Day #30 :: SNOW MELT :: January Daily Painting Challenge (in February)

SNOW MELT
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

Interestingly enough, last week I went into the studio and four of these 6x6" pieces poured out of me onto their painting boards. It was intense and a perfect definition of "flow." When I came upstairs I showed Tim what I had done and he shot me a quizzical look. "In 40 minutes you did those?"

When people ask how long a painting takes, artists are frustrated by having to answer. So often, the paintings that take FOREVER are the ones that aren't as good. Not always, but often, this is the case. In my classes, I talk about saying the most you can with the least amount of strokes. Minimize your color palette. SIMPLIFY!

My classes also hear me tell this story --- which I LOVE so much. And if it's some made up literary legend, please don't tell me. I like to think that what I share here is truth.  ;)

Ernest Hemingway was talking with some of his writer contemporaries about story-writing. They challenged each other to write a compelling story with as little words as possible. Hemingway accepted and turned in this:

      For Sale:
      Baby Shoes
      Never Worn

Gets you right in the heart, doesn't it?

(And I just Googled it. Not sure if it's Hemingway, but I could be, so I'll hold on to my story line. Whew!)

And so with painting we want to say as much as we can with as few marks. We strive to make something difficult look as though it was done with ease. In Italian the word is "sprezzatura" and I first heard this in Professor David Nolta's Art History class at MassArt. Artists strive toward this "studied carelessness." It's a great contradiction: The art of making something difficult look like it was done with ease.

Winter seems to have broken, and I'm eager for this to be true. Only time will tell, but today's 50 degree walk in the muddy field with a smell of spring in the air was encouraging. This painting of greens touched with various light was a fun challenge to paint. I love the streak of sunlight: Warmth exemplified.

This painting wraps up the 30 in a row for 2016. I'm proud and excited about this body of work. Of course, I'm keeping painting. A new project has my interest and with teaching painting classes we shall see where my studio time brings me.

Be sure to stay tuned!
Thanks for reading ~kmw

Day 29 :: ACORNS :: #30in30 Painting a Day Challenge

ACORNS
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

Sold! 

Since the girls went back to school I spend a fair amount of time outside walking in my neighborhood. It's a great spot to walk: hills, fields, rivers, ponds, forests, and so much to look at. Lately when I've been walking I've been stopping to notice small things at my feet: feathers, seed pods, interesting rocks, and of course -- acorns.

Acorns are everywhere right now. While waiting for the bus they seemed to be raining down on us. During my walks I am always picking up interesting acorns and bringing them home, my pockets stuffed. How many kinds of oak trees do we have in my neck of the woods? I had always lumped them together simply as oaks. Now I have been observing more closely--northern oaks, pin oaks, black oaks, red oaks, among others. Such interesting fun.

Last night I sat to write my blog post about Blue Coat and took an inventory of paintings for the month. Landscapes dominate, obviously, I am a landscape painter. I decided I needed another still life before month's end. Today in my studio I decided to paint acorns.

In art school, I was always working on a still life. My view from MassArt's Kennedy building was not my scene, so I'd set up my leather bag, or some other art supplies, and paint. It was then I learned that when painting a still life, the thing you're painting is important, but so, too, is the background -- even if it's a mass of a solid color. This is HARD to do! Professors often said (and now I repeat this to my students) that you should spend as much time on your background as you do the subject.

Today in the studio I really understood about the importance of the background in making a still life painting interesting. In person, it's almost as great to see the pinks, grays, blues, and yellows in the light neutral background as it is the collection of acorns.

Thanks for reading! -kmw