Light Through the Trees

10" x 8", acrylic on aluminum panel © 2024
Collection of the artist

Jump starts are often very productive times even though they may not be finished for a time after the event. "Light Through the Trees" was such a painting. I really didn't know what I wanted to do to finish it; then one day in a flash of inspiration brought on by watching some YouTubers—I thought that's what it needs. I then finished it in a day. I must say that there are a lot of layers to the work as there was experimentation and then there was the use of almost forgotten techniques and newer techniques never used as successfully. It worked and is finished, and I can breathe a bit easier.

It reminds me of another piece I did in 2016, "Deep Forest Fall." That one was also a closed landscape with light coming through the trees.

The Ancestors

 9" x 12", acrylic on canvas panel © 2024
Collection of the artist

In 1864, Eric Øhlenschlæger and family settled in Fountain Green, Utah. He had three sons and two daughters (who died in Denmark). He died on 4 January 1865—it must have been a cold winter. His sons were Peder, Ludvig, and, my ancestor, Hans Peter. Two of the three adopted patronymic names of Ericksen and the third maintained the family name of  Øhlenschlæger (spelling was Americanized). His death in January made for difficult burial and he happened to have been buried outside of the official cemetery—he was buried in a dry creek bed. A flood came years later and washed the body away; there was no sign of the burial. As close as we can come to the site, it was the "bush" | "tree" which is the focal point of the painting. I contacted the city and found that there was no official record of the burial or the site. So he is immortalized in this painting and the photo that it was taken from.

Japanese Forest

14" x 11", acrylic on canvas panel © 2024

Collection of the artist

I've never been to Japan—the closest I've come is Hong Kong. A granddaughter, however, has a young Japanese man as a significant other, and she went to Japan to meet his parents. This is my interpretation of an image that she took and posted. I like the depth of the image, and the abstraction of the flowers in the foreground. It invited me into another world, and took me on a trip of exploration from which I returned with this image.

Peaceful Harbor

8" x 10", acrylic on canvas panel © 2024
Collection of the artist

I explained the process of getting a jump start in the last post. This is another royalty-free prompt with my interpretation. It languished in my inventory until one day I looked at it with a new eye for its simple beauty. It provided me with a peaceful feeling and a joy to have created it.

 

Evening Mist

 

8" x 10", acrylic on canvas board © 2024

Collection of the artist

Sometimes after a period of artistic inactivity I have to get a jump-start—that jump-start can come in many ways. In the past I have participated in live workshops; those are the best but often expensive. Sometimes I've participated in a longer learning-experiences through distance learning, which are plentiful today. And there is a hybrid when online workshops are offered free and this is the result of one of those. They offer the prompt, royalty-free, and you are to work on the product in your style or using what has been offered as an approach. This is my interpretation of the prompt—not exactly the same; but my vision of it. I particularly like the halation effect where the tree-line meets the sky. The frame works perfectly to set off the fire in the sky.

Evening of Glory

 

10" x 8", acrylic on canvas board © 2023

Collection of the artist

A step outside when the sun is setting is often rewarded by a cliché. That means that you have seen them before, but sometimes it seems like the beauty gods have chosen something just for you. Now it has become piece that represents what you see at the end of the street in the "hood."

A Place Out of the Sun

11" x 14", acrylic on canvas panel, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Returning home from central Utah, it was a hot summer's day, and to the side of the road was a respite from the heat—a hollow of sorts when the lowering sun was obscured and the blaze of the sun could still be seen.
    It was fun to paint as I recently used a new technique for me—a palette knife. I had purchased a new one in a recent workshop and had used it in another painting. In this painting, like the other one, the foliage of the trees was the issue. The knife had proven itself then; now could it do it again. It did, and the trees came to life in the afternoon sun.

Mountain Stream

11 x 14, Acrylic on canvas board, © 2023
Collection of the Artist

Exhibits are a source of motivation. Such is this painting of a stream in a nearby canyon. I finished it for an exhibit as I had been working on a more significant piece and hadn't a fresh smaller work of art to take. 
     I had taken a photograph a couple of years ago and its time had not come to be a painting. I had seen some painting with very blue water and wanted to experiment with that and the composition. It made it to the exhibit, and what will become of it now is for the future to determine.

 

Grace House, Good-bye

 

19" x 31.125", Acrylic on metal, © 2023

Private Collection

Sometimes you accept to do something that is unfamiliar—not painting, but the subject matter. When photographs are hard to come by except from memories, you buy models (truck [1948 Ford 100] and a Checker) and use a poor quality Google Map, street view—I envision a driver going as fast as possible in a small town in Idaho—it's a tad blurred as a result. The people are even a problem for they lived in a time when photographs were very expensive not to take but to develop. So, you find some and make comps for reference. 

    You start thinking that you can get it finished in a month and then 18+ months later you finish it. It's not that you don't work on it as it is center-stage in the studio; but you ponder the composition, the colors, and textures. Did I say the photograph was of poor quality. You use your memory of a by-gone era when there weren't garage doors in place and the siding was asphalt brick. What is enough detail, and what is too much? It weighs on you and you paint it several times with varying degrees of success.

    Life happens at the same time, so you edit a book or two, paint only one other painting as you feel guilty if you don't work on THE painting, but it is always in your mind—even in Paris. You don't want to be like Leonardo and not finish commissions after you have worked out all the problems.

    So, it's finished, and you say good-bye to the Grace House with Mom and Pop out to see you off as you have so many times before. Now it is not just a memory, but an object on the wall.

