Late Summer Volcan View

18x24 oil on panel

This piece completes my 10 painting series examining the plant life on Volcan Mountain in Julian California over the course of the last year. In late August the grasses on the mountain have been bleached by the sun and and rustle in the hot breezes that move about the mountain. The grassy ridges and meadows seem to bounce the brilliance of the of the sun back to the sky. Light and heat seem to come from everywhere. 

Walking down the trail after the long hot hike to the 5,500 foot summit I was struck by this lovely long view up the westerly face of the Volcan Mountains. It's a timeless sight, a succession of ridge lines and valleys, habitats in large part still untouched. 

I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to spend a year scrutinizing this beautiful environment under the sponsorship of the Marjorie and Joseph Rubenson Endowment for Art and Science of the Volcan Mountain Foundation. My lifelong love of the wild lands of Southern California has become a driving mission to preserve and protect wherever we can. As my knowledge and understanding of the the importance of wild spaces has widened, my commitment has deepened. The hard work of the Volcan Mountain Foundation is a gift to the future. It's fight to preserve and protect over 17,000 acres since 1988 has protected the headwaters of the watershed that feeds the San Diego Basin, and has preserved the incredible biodiversity of wildlife and wild lands.

The soul opens watching a hawk circle in an updraft, startling a doe and her fawns in a grassy meadow, hearing the throaty jumble of sound a wild turkey unleashes from it's perch high in a tree top, and knowing that all of us are carefully observed by a thriving community of mountain lions.

Knowing that the Manzanita, Oak, Cedar, grasses and shrubs move through their reproductive cycles, producing flowers, seeds, nuts and berries in an unending cycle of regeneration is deeply reassuring. It is in the natural setting that the continuum of time is felt as much as it is understood. 

We are forever in debt to those who combine conservationist though with sustained hard work to preserve and protect our natural world. I offer heart felt thanks to the Volcan Mountain Foundation for their exceptional good work, and to the Marjorie and Joseph Rubenson Endowment for the opportunity to develop paintings that express my gratitude for all the Foundation has accomplished.

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I will present the series to the Volcan Mountain Foundation and their supporters at a fund raising dinner on December 2. It will move to the Julian Public Library, where I will conduct a "Conversation" about the paintings and the experience of being an Artist-in-Residence on December 3 at 10:30. The show will continue throughout December and then move down slope to the Ramona Library. The exhibition will continue to move down the watershed to San Diego. Specific dates to be arranged.

Cedar Grove Volcan Mountain 12x16 Oil on Panel Roughly three quarters of the way to the 6000 foot peak of Volcan Mountain the trail plunges into a stand of Incense Cedars. For most of the year the deep shade is welcome, and at others the shelter these enormous trees offer is welcome when wind and rain descend on the mountain. In the hush that the trees and their feathery branches create, powerful trunks rise like ancient doric columns holding up the sky. Their erect and powerful presence is counterbalanced by curving branches and soft, feathery greenery. In late summer when pink and green immature cones nestled in the rich green arching right and left I couldn't resist making the scene the subject of a painting.

The completed painting is at the top of the post.

Bee and Manzanita Blossoms Volcan Mountain 12x16 oil on panel In late February I was entranced by the waxy white blossoms that covered all the manzanitas as I hiked up Volcan Mountain. It looked as if there were drifts of snow on either side of the trail. The hardy plants, with their famously hard wood and their thick, rigid leaves produced the most delicate blossoms in pristine white. With the lyrics of Edelweiss ringing through my brain, I took photo after photo of the delightful clusters.   I found one composition that I loved for a juxtaposition of bright white blossoms and a crazy cast shadow pattern on the leaves below. I was framing a number of compositions of it when one of the bees that were moving all over the mountain flew into my photo. Magic!  My focus in this residency has been on the plant life on Volcan Mountain. As we all know, there would be no plant life without bees. The depth and breadth of the work done by these industrious creatures is nothing short of miraculous.   In a series of paintings about plants there must be a Bee! The completed painting is at the top of the post.

