Monday, August 31, 2015

I've got some colors I'd like you to meet


If you've seen many of my barn paintings you may have noticed some similarities between them (other than the fact that they are all of barns). These similarities include things like brush stroke and color. They are what makes my paintings unique to me. In the case of color, also known as an artist's palette*, I generally employ two blues, two reds and two yellows plus white.

*Side note - the term palette can refer to the flat surface an artist uses to hold and mix colors (I use an enamel butcher's tray - more on this later) or the range of colors used by a particular artist.

THE BLUES

Phthalo Blue - Short for Phthalocyanine Blue (do not ask me to to pronounce that - just know that the "ph" is silent). When mixed with Cadmium Yellow Light, this blue creates a lovely bright green that, I think, perfectly depicts grass in bright sunlight. Combine it with white and you have a brilliant blue sky. I will also add this blue, lightened with white, to shadow areas to liven them up.



Ultramarine Blue - A very appealing blue that leans towards deep purple. Mix it with Alizarin Crimson (sometimes I call it Lizard Crimson just for fun) and you get just about the prettiest violet you can imagine. I will also add it to the very top of my blue skies for added depth.





THE YELLOWS

Cadmium Yellow Light - As I mentioned above, a must have for creating the greens of spring and summer. On its own or lightened just a bit with white it creates sparkling highlights for trees and bushes or just dots of yellow flowers. Its considered a "cool" yellow as it skews ever so slightly towards green on the color wheel.




Cadmium Yellow Medium -A very warm yellow, almost orange. I add it to the red of my barns to give them the soft glow of sunset light. Because it is so warm, it makes a nice olive green when mixed with Phthalo Blue. I also find it helpful, for depicting the golden color of dried summer grass when mixed with white.




THE REDS

Alizarin Crimson (a.k.a. Lizard Crimson) -  If the barn I'm portraying is red, I paint a layer of Alizarin Crimson first. This establishes the depth of "redness" of the barn. It's also part of my recipe for black along with Phthalo Blue and Cadmium Yellow Medium. Some may disagree, but I believe a "mixed" black has more richness and depth of color than one from a single tube.



Cadmium Red Medium - A bright, medium red. I had to get around to this color eventually, I am painting barns after all. It is also my go to color along with Cadmium Yellow Medium for creating the oranges of autumn.






So there you have it. These are the colors I use to create my paintings. They are the tools of my trade along with my brushes, canvases and butcher's tray palette. Speaking of my palette, I have no idea how it got that name, but it is a pretty handy little device. Not only is it easy to clean, being covered in enamel, but the outer lip makes it almost impossible to spill your paint. The little metal round container pictured along with my butcher's tray holds painting medium that I mix with my paint as a I work. It speeds up the drying time of the painting.


Well, now you've met all of my colorful friends. The next time you see one of my paintings, look closely, they are all in there working together to create a piece of art.

Jenne Farm Barn
5" x 7", oil on linen canvas, 2015
The painting below is currently for sale at auction. 
Click to view Auction  (auction includes detail and framed views)


The Jenne Farm Barn
The historic Jenne Farm is one of the original farmsteads on Whidbey Island, WA. The farm cluster consists of the original house and outbuildings and is surrounded by 140 acres of crops, forest, and scrub. Edward Jenne, an immigrant from Germany and a Coupeville, Washington resident, built the Jenne Farm cluster in 1908. It is said he built a sizable house, barn, summer kitchen, workshop, and granary with a barge-load of wood at a cost of $5,000. He grazed sheep, harvested the largest per-acre-yield of wheat of his time, and had majestic work horses. We have photos in the gathering house of the Jennes playing croquet in the backyard with long skirts and formal hats.      

The farm was bought from the Jennes by Robert Pratte, who died in 1999.  Though he left much of his property to The Nature Conservancy, he willed the Jenne Farm to an heir on the east coast.  The property was put up for sale and looked as if it would be chopped into development parcels, losing its historic size, form and character.

