Sargent and the Sea

My brother and I had the opportunity to visit the Corcoran Gallery this last weekend to see the John Singer Sargent exhibition. Seeing the scrapbooks and sketch books of Sargent, along with the hundreds of framed drawings, was a very humbling experience. The amount of work Sargent devoted to just the above painting (En Route pour la pêche) involved numerous sketches and then individual studies of each figure (all from life, without using photography and probably having to pull a lot of things from memory for the final painting). If I was limited to those conditions and needed to devote that amount of time for constructing a painting, the quality of my work would have never been equal to even the lesser painters of that time and I would only paint a few paintings a year. John Singer Sargent isn't just a Master because of his finished paintings, but also because of his devotion and work ethic to develop and construct the paintings that dominated the art world of that time.

Below are more works from the exhibition and their collection. If your anywhere near DC, get over to the Corcoran (it's also right next to the White House and the other national monuments, making it a perfect day for sight seeing).

Oil Painters of America Paint Out

Below are some pictures from the New England area paint out for the OPA. There were about 12 of us up in New Hampshire for the day, I was able to fit in two oil sketches, some lunch, and some great conversation before I had to make the long drive home. Below are a couple pictures of myself that a local photographer took, and then some pictures of the other artists.

Putney VT

I had the opportunity to go up to Putney this Saturday. I met Captain John (from Richard Schmids Video, The Captains Portrait), and got to take a look at "The Barn", the home of the Putney painters. In between the rain, I was able to paint two landscapes, the first took about 2 hrs, the other was limited to an hour and a half because of the wind and rain.

South Kent

I keep up with the blog of California artist, Jeremy Lipking. He is one of the best painters alive and he was just up in CT doing some painting. He and a few friends were painting in South Kent at Bull's Bridge (Richard Schmid did a fairly famous painting of this very area) After seeing some pictures of the area, I decided to take a drive up and paint for the day. To make a long story short, I started to paint at the edge of the river and I accidentally bumped my easel which caused it to start falling into the rapids. I saved my easel, but lost a tube of white paint and the canvas in the river. I also dropped my glass palette in the process and it shattered into pieces. So after a miserable 30 minutes I got in my car and found a little grocery store and picked up a junky disposable camera and snapped a few shots of the river and bridges. The below is the first painting from those pictures - hopefully you'll see more soon.