Donald Jurney

Friday, June 13, 2014

Details

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com

The Devil's in the Details

Several people have, in the past, asked to see details of paintings, in order, I suppose, to trace the brush marks. Below I show four of the recent 8" x 12" (20x30cm) plein air studies, each followed by a detail. I hope they're interesting.

No matter how much I de-saturate the blue and the cyan in the photos of the last painting, they appear on my monitor as too blue. Who knows how it looks on yours?

Do remember that these are studies, often with rough brushwork and with little 'finish'. I'm more interested in the immediacy of the scene than with polish.

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Classes:

Weekend Workshop 28-29 June 2014 Coming up!!

Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net

The Ogunquit Summer School of Art
Ogunquit, Maine

Two two-day workshops
14-15 August 2014
27-28 September 2014
Contact them at 603-819-9100

Holland
4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net

Toronto

6-10 October 2014

Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net

Norway August 2015

Contact me to receive information as it

becomes available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales

A possible 2015 workshop for the

Welsh Academy of Art

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Further Along

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com

Imagination

Yesterday my friend and fellow artist, Todd Bonita, asked if I would do a demonstration for the Tuesday plein air class he teaches. The forecast was for rain and Todd secured the use of the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit.

I had a 16" x 20" (40x50cm) panel (my Claessens linen stuck to Gator board). On it was the aborted start of a demonstration from my Savannah workshop in 2013. It seemed like it was time to paint over it.

It's sometimes a bit disconcerting to make a grisaille over an entirely different painting. Which marks belong to the old painting and which to the new? After a bit, though, the old image recedes and the definiteness of the new image asserts itself.

Because I've been painting all the recent 8"x12" panels at Rawson's Neck and Rawson's Point, the sea was much on my mind. I had no reference but decided to paint a painting of the rockbound coast of Maine from imagination.

Here's what I did. The photo is a bit over-sharp and a bit contrasty. There is actually a sky in the painting, but here it's blown out by over-exposure. Still, it will give you the idea, and I told the students I would post it.

I still need to refine the rocks and to work on the water. But I think there is already a sense of the bright, glary light that I wanted.

There was a 'school' of painting called the 'glare aesthetic' at the end of the 19th century. An oft-cited example is by William Lamb Picknell (American, 1853-1897). His painting The Road to Concarneau was bought by the Corcoran Gallery in 1880 when Picknell was only 27. It may be of interest to Essex County readers to know that in his later years Picknell lived at Annisquam.

I've been unable to immediately find the dimensions for it. But I remember seeing it at an exhibition held at The National Academy of Design, in New York. It was very large---my guess being that it was six or seven feet wide.

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Classes:

Weekend Workshop 28-29 June 2014

Toronto

6-10 October 2014

Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net

Norway August 2015

Contact me to receive information as it

becomes available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales

A possible 2015 workshop for the

Welsh Academy of Art

Monday, June 9, 2014

At Rawson's Point

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com

Fluid Dynamics

Some of you may know that I'm not much of an engineer or scientist. This has a definite downside.

Usually I'm painting trees and fields, mountains, roads and the occasional farm building. Although the light changes throughout the day, and the shadows move, shortening and then lengthening, everything is still stationary.

Then there's the sea.

In these last ten days or so that I've been in Neptune's realm, or at least on the rockbound edge of it, I've been mesmerized and conquered by the constant movement in the water. Look for a second---see the wave!---look at your canvas!
By then the whole scheme has changed again.

Frederick Waugh, American painter (1861-1940) was a master at catching the myriad moods of the briny deep. When I was about 8 years old my sister and I spent the summer with our grandfather in La Jolla, California. He had retired there, and among the possessions which he took to California were three or four Waugh seascapes. They fascinated me as a youngster. When he died they were sold in the estate sale and ---this being the glorious morning of abstract expressionism---they fetched only a few hundred dollars each. But now Waugh is appreciated again, fetching great prices.

I mention him because I read some comments from him recently. He spoke of the surface being in constant motion, but noted that the action of the water is conditioned by the nature and depth of the sea floor. Gradually shelving coastlines generally produce wavelets like the eight-inch surf of Long Island Sound along the Connecticut coast where I grew up. Rockbound coasts, deep and rugged like much of Maine, produce much more emphatic waves. The coast near Rawson's Point is, in fact, quite like Maine.

Here's what I did at The Point today, 8" x 12" (20x30cm). I'll have to do something about that dirty color in the sky.

