My Brushes

These are the brushes I use every day. They are not special, and they are not expensive, and they are not new (for the most part). I'm used to them and they do a great job. If one gets loose and wobbly, I wrap a bit of masking tape around it, so that it's right again (maybe just like my uncle used to tape his eyelid to his brow when he got old and his lid didn't work quite right any more). Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get my drift. It's really only the last 6 brushes or so that I use every day, and the small house painting brush is used only to spread my left-over paints onto thin papers for collages later. It's not necessary to spend a lot of money on brushes. I can't recall the last time I bought a brush, and when I do buy a new brush, it's usually just a tiny sable brush for little details. Don't feel that an old, gnarly, messed up brush should be thrown out...it will work just fine for a number of things. You just have to watch what it will do...and what it will not do....

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Colour Notes

 

Here is list of some of the main colours I use: ultramarine blue, permanent blue light, cadmium red middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), cadmium yellow middle (sparingly, and good for mixing), naples yellow, titanium buff light, or unbleached titanium, titanium white, prussian blue, chromium oxide green, hookers green, sap green, viridian green, ultramarine violet (great for cutting the saturation of greens, and for achieving more variety with blues), burnt umber, raw umber, I also use a variety of mixed colours,packaged in tubes, often not expensive...like light portrait pink, greyish blue, light blue violet, neutral grey...(they are great for tinting other colours). carbon black (great for mixing greys and allows to you easily achieve both warm and cool greys). The dark blues and greens are great for mixing the equivalents of black when mixed with the umbers.

 

I use the carbon black mostly to mix greys, but for a variety of extreme darks in the painting I use my darkest blues and greens mixed with the relaltive complementary....I love mixing darks! So for dark green masses I might use hookers green + prussian blue + burnt umber.

 

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Buckhorn Arts Festival....Preparing Masonite Paintings

I'm preparing a whole lot of small paintings on Masonite for the Buckhorn Arts Festival. I started by putting them on these larger blocks with glued card flanges, which worked very well. But I made some modifications along the way......

To Lake Ontario, On Location, June 25

To Lake Ontario

Painted from the front seat of may car.

 a very beautiful and gently unsettled evening....it started off almost perfectly clear, but within 20 minutes came a variety of quick showers. The sky was repainted right at the end. Acrylic, pencil, on thin gessoed panel 7.75 x 8 inches. I always like the idea that every single little touch is important...there is an energy to the quality of mark that often shouldn't be tampered with. I like that the lowest part of the grey cloud is the first big brushstroke that went in...and it wasn't touched afterward....

I like this spot...one day I walked right around the whole field. just north of Port Hope, Ontario...above the lake, the land is hilly and beautiful. Here, I'm about 2 minutes north of Garden Hill.


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On Location, June 18

 

In Advance
Acrylic on gessoed, cradled birch panel 11 x 14 x 1 inches, wired at back and ready to hang. Painted on location from the front seat of my car.............afternoon, June 18, hot, humid, windy, the skies changing by the minute and the air feels unstable...something is coming......

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On Location, June 14

Yesterday evening....I always enjoy seeing Rice Lake from a distance. Perfect quiet...only one car passed. The evening light was shining on the painting a bit too much, but the passenger seat visor helped. I intersperse this plein air method, with my other ways of making. I like to paint on location at least once a week.....the other days are devoted to studio work.

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From the Woodlot

Recent collage paintings on 8 x 8 inch Masonite panel....exiting the woodlot after cutting down old blowdown for firewood.

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Spring Squares

These square paintings are on 7.5 x 7.5 archival paper....from the last few days. On the same surface and size, there is also a group of abstract collages that are happening.

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Five Nights in Maine

Some of my paintings....in the movie "Five Nights in Maine". Written and directed by Maris Curran, starring David Oyelowo (Golden Globe Nominee), Dianne Wiest (Academy Award Winner) and Rosie Perez (Academy Award Nominee)
I think they used about 6-7 of my paintings...but I couldn't get clear views of the rest. Sorry for the horrible photos...I don't think you can really photograph a paused image...the screen flickers. This is an unbearably sad movie....
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Watershed Magazine, spring 2017

 

Watershed Magazine, spring 2017
Life in Northumberland, Prince Edward County, and Quinte

 ...a nice little writeup, with some visuals. Thank you for this, Denny Manchee!

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A Painting a Day

....from the last 3 days. The dark, broody one is done with no reference other than memory. All are on thin, gessoed panel, 8 x 8 inches.

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Abstract Collages

 

These abstract pieces are fewer in number than the landscape pieces, but they are important to do, primarily because they open up the process, and allow for a certain reinvention.

 

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Spring Coming

 

From the last few days. Perhaps the last snow of the season has fallen...it is definitely getting warmer now. Sometimes I don't get out for the daily hike until after dark.  Both are acrylic collage paintings on gessoed, thin Masonite panel 8 x 8 inches.

 

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Sundown, March 7

Acrylic on gessoed, thin Masonite panel, 8 x 8 inches. As I keep doing these, one per day, the format becomes more and more important. The size and surface that I'll work on, becomes a key component of the work session. It's the critical thing, and the first thing, that starts the energy flowing.

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