Peeling Manzanita, Volcan Mountain 18x24 Oil on panel One of the pure pleasures of hiking on Volcan mountain is walking through an extensive tunnel of manzanita at the base of the Five Oaks Trail. Never before I first ventured to Volcan Mountain had I found myself enclosed by a tangled forrest of 10 to 12 foot high manzanitas. Such a pleasure! As long as I can remember I have loved manzanita's satisfyingly smooth bark that seems to glow with an inner light. It's trunks and branches look almost animal, as if there are muscles rippling under the surface of the warm and lusterous surface. The plants are interesting all year, producing delicate blossoms, berries of multiple colors, and then they do this! Starting around May the trunks and branches start shedding their old bark. As the plants grow, cracks develop and the old bark begins to roll up into tight curlicues. The newly exposed bark is a bright green but transitions within a matter of days into the gorgeous orange, red, purple colors the plants are known for.  The color combination lit my art heart on fire, and I felt like giggling when I focused on the curling shapes of the old bark. Like a snake, the plant sheds the outer skin that has protected it for the year. Tannins make the bark bitter and even toxic to some invasive organisms, and they also give the plant it's distinctive coloring. By November the shedding process is complete, and all the old curled up bark has blackened and fallen away. The new bark has matured into it's luminous reds, oranges and purples and is silky once again.

The finished painting is at the top of the post.

High Summer Manzanita Volcan Mountain 12x16 oil on panel By early August the pace of my hikes up Volcan Mountain was slowed by the heat. The upside was that I spent even more time than usual with my favorite plants, observing their changes since I visited with them 3 weeks prior. Most plants were pulling down in the heat of summer. My hiking partner suggested that summer probably wasn't a great time to find plants doing much of interest. Shortly after we came across this manzanita that was doing all sorts of showy things at once. He nodded appreciatively and promised to never dismiss mother nature for a day much less an entire season!

My value scheme for the painting

Mid way through laying in the first layer of color

All light and shadow, warm and cool is established

After several days of refining the details the painting is complete

Gooseberries Volcan Mountain 12x16 oil on panel A tangle of waist high gooseberry bushes have drawn my attention time and again as I have hiked up Volcan Mountain. They are thick in the shadow of the second rise of the mountain, just past where I generally sit in a meadow to rest my legs, have a bite to eat and watch the hawks circling on the wind rising from the valley below. Each month the gooseberries show off in a new and delightful way. Their thick, glossy leaves first shelter hanging blossoms that fuchsia fans would love, then in spring they produce spectacular yellow pods that develop a bristling brilliant crimson stubble. As summer's heat builds the pods deepen in color, turning red and then moving to a rusty brown. The leaves loose their luster, begin to look tattered and drop leaving arching canes to weather the winter. Just another marvelous cycle of regeneration I've been following while hiking Volcan Mountain! I more closely documented the steps in developing this painting than I usually do. Below is the sequence, covering about a month of elapsed time. This time the finished piece is repeated here at the bottom, in order to make all the changes in each step more visible.

Oak Catkins Volcan Mountain 12x16 oil on panel Early March in the mountains above Julian is cold and much of the plant life is still dormant. As I hiked up the beautiful 5 Oaks Trail on Volcan Mountain I rounded a switchback and was stopped in my tracks. Above me was a dome of 6 to 10 inch tassels swaying in the breeze. Delicate strings of brilliant spring green puff balls (a technical term) were dotted with bright red seeds. Lush groupings of these opulent tassels sprang from the ends of all the branches, and each was topped with small scarlet leaves, sporting tender white peach fuzz. The effect was dazzling in the still largely brown and grey environment. I have since read that these beautiful displays are called Catkins and are the male flowers of the Oak. They produce pollen abundantly that is spread by the wind to the much smaller, harder to detect female flowers. Clouds of pollen are released blanketing anything beneath the tree. If any finds its way to it's target, the female flowers begin their development of acorns, and the spent catkins dry up and drop from the tree. The endless varieties of beautiful excess that procreation stimulates are awe inspiring!

Here I have just begun to apply color to my value sketch.

