The Pinnacles of Synchronicity

This story is not about Northern Vancouver Island but is an amazing account of how small our world really is and how we are all tied together.

In the year 2000 we visited friends in a suburb of Fremantle in Western Australia. Gillian Peebles is an outstanding artist who was the official artist for the Americas Cup when that huge sailing competition was held in Fremantle for two years in succession. Her husband, Ron, helpful at every turn, was the epitome of supportive partners in the game called art. She and I had painted together briefly on North Island when they toured here the previous year and so the invitation to visit them was extended every month or so.

Ron had seven weeks of holiday time saved up and so they created some very ambitious plans for all of us to travel over most of Western Australia, a huge area almost half of Australia in size. Gillian took us to all her relatives and the places of her youth in the outback. We painted nearly every day in the most exotic places imaginable for a North Islander! One of these was a remarkable desert region preserved as a National Park, several hours north of Perth.

The Pinnacles National Park, an area of shifting sand quite near the Indian Ocean, is unique in that pinnacles of brilliant sandstone stand upright throughout the entire locale. The persistent wind from the ocean, not only weathers the pillars, but moves the sand around to expose new ones, changing the scenery almost daily. Did we paint? You better believe it! Gillian had the foresight to bring a lawn-chair and umbrella but I did my sketches in watercolour by kneeling in the sand and working in my shadow, the painting shaded from the brilliant sun. The sketch shown here was one of these productions.

End of story? Hardly. The painting, being a rough sketch was never framed when we got home, but we thought it would be worthwhile to place it in a mat and shrink-wrap it for inclusion in one of the bins in our gallery; where it stayed until last summer. Then the most synchronistic thing took place. A young lady from B.C. came in to browse the gallery and went, almost directly, to one of the picture bins, removed the sketch of The Pinnacles and brought it to the take-out counter.

I had to know why she had chosen it after so many years in the gallery. She told me, reluctantly with tears in her eyes, that she and her husband had been on a vacation to Western Australia and, while they were walking in The Pinnacles National Park, he had a stroke and passed away.

How do you ever explain how she had found this painting? She could not, so I’ll leave it up to you.

The Canadian Shield

Re: Our website at http://www.henschel.ca/, on the Home Page under "What's New" you will find "Canadian Shield". For many visitors, to whom this term is new, let me explain. The Canadian Shield is a massive area about 3000 km. in length and varying in a width I wouldn't want to guess at. It lies in a south east to north west direction, beginning in northeastern USA and ending at the Arctic Ocean in Yukon and Northwest Territories. With a rock base of mostly granite, the last ice age carved all sorts of shapes into the surface which later filled and became lakes. The rock base is really the remains of the most ancient mountains on earth. Incredibly hard, one can still see the striations on the surface of rock outcroppings that the Ice Age produced.

The reason that this section is on our website is simple: I was born and raised at the western edge of The Shield, in Manitoba. Although we moved to B.C. in 1974, we still make regular forays into our old stamping grounds, especially in Autumn when the whole area turns gold! So this is why, if you look at the Canadian Shield section on our website, you will find a lot of Autumn paintings. It is so delightful to sit and paint by one of the lakes in Whiteshell Provincial Park and paint the brilliant yellows and reds while listening to the Canada Geese honking and flying in huge V formations overhead. This is one of the biggest flyways for North-South movement in North America. Enjoy the paintings in this section of our website. There will be more!

Paintings, Paintings, Paintings!

During the early Sixties, already an avid painter for several years in Eastern Manitoba, my good friend and fellow artist, Robert Kost, told me about an experience that had taken place at his home and studio. He had a call from a lady in Brandon, about 300 miles away, saying that they had heard that there was an artist in that area and would he mind if they came to him and his work. As it turned out, four ladies arrived a few days later, sketch books and cameras in hand, and talked for several hours with him while he showed them what he was doing. A happy event for all!

During those days artists were so few and far between that a 300 mile drive to see one was not considered strange. Artists were usually trained in college art schools and mostly worked for firms that employed Commercial artists. GRIP in Toronto was such a firm and became central to the forming of The Group of Seven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Seven_(artists)Self-taught artists were a rarity and usually not very good at what they did because Instructional art books were hard to get.

In today's world, I could easily find two or three hundred instructional art books , not to mention almost as many videos and television series showing you exactly"how to do it". Coupled with this plethora of "art stuff" is a new age of retired folks who are often well-pensioned with plenty of leisure time on their hands. Not surprisingly, the number of artists has mushroomed. The quality of the art is sometimes questionable, but they are having fun and some of them are pretty darn good!

"So what's he getting at?" is likely your question. The vast numbers of artists today mean several things to artists like myself who have been practicing their craft for half a century. First of all, I've taught a lot of them and claim responsibility for something that some older artists believe is a problem in competition. Secondly, Art is not a competitive game because as the numbers of artists grow, so does the population. Thirdly, because there are many more people involved in art, the interest in it increases. You would be surprised how many folks can identify the old masters and are very discriminating as to the quality of paintings in galleries. This surge in growth of artists, professional or amateur, has led to a new Rennaissance. In 1960 some folks drove 300 miles to see an artist at work. Today they wouldn't cross the street for that experience and if they did, the art had better be good.It's an exciting challenge to be part of it!

Happy New Year!!!

