It's Landscape Month in Seattle Galleries

Thursday night I enjoyed a lovely evening at Seattle’s downtown Art Walk, and WOW--what an incredible month to see landscape paintings. Do set aside a weekend day for your own visual pleasure if you can.

 First stop: Kent Lovelace’s show “Occitania” at Lisa Harris Gallery. Kent, a printmaker in an earlier life, now uses his familiarity with images on metal plates to paint glowing landscapes on copper. From across the room they appear as faithful as photographs of the southern France he adores; step up close and they dissolve into deliberate strokes of paint that describe wizened olive trees and laden grapevines with irresistible flecks of copper gleaming through. New this time around: Kent ventures into watery pondscapes, with the dappled light hitting autumn trees, melting into dazzling reflections. My favorite of the show: Birch Pond II.  Minimalist palette of dense dark greens interrupted flickering pale whites and blues conveys stillness, depth and quiet.

Next stop: Davidson Galleries in Occidental Square to see Susan Bennerstrom’s latest body of work: a move back to landscape, but this time in oil paint rather than the pastels of her earlier works. There are still some of her signature interiors—maybe with a window onto the landscape beyond—but the destination of “Sojourn” is her ordered universe of botanic arches and stylized trees choreographed to graphic and mysterious effect with the help of Bennerstrom’s main character, light.

Save plenty of time for your final destination: A two-person show at Linda Hodges Gallery, where big, bold bravura contrasts with lyrical, poetic jewels. Kurt Solmssen returns with his iconic grand canvases of waterfront living on the sunny south sound. Colorful, confident, out-of-the-ballpark stuff. But it was the two fog pieces that took my breath away—50” x 70” painted out “in the thick of it” so to speak, putting us studio painters to shame. Still, it was the little gems at the other end of the gallery that grabbed my attention and held it long enough to enjoy an illuminating conversation with Portland artist Sally Cleveland. Her landscapes and cityscapes in oil on paper have a deft brushwork that somehow strikes the usually elusive balance between descriptive and painterly—enough detail to draw you in, but up close there is a loose confidence. Silvery gray skies set off deep greens, occasional blazes of orange, delicate winter trees. As I admired her paint handling, I couldn’t help but think of Norman Lundin, who, it turns out, happens to collect her work (and no, she didn’t study with him). Meeting Sally and being drawn into her work (and yes, you will want your specs for these if you’re of a certain age) was the surprise highlight of an evening that started with splendor and didn’t let up.

Next up: Must see the handiwork of Canadian Renato Mucillo at Howard Mandeville Gallery in Kirkland. Even though the show pretty much sold out on opening night a couple of weeks ago (no surprise there), the marshy sunsets painted with Flemish attention to detail are on display for our enjoyment through April 14^th.

Water | Vapor Show Statement

The main body of work within this show, the Fog Variations, explores that peaceful, hushed, almost mystical state that is the morning fog. Come October, I see its thick blanket spread out over Green Lake when I open the blinds, and it beckons. For a while the thick vapor obscures all. But as soon as the fog starts to shift and lift, I grab the camera and head down to the water. Though I know this lake as well as any acreage, the fog lends a compelling sense of mystery. The colors are muted, nothing more than a promise. Only what is closest—a floating dock, a bed of reeds—reveals itself. These poetic layers of known and as-yet unknown, of softness and focus, of light and atmosphere, have given me much to explore at the easel. 

Compositionally, fog has a wonderful way of simplifying, which I find deeply appealing. Too many pictorial elements clutter a painting, while “breathing spaces” as I like to call them, let me into the painting and allow me to focus on and revel in the most essential. Besides simplifying an image, fog plays with light and color, harmonizing and subduing the palette, adding to the sense of calm.  I have no allegiance to reality-based colors, and fog’s mysterious aura seems to encourage a bit of experimentation on this front. Can fog read as fog in warm, sepia tones? How subtle can a film of color be and still contribute when values run the gamut? The glazing method I use—thin, transparent layers—really comes into its own with the subtle hues of fog. 

Meanwhile, there’s the dramatic unfolding of light: each transcendent moment is a painting-in-waiting, a challenge issued. The early, diffuse period is lovely in its somber, soft tranquility. Slowly, bits of blue sky appear as the fog thins on top, while the blanket recedes across the lake, leaving wispy traces here and there. Then, when low sun burns through a patch of atmosphere, the light dazzles as it bounces off particles of moisture. Dark lacey branches come into sharp relief; water fowl paddle into view as they emerge from the vapor. The high-contrast clarity in the foreground is all the more striking against the backdrop: those strolling around the north end of the lake are still in a romantic interlude of fog.

I stay until the mists clear, then head home, inspired and grateful for a clear vision of the work ahead of me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Christine Gedye, October 2012

Sharpening up with EDGE



Centrum Offices at Fort Worden

Last month I was one of a group of fifteen artists selected to take part in Artist Trust's EDGE Program for Professional Development. The week-long seminar took place at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, WA, courtesy of the Centrum foundation. We benefitted from over 53 hours of presentations by dedicated, experienced arts professionals coaching us in everything from developing a business plan to deciphering contract and copyright law. Focusing on "the other side" of my art career so intensively will come to be, I think, a watershed week for me. It created a shift in how I perceive my career in a way that may only be matched by the day eight years ago this month when I decided to pursue art professionally.

