Failing Up

8 x 8 oil Available here Lilacs on LeDoux

I really didn’t get it right.  I was excited to find the two beautiful lilac bushes flanking the door near the Blumenschein Home and Museum* on Ledoux Street in Taos.  I set up my plein air easel and quickly set about painting.  After two hours of struggle it was clear I had a failure.    The composition was dull—one, two, three things in a row.  The middle was a gaping dark uninteresting rectangular door, the wrong focal point--not the flowers, the whole reason for the painting!  The painting was 95% dark.  The brushwork was heavy-handed. I was disappointed and disheartened.  So distraught I destroyed the painting. I had come to paint lilacs, and, by-gum, I was going to get these lilacs!—just not today.

Photo of the first composition try.

 Of course, part of my problem, was in not thinking before painting. If I were to make progress I was going to have to look at this mistake and find the roots of it. First, I chose to paint the scene from the most comfortable vantage point (shade and level ground), not from an interesting composition vantage point. Bad me! Second, so worried about losing the light late in the day, I didn’t take the time to work out a few small sketches.  Finally, had I thought any about what my teachers had taught me? I went back to lessons on compositions, about light versus dark, about balancing warm and cool, and about finding some exciting place for a spark of unexpected color.  What was I trying to say in the painting? After reconsidering these, I went back later in the week.  The result is my failing up “Lilacs on Ledoux.” (top)

A lesson learned in the hot and dry western land is not soon forgotten. You’ve got to use your brain when you paint.

Postscript* The Blumenschein Home and Museum is an appropriate place for a “failing up”, of making progress as a painter.  Ernest L. Blumenschein was  one of the New York and European trained artists who settled in Taos, NM in the early part of 20^th c and founded the Taos Society of Artists.  Though it was disbanded about the time of the Great Depression, he and its members are largely credited with making Taos the artist colony that it continues to be today.

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My paintings are available at Sheffield Art Studio in Cary, NC and online and now, if I have paintings on auction, at Daily Paintworks auctions (see above.)

 . . . And by contacting me at the following links:

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Pointing Home

Bella's Lilac's 8 x 8 oil SOLD

I bent the white, lavender and pink blossoms to my nose.  If I couldn’t reach them, this skinny kid could climb to the highest spindly branches and sit among them and take in the fragrance, knowing that school would soon be out, jackets shed and, if I remained still,  butterflies would land on my arms. Spring in Michigan! Our small yard had at least three lilac bush-trees. 

The crape myrtle is sometimes called the southern lilac and is lovely, but cannot match the lilac for fragrance.  I miss the lilac and in recent years have added Lilac Festivals to my travel and painting list.  Several years ago we traveled to Mackinac Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a June festival.  They did not disappoint.  The UP’s combination of severely cold winters and moist air provides an ideal growing condition.  Abundant, large spikes of florets to wander among were heavenly and awakened long ago memories.

 A few weeks ago we sought to recreate that experience in Taos New Mexico’s Lilac Festival.  I was at first amazed to learn that Taos had such a festival, associating as I did lilacs with northern states.  I learned, however, that Taos did, indeed, have cold winters at an elevation of 7000 feet and that lilacs had been imported into the area around 1900 by a British citizen.  After de-boarding from or air flight in Albuquerque and driving several hours to Taos, I ran excitedly to the central plaza to see the lilacs I’d come to paint.  In disappointment I exclaimed, “Where are the lilacs?”  Several locals nodded knowingly and remarked, “A late snow last week froze the buds.  There are no lilac flowers this year.”  I was simply horrified I had come all this way for burned buds!

I wasn’t so easily deterred.  In searching around town, we found a few lucky protected places where some survived and I happily painted their beauty.  Outdoor painters must be resilient, so we were on to plan B to find southwestern splendor and create new memories in Taos.

Plan B included painting in the garden of Nicholai Fechin; he was a Russian immigrant painter who lived in Taos for many years.  He planted Aspen trees outside his studio windows to remind him of his native Russia where he hoped he would return.  I went to Taos to rekindle memories of my home in Michigan, and found kinship with a painter who sought memories of his home in Russia.

Pointing Home 8 x 8 oil Available Painted at Nicolai Fechin House garden

I’d like to hear from YOU!  Please leave comments and questions.

My paintings  are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am-5:30 pm

  . . .And by contacting me at the following links:

 Sheffield Art Studio

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