Just as the sun is coming back from the short days of Solstice, my health is coming back as well. This has been a year of trials and tribulations. About this time last year, I started having joint pain that moved around and came and went. Finally it settled in my hands and I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Then came the tribulations of medication which like all of life, carries both good and bad gifts in its basket. Now I am taking Enbrel and am able to paint, play my flute, chop vegetables, prune my raspberries, sew and do all the other things that I love that I could not do a few months ago.

It has been the painting that I have missed the most, but I am slow getting back into it as there is so much that has been left undone this past year that I am catching up on. Arne has been my saving grace in all of this, assisting with what I could not manage. In addition, he has finished the earthquake anchoring of our house and now is organizing the basement with all sorts of storage. It will become more and more efficient under his patient design and construction. Even while busy with all the rest of life, he has succeeded in finishing his first 10 speeches in the Sunset Toastmasters Club that we joined in May (I am only on number 5). He has also brightened my life with his study of the accordion, playing familiar and new music every day.

I hope to travel to Norway again this summer and paint more of the wonderful landscapes I found there. I would also like to visit Finland to paint as well as take in the art museums there and the museums in Oslo that I have not seen. There is an Antell collection in Helsinki that I especially would like to see as that was the original spelling of my last name before my grandfather changed it. Antells are not very common in the world so I am always interested in where they have settled.

I wish you all the blessings of the season and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Rosemary

Volume 12 Number 1 June, 2007

Straw turned into gold ...

is what I think on seeing the shaft of early sun strike the bedding in the calf barn on my Grandfather�s farm. The otherwise cool shadowy barn is built into the side of a hill for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. I love wandering through the barns and out buildings on this farm where I spent many happy days as a child. The memories of those early years flood my mind.

My childhood pastimes were looking for eggs in the beams of the hay mow where errant chickens hid them and chasing the barn cats so I could pet them. Of course, no self respecting barn cat wants to have anything to do with little kids. They would only show up when one of my uncles would pour out a gallon of fresh milk into their large dish. As soon as the milk was gone and their faces washed, so were the cats.

How small the farm seems now. The hay barn is smaller, the driveways shorter, and the lane up to the top of the hill where the water cistern is located has shortened by at least 80%. Were my legs that much shorter the last time I was here?

Some things have not changed at all, like the cool, dark interior of the spring house and the equally cool water in the horse watering tank outside that was filled by the spring house overflow. The overflow from the watering tank ran down a little stream to join another little creek. These bits of water supplied lush harvests of mints and watercress for Grandma�s kitchen.

The patchwork of sheds, barns and lanes tempts me with multiple compositions for paintings. The textures of the ancient wood of the horse barn and the old wrought iron fence of front yard covered in pink roses, the lilacs, the cherry trees and more catch my attention and would make wonderful subjects to paint.

Where do paintings come from? I wish I knew, but I can only give some clues like how the process works for me.

All my life I have traveled with camera and sketchbook, sometimes adding watercolor, oil pastel or oil paints to my burdens. Besides these methods of actually recording my impressions of the landscape, I often do what I call � air paintings� where I analyze the scene before me as if I were painting, but only do all the steps in my imagination. This saves a lot of time but still triggers the kind of intense seeing that I experience when sketching or painting.

I have often traveled to places of incredible beauty but these sights can be intimidating. How can I come close to capturing what is before me? When I was younger, I often selected these �calendar views� as what I wanted to paint or I would search for something resembling a stunning painting I had seen in a museum. As you might expect, I was setting myself up for disappointment over and over again. I was never happy with what I painted in those years as the subject was just too grand.

Constant study turned up a gem from another artist. I don�t have the source or exact quote, but the gist of the message was that a competent artist could be plunked down anywhere and facing any direction and find a subject for a painting worthy of the time to produce it from what was before the artist. A light bulb went off in my head and I realized that it was my selection of the motif for reasons that interested me that gave the strongest paintings. I began to select contrasts such as flat against vertical or dark against light as worthy subjects. Shapes or color combinations that intrigue me or rhythms of line repeated inspire me now.

I began to relish the challenges in just setting up my gear somewhere and painting what was before me. Now mind you, it is not quite that simple. Although I no longer wander around for hours looking for the perfect view, I do look at the scenes in every direction including the ones into the sun. I do spend time with sketchbook and value studies analyzing how I can produce the strongest painting from what I see before me before leaping into the painting process. I do a color study in the studio or a color analysis with a note or two if in the field.

The first decision is whether this painting will feature a lot of detail or the larger patterns of the view. If I am painting detail, such as the calf painting, I choose a small support to paint on. If I am featuring the shapes and colors of a landscape, I choose a larger support to paint on. I also select a format for the painting that will best complement the composition I envisage. This may be square or a rectangle in various proportions presented either horizontally or vertically.