I have applied color to the entire image, trying to stay true to the values of the sketch I began with. I begin to establish the warm and cool tones and basic shapes created by light and shadow.

In this photo I am several days in. I have begun to define the details more closely, rounding form and creating the play of light and shadow that dappled the otherwise bare grey branches. After a number of days spent refining, I found a place between suggestion and description that I liked. The completed painting the first image in this post.

Spring in Julian 11x14 oil on panel I have gone missing, I know. I've been living a technological nightmare. A computer melt down has stopped all forward motion for a couple of months now. Rising from the debris, I'm forging ahead with a shaky smile, and a deep seated drive to properly organize and back up... This is another in my series of paintings done for the Volcan Mountain Foundation who were lovely enough to select me as their first Artist in Residence. Volcan Mountain sits above the town of Julian in Northern San Diego County which is famous for it's apples. Orchards create a patchwork around the town, and the trail to the top of Volcan Mountain starts by cutting directly through rows of well tended trees. I love begining and ending each hike among the apple trees. They mark the season so vividly. Gnarled grey branches well up with bright red and pink buds, which in a blink burst into tender white and pink blossoms. Small green fruit is revealed as petals drift to the ground like snow.  Buried in tender new leaves, the shiny new apples grow as the days warm. Their color and flavor brighten and insects, birds, rodents and larger mammals enjoy the bounty. The town of Julian fills with pies, cider and happy tourists.

3 Speed, 16x20 oil on panel

When I was in 4th grade my parents agreed with me that it was time for me to get a bicycle. Walking to my Elementary School gave me lots of time to admire all the cool new stingrays that went by with banana seats and tall swooping handle bars. I couldn't wait to be the proud owner of one, and began to  mull over which color to choose.

It was on the drive to the Schwinn bike store in a neighboring town that I had the chance to describe the bike of my dreams to my dad. He turned to me with a furrowed brow and said "I'm not going to buy you a silly circus bike! We are going to get a fine English 3 Speed that will serve you for decades!" I tried very hard not to let my face express the horror I felt. Not only was I not going to be getting the stingray of my dreams, I was going to have to ride the kind of bike that crotchety old men and that very opionated German widow rode around town.

I smiled wanly as we drove it home. Despite feeling like the wicked witch of the west peddling furiously around town, I defended my fine English 3 Speed fiercely when my friends made fun of it, and indeed it lasted for decades!

Last Leaves - Volcan Mountain 18x24 This painting is the second painting done for my residency with the Volcan Mountain Foundation (www.volcanmt.org). My mission this year is to capture the change of the seasons through the cycles of the plant life in the Volcan Mountain wilderness area. This image was captured on a cold and rainy day in late October when clouds sat low on the mountain. As we hiked, trees we neared would emerge from the fog while others remained simple silhouettes.  There was a hush broken only by the drip from branches creating a rhythm that changed as mist gave way to passing bands of rain. The grays were endless in number, and created a reflective mood. The browns of plants pulling in and down were wrapped in white as fog blew around and through branches, shrubs and golden grasses. In this quiet setting the very last of the fall leaves provided startling flashes of color. They drew the eye, creating a beautiful counterpoint to all the subdued, muted colors.

The panel with my value drawing, in Burnt Siennna. I use this to place the elements in the composition and make sure I can capture what I am after.

Here, after several sessions of work, I have the basics of the background and the branches painted. I have yet to begin work on the leaves, so there you see the underpainting. It took several more days of work to complete the image to my (and my family's) satisfaction. The completed painting is at the top of this post.

