The Meadow Wakes – California landscape painting – Karen Winters
“The meadow wakes”
(Sierra foothills, east of Visalia)
6 x 8 oil on canvas
SOLD
When the first strong rays of light hit a meadow filled with fiddlehead flowers, the mist was still rising from the nearby hills, providing an interesting contrast of saturated and desaturated colors. The statuesque valley oak was just starting to put out its new foliage, creating that lacy effect that is only characteristic of earliest spring. I wonder what it would be like to live on a farm like this, with so much beauty to see in every season.
California plein air oil painting – Days End in Fallbrook
SOLD
Days End in Fallbrook
California landscape plein air painting
11 x 14 oil on canvas
At the end of the first day of Libby Tolley’s workshop, which was held in the classroom, I was excited to get outside and find a location to paint. All day the temperatures soared into the high 90s, maybe even 100 degrees, and we were all relieved to paint and practice indoors. As evening came, it had cooled off enough to be tolerable. But on top of that there was a brush fire nearby which filled the air with smoke and gave the sky a warmer than usual color. The color combination was irresistible.
What attracted me to this scene was the beautiful eucalyptus, and the layers of color and foliage disappearing in the smoke back to the distant mountain range. On any given day, the scene may have looked entirely different. A little earlier in the year and the foreground grasses would have been green. On a fire-free day the atmosphere would not have provided the interesting sky effects of warm and cool, intermixed. In the morning, everything would have been lit from the opposite direction. This is one of the things I love about plein air painting – the practice of capturing a very specific moment in time that may never occur again.
While I was there, next to a curb on a culdesac where no houses were built, a man who lived nearby hailed me with a wave and I told him what I was doing. He and his sons came over to watch me paint for awhile, and then I packed my things up. It turns out he’s in the agricultural business and knew a number of places to paint where there are reflective pools of water. Like I’ve said before, I think I could be in the middle of the wilderness and still draw a crowd. It always happens and because I’m a social person, I don’t mind sharing my love of painting.
Fallbrook Landscape Oil Painting – Morning Breeze – by Karen Winters
Morning Breeze (Fallbrook, California)
16 x 12″
oil on canvas
• SOLD
As the week progressed in Fallbrook, the weather cooled and large clouds would appear every morning. This painting, inspired by my visit there, depicts a view looking eastward across a small creek that helped irrigate the ranch where we were painting. Clouds are among my favorite subjects to paint and in this case they are the primary interest.
If this painting is dry, I might be bringing it to the Montrose Art Walk this Saturday on Honolulu Avenue in Montrose. I can’t promise, because it may not be dry enough. But on the other hand, at a plein air event, the patrons buy paintings at the end of a QuickDraw event, and they are soaking wet, painted just an hour before. So I might very well bring this one along.
Fallbrook Country Road – Plein Air Study
Fallbrook Country Road
Plein air oil sketch
9 x 12 oil on canvas laid on board
Eucs, palms, oaks, sycamores. I’d have a hard time deciding upon my favorite California tree.
This time, eucs are featured. and it turned out to be one of my favorite on-location oil sketches from Libby Tolley’s workshop. It was late top-light, about 3 in the afternoon, before the sun made its final descent. The hillside was starting to go into shadow, but the warm light was still touching the tops of the brushy shrubs here and there. The eucs are getting the kiss of the sun on their heads but shortly afterward became more sidelit. What attracted me to this scene was the warm glow of light striking the grass at the base of the eucs. I thought that it gave an interesting way to show the trunks that are usually hidden in shadow.
This is a transitional season painting. There still remains some spring grass, especially in the irrigated pasture, but the non-irrigated fields are turning the gold so characteristic of California in the summer and fall. The warm light of the day creates cool shadows – and I like the way the gold of the grass complements the shadowed blue-violet. The suggestion of fence posts adds a bit tot he composition, but I didn’t want to paint them so stiffly and regularly that they became a barrier. Just enough to let you know it’s a fenced pasture, no more.
If you’re in LA, this Saturday I’ll be showing paintings at the Montrose Artwalk, May 2. I’ll be near the bowling alley.
California Plein Air Farm Painting – Peaceful Valley – Karen Winters
Peaceful Valley Farm
9 x 12 inches
plein air oil painting
SOLD
Last week I noticed that the theme on the Creative Construction blog was “farm” and that jogged my memory of this farm study, painted last fall, up around the Santa Ynez Valley. I don’t know the location since we were driving around without a GPS. So I found it in my archives and put on a few finishing touches and here it is.
