In the Nick of Time . . .

In the Nick of Time

I'll just leave this here and come back later for details.

I'm back! Details.
I'm not sure where my reference photo came from but I loved the fresh cut wheat in rows.
The little town in the distance is from a photo I took while driving
back from Brainerd, Minnesota last month.
So iconic here on the Great Plains.
The white houses, a few steeples, and
grain elevators.
The storm on the horizon is nothing out of the ordinary for folks
out here in the middle of the country so to add it to
this painting was natural.
Always trying to stay one step ahead of Nature.
And with that, I need to head out to take in the last
of the garden, pull up tomato plants and okra and chop
out the invasive chives.
Who gave me that evil clump of chives, anyway?

Detail : 10"x10"
Oil on canvas

Day 25 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 25 : Sunrise Seward Airport

From a photo I took this summer just before dawn at the Seward Airport in Nebraska.
Looking north, the sky was the wonderful hazy pink,
the shadows long, and the distant farm misty.
Every June our aerobatic club stages a contest there and every summer,
Ed and I tow my '63 Shasta trailer out and stay in that so we don't
have to get up pre-dawn to drive the 20 miles to the airport.
Every year I marvel at the gorgeous sunrise, the quiet calm of the airport,
the surrounding misty farms, distant freight trains.
So here are two hangars making long shadows as the sun comes up.
Before the hubbub begins.

Details : Oil on canvas
8"x8"

Day 24 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 24 : Salt Marsh Evening

Okay, so this challenge has turned into 30 paintings without

regard for the 30 days.

Still.

24 paintings and well on my way to 30!

This is from a photo reference that I've taken some liberties with.

I am trying to improve my grass technique and my trees seem to be improving.

I'd give anything to be able to take a class with Carol Marine.

I so envy her brushstrokes and try to copy them in my own work.

Someday.

When I've been painting for as long as she has.

Maybe there are people who say that about my metalwork.

Get 15 years under your belt and come see me then.

=-)

Detail : Oil on canvas

12"x12"

Day 23 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 23 : Platte River

Just south of Columbus, Nebraska, August 2015.

Shallow enough to wade across in most places.

And wide.

This painting took less than 30 minutes to complete.

Quick and impressionistic.

Dark blue ground with is what you see in the scumbled background

and in the vegetation here and there.

I just let it show through for a little depth.

Details : Oil on canvas

6"x6"

Day 22 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 22 : Milkweed

Since we live in the middle of farmland, it's only natural that it is my first choice for a subject to paint.

Just up the road a ways is this neighbor's field.

Very soon it will be dusty golden yellow from harvesting corn and beans but for now,

this field is blooming with milkweed throughout.
And summer haze.

Details : Oil on canvas

6"x6"

Day 20 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge

Day 20 : Person to Person

I love to paint wide expanses of prairie and sky with farmsteads on the horizon.

But I can't shake the feeling that they are somewhat lifeless until I add

what is always there but not so obvious - tall radio and telephone towers.

So I call this one 'Person to Person' as farms used to be

remote and out of communication until telephones came along.

And now we all have these little handheld devices that beam your conversation

up into the sky where it connects with a satellite

then beams it unbelievably to the person you wish to speak with.

I can see that this painting needs a little touchup but you get my message.

Details : 8"x8"

Oil on canvas

Day 17 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

 Day 17 : Fort Robinson Bluffs

Getting back into the 'one a day' swing again and feeling the burn.

Spring a year ago, Ed and I took a driving trip west from Lincoln into the Sandhills of Nebraska and on into the Black Hills of South Dakota, through the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore and Custer Parks and a few others.

I'm okay with people calling Kansas and Nebraska 'flyover states' and it seems to keep the riffraff out of the way while you enjoy the unbelievable scenery.

No mountains to get in the way of the view.

No people, no crowds, nothing but sky and grassland.

In west central Nebraska is an old US Army fort - Fort Robinson.

Here is where Sioux Chief Crazy Horse surrendered and died.
The Fort Robinson Massacre was here.

Here is the site of a German Prisoner of War camp during World War II.
Local farmers would come to the camp for field workers.

The place is infinitely fascinating with history and lately I can't get enough of it.

Something in my center makes me feel at ease in the grassland and prairies.

It is hard to imagine the prairies treeless but you can read My Antonia
 and get a wonderful description of Nebraska through Willa Cather's eyes. 
Trees were brought in by settlers and people walking their way to the West, 
hoping to make homes.
Buffalo Soldiers were stationed here.
There are good things about this area and bad things - all concerning the Red Cloud Agency, Sioux, Lakota, and Cheyenne - and most definitely there can be sadness felt here.

I'm deeply moved when I'm out here and can't drink it in fast enough.