A Road South

 

12x19 Acrylic on metal, © 2022

Collection of the Artist

In the fall of 2012 we travelled to New Mexico, and along the way through Utah I saw this scene; I immediately stopped to take a photograph. It has been ten years, and I decided that it was a photo whose time had come. I painted it for an exhibit of the Utah Valley Artist Guild.

Rock Creek Hollow

11x22 acrylic on canvas, © 2021

Collection of the Artist

In 1856 handcart immigrants from England and Denmark left Iowa City late in the season and were caught in an early storm in Wyoming. A rescue party was sent from Salt Lake City to bring them in from the plains—it was the Willie Handcart Company. They were "saved" they just had to pull their handcarts to Rock Creek Hollow where the rescue party had camped in the willows against the bitter cold of the storm. That night, of being saved, my great, great grandfather froze to death and was buried the next morning with 12 other fellow travelers in a common grave laid out like spokes of a wagon wheel.

    We had a family reunion in the hollow to commemorate his death and the life of his daughter through whom most of us were descended. It was a peaceful morning, and the beauty of the location was palpable. He still lies in that common grave now marked with a brass plate telling that Ole Lykke Madsen, 41, died here. He didn't get past this place of beauty in October 1856.

North Creek Hollow: View from Mainstreet

 20x16, acrylic on linen canvas, © 2021

Collection of the Artist

When driving North down main street in Springville, look to the right as you approach 1400 N. You'll see a hollow in the mountain. This is apparent about where you see Subway on the left.  

    It's a cold day, and the clouds were down on the mountain with snow falling in spits and spirts and the clouds part and the sun hits the ridge and down in the hollow. It's beauty had to be interpreted in paint—here it is—a cold day on a Springville spring day.

Falls at Cayote Gulch

16x20 acrylic on canvas, © 2021

Private collection

My daughter's family are quite the explorers and hike to places that I may have once been able to do but time and legs preclude. She took this photo of the falls that spoke to me in a calming way. Lovely light and gentle water falling is the best of Zen. My wife loved the turquoise water that plays off the red of the sandstone.

Fires in the West

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

We drove to Tooele, Utah on a warm summer's day for a barbeque in the back yard of my wife's nephew's home by the lake. There were lots of fires in the Western United States at the time and the sky was more atmospheric than usual. I saw this scene and immediately took a picture. Time is of the essence as the conditions can change, and you would not think of painting what came later. So with some cropping in PaintShop, here is my interpretation of that day and time—it became immediately one of my wife's favorite paintings and gave her peace and serenity every time she passed by it.

Lake's End

11" x 14" acrylic on canvas panel © 2020

Collection of the Artist

When on an outing around the bottom of Utah Lake, you have to always be aware of what is around you as you may find beauty everywhere. We lived on the prairie for 40 years, and when we returned to the mountains we came back to their comforting protection. There are those who feel that mountains are closing them in, but when you have grown up in the mountains, their height and strength liberate you as you return to them—you're home!

A Trail Less Taken

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020

Private Collection

My wife and I took to the road one afternoon on the south side of Utah Lake. A road appeared that was not used much; it circled an area that is marshy when wet. The distant mountains and the smoke in the air from fires filled the atmospheric conditions with nostalgia—a wistful feeling of wanting to see where this road (as well as the one we were on) would take us.

    Some people in their lives find that they are on a path that is not usual for the time or the group. It is a difficult road to travel, but the benefits of the trip and the glory of what awaits makes us feel that a trail less traveled is a road that is fitted to our wants and desires.

 

You Can't Go Home

11x14, acrylic on canvas panel © 2020

Collection of the Artist

When I was a young person, I would visit a friend on his ranch in Idaho. He lived across the way from his grandfather's house, which this is. I was stricken by the beauty of the place. It seemed placid and cool. There were big cottonwood trees behind the house or to the left which shaded the yard. It had a big front yard in which a band of the Blackfoot Tribe would come and camp. On one occasion we went out to the teepees that were in the front yard, and the women took a piece of paper and drew around my brother's hands and around my feet. In about a week we went back and picked up leather gloves with beaded gauntlet and moccasins with some beaded decoration—both made of deer skin. The gloves were well used and are gone, but the moccasins I still have in a shadow box in my studio.

    My brother and I went back to the area on a nostalgia trip, and it was sad to see the house now. I realized some things are better to remember how they were and not how they are, because you can't go home and find that nothing has changed.

Here is the shadow box with the moccasins, a tomahawk (made in Japan) that I purchased at the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone Park, an arrow head that my brother found, and a dream catcher made by the woman that put together the box for me. 

Along the Platte

16x10 acrylic on panel, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

One grows accustomed to the surroundings after 38 years in an area. So it is when you live in Nebraska; it has its charms—weather not being one of them. Flat land, which is what Platte references, albeit flat river. Evening has a charm of its own, and the warm tones and cool water give the nice yin-yang feel to this piece.

    I love the reflective nature of water and the movement challenges it presence to artful depiction.

Hope Over West Hills

16x20 acrylic on canvas, © 2020

Collection of the Artist

There was a heavy storm in Springville; it was dark and foreboding. There was a pandemic getting started. I had gone up the mountain and was coming down when the clouds parted and the sun broke through and everything was better. There is hope, and we can get through all of the craziness that is going on. A patch of blue and gold-lined clouds makes one think tomorrow will be better because it is good right now.

Forest Respite

 

11x14 acrylic on canvas panel, © 2020 

Collection of the Artist

Part of the process of becoming a better artist, at least historically, is to "channel" the work of a master painter—such as Albert Handell. I have studied Handell and his technique for several years and thought I would see what I could learn from emulation. It's harder than it looks to be simple.