Oil Painting

Moving to California in 1985 marked the beginning of my serious pursuit of becoming an artist. A real turning point came when I met David Leffel OPAM. I had initially met him in New York City years earlier at the Art Students League, but when we met again in California at a workshop in Ojai, I connected with him right away. I have since painted and taken many workshops with him over the last twenty-five years. He has not only shaped the way I paint and understand painting, but he has also influenced the way in which I relate to my students. Teaching the concept of Abstract Realism (where paint represents something recognizable and yet is beautiful as paint itself) is a concept that David and Sherrie McGraw OPAM coined. Reaching students on their level and teaching them to be more sensitive has been a wonderful endeavor and it has helped expand my own skills as a painter and a teacher as well. 

The most important requirement in learning to be an artist is the desire to paint. The best way to get started is have a collection of resources and references, like photos, sketches and other artists’ work that you admire. This can be inspirational when looking for ideas to paint. Keep a sketchbook for ideas about future paintings where you can capture something that inspires you and use it as reference once you are back in your studio. A sketchbook is a very important tool that trains your artistic skills and serves as a reference for painting ideas.

Paint a subject that inspires you. I love painting landscape, flowers and still life objects. I am most inspired when I‘m traveling in nature and when exploring antique shops. It’s really not about the subject matter as such, but rather it’s about the light falling on objects and the shapes of light and shadow and the abstract idea that the subject matter suggests. Painting is an opportunity for you to be yourself using paint and color to express feelings and passion. Find your fun and gratification in the journey, not the destination.

I think a lot of people are frightened by doing something differently. Your local teacher may be teaching you in a particular way that makes you feel awkward. Perhaps it is the subject matter. I suggest that you try some other subject matter or other technique until you find what resonates with you. When I teach, I share how painting works. Rather than teaching a technique or formulas, I teach how painting works. Once you understand this, you will be able to paint your ideas and paint what inspires you. When you learn about color, edges, composition, paint quality, and making form, you are equipped to paint your ideas as this knowledge is what goes into making a good painting. Whether you want to paint dogs, horses, landscape, people, interiors or flowers – whatever it is that you envision in your mind that you would love to paint, learning the principles behind painting will give you the ability to do just that.

Don’t worry about learning technique. Early on David said a powerful thing to me: “Paint the visual idea and technique will catch up to express it.” This made immediate sense and was life-changing in its simplicity. To this day, his philosophy guides me when teaching others. Paint the idea—the beauty that you see in your subject—then you’ll find a way to express it. 

“Don’t learn to paint; paint to learn.” David A Leffel OPAM

I must quote him here for he is the mentor that allowed me to follow my dream of becoming an artist. His approach to painting was always so simple, clear and beautiful. These are the concepts that I pass on to my students.

Keep it simple. Learning to paint is learning to see simply, which is a harder lesson than it seems, and one that somehow eludes students the most. What you put in your painting is as important as what you leave out. 

Make brushstrokes. Their speed and direction will describe the textural quality of what you are painting and is the lifeblood of the painting. Economy of brushstrokes is another aspect of painting I try to teach my students.

There are just a few things you need to learn. Learning to become an artist takes patience, perseverance and practice, but if you love it enough, you’ll be able to achieve it. Remember, the only tools available to the artist are color, value, edges and paint quality. These are the fundamental elements used to create a painting. 

See abstractly. It’s necessary to see beyond assumptions to develop visual clarity. Try to keep the subject as abstract as possible for as long as possible, and perhaps for you too, painting may become—as it has for me—an essential part of your being…as natural as breathing. 

I grew up in Crested Butte, a very small town in Western Colorado. During my childhood, the local coal mines were closing and the world-class ski resort that exists today had not yet been established. Only around 100 people called the town home.

I went to a one-room schoolhouse that at times did not have enough kids to fill all the grades. The lack of people meant I had a lot of time by myself, and I would typically spend it drawing or sketching. My mother, who always encouraged my art, gave me a beginner set of oil paints when I was 14 or so. This astonished me because we had very little money. I knew the gift was a special treasure and treated it that way.