Details : 12"x12"

Oil on canvas

Day 16 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 16 : Seward July

Yeah, I took a break.

Not that I wanted to.

It was kind of forced on me by first my sinuses and then my intestines.

I won't go into more than that.

So.

Here I start in once again at Day 16 with a quick and light summer scene.

From the Seward, Nebraska Airport, I can see a far off farm.

Looking so clean and tidy and bright from a mile off,

sultry summer clouds building and dying, building and dying.

Milo is yellow/green with heads ready to turn rust soon.

Details : 6"x6"
Oil on canvas

Day 12 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 12 : Almost

I'm a day behind thanks to this.

Okay, so maybe that's just an excuse but when the knife broke,

in the middle of a painting,

I thought it best to hang it up for a day.

Day 10 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 10 : Two Farms

Maybe I should title this "Farm vs Farm"

Another expansive, vapor of a sky with grassland far and near.

One the left is the traditional farm with two silos, barn and outbuildings.

On the right are three windmill power generators.

(In need of a little more definition.)

The war will continue for some time over the land and the wind.

Details : Oil on canvas

6" x 6"

Day 8 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 8 : Two Farms

If no one is impressed but me that I've stuck with my 30 Day Challenge, 

then hooray for me!

I'm starting the second full week of painting an oil painting a day and I cannot believe how energizing and affirming this is.

Especially when I posted Day 7 on my Facebook page and got 59 'likes'.

More 'likes' than I got on my birthday, I think =-D

Anyway.

This painting is another simple prairie landscape with some unexpected detail.

If you look closely, you can see that this is a painting of Two Farms

but not the traditional farm.

This is a painting of wind turbines that are cropping up all over the central states.

When I look at the maps for the amount of wind in the central US,

the highest amounts of wind are concentrated from Texas northward through North Dakota and Minnesota and the highest areas are through Iowa.

Traveling between Omaha and DesMoines is jaw-dropping.

One day I quit counting at over 100 near Walnut, Iowa.

This developing source of power is having serious consequences and affecting the true farming communities and farmers in ways not imagined.

So here you have Two Farms.

Non-traditional.

Details : Oil on canvas

12"x24"

Day 7 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 7 : Untitled

Wow, a week! Seven days and seven paintings!

I have impressed even myself with this 'every day' thing.

Okay, what did I learn today?

That there are more artists than just me who paint the same subject matter more than once. I have been reluctant to repeat landscapes or clouds or grass because I think (well, who know what I think?) that it simply isn't done.

Boy, was I wrong.

Last night I got out a few basic painting and color theory books and found that this is exactly what I should be doing if I ever intend to improve on whatever my subject matter happens to be.

Duh.

So there will be more gravel roads, more grass, more skyscapes, more more more.

Now I'm getting a bit more excited about this process.

All things unfold in their own time but I seriously wish I'd not been telling myself for these last 40+ years that I could not paint.

Detail : Oil on canvas

8"x8"

Day 6 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 6

Okay, here's the deal.

Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't.

Here it doesn't quite make it.

Yesterday I started this landscape three times and three times I wiped it off.

Today, I was determined to stick with it.

I'm not happy with the way it went but I am happy that I 

held in there and finished the job.

Details : Oil on canvas

5"x7"

Day 5 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 5

What did I learn today?

That it's okay to wipe off a painting and start over, once, twice, and three times.

What I was working on was a fading gravel road with a gold and green field.

Another distant horizon.

But it was all wrong. Color wrong. Grass wrong. Gravel wrong.

I wiped it off and went back to what I knew to work and maybe that's the key.

In my metalworking, when I try to hard to get detailed and intricate, I miss the mark.

But when I let my design go broad and expansive, I hit it almost every time.

So here you have another little painting of the expansive Nebraska grassland.

A big farm with two silos that is dwarfed by the vastness of sky.

Detail : Oil on canvas

6"x6"

Day 4 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 4

Color mixing is almost as much fun at brush play right now.

Strange how reluctant I am to paint things as they are not in real life.

Somehow they are not jarring as I thought they might be.

Play is important for now.

Details : 6"x6"

Oil on canvas

Day 3 : An Oil a Day 30 Day Challenge . . .

Day 3 and I learned today that doing something a little different is hard.

This little painting originally had a diagonal road running through it but 

(and I say 'but' because I wiped it clean off the face of the earth)

gravel roads can look chalky and artificial.

I don't quite have the technique down, yet

(and I say 'yet' because it will come, it will come.)

For today, another landscape from a photo I took of the field across the road from us.

It is wide and open and the skies have been gorgeous this Spring.

On this day, high cirrus clouds and hard sunshine.

Details : 6"x6"

Oil on canvas