Lisa McShane Art

Lake at Night. ©2012 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen. 9" x 12". There's a cold and lovely mountain lake near me that I drive by often. There is very little public access to the shore so the glimpses I see are at 60 mph on Interstate 5. But this is what I see when I pass at night: a few lights reflected in the deep blue water.

Perigee Moon . ©2011 Lisa McShane. Oil on Linen 20" x 12" The day we had the super moon this March it was oddly clear in Bellingham. I picked up another artist, Donna Auer , well before dawn and we drove to Lake Samish to watch the moon set and the sun rise. We chased the moon a bit as we struggled to find the right viewing spot what with trees and houses blocking our view. We stopped at one point on a dead end road and saw the moon high through the branches. Lovely. I've placed it lower but remember well how it looked.

Samish Alders, Frozen Lake. Oil on Canvas. 16 x 20. This is part of the Northern Lakes series. I've been keenly interested in the view you catch quickly, through a scrim of trees. Like this. Especially before dawn when it's very hard to see what it is you're seeing.

Samish Dawn 3. Oil on Canvas. 18" x 28". Isn't this lovely? It makes me happy to look at this one. Early dawn spreading over Lake Samish. Full of hope and promise. I sent this one out in my weekly email last Thursday and a dear friend pointed out that with Samish Dawn 1, 2 and now 3, perhaps I could come up with more creative titles! Point taken! I'd love to hear from you: what are your thoughts on titles? Do titles help engage the viewer or do they intrude into your interpretation?

Samish Dawn 2. Oil on Linen Panel. 8" x 10". I'm really enjoying painting the lake dawns. Partly because they're soft and lovely, with colors that are fun to layer. The trees and reflections are a delight and I've been focusing on getting the edges just so. Click here to see an earlier version of this same painting.

This is the start of a painting that I'm super excited about: Lake Samish seen through a scrim of alder trees. Last summer in Philadelphia I saw a painting by Peter Doig that floored me. It was a wonderful large painting about a Canadian artist called "Figure in a Mountain Landscape." Brilliant. It was painted from a 1930's photo of the artist Franklin Carmichael. So as soon as I had computer access I looked him up. More wonderful paintings. My painting of Lake Samish is inspired by such Doig paintings as Concrete Cabin and Ravine . Click here for a fun blog post with images of Doig's paintings and information about his process. I hope to see more in person in the future because the textures Doig uses are exciting. I also love his compositions. He uses photographs and memory, abstracted somewhat, to create a sense of the past.

Work in Progress: Samish Dawn 2 Work in Progress: Samish Dawn 1 I've spent a lot of time lately studying the sky. Early dawn I like to go to Lake Samish and watch the pink spread across the sky from the left and thinking what colors of blue and yellow I need to mix to create the upper portion of the sky and the blue reflections in the lake. I sketch, I take notes, I take photos but mostly, I'm training my memory to retain the details of the visual information. On the way back I swing by Lake Padden and it's always much brighter there, since it's a good 10 minutes later. Whistler painted wonderful nocturnes and landscapes and he made just rough sketches and notes. He spent a great deal of time, according to his colleagues, training himself to remember visual information: composition, color, the details. I've been working on better observation and on training my visual memory on these visits to Lake Samish.

Samish Dawn 1, Study. Oil on Linen Board. 6" x 8". $110, unframed. The shelves and walls of my studio are lined with Lake Samish, early dawn and nocturne studies. Meanwhile, I'm continuing to study Whistler and the tonalists to better understand their techniques, approach and underlying philosophy of painting. And because my larger paintings are taking a little longer, and because I love to paint, I'm creating studies of my larger works to think through value and color relationships.

Early Dawn, Lake Samish. Oil on Canvas. 16" x 20". SOLD . When you head south from Bellingham you drive through the Chuckanut range and nestled in the mountains is this spectacular lake. It's always beautiful but I love it best in the early dawn. For an earlier post with an earlier iteration of the painting, just one glaze on it, click here . I've been going to see Lake Samish at dawn and have several more paintings in progress. Dawn was a little easier to catch a month ago!