Once again I must apologize for not having posted anything on this blog since November and won't burden you with a number of excuses like "the dog ate my laptop"! I do keep a diary fairly consistently and my biggest excuse for being so tardy with my blog sits on every January 1st page of each year's diary: "This year I will get organized"! So--if at first you don't succeed write it into next year's diary!

Since the name of this blog is "ARTALK", I must tell you every artist struggles with distractions. In the days of Van Gogh life was much simpler and one could get on with paintings without having to check your Blackberry and your laptop, not to mention the latest Canuck game. Probably I should change the new year's message to myself to: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.

I have a special request to readers of my blog: There is a small section at the bottom of the blog for COMMENTS. Please use it for questions as well about my work or your work and for any subjects that you would like to talk about, problems that you have encountered if you are a painter, etc. It would help me deal with what direction I want to take with this blog.

Meanwhile, enjoy each day to the fullest in 2010!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Plein Air Painting in Acrylics

In the past I have not been enthusiastic about painting on site with acrylics since they dry so quickly even in the studio, where you have much more control.

Why would you want to? (1) For work that is considered "finished" enough to put on the wall of galleries. Many galleries will not accept watercolours or any other works behind glass. This includes most galleries in Europe, as well as in the southern U.S. Oils are also considered more "finished" work but take much longer to get to gallery walls because they dry much more slowly. (2) For working away from your studio and yet wanting more finished work. For example, if you are painting in Spain for a month or more and want something that is immediately available to the collector, acrylics is your best bet since you can pack them around almost immediately.

I have painted on site from time to time with acrylics using what they call a "Stay-Wet" palette. Daler Rowney makes one that works well.The palettes are made from plastic and consist of a base tray with a tight-fitting lid. A wet piece of watercolor paper (or thin sponge) is placed in the base of the tray to serve as the water reservoir. On top of this is a sheet of grease-proof or baking parchment paper, to serve as a membrane to stop all the water going into the paint immediately. You lay your acrylic paints out on top of the grease-proof sheet. As the water in the acrylic paint evaporates, it is replaced by the water being held in the watercolor paper so the paint doesn't dry out as fast as normal. This is made for the more traditional fast-drying acrylics, but "the times they are a-changing"

The Golden Paint Company has come out with something called "Open Acrylics" that dry about 10 times as slow as the regular ones. I have used this with some success. They take some getting used to since thay are a bit more tranparent but the beauty of them, even in the studio, is that they are far more open to manipulation, allowing you to gradate areas without streaking, especially in skies or large areas of snow, etc. In the painting, "Dining in the Cathedral", (on page one of this website's original paintings and shown above) I did almost the entire painting with Open Acrylics. They mix with regular acrylics which lets you pick and choose between the two.

Give them a try. Golden sells small starter packs to let you do this. Honest, I don't own stock in the Golden Company!!!

Autumn Colours?

Once more I must apologize for being so late with this blog. I was in Manitoba since the middle of September and am not great with a laptop. Anyway, we went to Manitoba for two reasons: One, to visit old friends and relatives and two, to paint the usually great fall colours. The first was successful but fall colours did not materialize. Here's the reason: Manitoba had an extremely rainy summer followed by a hot, hot Sepetember. The leaves were green on green on green. When I arrived some were just beginning to show a few warm colours until a severe -10 degrees celsius hit the area as well as a snowfall of about 10 centimetres to break the ice! The leaves fell to the ground green!

We stayed on a farm along the Whitemouth River, a delightfully scenic spot. The Canada geese were everywhere, since this is one of their major flyways. These sketches were done along the river and one in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, my old stamping grounds. The river here was lined by huge old Oak trees. Sketching them was pure pleasure. The scene with the barn was typical of the area. Farmers here are like people everywhere, loving to live along the river.

Trails ran through the local park with crops still dazlingly green through the trees. The Whiteshell sketch was a quickie done from my van to avoid a biting wind with zero temperatures. I will work up all these sketches into larger pieces, using them as a guide for further exploration. The lake scene done from the van, for example was a roller coaster in values, dark and stormy one minute and bright several minutes later. I liked the dark water the best with highlights of strong sunlight on the waves. ASlthough this sketch is very different from that I will use it to give me the inspiration I need to follow through with a final knockout painting!

Be back soon, since I will have more time when I'm home and in my studio. Hasta la vista!

Plein Air Painting in Oils

Sketching in watercolours on site (plein air) is the usual way to go for most artists, since equipment is light and technique fast.; but if you are painting on a day trip, oils are often the best way to go, especially in inclement weather. There is nothing more devastating than rain to a watercolour, while an oil is completely impervious to it. Oil sketches are also more likely to be treated as serious art. Witness, for example, the incredibly lively oils of the Group of Seven. The 8 x10 inch paintings of Tom Thompson express a liveliness that his larger works miss. These were all done on the spot. Many of the French Impressionists rarely painted indoors and produced huge canvases en plein air. Monet, Pissaro, Sisley and, of course Van Gogh relished their time in the sun.

On North Vancouver Island, when I head out for a day of painting I nearly always use oils, even on a sunny day but especially on a showery one. I have painted wearing rain gear and watching the water running down my canvas while I worked! My usual equipment is a French easel, often accompanied by a stool for comfort. The only drawback to using oils is their slow drying time, which means being very careful getting the finished product home! I love to use a slow drying white called Zinc White(because of its transparency it doesn't hide the pigments that are mixed with it) so my oils take a very long time to dry.

Above is a photo of my easel on a newly logged area high above Nimpkish Lake on a cloudless day early this summer.