Lisa McShane Art

Something came up recently and I've been thinking about it: this notion of discipline and the value of either taking time off after you produce a body of work or pushing on, and leveraging that energy into the next body of work. I believe - strongly - in work. I think the cultural myth of artist as dilettante is the opposite of what's required to produce good work. I think good work comes when you paint every day. It's not glamorous or exciting. It's lonely. Sometimes it's tedious, sometimes it's amazing but just like any work, it happens daily. Here's a great article, one of my favorites, because it discusses Chris Ofili and a number of other well-known artists in the context of their discipline. They all go to their studios and paint every day. It's what works. Click here to read  Wake Up. Wash Face. Do Routine. Now Paint . by Michael Kimmelman, May 5, 2005, New York Times.

Mt. Baker from Margaret's. ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 9" x 12". Mt. Baker from Margaret's will be in Art + All That Jazz , a benefit for Whatcom Museum. It's one night only: Friday, November 12 from 6-9 pm. If you're in Bellingham, please come! There will be amazing art for purchase. This is a plein air painting - different from my studio work. This was painted in Skagit Valley looking at Mt. Baker to the northeast on a sunny afternoon. When you watch Mt. Baker in the light of the Skagit Valley, it changes color about every 5 minutes.

Rattlesnake Mountain from Mesa. ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Canvas. 24" x 44". Working to capture that warm, late evening sun in eastern Washington. Rattlesnake Mountain is the prominent landscape feature for 60 miles or so in every direction and I've been painting it from all angles. This painting, Dusk Falls on Rattlesnake and Red , is from the other side.

Winter Wheat on the Plateau . ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel. 24" x 36".  This is the land my great-grandparents settled almost 100 years ago. My grandparents farmed the land, my mother and her 4 siblings grew up there, my uncle Dale farmed the land for decades and today my cousin Dan and his wife live there and harvest the wheat. In 2005 WSU released a new strain of wheat named after my uncles: Bauermeister Hard Red Winter Wheat . This is an arid land. It's not irrigated and farmers here rely on winter and spring rains for winter wheat to grow. This painting is at harvest when the wheat is absolutely ripe and golden yellow. In the distance you can see the canyons and coulees cutting through the land. If you look close you can see the neighbor's farmhouse. The farms here are very large and the homes have always seemed like islands in a sea of wheat. This August we had a family reunion at the farm and on the way there my husband and I had a flat tire alo...

Five Mile Road to the Blues . ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 24" x 24".  This is a painting that I started during the studio tour simply so that I could show people an underpainting. It moved much more quickly than most paintings, possibly because I'd been drawing this composition for a couple of months in thumbnails, not quite settling on the finished size.

Sentinel Gap. ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 24" x 36". This is Sentinel Gap, a break in the Saddle Mountains where the Columbia River punched it's way through during an ice age flood. The power of water. I got an email last week that was such fun: the Art in the Embassies program would like one or two of my paintings for the Yemen Embassy. The new Ambassador was recently assigned and the curator at the State Department is putting together an exhibit of paintings that will be in Yemen for the Ambassador's Tour of Duty. I'm thrilled to be part of this and love that people in another part of the world will see my landscapes. They pull art from museums, galleries and artists for these unique exhibits to share American art with the world and I'm honored to participate. I'm not sure what landscapes will be heading to Yemen but the curator was interested in Sentinel Gap. I have several larger paintings of western landscapes in progress and nearly com...

River of Gold. ©2010 Lisa McShane. 12" x 20". Oil on Linen Panel. I've been working on about 10 paintings for more than a month now, painting, glazing, scumbling, day after day. Yesterday 5 of them were complete. When it rains it pours. This one was started in August after seeing the Skagit River turn to liquid gold as the sun set behind it. You can see another version, Summer Night, Skagit River, here . This is a painting that I often talked with studio visitors about during the recent studio tour. It's striking and people were drawn to it but there was something about it that was missing for me. This past week I made the darks darker, glazed the bottom of the river in a red/orange/purple, and added sunlight in a few more places. Now it works.

Poplars Above the Snake. ©2010 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen Panel.  16x20". 2015 Update One of the questions that came up several times during the Studio Tour was that of framing. - Do I frame my own paintings? - Where do I get my frames? - Why do I use black frames? - Where did I get that sweet gold frame? Yes, I frame my own paintings. Yes, I think artists should frame their paintings as a way of reducing costs and making a living at their profession. Yes, I think buyers of art should take their work to a local frame shop for framing. It took me awhile to figure out how to frame my work. First, I decided to make my own frames. After all, I was a sculpture major and I've got skills! I bought stock lumber (1 x 3's) and painted it black to make simple butt frames. It looked all right, but it doesn't provide the same level of protection because the frame is attached directly to the side of the stretcher bars. Over time, that pulls on the canvas. Ideally, th...

Surfaces, brushes, paints and mediums. Those are the materials of an oil painter. Each of those elements are important to the finished product. One of the very best painting surfaces is an oil or alkyd primed linen mounted to a panel. For my larger paintings I stretch linen or canvas over wood bars, size the fabric and then prime the surface with an oil primer. But for smaller paintings I prefer the linen panels for several reasons: Less fragile. When you're storing or moving paintings, this is important. Easy to handle. A nice stable surface with no movement. There is no flex when you paint on it and later, that makes them more archival. You can achieve a gorgeous surface effect. You have more frames to choose from (and yes, panels must be framed!) Linen panels seem complicated to make but they're not. It's easier than stretching canvas or linen and a much higher quality surface than buying stretched canvas. And the beauty of making your own panels is that once you...

Beautiful New Frames from Mountains Edge Frames - www.mountainsedgeframes.com! Whoa! Stop the presses! My gorgeous new frames from Mountains Edge Frames arrived today. I tore into the box, framed my paintings and hung them on the wall. It's the top image - these are my three latest paintings. I can't wait for people to see these.

Studio Wall Studio Wall w/ small paintings This Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 5, my studio will be open for the Whatcom Artists' Studio Tour! I hope you stop by. I have a number of new paintings that I'll be hanging this afternoon and I will be doing a painting demo most of the time. Tomorrow my friend Isabel Vanderslice will be assisting me. We hope someone buys a painting with a charge card so that we can use my new iPhone app to charge it!