Today my project is to make canvas panels for a workshop I’ll be attending in Fallbrook the week after next. Someone asked me recently about the importance of study in painting. I think that it’s essential to be a perpetual student, either literally, as in taking classes and workshops, or self-study by learning from nature.
When I’m riding in the car with my husband, if we’re not talking, I’m constantly observing and making mental notes about the landscape. It might be the color of the clouds when the light is coming at a certain angle, or the value difference between the light-struck part of a bush and the underbrush on a bright day. I might think about how I’d mix a certain shadow color that I see on the hills, or the sort of brushstroke I’d use to convey the softness of a field of grass vs. the roughness of a broken stump. We are not just painters when we sit or stand at the easel. We are painters every moment of the day (and sometimes, when we are asleep, too.)
California Poppy Landscape with Oak Trees – Karen Winters
Poppies on the Hill
11 x 14
oil on canvas
SOLD, but I have more poppy paintings
Interested in a poppy painting?
Click this link to write me. See more of my paintings on my website
See more of my wildflower paintings here
I can’t think of a landscape more quintessentially Californian than spring’s poppy covered hillsides – and when you add oak trees it’s downright iconic. In this painting my objective was to capture the feeling of the radiant hillside, crowned by sprawling oaks. The Fresno Bee reports that this is one of the best years for wildflowers in a long time. I don’t know why – we haven’t had an abundance of rain, but whatever conditions brought about this abundance, I’m glad.
More California spring landscapes to come …
Central California Plein Air sunset creek painting
Twilight Creek
9 x 12 plein air painting
oil on canvas
Because the light was certainly fleeting, this is my entry for illustration Friday’s theme: fleeting
Not too long ago (pre-crash) when my husband and I were on a weekend trip to see the wildflowers north of us, we saw this view at the end of a long day. Although I was tired from painting and taking pictures of the ephemeral bloom, I saw a ribbon of light by the side of the road and felt that I just “had” to paint it. “Stop the car!” I yelped to my husband. (he’s used to this – he knows what it means.) The sun was already down and I knew that I had 20 minutes, at best, before I wouldn’t be able to see the colors on my palette. (And I don’t have a hat light yet – that’s on my wish list for nocturne painting.)
So while I squeezed out some fresh paint on my palette, my love set up the Yarka on uneven ground and I started blocking in the big color shapes, aware that it was changing by the minute. When I got home I refined some of the tree shapes and the river curves, and touched up some of the canvas areas where the paint was too thin. Overall, I am very satisfied with this field study, which I might use as a reference for a larger painting, as I often do.
Plein air paintings tend to be very loose – and those that happen under changing light conditions are the loosest of all. It’s one thing to do a painting with three hours of pretty even mid-day sun … but it’s another to try to paint a scene post-sunset. But I think that’s part of the charm of it – it’s a very quick impression – colors mixed on the fly and laid down (for better or worse) with decisiveness. It’s like trying to catch “lightning in a bottle,” to quote Leo Durocher. Pretty near impossible, but fun to try.
Aspen Sierra Morning – California Eastern Sierra Oil Painting
Aspen Sierra Morning
(near Bishop, Owens Valley, Eastern Sierras
16 x 20 oil on canvas
Because many of my Sierra/aspen/Owens Valley paintings have gone away to new homes, I decided to finish up another that I began last year, inspired by our Eastern Sierra trip. This painting features a grove of aspens caught in the earliest morning light. And I mean *really* early, when the color is intense and warm. That’s the time when more sensible people are snug in their beds, or enjoying their first cups of coffee in the kitchen, but the plein air painters and photographers are stomping around in the brush, looking for the best compositions and getting tangled up in barbed wire. (Yes, that happened to me in November, and it wasn’t pretty.)
Truck crash update, for those who are interested.
At Flintridge bookstore, seven of my ten paintings have been found, in various states of damage. All framing has been destroyed. Some of the watercolors survived, others will require significant repair, and the other (one of my favorites) was torn down the middle. The only acrylic – painted on a hard panel, came through ok. It will only need a brush off to remove some plaster dust, and a few touch-ups. The other two oil paintings are still buried, no doubt. On the positive side, all of those who were hospitalized have been discharged to their homes, and there were no more deaths. Large trucks have been banned on Angeles Crest Highway, at least temporarily, until legislative action can ban them permanently.