After graduating from high school, I ended up at the University of Colorado at Boulder on an academic scholarship. The university was so large that the student population alone was 200 times the size of my hometown. Being naturally shy to begin with, I felt lost and overwhelmed. I found solace in the quiet art building, where I took fine art classes, pottery and painting. I’d spend hours there every day happily working alone on my art.

There was no doubt: painting was my passion. But after just one year of college, I knew I’d never be able to make a living at it—especially at first. I was too shy to waitress and didn’t want to continue cleaning houses, which I’d been doing as a student. Frustrated, I talked to a beloved painting teacher about what I could possibly do to earn a living. That’s when I learned about graphic design. Soon, I was enrolled at the Colorado Institute of Art studying design and layout. (I decided against illustration because I was too shy to hustle my work.) 3 years later, I graduated and got my wish—at least the wish I thought I wanted—of a real job with a salary.

As time progressed, I ended up running my own successful design firm with a few employees. I also got married and had a family. At one point, when my son was about nine years old my passion for painting resurfaced and I took a painting class from a local classical art school. I loved it. Standing behind the easel felt like coming home.

At the school, I began a painting of a boy petting a donkey using the grisaille method. But with the demands of work and family, I never finished the painting. Life went on and soon my son was graduating from college. During this period my father passed away and my mother, who always championed my art, became ill. One of the last things she did was make me promise I’d finish the painting I had started at the classical school. I told her I would.

More time passed and I grew tired of making excuses as to why I couldn’t paint. I downsized my business to free up some time and focused solely on freelance design work. Maybe now, I thought, I would finally have the time to focus on painting. My one goal was to fulfill my mom’s dying request.

Unfortunately, it had been so long since I had taken the classical class—probably 30 years by this point—that I no longer had any idea how to paint. I began taking weekly oil classes with Jake Gaedtke, but my freelance work still consumed too much of my time. I’d miss class after class due to work obligations and after a while decided paying for the class was foolish. So, I stopped attending. My desire to paint, however, didn’t cease. If anything, it grew stronger.

Finally, five years ago at age 58, I said, “Enough is enough! It’s time to make painting a priority!” I enrolled in classes with Rey Ford, a Colorado-based oil painter, and began in earnest. This time I was not going to give up.

Because I continued to work, still life painting suited me. I could set up a still life in the evenings and paint. I’d work from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on my freelance business. Then at 4:30, I’d switch my focus to painting. After dinner, I’d paint many evenings until midnight—or later. The time spent painting flew by.

The energy I got from painting fueled itself. I began taking workshops and classes with other teachers, and slowly got the confidence to start showing my work. About three years ago, after two years of painting nearly every night, I exhibited my work in a local show. There, I sold my first small piece, titled “Blue Citrus Wash.” I was recovering from minor surgery so I couldn’t attend, but my husband was at the show and called to give me the good news.

I was ecstatic. That small sale made me believe that maybe I really could do this painting thing. The sale gave me hope. It made me believe all the time spent painting—and maybe even all the years spent waiting—had been worth it. I was ready now. Although I had frequently left painting behind, clearly, it had never left me. It was simply waiting until I was ready.

Not long after that show, the owner of Rembrandt Yard, a gallery in Boulder, Colorado, where I live, visited my home studio during an Open Studios weekend. She liked my work and began exhibiting it at her gallery. During my first show, I was too shy to talk to potential customers. (Apparently, shyness never left me behind either.) I stood huddled by my paintings and let my husband do the talking. My work has now been in three shows at that gallery, and I’ve probably exhibited at 10 other art shows since then. And yes, I am starting to talk to customers. A bit.

Last year, I was in Boston and—as I always do when in major cities—I visited the fine art museum. Walking in, I saw Dance at Bougival by Pierre-August Renoir. I stood there staring at the magnificent piece with tears streaming down my face. You see, my mother had a print of the painting hanging in our house when I was growing up, and after she passed I brought it home as inspiration. I took it as yet another sign that I should jump full-time into art.

I made the leap to rent a real studio dedicated to art, instead of working from a corner in my home office. I also cut back significantly on my graphic design business and now I only paint till 9:30 or so in the evening—but painting still happily consumes about 50 hours a week.