For Northwest landscapes, I almost always tone the canvas a medium red-orange for a base color. I do this for three reasons. 1) I dislike little white spots where my paint skipped over the grain of the canvas, 2) I like to start on a midvalue canvas rather than the lightest value white, and 3) The under color of the evergreen foliage here is orange. When the conifer needles die you can see them lose the green of chlorophyll leaving shades of orange through burnt sienna showing.

Now I am ready to draw the first version of Skagit Winter with vine charcoal. I use a little piece of chamois to erase unwanted lines and continue with the drawing until I am happy. Often I use some guidelines to �square up� or enlarge the little value drawing to the larger canvas. The proportions must be true to my concept for the painting to be as good as it can be.

When I am satisfied with my drawing, I go over it in very dilute paint and then when the paint is dry brush off the rest of the charcoal. The underpainting of the darkest darks and the lightest lights comes next, followed by a long period of contemplation to see if the patterns are heading in the direction I had earlier planned. At this stage, often I find some unforeseen unfortunate shapes or overlaps or pointing lines that I don�t want, so they are corrected at this stage while it is easy to do.

When I feel satisfied with this value layout, I put the first layer of color over the whole painting while frequently referring to my little color study. Again comes another long period of contemplation which now includes looking at the painting in a mirror and upside down for fresh views. I have learned that sometimes I just don�t see what is there, but instead see what I intended to paint. It is like proofreading a paper. After a point I see what I meant to write, not what is there. For a fresh view I must read the paper from back to front, a sentence at a time.

Now comes the modulations of color and value, a layer at a time, until the painting is just right. Unfortunately, this is the slowest part of all, as every change affects every part of the painting and often necessitates more and more changes over the surface of the painting. Eventually, I have to decide that I can�t make any more changes that will improve the painting. It is as good as I can make it at this time so I put it aside and work on another for a while. Sometimes, after resting its face to the wall for some time, a flaw will jump out at me when I first see it again. Oh no, how could I have missed something so obvious? This is just more proof that I don�t see reality but some construct of my mind that somehow relates to reality but is not the truth. Seeing the truth is the hardest thing to do, I believe, whether it is in my paintings or in my life.

As Joni Mitchell said in her timeless song, Both Sides Now.

I�ve looked at life from both sides now, From up and down, and still somehow, It�s life�s illusions I recall, I really don�t know life at all.

So I must conclude with a line from a children�s song, Life is but a dream.

So dream on through the lazy days of summer and feast on the ripening berries and fruits. Enjoy!

Rosemary

Volume 11 Number 2 December, 2006

The Seattle Rain that I Cherish ...

Is a delicate mist of imperceptible drops, just heavy enough to gently fall to earth. This rain would last for days but was so gentle that we did not stay inside or require umbrellas. It was rarely cold or so heavy that we would get wet to the skin while out in it, summer or winter.

My memories of jogging around Green lake in such a lightly moistened environment are of the beauty of the trees and distant shores dimmed by the fine haze of moisture in the air. Body heat from exercise could almost dry my tee shirt as I went.

In contrast, the Seattle rain of this fall has been more like that of a tropical storm. Cold, huge drops, that pelt down with the force of hail (and sometimes are hail). This weather mandates a hooded rain parka and encourages parking as close as possible to the store, waiting for a break in the deluge to dash in or out.

The resulting flooding of streets and basements has everyone battling water. Those on the high banks are in danger of mud flows as the rain is non-ending. Just when we thought it was over, it turned to snow and stopped traffic for several days in this major city with only 7 snow plows.

Now I really regret missing out on all the opportunities to paint outside this summer. We had wonderfully predictable weather for months while I was tied to the schedule of readying paintings for exhibition and promoting the show. Now, I could take some time to paint the landscape, but it will be from inside a vehicle, I suspect, unless this endless rain lets up.

In 2000, I took a 10 day trip on the MV Snow Goose from Bellingham to Prince Rupert. Along this slow progress through the Inside Passage we visited many villages and former village sites with examples of Northwest Formline Art. The scenery along the route was superb and I sketched in my notebook and painted a watercolor everyday recording color and feeling. They were featured in an earlier newsletter.

This year, I pulled out my references to start working on larger studio works based on these reference materials. Why do I paint what I paint? Often it is because of the color, the shape or the feeling that I am getting from the site. Sometimes I cannot say at the time I am there, but must figure it out as I work on a larger work.

I especially enjoyed a trip to a winter village site in the rain. It was so easy to take in the feeling of a rainy winter camp on this site. The rain let up and the foggy clouds raised a bit to allow a view of the neighboring islands. The water was flat and the sky took on pearly tones.