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This Friday, October 7th, I will be presenting a slideshow of my work along with several other EDGE participants. The event is part of Seattle's Arts Crush month, and will take place at The Project Room, 1315 E. Pine, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. It's a rare opportunity to meet and learn first hand about Washington artists working in a wide range of media and styles. I hope you can stop in.

Coming Up: On Saturday morning, I will be returning to Centrum for a one-week painting residency, inspired by the fog, light, water and trees unique to Fort Worden. I look forward to sharing the results of that week with you here very soon.

Winning with the Palouse

I have two recent "wins" to report. First, thanks to the votes from so many fans in e-mail, as well as visitors to the Peterson-Cody Gallery in Santa Fe, I won the People's Choice Award for the Fresh Paint show (see previous blog post). Thank you for taking time to vote! I was thrilled to sell "Chase Road" shortly after the show opened. I had a great time in Santa Fe

Just last week my painting "Humps and Hollows" was honored with a first place prize at the Women Painters of Washington Spring Members Show. I was especially honored, as the juror for this show was Master Artist Juliette Aristedes, director of the Classical Atelier at Gage Academy, and author of two books: Classical Painting Atelier and Classical Drawing Atelier, both published by Watson-Guptil.

You will get to see many more paintings of the Palouse in my upcoming solo show at the Fountainhead Gallery on Queen Anne in Seattle during the month of May. Details forthcoming.

First Show in Santa Fe

Chase Road, 24" x 12"

 

Tomorrow I will be flying down to Santa Fe, New Mexico to attend the Fresh Paint exhibit opening on Friday, December 3rd at the Peterson-Cody Gallery in the Palace Arts District. The three paintings you see on this post are the ones that are hanging for the show. I am humbled to be included with six other artists, all highly regarded, well established, and very talented. The show represents the top selections in the Fresh Paint national competition, which drew over one hundred entries from all over North America, and was judged by the editors of American Art Collector magazine.

In the Clouds, 18" x 12"

Floating in Fog 18" x 18"

WPW Award from Juror Barbara Shaiman

Tonight I was thrilled to have my painting "Old Forge Evening" honored with the Graham Award at the Women Painters of Washington Fall Members show. The Juror was the esteemed Barbara Shaiman of the SAM Gallery (Seattle Art Museum Sales and Rental Gallery). The show will hang until October 29th in the WPW gallery at the Columbia Tower (details at the top right of the blog page).

The Palouse

The series I've been working on this summer was inspired by our first visit to Walla Walla, Washington, just over a year ago. I'd been taken with other artists' musings on this landscape (Gayle Bard's, in particular), and I knew I had to see it for myself.

Our friend Nancy Page, a WW native, suggested we (my husband David and I) take our cameras to Middle Waitsburg Road, the wheatfield-flanked back way to up-and-coming Waitsburg. We drove it first at sunset, stopping so frequently that we nearly missed our chance at dinner at the other end. (Travel tip: If you ever get to Waitsburg, go to jimgermanbar for cocktails and a light dinner, then cross the street to dessert at the Whoopemup Hollow Cafe--both established by Seattle veteran chefs.)

Back to the landscape: The geology of the Palouse is described in Wikipedia as being "peculiar and picturesque silt dunes formed during the ice ages."  Think of gently rolling sand dunes blanketed with golden wheat as far as the eye can see. Nothing short of sensuous. And then they go and call the landforms "humps and hollows." A bottle of Walla Walla wine, and wordplay is inevitable.

To get a bird's eye view, we drove to Steptoe Butte a couple of evenings later. Check this out:

So, I'm entranced. We made a second trip out to WWW later last summer, and three more since June of this year. We now know both Middle and Lower Waitsburg Roads quite well. I look forward to returning sometime in the fall, when the grapevines are turning, and again in winter, after the fields have been burned. A local tells me that's when the soil takes on a violet hue.

For someone who has always been so entranced by water, I was curious as to why I found this landscape so appealing. I got my answer in late June when I made a trip back to Minnesota ("land of 10,000 lakes") and ventured from my home town of Minneapolis to the rural southeastern part of the state, where my mother grew up and where I visited throughout my childhood. It's a wave-like landscape lined with quiet country roads, old barns, silos, and old white farmhouses like the one my mother was raised in. While the glaciers didn't carve curves quite as sinuous as in the Palouse, the Minnesota cornfields roll in their own reserved way.

In our five trips to WW, hundreds of photos have been captured, which will be narrowed down to a dozen (maybe fewer) to immortalize in paint. In a future post, I'll talk about how and more importantly WHY I've chosen the handful of images I have. To see the paintings inspired by the landscape, go to my Preview section. I anticipate up to a half-dozen more. All will be featured in my next solo show at Seattle's Fountainhead Gallery in May, 2011. The first of the series, Palouse Sky, will be hanging in the Summer Group Show a the same gallery, opening Saturday, August 7. Reception from 5 to 7--stop in and have a look!