Out of the Comfort Zone

"Morning with a Treasured Tree" oil 12 x 12 Available at Cary Gallery of Artists through Oct 22

What is my comfort zone?  The studio−everything I need, quiet, being undisturbed to plan and organize, time to complete a painting on my schedule.

So when I was given the opportunity to participate in Historic Southport’s Plein Air Paint Out and Wet Paint Sale, my reaction was:  Ugh, Paint Outs!  I’ve avoided them like the plague.  Pressure.  Jockey for position at the most interesting sites.  Quick decisions. Compose-Paint-Frame! Not the meditative and “sinking into the place” experience that is so enjoyable about painting outdoors.  And during the start of hurricane season, I thought.  Oh, yea.  And scheduled right before I’m preparing for three exhibits.  The date, September 14, was picked to coordinate with the International Plein Air Painters Organization Worldwide Paint Out.  Who knew there was an International WORLD WIDE paint out? 

In my mind there were plenty of reasons not to participate.  But I overcame all the internal nay-saying because one of the organizers was Jim McIntosh.  We wanted to see him again and the ever-so-lovely coastal town of Southport, NC.  We had visited Southport the year before and stayed in the heart of the downtown at the Southport Inn B and B. Southport has been the location to many movies for its historic buildings, small parks, walkable waterfronts, docked boats and yachts, and charming merchant and tree-lined residential streets.  For these same reasons, it’s a delightful location for outdoor painting. If there was ever going to be a fun paint out, Jim, a lively and easy-going watercolorist, would make it so.

The problem is—I’m not easy-going!  So, being a former arts administrator, I went into planning mode.  I spent weeks agonizing over gathering an assortment of frames and painting panels so Walt and I would have a variety of size and orientation choices –6 x 8, 5 x 7, 8 x 10, 9 x 12 (horizontal and vertical) for all the subjects we’d want to paint.  In the final week, I came to my senses and realized neither of us would paint more than two paintings in the morning hours before we’d want lunch and need to pack up for the viewing area.  We ended up packing only a few prepared 12 x 12 frames --one nice square orientation!—prewired with backer boards and identified with business cards.  That decision done! 

Next—map out our desired locations. I’ve been doing a series of trees, so I was particularly interested in painting the estimated 800 year old Indian Trail tree, also known as Treasure Tree.  So that was to be our first stop, followed by either the old yacht basin or a residential scene or downtown business.  We would let our energy and interest of the day guide us.  The evening before we took a leisurely stroll around the town to consider distances (for hauling equipment between sites) and to estimate the sun’s location in the morning—here Walt is of incalculable help as I’ve never figured out the seasonal movement of the planets! Where the heck is that sun going to be?!  Is there an app for this? (Turns out there is, Sun Seeker, but Walt’s a better companion.)

"Bunting and 'Brella" oil 12x12. Available. At Cary Cafe through Oct 27

In the middle of the afternoon, all the participating artists congregated at the Fort Johnson-Southport Museum & Visitors Center lawn.  The assortment of styles and quality was top quality.  This event will surely grow.  We ended the day with a seafood dinner with good friends Paulette and Hank Wright.  Paulette, a photographer and painter, participated with her acrylic work.  

Walt’s paintings have already migrated to his office at Armor Investment Advisors, but I can tell you his acrylic work was very popular. The tree pictured above was the first painting we each worked on in Kezia Park.  Next I chose to paint a portion of the Christmas Shop and, the next day, a boat in the Old Yacht Basin. 
 

"Calm in the Basin" oil 12x12 Available. At Cary Gallery of Artists through Oct 22

How do I feel about the experience?  Ebullient!  By leaving my comfort zone I learned I could make quick and good decisions, that years of workshop and daily painting training would buoy me up, and that, by being approachable, the good nature of the public and fellow artists would encourage me.  Where I had been struggling with painting in the weeks prior, the experience of going out of my comfort zone was what I needed to rejuvenate my confidence and painting. 

Challenge met!

In addition to Jim McIntosh, thanks to Cindy Brochure of Tourism and Economic Development, Film Liaison City of Southport, for organizing this event.  We’ll be b-a-a-a-ck!

In Cary, 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. 