Now, my focus is on finishing the child-and-donkey painting I promised my mom all those years ago. I haven’t painted humans or animals since then, so I’m studying figure drawing (mostly through videos thanks to Covid) and have plans for figure painting. I’m hoping that soon I will have the guts to finish what I started.

Now that I think about it, I guess that’s what this whole journey has been about: having the guts. Having the guts to pursue the passion, to take the risks, to say yes to what feels right, to say no to what no longer fits, and to tell myself it’s never too late.

Because it’s not. I’ve been reading about artists working into their nineties and know, thanks to the passion, love and energy that has been rekindled in me, that I have a few good years ahead of me.

Which is a good thing. Because I have this painting I need to complete…

I’m relatively new as a studio and plein air painter, but I have over 40 years experience as a graphic designer and illustrator. I was a graphic designer for five years before attending the Illustrators Workshop in 1979. It was there I made the decision to become an illustrator. During the next 40 years my clients included Fortune 500 corporations, major magazines and newspapers, several international clients and over 30 children’s books for prominent publishers.

Growing up in Oklahoma I have an appreciation of Native American culture and the outdoors. My grandfather, a house painter, was also an artist. Using house paint as his medium he painted landscapes. I attended the University of Tulsa on a golf scholarship, majored in graphic design and earned a BFA.

Although I was an art major, I am largely self-taught. After talking with others who were art students in the late 60’s to the mid 70’s, we realized we were given the same kind of instruction; “Paint how you feel!” I’ve collected quite a few books over the years to make up for the lack of formal instruction. There are a couple of books I think every realist painter should have in their collection. ​Color and Light A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney ​and ​Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis.

In 2018, I retired from illustration to become a full time painter. After 38 years painting with acrylics, it took about a year to familiarize myself with oils. My biggest influences have been Howard Pyle and primarily N.C. Wyeth. I’ve studied Pyle’s theories on composition and values and how Wyeth applied those theories to his work. I realized my weakness as a landscape painter, so one of the first things I did was to attend a plein air workshop with Bill Cramer at the Grand Canyon. I’d studied landscape painters for a while and I liked what I saw in Bill’s work. His work with values was similar to what I had been doing for years in my illustrations.

I made the mistake that most beginning landscapes painters make, especially at Grand Canyon. I tried to include everything I saw in a small painting. I’d always created simple compositions for my illustration work, but painting outdoors for the first time, and at the Grand Canyon, was overwhelming. My head was spinning. Bill told me I needed to choose a specific subject to paint. By keeping the composition simple, I ended up with a decent painting by the end of the workshop.

In late 2019, my work began to improve. In 2020 I was honored to have one of my​ paintings, ​FadeOut,​ accepted into the OPA’s 29​ National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils.

Some background on how this painting came to be. My wife’s grandparents had a farm in south central Oklahoma. We go up there quite often to relax and get away. I paint and fish while my wife writes and works in the yard. We go on long walks around the property. In July 2019, we walked to the back of the property to one of the ponds. I had my camera with me and was taking some shots of the pond and the lily pads and suddenly there was the perfect shot of the setting sun peeking through the trees. I got about 5 quick shots before the light was gone. I happened to be at the right place, at the right time and after looking at the camera screen, I knew I had to paint the scene.

To make the painting work I needed to be aware of the light, values and especially the color temperatures. There are multiple areas in the image where warm colors are touching cool ones. I wanted to handle this with almost no blending.

Trees blocked the direct sunlight from the lily pads and formed a large abstract shape on top of the water. Their green color had warm and cool areas. I kept my paint thin to allow the warm under painting to be visible in the warm areas and a slightly thicker blue-green mixture in the cool areas. I simplified the background undergrowth so the focus remains on the lily pads and the setting sun.

I made plans to travel and do more plein air painting this year, but like most everyone, my plans changed. Instead of thinking about what could have been, I’ve been experimenting. Going solvent free appealed to me and now I use Daniel Smith Water-Soluble Oils and a limited palette, seven or eight colors plus white. I continue to paint a variety of subjects, probably left over from my illustrator days. Sometimes they work and sometimes I wipe it off and start again. That’s part of the fun. I’m always learning.

