satisfied with the new version.
Mahalo for stopping in today.
Aloha, Timo
