by Diane Widler Wenzel: Painting color and texture after cataract surgery

Every Spring the first time painting outdoors after becoming accustomed to dimmer lighting of winter, I need to be mindful that the brighter outdoor lighting makes my paint colors appear lighter outdoors. Then looking at them indoors the colors are much too dark. Since the colors appear lighter, I paint too dark. Soon I become accustomed to painting in outdoor lighting.

Having cataracts removed is like painting every Spring. I am adjusting happily.

I feel grateful for seeing a cleaner brighter view of earlier color in my paintings.

Before

I, also, am aware without cataracts I am seeing like the Spring time outdoor painting phenomenon - I am apt to paint darker and dirtier.  Being aware I am sure I will adjust and be better off seeing truer color.  How fun to see how they relate to one another.
 

After

After surgery for a right eye focal point at three feet at arms length for best seeing my paintings, a big surprise was seeing clearly the textures of paint I had missed and did not know I was missing.



Detail from a textural painting completed 2016

Still wondering how my left eye focus at six feet will integrate with the right eye focus at three. Second surgery was yesterday. Such a big experiment!
 

Paintings that get a little remodeling

From time to time I like to go through my old work especially when I need to consolidate to make room for new work.

 I cropped the late evening coastal painting started at Yachats about ten years ago and it was exhibited at the Albany Public Library in 2014. Now it looked like it would be stronger with an additional cool gray wash over the sky to simplify the value composition to further pop the reflective white foam.








Rocky Creek Wayside was painted six years ago. Like the  evening Yachats painting the foreground dark value rocks were many values and is now stronger after washes reduced the contrast from very dark to light. The composition is stronger width the foreground rocks ranging in value from very dark to medium dark gradually transitioning to lighter rocks in front.





The canyon just above the confluence of the Salmon River into the Snake River painted in the mid 1990's. Since then I have added magenta and opera paint. The opera made the thalo blue green shade in the sky strident. A wash of alizarin crimson  achieved more harmony.






 In 2007 Arizona  watercolor was started and later the black ink drawing was added in 2013.  This time additional white acrylic ink pened in with the goal of creating more flow of movement.


Oceanside, California 1998 finished several times. The white acrylic applied with a brush brought the jewel like sparkle back while adding flow.  Also the green watercolor mixed some with the white.

Overworking these paintings was avoided by storing them out of sight for years.  Even storing them for a month is a big help. Then when looking with fresh eyes,  I see more easily compositional considerations of the whole painting was the goal of the changes. I could verbalize the reason behind the changes.

When is a painting finished?

A painting is never complete. I never set aside a painting  until I can look at it for a long time without it telling me it needs changes.  I never stop painting until it resonates emotionally with the mood of the beholder. Also for story illustrative paintings, they are never satisfying me until they communicate to others.

A neighbor brought back a painting I had originally finished eleven years ago and I had given the neighbors as a wedding gift about ten years ago.  It had darkened hills as though a rain storm was coming. The image of it on their wedding announcement had lighter hills. Apparently I had darkened them to make the yellows stand out  as happy perky survivors. After all this time I could see my last minute changes gave the painting an overall feeling of foreboding.

This is how the painting looks after taking a few minutes to paint over the the mountains and green up the valley. Now the neighbor says the painting is after the rain instead of before the rain.

 

 

The original of the Greenwell beach cabin that I thought was finished in Hawaii seemed incomplete when I looked at it hanging at home.

 

With white lines suggesting back lighting, I popped out the plumeria tree, added definition to child gate on porch,  added some fallen flowers.

The white on the plumeria's branches did not help so I removed most of the white lining and now it is like the original with very small changes.

 

 

 

Of all the on location paintings I did in Hawaii in February the wedding painting was by far the most painted over and over. I had no fear of overworking it. At first I had an uneasy feeling about the wedding but as time went by my feeling was for weddings in general so the painting took on the dreamy atmosphere of hope.

When the  wedding painting was almost complete, but I was not sure, I shared it with the Tuesday Critic Group at the Old World Delhi  in Corvallis.

 I like to hear critics of my new story paintings to make sure people see my story. I received good feed back. The log and sand was ambiguous. The painting had a hole in back of the log - a difficult problem for painters.  To my fellow artists the log looks like ground.  So at home I made the sand lighter to define where the log ended.

 

Before critic

After

 

 Another painting hanging up on trial is of fan coral. I thought it was finished in January, but it is still in question hanging up in our kitchen/ dining area. Living with it for awhile, I may decide but another way to decide is to put it in a closet for a few months until I can look with a fresh critical eye.
 

 This is how the painting looks now.

This painting was started years ago of an entirely different subject.  North Albany Autumn has become a poetic interpretation of Belize fan coral and fish.