Acorns - Volcan Mountain 12x16 oil on panel What better subject for the new year than the acorn! Beginnings, possibilities, great things to come... All the rich potential for a majestic oak is contained it the beautiful nut that wears a cap! All the birds that will find homes in the oak's branches, the squirrels that will store it's nuts for winter,  all the deer, coyote and bobcat that will pause in it's shade in the hot summer, and all the oxygen the oak will release into the air is in that beautiful nut that fits so perfectly in the palm of your hand. Magic! This is the first of the paintings I will be producing as the Resident Artist for the Volcan Mountain Foundation. I was approached by representatives of the Foundation while exhibiting at the Festival Of Arts in Laguna Beach last summer. They were looking for an artist to kick off their residency program. I love the wild lands of northern San Diego County and investigated the Volcan Mountain Foundation. I found that it was a group that had purchased, bit by bit untouched tracts of land on Volcan Mountain in order to prevent development and preserve open space. I admired their mission, and my work seemed a perfect fit for their desire to celebrate the wilderness preserve that now spans 2,900 acres rising behind the city of Julian, CA, and offering sweeping views of both the coast and the desert on a clear day. See www.volcanmountain.org I wrote a proposal, submitted a portfolio of my work and was selected by the Volcan Mountain Foundation. I plan to produce around 10 paintings of the plant life on the mountain through the cycle of the seasons. At the end of the year the Foundation will hang a show of the collection of paintings at the time and place of their choice. Being involved with this organization is deeply satisfying for me. I greatly admire their mission, and the success they have had in preserving land that is still so untouched and will remain so in perpetuity. I get to routinely hike the mountain and gather photos of all the plants there, and I have the pleasure of developing a series of paintings that will be used to draw attention to the preserve and the unique beauty of the California environment. Perhaps it will help inspire others to protect and defend our shrinking wild environments.

This is a photo of the underpainting. Done in Burnt Sienna, this is how I place my image on the panel, develop the pattern of values and make sure I like the composition.

Here I have begun to weave the background of leaves that the branch I am focusing on is nestled into.

Here I have spent several sessions on the acorns and leaves in the foreground. Several more are required to finish the detail of the subject, and to balance it with the background. The finished painting is found at the top of the post.

Birds of Paradise, 16x20 oil on panel Wishing you a great new year! I believe that if we all do our best in our own sphere of interest 2016 could be an extraordinarily wonderful year. Shall we give it a try? In response to an invitation to a show titled "Bouquets" I painted some of my favorite California  flowers.  They grow with no tending and almost no water, adding brilliance and verve to everything between parking lots to elegant  dining tables. Their clear complementary colors are upstaged by the scrappy strength of the stem and base of the flower from which rise delicate ballet dancers in a wild array of shapes and colors.

Forgot to take a photo of the underpainting, but here you can see it with some of the early steps of painting over it using my entire palette.

The first stage of the full color painting. It's all here, but all the hours invested in pushing the darks back,  bringing up the lights, and finding the distinctive details in each shape make the finished painting- The finished painting is found at the top of the post.

Dia de los Muertos, 12x16 oil on panel I recently showed up to a holiday lunch wearing an orange and black striped blouse and one of my witty sisters-in-law commented that I seemed to be not one but TWO holidays behind. I think this may be why! I've been working on paintings from some of the photographs I took in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico when we were there for their Dia de los Muertos celebrations (which falls at the same time as our Halloween). Time spent observing their rituals was enormously moving. All over the city, in stores, restaurants, on the steps to homes, and most notably in the town squares there are altars created for those who have  passed away. They are thick with marigolds (the flower of remembrance) and a velvety bright magenta flower I had never seen before. The favorite food and drink of the departed are presented on lovely platters, bowls and glasses, there are photos of the person, and often items that they particularly loved or that represent what they enjoyed doing. The altars are decorated with candles, incense and often skulls or skeletons. The painting above is of one small detail of a large altar in the public square. The festive crown of flowers pays tribute to the beauty and vibrance of the departed and the field of marigolds is an assurance of respect and remembrance. Crowds gather for 3 evenings to circle the square,  look at the altars and remember those lost, and to admire one another's costumes. Skeletons are everywhere, reminding us that it is simply a thin veil of flesh that seperate us from our ancestors and from those we have recently lost.

The first day I lay out the composition in light and dark values of Burnt Sienna

Once the value study has dried I return to the panel and paint over it placing the first layer of color and trying to adhere to the values I have made note of in the monochromatic underpainting.  Squint your eyes and look at this image and the value study above it and you'll see that I toyed with a different background idea.