Waugh would sit, sometimes for a whole day, watching the action of the waves, committing to memory the various moods of the sea. Sometimes he would make an 8x12" study en plein air, but his paintings were never painted on site. He distilled what he knew of the sea through his particular alchemy. I find his work somewhat uneven, but superb at its best.
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Chris Volpe, who writes a blog which invariably has interesting insights, sent me a photo of a postcard today, writing, "I was rummaging through some boxes of stuff that my late grandmother-in-law had saved in an old roll top desk when I came across this antique postcard. It appears to be labeled “Near Rawson’s Head.” I don’t have any other information about it, except that Helen (that was her name) saved many odd things over the years. Anyway, just thought I’d send it along."

Rawson's Head seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Bald Head Cliff in York, Maine. Notice, too, that Grandmother Helen identified the photo with a stylus, rather than her usual fountain pen. Still, Granny Helen got around.

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I'm pleased to report that I heard today that the Plein Air Landscape Workshop, scheduled for 5-10 October 2014, under the auspices of the Toronto Academy of Realist Art, has reached its enrollment goal. There may be a couple more places. Write to me at dbjurney@verizon.net if you'd like to join.

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And a reminder...

This coming Thursday, June 12th (5-8 p.m.), I'll be at the annual Catalogue Show at my Boston gallery (Quidley&Co, 38 Newbury Street, Boston, MA). This show features a new work by each of the gallery's artists. The paintings are in a catalogue, hence the name of the show.

This year, in addition to my new painting, Quidley will also be showing my painting The Door to the Golden Age. If you haven't seen it in person yet, you may want to come check it out before it's off to Quidley on Nantucket. Here it is, all 7-feet (2m) of it.

If you live near Boston, and you're a blog, Instagram, or Facebook follower whom I haven't met, I'd be especially pleased if you'd stop by and introduce yourself.

I look forward to seeing everyone.

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Classes:

Weekend Workshop 28-29 June 2014

Toronto

6-10 October 2014

Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net

Norway August 2015

Contact me to receive information as it

becomes available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales

A possible 2015 workshop for the

Welsh Academy of Art

Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Second One

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com

Rawson's Head, No. 2

Yesterday I also began a second panel (8" x12", 20x30cm) at
Rawson's Head. As it turned out, I was pretty tired and stopped after I had the basic information.

Today, in the studio, I worked on refining my idea. Since I left the site yesterday at about 1:30 p.m., I didn't really see this effect of the light. Today I solidified it from imagination. There's is still a bit of both crisping and softening that needs to be done, but I'm relatively pleased with its progress.

Do remember that one of the best things about making a grisaille is that you can subsequently make it whatever you'd like.

(I just swapped out the original photo from this post in favor of one from my phone. This one has issues with extraneous 'sparkles' in the shadows, and a lack of sharpness. More important, though, is that this one has a more correct 'feeling'.)

Thanks to Gerry, Caroline and Bruce for their comments.

And a reminder...

This coming Thursday, June 12th (5-8 p.m.), I'll be at the annual Catalogue Show at my Boston gallery (Quidley&Co, 38 Newbury Street, Boston, MA). This show features a new work by each of the gallery's artists. The paintings are in a catalogue, hence the name of the show.

If you live near Boston, and you're a blog, Instagram, or Facebook follower whom I haven't met, I'd be especially pleased if you'd stop by and introduce yourself.

I look forward to seeing everyone.

***********************************************************

Classes:

Weekend Workshop 28-29 June 2014

4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL

Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net

(Possibly) Toronto

6-10 October 2014

Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net

Norway August 2015

Contact me to receive information as it

becomes available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales

A possible 2015 workshop for the

Welsh Academy of Art

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Anniversary

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com

Happy 200 Posts!

This post is my two-hundredth since I began on February 29, 2012. So far there have been 68,401 visits to the blog. There have been 628 comments, just shy of 1%. But still we soldier on.

I went out to paint at Rawson's Head today and made this 8" x 12" (20x30cm) plein-air study. For some reason the blue in this photo is a bit more electric than in the painting. Actually, I also made a second one, but that's not fully-baked. I'll post it another time.

This coming Thursday, June 12th (5-8 p.m.), I'll be at the annual Catalogue Show at my Boston gallery (Quidley&Co, 38 Newbury Street, Boston, MA). This show features a new work by each of the gallery's artists. The paintings are in a catalogue, hence the name of the show.

If you live near Boston, and you're a blog, Instagram, or Facebook follower whom I haven't met, I'd be especially pleased if you'd stop by and introduce yourself.

I look forward to seeing everyone.

***********************************************************

Classes:

Weekend Workshop 28-29 June 2014

4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL

Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net

(Possibly) Toronto

6-10 October 2014

Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net

Norway August 2015

Contact me to receive information as it

becomes available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales

A possible 2015 workshop for the

Welsh Academy of Art