 

My belief is never be afraid to overwork a painting. Working on an exercise is nonsense and an easy excuse for abandoning the work that could transform itself many times.  Paintings are not suppose to be perfect. Paintings do not need to be finished; they are part of an ongoing learning experience.

My Painting, and Photograph compared with Chinese watercolor painting

 

Although I didn't start this painting thinking it would be like a Chinese watercolor, others at the West Hawaii Painters thought it was.  Like a Chinese painting the light area ties the painting together working with very linear brush strokes. The color is subdued with the linear elements giving the painting strength.  When determining if it was finished, I referred to examples in  the book, CHINESE WATERCOLORS by Joseff Heizlar. I was reminded of what I knew about the Chinese organization of distances.

February 22, 2018 at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau  National Park

Kekaha State Park, February 2018
 Like Chinese paintings which combine three points of view, this panoramic picture was made by  moving the camera  first by looking down in the foreground, then across the middle ground, and finally up and farther away in the background.
The Chinese watercolor,"Pines on a cliff'' pictured above  has similar compositional elements.





Painting a wedding at Waiailea Beach in Hapuna Park, Big Island Hawaii

At the West Hawaii Plein Air Painters event, 9:30 AM, Friday, February 3, Cindy had been painting for almost two hours. Cindy is not in the painting just on my left on the other side of the log from me.  I was also a little early and just starting this painting and Richard had just arrived and was set up to paint. Then the mother of the groom appeared. She wanted us to all move because her son was getting married there in half an hour.

Richard who facilitates the group said there are no reservations on the site and we would not move. 

To make the lady happier, I offered to paint the wedding and give the painting to her. She said she had photographers and never came to look at my painting luckily because it was in a very dull state after three hours. I have put in many hours on it since.

If she changes her mind and finds me, and demonstrates real appreciation, the wedding painting would still be a gift to her.

The 12 x 16 inch painting is over an acrylic painting on canvas that I covered with absorbent ground that accepts watercolor and mixed media. Then I sprayed it with gloss UVprotective Krylon before making changes with acrylics. With the Krylon protection I could remove the acrylic and preserve the under-painting.

The old recycled surface was intended as a warm up painting before the real effort of the day. When the wedding happened, I decided that the iron wood trees made an excellent symbolic frame for the ceremony of joining of two family trees of life.

 My most memorable paintings outdoors are when I am moved by what happens while I am painting. Most paintings include more than one period of time. This painting depicts the father walking the bride and then he was consoling the sister. The bride was painted twice.

The wedding painting is not finished yet. I am working on the expressiveness of the gestures and relationships between the members of the wedding party and how the eye is directed to the wedding.

One collage led me to doing another

My abstract memory painting goal was to focus on organic patterns in movement of the algae and coral. Paper I made in a slurry has the random dispersion I remember from my snorkeling experience in Turneffe Flats.

Tropical waters inspired abstracts in process

Coral reef colors first, then water movement followed by pattern and texture are the inspiring memories I brought home and were foremost in my mind.  As I started to paint, I took into account the materials I had to express my delight.  Watercolor was my painting medium of choice to express the beauty of light in the pristine waters of the reef that I saw snorkeling at Turneffe Flats Atoll.

First came the juicy somewhat rectangular colors. Then I added pencil and crayon drawings of repetitive patterns. During this process I marveled at the juxtaposition of randomness and structured organized life in the reef. Painting extended the joys of the vacation.

I saw two compositions  as my painting /collage evolved. So I turned the board and cut it in half.  I wasted only a small piece of board so my pictures would fit in the frame.  The lavender fan being a collage piece could be moved around until I found a sweet spot.



Collage of my handmade papers and purchased paper
 over watercolor

Watercolor, mixed media and collage

I love underwater photographs of the reef but I also like the emotional involvement of abstracting from my memories because these paintings express my internal reality.  These collages remind me of small details I focused on while snorkeling. Also the feeling of water movement gently swaying me this way and that.  Some tall sponges and corals reminded me of  human anatomy like our fingers. In previous landscapes I found the shapes of the hand and fingers like in the basalt columns of Coyote Rock, on the Siletz River in Oregon.



Beginning to paint after being away

When ever I am away, it is hard to get back into painting again. Even though I did an accordion book using half pan watercolors at Turneffe Flats, these small 16 pages that I previously posted left me without a flow.  When I got home I declared the book finished.  I didn't get back to painting until about 10 days later.
So to start, I decided to get out my tube watercolor paints and see what my colors would do in reminding me of the colors at Turneffe Flats. The white of the paper make watercolors so sparkling like the colors at Turneffe Atoll.