Pleinair Painting

I just completed this portrait of three cousins. It's an oil on canvas, done with an indirect painting technique. I start with a transparent golden wash over the entire canvas and then work the lights and darks up from that base. I find it's a lovely base to start with for flesh tones and makes the whole canvas warm. These portraits were difficult for several reasons. First, I didn't have an opportunity to meet the children in person. Second, I had to work from lower res photos than I normally like to do. And third, I had to photoshop out several elements, replace heads and arms and try to make it not look like I did exactly that. Here is the photo shoppped photo that I worked from:   The finished painting is beautifully rich in color and texture compared to the photo. Another reason why paintings are so superior to photos if they are done with the intent to express an emotion or message and not just reproducing a photo.  Here is the full portrait with frame...

I had never painted an underwater landscape before this year. And my first one was 180 feet long by seven feet tall! This is a small section of a mural for Motts Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor. The mural utilizes a special paint that gives the water and fish a glowing quality. Much like regular landscape painting, the colors fade off in the distance, only with water, the fade off is much faster and is more blue in tint. I was struck by the variety and populations of fish in the reefs. Although for my painting I assembled the very best combinations of color and texture, I was still was only able to capture a very small section of the massive variety of reef creatures. My studio changed considerably during the painting of this mural. Every morning I looked forward to coming into the studio, which had transformed itself into a large aquarium. The colors were comforting and calming. I was delighted with the creatures as they emerged and developed. Some plant life I made up...jus...

What a blast this was! I was notified about a month ago that my artwork won the Blue Man Group's Art Competition. They asked that I not post anything in social media about it until after the unveiling on Wednesday of this week. There was a notable cash prize, as well as a 10 ft x 10 ft blow-up of my artwork on the side of the Blue Man Group's theater in Chicago. And the original hangs in their lobby (photo above). The winning artwork fits their quirky performances that utilize splattered paint and other performance arts. We were told that there were 776 entries in the competition. I'm honored that my painting was one of the six winners! I saw the Blue Man Group perform many years ago and was struck by their grasp of what makes us human. The large screen behind them, giving instruction, is very clever in pointing out attributes of human nature that we take for granted. It's amazing to me that we are looking at artificial intelligence coming into our lives today with...

About two years ago, a local children's hospital put out an RFP to several artists concerning their operating rooms. They were getting complaints that the environment was too sterile and frightening to the small patients. When I visited the site, I discovered blank walls devoid of any artwork, and procedure rooms filled with scary looking equipment hanging from the ceiling and surrounding where the patient would be laying. I couldn't imagine would I could do to bring life, distraction and joy into that environment. Some ideas were to hang mobiles from the ceiling. But I kept thinking that there was no way to hide the equipment, so I had to somehow make it ok that it was there. Eventually, an idea came that submarines had periscopes and lots of equipment in them. And if I painted portals around the room with concerned sea creatures looking in, that it would soon have the appearance of a submarine, and less of an appearance of a scary operating room. My idea was selec...

DESTRUCTION A long time has passed. Nearly two years have gone by since my last entry into this blog. A short list of events tells you why: • House sold for a loss, gave 1/2 of everything I had away.. • Had no home for several months, lived in a rented art studio and a friend's pool house. • Father died. • Established new friendships in a new city. • Bought a much smaller house (1/3rd the size) on some land far from the city. • Built an art studio • Painted 15 murals • Learned WordPress for building websites and designed 4 sites • Changed the way I did business • Published another book (the illustration above is from this book entitled: Life is Wonderful, It could be Verse! , By Art Holst) You can see it on my website at www.katherinelarson.com • Found God again. Sometimes you have to tear down everything you think you wanted and start over again. Sometimes it's life that does it to you, and sometimes you have to do it yourself. As a writer, painter and singer,...

Sometimes ideas come and I have to paint them. This painting started a new series I'm calling "Vessels." I'm not really sure what they are, nor do I think it really matters. Some people think this is coral, others ice crystals, others energy or space creatures. I saw it in my mind's eye and had to paint it. The creative process has always been a mystery to me and I try not to examine it too closely. Often I have found that experimentation can open me up to other avenues..and the paintings that I do along the way may not be the destination...but rather the path to it. I am on a path at the moment. Abstraction is not one of my strengths, or even one of my passions...but I am captivated by the patterns that are emerging. Patterns that I recognize are in nature on many levels. On this bitterly cold and dark January night, I'm emerging from the depths. Slowly.

As artists, we always seem to be recording things. Sometimes it's difficult to separate real life from the process of recording. As I'm painting a scene, I'm recording what's happening, or what has happened, or what I wish was there. So am I really "in the moment" or chasing a moment that has already passed. While painting "En Plein Air", we call this loop "chasing the light." As light continues to change on the scene, the question always arises: "Do I change the painting to match the current light, or do I try to remember what the light looked like a few moments ago?" If one chooses to change the painting, there is a risk that the painting will never be completed because you will always be "chasing the light." It's a dangerous loop. Recently, my life has been an exercise in "chasing the light." As each day dawns, I have a list of projects that need completion, but as the sun arches across the sky, the...