Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Eyes of the Artist Exhibit

Currently I am participating in an exhibit at the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art in Lafayette, Indiana. There are five of us --- women who paint together and enjoy sharing ideas and resources so that we can become better painters and enjoy friendship in the process. Our exhibit is called "The Eyes of the Artist." It has been great fun...

Here are the paintings that are my portion of the exhibit. The first four have a railroad theme in honor of my Dad. He worked for the railroad for over 30 years, so the concept interested me quite a bit. The one with the red building is a scene from Main Street in Burlington, Iowa. The train station is near this crossing, and you have to go over these tracks to get there.







This second painting is more about an object, the luggage cart. It has less of an emotional attachment , though the colors were lively. The railroad museum in Linden, Indiana is an enjoyable spot to visit. I wanted this painting to be appealing, like a still life in the out of doors.














The third painting with a railroad theme is of the tracks behind the railroad museum in Linden. This was an exercise in color exaggeration. The buildings in the background catch the eye, and they are accented by the curve of the field and the tracks. It started out as an exercise in
compliments, painting an underpainting first that used the opposite colors on the color wheel. It was almost too much of an intellectual game to paint like that, and the method was soon discarded. The result was, nevertheless, a lot of color.




Finally, the last one with a railroad theme is of shadows over train tracks. When looking at things in the distance, painters have to consider color changes that occur as objects recede into the distance. Things become bluer and lighter as they move back in aerial perspective. That is what happened in this painting -- the intensity of the blue in the distance becomes like a focal point. The tracks lead one's eye to the blue in the distance, and the trees have lost their green color.


Here are the other paintings that were included: I will comment on them at a later date.

Bev in Boulder


Clouds


Museum


Red Girl in Garden



Snow



1 comment:

  1. Mom, I love your blog. Thanks for sharing. Now we have to photograph all of your paintings that I have so you can add them. I have the shoes!! P.S. The red cabboose is one of my favorite railroad paintings...

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