I have just returned from ten days in the embrace of one of my favorite places on Earth...Catalina Island. The colors of this island and the incredible land and seascapes always get me up early and keeps me working hard. Then, there is the food, drink and friends. I am exhausted after that much fun. I painted this time with Joe Paquet of St. Paul, Minnesota and Karl Dempwolf of California. We had mostly great weather. Many good works of art were born both from the interior of the island and the two "towns". The results of this trip and my time there last December will be unveiled at the Wildside show on the island June 23rd. For more information.
Painting Catalina
The California Art Club Gold Medal Show is featured in this month's Plein Air Magazine. Click here to read the article and view my show painting. Paintings will be on view through April 22nd at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.
"Rolling In" 24 x 30
"Saving Paradise: The Symbiosis of Landscape Painting and Environmental Awareness" is a group exhibition from the California Art Club now showing at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery through May 6th. The quality of the representational art in America just keeps getting better. I see this as evolving from the support the public gave the painters of the 90's and the first part of this century as well as from the efforts groups and painters are putting into education. Bravo, we all win! This show will travel to The Bennington Center of the Arts. So, if you have not seen it before it comes down, you will have to go to Vermont to look at these exceptional works of art! Click the above links for more information.
The Bakersfield Museum of Fine Art will mount a showing of my work along with Los Angeles area painter William Wray on December 13 through March 10, 2013. More details to come.
 "Warm Clear Waters" 36 x 48
Painting Tip: Every Stroke is Important
This is a concept that escaped me for many years of my artistic pursuit. Even though I heard and read this concept many times the true meaning passed me by. The dialog in my brain went something like this..."If every stroke is important...how do I know where to...put sharper edges, thicker paint, brighter color, grayer color and so on"? I, like many in my generation, thought that sloppy painting done by a gifted painter could be genius. Bottom line...I wasted a lot of time. This was further compounded by the ill-conceived notion that if I just painted enough paintings, I would "Get Better". To my horror "Practice Makes Perfect" is incorrect. Now I know that someone wrote that down wrong. It should have been "PERFECT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT". When a painter like Sargent put that inspired single stroke down that elegantly described the most important passage in the painting, he made it look like a casual stroke of genius but in reality the genius was in how he planned for that stroke right from the beginning. He set it up with simpler passages underneath that made the drama of the stroke shine. If when he made the all important stroke it wasn't the way he wanted it, he wiped that area and started again with the underpainting and working back up to that moment of "Genius." If each phase of the painting is done with "Great Care" then even if it does not turnout the best painting you ever did, it will be a great lesson that will be invaluable to your future attempts to release your "Genius".
Happy Painting,
John Cosby
|
