Another Randy Higbee Gallery 6 x 6 show

Here are my entries for this show:

Four tiny coastal paintings, in one of my most favorite places to work in all of the world: Point Lobos Nature Reserve. It is a small headland that juts out into the Pacific Ocean, just south of Carmel and north of Big Sur, California. The light you find there, at any time of the year, is unlike any other place I've been, and every time I visit the place I wonder why it is I live in Oregon. Guy Rose painted there, Childe Hassam painted there. Armin Hansen, Francis McComas, Percy Grey, Paul Dougherty, Mary Morgan, Bruce Nelson, and William Ritschel all painted there. Heck, Edward Weston photographed there (I accidentally found his one-room log cabin darkroom in somebody's backyard ten years ago while tooling around. There wasn't even a plaque on it.)

So I try to get down to Point Lobos as often as I can. I'll use every excuse I can come up with. Because, when I get there everything looks like a painting.

"Earth, Wind, Light, and Water" Point Lobos CA

6 x 6 inches  |  oil on panel

The host of the show, the Randy, of the Hygbee Gallery, is located down in Costa Mesa. He has made it a central rallying point for the Neo-Southland Crew of California Plein Air painters. Randy hosts a small works show every quarter and always arranges for a high-profile judge to come in and jury in the work -- which makes for a good show. I have no idea which ones (if any) of these paintings will get in. I've only just submitted them today. But I am happy with this work nonetheless.

"Down in the Hole" Point Lobos CA

6 x 6 inches  |  oil on panel

It is a challenge for me to paint inside of 6 inches. It's like trying to stay in the lines of a coloring book when I was three. To me it is like working on a postage stamp. Especially since ten years ago I used to paint quite large, up to 30 x 40 inch or so, outdoors. But I dropped down to smaller works in the 1 x 2 foot range to up my output and to become more playful with the paint. Over the years I've become interested in how oil paint throws down, moves around, and builds up. Its capacity to drip, striate, break, and drag are what create the detail you see in this work. It's not me fussing around with tiny brushes and little strokes. And that is what I am in pursuit of these days: a fresh lively surface. Something that doesn't looked picked at, cat-licked, or slicked-down. I have come to believe that the great painters learned how to convey a sense of detail through tactile properties of the paint itself, and as a result, encouraged us to complete their paintings in our own mind.

"Holding Fast" Point Lobos CA

6 x 6 inches  |  oil on panel

This approach to painting a picture may sound easy, just keep flipping down some loose paint and see what develops, but it ain't. This approach is arguably the most difficult way to paint a picture, and it is certainly becomes a risk-taking adventure for any artist like myself who once built up a following out of detail-oriented collectors. And that's before I even become competent at things, let alone excel with my hoped-for bravura brushwork. But this is an exciting way to paint. A thrill. And now, an addiction. Last October I picked up a newly minted book on Franz Bischoff, a fine early 20th-Century Californian painter who has come back into vogue. I was quite smitten by his handling of paint, and his over-the-top use of color. It's crazy painting, but somehow controlled-crazy painting. I think you can find some Bischoff-influence in my little paintings. 

"The Ancient One" Point Lobos CA

6 x 6 inches  |  oil on panel

But ultimately, I am painting this way right now because I love it. It's fast and furious. It's the equivalent of performing a tight-wire act without the net. One errant stroke, or two seconds of inattention, and you are screwed. You block in your composition, throw down a lot of paint, fast, and build it up to considerable thickness, and BY GOD you hope you get it right the first go-round because you only get one or two more tries to pull it off. After your third attempt (sad face) you might as well toss the painting.

This is a physical way to work. A semi-controlled tactile explosion. For ultimately, it is the paint deciding for itself what it will do, despite an artist's intent. Well, hopefully, there is some degree of control emanating from the artist's hand, but I've learned I can't count on it. When it works – meaning, when a train wreck has been averted – I am left scratching my head as much as everyone is. And I love that. When I paint this way, I have no idea how, or why it worked. Or why not. (Ha!) I've just come to accept that it either does, or it didn't, and in both cases just throw another canvas up on the easel. The same way you press more ammo into the chamber and re-take aim.

It's kinda fun.