Corot – The Painter in Us All –

Reflections on the Master of Land and Body – By Brian Keeler

I managed to make it to the show of the work of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC just before it ended in December of 2018. I drove down between the holidays at the end of December because I felt it very important to see this small collection called “Corot Women” as it presented a fine grouping of his figure painting. But also, because, I have seen the other two major shows of the French Master’s work here in America. The first Corot exhibit, “In the Light of Italy” at the NGA in 1996 was an eye opener, as it served as an introduction to plein air painting in Italy and to Corot and his followers. Then, right on the heals of this show, came the comprehensive exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York at the end of 1996.

Corot was not initially a favored painter of mine, an acquired taste in other words, whose work came to be appreciated rather gradually. In the show catalog for the NGA show of women, one critic of the 19th century found Corot’s figurative painting and portraits to be lacking in cleanliness. The observer, Alfred Delvau was referring to the overuse of brown and went so far as to regard them as exhibiting a certain scurviness, which he thought most unpleasant to behold. We wonder what Delvaus’ model for clean color would be, perhaps Bougerau, Ingres, Gerome or the new impressionist. Well Corot certainly has had his detractors over the years. And I can relate to Delvau’s opinion somewhat, as I too, early on found much of his work to be lacking in verve, chroma and being perhaps too pedestrian and unimaginative.

I have since come around to be a fan for many reasons. Although, when people ask me about my influences, I often mention Corot, but with a proviso- that I admire and follow his motifs, abstraction, design, concepts and much more but- not so much his style, per se. This show at the NGA presented in three modest size rooms is an appreciable collection of portrayals of women that one could absorb nicely in a few hours or easily much less. While perusing the show, we reveled in these umber tones, monochromatic studies, and of course his silvery landscapes incorporated into the compositions. The costumes of the models, often peasants in agrarian settings, and Corot’s predilection for creating archetypes while portraying individuals was absorbed too. The idea of using the model as a point of departure to create enduring and timeless personages is part of appeal here. A passage from the catalog is apropos; “Corot’s relationship with the model, seemingly as essential trigger of his inspiration, was nonetheless ambiguous. From the 1850’s on, the notion of the model who “posed” so as to be “transposed” onto the canvas by the painter would be one of the founding ideas of modernity.” We can also see his penchant for pushing the contrast and using those dark browns in the shadows of the figures and in the facial structure, as with eye sockets and cast shadows and form shadows in general.

This NGA show was drawing me to it also because of its adding legitimacy to figure painting and painting the nude. I reveled in the official attention and scholarly ink being spilled on portrayal of the human form through this show. Corot’s figure work is supposed to comprise only about ten percent of his work, with his landscapes taking up the bulk of his ouvre.

As an artist, I am thinking of the process and interaction of model and painter. When I see these models depicted in nature I marvel at how they are incorporated into the settings. But I wonder if many were in fact done in the studio or perhaps a hybrid process. Either way these Corot nudes show a well-conceived blending of the genres of landscape and nude. There is mention of this fusing of genres in the essays for the catalog. An excerpt from Sebastien Allard’s essay is worth quoting here. “The reader in the background creates a sense of depth. Attenuating the regularity of the parallel trunks and forestalling any effect of a nude against a painted backdrop. With this composition, one of the most accomplished he ever executed, Corot attained a level of equilibrium and perfection that is a high point in the centuries-old quest to fuse the figure in its surrounding space.”

We can see why Monet revered Corot and how Monet’s nudes in dappled sunlight show a debt to the older Frenchman. I refer to Corot as a proto-impressionist, as his work anticipated the airy attention to the light of Monet. So its great to have these large figurative allegories available in the show to see how he worked these plein air studies into major works. For example, the Diana and Acteon canvas is one, and just down the museum hall in another room is a large landscape in the permanent collection of the NGA of a stream in Fontainbleau with a woman reclining while reading. It is truly a lovely piece (shown below) with the beautifully rendered trees and the woman comprising only a small portion of the canvas, to suggest the relative scale of nature to the human element. The depth and spatial relationships of the work should be appreciated too. And that glowing warm light, a palpable feeling for a French summer is experienced through this painting. Nicely overlapping major forms, like the masses of tree foliage lead us back into the atmospheric sfumato of the distance.