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

Visit me at
www.sheffieldartstudio.com

LIKE me at
www.facebook.com/sarahsheffieldartstudio

Exploring Land and Color

When I left you last I had given you my first impressions of Door County Wisconsin and was eating pie at the end of our first day. On our second day we set out for one of the many parks on the peninsula, one aptly named Peninsula State Park.  Here we settled in to paint Eagle’s Bluff Lighthouse.  We were attracted to its warm light ocher brick and red roof and beacon against the cool olive trees. Later in the day we found a lovely cliff scene with abstract qualities of strong light and rock patterns which, I learned, was beyond my painting skills.  But I’ll try again! 




As promised, Cana Lighthouse-Lighting the Lake 6 x 6 oil on copper. Available.

Eagle's Bluff Lighthouse.  Soon to be a painting.

I like to cover a lot of ground, so the following day we set out for Kangaroo Lake near Bailey’s Harbor on the other side of the peninsula looking for marshes.  Unsuccessful in our search for an accessible marsh, we settled by the lake on this clear warm day.  Just as I was about to paint a lonely little canoe tethered to a dock, a couple came up and paddled away.  Woe to hopeful plein air painters.  So I settled on a scene of a few trees by the water's edge, which gave me an opportunity to play with the different greens and reds.



By Water's Edge 10 x 8 oil Available

Lunch time!  We found an unpretentious tavern near the lake and to my great delight they served bleu cheese and mushroom burgers.  This brought up a wonderful childhood memory of my Michigan youth when my grandfather made grilled hamburgers with blue cheese centers.

Determined to cover more ground, we then headed up north to Newport State Park where we had the sand dunes by Lake Michigan almost all to ourselves.  Below is a painting based on that afternoon. 




Beach Grass 18 x 24 oil. Available

We finished the day with an authentic fish boil dinner of white fish and potatoes.  We sat at a table with a couple who told us about a couple they saw at Newport seriously concentrating on painting —us!  We laughed.  The fish boil was very interesting to watch, but not to my taste—a bit bland.



"Santa Claus" preparing the fish boil.

With just two days remaining, we concentrated on scrumptious food (cream cheese and cherry stuffed pancakes for one!), the timeshare spa, and gallery hopping.  We met an artist facebook friend, Bonnie Parusch, which was a great delight.  We visited the Peninsula Art School, which hosts the well-known plein air festival each year. 

What do I think of when I think of Door County in spring? —cool, crisp air; birch trees and more trees; gently rolling hills; eagles and seagulls; apple and cherry orchards; daffodils and tulips; high, hazy clouds; white and yellow rocks; goats and cows; lovely historic buildings; lighthouses; wineries and barns; butter and fresh vegetables; jams and jellies; cheese; sparkling shorelines and cliffs; friendly people; parks; wildlife—and snow on our departure!

What’s up next?  Exploring my own backyard—Wake County and eastern North Carolina.  Then we’re looking toward Taos, Key West and Iceland in 2014 and beyond.

If you’re local to the Cary area, please join us for Final Friday Art Loop which happens—guess when?—the last Friday of each month!  Galleries open in the evening and provide refreshments and new exhibits.  I’ll be featured artist SEPT 27.

In Cary, 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. 

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com

www.facebook.com/sarahsheffieldartstudio 

A Wealth of Beauty: A Painter’s Dream

Door Peninsula is well known for summer recreation and an outdoor painting festival.  Our trip in early May, well before “the season”, brought us cool temperatures and floating ice in Green Bay!—but, fortunately, the first beautiful sunny, clear days perfect for outdoor sketching and photography.  The peninsula is situated between Lake Michigan and Green Bay and has the most wonderful combination of farmland, woodland, parkland, orchards, marinas, lighthouses, inland lakes, and historic and quaint towns.  

We started our introduction to Door County with a drive up the peninsula viewing the many, many barns and silos and had our first cheese curd appetizer and white fish dinner, followed by a walk to the shores of Green Bay for a lovely sunset. We started the next morning with a breakfast of fresh blueberry coffee cake and a drive to the end of the peninsula to Washington Island ferry, looking for likely painting locations, taking pictures along the way, and then ate at Al Johnson’s Swedish restaurant, which is famous for goats grazing on the roof.  The goats had not been “roofed” this early in the season, alas.

We discovered fine galleries—Fine Line Designs Gallery and Edgewood Gallery and we were inspired by the wonderful artists.  (And later in the week the studio of friend Bonnie Paruch.) There are numerous galleries in Door County, but visitors be warned! While there are many galleries, most only operate late May until early fall.

