January 2020: Happy New Year!
Reference photo for painting: Sugar Pine State Park, Lake Tahoe
The new year is always full of new beginnings and here’s one I’d love to try to maintain this year: a monthly background story on the 12 paintings that I have put into my annual calendar. If you are a recipient of one, maybe you are interested in learning more about it as you stare at it for a month!
January’s painting was painted a year ago in Tahoe. I had just started the “January challenge” to paint daily- which I’m doing again this year. This is a great way to get fluid again, and shake off the cobwebs brought on by the holidays.
We had so much snow last year in Tahoe, I had to be on a 2nd story to see anything- you couldn’t work at ground level with 10-12 foot walls of snow. So I went to a nearby state park (Sugar Pine) where they plow the parking lot and saw this scene. It was quite cold and I only gave myself about an hour and told myself “just get it done and get out of here”. I’m almost a little grumpy about it, and then, all the sudden, I’m in the zone and the rest of the world melts away. What cold?
As you can see from the photo, the lake is barely visible- but I knew it was there and I knew it would be a stronger painting to emphasize it. I placed tree trunks at thirds- nothing in the middle- and used the wide, narrowing path to move the eye into the painting. I could see very quickly that the tree shadows were constantly moving, so I had to decide what was light, and what was dark and stick with that plan.
This piece is very “Plein air”- it is a reaction to what I was seeing, in paint, and not polished up at all in the studio. When I look at the painting now, I can tell I was looking at the scene, if that makes sense. It’s me saying “I am seeing this for you”. It’s a bit more loose and brushy than some of my work is, but I was happy with the result.
This painting found a home in Montana- a sorority sister/ fellow art major enthusiastically purchased it and it makes me happy to know it’s in a good home!