by Diane: a visit to Henri Rouseau's fanciful flight from Paris in Paris

My two adult granddaughters were graciously accommodating to an addition not on our list of the things we wished to see during our four days in Paris.  I wanted to see where Rousseau found what he needed to see to paint his jungle inspired painting.  One of my recent paintings is derived from Rousseau's  THE DREAM.
        Le Jardin des Serres d'Auteuils ( The garden of green houses ) is  a distance from the usual tourist attractions.

 On a Saturday the park attracts Parisians. We saw some families picnic on blankets and playing on the lawn, some were sitting on the benches reading. I was not surprised to see a few art students getting a semi-private art lessons.

 The art instructor provided a variety of materials. In the morning they used colored pencil. When we left at about 1:00 PM the instructor was demonstrating colored felt pens. He agreed to me taking a quick look but I didn't feel he was open to conversation as he was intense and highly engaged with his two student.  The instructor also had raw canvas and paints presumably for the afternoon.

 

 

 Inside one of the glass enclosed arboretums I saw two women with their children having a jungle themed lunch imagining that they were in the tropics.

The garden lends itself to surreal day dreaming now as it was for Rousseau who imagined into his painting a nude women on a couch in Paris pretending she is a mermaid in the jungle.

 

photo copied from the NewYork City MOMA web site

Different plants but same dreamy atmosphere was a delightfully relaxing change for all three of us.  

 

Diane Widler Wenzel: Changes to oil painting started with linear marks

More balanced!  More depth! Feels much improved after reviewing my collection of on location gestural sketches described in yesterday's post.

To paint or not to paint from a photograph?

During the hot days this summer my husband and I like to make road trips to the Oregon Coast.  When we make a stop, a favorite walk of ours is the Salishan Nature Trail. The daisys are in the parking lot of the Salishan Market Place and Spa.  The trail head almost hidden is in back of the market between the golf course and Siletz bay.



A great view for a picture is always had from the nature trail on a man made dike upon which the trail heads towards Gleneden Beach.  Costal pines frame the shallow bay. Many birds are often sighted. Very nice for painting, not. Many dog owners from the area walk their dog here and the trail is narrow and I do not want to remain on the trail when golfers are unable to control their balls.

The groomed golf course lawn is like a canvas for interesting shaped shadows. Even though the photos are interesting they do not compare with what I could imagine in paint. The darks in my digital photographs are flat dark. In the real world the dark areas contain  greater variety of color hues and relatively light areas.
I could just use the photos to remind me of the place and go home and paint from the photo and memory. I have done that but the number of possible pictures I see and photograph are a problem for me because I go around happily imaging paintings everywhere I look and I have only a few hours to paint and a few surfaces ready for paint.
As incomplete are my photos in comparison to what I might paint, I am happy to photograph what interests me as a fun thing to do as a completely different thing than my usual painting process.


On the dunes of Salishan Ocean Beach I photographed more pictures that excited me. Maybe my peaked interest in lines recently caused me to select subjects that were strongly linear.





The photos of Salishan Gleneden Beach are finished and I have no desire to copy them in paint especially since on this walk I sketched. For awhile I found a log in the shade where I could sit and sketch. This sketch, if I should paint this from memory, contains a useful selection of color values from dark to light, textural patterns, and an interpretattion of movement that is all over the picture. It is an unfinished sketch and could be a guide to important pictorial considerations that  would not show up in a photograph because of either not enough definition in the dark areas or if the darks are visible the light areas would be too light.

 Photos  do not hold

enough of  what I care about.  I like experiencing the place and my own immediate emotional reaction.  I like to feel the energy of the place flow through my body as I draw.

 

A dream painting commission

A 24" x 48" oil painting for a daughter and son-in-law who know I like to paint large

A daughter of mine wanted a painting I did from Church Lake in Washington State. It sold 17 years ago.  A few weeks ago the owner brought it back for painting over repairs to a tear mended by a conservator.




Looking at the results surrounded by my other paintings, I wanted to do more like the daisies. It was a memory painting of Church Lake but I tipped the background to make the distances closer and more dominate as though the painting was in a canyon.








 I have done one other landscape painting in which the foreground drops into a hole in the middle ground.
I am happy to paint a commission for my daughter especially since I already wanted to do the subject. But she wanted it larger and a longer panoramic view.








I found a photograph taken from low on the ground which makes the snow peaks appear higher and gradually creating a hole in the middle ground. The picture was taken on the Coffin Butte Trail near Iron Mountain in Oregon.  Photographs are one thing my paintings another form of expression.


I like challenges and do not want to repeat a past painting. The requested a 24" x 48" size made it more difficult to keep the juicy oil effect all over the canvas than the smaller one my daughter liked. The representation of the photo was not my goal making it more difficult to know when the painting is done.














 I wanted the energy feeling as though I was painting "a la prima" on location. So I didn't look at the photo as I began laying in thick oils to the upper left corner then working all over. So I needed to keep up the rhythm of my first "all over the canvas paints. The painting could have been done the first day except the paint wasn't all thick and juicy all over. So the next day I did a sketch trying to firm up in mind the placement of visually recognizable flowers, driftwood, rock and mountains then just as it was almost complete I sketched again to warm up before I began for the two hours it took to finish the painting.  Maybe this painting will stand up to the test of looking at it for a few months before it is hung in my daughter's and son-in-law's home.