We watched the city council meeting last night via cable TV and were glad to see a good discussion of the options to prevent future calamities. And the council was very thorough in thanking everyone who helped in the aftermath, including those who sent letters of support and ideas. At the council meeting I did not hear an acknowledgment of Girl Scout, Malia Mailes, whose 46 slide powerpoint project outlined the disaster waiting to happen before the crash, and she was not mentioned in the round of hearty back-slapping. Perhaps it’s the fact that her report was horrifically prescient and is/was a source of embarrassment to our council who were unable to use her research to get any action. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that teenagers are usually characterized as feeling “immortal” and behaving as though nothing bad could happen to them. Yet here you have a teen sounding a clarion call and the adults patiently waiting for the state to throw them crumbs.
The burning question, which a member of the public raised at the meeting, was, why did it take so long, with repeated runaway truck “near misses” and finally two deaths to get some action? Clearly, the carefully worded requests for action from our city manager, as politely “by the book” as they may have been, fell on deaf ears with the regional CalTrans director who recently told a reporter he wasn’t going to spend any money on our requests. If our city representatives tolerated a runaround on this issue, which ended in fatalities, how will they respond to future needs? Will they have learned a little assertiveness from the experience? Perhaps the PR firm that they hired to manage the media and interviews on the day of the event can give them some helpful suggestions.
Here’s a helpful suggestion: Malia Mailes for City Council in two years, when she’s 18. She sounds like a go-getter, someone who is passionate, energetic and wants to get things done. We can use more of that around here.
Sierra Blessing – California Eastern Sierra Nevada Oil Painting Commission
Sierra Blessing
18 x 24″ landscape oil painting on canvas
SOLD (commission)
Today, I finished this Eastern Sierra Nevada painting with much love and joy, and shared a photo of it with the client who commissioned it. I have since signed it and will give it a protective coating in a few days and then it will be time to leave my studio and go to live with a new family.
The origin of the painting has an interesting story, I think. The individual contacted me because she had seen a painting of mine on my website of a location close to where she lives. But as we got to talking, it turned out that she also liked my painting of the Sierras, a place where she and her family had camped together and enjoyed many happy days together.
This painting is a reflection of one of those special places, with a view of Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney. It has a special significance to the family that makes it especially sacred to them. I feel honored that she entrusted me to interpret this spot artistically, and I hope that long after I am gone it will be passed down in their family.
For me, this is what making art is all about. It is about taking something in the real world and, through the application of study, practice and technique, turning it into a creation that will capture a feeling, a moment in time, a spiritual insight. I love painting plein air, and I do it as much as I can, but sometimes I rely on my field studies, sketches, direct observation and other references to re-create a scene. That was the process I used here.
I love this painting so much that I am going to paint it again, in a slightly different size, probably a little bigger … and no doubt I will interpret it a little differently. That always happens.
Out of the wreckage of the runaway truck accident, there are some positives. Yesterday my dear husband went to the store and recovered three paintings which the store owner had carefully found and put up on the counter in a safe place. (The vase of peonies, a pink magnolia watercolor which I had forgotten was there, and the vertical eucalyptus painting.) Today my husband visited just as a cleanup crew was arriving and showed them a poster we made with small images of the remaining six works. They promised to keep an eye out for them. If they find even one or two more I will be very happy. And I am optimistic that they will!
As a dear friend of mine is fond of saying “You can’t see around life’s corners.” Indeed we can’t. Which is why it is especially important to do our best and be kind to each other at every opportunity.
And now, it’s time for me to get back to the easel!
Cabo San Lucas – Lands End Mexican Seascape Painting
Cabo San Lucas – Land’s End
24 x 30 inches
oil on canvas
Painted on commission – SOLD
A 16 x 20 version of this painting is still available here.
Today I had the pleasure of packing up this big painting for a new collector in the midwest. I was delighted to be able to paint it for the couple because 1) I love to paint seascapes and 2) it brings me special enjoyment to paint something that has a lot of meaning for the patron.
Lands End is a landmark geologic formation, and it appears that the arches have been carved out by consistent wave action over milennia. I’m guessing that those standing stones once were capped with arches as well, a very long time ago.
Probably the most exciting part of the painting process for me was the painting of the many different rock surfaces, which reflect the color of the environment as well as having their own “local color” which comes from the minerals in the rock as well as the effect of weathering.
Now I’m working on a new commission of the Sierras, while finishing up some rose garden paintings for the Descanso Rose paintout and sale April 18-19. Busy, busy. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!