These women are lovely evocations of the mundane and the archetypal as he often makes allusions to classical mythology. The mundane aspect comes in to play in these everyday representations of the studio. Variations on a woman at an easel with a mandolin offer a very matter of fact portrayal of the artist’s studio. Done without sentimentality or embellishment they show matter of fact records done without any exaggerated color. In other words, they employ his characteristic limited palette of umbers. But they do however offer an allusion of sorts to suggest the nature of music and painting and the relationships and corollaries between the two.

Visiting the actual paintings in the museum we can love the lush paint quality in many of these figures, clothed or nude, for his brushwork and tactile nature of the paint does draw our attention – as we are enticed to look at paint for its own sake. This is to say, that the thick impasto passages or these thin washes in backgrounds can be appreciated for the technique and beauty of paint regardless of the subject depicted. For example his modeling on the nudes can be observed to be comprised of subtle brushstrokes that are left to be unblended. I frequently take the time to sketch while I am visiting museums as it allows time to take in so much more than a cursory pass through will afford.

I have made Corot’s plein air painting in Italy a source for my own motifs for many years. In the catalog for the Met show there are maps included that showed where these landscape subjects were located. So, over the years, I’ve managed to paint at the same locations as Corot used for quite a few of his canvases in the early nineteenth century. Corot’s painting of the Tiber Island in Rome titled the “Island of San Bartolomeo” is one of those exquisite little masterworks that shows a simplified geometric design and light, yet is an honest record of the scene. I have painted this view as well, although the exact same vantage that Corot used is no longer available. Still this bridge, Ponte Fabricio dating from 63 BC and the medieval buildings on the island have changed little. Therefore they offer a timeless sort of motif.

Corot’s little brushy studies of the Roman Campania and scenes in Rome, like oil sketches of the Roman Forum and other buildings have long appealed to me, and many others. The honesty and directness of the work is part of the appeal and the unadorned impressions of fleeting light are part of the ingredients that allure us. There is a little study in the Frick Museum in New York of the Arch of Constantine in Rome that appears so simple and brushy, yet exhibits a sophisticated design that betrays its apparent slapdash nature.

Another Corot Motif that I sought out after hearing from Jack Beal, the late American painter who I was taking a workshop with, told an animated account of his visiting the bridge, Ponte Augusto that Corot had painted also. Beal, while visiting the site in Italy, became livid at the incursion of factories in this upper Tiber valley over the centuries and his wrath coincided with an earthquake in this Umbrian locale. There are two paintings by Corot of this subject that have become rather iconic and emblematic to painters. Their significance is in the fact that there is a small on-site plein air of the subject and large studio canvas. They show the importance and relevance of plein air studies to his ambitious allegories.

I like Corot’s work too in part because he is not exactly a household name, although for artists and historians his work cannot be overstated in terms of significance. For example, in the NY Times review of the Met show in 1996 there is a quote form Monet included. Monet said, “There is only one master here: Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing.” So we get the exalted nature that Corot was regarded with to the Impressionists and many others. In the accompanying text (wall labels) and catalog essays there is much credit given to Corot in influencing modernist or premodern painters like Cezanne, Braque, Picasso and Manet. We can especially see the influence of Corot on modern figure painters like 20th century artist, Balthus. Corot’s influence is also obvious in the umber toned still lifes of Braque and in the expressions and deep modeling and even the eyes of Picasso’s female portraits.

We can see Corot admiring his predecessors, as we are in turn, being inspired by him. For example we are directed to see how some of the poses the women assume in his paintings were derived from artists like, Titian, Ingres and Leonardo.

When I visit museums and shows like these it is always fun to find avenues of the relation and relevance. Painting the figure and portrait has been a part of my career since art school but also like Corot, a lesser-known aspect of my work. His career of over fifty years allowed him to explore these themes while growing and expanding, yet maintaining a vision and pursuit of his aesthetic. So seeing an exalted artist like Corot interpret myth, landscape, the nude and genre scenes offers a sort of validation and inspiration at the same time. He is involved in the same challenges and issues that all representational painters grapple with.