In this session I decided to return to the darker background and added  a bit of the stone sidewalk rather than more marigolds. I continued to add definition to the flowers, trying to capture their countless layers of petals without getting too detailed. I tried to define how the sun came across the skull and it's flowers, and how the short wall behind it cast a shadow behind it. More than anything else, I tried to capture the beautiful vision of a culture that honors it's dead and continues to include them in their community and family life. The finished painting is at the top of the post.

Echeveria 6x6, oil on panel This is the second of the two mini paintings I recently completed. I keep returning to this subject, and have to admit to having a love/hate relationship with it. I begin with enthusiasm having been drawn by the wild light and shadow, warm and cool thing that these delightful succulents present. I get part way down the path of trying to nail down the curves and turns that I love so much in the frilly edges of the leaves and I begin to grumble. "Wait, which bend in the road am I on? Grrrr, I missed a critical turn!" In the end I love the twisting road I've traveled, and enjoy looking back on the trip.

The Crown of Autumn 6x6 As I confided in my last post, I have taken a holiday from the easel, so have not been posting as regularly as I have in the past. My early Fall break was utterly delightful, first spending time on the beach after the crowds had left, swimming in the extraordinarily warm Pacific, reading great books, and enjoying the kind of time with friends and family that my very busy last year did not allowed.  Recently I enjoyed a mind blowing, heart expanding trip to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato during the celebration of  Dia de Los Muertos. I wish Americans could assimilate some of the sweet, family oriented traditions of our neighbors to the south. We would be a kinder, happier people. Now I'm happy to be back at work. I painted 2 6x6 inch pieces for a December show at the Randy Higbee Gallery. I have never painted this small, and I would like to say that it's HARD! It took as long as a larger painting, and after a session of painting my eyes refused to focus on anything beyond my arm's reach. However, I like the intimate scale of the tiny pieces, and may return to 6x6 panels periodically. I hope you are enjoying Fall as much as I am. I love the low sun and long shadows, the pumpkins, gourds and pomegranates, and the urge to stir slow cooking soups and stews to warm the people you love from the inside. A big thank you to my friend Suzanne Redfearn, author extraordinaire, for the bag of pomegranates from her backyard. I had a very messy, fun time breaking them apart and arranging and rearranging their pieces until I found a composition that called out to me. I hope it pleases others as well!

I haven't posted in some time, and I'm pleased to be back!  I spent the summer happily exhibiting the paintings you watched develop on this blog at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts. They were well received and the entire experience was wide and wonderful. In September I took some R and R, reading thick novels, swimming in the extraordinarily warm Pacific and reacquainting myself with  my sweet family and friends. 

During that time I had an on going conversation online with the Volcan Mountain Foundation and ultimately wrote a proposal and was selected to be their first Artist in Residence. Volcan Mountain rises to the East of the historic town of Julian in beautiful Northern San Diego County and is the top of the watershed that delivers water to northern San Diego and points north. The Foundation bought or helped facilitate the purchase of some 17,000 acres of the mountain, just ahead of the developers. This forward thinking group is hosting scientists and artists to come, do their work there and look at the mountain through their own lens. 

I plan to visit Volcan Mountain several weekends throughout the year to hike and take photographs of the plant life documenting seasonal change. I will then generate a series of paintings that will be exhibited to help develop awareness of the wilderness preserve and the importance of the rich flora and fauna thriving there. I will also post the paintings here as I generate them.

You know that something is meant to be when everything in you sings "yes!" My love of  Southern California, hiking, plant life, painting and the preservation of wild spaces are all satisfied in this new opportunity. The stars aligned, and I couldn't be any happier!

The dramatic gate to the wilderness preserve designed by local artist,  James Hubbell.

After the hike to the 5350 foot summit we took refuge under gracious old oaks as a rainstorm (!) passed. It was silent, drippy and soul satisfying.

After the storm passed I ventured out with my camera to capture some of the Autumn display of nuts, berries and falling leaves. The trail moved through Riparian and Chaparral ecosystems then into grasslands, high meadows and forests of pine and 5 varieties of oak.

As we descended the sun began to break through and drew my camera lens left and right as it dramatically touched the landscape here and there.