The current owners bought the farm in 2000 with the goal of preserving it as a working farm and historic site. In December, 2002, the Jenne Farm became a preserved farm in Ebey's Landing National Historic Reserve. Today, the farmhouse is available for vacation rental. For information on renting the Jenne Farm Gathering house visit jennefarm.homestead.com





Monday, August 17, 2015

The Great Poultry Rescue

Since my last post was pretty sad, I thought I'd relate a happier story that involves an animal rescue. In this case, the animal was a bird or more specifically a chicken. Those of you who don't live in a rural environment might not be familiar with the phenomenon of poultry dumping. Poultry dumping is the releasing of domestic chickens, most commonly roosters, to fend for themselves on some country lane. They will show up one day in your neighborhood, hang around crowing for a week or two because they have no home to go to and then the only evidence of their existence will be a pile of feathers because some raccoon or coyote had them for supper. You're probably wondering when this story is going to get happy. Just hang in there with me for a while more, I promise it will get better.

A while back, my sisters, Sue and Sally and their friend Sandy were up visiting for the weekend. Sally enjoys walking the dogs with me in the morning and we were out for our canine stroll in a nearby neighborhood when we spotted some loose chickens in the street in front of a house of an acquaintance of mine. One of the chickens, a speckled hen, had what appeared to be a large growth on her right foot. It was the size and color of a large baking potato. As you can imagine, it was not easy for her to get around with such a large mass on her leg. Talk about a ball and chain (without the chain)! Sally and I were pretty upset to see such a sight and as soon as we returned home, I phoned the gal who owned the house in front of which the chickens were roaming. She informed me that she no longer kept chickens and she didn't know where those particular birds came from and that was that.

Well, my sisters and I continued with our visit going off for the day, with my husband Paul as our chauffeur, to explore a nearby town. The vision of that hen with her affliction kept niggling at Sally and I so much so that we convinced Paul to take a detour on the way home to see if she and her companions had survived the day. We drove into the neighborhood and sure enough, there they were. Operation Chicken Rescue commenced. Paul parked and we quietly exited the van. The other chickens scattered, but the speckled hen, weighed down by her anchor was easily captured by me. We clambered back into the van with Paul driving, me in the passenger front seat holding a very nervous chicken and my sisters and Sandy in the back.

The short drive back to our house was relatively uneventful, except at the very end when we parked and the hen began to struggle, flap her wings and squawk in an alarming manner. I hung onto the distressed bird amid flying feathers, while the others opened the garage door and quickly set up a portable dog kennel we had in storage. Into the kennel the hen went, while we convened to access the situation. By this time, we realized that the mass was not an original part of the chicken and appeared to be made of dried mud. Perhaps we could gently chip away at it and eventually the rest of it would crumble and fall off. We decided that Paul would be the "doctor" in this operation and we would all be his assistants. We gathered the necessary tools, a towel to wrap the hen in so she couldn't flap her wings, a small screw driver, and a hammer. It was my job to calm the "patient" so we could carry out the procedure. So, with my sister and Sandy looking on, offering words of encouragement, I reached into the kennel and grabbed the hen and wrapped her body in the towel leaving only her head and the mass encased foot exposed. Paul took up the hammer, positioned the screwdriver near the edge of the mass and gave it a gentle tap. Nothing. He tapped again with more force, and again, nothing. It took a half an hour of banging (and I mean banging!) away using a chisel and larger hammer to begin to degrade that hunk of mud. We eventually did remove it all and the hen survived to tell the tale to her new coop mates. Although for the first few days, she looked like a plump, squat, speckled, flamingo as she held her leg aloft not being used to having it freed from that mud ball.

The question of what to name our new acquisition, came up almost immediately. Susan wanted to name her "Rocky" because of how hard and stone-like the mass had been. But she was overruled, by the rest of us. What do you call a chicken that had what looked like a large Idaho spud on her foot?

Tater.




The barn pictured in the painting below is a beautiful old structure located hidden amongst the trees in Ebey's Reserve in Coupeville WA.


Hidden Sheep Barn
7" x 5", oil on linen canvas, 2015


This painting is currently for sale at auction. 
Click to view Auction
(auction includes detail and framed views)