Monday was our first day painting and we chose Bailey’s Harbor on Lake Michigan and the Cana Island Lighthouse.  It was fun seeing wild turkey and red squirrels along the path to the lighthouse.  Even with ice floating in the lake, the sun kept us warm as we sketched the lighthouse.

10 x 8 oil "Birch in Bud" Available

Cana Lighthouse-soon to be a painting

 We concluded the day with bumble berry pie (a combination of different berries, apples and rhubarb) after dinner and a drive to the town of Ephraim for a beautiful sunset.  

A painter's life is hard.

If you’re local to the Cary area, please join us for Final Friday Art Loop which happens—guess when?—the last Friday of each month!  Galleries open in the evening and provide refreshments and new exhibits.

In Cary, 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.

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com 

Indigenous Inspiration: Landscape and Artists of Sedona Arizona

Our exploration of the Sedona area continued a bit farther out to view and learn more about the culture and desert landscape.  We set out for Montezuma Castle and Well, both with ancient cliff dwellings. We’d never seen the Castle, but we’d stopped at the well on our way to San Diego forty years and forty pounds ago! It’s a marvel. The well is a natural limestone sinkhole which is fed by underground springs. It’s a sacred place to the Yavapai people.  We didn’t approach these places as places for painting, but places for understanding—places to appreciate the landscape, to see and feel that would inform our later paintings.

Cliff Dwelling -Montezuma Castle

Montezuma Well

The next day, on our quest to understand the history of the area we set out also for the old copper mining town of Jerome, which has now become an artists’ colony, an opportunity for some present day human inspiration.  Most of the artwork is full of hot color and gaiety.  We got pelted briefly with bits of hail in April skipping up the steep streets.  The desert— a varied experience!

It’s time to get back to painting the landscape, so on the way back to Sedona, we stopped at Red Rock State Park and followed the Kisva Trail.  Kisva is Hopi for “Shady Water”.  Here I found many secluded spots that appealed to my desire to paint intimate spaces.

Red Rock Beauty Available at Figments Gallery

Kisva Trail Sycamores-Watercolor Field Sketch

While in Sedona, we visited many private galleries and the Sedona Arts Center.  I became aware of these established fine artists: Bill Cramer, Keith Lindberg, Gretchen Lopez, and Lynn Heil.

April in the desert—yellow greens to olive and sap greens, wheat colored grass, lemon yellow buds, violets and eggplant purple shadows, nearly lapis blue sky, cool blue grays and pink gray underbrush, light terracotta to oranges to burnt sienna to brown orange and blazing red rocks, ravens, white sycamore trunks piercing through the evergreens, dry creek beds, water trickling over rocky streams, sudden hail, and roadside wildflowers.

Inspiration!

If you’re local to the Cary area, please join us for Final Friday Art Loop which happens—guess when?—the last Friday of each month!  Galleries open in the evening and provide refreshments and new exhibits.

In Cary, 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.

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com

The Road Renewed

It’s been a long time since I’ve written any thoughts about painting or travels.  Poor health had sent me into an uninspired and un-spirited period.  But the non-painting period allowed me to think about my art−how I want to connect with the viewer, what I want it to reflect, my subject matter, and my style and technique.  I’m refocused!

In the next few posts I will be sharing my recent travels to stunning Sedona, Arizona (and one also to beautiful Door County, Wisconsin) and the photos, thoughts, sketches and studio paintings that resulted from the renewal I’ve experienced walking in the beautiful State Parks and National Forests at each of these locations. 

The first day in Sedona we set out for Red Rock Loop Road and Red Rock Crossing Park.  I very quickly found a shady spot along Oak Creek within site of the famous Cathedral Rock.  Because I’ve decided I’m best a painter of intimate scenes, not monumental landscapes, I chose to sketch the handsome western sycamores along the sandstone banks.

What I experienced—think crisp, clear dry air, gentle cascading creek, cottonwood pollen floating gently by, soft sandstone path beneath my feet, challenging rocks and tree roots, spring desert colors from almost white to yellow to yellow-greens to olive greens, blues, purples and the full spectrum of brown to flaming reds and oranges. Exhale! 

Cathedral Rock-much painted by others. I'm looking for the intimate

"Sycamore Shadows" A watercolor field sketch

My watercolor sketches will be the basis for larger studio works.

Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village for these and other paintings. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11am - 5:30 pm.

In the Wilmington area, works available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center  Wilmington, NC 28405 910.509.4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com

The Truth of Light and Color

Recently I traveled just four miles down the road to McNair Horse Farms  .  . . and back in time to Henry Hensche and the Cape Cod School of Art with the help of Lee Boynton. (thank you Waverly Artists Group for bringing him to Cary).

Most of my teachers paint and teach with the limited palette approach, mainly four tubes of colors.  This makes for very harmonious paintings and makes mixing colors, especially for beginners, a much easier learning experience.  It is amazing how many variations of color can be achieved with the limited palette.  But honestly, I’m not the most patient mixer.  And because a painter can never really duplicate the natural brilliance and intensity of natural light, I have been frustrated in finding ways to translate what I perceive onto the canvas with the limited palette.  So I have been yearning to find out more about the full spectrum palette and ideas of the Cape Code School of Art.  The full spectrum palette often has up to 20+ colors representing more of the color wheel.

Lee Boynton started us off “practicing the scales”, that is, painting colored blocks—to see how light changes color on planes facing different directions.  He reminded us this was essentially what Monet was doing with the haystacks—watching the effect of light and atmosphere.  It wasn’t about the haystack, it was about seeing and painting the light and atmosphere.  Upon returning home, I made my own colored blocks so I could continue to “practice the scales”.

What Lee said during the workshop was often in agreement with what my other Impressionism teachers have taught (especially “always paint the light, not the object”).  He persistently emphasized awareness of the warmth or coolness of the color in the light (also something emphasized by my other teachers). He mentioned that the Cape Cod school of thought has sometimes emphasized color over value, but he, himself, does not.  But he mentioned that nature is not homogenous.  By that I understood him to mean that representing the full spectrum of color found in nature was more important to him than strictly harmonizing the palette. (But here, this is my own conclusion, not his statement.)  He also does not harmonize the painting by toning the canvas, a common practice of many painters, believing this can muddy or deaden the sense of light of the colors.

"All Silence and Glimmer" 8 x 8 oil
Available
First painting completed following the workshop

With my color blocks, some tips and techniques to try, new colors on my palette, and new inspiration, Lee has given me fresh tools on the journey to become the painter I want to be.

Drop in Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary to see my paintings and the work of other local artists. 919-462-2035

In the Wilmington area, drop in Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center  Wilmington, NC 28405 910.509.4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com

The Path Since France

 The Trip Winds Down

Toward the end of this journey we walked past the imposing Abbaye Sainte Marie to the nearby market in Souillac, but did not visit the nearby vineyard or local distillery.  Below is the Abbey.

That evening we treated our hosts to dinner in Gourdon.  Gourdon is near the border with the Dordogne.  Historically Gourdon was an important town and had four monasteries at one time.  This evening the main street was obstructed by a raucous visiting carnival, so we experienced a whole different “vibe”!  But it was fun and we saw the local teens and families out having fun on a Friday night.

Carnival ride at Gordon

The Road

We traveled many miles around this region.  We had lots of fun and relaxation.  Like all good trips, it changed my perceptions.  When I originally signed up for this painter’s retreat trip I approached it much like other overseas workshop trips.  Though it was not teacher led with scheduled classes, I thought I would be “producing” paintings and practicing skills.  I packed and prepared to focus on watercolors, to sharpen those skills as opposed to oils.  As the trip progressed I concentrated more on quick pencil sketches, photo shoots, and gathering of information in my notebook—more on “seeing” than producing, These were a different set of skills and valuable too.  It was more relaxing and, in the end, more instructive.  I learned so much in observing another highly successful professional artist, watching how she photographed, used technology to stay in touch with her customers, blogged and painted.  In watching her, I started thinking about issues I had not given much thought to—the business side of art.  Now that I am in a gallery, I realized I needed to think seriously about presentation, a unified look in terms of framing and pricing.  I needed to think about marketing and staying connected to people who enjoy and buy my artwork.  I have already made many changes since returning home and have a long to-do list!  The learning curve in painting and the business of painting is certainly a life time journey.

Drop in Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary for these and other paintings. 919-462-2035

In the Wilmington NC area, drop in Figments Gallery,  Landfall Shopping Center, 1319 Military Cutoff Highway  28405  Tel 910.509.4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com