Self Portrait - NFS

"Self Portrait", 9 x 7 In, Oil on Museum Board
Every once in a while I do a series of self-portraits and most of them are variously tortured--too detailed or over done. But this one was a quick sketch and for that it became interesting to me.

Meg - NFS

"Meg", 9 x 7 In, Oil on Museum Board
This is a quick sketch, the kind I really like to do. Just do it and be done. I realized something this morning. When I go away on vacation and I post ahead, I can post any old thing. But when I am here, I stress about each painting--whether it is good enough to post. It is as though when I am on vacation, I'm not around to take the heat. Very strange, since it is all on the internet. Do any of you other painters encounter these baffling quirks of the mind?

Naxi Woman -- NFS

"Naxi Woman", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board NFS
I posted this painting back in September, but I'm posting it again because it was a finalist in the FineArtViews Painting Competition for October. It was my favorite portrait of my marathon "30 portraits in eight days" before I left for Cornwall, and I am grateful to Scott Prior, the judge of the October competition for selecting my painting as one of the finalists.

I visted Yunna Province in China in March of 2009 with Barry Raybould and Timothy Tien. The ethnic minority in the Lijiang and Yuhu Village areas are the Naxi people.  In Yuhu Village, just beneath Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, we stayed at a delightful guest house. Scroll down to the second set of photos in this Yuhu Village link and you'll see photos of the guest house, the wonderfully accommodating proprietors, and the mountain above the village. Most afternoons at the guest house, a group of village people would gather in the courtyard to play mahjong. Some of them agreed to model for us--but it was always clear that their interest was with the mahjong table. It was March and still cold, elevation about 8,000 feet, so they had cement bowls filled with hot coals around the group for heat. We just wore a lot of clothes! This painting is from a photo of one of the women watching the game.

Naxi Woman -- NFS

"Naxi Woman", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
The ethnic minority in the Lijiang and Yuhu Village areas in Yunnan Province were the Naxi people.  Most afternoons at our guest house, a group of people would gather in the courtyard to play mahjong.  Some of them agreed to models for us--but it was always clear that their interest was with the mahjong table.  It was March and still cold, so they had cement bowls filled with hot coals around the group for heat.  We just wore a lot of clothes! This painting is from a photo of one of the women watching the game.

Peach Suit - NFS

"Peach Suit", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
This was a well-dressed man in Lijiang.  We spent a half a day when we first arrived wandering through the old city and the outdoor market. 

Man from Yuhu Village - NFS

"Man from Yuhu Village", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
There were hardly any western tourists in Yuhu Village--I think we saw one American.  But the people were not keen on having their photos taken, so we had to be careful.  This man, sitting on a doorstep with another old guy and a child didn't seem to mind. Although the buildings and houses were made of stone, the doors were sometimes painted a orangish brown. It was about a mile from the village up to the base of 18,000 foot Snow Dragon Jade Mountain, and we hiked up a little ways on the trail late one afternoon, along with some Chinese tourists in high heels.

Man with Pink Shirt - NFS

"Man with Pink Shirt", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
This painting was really about getting the plastic quality of the planes of the face with just a few strokes.  Every painting for me is an experiment in color.

Small Boy

"Small Boy", 8" x 6", Oil on Museum Board
With this painting I went back to a 30 minute time limit.  Sometimes this is the best way to change the dynamic of the painting experience--to be less obsessive about "getting it right" and to be more spontaneous.

Woman in Leather

"Bai Woman", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
When we visited the Bai village on the west side of Lake Erhai in Yunnan Province, there was a big festival going on, and all the older women were wearing their traditional dress.  But this was a tall woman in leather.  It made me wonder if she actually was not Bai, but maybe Chinese.

Peruvian Woman

"Peruvian Woman", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
This Peruvian woman is a weaver in a small cooperative that my daughter and I visited on a travel tour.  Being a person who has collected carpets and weavings for many years now, it is hard for me to resist the beauty of the color combinations and the fabrics of the products that these women made. I came home with a beautiful wool poncho of many colored stripes.

Yuhu Village Woman - NFS

"Yuhu Village Woman", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
Yuhu Village is a small community outside of Lijiang, China, right at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Each day the villagers would bring their horse or mule to a central area and load up the tourists to go up the mountain. These were almost all Chinese tourists.  In this travel link you can see the guest house where we stayed with the mountain behind.  There was no central heating and we were at about 8000 feet elevation, so you can imagine how welcome the electric blanket was at night! The daughter of the couple in the link, who were the proprietors, worked for the Nature Conservancy in China.  The food was unimaginably good!

Village Boy

"Village Boy", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
This painting was from a photo I took on a prior trip to China several years ago with Jove Wang. We took a van to an area in Inner Mongolia, which is part of China, and at one point stopped at a farmhouse.  And there we were with our Nikons and our Canons, snapping photos of mostly women who probably thought we were pretty strange.  I'd much rather take photos of people with a telephoto, far enough away so they are not aware of me.

Yellow Smock

"Yellow Smock", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
This was another one of the women coming home from the fields in the village near Dali, Yunnan Province, in Western China. The challenge of this painting was to capture the face in shadow. Following is the painting I did on the spot, facing the other way.

"Long Shadows", 8" x 10", Oil on Canvas, 2009

Pink Scarf

"Pink Scarf", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
Coming back from the open-air market in a town near Dali in Yunnan Province, China, we stopped at a wood carving shop so my friend Barry could purchase a pair of beautifully and intricately carved doors.  I sat out in the small vehicle to guard our stuff and passed the time by taking photos of the women coming home from the fields.  This portrait is of one of those women.

Girl in Pink

"Girl in Pink", 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
My small portrait marathon is now over for the time being as I have to focus on my trip to the UK.  In eight days I painted some 30 small portraits. Not all of them turned out and some painted themselves. Some I limited to 30 minutes, most were painted in less than an hour and at least one I struggled with over time and was still not satisfied. So though I am throwing out the unacceptably bad ones, I think I have enough for my husband to post one every day during the trip because I will not have access to a computer.  Some I have already posted.  Thank you all for your comments, both on the blog and through email.  I appreciate your encouragement!

Bai Woman - NFS

"Bai Woman", Oil, 9" x 7", Oil on Museum Board
Most of the older women in the ethnic minority areas of Western China still wear their traditional outfits.  The women in this village were charming and after being allowed to go into their temple and have a special small ceremony, many of them wanted to have their photos taken.

Lake Kachess

7/15/10 "Lake Kachess", 9" x 7", Oil
I'm up painting at the Cle Elum "Fresh Air Paint-out".  This is one of my all-time favorite places since childhood--alpine lakes, mountain air, sage brush country, small western towns including Roslyn, where Northern Exposure was filmed.  Last week at the workshop, I felt I literally forgot how to paint.  I felt paralyzed and incompetent.  This painting was sort of the last of that struggle, but since I'm entering the ones that came after that--the ones where a couple of things began to sink into my brain--into the competition, I'm waiting to post those.

Raymond Logan has been kind enough to include a wonderful review of my blog on his Daily Painter Review. I feel honored that he selected my blog for review and I hope you will all go and sign up at Daily Painter Review.  It is always so interesting to get a perspective on your work from the outside.  And by the way, Raymond is not only a good writer, but he is also a fantastic painter, so check out his website  http://www.raymondlogan.blogspot.com/