Phil Starke Art Talk

As the summer winds down, things start getting busier in the art world here in Arizona.  Fall shows at Settlers West and Medicine Man in Tucson, the CA (Cowboy Artists of America) show is in Phoenix as well as shows at Legacy and Trailside Galleries.

My wife and I will be going to California in October for the Laguna Plein Air Show and the Plein Air Show at Torrey Pines.  In november we have the American West Show at Settlers West, the Mountain Oyster Club Show and at the Grapevine Gallery in Oklahoma City in early December.  So now is a great time to get the calendar out and schedule some gallery visits.  Now I’ve got to get back to work! 

A full moon in the Southwest is a great time to paint outside.  It’s not as difficult as it sounds.  On a night where there is a full moon, between 8 and 10 pm, that’s when the moon is lower and seems to be brighter, you can see a lot of strong contrast between light and dark.  Edges past the foreground are a lot softer because of the dark, but the foreground can have a lot of variety because of the strong light.

I start with two booklights that I bought at Barnes and Noble.  One clipped on top of the easel to shine on the painting and one down below shining on the pallette.  The light from the moon is a bluish-green so I replace ultramarine blue with prussian blue.  Also the lights appear cooler with the blue-greenlight and the shadows recede and become very dark and appear warmer or more red.  I work small, 8 x 10 or 6 x 8 and I work fast because it can get a little creepy out in the desert at night when the nocturnal animals begin to roam.  You can’t see anything but you can sure hear them.  A couple of painters that handle nocturnal painting well were Frank Tenney Johnson and presently Bill Anton.

  This is one of my nocturnal paintings.  I really enjoy the challenge, you might too.

I was painting a view of the Tucson Mountains when the sun set behind the mountains and the colors went from very warm, definite colors of green, orange and yellow to shades of cool gray color against a very warm, yellow sky.  At first the colors seemed grey when the sun set but when my eyes got accustomed to the light change I noticed all kinds of subtle neutral color.  With a limited pallette of yellow, red and blue I find it easier to achieve those subtle changes.  Find the local color of a shape and decide how much of the remaining primaries you need to add to get the right color, thinking in terms of value first. 

  Large areas of shadow, like a field or mountain, are going to have subtle neutral color changes from front to back and side to side, I find that easiest to control with a limited pallette.

Early in my career when I thought of a palette knife, I thought of the guys on TV who used a knife to lay in half the painting in thirty seconds or to paint the same stylized tree every time.  Now I think of Richard Schmid using a knife to flatten a ground plane in the foreground or Trevor Chamberlain (painting shown) using a knife to soften edges or to flatten a dark plane against a light plane.  The palette knife is a good tool to use when you want to simplify a passage in your painting or flatten it against a busier area.  When the paint gets too thick in the darks and the heavy brushstrokes cause glare, use the knife to flatten the thicker paint so it can’t reflect the light.  A couple of strokes with a pallette knife can be a nice contrast against a bunch of short choppy brushstrokes.  I use the knife a lot to mix bigger piles of paint in the studio for large paintings.  It’s hard to mix big piles of paint with the brush.  So go get a couple of knives (small and medium size) but watch out for the sharp edges.  Also check out Trevor Chamberlain’s book:  “Painting Pure and Simple.” 

I have always used outdoor sketches and drawings for studio work.  I also use photography for detail and composition, but rely on the outdoor paintings for color. 

Since going digital and discovering Adobe’s Photoshop where I can “diddle” all day adjusting color, contrast and values it became easier to ignore the outdoor sketch.  As I was preparing for a 30 x 40 piece in the studio to develop from an 8 x 10 sketch of some large cottonwoods on the Aravaipa River I fussed around with the photo on Photoshop for a half hour only to discover my color ink cartridge was too low.  Frustrated, I went ahead and printed out a black and white photo and rediscovered using the 8 x 10 sketch and my own color sense.  The black and white photo was a good source for more accurate values and plane separation.

The color on photographs is never very accurate so it’s good practice to rely on the outdoor painting to develop your own color sense and the black and white photo for planes and values.

    Edward Seago was a 20th century British landscape painter.  Known in the US primarily for his plein air work in oil and watercolor.  It’s hard to find books on his work but I have found some show catalogs of his plein air work.  One book that can be found is this “Edward Seago” by Ron Ranson.

He used a limited palette outside that varied from Indigo Blue, Ochre and Indian Red to different forms of primary colors.  His paintings always had a great sense of color harmony, very expressive and spontaneous brush work thats shows only what is important to the painting.  On the internet you can find galleries that carry his work and some will have catalogs.

Well, as you can see, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to get back to the blog.  I began to have several things converge upon me all at once and priorities had to be set.  Our biggest events this year were the wedding of my daughter and the graduation of my youngest son.  So yes, we are officially empty nesters.  Next were three big exhibitions during this same timeframe as well as two major trips. 

I’ve also been writing two books which are soon to be released.  One is a book with a compilation of my work, the other is a painting instruction book. So something had to give and I’m afraid it had to be the blog.   Now that things have settled down and I’ve got  some sort of a routine, I’m able to be back here blogging again.  My wife has also updated my website, so you might want to check it out.  She’s done some revamping and still has some more to do, but her main goal was to get the site to work faster and that has been accomplished.

Wilson Hurley passed away recently on the 29th of August.  I didn’t know Wilson very well, but I was able to visit his studio twice where he was kind enough to critique my work and spend time talking about painting and things that influenced him.  Wilson had a varied and full life, he attended West Point, became a pilot and served in Vietnam.  He attended law school and practiced in New Mexico.  During all this time he painted when he could.  He eventually started painting fulltime and used all his experiences in life to teach himself to paint and was encouraged by Robert Lougheed, also an artist in New Mexico. 

Wilson’s work can be found in many museums including the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Albuquerque Museum of Art.  The pieces that have had the most effect on me are the four very large murals located in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  They are monumental respresentations of light and color in landscape painting.   If you haven’t had a chance to see a good body of work by Wilson Hurley, you might want to check out this book “ Wilson Hurley: A Retrospective Exhibition“, then you, too, will see what tremendous talent he was.