Front Row Seat

"Front Row Seat"

Oil

30" x 36"

Here's my newest creation!  With this painting you have a front row seat to the action.  The model in this is a cowgirl in northeast Colorado who loves horses, is a professional barrel racer, and works from the back of a horse.  She truly has a front row seat to the action....and that includes all kinds as working with livestock brings lots of variety...at times dangerous and at times humorous.  She has a zest for life and this is what I wanted to portray.

Wrestling and Art

 

(Sketch of my son Elijah in the black hat and his friend Kelton)       

     Watching steer wrestling or similar activities to get an unwilling animal to cooperate with human intentions can be humorous.  But for the individual involved, frustration and lots of struggle can go into accomplishing the successful end result.  

     I find similar correlations from steer wrestling to the making of art.  How does that break down?  Well, at first, excitement to begin a new piece drives the selection of composition, size, preparation of panel board with gesso, painting a neutral color wash over the whole painting, and then laying in the sketch.  Next comes the first strokes of color here and there around the composition.  Things are still going great!  But......then you start to get a sense that the colors aren't working together well. You are not sure exactly what to change.  So you muck around in the paints trying to figure out just what color will correct the balance.  You resort to your color theory books.  You may call an artist friend.  You check out Youtube videos on the topic.  You may visit the local art museum or galleries for reference.  You pray.  Sometimes for me this can go on much longer than I have patience.  But that is what develops perseverance.

    There are no shortcuts to learning or improving your skill set.  You just keep picking up the brush and working away at it, wrestling with it, until at last color harmony starts to emerge from the composition.  You feel like "maybe"  the problem is solved.  Somehow it all comes together in the end to be at least a respectable piece of art.  But wow...the process isn't always easy and can be quite discouraging.  You sense you have really wrestled with that piece of art.  To wrestle means to contend by grappling with and striving with something, to engage in a determined struggle.  And that is where art reflects life!  We engage often in a determined struggle with a variety of issues and problems that come into our lives.  What do you do?  Along with other good choices, you keep "picking up the brush and painting".  You take the NEXT right step...incremental as that might be.  Ultimately the "painting" of your life will be complete and every color will matter to the whole.  

     I love the story from Aesop's Fables about the rabbit and the turtle.  More on that in another blog perhaps, but the point is "steady at it wins the race".  So whatever it may be for you in your life, keep on wrestling!

Oooops......!

     If you have ever hiked in the beautiful Rocky Mountains or some other similar terrain, you probably know what about scree.  For those of you who prefer staying at sea level, here's what scree is.  It is a mass of small loose stones that form or cover a slope on a mountain.  I experienced the "joy" of scree while attempting to climb Long's Peak in Colorado one August day.  If you have the misfortune of slipping on a large patch of scree, you are at the mercy of the pebbly landslide until your downward descent looses steam at a leveling off area.  Then comes the tricky, slippery-slide ascent with several more smaller descents tucked in just for "fun".

      Here comes the metaphor....life has many opportunities to experience scree in our work, health, relationships, and plans.  And I experience my share of them in creating artwork.  Understatement!  Here's a fresh example.  Last week I worked on a small watercolor painting of a dog and adhered it to a piece of wood as a backing.  After the drying and varnishing process, I discovered to my dismay that some of the adhesive buckled and wasn't going to be fixable.  This had happened on more than one painting.  So I ended up ripping the dog painting off the wood mount and took two smaller pieces of plain watercolor paper and tried a different adhesive as a test.  I decided to have some fun with it despite the messed up painting and getting the papers even glued crooked under the weight I used to press down on the painting.  This botched up project will be my own little reminder hanging here in my studio.  So here it is...

     And here is a peek at the dog watercolor painting before it got pulled up.  It was going to be titled "Keeping a Rein on Things".  I may go ahead and develop this one into a larger work down the road.  In the meantime, watch your step around the scree!

Polar Vortexes, Art, and the Soul

     What do polar vortexes, art, and the soul have do with each other, you ask?  Plenty....if you think in metaphors!  Let's give it some shape here.  How do you describe polar vortexes?  Try severe, extreme cold.  Hunkering down under blankets, inside parkas to keep warm.  Major discomfort in getting out and about.  Starkness and restriction of normal activities.  What about art, then?  How do you describe art?  As that which nourishes, uplifts, transports, changes your perspective, feeds your soul?  Finally, what about soul?  Is it that part of being human that feels, responds morally and emotionally to beauty, truth, life, and death, and that is eternal?

                                                          

    Loveland, CO Ranch

                                                                         8" x 10" oil

                                                                       Bonnie Patterson

     Okay, now link them all together in this aspect metaphorically.  As in daily life, so in our life experiences polar vortexes bear down on our souls...cold, frigid, undesired.  How does your soul deal with them and come out better for wear?  That is where art can step in and play a part to redirect your emotions, console grief, give perspective, divert focus, and inspire anew...whether it be music, theater, movies, literature, dance, a painting, or sculpture.  That is the power of art!  And polar vortexes are not permanent....the weather will change.  The sunshine will come and it will be June once again.  

     But right now it is still January and I'm excitedly preparing for a 6 week art class I'll be teaching in South Omaha with youngsters.  Since the 2014 Winter Olympics are in February, our theme is learning to draw sports action figures.  We will be following what is happening in the Sochi Olympics and having fun putting our interpretations of the human form in motion down on paper.  The class will be patterned along athletic training modes of drawing warmups, coaching instruction, implementing new knowledge in workouts, and then wrapping things up in a cooldown of reviewing main points and cleaning up.  All finishers will receive a a medal!  

     For those of you in Colorado, why not include a visit to the Coor's National Western Art Show at the Denver Stock Show this month?!  I have always been inspired during the winter blues with a feast for the eyes by wonderful western artists at that event.  All the best in this New Year to you!