Oil Cans 8x10 oil on panel I hope you're fortunate enough to still be close with some of your best friends from childhood. I'm blessed in this way, a number of the kids I grew up with are still a part of my life. Sharing decades of experience is simply delightful, and the depth of understanding is beyond belief. In the mid 60's the tomboy who ruled the neighborhood on the other side of the school yard and I decided to join forces, and we sealed the deal by climbing down a storm drain, pricking our fingers and pressing them together. My blood sister and I have made each other laugh while riding bikes, boards and horses, while confessing hopes and fears, and while exploring new places, lifestyles and fashion choices. We've celebrated countless birthdays, holidays, highs and lows and have stood by one another's side through thick and thin for over 50 years now. We spent a weekend together on the central coast of California a couple of years ago and talked endlessly while walking the rocky shoreline and poking through antique (junk?) stores. It shouldn't be a surprise that we both fell in love with the same thing in one store, but you have to admit that it's a little unusual that it was a grouping of beat up old oil cans. Yup, our co-mingled blood called out for the very same odd ball stuff!  The cans went home to her place in Santa Ynez, but I borrowed them so I could have a painting of them!

I began by doing a tone drawing in Burnt Sienna oil paint

After the paint dried I applied the base color for all the objects and the environment. While working to capture the color I try to remain true to the values that I established in the underpainting.  I let this stage dry and then I analyze my decisions and make note of where I want to make changes or corrections. After seeing to them I go in and fine tune all areas and add the finishing details. The completed painting is at the top of the post.

Cactus Royalty 18x24 oil on panel This is a large version of a painting I completed in December. I love the scarlet bulbs arrayed like jewels in a crown atop the cactus. Their satisfying round shapes invite you to reach out for them, and the brilliant colors contrast with the smokey cool greens of the leaves in a way that satisfies me. This is the second painting that I have repainted on a larger scale. In general I have never felt drawn to cover the same ground, and am eager to describe another subject. However, I was interested in seeing how scale would affect the feel of the image, and I am a fan! It changed from a beautiful little glimpse to a majestic vision. Fun! And I found that having painted the subject before the painting took shape quickly and with great confidence. We knew each other through and through and had worked out the bugs in our relationship months ago! Below are some of the steps along the way to the completed painting.

Wanderlust 12x16 oil on panel When I was growing up the National Geographic came like a bolt out of the blue each month. The photos made clear to me that the world was a very big place that I didn't know the first thing about. The wonder grew when my brother was given a globe for his birthday one year. Although our family was all about maps, seeing the globe gave me, for the first time, a sense of our planet, which implies spinning through space... infinitely more I didn't know about! My brother and I spent time turning the globe and trying to pronounce the names of all the countries we had never heard of. We were taken by the vast swaths of luminous ocean that had been, for the most part, missing on the maps we had seen.  There was a slight relief to the continents that indicated where vast mountain ranges ran and depressions where camels struggled across punishing deserts. We spent a good amount of time running our hands and eyes over that globe. Eventually the globe was placed on the top of the book shelf that my brother and I shared. At night I routinely looked up at it as I was going to sleep. Some nights it was a way of avoiding the shadow cast by the bed posts our twin beds that looked  EXACTLY like the boogie man. Other nights I simply looked at the globe and mused on how large the world must be and how tiny mine mine was. I wondered how I would ever get to the Amazon, to see those amazing Indians hunting barefoot in the jungle with blow darts.

Brilliant Disks 18x24 oil on panel A couple of years ago I painted a small version of this image that I really liked. As my brother took it home, he told me that he really looked forward to seeing me do it in a larger scale. When I was looking for a few images to paint in a large format recently, his words came floating back to me.  I'm really glad for his advice, this painting leapt off my brush like it had been just itching to be big all along!

The burnt sienna value drawing/underpainting

The very start of laying in color over the value drawing.

The first layer of all color completed. Now I let it dry fully before beginning to make all the refinements and adjustments it calls for.

Several days into the process of defining the way sunlight and shadow weave the gorgeous leaves of this plant together into a dramatic composition. The final, completed image is at the top of the post.