Calvert Island merited several paintings. This bit of rock with lots of sandy beach was liberally decorated on the west side with logs that had been sanded and polished smooth by the waves and rocks. The forest up on the rock was full of dead snags that must have had their tops snapped off in a storm. It was so perfectly clean, no litter, and so perfectly empty that I felt like I was in the wilderness. I regret to say that the cruise ships plying the Inside Passage have been fined repeatedly for dumping garbage overside, but still get caught in the act. As a result, so many beaches are littered with immortal modern trash. I think the fishing lodge on the other side of the island must keep the plastic picked up here.

Varney Falls was another interesting site. A freshwater lake flows over the falls to the salt water, creating lots of foam and fascinating patterns in the sea. The shapes of the rocks and mountains behind created interesting forms and color patterns for me to paint.

What with all the increased airport security, I am trying to find better media to carry on trips to paint with on location (en plein air). I am testing oil pastels. I can't deal with the mess of soft pastels as the dust gets everywhere, but I can contain the oil pastels much better. As always, I am using only the best quality available, Sennelier. Here is the history of the medium from the French company.

"In 1949 Pablo Picasso asked Henri Sennelier to create a completely new medium that had qualities of oil paint and soft pastel in an easy to apply stick form. Picasso told Henri 'I want a colored pastel that I can paint on anything...wood , paper, canvas or metal, without having to prepare or prime the surface.' This collaboration between the greatest genius of modern art and its master colorist gave birth to Sennelier Oil Pastels; pure intense color drawing sticks, with a completely new form of consistency and smoothness."

I did not have the time to use them outside this summer, but I did try them out in the studio. I have a removable resin fixative to seal them with, to prevent them holding dust. They slowly harden into a durable surface and never craze or crack like oil paintings can. I have found that they are much more of a drawing medium than oil paint.

I used them to paint some garden and farm scenes on a base of Pastelbord, an archival product. They are fun to use and not too messy. I can see though that I could not leave them in an auto in the summer as they might puddle. At our summer temperatures indoors, they were as soft as I could use them. Now I need to test them at cooler temperatures and see how easily they make marks and blend.

The bridge scenes are from the gardens at the Columbia Gorge Hotel and the other scenes are from Everett and the Skagit Valley. I tried a variety of subjects and colors to see how the colors available worked in the landscape.

I really love oil for plein air work, but if I get too much hassle to take it on a plane, I need a plan B. I have used watercolor for years but it is so sensitive to weather conditions that it is difficult to use sometimes. It is especially a problem in the cold damp climates I prefer. There it doesn't dry fast enough without a hair dryer. The airlines didn't seem to have as much of a concern with watercolor as with oil paint. On with the experiments and I will report more later.

Stay dry, dear friends, and be cozy in the midst of this chilly season.

Rosemary

Volume 11 Number 1 June, 2006

Thirty-three Years Ago...

The idea for a painting was burned into my memory. I finally painted that painting in my new studio. Thanks to the spacious 10 foot plus ceilings and the generous size, I could conceive and paint that image. This painting of Heaven was in my December, 2004 Newsletter, but I am repeating it here, reversed, because it is a part of this story. I am frequently asked "How long does it take to paint a painting? The answer is that it sometimes takes 33 years.

Visitors to my studio where the painting is currently hanging have continued to ask me where the view is that this painting is taken from. I finally decided that I really had to try and identify it. I knew it was from a slide I took on a 10 day climbing trip in 1973 called the Inspiration Traverse. There were 12 of us who packed in the Sibley Creek trail and headed uphill, off the trail to spend the next 10 days in some of the most spectacular scenery in the North Cascades before we exited via the Pyramid Creek near Diablo Dam. Along the way, an average of 6 mountains per person were climbed besides the rugged cross country and glacier travel with full backpacks. Tents, sleeping bags, food, fuel, crampons, ropes and ice axes meant 60 pound plus packs for all. The mountain that most impressed me was El Dorado and anyone who has climbed it will know why. The final approach to the summit is a wind carved hard snow ridge like the ridge of a steeply pitched roof for about a hundred yards, with a cliff 30 feet away on one side and extremely steep snow that is almost undercut on the other. But I digress from the main story.

I got out all my old slides, my trip notes and my annotated topographic quadrangles of the trip. Well, to be honest, first I had to spend a day trying to find them in my extensive collections of reference material from places I have been. As I looked through slides and maps and books of routes, I was continually distracted by more memories of fabulous places I have seen that really need to become paintings. That is why a simple chore takes days. The distractions of souvenirs, aids to memory, irrestistable side trips from the task at hand and once again, I am digressing.

I spent several days scrutinizing the slides and maps and getting the slides back in order so I had a better idea of where they were taken, but still could not identify the peaks and glaciers. I thought it might be something on Forbidden Peak as it has that steep look with steep glaciers but that did not make sense as we were on the mountains across from Forbidden.

