West River, keeping it simple
Grey Skies, Saturday Morning
Oil on canvas, 11×14 inches. Thanks to Tish for getting me out to Spy Pond in Arlington, after years of driving by, I finally had an opportunity to paint. Very family friendly but felt like out in nature for this urbanite. The morning included very light sprinkles of rain.
A few postcards from a rooftop
Postcards – my code word for quick, small, landscape studies – if they don’t bring a smile to my lips, I wipe the canvas down. Here is the Tobin Bridge and the St. Francis spire.
And when the weather finally turns to Spring, I’m back outside.
Found this in the drafts folder – from April 16, 2016. Gorgeous day in Boston – after last weeks late snow, the magnolias are mostly very sad but the cherry blossoms are bursting out. I used the water miscible paints on this.
Feels like old times
First, this is the top of Summit Hill, Brookline, not a vista from one of our more northerly rural states. Dense foliage covers a lot. And a lovely time was had with Elissa and Andy.
A year after my close encounter with vertigo, and subsequently staying far away from solvents, I was still using cooking oil to swish the paint off the brushes (using more brushes than ever), trying water-miscible oils, using many different solvent-free painting medium and staying far away from the phthalos pigments that magically get into everything. I knew what I missed most: the loose, lean, initial washes for the initial blocking in of values. I felt like a toddler who skipped his nap and is no longer fit to be in public. Missing this step was a big problem with plein air; in the studio where I work more slowly and have more tools at hand, not so much.
It was time for a test, I slipped some odorless turp into a portion of stand oil, I obsessively kept the cap on when not using it and set up at a nice breezy point on the top of the hill. Hallelujah! It worked.
Ready for Beacon Hill Art Walk?
I’m packing up now. The weather forecast for tomorrow is improving – I’ve got tarps for showers, the durability of oils is a plus outside – hope to see you at the Beacon Hill Art Walk, June 5, 2016 – noon til 6pm. If the rain is no worse than showers, you’ll find artists in beautiful corners, gardens and alleys on the north slope and I’ll be at Rollins Place off of Revere Street If the rain is unrelenting, you’ll find us in dry nooks and crannies and me at 99 West Cedar St. (under an overpass or in a church or firehouse) For more details and printable event map, see the Beacon Hill Art Walk site
Fresh Air
A selection of my plein air landscapes are now hanging at the St. Botolph Club until June 10. The paintings look terrific in this space. Thanks so much to Michael Price, Carol Hartman and George Lynde of the Art Committee. Visits for nonmembers may be arranged for Wednesday afternoons.
Must be Spring
Finish
Rescued Magnolias
Studio Set-up
underpainting
in process
The miserable winter of 2015 left trees and shrubs in shambles. Pulling broken magnolia branches out of a snow bank, I brought them home to see if they would bloom. The flowering was only partially successful, but I was very smitten with the resulting painting and started to imagine a series in a larger format. The Thistles, painted summer 2015 and The Cherry Blossoms, just completed are both 30×30 – a huge amount of canvas real estate compared to my more typical canvases. Expect to see more of these.
Carol Schweigert 