Turning and Looking

From Monhegon Island’s pristine forest trails to Maine’s inland coves, artists have expressed their experience of deep forests with textured shadows and scattered pockets of light. These expressions can be distilled emotional evocations tucked into subtle designs. Last week I brought artists to these locations. We set out our easels, palettes, bug spray and sunscreen. In the future I will show their work from  Maine’s rocky promontories but, this week we return to the woods. These woods are backlit by the glare off saltwater coves.  Here we found the essence of dense forest life without chasing sharp-edged realism.  Instead we looked to evoke the sensation of  visually scanning the infinite textures of a forest.

First, let me show a photograph of our general area ( example 1) . Our view is through trees along the water’s edge. I began with plein air demonstrations. First I painted with acrylics which I later overlaid with oils (example 2).  In my second demonstration (example 3) textures were generated by spritzing a spotty rain of turpentine over the wet oil  paint . The fracturing effects of the turpentine into wet oil offer a suggestion of the fine and varied textures of a forest interior.
example 1. photo of the area.

example 2. plein air demo in acrylic with oil overlay.

example 3. plein air demo in oil with turp. spritzing.

Several of my artists took up the challenge of deep forest painting. Example 4 by Kathryn Poch presents a 12×12″ oil on white anodized aluminum.  She used a combination of squeegees and wide, soft flat brushes. Kathryn blurred her squeegee marks with  brushes which gave her work a vaporous luminosity. You see her work on the easel with the woodland behind.

example 4. Kathryn Poch’s plein air oil.

What follows are two different studies (each 24×24) developed in the studio using photographs of the same woodland ( see example 1).  Each image proceeds similarly at first but, with a different older painting serving as the substrate or underpainting. Example 5 (step one) is a marsh painting turned on its head.  I proceeded to example 6 (step two) which reflects my design’s simplified intention. Example 7 reflects my pursuit of a feeling of  motion in the forest, the motion of my eyes and head turning as I looked  around. Here, The painting was further layered, blended, squeegeed, brushed, and feathered.

example 5. step one, the inverted substrate.

example 6. step two, early design.

example 7. step three, latest developments.

The second study used a different painting, an inverted Parisian cityscape. You can detect its reddish color  under my initial squeegee marks in my overlaying  coat  of ultramarine blue (example 8). In example nine  I again tried misting turpentine into the paint. The effects were curious but ultimately, unsatisfactory. I returned to brushwork. You can see the results in example 10.

example 8. step one, the initial lay-in with squeegee manipulations.

example 9. step two, after turp spritzing.

example 10. step three, the return to brushwork.