What I really needed was some more photos of the area with more of the mountains properly identified. When I googled "El Dorado North Cascades", I found the most incredible aerial photos taken by a pilot named John Scurlock at the site http://www.pbase.com/nolock/ncsummer. WOW! If you love mountains, take a look. And there are names! After some time scrutinizing his photos and my slides and the topographic notes, I have concluded that I now know the name of the peaks and glaciers in the painting. It is a little obscure because I accidentally flipped the slide that I painted it from, so I printed it reversed for you above. I believe it is Coccyx and the McAllister Glacier, looking toward El Dorado from a spot on the ridge above Stout Lake. It was awesome to retrace the trip on the aerial photos which really show most of the route very well.

After these days of immersion in my memories of mountains, I was really excited about painting some more of those alpine views that I love. With such clear memories of the trip and what I saw, I started working on a gorgeous peak that I remembered camping across from, watching the sunset reflect from the granite walls. Now what was its name? After some kind help from John Scurlock, I was reminded that it was Mantis Peak. I say reminded because the couple who did the first ascent and named the peak were on that traverse and told me its name, 33 years ago. Once I heard it again, I remembered their story of the first ascent and the name. I freely confess that I have always had a name-impaired memory although I have a very good memory for images.

Again, with more kind help from John Scurlock, I also I found the name of the peak that I had painted a couple of views of from the Artist's Point area. Most people have asked me about these paintings. I could tell them where to stand and which direction to face but not the name until now. It is Mount Ann, above Lake Ann. Those paintings were in the December 2005 Newsletter. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and the information so freely shared there, I have solved the mysteries. The names of peaks are hard to come by as they are mostly not on the maps. They do appear in guidebooks and climbing notes, but that is about it.

So why this obsession with the names of these places? Does knowing the name enhance the experience of viewing the painting? I know that it does for me. I just like to know about things. I have dragged a copy of Hult�n's Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories all over Alaska so that I could look up flowers and plants as I found them and see what their circumpolar distribution is. Never mind that I usually promptly forgot the name of the plant or that the book is only good for car trips because it weighs in at 5.5 pounds. Somehow knowing enhances my experience. Of course, having made several trips to Norway and Sweden, I am fascinated to see what plants are common to Alaskan and Scandinavian locales. (Digressing again.)

Deep and steeped in glacier study mode now, I also painted a view of the Blue Glacier on Mount Olympus that is a favorite of mine. I backpacked up to the glacier once with my daughter when she was about 7. Another year, I climbed Olympus to the base of the summit rock which was covered with verglas and impossible to climb to the actual summit 30 feet away. Finally the following year when I climbed it again, I could actually make the summit as the rock was dry. I have always especially loved the rhythms of the shapes of the rocks, peaks and glacier at this point which is near where climbers take to the glacier. It is worth the 19 mile hike up the Hoh River to experience it. I wonder if it is still there or has shrunk back from this point, along with all our other glaciers.

As I remembered peaks I have climbed I thought of White Horse and painted a view of that as well. I had painted the other side of the mountain when I backpacked into the Squire Creek trail with camping gear and watercolors many years ago, but had not yet painted the public side. This mountain has an interesting route that is a real bushwhack. The slide alder springing up out of the snow smacked a deep groove in my helmet. Imagine what my head would have looked like if I had not been wearing my helmet? But the pastoral scene below is so peaceful, you would never guess the presence of a Slide Alder Hell which reminds me of bushwhacking through Rhododendron Hells in the Great Smokey Mountains. These are nasty things to try to force your way uphill through, but what wonderful trout fishing in the Smokies. See what I mean about digressions/distractions?

Besides mountains, I have been painting more views from the 10 day trip on the Snow Goose up the inside passage to Prince Rupert a few years ago. I painted watercolors on the trip and am now using those and my photos to paint larger studio oils of places we visited. Calvert Island was one of the places that I really remember and Village Island.

There are many more memories I have painted but these images are reserved for the exhibition September 29th to October 19th at the Kaewyn Gallery in Bothell. This show will feature landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, including some of these and others that will be a surprise. Do plan on coming and seeing the paintings in person as the reproductions in my newsletter just do not do them justice and most of the paintings are new. Standing in front of my larger paintings is very like being in the landscape, and so different from seeing them as a tiny image.

The May exhibition at the Fountainhead Gallery did well and also decreased my painting inventory. That is why my newsletter has so few images in it this time. Sorry, but I am saving some surprises for you at the upcoming Kaewyn exhibition. I do hope you enjoy them.

I am looking forward to seeing you at the opening reception September 29th, 5-8 p.m.. The address of the Kaewyn Gallery is 10101 Main Street in Bothell. The number there is (425) 483- 7385.

Until then, Rosemary

Copyright 2001-2008 Rosemary Sylvanus Antel. Email: RAntel@seanet.com
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