When I went to Chalk Hill Artist Residency, deep in the wilds of Sonoma county, I had no clear idea what I was going to do. I had a vague notion of doing some Plein art painting but nothing firm. I brought up a lot of random things from my studio like watercolor paper, canvases, colored pencils, and oil paint. Stuff I might need, just in case. I wanted to be prepared for whenever inspiration struck.
In my first few days, I did some sketching and a couple of studies. Nothing too involved. I decompressed. I went on some hikes. I waded into the Russian River. Explored Santa Rosa a bit. Then I started doing some still lifes, which I will post a bit later.
The second week, I picked up this fancy Japanese ink nib. and immediately started sketching the beautiful landscape that was literally out the window of my studio. This inspired me to go bigger. So I pulled out some large sheets of watercolor paper that I brought with me.
I had been really looking at the works of Richard Diebenkorn while I was there. I loved the tension in his work between representation and abstraction, especially in his landscape. Nature is beautiful but it’s also chaos. The trick of the landscape painter is to break down that chaos into some kind of order. Diebenkorn often used roads – clear lines slashed through a vista – as a handle to structure his paintings. I decided to do some of the same.
So I started working first with just pen and ink but then later experimenting with gouache and I was rather pleased with the results. You can see all of the landscapes I did then here. Or here.
I looking forward to exploring more in this direction.